Ready to sley

Threaded the sample yesterday (by my calculations, 1100 threads took about 3 hours and 15 minutes to complete, though I broke it up  into periods throughout the day) and am now ready to move on to sleying the reed.  Since the reed is 27″ and my reed pocket is only 24.25″, however, I will need to cut down the reed.  So I’m waiting for dawn to arrive so I can go outside and cut it.  Meanwhile, I am entering more projects on my website.  Slow process, but thankfully, I am a relatively new and not particularly prolific weaver, so I don’t have more than ten or fifteen left to enter.

I have also solved the reed hook problem by constructing two tools out of 10-mil (.010″) thick brass:

Easy to make: cut out the shape with scissors, fold over 1/3″ or so (doesn’t need to be exact) on either side, press with a smooth rounded-edge something-or-other (I used the back end of the scissors) to flatten any parts that stick up, and sand lightly to remove rough edges.

The top tool is for pushing yarns through the reed, the bottom hook for pulling.  They do bend easily, but that allows them to be adjusted for your hand position, and they also bend back into shape easily.  And they go through a 30-dent reed without having to bend the reed partitions.