Sweet success

What you are seeing, dear hearts, is about 8″ of fabric, without a single broken thread.

I feel like Cardenas must have, as he pushed wearily through yet another patch of scrub brush – hot, sweaty, and dusty after weeks of thrashing about in the wilderness – and beheld, for the first time, the Grand Canyon opening up in its vast vista beneath him.  I feel like a marathoner must, stumbling through the last few miles and seeing the finish line appear.  I feel like the heavens have opened up their glories, the trumpets have sounded, and I am gazing on the Promised Land.

IT.  IS.  WORKING!!!

Now, the pattern is not quite as delicate as it is in the finer yarns and/or the denser sett.  Here is a closeup, with the shuttle giving a sense of scale:

So I’ve lost some delicacy in the pattern, but it’s more than made up for in weavability.  This sweet little piece (sett at 72 epi) weaves at about 3 minutes per inch, which (adding some fudge time) means about two hours per yard.  This suggests that I could realistically weave about 2-3 yards per day, so 20 yards would be something like 7-10 days if I worked at it.  Hallelujah!  I will get this yardage woven!

But I am not quite done with sampling yet.  This is woven with 60/2 silk weft.  I also want to try it with 120/2 silk weft as well, to see if I like that look better…so after I weave another few inches I will switch out and try the thinner weft, and weave about 18″, then wet-finish the samples to compare.

After that I will weave up the rest of the sample warp and see how it goes!

I am a little concerned about whether I can get 20 yards wound evenly onto the beam – there was a little bit of uneven tension even in the short sample warp – but I figure that if I take it slowly and patiently, and don’t rush, I’ll have a fairly decent chance of getting it put on correctly.

But that is the news for tonight: It’s working!!  I’m in business!!!

Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah!

(now if only this poison ivy would STOP ITCHING!!)