Starting over

Yesterday’s festivities included the first dyeing session for my Fine Threads Study Group samples, and almost finishing the threading for the devore sampler.  I say “almost” because, as I was blitzing along on thread #720 of 800, treadling my threading and humming a cheery “I’m-almost-done-threading” tune, I happened to look up at my monitor, and realized that the treadling sequence ended at pick #741.

How could this be?  If I were treadling the threading, the sequence should have ended at pick #800.

Then I realized that, in my haste to start threading, I had forgotten to set the treadling sequence to be the same as the threading in my weaving draft.  I had been threading the treadling sequence in my original draft, not the threading!

I said a couple of bad words and assessed the situation.  Eventually I concluded that there was nothing for it but to start over.  I said a few more choice words and consoled myself with the knowledge that only a genius such as myself could have made such an error.  A mere mortal would have been content with only a few small threading errors, easily fixed; but to thread up 720 threads of a completely wrong threading required genius, nothing less.  C’est la vie.

Given my display of brilliance, I decided to quit threading for the day, and do something that even a genius couldn’t screw up.  I started making pirns.  I needed 12 pirns to wind my colors onto, and wanted to label them with the color numbers and formulas.  So I rolled a bunch of paper pirns, wrapping half a sheet of 8.5 x 11 standard copy paper tightly around a 5/16″ dowel and taping it closed.  (Actually, the way to do it is to apply the tape beforehand, then roll up the pirn – giving you a nice, totally smooth edge when the pirn is completely rolled.)  This works with Schacht and regular-size Bluster Bay end-feed shuttles.  Since I can manufacture a paper pirn in about 30 seconds with maybe 2 cents’ worth of paper and 1 cent’s worth of tape, that’s a 99+% savings over purchasing a plastic pirn.  In about fifteen minutes I manufactured 30 paper pirns, saving myself over $100.  At that rate, I could “pay” myself $400 an hour to roll paper pirns!  I felt somewhat better about my cleverness, and proceeded to wind a couple skeins onto the pirns before giving up for the day.

So today’s festivities will involve threading the CORRECT draft, another three hours of work, and then going up to Sharon’s to get a dress form cover fitted.  With luck, I should be able to rethread today and sley, tie on, and start weaving on Monday.

Ann asked what colors I used to create the colors in the last post.  I used Cibacron F fiber-reactive dyes, colors Red F-33 (which I later found out is actually a mix, not a “pure” color at all), Blue F-GF, and Golden Yellow.  Sadly, Blue F-GF is no longer available (I stocked up as soon as I found it was discontinued), so I’m afraid those formulas won’t be of much use, but the green is 9-1 gold-blue (9 parts gold to 1 part blue), the warm brown is 7-2-1 gold-red-blue, the cooler brown is 5-3-2 gold-red-blue.  The four depths-of-shades are .5%, 1%, 2%, and 4% (this refers to the weight of dye relative to the weight of fiber).