Halfway threaded!

I’ve doubled my threading speed over the last few days, mostly by paying close attention to the threading process. I’m not going into the gory details, but the bottom line is that I’m now threading at 3.3 heddles/minute, exactly double the rate at which I started. I’m hoping to keep improving, too.

Here’s where I am after spending all day laboring in front of the loom:

my TC-2 jacquard loom, exactly halfway threaded!

The other half of the warp is 880 threads – at 3.3 heddles/minute, that will take another 4.5 hours. So I should finish early next week.

I had been using a makeshift threading hook – not much more than a bent piece of wire – but Mike very generously volunteered to make me a real threading hook. So he made me this little beauty:

I included the pen for scale – that hook is tiny. It took Mike a few hours with a jeweler’s saw, some files, sandpaper, and a sheet of bronze to make it for me. It works infinitely better than my bent piece of wire – I’m very happy he made it for me. Thanks, Mike!

In other news, chocolate season is creeping closer and closer. The official opening of the test kitchen is in just three weeks! So it is looking like it will be a race between my weaving progress and the chocolate calendar. I’ve started putting together my annual chocolate order, and am wrestling between splitting the order into two parts (one for flavor trials and one for the production run) or just ordering everything at once. Prudence would suggest splitting the order, but a larger order might allow me to skip a second trip to the gourmet wholesaler – getting there is terribly inconvenient as they are an hour’s drive away and only open during business hours. And packing 132 pounds of chocolate into the car, all at once, would be fun!