“Bipolar Prison” progress

I’m pleased to say that I have broken the logjam on the “Bipolar Prison” piece! I finished threading earlier this week, spent yesterday sleying like a demon, and am now happily debugging the warp. There are quite a few errors in the threading and sleying, so I expected to spend up to a week debugging, but it looks (knock on wood!) like it will only require a few days.

There are some tangles behind the lease sticks, so this warp will definitely have tension problems when woven. Regrettable, but I think it can be worked around. And I am not weaving yardage, so as long as I can clear the tension problems in a one-yard section, I think it will all work out.

And the warp is beautiful! Here’s a shot with the red warp on top:

The mottled shades of fire are exactly what I was hoping for, so I am pretty pleased.

I have also finished the initial translation of the image into a loom-ready file. Here is Arahweave’s simulation of the fabric:

If you think this looks disappointingly drab, fear not: the final fabric will have much brighter and more varied colors. The purpose of the simulation is mostly to make sure that all the elements of the image are represented correctly, and that I got the translation right. (Arahweave does have the ability to do a much more accurate simulation, but I decided not to put the time into tweaking all the knobs.)

I decided to put some squiggles into the background to add to the sense of internal chaos. And I thought about using a more complex weave structure for the face, but eventually decided that I wanted the smoothest possible rendition for the face, for which 8-end satin is perfect.

Next steps are to finish debugging the warp, weave samples of each weave structure, then weave aspect ratio samples. After that, I will weave some sample sections to test my overall design. I expect to weave the piece several times over before I’m satisfied. Yes, it will take a long time, but if you want great results, you have to put in the work. Perfection is a very slow process.