Friday, January 10, 2025

Pine Tree & Snowball Bookmarks: Setback

There was no treading draft for this pattern, so I began my weaving with a bit of experimentation to see what all the sheds did.


The bottom row is sheds 1, 2, 3, 4 consecutively for several rows, then moving up are rows for each shed, repeated with tabby in between the pattern picks. The pattern is supposed to be symmetrical from selvedge to selvedge, but as you can see, two of the sheds (B and C), are not. That, plus a threading error smack dab in the middle. 

I loosened the tension and tried to check the threading in the heddles, but it's too crammed to make an easy job of that. So I cut the warp right above the sample, removed the beater, and am making a more careful check. 

I figured it could be one of two things:
  • threading draft error
  • miscounting on my part

What I discovered, is that I had the wrong number of warp ends. I knew from Lucy Brusic (A Crackle Weave Companion) that Snyder's book contains some errors. But I could see that the threading draft was correct, so my next step was to count the warp ends in the draft. 


The instructions (The Crackle Weave, 1961 edition, page 24) called for 88 ends. Yet the draft counts out to 112, including selvedges and incidentals. In checking Syder's 1989 revised edition, I saw that the bookmark width and number of ends was omitted. So someone must have caught the error and omitted it, but it would have been helpful to indicate the correct number of ends required. 

So, mystery solved, but I'll have to add 24 more ends to the warp and rethread to correct that error in the middle of the warp. Fortunately it's a short warp and so should be doable. 

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