Good grief, I never thought getting a warp on the loom would be noteworthy on a project, but I've had so much trouble with this warp that I'm celebrating that it's finally accomplished!
What took so long? Besides not having unlimited amounts of time for weaving anymore, I made so many threading mistakes! Threaded the heddles, checked the threading and found mistakes, corrected the mistakes, checked again, and then found new mistakes! What's annoying is that it's not a complicated threading pattern: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 7 - 6 - 5 - 4 - 3 - 2 - repeat. I can't believe I had so many errors. And I wasn't even listening to a book while I did it.
And then there were the tangles. What a mess. Changing the color for every warp end to create a random color warp was a disaster. I picked up a different color yarn for each new end which meant there was a lot of crossing over on the first and last pegs on my warping board. I think this was the major reason for the tangles. I've never had so many tangles! In fact, I'm a little surprised that I didn't give up and throw the whole thing away. Perhaps it was the unwelcome idea of having to start the warp again from scratch that was the deterrent. My random color idea didn't work the first time, so likely it wouldn't work a second time either. I just started thinking of it as a puzzle to solve.
Ironically, the very project I hoped would be a relaxing distraction from the several stressors in my life, became a stressor itself. Anyway, it's on the loom! Yay!
Next is tying up the treadles. I'm trying a new system here, and if it works as well as promised, I'll be ready to actually start weaving soon!
