Geeky stats post

I wove another 8" of header band today. Since I'm still sore from that fall last week, I've been doing it in shorter sessions rather than settling down to do one long session. This has meant the weaving setup has lived on my dining table all day today, but I'm good with that. I'd rather be able to come and go right now.

Have been having some equipment -- well, not failures, just problems. The improvised warping board keeps coming unclamped. I have shored it up with better clamps and some ties; that should keep it from slipping any more. The frame loom was giving me tension problems which made advancing the band warp slow and annoying. I worked out a different way to use the tension device, by adding a dowel to the process. Later on I will probably post a photo of the rig; there's still plenty of time for me to fine-tune it some more before I see the end of this warp.

I'm still getting gauge without thinking about it much, but this yarn is so fine I expect I'll probably be a couple of inches off by the time I get to the titular end of it. That's okay; I'll just add some more warp. I would like my calculations and gauge to be brilliantly accurate, but I'm willing to admit they likely aren't.

I thought I should probably time myself and see how long it takes to crank out the header band. I'll measure twice more: somewhere near the middle of the band and somewhere right before the end. Maybe I'll get faster at this after having done a yard or two of it.

Right now I'm grouping the band weft/warp ends in 12-loop bunches, one per inch. (That's a sett of 24 epi.) First I pull a warp loop through the header band as weft; I walk it to my dining room wall, pull out about another foot of length, and then return to my warping pegs. I wind the loop around the set of warping pegs in the assigned order, keeping a finger between the two threads so they're always in the right relationship. I change the shed, beat the band with a finger of my right hand, and pull the next loop. After I finish 12 of these loops, I change the shed again. I beat the last loop into the band, then pull out my measuring stick to make sure I've got gauge. Then I put my hand in the cross, separate the halves of the warp, and tie a slip knot in the front half of the warp. Then I chain the whole bundle to make it more manageable, then I toss it toward the other end of the table away from the weaving process.

That entire process takes approximately 7:45. It includes occasional adjustments of gauge or of the tension of a weft loop at the non-warp side of the header band, i.e., across what will be the top when the warp is put on the loom.

So at this point I'm taking seven minutes and 45 seconds to create one inch of header band/warp. Next time I have to advance the band warp, I'll time that and turn it into a geeky textile statistic too.

Because it's all about the geeky stats, right?