Chenille scarf - WIP

I didn't get much done on the scarf this past weekend, but I did get to a crucial stage. Remember the two mystery crosses on the warp? Here's where they come in really handy. The cross at the bottom of the warp goes through the "raddle," which is the piece of wood with the nails, which are one inch apart. What you do is cross the threads in bunches that correspond to how many ends per inch you have. This scarf will be about 11 inches wide, and there are 16 ends per inch, so I changed the cross every 16 threads, 11 times. What this does is help to spread the warp out to its proper width as you wind the warp onto the back, and it also minimizes crossed and tangled threads, the bane of every weaver. Also, when you wind onto the "back beam," you put in layers of heavy construction paper so that the threads don't sink into the wrong layer. Another method of maintaining the proper tension and trying to keep the blasted threads from tangling.






The other cross can be seen where the "lease sticks" are. For this cross, which usually can be seen at the top of a warp, you want to cross every thread. This is where each thread will be taken and put through the "heddles," which is how the pattern will eventually emerge. So the next step, which I hope to start this weekend, is threading the heddles, a laborious process that takes a lot of concentration. But it's part of my own personal psychosis that this is the part that I like the best.