Fun with weaving

I'm convinced (or I am trying to convince myself) that someday weaving will be fun. Maybe with my very next warp! Because my last warp? Not. Fun. At. All. Beginning to end, there was nothing fun about it, except the colors are pretty. I have no pictures of this warp because, 1. it didn't deserve to be dignified with documentation, and 2. I keep forgetting I can take pictures.

Here is a list of what went wrong:
1. Mismeasured one pair of warp ends. I was following this very nice zig zag pattern on the measuring board and discovered when I pulled off one set of the warp that I hadn't bothered to follow the pattern for one pair, just went to the end of the first set of pegs and back. Even I knew it was easily fixed, but I should have been forwarned.

2. Missed a dent. Luckily it wasn't that far from the edge, so I didn't have to move half the warp.

3. I decided to throw in a couple of repeats of the weft color into the warp (ivory warp, pale teal weft). I had planned on using a 22 end (or whatever that's called in weaving) repeat, had calculated out the number of ends, plus 2 floating ends. When it came time to measure the warp, I did 13 ends ivory, 12 of teal, a whole bunch of ivory, 12 teal, 13 ivory (in two parts since there were lots of ends). Only when I pulled out the draft did I realize that the stupid repeat was 22! Not! 12! @%!#$!!! Fine. I'll choose a 12 repeat.

4. A couple other things went wrong with the threading, resulting in discovering I had miscounted my ends. All easily fixable (because of going from the 22 repeat to 12 I had come extra ends hanging off the front end of the loom).

5. Had a terrible time getting the tie on to the front apron to come out evenly.

6. About 6 inches in, it turns out, I may not have miscounted the warp ends. I just had !$%#$ing threading errors. At least three. Whatever. Too late now.

7. About halfway through weaving, one of my floating ends began fraying and pulling apart. I finally had to abandon it and throw it off the end.

8. Finally! Here comes the back apron rod! Almost! Done! Nothing more can go wrong now! Ha! The warp started untying itself from the back rod. First one bundle. Got that tied back on. Then another. Got that back on. Weave fast so it doesn't have time to happen again!

Whew! Done. Now I'm braiding the ends. Will wash it tonight. Maybe I'll set Len loose on it with his bb gun. He'll probably refuse.

And Stef? I measured another warp last night. Be proud.

Cotton dishtowels. Plain weave. What could go wrong?

heh.