What the HECK??!!

As planned, I’m weaving a full size wrap, using Meghan’s colors with a cream weft. When it’s done I’ll cut it off the loom, hem and wet finish it, and send it to Meghan for her and two other moms to test out. They’ll each use it for a week, write down their comments, and send it back to me. I’ll use their input to determine if I need to make any adjustments before proceeding.

So after getting the loom threaded I sat down to throwing the shuttle. I had only one tiny threading error, which I fixed relatively easily.

I timed myself at several different times to see how many inches of baby wrap I can weave in 15 minutes. The clear answer is 7 inches. Despite needing to wind bobbins and fix a broken warp thread, my time didn’t vary much at all.

Here’s what I originally wrote in the draft of this post: “It’ll be fun to take all my measurements: width in reed, width on loom, length on loom, width and length off loom, width and length after wet finishing. All this info is critical to me knowing how I have to plan future wraps to make sure I can produce wraps in the promised sizes.”

Hah, HAH, HAH!

I finished the weaving last night and cut it off the loom today, taking care to reinsert lease sticks and have enough length in front of the reed so all I have to do is tie to the apron rod to start the second warp, assuming no changes are needed. In good weaving practice, the first thing I did after it was off the loom was to measure the width & length.

WHAT??!!! I wove 205″ on the loom, under tension. How can it POSSIBLY be 225″ off the loom??

I marked my weaving length by inserting safety pins, just like always. The only difference is that I used 20″ for my distance between pins instead of my usual 10″.

Count the pins again – 10. 10 pins x 20″ = 200″.

Measure the cloth again – 225″.

Go over the edge of the cloth again to make sure I didn’t miss a pin. Nope.

Measure the cloth again – 225″.

Scratch my head, sit down and look at the fabric.

Measure the cloth again, this time in yards instead of 50″ increments- still 225″.

What the heck??!! How is this possible?!

Walk away. Chop veggies for soup.

DOH! (Heel of palm to forehead.) I know how it happened!

Usually when I’m weaving a scarf, I use 1 less pin than needed. So if I want to weave 76″ of length, I use 6 pins, each 10″ apart, and don’t use a pin for that last 16″. But I used 10 pins, each 20″ apart, and THEN did my last 25″. I should have used 9 pins, not 10.

CRAP!! Now will I have enough length to weave the second warp the length Meghan wants?

Go to my worksheet and do some quick calculations. WHEW!! I should have plenty, with a bunch left over. For my first baby wrap, I made my warp extra long, just to make sure I didn’t cut myself short.

The lesson to be learned here: follow your usual process!

Now I’m going to email my test mammas and see if I should hem the extra long wrap as is, or cut 20″ off it first.