Next in Line

I've had 6 kg of 2/9 wool in my closet for about six years.  I've been planning on making blankets, but have been putting it off because of the 1024 ends it will require. But my mom called me a couple months ago and asked if I would make her a blue throw for her new couch, so it's now the next project in line.


I've never done a project with that many ends before.  I had ordered a couple hundred extra heddles for my Glimakra last year in preparation for them, but didn't get to it.  Now I have a 16-shaft AVL with 1600 heddles already on it!  I'm going to use double weave plain weave, so it will require only 4 shafts, but I'm going to spread the ends over all 16 shafts so hopefully it will reduce the stickiness of the warp.  The blankets will be approximately 64" square (on the loom) with 6 inches of fringe on each end.  If I make a 15-yard warp, I should be able to get 7 blankets out of it. Or at least 6 blankets and a nice warm shawl.

I'm going to use the natural and gray for the warp and the blue, red and purple for the weft.

I'm also going to do something else I've never done before and I'm going to sley this OFF the loom.  I'm going to Hobby Lobby tonight to see if I can find something that will work as a reed holder.  It's going to be sleyed at 32 epi, so an 8-dent reed is also going to be ordered.  It will be easier to thread the heddles (being an avid F2Ber) on 16 shafts if the ends are always in groups of four. I'm thinking about pegging my dobby to raise 4 shafts at a time to make threading go smoothly with less chance of a mistake.