Setting up

Okay, so the yarn is spun and ready to weave with, but before I weave I need to set up the loom. I have to do a little bit of math to figure out how many strings per inch I want the shawl to be. The finished shawl will be about 21 inches. I need to allow four inches for shrinkage, so I need to plan on 25 inches on the loom. I want 15 strings per inch. So I multiply 25 by 15 and get 375 ends. The weaving pattern I've chosen is a repeat of 30, so in order to make this work and be centered I need to increase the strings to 390 plus 2 for floats. That is a total of 392 strings that I need to get ready to go on the loom.
The length of the strings will be 3 yards. I use a warping board to measure out the length and count the number of strings that I need. This process took about 2 hours.


Now that I have the warp strings counted and measured it's time to go to the loom. I now will take one by one everyone of those 392 strings and thread them through the reed. That took 1 hour.

After I have finished sleying the reed, I then need to take each thread one by one and pull it through one headle on one of the four shafts on the loom. Time, 2 hours.
Now I need to tie the warp to the back beam. Time 1 hour
With the warp attached to the back beam of the loom, it's now time to wind the warp up and attach the other end to the front beam. Time 1 hour.
The loom is now dressed, and I'm ready to begin weaving. Total time invested so far in this shawl, 37 hours.