Vitarka

I'm back to the vitarka stage with weaving. Vitarka is the first stage of learning: the bike falling over because you can't figure out how to balance, the toddler falling down because he hasn't determined how to move two feet and stay aloft, the weaver who's warping a loom for the first time in over three years.

I thought that I remembered how to do this. But there are so many steps to preparing, or as it is called - dressing - the loom, that some were sure to fall through the cracks. I've already started a list in the notebook where I keep track of a project. The subject of the list is Mistakes, and I've already run into two. (Edit: No, three.)

One was minor, or mrdu: I forgot that you want to insert the lease sticks - which are long, narrow pieces of wood drilled with a hole in each end - between the cross at the end of the warp so that you can keep the gazillion threads in order as you thread the loom. Somewhat important, but I caught myself as I was preparing the warp to go onto the loom.
Second mistake: somewhat more major, or madhya. Somehow, in the beginning or end of the middle group of warp, I willy-nilly wound the warp without making the cross. Now I have a hunk of warp in the center that has no clear order of which thread comes first.

Third mistake, noticed today, big- adhimatratvat -: even though I used a calculator, and kept careful notes, and pre-planned the warp so that the blocks of Summer and Winter pattern would fall neatly into the stripes of periwinkle and amethyst blue, I discovered that already, in my first block, I'm short seven ends of periwinkle. No idea how this could have happened. I worked out the math, doublechecked it, and recounted each group of color before moving on to the next.

Here are some of my tools. In the background, the glass of white wine. Perhaps the reason for Mistake Number 3? But I don't think so. Somehow, there's always a gremlin in the machine when I set a warp up. I can't remember it ever lacking at least a few glitches.

Today was not the day to try to fix this mistake. I could feel the urge to cut the whole thing off the loom, all 175 inches of 488 warp ends, which equals 2372 yards of fiber. Instead, I roamed from project to project, drove to the knitting store in search of a sock yarn that resembles tweedy ragg socks (no luck), knit my Jitterbug yarn from Joan and listened to a Harry Potter (great yarn makes all the difference!), threw the ring for Parker, colored in my homework from anatomy class, and laid in the hammock and read a mystery by K.K. Beck

Here's one of the orphan yarns if anyone feels tempted. Rowan Summer Tweed.