Oh, oh. It's evident I'm a little out of practice at the loom! As I was threading some heddles just now, I realized that I neglected to distribute them evenly on both sides of the central hooks which hold the bars which hold the heddles. It's no big deal, I can bend the bars that hold the heddles just enough to get them off the hooks and thereby allowing me to shuffle the heddles from one side to the other. But in the process of thinking it through, something made me look at the draft again. Oh, no!
Two things: 1) As it was I had just enough heddles to thread this draft: I have no extras floating around; and 2) looking at the draft again I realize that I missed the fact that the corner block threading was given only once (it's not quite obvious unless one is really alert) and I should have counted it twice (because I need one on each side of the center panel). Oh, no!
Some tense moments. What to do? I would need to order some more heddles, wait for them to arrive, and get them on the frames. Ordering isn't a problem, but there's no way to add heddles after threading has begun. Not on this loom, anyway. Oh, no!
"Think of a solution," I thought. "Make it work," as they would say on "Project Runway". Could I make up some string heddles and get them on the frames? Ooh, that would be a lot of work and I'm not sure what the result would be. Should I order some more heddles and cut the top and bottom loops so I can get them on the frames? Seems such a wasteful thing to do. Oh, no!
I came close to deciding to scrap the project. Start over with something new--or the same draft--but start over. I decided to hold off a bit. Maybe a solution would come. But what? What can I do? Oh, no!
Well, a solution just came to me. It's not a perfect solution, but it's a solution I can live with... The center panel of the draft is a motif of 24 threads repeated ten times. That's 240 threads, hence 240 heddles. If I repeat the motif only 4 times (e.g. make the center panel quite a bit narrower) it would free up 144 heddles--the corner block requires 140. It works. Oh, yes!
So my runner is still going to be the width I had planned on, only the center panel will be narrower. Will it look unbalanced? Maybe. Maybe not. Time will tell. (I think it probably will.) At any rate, I think I will still enjoy it, and I will enjoy the process of weaving it, for sure. And I think it's better than starting over and losing all the work I've already done. Oh, my!
Live and learn.
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