I've finally wanted to weave again, and I've done little else the last few days. I had a warp wound for a couple of years for a project that never made it to the loom, and wanted to use it to make dish towels. I needed some color, so I added some of Mom's olive green 8/2 to the organic 8/2 already wound, and interspersed stripes into the warp. I wanted them to be big, so I added enough to make them about 26 inches, before shrinkage, 620 threads set at 24 EPI. I think they'll probably be about 22-24 inches when they've been washed. And I'll make them about 36 inches long.
I started threading on Tuesday, front to back, and finished on Saturday. But I found myself dreading winding that big, fine warp alone! I've been curious about Trapeze warping, and spent a lot of time watching videos on YouTube, reading blogs,cruising Google, trying to figure it out. I didn't want to drill and cut and generally spend an entire day using power tools and making a mess!
On Sunday morning, as I woke up, I had a Eureka moment: My Navajo loom is empty, and would be pretty nearly perfect as a trapeze! I found a great video by Leigh Skowronski, and here's the link: https://youtu.be/Ck-_HSKNFx8. There are a few others, but this one is to the point, clear and concise.
So, I did it! It took me most of Sunday, finishing just in time to make peach crisp for Sunday supper! It's still fiddly, with having to unwind the chain, convince wayward threads they need to straighten up, retie the weights (those are 2 and 3 pound hand weights), but so much better than trying to do the whole thing myself!
This morning, I did the tie-up and tied onto the front apron. I started weaving, and discovered a mistake. Below is the pattern from Davison, page 25. Maybe you can't see the error, to the right in the picture, but there were two 1's side by side. When I cut it out, I could see there was more than that wrong. And now I can't decide what to do, which is why I decided to blog instead of weave for a little while. I'm not sure I like the pattern, even without the mistake. 
If you can see the tie-up and treadling, you'll notice that I have to direct-treadle the pattern, meaning I have to step on two treadles at a time every other pick. That's not necessarily what I don't like, but I'm just not in love with the pattern enough to re-thread half of a 620-thread warp. The plan is to have a green band on the top and bottom of each towel with the 2nd pattern, and the body of the towel will be what you see.
I think I probably just need to step back and think about it for a while, not throw the baby out with the bathwater. I need to take a cue from Purl, and just relax.
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