Tangled Webs and Cardboard.

Weaving class is over--for this quarter, anyway. I got the string heddles done and put on the loom.

The  warp beam has been residing in the back of my van for the past two weeks. I had to move it when the family went out to dinner on Friday. I had the boys put it on top of the washing machine in the garage. I did laundry today, so now it's in the front room.

I've been trying to untangle the bottom part of it. I got the old spacing chains from last year off. That was a major hassle in trying to untangle things.

You are probably now screaming at your monitor "Why is it so tangled? How did she let this happen? Didn't she know it would be an Herculean task later?" Angst, angst, angst!

(Since you're probably reading this because I posted the link on my facebook page, you may NOT be yelling things at the computer and are getting the glazed eyeballed stare of impending death from boredom. If you are related to or are well acquainted with me, asking the above questions is kind of pointless, isn't it, because you know the answer is "Because it's Audrey!")

For all two of you who may not have known me since kindergarten and before, I will answer the questions in the form of a prescription for rolling up the loom with a work in progress. But briefly, Yes, I did know it would be this difficult later when I rolled up the beam the way I did last year.

Last year, at the end of the last night of Journey to Bethlehem, it was fixing to RAIN. Hard. I got the beam down and took it up to the props room, somehow. I don't remember that exactly. I packed up all my things, and then got my son to help me roll up the beam very quickly, so we could get it to my van before it started raining. It was starting to sprinkle as we walked to the car. Not just sprinkle spray, nope, it was slooooow, BIG, fat, drops of water, picking up speed with each succeeding drop.

If you are doing a warp weighted loom for demonstration someplace, a renfair, an SCA war or a re-enaction event, you will have to disassemble and move the beam and the loom with an unfinished project on it, unless you are a blindingly fast weaver.

Put a tarp, canvas, or a large piece of corrugated cardboard flat on the ground in front of the loom. Take down the beam, and place it just above one end of the tarp. Roll up the beam the way you do when you are rolling the woven cloth onto a modern floor loom with the cardboard.

Cardboard isn't period at all, unless it's late 1800's, in which case, you wouldn't be using a warp-weighted loom. It would be difficult to wind a sheet of cardboard on the beam because of the way the loom is configured. I suppose you could use sticks, but then you risk snagging the fabric. If you are rolling it up to move and "historicity" is important, then you could use a canvas, or maybe one of those bamboo mats like they sell at a hardware warehouse store in the garden department.

By the way, when you started weaving did you know that you need to have a refrigerator box worth of corrugated cardboard for both beams? I didn't know this. What is more, I haven't come across much on this important little tidbit of information in any weaving pattern, magazine, or book I've seen. Of course, it's possible I may have missed something. I haven't read absolutely everything there is out there on the subject and I usually only read English language publications.

You get this information from another weaver, and it's usually an offhand, "oh, roll some cardboard in between the layers on the threads and the cloth beams so they don't stick to each other."

So what did weavers use before cardboard was invented? Most likely they used sticks. I've seen that  mentioned, once, fairly recently in a magazine article, I think. I tried to Google this and was unsuccessful in finding the topic. So if you see this and have any historical information on it, please comment and let me know.