After blood, sweat and instructions...comes a bit of fabric

After spending hours fiddling about with the loom I've finally produced a tiny piece of fabric! I spent the last few evenings going one step forward and two steps back, realising that I'd got the tie up completely wrong or totally misunderstood what I was supposed to be doing. At one point I had put the warp on the loom but missed out the knee beam completely! Very frustrating at the time.

Still, there are some mistakes I know I won't make again - I think I was just so excited that I wasn't thinking logically. A bull in a china shop springs to mind. So when I stepped back from the loom and read some of the weaving blogs out there and read the Glimakra instructions on how to set up the countermarch I actully started thinking about things logically and then the penny dropped. I tested the tie up with one treddle first and then it all seemed so obvious.

I know I've still got some work to do on the shed and the tension of the warp isn't the greatest but the weft is straight and overall I think it will do for my test piece.

I've only managed two repeats so far but it's huge progress and I wanted to post this before I carry on. Needless to say I slept like a baby the night that I got it all sorted out!

As you can see from the photo I haven't got a pirn on the shuttle yet - I've cut some bamboo from the masses that we have in the garden and thought I'd use that.