Here’s my process pictures for my first time fully warping my SAORI loom with the “chair warp” from my last loom-related post. First, I remove the beater and flip it over, resting the legs of the beater on the harness of the loom. I undo the braids from my prepared warp, and use the warp cross to keep the warps in order, and then cut the colored yarn I used to keep the cross intact (visible in the picture below). There is a tool that is a series of posts and grooves to hold this as well. I don’t have it. I’m wondering how I – or it! – can hold all the warp if I were to warp its full 23″ width. This is 56 warps. The loom holds 300.

This is sleying the reed. I use the reed hook to push the warp through the dents.

Progress.

I’ve tied bundles of warp threads together below the reed, and turned over and reinstalled the beater.

Now threading the heddles. I’m sitting at the back of the loom, holding a bunch of warp threads in my left hand, interlacing them between my fingers. I can’t keep it interlaced like this; it keeps sliding off my pinky, but I can keep it solidly between my first and middle finger. Inside my left hand is a bunch of heddles, from both the front and back harnesses. As I use up the warp in my left hand, I grab more warp and more heddles.

Here’s using the hook to grab the next warp to pull through the heddle. Standard warping is to alternate from the front and back harness (and one warp per dent in the reed), which is what I’m doing here. I can put more than one warp through the same dent and heddle. I can skip dents. I can do two front or two back heddles in a row. I wanted to try a plain warp first, so one warp per dent and heddle, and alternating front and back harnesses it is!

Done.

As I’m looking back at the instructions, I see I’m supposed to be tying bundles of warps together as I complete warping. Oh.

Pulling the warp through to the back of the loom, with the tying rod resting on top of the warp.

I have to use two hands for the rest of this (and a knee at one point), so no pictures. Here’s the frustration picture. I’ve tied the warp onto the tying rod (the diagonal dowel you can see at the upper left), and I’ve got to try to roll it onto the warp roller while holding onto the warp at the front of the beater. So I’m sitting cross legged on the floor to the left of the loom, my right hand is holding the warp at the front of the beater, I’m rolling the warp roller with my left hand, and pressing the warp control pedal with my left knee. Looking closely at the pictures in the book now, I see the warp control pedal is disengaged by the angle of the pedal – but it’s not written in the instructions to do so. I will have to try that next time. The warp roller fell off twice because I didn’t have the metal widgets correctly on it.

That’s done, now to attach the warp to the front clipping tying rod. I just have to put this strip of wood into the slot in the dowel, catching the warp.

Warped! Or at least I think so.

Weaving right along. Isn’t this yarn great/terrible? Microfiber chenille, from one of two Craiglist yarn lots I purchased for very little money. I keep thinking of caterpillars.

So, I try to advance the warp and it’s not working. I check the pedal and advance the warp, more than once. Also, why is the beater hitting what I’m weaving? It’s because I need the warp to go up and over the front beam. I correct this by removing the clipping tying rod and reinstalling it correctly. Now I’m making some sort of animal skin print with my caterpillar yarn!

Okay, off to finish this warp.