Fini

        10.5 meters of cloth are flying their way to Arizona to be washed, dried, hemmed, and done-to-whatever to be made into babywraps. I burled my cloth looking for misspicks and any other weaving mess ups that are better fixed before the cloth is processed. I looked everywhere and especially at the selvedges but ... I could not find anything to fix. When I weave and I see something impossible to fix on the loom I will mark it with a small piece of painter's tape. I did not have to do this with this cloth. It is a bit arrogant to say I wove some perfect cloth and yet I can't find any mistakes. A bit scary.  My hope is that some mama somewhere will hold her "squish" (babywrap lingo) close, tight, and happy in the cloth I made and put so much energy into.

Subtle

   This warp is weaving very well. I am only working with two colors of the Bockens cotton, an unbleached natural and a bleached white. You can barely see any stripes or my attempt at a gradient. I had to carefully calculate the amount of each of these colors that I have. I needed to use up all of the bleached white because my weft is all the unbleached. Math is not my strong point and I have made some amazing errors. I was left,  after measuring the warp, with only a few yards of the bleached white. This is good. I need something if I have to do a warp repair.
   I still can't get close to the ppi desisired by my boss. This is a very different yarn. I need to look at it closely with my magnifying glasses and compare it to other 8/2s cottons. Maybe if the sett was lower I could pack in more weft? Really?  ... I should put on a more narrow sample and switch up the reeds, change the weave structure, wet finish it myself. We shall see. Meanwhile at my "guild" I bought two large cones of 8/2s unmercerized cotton of dubious origin that will make splendid babywraps for myself.

Getting There

      I am threading the next batch of the Bockens cotton. I have my 13 dent reed and have moved the warp onto the 2" sectional beam and I have a selvedge running on the 2nd beam. The warp looks nice on the beam. There are still some mysterious technical issues like the finished weight of the last warp.
        Apparently it weighed almost half of the usual tabby warp but those warps were woven with a different cotton according to my client. I still think the Bockens is quite lively and it seems to throw more lint than the WEBs 8/2s unmercerized which is the only cotton I can compare it to. I cannot seem to beat down the weft as much as I should for the specification I given. I feel a lot of resistence in the warp. The 2nd half of my last warp was perfectly woven but it did seem kind of airy. I didn't do the wet finishing so I am  relying on the person I am working for to take the weight measurement. It is difficult when you don't control the whole process but in previous contracts I just burl the cloth and returned the "grey goods" to my client.