Warp Winding

I had a big plan. I was going to make a whole bunch of kitchen towels for gifts for some friends from church, my mom, maybe Brittney and Chelsea (the grown daughters). Then I went and spent ten days in Pennsylvania with my parents not too long ago. So the towel warp didn’t get wound. Well it shouldn’t be that difficult I said to myself. LOL

I had on hand one come of 8/2 natural cotton and a couple of cones of a couple of colors. The plan was to wind an all natural warp and weave colored stripes on each end of each towel.

Today I’m just going to tell you my first mistake.

The warp length needed to be 13 yards to get the number of towels I need. I had one cone of natural on hand.

Years ago when I had that weaving week with Sara Lamb she taught me to use a paddle when winding a warp. She explained how fast it is. Back in July, when I was winding the warp for that dress, I realized that it would be faster with a paddle.

Three days ago….well I didn’t listen to Sara Lamb or my experience. I have a warping mill that can hold up to 15 yards. It’s awesome.  I needed 440 ends and I decided to do 4 chains of 110 ends each. Each chain took about 2 hours. Because I had only one cone. Imagine if I had 4 cones. I could have knocked that down to only 30 minutes per chain. Two hours total! Instead of the 8 hours over 2 days it took.

So my advice to you today, if you have plans to do solid color weaving, get yourself a warping paddle. It’s a miracle time saver. Remind me I said this next time I’m going to wind a warp. Don’t worry, I bought 4 new cones from Gist Yarn Last week plus a little extra..