Onward with the linen: sampling

All those brave words I typed about taking the irregularities in the linen as evidence of the rusticality of the piece, and being able to live with the threading errors? I really ought to know myself better. After weaving 8-9 inches of the linen, I stopped to assess. And discovered that the two places where I had missed a dent in the reed when sleying both had a threading error with two threads in the same dent, right beside them. Aaah. You can see this in the picture below, marked with purple threads:



In addition to this, I wasn't happy with the balance of the loom for the plain weave. A very broad cloth of plain weave is a most unforgiving thing to weave - all errors stand out like a sore thumb. So I decided that this was the perfect time to cut off the first section and use it as a sample. In doing so, I fixed the sleying errors, rebalanced the loom and retied the warp. I'm really pleased with the way the linen yardage feels after coming off the loom. It's a nice firm fabric despite being an open weave, and will do well for cross-stitch, I think. The next step is to zig zag the ends, wash it and use it for a sample sewing piece. In the meantime I'll get on with the rest of the yardage.

Now to illustrate exactly why you shouldn't weave with a fluffy single as a warp, this is what happens behind my reed as I beat:



Don't you envy me the job of clearing that off each of the 700 threads after every few beats?