Rod and I are very privileged to have been commissioned by Jane Shand from JSDesign to weave some of her very fine merino yarn. It is undoubtedly the most exquisite yarn we have ever worked with and it is grown in Middlemarch and milled at the Bruce Woollen Mills in Milton, which just adds to our belief that rural NZ has the produce and the skills to produce world class products.
You can check Jane and her merino products out at http://www.jsdesign.co.nz/
We spent yesterday threading 1,830 72 metre long very fine merino warp ends through 1,830 metal heddles on four shafts. As you can imagine it is a very fiddly process, but we work well together once we agree on the order of the shafts and their associated number.
Rod is really looking forward to weaving this warp - he loves really fine work even though it means he has to pedal much more than with heavier weight yarns.
This is a 60 ends to the inch warp, which means that 60 of the threads lined up next to each other equals 1 inch, which also means that Rod will have to pedal 60 times to create 1 inch of fabric. This is not an occupation for the faint hearted!!
This is the frame we use when threading the heddles - Rod sits on the yellow tartan chair and I sit inside the frame, handing him one thread at a time which he threads through each heddle in the right order (otherwise the pattern will be wrong and you can't fix it once it's on the loom so it's not a good thing to happen!)
I'll keep this blog updated so you can follow our progress.