“It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas…”

Too early to break out the Bing Crosby Christmas music? This project has definitely put me in the holiday spirit! The good kind! Not the people-cutting-me-off-in-traffic-to-get-to-Target-first kind.

Next up, I’m taking the yarn off the warping board. To do this, I start at the bottom and twist my way up to the top. The goal here is to keep the yarns from falling apart all willy-nilly. So, when the twist comes off the warping board, it’s in a format that doesn’t allow the yarns to slip out, knot up or generally cause me pain and suffering.

The yarn at the top comes off last!

The twist that will save my sanity!

Next, I’m heading over to the table to slide in the lease sticks and sley the reed! Lease sticks are 2 sticks with some way to tie them together at each end. Mine have little holes , but I’ve seen many other styles. The lease sticks keep the cross in place. I’ve spent quite a bit of time putting each yarn in order. I don’t want to mess up the order now!

Lease sticks working their magic!

For this project, I’m using a 12 dent reed, meaning there are 12 slots per inch. The reed is the width of my loom – 36″. Because my project isn’t that wide, I have to do a little measuring to center it.

Sleying the reed!

For this project, I’m placing one yarn in each dent (slot). If I was working on a project involving twill or a denser weaving pattern, I would need to fit more than 12 yarns in an inch, meaning I would double up in some dents.

One yarn per dent

I like to make my projects as logical as possible. (The less frustration, the better – especially when setting up the loom!) So, I usually plan my projects in terms of each inch (solid green for inch 1, mixed green for inch 2, etc.). It helps immensely to knot each inch together after it’s through the reed! I can then easily verify that I have “x” amount of inches in the reed versus the “x” amount of inches I thought I put on the warping board.

And the sleying is finished!

Next up, the reed will go back into the loom and I’ll begin assigning a heddle to each yarn. The fun never stops, I’m telling you!

Ready to go into the loom!