[Sorry for the less than stellar pictures – overhead lighting and cell phone camera.]
Today I finally finished warping my loom. It was a journey in weaving vocabulary.
First you sley the reed (this phrase always makes me think of killing something).
Then I threaded the heddles and beamed the warp (this phrase always makes me think of the Starship Enterprise).
I think I didn’t do too badly for the first time ever – I ended up with (only) three crossed warps in the shed (this sounds like some weird farm thing).
I marked the whole thing down as a learning exercise and plan to re-warp it with the following changes:
- Finer warp – the blue yarn is too thick.
- Longer warp chains – the two feet recommended by the book is way to short to work with easily.
- More warp chains of fewer wraps, making it easier to keep the threads from crossing and to beam the warp more evenly.
I figure it should take me half as long the second time around. Onward.
Ariadne's Legacy 
So, you’re warping from the front not the back? On the big loom, we always warped from the back (off a spindle rack thingie) and then, once we had enough thread on the back beam, we threaded everything through the heddles and the reed, and tied it onto the front beam. (Gee, I hope I’m using all MY warping terminology correctly.) Since the beam is not divided on this one, it’s harder to keep things … neat and straight.
Sarah,
Being a total newbie I am using a book to teach myself – Deborah Chandler’s _Learning to Weave_ and just following her instructions. It is an older edition of the book and only shows the warping from the back to front, although I’ve seen a friend’s newer copy and she includes front to back in that one. Since it is just a small table loom there’s no spindle rack, so I’m hoping this will work just fine . . . although I’m always open to trying other ways once I get up and running! Thanks for the comment and question!