WW Loom Diamond Twill

Stupid threading errors are infinitely more obnoxious to fix on the warp weighted loom.   I had a threading error on the first twill threading and it made it into a broken twill, which was nice enough but really not what I had intended.   By the time I had realized that I had undone the wrong heddle rod, I decided to redo them all in a diamond twill.  This is what I had wanted to do in the first place, but was getting a bit confused on how to tie it up. 

I am currently reading a thesis on the warp weighted loom and she has surmised that multi-harness weaves are better worked with only one row of weights.   I thought I would try it, since it sounded like she had experimented herself.  However, having tied up the loom, with all new heddles, it turns out that it didn't work for me.  The pictures and diagrams of old looms, show 3 heddle rods and it is thought that the bottom support bar acts as a "shed bar", helping the 4th shed being just open.   This

works really well.  However, the open shed wouldn't actually open at all,with only one row of weights.  It might have worked well with an extra heddle rod, but I only have 3.  The next redo had me make my heddles too short, so I had virtually no workable shed.  It was miserable to weave with, so out they came again.   By now, I had done more research and found Marta Hoffman's diagram on how to thread one of the Birka twills.   Of course, the open shed in this diagram was 1/4, rather than the plain twill 3/4, so I  un-knit all the heddles and re-tied them again. 

  I made a mistake on one of the shafts and had to do it twice then finally got to start weaving!

Low and behold, a diamond twill - Birka 10, I think it is.   How cool is that?

I am using a stick shuttle instead of a weft butterfly, mainly because I sometimes need to travel with the loom and my weft butterflies keep getting too tangled to be of use.  I don't think it makes weaving any easier.  

It still isn't my favourite way to weave.  I do like my floor loom, but it is very satisfying doing something other than tabby weave, which is by far the easiest way to dress a warp weighted loom and what the weave structure is of virtually all the projects on looms I've seen in real life or in photos.  I'm sure there are project twills out there, but I just haven't seen them.