The Never Ending Warp

When the guild had to move from our old guild room 2 years ago, we were putting all of our equipment and supplies in storage.  That meant we did a ruthless clean out of stuff that we thought could be easily replaced, or that we'd had in the room for ages upon ages.  We'd offered these items up to members and amongst the offerings were several warps which were chained and forgotten, or not used.    This was one of those misfit warps.  It was wound of 2/8 cotton, 143 threads and get this, 12 yards long!   Those 143 threads would work out to about almost 6 inches wide.  That means that this was a 12 yarn long mug rug warp at the very best, or perhaps someone wound a warp too wide and this was stripped off.   Regardless, it's a bizarre size.   If it was meant to be 6 inches wide, that would make a an awful lot of mug rugs or skinny scarves.

It looked to be in decent shape, for threads of an undetermined age.  It's two colours, rust and beige.  I find that combo rather uninspiring and a bit dull.  However, I found some khaki and turquoise in my stash that add a bit of interest to the original colours.  With those, I figured I could do something useful with the warp.

I've been trying to work something out with this for a while but it's too long to deal with inside the house. There is also the kitty factor, because trying to do anything to a 12 yard warp with 4 cats would be slightly insane.   I don't think they'd sleep through that effort.  Well maybe the old guy, but he's 16 and doesn't wake up for much if it doesn't include food and pets.

I took the warp outside, hooked one end on the garden gate post, stretched it out and walked it back to hook the other end on the same post, effectively doubling the warp.  Now it was 286 threads - getting better.

There was only a cross at one end, but the choke ties were done in slip knots, so I slipped my fingers in between the one part of the cross, thinking that half a cross was better than no cross.   I walked backward, and undid each choke tie as I got to it, separated the warp, retied the choke tie and moved on to the next one.  When I got to the turning point, I added a tie to denote the centre point, and moved back to the beginning.  It wasn't perfect, but at least it's something.

 This is the folded area.  I put extra choke ties in to try to help the threads from not getting tangled up and more difficult to deal with than necessary.   Luckily it's a simple colour arrangement, looking like a smaller rust strip beside the beige.

At this point, I reached in my back pocket, took out the scissors and snipped the warp in half.   There was no way I was going to weave off 12 yards of anything 6 inches wide.  Now I have almost a foot wide and I only need to wind off another 4-8 inches of threads to make the warp wide enough for something useful, like napkins or tea towels. 

As well, it's only 6 yards long, which is a less daunting size to deal with.   I'm thinking a tabby weave.  While I prefer twills, I'm not sure I want to risk that much more thread on this.  While I snapped the threads in a few places to test for strength and it seemed fine, there is still the risk that the cotton has weak spots, which would make for some miserable weaving.