Arithmetic

I believe I've not mentioned the studio in a while. I don't remember. In its own fashion, the studio is coming along, except what I keep waiting for, exacerbated by a holiday and computing errors, compounded by...

I'm waiting on the forty spool stand I ordered. The people who own that rug weaving supply house also have a trucking company, and the runs keep interfering with picking up my spool rack from the Amish fellow who made it. No matter; I have a bigger setback on hand.

To fill the bobbins to put on the spool stand to wind into the back beam sections, I ordered a lovely 8/2 unmercerized cotton, spun in Canada. It comes on big cones; I asked for the biggest they had in stock. When it came I hardly could lift it from the box. Four or five pounds, I figured. Way more than enough.

I cannot find the invoice to see what I got, but no matter. There's the loom, with eleven cords on eleven two inch sections to warp up twenty two inch width towels. I don't intend to make anything but towels. And more towels. Twenty two inches. The rest of my life. 

Here's the math. I have this because I sent it to Beth when I reached the "3 turn" part. First I calculated there are 2.5 ounces of thread on each bobbin. I'm weaving my twenty two inch wide towel at twenty ends per inch, or 440 ends, divided by forty spools is eleven bouts. 

(Remember when your mom bought sheets by thread count. That's how threads are counted in fabric; how many wefts cross how many warps.)

I know there are 3,360 yards per pound in this thread, because I looked it up on the vendor's web site, because I cannot find the invoice. So, there are 210 yards per ounce, times 2.5 ounces per spool are 525 yards per spool. Should be enough to do anything, right?

There are no weaving fairies anywhere in the world; real people do it. I had forty bobbins to fill from that ginormous cone of thread on the floor. I got to work.

I wound twenty bobbins yesterday. I said "Holy cotton balls, Batman. I don't have enough thread to fill twenty more!" It was three in the afternoon. I ran to the phone and called. It is a holiday weekend; the order line closed at one and would reopen Tuesday.

The scrap of paper calculating the thread on each bobbin was right there on the desk. I might as well figure out how much warp would go on the loom; how many towels I will be rewarded with. Those 525 yards will be spread out over eleven bouts, which is 525 divided by eleven is 47.7 yards in each bout. 

The beam averages sixteen inches around, divided into 47.7 is "Holy short sheet, Batman. That's like one towel!" I sent it to Beth. We started at the top. We got down to 47.7 divided by 16", and she KNEW and I saw it: 47.7 is yards, not inches. So, I will be putting on one hundred 16" turns, which is what I instinctively expected, from the "old days". That's about fifty towels. 

After I get the spool rack and another ginormous cone of thread, sometime next week. And I don't mean the short week that starts tomorrow.

To finish torturing myself, and because I really can do this, I calculate the missing invoice shows I purchased about 4.6 pounds of thread. I should have done the math on the front end.

The next mystery: how many towels will a one pound cone of colored thread weave? Actually, I could work it out mathematically, but I won't. I'll just write it all down somewhere, like it's all written down in the original "bible" that I gave away, which has been misplaced by the recipient.