The Rube Goldberg fix

I hope many of us remember Rube Goldberg, the sculptor, engineer, author, inventor, and most of all (for me) the cartoonist. At my grandparent's home on Sundays, the comics of the Cleveland papers far exceeded those of my hometown Akron papers. One of the best always was Rube Goldberg and his elaborate methods to achieve a common end.

You may recall that oversight on the part of both participants in the last warping of my loom left the weaver (me) with a problem to resolve when encountered, namely two threads missing in the warp.

There are two threads, exiting the coffee can, crossing the breast beam and the heavy cotton apron. Then they go...

through the tension box that otherwise is used on the back beam to guide thread into the bouts. Ignore the prescription bottles, they are solving a different problem.

And the two threads come up and join the threads of the bout being woven into very decent towels on this convoluted warp.

There they are, just two more threads in the warp, only special by how they arrived.

This time I've weaving khaki, the color of my father's army uniforms. They may be finished for the show on Saturday. Or not.

I used the tension box solely to put tension on those two threads. It turns out the coffee can and the trip over the breast beam and especially the cotton apron provide enough tension; I could have eliminated the tension box all together. Or not.