Weaving Through Checks

Check check.

I've started weaving a 2-shaft draft using my AKL, and while the reed marks are distorting the pattern a bit (a lot), I can see it coming out if I try to shift my focus on a point beyond the actual weave! Exciting times. Hopefully the reed marks will lighten up, or better yet disappear, once it's off the loom and I put it through the wash.

More of the check pattern. And the reed marks.

So. While it's pretty obvious in hindsight - and I'm not too sure why I thought it would be the case - I thought that the checks would be larger. I envisioned them larger. (Which, if they were, would have made the cloth pretty unstable in the middle of the checks if I were ever to cut into the cloth to make something of it.) Even though I knew, just by looking at the draft, that the checks would each have 3 strands making up their width. Oh well. At least I know how to translate weaving drafts onto my rigid heddle loom.

That being said though, I'm not completely satisfied with the sett that I can achieve once I move onto doing anything beyond plain weave, especially once I get to 3-shaft drafts: because the threading sequences don't necessarily use every hole and slot, I can't double my sett even using the two heddles (because each hole/eye acts as a different shaft, and then the slots act as the third one). Even with this draft, which was made for 2 harnesses, my sett was far from doubled, even though I used two heddles. As it is, it's not too light, but I really like the idea of working fine, so perhaps a floor or table loom would better suit my purposes? Something to think about for the future.

You can see the two heddles here in rest position.