Hood weaving update

My current weaving project is cloth for a Greenland hood.  I'm using commercially spun yarn, but trying to get as close to the texture of the original cloth as I can get.  As part of the project, I'm also hoping to spin some samples of Gotland and Shetland (two modern breeds that are purportedly similar to the sheep used by the Greenlanders) and weave some samples to see what sort of difference all this twist direction stuff actually makes.  The project needs to be done by April 2, and the documentation has be done by March 20th.

So far it's been slow going.  The yarn got backordered and delayed (see my eariler post) which put me in a cranky mood, so when the warp did show up I was less than interested in getting started.  I finally got started on Monday, got everything measured, and then went to start threading the loom Tuesday after my taking my car in to get a new tire (the potholes around heat eat tires like nobody's business.  Lesson: low profile tires are a Bad Plan, buy a tractor next time) only to discover that one of the shed frames on my loom had broken and needed to be repaired before I could thread the loom.  I got the car back Wednesday morning, went the hardware store, and got the loom fixed just fine but it set me back two more days and I didn't actually start threading until late Wednesday.  As of last night, I was done with sleighing the reed (I warp front to back for now) and had half the heddles threaded.  Hopefully today I will get the rest of the heddles threaded and enlist some help getting the warp wound on to the back beam tonight so I can start weaving Sunday (Saturday is University so nothing will get done).

Almost a week to warp 3 yards of cloth.  How silly is that? 

I had a total spacial brain-fart last night too and couldn't get my head around the idea that Z is always Z, even if folds over on itself as the yarn goes back and forth in the warp (or weft), or if you start from the other end.  I don't feel too bad, my Laurel got confused too and we had to draw lots of pictures with the help of her husband (a knight, Pelican and woodworker) and even draw lines on a straw and fold in and bend it to convince ourselves that we were being dense.  I felt mildly stupid but questioning things is good, and I did come up with a theory and possible explanation for why the whole Z/S thing matters, which is the point of this whole thing anyway.  I suspect that when you have a Z spun warp and S spun weft the finished cloth will have a smoother finish since all the fibers will end up aligned in the same direction.  More on this when I have pictures, for some reason it makes more sense to me with visual aids!