240 Needles

Anyone who can handle a needle convincingly
can make us see thread which is not there.

~ Ernst Hans Josef Gombrich

Next up, threading the needles - or, as they are called in loom-dom, the heddles.  Yup, the next step is to put each of those 240 warp threads through the eye of a separate needle/heddle.  

The heddles are long, thin metal sticks that can slide back and forth along a frame and have an eye in the middle.  They are distributed between 4 hanging frames.  

You can create different patterns in your weaving by threading the heddles on the four different frames in different patterns.  I'm doing a standard weave and so I just put the first thread through a heddle on the first frame, the second thread through a heddle on the second frame, etc. until I have used 4 threads, and then I start over...  

I tie loose knots into every batch of 12 threads - here it is with all 240 warp ends threaded through the heddles:  

And here you can see the threads going through the reed and the heddles:  

Amazing, right?  But wait!  That's not all!  

Yup - there are still more steps to come before I can start weaving my rag rug...  
Stay tuned - it's going to be worth it, I promise.  :)