I love me some houndstooth table runner action

After a supremely frustrating experiment in Log Cabin weaving I went back to my roots with another houndstooth table runner, this time using the 5/2 mercerized cotton yarn in Bermuda Blue and Purple on a 12-dent heddle.

I set up the warping board on my floor stand and it worked great!  The way I set up my warp for houndstooth is very time consuming as I knot the individual colours, but it really helps keep my warp threads nice and clean when I am weaving - - there is minimal crossing behind the heddle.

I planned this project out ahead of time in an attempt to better know what my finished project should look like, using a worksheet downloaded from <craftsy.com>.  I wanted to get 90" of length including fringe, and factored in 15% take up and shrinkage for a total length of 120", which is what I attempted to set up on my warping board.  As for the width I wanted 12" finished width, so I initially warped across 168 ends, or 12 dpi x 14".

Ready to weave

Cleaning the warp threads as I wound them on the back beam took the longest time, because there was about 10' of distance in a slick yarn that just loved to tangle.  I ended up losing some of my warp length by having to trim my yarn ends, which were excessively prone to tangling.

It took me most of a day to set up my warp.  On the plus side, I got an extra hour of work time around 2 am because I was still hard at it when we set our clocks 1 hour back.  So productive!

Once I began weaving, the piece took shape very quickly.  In less than a full day I finished weaving the runner.

 

When I took the work off the loom I discovered that the woven piece measured 78.5" x 12.75", which is interesting.  I see now how much warp length I lost by having to trim out the knots at the bottom of my threads, because although the width was much closer to my planned width (all measurements prior to washing) the length was much shorter than planned.  

As for the pattern itself, I was very happy with how it turned out:

The colours are nice and rich, and although this is still a very airy weave (even using the 12-dent heddle), I love the look of it.  We will see how it washes up.

I will update this post once I wash the piece and will know how much it shrinks. 

EDITED TO ADD:

After washing the runner came down to 75.5" x 12" (from 78.5" x 12.75").  The finished runner looks great!  It is going in someone's stocking for the holidays for sure!