On Warping with Dogs

I babysit dogs -- and I prefer the bigger ones, like labs, because they are so much calmer.  The little guys can be too nervous and bark too much and I don't like running around all day trying to shut them up.

So I fill the place with big dumb dogs, usually the kind that shed a lot. 

If you came into my 84 square meter house, you'd see them lying around on the furniture, sometimes on their backs, feet in the air....can you picture that?

Or just hanging out, "dogging up the couch," as we say in our family.

Two of these yoyos are paying customers.....the other two NEED to get a job.

So I'm pack leader and when I go upstairs, they come.  Bathroom, dogs follow. Kitchen, they're right there.  My buddies.

What does this have to do with warping? In my continuing clumsy efforts to warp my sectional beam Norwood 8 shaft loom with no yarn yardage counter, I keep trying to figure out how much warp to wind onto each spool to then feed through the tension box, to warp each section of the beam.

Lately I hit upon a new way to measure out that length: use the banister that runs around the top of the stairs -- from one post to the other and back is 184 inches and if I need to put on 5 and a half feet of warp in each section, that's 12 sections, and that measures 5.5 times 12 which is 66 yards, which is 2376 inches divided by 184 inches --remember that's the length around the banister -- and that comes out to 12.9 winds (approximately) around the banister posts.  Got that?

Ok.  So there I am upstairs. We have a bedroom at the head of the stairs, the bathroom in the middle and another bedroom at the other end. And I'm walking the length of the narrow upstairs hallway .... 12.9 times. I begin.  I walk towards the bedroom.  Aha! they think.  It's bedtime. Let's go jump in the bed!

Three dogs do this. Two are not so sure.  I turn and start the other way down the hall. 

Three dogs get off the bed. The other two think it's time to collapse in front of the bathroom door and wait for me to come out.  So they fall on the floor and I step over them, heading towards the other post by the stairs.

Time to go down! (so think four of them) They pile up behind me in the hall, ready to follow me down the stairs.  The bottleneck is totally confused when I turn and head back towards the bedroom. 

Aha!  It IS bedtime, think two.  Jump in the bed.  No! Bathroom, think two others, fall on the floor.  One is just standing there looking confused as I walk and turn again (remember, this is 12.9 winds...)

Damn, I think. I have finished winding my 12.9 winds and I forgot the spool I needed to wind it all onto, so downstairs I go to get it. My pack is at my heels as I go down the stairs, thinking this is IT! we're going to the kitchen!

Grab the spool and go back upstairs.  Bedtime? Bathroom? We start all over again. Dropping in heaps on the floor, bottle necking the hallway, grid lock in front of the bathroom.... 

Thank God, I'm going to take weaving classes when I visit my son in Oregon in January. I sincerely hope they have a better method to suggest because the dog-pack-banister-method ended up to be yet another Eventful Warp.