There is one event that every weaver is familiar with, but each hopes will not happen in the middle of a project: running out of weft thread.

The weft, the thread which goes back and forth between then tensioned strings on the loom, will eventually run out as the project is woven. The crafter must take a guess at the beginning of the piece, and hope that she gets enough yarn wound onto the shuttle to last for the entire project.

In the event that the weft yarn on the shuttle runs out before the weaving is finished, the crafter has to take extra steps to get the yarn to match up just so in changing to a different length of yarn.

When I ran out of ivory weft yarn mid-project, I found myself facing choices on how to proceed. The changing of the weft yarn does not weaken the project in any way, or make it wrong. It simply means that more weft must be added, and the change-over between the two yarns made invisible on the project.

I filled the smaller shuttle with ivory yarn once more, and studied my project to determine where and how I wished to blend in the end of the old yarn and the beginning of the new.

I decided to make my change-over between yarns on the right-hand side of the project. I positioned the ivory string so that it hung off the right-hand side, and then brought the shuttle with the new string through the warp to the far right side.

Approximately six strings from the far right of the project, I fished my fingers through the warp, grabbed the end of the new string, and pulled it up above the warp strings. Then, I shifted the shuttle on out the right side of the project, like nothing different had happened.

I changed the heddle position and wove the new string back through as if it were the original string, then continued with my two ivory, two sage pattern.

As I continued to weave, I made certain that the new string end remained above the warp strings and easy to locate. Eventually, through advancing the loom, the string disappeared among the finished work.

Hiding that string piece will not be done until the piece is off of the loom and ready to be finished.

In finishing off the weaving, I eventually ran out of sage colored yarn once, and ivory yarn a second time. This left three places which would have to be finished off later.

I continued weaving until I found the end of the strings at the far end of my loom. The tightly-tied knots had been smashed by the tension of the wrapping for several weeks, and they slowly came back to life as they were exposed again by the unwinding of the loom.

With the end knots in sight, I was finally able to determine that the lone problem thread on the loom, the one that would not hold its own tension, was not the string that had fallen out of the entire project way back at the beginning.

Approximately 12 inches from the end knots, I decided that I had woven enough cloth. I made one final pass with the ivory yarn, bringing it off the left side of the project, and cut both the ivory and the sage strings approximately 15 inches from the project.

I turned to the end knots then, and, using my lefty scissors, I carefully snipped each small bundle of 10-15 strings, staying as close to the knot as possible.

As each bundle of strings was cut, the project began to go limp on the loom.

When I was finished, I gently teased all of the strings through the heddle and freed this end of the project.

Anxious to get the piece off of the loom, I unlocked the cog-and-peg mechanism that held the front side taut, and began unwinding the finished piece. I draped the finished work over the heddle as I went, folding it carefully so as not to tangle the loose ends.

When I reached the knots on the front bar, I cut them free as well, and lifted my work. Like a giddy child on Christmas morning, I scampered to the living room in the middle of the night to spread my project out and examine it fully.

The green and white houndstooth made a delightful pattern, with the colors working well together. My weaving assistant, Mari, followed me into the living room and walked happily all over my piece, meowing at me all the while. She even posed for a picture on the new piece so that everyone in the Mid-Ohio Valley can finally see her face.

Even though the project is off the loom, it is not finished. Join me next week as the project is washed to cause purposeful shrinkage, and the final touches are added to prevent unraveling.

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Gretchen Richards is a reporter for the Parkersburg News and Sentinel. She is a fifth-generation artisan, and skilled in multiple art forms.