Wrong Way Warp

Got the latest project onto the loom.  I just had to start with a photo of my little helper.  No, he is not helping tension the warp.  He is being naughty and I think he knows it.  But I just had to shoot a picture before shooing him off.  Kitties lo-o-o-ove wool.

It seems that with each warp, there's always something.  With this one, I was so excited to get it onto the loom that I forgot to run the beamed (cotton) portion of the warp through the slot between the two warp beams, so that the weighted (wool) portion wouldn't sit on top of it.  Here I have some stick shuttles sitting between the two layers.  You can see the cotton warp coming up from the warp beam and going outside that additional back beam.  It's supposed to go between the two back beams in that slot, where the handle of the screwdriver is.

I thought I would be clever and just slide that beam out from under the cotton warp, and replace it between the cotton and the wool layers.  Alas, I could only get 3 of the 4 screws to budge.  (The loom is older than me, after all.)

So I ended up constructing an ugly and only partially effective separator from stick shuttles and masking tape.  Yes, masking tape makes many appearances in my weaving path.  Useful stuff.

And it seems to have worked well enough for it to weave, anyway.  Here's the work-in-progress shot.  I have woven a 3/1 twill using both the cotton and wool warp for a few inches, and now I am weaving just the cotton in a back layer of plain weave, leaving the wool warp unwoven to be worked in sprang, or double sprang to be exact.  There is a border of 3/1 twill on each side to frame it as well.