The Thread Walkers
The Thread Walkers Prefatory Note on Textile Encoding The reader who has not sat at a loom may benefit from a brief account of its metaphysics, for the loom is an argument made of wood and string, and like all arguments it has premises that must be established before conclusions can be drawn. A loom holds two systems of thread in tension. The first is the warp: vertical threads stretched taut between two beams, parallel, evenly spaced, under constant tension. The warp is established before weaving begins. It does not move. It does not change. It is the structure — invisible in the finished cloth but responsible for everything the cloth can be. To set a warp is to make an irrevocable commitment: the thread count, the spacing, the material, the tension. Everything that follows is constrained by this initial act. A poorly set warp cannot be corrected by clever weaving. It can only be cut off and begun again. ...