Ask Madelyn: Warping Woes

Dear Madelyn,
I am planning to make a scarf from shadow-weave draft in Carol Strickler's A Weaver's Book of Eight Shaft Patterns, p. 75 #296. I am combining white with a dark blue for one stripe (15 ends} and white (a different white yarn) with light blue for the lighter stripe (25 ends). For shadow weave, I usually wind the light end with its adjacent dark end together, but this draft presents a challenge because in two places there are 2 dark ends together where I change blues. I warp back to front and attach the looped end of the warp onto a rod that is attached to the apron rod. If I start winding with 2 dark ends, then add the white for six light/dark pairs, I then have to add 1 more wind of dark blue alone. That leaves that blue end cut off where there should be a loop and the white at the opposite end of the warping board. How can I anchor that dark blue end while I tie on the lighter end to the white? (I can't change my warping method because I can't get close enough to the heddles to thread in that position.)
—Sylvia Lowry

Hi Sylvia!
What I think is easiest (easier than winding single ends and cutting and tying at all joins) is this: use 6 yarn packages (balls in bowls or whatever), 1 of each light, 2 of each dark. Where you have the paired D/L ends, wind taking the appropriate 2 ends together around the warping board, starting and ending at the peg that does not form the loop. Wind the single dark ends as 1 strand from 1 package, but tie each end of the yarn around the start peg and around the end peg in a knot. You'll be able to pass the rod that you'll attach to the apron rod through that knotted loop along with the other loops. For the two different D/L pairs traveling the board, when they end up at the peg that is not the loop-peg, I'd just wind them around a few times to secure and then pick them back up when I use them again (rather than cutting and tying). When they end at the loop-peg, I'd cut them and tie around the peg as for the single dark ends.

And let me know how it goes!
—Madelyn