Trouble always finds me

I was so excited to get started on my first actual "project", so I picked up some 2/24 acrylic knitting machine yarn (that I've vowed to practice weaving with, despite its yuckiness) and devised a plan.  I used a blocks draft, from handweaving.net.  I decided to use a simple one-color warp, one-color weft in this simple pattern to make a scarf.  After all my careful calculations, I got the warp on the board.

And then worked on loom setup.

And started weaving. I immediately realized there was something odd, because I was having a really hard time getting enough header woven to make the threads even. But I eventually did, and started off weaving. Now this 2/24 yarn is approximately 4800 yds/lb and is classified as lace weight. After weaving a bit, I began to see that I couldn't possibly beat the weft in LIGHT enough to allow the pattern to show through. 

So I decided the best idea was to re-sley, changing from a 12 sett to an 18. This seems to help quite a bit (however I probably could have gone to a 20 sett easily), and I started weaving again. I wove no more than an inch and a half and I realize a warp thread has snapped behind the heddles. 

Grrrrr.  Ok.  So what in the heck do I do with that?!  I get my books out, read a few options for fixes, and finally decide on one like this. I get an old M&M's candy tube I have in my crafting pile and fill it with long grain rice until the whole tube weighs 80g. 

I super glued the lid shut to save myself from aggravation later :). Next I measured a new warp thread and wrapped one end around this tube. I located and removed the broken yarn from the heddle and threaded the other end of my new warp through. I then removed the broken warp from the reed, sleyed in the new one, and secured it with a T pin in line with where the warp belongs on the woven material. 

The tube dangles off the back of the warp beam, giving tension to that thread as I weave. Neato. 

So now back to weaving. As you can see, the pattern is still very hard to discern, but I'm thinking a larger size of yarn would be needed for the desired result. I'm ok with it, so I'll keep going and see what will go wrong next!!  Haha!