Tennessee Cross to Bear

I've been working on a table running in the overshot pattern "Cross of Tennessee." It has not been going well. I'd been worried keeping track of an 86 shot overshot would be difficult. That has not been the problem. The problem has been keeping the tabby straight! (The tabby is the plain weave, over-and-under thread that goes between the color pattern. It's what actually holds the piece together.) I've taken out repeats as many as 3 times before getting it right, all due to tabby errors.

The brown is the overshot; the off-white is the tabby and the warp.

 Once I got that rhythm going, other problems have emerged. I've never had this problem before, but somehow when I was winding on, the warp threads got seriously crossed in the back, which is affecting the tension more and more. I've been slipping paint stirrers under groups of threads and hanging 3" S hooks off of threads until what with all the jingling and all, it is sounding quite festive back there, but I've one edge curling up, the other dropping down, and some odd things happening in the middle. When I look at the back, I see only worse things ahead as one bundle of threads is trying to go from center to right, and another is going from right to center and one group is getting downright floppy while another is getting dangerously tight. Oh my.

Sometimes I really wonder about my idea of a pass-time.

 All my books say "rewind." I've more than half-way through the project - but will I even have something worth having when it comes off the loom if I keep shoving more and more hardware under and onto that warp? There are soap operas out there without this much drama.