The story of the little warp that grew

This happened many years ago (maybe in the late 80-ies?).
A weaving guild I was associated with decided to do a vadmal project. I don't remember how many participants, or how many warps. But I do remember there was a lot of research done, and many discussions with spinning mills (I think we had two or three "custom" mills in Sweden at that time). It was decided we should order our yarns from Solkustens spinneri (at that time they were located outside Oskarshamn). So we ordered "warp spun" singles in white, also some ombré yarn (grey -> white -> grey).

All warps were wound 20 metres long.

The cloth from the loom I wove on came off as 22 metres. Plus thrums, and the dimensional loss we all learn to estimate at some 10%.

No, it wasn't mis-warped; the yarn had stretched. (IIRC, most cloths came out slightly longer than the warp length.)

It all ended happily: we went to a hammer mill deep in the woods, we hammered for hours (and hours), came home and made coats and other clothing.
- the ombré users noted that the white and grey portions had shrunk differently and pressed for hours, in hope to flatten their fabric.
All of us noted that the selvages were longer than the rest of the fabric. Some of us found ways to utilize the flaring edges, others tried to press them flat.

(Many years later, I did it again, with some other friends, different yarns, different mill - read about the vadmal adventure here (in Swedish here).
The flaring edges from my first experience made me fold the fabric in a different way this time, which worked: the edges came out nearly the same length as the rest, but instead we got "in-and-out" waves.)

So what has this to do with anything?

Not a lot.

But when I finally cut off this fan-reed fabric, it was a little shy of 6 metres (and I might have had maybe 50 cms more).

Considering I thought I had warped around 4 metres, the result made me remember the vadmal warp. In this case I guess I made two turns (and then some) on the warping mill instead of one turn (and then some).