Carpet Progress (and the dog)

I made lots of progress on the carpet today and hope to finish it tomorrow.

But first, why this blog is named "Sleeping Dog Weaving" (his name is Andy):



Back to the carpet. Here it is tied on to the apron rod with a little header in to spread warp evenly.




The first few inches of the carpet are a multi-pattern border. Here, the border is done:




And here is what the main body of the carpet will look like:




All seems to be going well but the border doesn't look like I wanted. I did a sample of the pattern I wanted ("railroad tracks") and this is what the sample looked like:




But this is what the carpet looks like:




Unless I'm losing my mind (which is not out of the question) everything about the sample and the carpet is the same. It just seems like the carpet is not beating together like the sample did. I'm beating hard enough to lift the loom off the floor at times, so I'm not sure why it's not making a tighter weave. Is it just because the sample was narrow? It's a bit frustrating but too late to fix for this carpet.