After I got my warp untied from the front and traced it back into the heddle, I found that the problem was not in the heddling, but in how twisted the warp had gotten while tying it onto the front rod. I remembered something I'd seen in my weaving exploration videos about separating a wide warp into subwarps and tying it on in smaller bundles.
I did that to my warp, and now had threads that lined up, but were too far apart. I managed to pull the three bundles more or less together, but the tension was completely random. Now I remembered this video by Ellisif Gydasdottir where she gets some tension evening by doing four weaves of chunky yarn into the warp before starting her band in earnest. The advice is for tablet weaving, but I figured it might work for plain weave as well.
Some plain red yarn to the rescue. I did four beats and also pulled the warp more together, enough to start weaving my band. So far, it's working! I have no idea if the lock weave I did at the beginning will work correctly given the mishegas of how this started, but I can always braid or backstitch it to lock it. Forward!
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