Ready, Steady, GO!

Goals for this next three months:

January:

1. Make and update the pattern for my "Test Vest"

2. Come up with a design for a primarily wool fabric for my vest. Planned structure is twill, but I can vary yarn diameters, etc, to make it more interesting.

3. Weave a selvedge rug for the studio (and possibly another for elsewhere)

February

1. Sample setts as well as finishing methods for the vest fabric. Try at least *two* different warps.

2. Dye yarn and sample for a krokbragd rug for the studio

March

1. Dye and weave the krokbragd rug for the studio. Possibly a second for elsewhere.

2. Weave the fabric and sew my first vest. Figure out what I liked and what I didn't like about both garment and cloth.

3. Goals for Q2.

How's that? It feels doable and I like having a goal on a month-by-month basis. Smaller bites to eat the elephant.

Happy New Year, everyone! I'm going to have some champagne and cake.

Time to Get Serious

It's time to stop dithering around and commit to goals.  I just finished the white wool warp that's been sitting on my loom for the past month, so I am free and clear for new warps!

These are my goals for the first three months of 2013:

1. Weave the wedding present table runner.  This includes a separate sample of warp rep, just so I understand the weave structure.
2. Two already-planned projects: A)  the Icelandic/alpaca twill shawl (like the one I made for Jesh, but a different twill or twills), and B)  the rest of the red cotton/silk yardage I sampled for earlier in 2012.
3. 4 exploratory warps.  These are just to play, to sample, to learn.  They can be short and narrow, or long and wide, cotton or wool, one color or hand-painted, whatever.  I'd like to explore weave structures that push the yarn out of straight lines, within the flat plane of the fabric - honeycomb weaves, in particular.
4. Finish painting and furnishing the second bedroom into a fiber room.
5. Start a proper sample notebook (with copies for all of you) and fill it with samples of all the warps, if possible.

That ought to keep me busy enough, you think?  That's seven warps in 13 weeks, which seems doable to me, if I stay focused.

I'm really looking forward to this, as you can tell by the detritus on my dining room table!

Sampling some sampling

I really do want to embrace sampling. And what better way than with a fabric structure that I truly know nothing about - but has incredible possibilities.

Overshot.

After finding a number of coverlet books in Jeane's "Dead Weaver Stash", I was overcome by Sarah's "white hot enthusiasm" and really, really started itching to give it a try. I'd no idea whether I'd be able to find a suitable use for the fabric (other than coverlets) so that meant sampling would be a good idea! Looking around for actual samplers didn't turn up much - there were even complaints that overshot didn't lend itself to sampling other than pattern wefts since the threading/treadling was so complicated. More fuel for the fire.

Fortunately, I have a copy of Fiberworks (best money I've spent in a long time) and that would let me play around with things a bit just to see if I could put something together. The "Namedraft" function lets the user enter a phrase (8 - 40 characters) and generates a threading/treadling based on one of seven (!) alphabets. There are also four tie-ups from which to choose - Rose, Star, Transposed Rose, Transposed Star - so there are just a ton of patterns that can be generated. That got me to thinking about taking a more traditional overshot pattern and playing with both treadling and tie-ups to see if I could make a sampler. That was yesterday.

Anne Dixon's Handweaver's Pattern Directory has a few overshot patterns that include a few treadling suggestions - and I settled on "Star and Rose", page 108. A little further research on Ravelry helped me choose yarn (10/2 cotton for warp and tabby weft, 8/2 wool for pattern weft) from stash and then I did a quick threading plan. 204 ends, 4-ish yard warp, sett at 20 epi. Boom.

Today I beamed and threaded, tied on and started weaving to check threading and to see if this sett/weft would give me square squares. I'm not getting hung up at all on colors. I'm just weaving. I'll do a set with this tie-up, then I'll do some of the two other treadlings in the book, change the tie-up, later, rinse, repeat.

I'll likely also use some 5/2 cotton as weft - just to see the difference in fabric. Strictly traditional overshot is cotton and wool, but depending on the end use, maybe this will be better. And, understanding this might help me figure out a garment use for the resulting fabric. But the real goal is just to sample.

So, Lynn - are you proud of me? I sure am. :-)

Another crazy idea

This past weekend, Jeane and I were talking about sampling. Both why it's important and why I, personally, have such trouble doing it.

When working on the shirt last year, the benefit of sampling was absolutely clear. I'd never have come up with the final fabric had I skipped that step, and I ended up with a garment that pleases me to no end. Keeping that in mind, why do I still struggle with sampling? After thinking hard about it, I settled on the fact that it's really, really time consuming. And it means a lot of time and effort to get, well, a scrap of cloth. That's a tiny bit less appealing than going straight to a project - or minimizing the amount of sampling that I do.

That realization hatched another Crazy Idea for this coming year. Lynn, you are also a bit responsible for this. Your thought of working toward, and building, a sample book got me to wonder if we can't all work together on this sampling thing. As each of us works on a garment, or project, I'd like to toss out the idea that we *all* sample for it and then exchange what we've got. For example, if I want to do something in wool, but don't know about sett, I could hand off two sample setts while I do the third. I'd even be willing to wind/send a warp if that'd make the process go more quickly. Then we'd each weave off our portion, cut and finish and send to the other two. That way, we'd get a wide variety of samples, at different setts, and help to build out our respective sample books. Jeane even said that she'd be up for joining in.

So there's my next crazy idea. And, I'm totally in for helping you two with sampling as well.

Thoughts?

As time allows

I'm going to continue to take advantage of the few days I have down here with Jeane to write a bit more about what we've accomplished and how it's continuing to refine the plans for next year.

Yesterday, we did a quick draft/muslin for what will, hopefully, become the basis for the four vests. It's drafted from my sloper and it's deceptively simple. As is so often true, the devil will be in the details. We talked about construction, finishing and the other small steps that will make a big difference in the final result. And, between now and month-end, I'll set aside the equivalent of a day to make a full vest from commercial fabric. JoAnn will be more than happy to sell me something and that'll give me a much better idea of whether or not the pattern will work as I'd like. And, if not, I know how to make it better. Learning is happening!

Best of all, I gave notice yesterday. It was time and more than time for me to go. I had no interest in going back full time, and unless I did so, I wasn't going to be able to drive the change I think is sorely needed. So, I am doing so in an amicable way. Boss is sad but understanding. Colleagues don't know yet, but that'll happen next week. And, with that burden lifted, I feel ready to take on this challenge and really make things happen. Solstice is coming. The year is turning. I can feel it.

Prep and more prep

Every day I get more comfortable with the notion of being focused next year - and my plan of four vests still feels good. This weekend, I'm spending time with Jeane again (and she's going to come and play with us here, too!) and we talked about The Plan, The Vests and ways to narrow it down even more.

I'm now thinking about a single pattern. Each vest will be cut and constructed in the same manner and that allows for another bit of learning - experiencing how each fabric has it's own requirements when becoming a garment. Ease, finishing, etc. are all driven in some part by the fabric; these four vests will help me to get my head around that part of the process.

Tomorrow morning we'll draft the vest pattern and my homework between now and January 1 will be to cut and sew the toile, and possibly a finished piece from commercial fabric, so that I have my "control". It will be a simple waistcoat - fronts lined, the back either the lining fabric or something else (I could do otherwise, if I chose), v-neck. A perfect canvas for experimenting.

We're also talking a bit about starting to narrow the experiment further and I think that I'll start with one that is wool, one that is linen. The first one because it's comfortable and I feel confident about being able to sort it and the second because I'm nervous and it's almost totally new. That should bracket things nicely. It's also an excuse to get out the dyes.

It feels like the plan is coming together nicely. And thinking about this focused, directed weaving was so wonderful that I ran an extra mile today. Because I missed my turn. Because I was happy at the thought of doing the work.

Thanks for the kick in the butt, Lynn.

Because Reasons

Well, I wish I had sold more scarves at the craft sale yesterday, but I didn't.  So, I've been dissecting my reaction to that fact today, and therefore thinking about why I weave.

So do I weave to sell?  Well, no.  I don't really need the money, although it feels like "free" money that I can spend on more weaving toys.  I didn't like the pressure this year to produce salable scarves, so I don't really want to weave the same commercially acceptable things over and over.  I don't really want to bother with an Etsy shop or anything like that, because it's a lot of non-weaving bother.  On the other hand, do I really want bins and bins of stuff I've woven cluttering up the house (did you see the video of the Dutch woman who had knit 500 sweaters in the past 65 years - 500 sweaters that had never been worn?)?

OK, so do I weave for the recognition?  You know - oh, Lynn, you weave beautiful scarves! and all that.  Well...yeah, that's part of it.  I'm always a little starved for attention, alas, a result, I think, of being one of five kids (in nine years, yikes).

So, why weave, when I could do something else that's more likely to bring attention?  Well, I've always liked the interaction between color and pattern, particularly small bits of each.  And fabric/fiber/yarn.  So of course, I've finally found my way to weaving.  I love plotting out a project.  I love dressing the loom.  I love taking a finished piece of cloth off the loom and dancing around with it - and then you get to wash it and gasp in amazement at how much better it is than when it came off the loom.  I love putting cones of yarn together and squinting to imagine how they'd weave up together.  I love reading weaving books and books about ethnic textiles.  I love the interaction between the intellectually challenging parts of weaving - grasping how a weave structure works, calculating the yardage, sett, etc. - and the tactile and visual parts of making cloth.

There are no doubt more aspects to why I weave, but this gets to the heart of it, I think, and thus I think I can fairly quickly move past the disappointment of not selling more scarves.

However, this mental exercise makes me think that in 2013, I ought to weave mostly for the sake of exploration.  Just wander through sample after sample, trying out color interactions, different yarns, loom-controlled weave structures along with handwork, and so on.  Play, in other words.

But grown-up play, to a certain extent.  One of the books I bought recently is Virginia West's Swatch Book.  It's a spiral-bound book with 20 swatches of actual fabric, woven by Ms. West, plus instructions for weaving and comments on possible uses.  Here are a couple of photos, to give you an idea:

 

 

 I'm thinking it would be a useful exercise to make a swatch book for myself this coming year, with copies for you all, if you want.  Making such a notebook will help discipline my explorations.  Whether I make nine projects a quarter or only one, keeping organized samples seems like a good idea for many reasons.

What do you think?