It's February - What Did You Expect?

Outside...



Therefore, inside...

 

Forward and Back

Starting with the Back first ... Here's what I said I'd do in this first quarter:

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.

 Now, not all of that had to be completed in January, obviously, but I think I made fair-to-middling progress last month.

The table runner:  Well, I have a warp and wefts ready to weave a sample, but I got frustrated trying to thread it, so I went on to something else.  I need to get back to this to two ways - order a 15-dent reed and try again, perhaps with a simpler sample warp, to understand how to weave warp rep.

The Icelandic/alpaca twill shawl:  DONE.






















This wove up with no hassles whatsoever (which is unusual for me!).  A couple of twill drafts from Davison smooshed up against each other, hemstitching, twisted fringe - DONE.  However, I'm not altogether satisfied with this; it's shedding a lot when I wear it.  I need to full this somewhat more, probably via the washing machine.

The red cotton/silk yardage:  No progress.

Four exploratory warps:  I was very happy with the wool honeycomb warp.  I loved playing with lots of color and I loved getting to change the colors and yarns often; I need to remember to plan more projects with lots of colors and lots of opportunities for changing things partway through a warp.

The fiber room:  The walls and ceiling are all prepped and primed.

The sample notebook:  I made up a template for recording all the details of the samples and I filled it out for the honeycomb samples.

All in all, that's not bad progress for January.

In February, I plan to:

• Weave off a certain Secret Warp that involves a lot of black/gray/white, with some color.  The black/gray/white part is done and I'm moving into the color section.  This will count as an exploratory warp, although there may not be formal samples in your sample notebook from it.
• Order the 15-dent reed and try warp rep again, even before the reed comes.
• Finish painting the fiber room (well, having it painted, techinically).
• Wind the warp for the red cotton/silk yardage.  I'd like to get this on the loom before March, but I doubt it will happen.

I've been trying to keep track of what keeps me from realizing my weaving goals; here are a few I've discovered:

• It can be too chilly in my current weaving room, which is a converted garage.  There's heat and insulation in there, but when we have a really bad cold snap, I'm not inspired to weave in there.  The future fiber room will take care of that issue, but in the meantime, I've figured out a way to wind warps in the living room and I've dug out my long underwear from the days when New England was really cold all winter.
• I can spend too long trying to get a stalled project to work (see the warp rep struggles), when what I need to do is back off and go at it in other ways (get the proper reed, for one, or choose something other than warp rep for the wedding present, for another).
• I commit to too many knitting and spinning goals at the same time as I'm trying to get a lot of weaving done.
• I could try to be more realistic about what I can really get done in a moth.  (Me?  Realistic?  Ha!)

 I suppose I better get back to weaving now!

A little behind

So. It's the first week of February and time to see where I am against the list from last month. Here's what I said I'd do back in December:

• Make and update the pattern for my "Test Vest"
• 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.
• Weave a selvedge rug for the studio (and possibly another for elsewhere)

Going in reverse order, the selvedge rug is done. I can't make another until I order more selvedges but I do want to make another one. Now that we've lived with it in the house for the past few weeks, we both really like the feel of it under our feet. And, the floors in the studio are absolutely bare, so it needs doing.

Second item was to figure out the fabric for my vest. I'd had my mind wrapped around twill - and I think I'll still give that one a go (Either Urquhart or an 8-shaft herringbone) but I am now also quite intrigued by the Honeycomb variant that I found in the Feb '57 Shuttle Craft.

There's a great discussion about how to vary two colors in the weft against a single color in the warp - and I should be able to pull that off with what I have. I'll be using 2/28 wool (Mill Ends from WEBS), and I've four colors in all, so I should be able to make something work from that. I've also a cone of 2/34, all white, and LOTS! so that I can wind off and dye something if it really comes down to it. So, two structures for sampling - the Honeycomb variant and the Twill. Done.

Last was to make and alter the vest. Absolutely no progress on that front and that's a bit of a worry since I need to plan fabric and make sure I've enough yarn. At a minimum, I've all the pieces drawn so I can get a quick estimate of how long for the two fronts. Realistically, that's a 10 minute job, so I'm not too fussed about that either. If I can get the vest sewn this month, I'll feel better about the whole thing.

Now, the other side of this is what'd I'd originally planned to do this month. That list looks like this:

• Sample setts as well as finishing methods for the vest fabric. Try at least *two* different warps.
• Dye yarn and sample for a krokbragd rug for the studio

The first one is fine. That's two warps of 2 yards each. Neither has complex threading and they're both straight-forward to weave. I think I'll shoot for two different setts for each one and resleying takes no time at all since I'll have multiple ends per dent. The only hitch might be the number of threads per dent and whether or not I end up with reed marks in the finished fabrics. But hey - that's what sampling is for, right?

Second is the Krokbragd. This is quite likely to fall off into March. I've got a lot on this month and this is purely a "fun" project. I've some knitting I want to finish, accounting and taxes, yadda, yadda. I give this a 50/50 chance of getting anywhere. More realistic is another round of dishtowels on the Gilmore.

So Lynn - how'd you do?

Networking

I think this project is the perfect example of why it's important to actually weave something and not just read about it. It also continues to reinforce that sampling is good.

I'd been muddling over how to play with color and texture in overshot and, in searching for some interesting references, found my way to Bonnie Inouye's article in the now-defunct WeaveZine on Networked Twill. I read it. I read it again. I got out my laptop and fired up Fiberworks and played around. Regardless, I just couldn't wrap my head around it so that left me no choice but to wind a warp and fire up the loom.

Project Notes:

• Warp: 8/2 BFL from Ashland Bay (this is very loosely plied - I'd prefer a higher twist and may well run it through the wheel first next time)
• Weft: 8/2 Mill Ends from WEBS
• Sett: 20epi - 2 ends per dent in a 10 dent reed

Woven off at 20 ppi for as balanced a fabric as possible.

I hemstitched at the beginning and after weaving off 75", left some room for fringe and then wove off a bit more as a sample to keep. I gave the finished scarf a bath and also gave it a vigorous rubbing. I may well run it through the wash next load to see if the whole thing will full even more. I'd like it to be just a hint softer.

The big learning here was how to manipulate the treadling to get curves - both slow, sweeping ones as well as sharp, zig-zaggy ones. It's all about how slowly or quickly I work my way across the treadles. The threading is based on a 4-shaft twill, so a "closed" repeat is four picks. If I stop short, then I work "left" two treadles from the last (e.g. - if I end on 5, then I start again on 2; end on 7 and start again on 4, etc.). Now, I can extend the repeat to five six or seven picks, that just changes where I start for the next segment. It took about 18 inches of weaving before I started to feel confident about where things would go - and then it became fun!

The other thing that happened was a noticeable rippling in the cloth. You can see that a bit in the picture above. The tie-up was a 3/1/1/3 so the cloth was "faced" and that, I think, is what helped give the added dimension. I was a bit worried about tension problems but as long as I kept moving those curves around, all was well. Bonnie's original piece was done in silk and I did wonder how much of my tension stuff got absorbed by the wool. BFL is far from elastic, but it does forgive.

And, of course, I wove a bit of the sample at the end in my (continuing) favorite yarn. Yup, that's the Dead Weaver Blue. I like the contrast so much more than the natural brown and, when I get to the real project, I'll probably go for a darker weft. An inky black with hints of yellow and green (think asphalt) with white nepps. Should be fun.

I'm going to fess up and say that I'm behind on my January list - I've not yet sewn the vest but I have been thinking about the fabric I plan to sample for next month. So, this weekend is for sewing and firming up sampling. I do think I'll be able to get it all done. Just need to get off my (proverbial) duff. Post this weekend to recap on where I am against the list.

Note to Self

Do not weave gray and silver in cold, cold January.



Warp:  Icelandic wool 2-ply, from the late Tongue River Farm.  Weft:  Peruvian alpaca, from A Touch of Twist.  Finnish and Swiss Twills, snuggled up to each other.  This is behaving itself very well, but gah, it's unexciting to weave.  Give me RED!

A Good Washing-Up

I love washing wool yarn, whether knitted or woven or spun.  It transforms and blooms and comes out dancing with its best smile on.

So, I washed the honeycomb samples.  They're dry now, so you get lots of photos - first the right side, then the wrong side of each.





















Interesting, eh?  I could see making the warp blocks just a little narrower (so the weft floats on the back weren't a little too long), weaving up several related narrow strips, and making a blanket or throw.  (Sometimes I wish I weren't so inspired to make big projects.)  The MacAusland wool that is the warp and ground weft in all of these is quite scratchy, even when washed, but I bet something like Harrisville Shetland woven in honeycomb would make a very cozy and warm blanket.  On the other end of the spectrum, I could see using fine silk and narrow blocks to weave off a colorful scarf.  I was surprised at how tidy and stable the selvedges are in these samples; I used a floating selvedge and of course the fulling of the wool helped, but still, they turned out to have a nice, relatively tidy, turned-under edge on either side.  With more than 4 shafts, I think you could add a plainweave or basket weave edge to honeycomb and stabilize the edges even more.  And can I just say I loved what this structure did for the colors in the warp and weft?  I wanna weave more stuff like this!

Next up: a twill shawl in silver Icelandic wool and gray alpaca, like the one I wove for Jesh.  You may not get samples from this warp, I'm afraid, as I don't have that much Icelandic yarn left.  The warp is sleyed, I wound a bunch of bobbins, and I'm starting the thread the heddles.  Progress, in other words!

ETA:  I also started pulling together a sample notebook.  I think it may need to be a sample box.   When I put each sample in its own plastic sleeve, the pile completely filled a 2.5" binder.  Hmm....

So Far So Good

In the "January" department, I had three things to do - two were vest related and the third was to weave a selvedge rug. Because I'm a contrary person, I started with the last one first.

I got a big bag of selvedges from a "Dead Weaver's Stash" on my last trip to Palm Springs and that was my excuse to give this kind of weaving a try. They're the high end version of the selvedges that you can get from Pendleton. In my case, earth tones - browns, coppers and neutrals with the occasional splash of green.

After poking around the web, I chose 8/4 carpet warp for the warp and threaded at 12 epi on the Gilmore. This was driven as much by which reed I had (either 8 or 12) as anything else. And, since the selvedges were so cheap, I didn't have anything invested in this other than time. I wound a warp three yards long and 36" wide. Nothing special on the selvedges - not even doubled. Threaded straight twill on four shafts, warped back to front as per usual. I wove a header using tripled 8/16 cotton left over from the rep weave placemats for a few picks to ensure that my threading was correct, spread the warp and to give me some fabric to hem, if I chose to go that route. I wound the selvedges on a rag shuttle and started weaving.

This was, to say the least, a challenge. The selvedges make for a HUGE shuttle and the Gilmore doesn't have the world's largest shed. My compromise was to wind some of each selvedge length onto the shuttle and then to manually pull the balance of the weft piece through by hand. That cut down on the number of times I had to wind a shuttle and the weaving would have been super slow-going no matter what. The Gilmore can put very heavy tension on the warp, and I can beat heavily, but after about 18" of weaving, I was knocking the pawl off of the back brake! This lead to a long pause while I had a look at the loom itself - and now I've a call to make to Stockton to discuss spare parts/rehab of this loom. Suffice to say the previous owner (at some point) made some mistakes with this loom and they need to be rectified. I don't think anything is damaged, and if I'd never woven a rug I'd have been unlikely to run into trouble, but now I've got work to do.

During the weaving, I felt pretty sure that I had sett this far too closely. The ends weren't sticking up at all, but from what I'd read, this would happen as part of the finishing process so I forged ahead.

With the help of a clamp and a hefty dose of patience I finished the weaving with only three strips of selvedge left over. I wove a wider header on the back end and then tied a Damascus Fringe (ala Collingwood) on both ends. I really, REALLY liked the finish this provides and makes for a clean edge to the rug. Then the whole thing went into the washer with a hope that those little ends would come springing out and I'd have a lovely, shaggy rug. That, however, is not what emerged from the washer.

Rather, the rug is more like a super springy version of a rag rug. The selvedges fulled into squishy tubes and the ends are locked down. It's wonderful to walk on - just not what I'd been aiming for. Also, the headers shrank up more than the rug, so they're drawn in a bit, but I'm not bothered by that either. The rug has been holding down the fort in the kitchen for the time being but it'll end up out in the studio shortly. It'll also need some kind of non-skid mat underneath.

Project "Lessons Learned" and points for the next time around:

• Make sure the loom is fixed before I try this again.
• Sett at 6 epi. Either single or doubled, but wider sett for sure.
• Read Collingwood further and construct a better header row.

Amazingly, I do think I'll make more - but that'll wait until later in the year. Chris really likes the rug and it's wonderful underfoot but there are other things to be done. Like my vest!