Waddaya do?

You got all that undyed cotton. And you recently picked up a large shoebox full of dyes from another weaver/dyer. So what do you do? You dye, of course!

Before the cotton actually arrived I measured out a tencel warp for a scarf – mostly one handpainted colorway with a second, much smaller, that I’d use for warp stripes. I am very happy with these warps.

I have plenty of tencel and rayon on cones to choose from for weft.

Once the cotton got here I did some planning and measured out 3 bouts to make some yardage and a shawl. In my head I wanted to do a similar blue variation like on the Tencel above, with neutral tans for the stripes.

Well. Remember I said I’d picked up a mess of dyes from another weaver/dyer? There were 3 different blues in her box, and sill me, I thought they’d all be pretty different. But when I mixed them up they were all very similar. So I reverted to a strategy I haven’t used since I first started dyeing – I just started dumping things together. Then I added a bit of this and a bit of that from my own dye shelf. The colors all looked pretty dark when they were wet, so I wanted to make the neutral/tan bout light. I was careful with my mixes for that, since I was using all my own dyes that I’ve used before and knew what I wanted.

After the overnight batching, morning rinsing, daytime soaking, then more rinsing and finally drying, it was completely clear to m that this was NOT going to work as intended. I didn’t like the way these bouts looked together. NOT. AT. ALL.

So waddya do? If you’re me, you prepare more yarn for dyeing. This time I made 24 ounces of cotton into skeins for immersion dyeing for weft for that blue/green warp, knowing I had sufficient solid colors to use as offsetting stripes. I wanted a nice, rich, dark denim color, and think I achieved it.

I have a weave structure planned that I think will look great with these colors.

I also measured out another bout to dye just like that first bout with the golden & light chocolate splotches. I think I’ll just use undyed yarn for my stripes. Keep it simple & neutral. I checked my stash and have a variety of browns and oranges in mercerized cotton I can use for weft, but I dyed a skein of purple anyway, thinking it might make a nice contrast. I didn’t want to do a dye bath, so painted the purple dye on this skein and clearly didn’t get the solid coverage I wanted, but I’m not worried about that.

So now I have 3 distinct projects to get on the loom. I’m going to put each in a bag – with notes about length of the warp bouts and number of threads (guess who learned the hard way that her memory is unreliable on this score) – and I’ll have to decide which one I’ll do first. But for now I’m happy with what I’ve accomplished with the dyeing – and with using a bunch of that 14 pounds of cotton.

October 23rd, 2020 | 

Sunrise Sunset complete

I finished all 3 pieces on my handpainted Sunrise-Sunset warp. I’m happy with all three. Remember, this is an oddly-sized 8/3 mercerized cotton warp. There’s a bit of 5/2 cotton in between the handpainted stripes – red, yellow, red.

I’d originally sett the warp at 16EPI, but after weave a few inches and thinking about my recent experience with the silk, I unwove and resleyed to 18 EPI. First up I used a dusty rose 8/2 tencel weft, in plain weave.

The weft toned the warp down – in a good way.

Even though the cotton is semi-thick for this sett, with the tencel it retains some drape.

I auditioned various wefts...16/2 navy cotton, 8/2 lavender tencel, 10/2 sienna cotton, and others I don’t even remember. But decided I wanted to emphasize the orange, so went with 2 strands of fine mercerized cotton. I had a red-orange in 16/2 and a medium orange in 20/2. I wound them on the bobbin together and set off weaving. This time I chose a 3/1 twill to enhance the drape of the fabric.

Again, remembering my recent experience with the silk, I decided to stick with the same treadling throughout the length, no alternating faces on this. So here you can see how one side punches up the purples and blues, while the other really focuses on the oranges and reds.

The twill did, indeed, enhance the drape of this piece.

Now, I had originally planned on making a long vest with the third piece, but that was before I had to omit a bunch of planned warp. So plan #2 was a mobius wrap. For this one I wanted to punch up the red, so I used 1 strand of 16/2 red mercerized cotto and 1 strand of that 20/2 red-orange. I wove this one in plain weave as well, but felt like I wasn’t getting decent consistency in th fabric, so beat it a bit harder than the first piece.

I hoped I had enough length to get a bag or pillow out of it, too. But when I still had at least 20′′ of apparently weave-able warp length left things started getting really wonky. I’m not generally of a mind to fiddle endlessly with the end of my warp, even if I really like it as I do this one, so I cut it off.

After wet finishing I pinned the fabric into a mobi, but found that it didn’t have the kind of drape I thought such a piece needed, s once again I went back to the planning board. I ultimately decided to make it into a top – for me! I got out an old thrift-store shee I’d purchased just for the purpose of making a pattern and got to work drafting something with straight pieces, using images I’d seen online as my plan. I can’t tell you how many times I put on and took off both the pattern and the real fabric. MANY.

It took a fair amount of pattern tweaking to get it reasonably right. Since my fabric is only 16′′ wide and about 76′′ long at that point I had to play around quite a bit, but finally finished the top this morning.

I’m happy with the result, although I do wish I hadn’t beat the weft quite so hard. But hey, there’s always next time, right?

August 14th, 2020 | 

Lots of color going on

I finished the three silk shawls I’d woven with the two different hand painted warps. First up, here’s the group of three, before we finishing, just so you can see the overall differences. Reminder – the warp is all 20/2 silk.

I wove them in the bottom-up order of the photo. So first is a navy 60/2 silk, woven in tabby. Here’s a beauty shot from the front.

And from the back, so you can get a better sense of its weightlessness.

Then I used a sage green tramm silk. Tramm is a very loosely spun yarn, often used for embroidery, and is very fine. I used 3 strands at once to approximate a 60/2 silk grist.

If the navy was weightless, I can’t think of a good word for this one. SOOO soft and lovely.

Unfortunately, that very loveliness is a drawback. I sett this yarn at 24 ends per inch, which I have done with this yarn with much success in the past. And since tabby is usually sett more loosely than twill, if anything I was concerned that the fabric would be a bit stiffer than I wanted. Well. This tramm silk is so fine that the finished cloth is not as stable as it needs to be. Here’s an example of what happens with an errant push of a finger.

The threads shift. Easily. Far too easily. So I won’t be selling this shawl.

Last up, I used 20/2 silk in a twilight blue, using a turned twill tie up and treadling. I followed the same ‘pattern’ as the threading. So for example if my threading pattern was 40A, 24B, 8A, 12B...that’s how I treadled, too. While I like the ‘randomness,’ this piece is way too busy for me.

Usually as I am weaving my brain is working on what comes next. But this time I just didn’t know. I thought I needed a bit of a break from towels, but what would I weave? No answer came, so I let that just be for a few days. Since it takes time to twist all that fringe on those shawls, and a lot more than usual as I beaded the fringe on the 2 tabby-weave pieces, I had plenty of time t think-while-not-thinking.

And my brain told me I needed to do another paint 2 warps piece. It kept saying Sunrise/Sunset. So I went through my stash, picked some mercerized cotton (since I can’t use that for towels), and measured out warp lengths.

(Side note: this wasn’t without problems. I didn’t have enough of the oddly-sized 8/3 cotton I wanted to use so planned to mix it with some 5/2 as they were a similar grist. But as I was measuring out the 5/2 I said, ‘nope.’ The yarn smelled funky. Why did I continue measuring out the whole thing before I made this decision? Who knows, but I did, even though I’ve not been successfu at getting rid of that smell in the past. But since the warp was measured and chained, I decided what the heck, nothing to lose. So I washed it with very hot water, Dawn dish soap and a bit of white vinegar, then draped it over my fence. For a few days. And a few rains. When I re-chained it and brought it in I can’t detect a smell. But I put it in a bag by itself. If there’s still no smell in a few days or weeks, I’ll use it. Oh yeah...as it turns out, good thing I couldn’t use it right away as it’s actually 3/2, not 5/2, so is quite a bit heavier than my 8/3. Sometimes life works out as it is supposed to.)

Although without any additional yarn the piece would be narrower than I’d planned, but I couldn’t find any other yarn in my stash that I wanted to use with it, so I went down to the basement and dyed the 2 warps I made. Here’s what I ended up with.

Kind of shouts at you, eh? While I was a bit apprehensive that it would all be too bright, I fell totally in love while I was beaming these warps. I hope the weaving turns out well.

Unrelated, I picked my first pink brandywine tomato. Isn’t she a beauty?

I made my first-of-the-season tomato salad. SO YUMMY!!

August 2nd, 2020 | 

Still at home with rainbows

Although many people around the country are significantly expanding their worlds outside of their homes, I’m one of the people who isn’t doing much more now than I was in March. I’m still mostly staying home, finding things that make me happy here. Like weaving rainbows. Here’s my latest batch of towels...a different take on the Safe At Home towels and the Rainbow circle towels

As you can see, I’ve already sold 2 of them, so if you’re interested, let me know. I’ll be posting them on Facebook this morning and they tend to move quickly. Note that towel #1 is short – I ran out of warp. So that towel may remain with me unless someone wants a short towel, for a short price.

I also got that painted warp woven – 3 shawls, but the fringes will take me some time to twist, especially since I plan to include beads on two of them. But here’s a bit of a preview of the first one while I was weaving.

As usual, each piece is different, sometimes a little, sometimes a lot.

July 23rd, 2020 | 

It happened again

Once more, weeks have gone by without a post from me. And this time I can’t even claim to have posted things on Facebook; I haven’t.

Some days I feel remarkably unproductive. How did I ever get things done when I had a full time job? Other days I’m totally caught up in doing lots of mundane, routine tasks. But there it is. I can’t change the past. So here’s an update on what I have done in the past few weeks.

I took an online class through our Weaving Center on deflected doubleweave. I’d done a bit of it before but had limited experience with the structure. Plus I really wanted to see how it all worked, classes on Zoom, and how the Center might be able to support more of our teachers doing more online classes. I, for one, don’t see myself taking in-person classes for the rest of this year.

The class met once/week for 3 weeks. On our meeting days, we had 3 meetings, each an hour or more. And we were to be doing things in between meetings and weeks. So I spent a lot of time on that. I learned a lot, but I’m not sure how much of it I wi use. The instructor is a big fan of collapse weave, using yarns that will shrink differently – for instance a wool and a cotton – and that’s just not my bag. But here are a few shots of my samples, showing measurements before & after wet finishing. Note that the pink warp & weft was tencel, the dusty rose, when used, was rayon. Their shrinkage differentials were surprising.

Then, since I had enough warp on the loom, I decided to weave 2 scarves with these techniques. My opinion of them? Meh. If you would like one of them let me know & I’ll give you a screaming deal.

This one is woven partly with colcolastic thread/yarn. My intent was that the plain weave sections would really ‘pouf out’ from the colcolastic sections. The effect wasn’t as dramatic as I’d wanted.

I kind of liked the ‘bubble’ effect with the wool in the sample, so I dug out some baby lace-weight alpaca I had and wove the second scarf with that. I may have over-fulled the alpaca a bit; lack of experience. In any case, here’s that scarf.

Here’s a closeup of those bubbles. And what appears to be a treadling error I didn’t see until just now.

So with all of that it was taking forever to weave the next batch of Safe At Home towels. I finally have them off the loom, but haven’t begun to press or hem yet.

Unrelated to weaving...strike when the iron is hot, right? Well, it’s berry time. A woman who lives not too far from me has a cher tree. With her permission I picked quite a lot of fruit in 2018 and made jams and more. Last year almost no cherries developed. So this year when I saw her tree and again got her permission to pick, I did so. The cherries were mostly really high, much highe than I could reach with my ladder, and not so great. I only picked about four quarts of cherries, ended up throwing out about a quart of them, and got one batch of jam. One of those jar went to the tree owner, of course.

Then my son found some wild black raspberries near his house. He’s picked, I’ve picked, and we’ve picked together. Here’s the first of three batches of black raspberry jam I’ve made.

Then my second online fiber course started. This one is on painting two warps and using them in one project. I’ve done this before, too, but again wanted the experience of the Zoom structure. Working well ahead of the course plan, here are photos of my warps just after painting, and then when they’re steamed, rinsed, dried, and chained. It’s all 20/2 silk.

The first warp is purple, orange, burgundy, and reddish-fuchsia.

I had already partially wrapped this one before I took my photo. It’s gold, avocado, blue-green, and light indigo.

I’m very happy with the results and am looking forward to getting these on the loom.

I think I’m going to go outside my personal comfort zone and do random stripes, with a simple straight twill. (Random???? For someone with my control issues?? Oh my!!!)

July 15th, 2020 |

More colors, more towels

17 of the 19 colors of yarn I ordered arrived on Thursday.

When I saw it all, I gulped. I fear I overdid it. But it’s done.
This afternoon I wound the warp for another 8 Safe At Home towels (the squares within squares).

I’ve already decided (thanks to a suggestion from a friend) that after this warp I’m going to go back to circles for at least one wa of 8. When I wove circles before, my warp colors were limited – usually 5-6 warp colors for the run of 8 towels. I think I’m going make every circle (18 across the width) a different color. Although I may change my mind before then. Maybe I’ll limit it to 9 colors – 2 circles of each color.

Earlier today I took the photos of my crackle towels and posted them on Facebook. (Have you joined the Second Wind Fan Group?) I’m happy with them.

I wove each of the 6 towels with a different color weft. I also used 4 different treadlings.

Unlike the last 2 batches of towels, all the colored yarns here are commercially dyed.

The Midnight Multi towel has a variegated weft with navy, purple, medium blue, green, and red-orange. Contact me if you’re interested in purchasing any of my towels.

May 22nd, 2020 | 

Using stash - or not

 

For MANY months I’ve been saying ‘must use stash’ yet somehow I keep acquiring more yarn. I have an excuse/rationale, b still...

My handwoven towels have been a real hit. Especially those colorful squares of Safe at Home.

I only got 7 towels out of this warp, and each one is long for a towel – 33′′. I was counting weft stripes instead of measuring length, and apparently I wasn’t beating as firmly as I did for the first batch of these towels.

Regardless, I had requests for 2 of these towels – which turned into 3 – before the warp ever went on the loom. As soon as I posted this batch of 7 on Facebook I sold 3 more of them, so only 1 towel is left.

So I knew I’d need to weave more of these joyful and useful babies. And I didn’t have enough unmercerized cotton left to put another warp on the loom. (Ok, honestly, I do have some grays and taupes, but I don’t think that’s what people want right now. I may try that in the future.) So what to do? First I contacted a woman handling the sale of yarn from a local estate. I got a few unmercerized cottons but she didn’t have many. However I did also buy a few cones of light tints of cottolin and some mercerize cotton. And some undyed tencel. I couldn’t pass up the price. Sigh.

Not much for the Safe at Home towels, so I HAD to place an order. I had no choice, right? RIGHT?? I ordered 8oz. cones of 19 different colors. Sounds like a real lot, but honestly, that’ll only make about 3.5 batches of these towels.

While I’m waiting for the yarn to arrive, I put another batch of towels on the loom. For years I’ve said to myself, “I don’t like crackle weave.” And then I’d see something woven in crackle and say, “That’s beautiful.” Repeat the “I don’t like it – that’s beautiful” sequence several times, and I knew it was time for me to try it.

I doubted they’d sell as quickly as the Safe at Home towels, and knew I might not like treadling them (the treadling is all somewhat complex) so I only put on a warp for 6 towels. I have 4 woven so far, each with a different weft color and I’ve used 3 different treadling patterns. We’ll see how they go.

Meanwhile, I have way too much Tencel & rayon, chenille, and silk to use up. But that’s not what’s moving out of my house right now. So I will weave cotton towels.

May 19th, 2020 | 

Pandemic brain

 Let me just start by saying I am not sick. I do not have COVID-19 or any other disease. I feel fine, other my usual age-related aches and pains.

But...

I clearly have what I’m calling pandemic brain. IMHO it’s related to pregnancy brain for women going through that. One’s norma mental processes are not functioning properly. Thinking isn’t always rational. Counting skills go out the window.

I would never want to imply that I don’t make mistakes. I sure do. But it’s highly unusual that I’ll make mistakes 4 out of 5 projects in a row. And that is what has happened.

It started in mid-March. I planned a beautiful skein-painted project, intending to make one shawl and weave yardage to make something else – a vest, perhaps. The weaving went fine, but I hadn’t done my calculations correctly, not wound enough warp ends, so the fabric isn’t as wide as I’d intended. Fine for the shawl, but for the yardage? I’ll have to find a different pattern than the one I had planned on. I’m confident I can do that at some point, but not yet inspired to do so.

Next up was my Safe At Home towels. I do love them, and the mistake wasn’t a big one – winding 62 turquoise ends instead of 72 as I was winding the warp. So I had to hang 10 ends over the warp beam and hope I could maintain tension. It all worked ou fine but caused me a small amount of anxiety as I wove.

After that was my Comfort At Home towels. They went off without a hitch.

Then my Spring At Home towels. As noted, I didn’t pay attention to my math and initially wound skeins only half the size I needed for my wefts. Again, a problem fixed easily enough by winding and dyeing more skeins, but a silly, if simple, mistake.

Now I’m working on another batch of Safe At Home towels. I looked through my stash and found colors that I thought worked well together.

The turquoise is obviously a commercially dyed yarn. The magenta and green are skeins I dyed back in 2016 for a project but didn’t use. I dyed the yellow and orange skeins specifically for this project. The dark blue-violet is some hand dyed yarn I’ve had for years, dyed by someone else, that I thought was just what this warp needed. In fact, I have 2 of the towels on this warp already spoken for, just from those warp colors and the Safe At Home weaving plan.

I got the threads measured out and beamed.

All heddles and reed threaded, time to tie on to the front apron. I had some difficulty in the beginning, and ended up doing my lashing on twice to get my tension right. Ok, that’s a pain in the butt, but whatever.

Then I started weaving. I was having difficulty maintaining tension and couldn’t figure out why, but said to myself, you just need to keep going. It will get better. But it wasn’t getting better; it was getting worse. All of sudden the lightbulb went off. I got up, looked at my yarn labels, and closed my eyes and moaned. That lovely dark blue-violet wasn’t an 8/2 yarn – 3,360 yards per pound. It was twice as thick – only 1,680 yards per pound. I thought it felt a bit different when I was measuring it, but as this yarn is also more loosely spun, I attributed it to that and kept going. BIG MISTAKE!

There’s only one way to fix this. Start by removing the weft.

Here I’ve got half of that done.

Next insert lease sticks to retain the cross.

Go back through the stash and see if I have something else that will look good for warp. Nope. Tomorrow I will wind another skein and dye it, hoping for something similar to that blue-violet.

Then I will go back to the loom. I will carefully unwind all of the warp, pulling it back through the reed and heddles so that it’s all at the front of the loom. (If needed, I will unthread the reed and the heddles, but I’m hoping I don’t have to.) I will attempt to save the 84 ends of the blue-violet yarn, as it is a lovely color and is almost 9 yards long, but if I have to toss it, I do.

Once the newly-dyed skein is dry, I’ll measure that out, put it on the lease sticks, and beam it along with the other 5 colors. Sigh I just HOPE that I DO NOT keep making mistakes. This is a royal pain. And not like me.

May 3rd, 2020 |