Lots of learning going on

 Warning – long post. Read at your own risk.

Apparently lot has happened in the last week. As soon as I got that black & white shawl warp on the Macomber and saw that there was a loom problem, I dyed a tencel warp for a run of 3 scarves. I wanted the blue-violet and periwinkle I’d used before, s pulled out my formulas and set to work. The colors going on the tencel looked just as they should...that is, just like I thought the had last time. But as the dyes batched, soaked, rinsed, and dried, my brain was confused. Where was the blue violet? And where the periwinkle?

That is red-violet and turquoise/teal. So I went back to my sample that I’d dyed using this formula. Yep, they were the same colors as what I had here. While those colors are very nice, there is no blue-violet and no periwinkle. Perhaps those were the colors I was going for when I created the formula, but they’re not the colors I got. Yet I never re-named my notes or my samples DOH! Still I think the warp is beautiful, so it’s all okay.

While I was waiting for the Macomber parts to be ordered and shipped, as planned I got a towel warp on the counterbalance loom. I opted for a red-based bumberet. In the must-use-stash mode, I chose color combos outside my general comfort zone. Here it is on the loom, with the first towel I wove, using a red weft.

That was too much bright red for me. I used a white weft next and really liked the way it muted the colors, so wove 2 towels of that. Then I wanted to use that peach/coral color that was also prevalent, but didn’t have enough left for even one towel, so matched it the best I could. Next I used one of the dark blues in the towel, then a cranberry. Here’s the batch of them.

Interestingly, now I like the red. Not as well as the lighter colored wefts, but definitely better than the darker colored ones. The cranberry one is too short to be a towel – not enough warp on the loom – so I’ll hang onto that for generic kitchen use.

In between weaving the towels I also finished weaving the warp that I’d put on my rigid heddle loom for demonstrations at the July show. Since I generally weave with relatively fine yarns, I have a challenge finding yarns in my stash that work well on the rigid heddle loom. So this time I thought I’d try a thick-ish variegated sock yarn in the knitting stash.

Looked nice, but O.M.G., what a pain to weave! The yarn was loosely spun, and the movement of the heddle kept abrading it. After a few broken warp threads I got wise and used the heddle only to raise and lower the warp threads, packing the weft in wit a weaving sword that I’d fashioned a few years ago out of a paint stick.
Fancy, eh? But it was with me at the show, and it worked. Not a great demonstration of what the loom could really do, but this was another live and learn situation.

First I used an orange rayon chenille weft for a long scarf.

Then a red rayon chenille weft for a cowl.

Moving on...you know that saying that no good deed goes unpunished? This next segment is like that. I suggested an ice-dying activity for a winter evening meeting for my Guild. Would I teach it? Um...sure. However, since I’d never actually done it, I’d nee to practice and work out some kinks.

First I dyed two little Tshirts for my youngest grandson. This was a test of whether it was better to use the dyes in powder form o after they’d been mixed with liquid. I was hoping the liquid would be just as effective, since I didn’t want to have to deal with the powders with a group of people, as they’d all have to wear masks.

Here are the Ts after I’d sprinkled on the dyes. Red & orange were sprinkled on dry, blue & green after mixing with liquid.

The next morning, after the ice had all melted, they looked like this.

After that I rinsed till clear, then washed and dried with other laundry and a color catcher. The reds are quite nice, I think.

The blues & greens, not so much.

Ok, so we’ll use powered dyes. (Or maybe I mixed them with a bit too much liquid...that’s for the next experiment.)

Then I realized that I’d planned on using little silk scarves I’d purchased for this process. But uh oh, silk needs to be steamed for the colors to set. No way will everyone who takes home a scarf covered with ice and dye at the end of an evening meeting have a dye-dedicated steamer at home. So next up was a test to see if other heating methods worked as well. Three little scarves are under this ice and dye.

After the ice melted, I steamed one and let the other two dry on the line in the basement. Then I tossed one in my dryer for about 20 minutes, and pressed the other with my iron set on silk. After that I rinsed all three scarves – it didn’t appear that any color ran at all.

An apparently successful experiment. Here are all 3 scarves after pressing.

Personally, I prefer the top one, with the most variation in color, but that’s a function of how it was in the container when I put the dye on, nothing to do with the method used to set the color.

Next experiment, which I’ll be doing with a few friends, is to try koolaid and other food dyes, and also to use both some cottons and some silks. That won’t happen till September, so the learning will continue. Glad the evening meeting isn’t until winter!

August 9th, 2018 | 

What the heck???

Yesterday I took Jack out for his regular afternoon walk. It’s been very cold, so he usually chooses to walk only as long as absolutely necessary to accomplish his mission. The afternoon walk was once around the block, which was what this walk often is any time of the year. Fine.

We got back home and I sat down to do some computer work. Jack was sitting near me in the room, just like always. He was, I thought, chewing on his bone. Swell.

When I was done on the computer, about an hour, I stood up and saw this.

WHAT THE HECK?!?! Jack hadn’t been chewing on his bone, but pulling things out of the rug!

In 2 years he has pulled out a total of maybe 2 dozen, and I always thought they were done in error when he was grabbing for a toy. But this?!?! This is BAD!

To make it as bad as possible, this spot is dead center in the middle of the rug. It’s not like I can put a chair over it or something have no clue if I can put those parts back into the rug; I will try, but I’m betting it will either be near impossible or will look like he when I’m done, and that I’ll be looking for a new rug. I’ve thought about weaving one, but wasn’t really ready to do that. Especially since this rug is a 5′ x 8′. Quite a large rug for handwoven indeed. Your suggestions will be appreciated.

In another what-the-heck is a new problem with my Adobe Photoshop Elements Editor. I have used this program for years, ever since I’ve had a blog, for sure. It’s how I edit my photos and size them for the web. When I got my new laptop, I’m thinking abou 18 months ago, I had to change the version of the software and get used to it, but it works very similarly, so fine.

Except starting a few days ago, not fine. I open an image. Crop and adjust as needed. Go to Save for Web and resize. Hit Save I consistently get an error message: “Could not complete this operation. The specified volume could not be found.” It matters no what file location I choose.

I’ve figured out a work around, but come on – what the heck happened?!?! My work around is more steps: Go to Image Resize. In a few clicks I’ve gotten it to the size I want. Then go to Save as and rename the file so I now it’s the modified one. Then click Save, and it easily goes to exactly the same location as it couldn’t find a minute ago. Again – what the heck? I can’t find anythin in Preferences that would seem to have any impact. Again, your suggestions will be welcomed.

Ok, so here we are on December 31. A few days ago I had a minor freak out when I realized that I had only 4 days left in the month and had completed NOT A SINGLE THING for my inventory. YIKES!

So I put the black and white 8/2 tencel scarf warp on my counterbalance loom. I figured I could weave it off relatively quickly. An I did. I’m not in love with the huck weave structure I chose, but it’s okay.

This was an experiment, to see what I might like best for weft for the shawl warp I’d painted at the same time. First I did a gradient weft: 16.5′′ of a solid color, my standard 64-thread gradient to the next solid color, repeat. I had 4 solids I used: black, dark gray, silver gray, and white. It’s okay, but not my favorite. I do like those spots of black on one end of the fringe – reminds me of porcupine quills.

Next I used solid white for the weft. I like this one better. You can see that one of the fringes in the middle of the white end sort o came undone in the wet finishing. No idea why, but I’ll have to fix that.

I had enough warp left for one more scarf. What color would I choose? As I thought about it, I had a light bulb moment. My cowl have been selling pretty well, so instead of making one more long, fringed scarf, I’d weave two short cowls – it’ll be summer time and people like short cowls in the summer.

So I wove one with the dark gray weft and one with the silver weft. This got me 4 finished pieces instead of 3.

I don’t think either of these photos show the cowls to their best advantage, but frankly didn’t want to go through the challenge of the Adobe process again with the other shots I’d taken.

Then I realized I’d finished weaving another scarf on my rigid heddle loom a few weeks ago but never did the finishing. This is the counterpart to the one shown here, this time with a dark purple chenille weft.

This rayon boucle warp doesn’t look good when double twisted, so I tried to put some beads on it to dress up an otherwise plain fringe. Geez, it was one problem after another, until I finally gave up, cut the fringe short-ish and called it good. So I ended December with 5 pieces. But absolutely nothing is on the loom now to start January. I saw a scarf woven from this to-die-for dra on Facebook and grabbed the draft from Handweaving.net – this is why I stay a member!

Thank you to Tara Oftenorth for creating this modification. I think I’ll warp my Macomber for this next.

UPDATES:

Jack had dental surgery last month – 14 teeth removed! Yikes! I suddenly realized that since his mouth has healed he has been doing a lot of chewing, much more than previously. Those teeth must have hurt, poor baby. So yesterday I went to Petco and bought 3 different kinds of chew toys. He loves them all. Hopefully this will protect future problems.

I googled the problem with Photoshop Elements, and was far from the only person with this issue. I followed directions for fixing it, and it worked like a charm.

12 comments to What the heck???

December 31st, 2017 | 

Weaving lace

 

After Fire in the Hills I decided I’d go back and weave some single color scarves, adding more handwoven lace to my stock. I lik the lightness of lace, its symmetry, and the fact that it seems so complex when it’s complete. I like huck and I like Swedish lace, using them each to achieve a slightly different look.

I also like weaving lace. I’ve woven enough of it that at this point it goes pretty quickly for me. I use tie ups that make my little counterbalance loom happy – it would much prefer that I step on a treadle with 3 harnesses tied to it than with 1 harness.

This time I chose to weave different sizes of Swedish lace blocks, using tencel as my fiber. I’d just received some royal purple yarn I’d ordered, so on the loom it went, for a warp of 4 scarves. I know people will like the color – they always do.

I had such a good time weaving this rich, dark purple scarves I decided to do another run of four, this time in natural.

Same pattern, same fiber, but I’m betting these two colors will appeal to different people. Time will tell...my first (very small) sho of the season is this weekend – just in time for Mother’s Day. In case I don’t get back here before then, have a great one with and for all the important women in your life.

May 8th, 2013 | 

11 more handwoven scarves

I’m doing a bit of playing catch up here. I’ve been weaving as fast as I can, and now that I don’t need to try out a new loom, mak decisions about which loom is staying, or do the work to sell the Varpa, I can get much more accomplished.

The first thing I did was warp for 2 rayon scarves on the Mac, to be sure that the hints the weavers on Weavolution had given m would work well. To start, I sanded the breast beam with increasingly fine grades of sandpaper, starting with 80 grit and working my way to 600. Then I finished it with Danish Oil. An interesting product – that. Before I bought it I assumed it was, as the name implies, an oil. Not so. It’s a product that has some plastic polymers in it, so dries hard – no residue to rub off on fabric.

Anyway, as I continued to read the hints I was given, I realized that one weaver had hit the nail on the head with my problem. I was advancing the cloth beam too far, so the bottom of the beater was hitting on the finished fabric and pulling that weft apart. Here are a few pictures so you can see what I mean.

In the first one the cloth beam is advanced correctly. You can see the space between the bottom of the beater bar and the wove fabric.

In the second (sorry for the quality), I advanced the warp too far, and the bottom of the beater bar hits that woven cloth. With a fine and/or loosely sett warp, this will be deadly.

Now that I know exactly what causes that problem on the Macomber loom, I can avoid it. I’ll probably try to come up with some type of ‘stop’ so that I can’t advance it too far. IMHO, while there are many great design features on the Mac, this is a design error. It was impossible to do this on the Varpa, and is also impossible to do on my counterbalance. I know there are very good reasons not to advance your warp too far at once, but this shouldn’t be one of them.

My test warp for this new attention/technique on the Mac was a lavender rayon threaded in an 8 harness Ms & Ws pattern. I used a red-violet weft in this first scarf.

The second weft was a navy rayon. I can’t show it to you because it’s one of the nine pieces I dropped off at a professional photographer’s today so he can shoot them for my show applications for next year. I wanted to get the weaving to him so he can take his great pictures & I can get them back to sell at my fall shows. I forgot to take a photo of this one before I took it to Tim Fuss.

Then, because I knew I could go faster, I went back to my trusty counterbalance loom for everything else you’ll see here.

First some of Tammy’s hand painted rayon chenille in Blue Violets. I put a stripe of some of her purple yarn in just for a bit of contrast.

Because rayon chenille is a slow fiber to beam, I moved to a lovely lilac silk-cotton blend, making some huck lace blocks. The second picture, the close up, is much more accurate in color.

Then, because I was on a lace blocks roll, I decided to weave with some of the lovely orange cashmere-silk I’ve used before. I’v been out of this color of scarves for months, and although I haven’t sold many cashmere-silk scarves this year, I thought people might like the orange.

Hmmmmm. Problemmatic. I like the lace pattern,

...but the yarn was much more challenging than it should have been. Especially along the selvedges. Absolutely none of the techniques I tried made smooth selvedges. They looked bad on the loom, they looked bad after wet finishing.

I’m sure I’ll be more critical than most of my customers, but needless to say I am really disappointed in these scarves. I had planned to take them to Tim for photos; obviously I didn’t do that. Sure don’t want a jury to think this is typical of my work!

I’ve woven a few other pieces I still need to finish, and I’m getting more on the loom tomorrow morning. Some more of Tammy’s hand painted lovelies. In 12 days I’ll be loading the van for the next show, and I still have to weave more bookmarks, warp the rigid heddle, and finish the magnets & cards I started last winter — specifically for this upcoming show. I have other ideas for things I think will sell, but there’s not enough time to make more new products. Better to have more ideas than time than the reverse.

The hillsides here are starting to be works of art. I love the beauty of autumn in western New York!

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September 23rd, 2012 | Tags: cashmere, cotton, counterbalance loom, handwoven lace, handwoven scarves, Macomber, rayon, rayon chenille, silk | Category: Weaving | Edit this post

Weaving with silk...and cotton

After warping up the Varpa and getting everything all tied up correctly, I decided I’d change the treadling for each of the three handwoven silk scarves, as well as the weft color.

For the burgundy scarf I used ‘tromp as writ’ — meaning I danced across the treadles in exact same pattern as I’d threaded th harnesses.

For the next one I decided to treadle basically a straight and point twill, eliminating the advancing twill sections.

Here’s what it looked on the loom like with a Pacific Blue weft.

That one was a bit harsh for me, I think because of the combination of the sharp angles in the weaving pattern and the dramatic difference in the warp and weft colors. So for the third I softened everything up. I treadled only the advancing twill with just a small point between each pattern.

Then I used a light coffee weft, which also softened the look. Again, here it is on the loom.

These scarves were not quick to weave. I had to get used to treadling the Varpa, and had to pay attention to 360 threads to make sure I wasn’t making weaving errors. After that, I really needed to get a quick, easy warp onto the counterbalance loom so could feel reasonably productive in preparation for the upcoming show. So I decided on bookmarks. I threaded in a rosepath pattern, treadled in a variety of patterns, and got 32 booksmarks woven.

That made me feel good.

So now I’ve wound a warp of 170 ends of natural 8/2 tencel and have beamed it on the counterbalance. (By the way, I’m a complete warping valet convert.) I’m going to thread in a modified Ms & Ws pattern treadle in a variety of ways, and use a different weft color for each of the four scarves. Gotta keep moving!

August 17th, 2012 |

Lemon Chiffon handwoven scarves

 Like most weavers, I have quite a stash of yarns.

When I’m at a show (not very common for me) and I see yarn I like at a good price, I buy it. Then I come home and have to put away, and sometimes forget about it. Months later I’m looking in one of my boxes for something, and get a pleasant surprise at finding a yarn I’d forgotten about, particularly when the color & fiber still make me smile.

That was the case when I found 2 cones of 10/2 cotton in a color I was calling buttercream. After the scarves were woven I had to change the name – the color was richer yellow than what I think of as buttercream. I opted for lemon chiffon. (The color is much more yellow than it appears in the photos. I’d still call the color in the photos buttercream.)

I decided to weave some huck lace scarves from it. I love weaving lace, both huck and a variety of Swedish laces. I like the way they look on the loom, the way they wet finish, and the way they please and amaze my customers when they see them hanging at a show.

I decided on an overall huck threading for this cotton, warped up my little counterbalance loom, and set to weaving. The first two scarves were woven in what I think of as typical huck. (I know I don’t use the correct terms for these lace weaves. Unfortunately I didn’t know that when I started calling them by ‘my’ names, and somehow can’t seem to get the correct names planted in my brain.)

I’ve woven this pattern in 10/2, 8/2 and 5/2 cotton, cobweb weight cashmere-silk, 100% silk, and rayon. It never fails to please. think the cottons work best, but it’s pretty much always a winner.

This time I opted to weave the third scarf in what I call ‘windowpane’ huck. Same threading & treadling, just a different tie up.

For some reason (I don’t know why) I haven’t used this option in a while. It does seem a bit more fragile, more prone to snaggin a thread while wearing it, but it’s so lovely that people like it anyway.

The two scarves look so different, it really is magic that they’re so close in structure.

I took all three scarves to my show at Chautauqua Institute in July, and sold all three, bing, bang, boom. Shoulda bought more o that yarn when I saw it – buyer’s remorse in reverse.

Parting shot:
Mama Phoebe built her nest in the rafters underneath my porch. She’d just fed her babies and told them to be quiet since I was nearby.

July 24th, 2012 | 

I wove the lemon chiffon scarves with a 10/2 mercerized cotton. My notes tell me I sett the threads at 20 ends per inch (EPI). I generally use 12 EPI when I’m weaving lace with 5/2 cotton. I also looked up my records for what I’ve sett 8/2 at for cotton (or rayon) lace, and I generally use 18 EPI. I did just weave some 10/2 cotton lace (it’ll be my next post) at 18EPI because I hadn’t checked my records (hah!). It’s fine, too.

I don’t change the sett with the different treadlings – that is, whether I'm weaving traditional huck, huck lace (what I called huck windowpanes), huck bars, I use the same setts. 

Watery lace

This time of year, I just keep weaving, and weaving, and weaving to build up my inventory for the coming show season. It’s nice to weave light, lacy fabrics when it’s cold out – it makes spring seem right around the corner.

Of course this year, we had a week of summer before winter was even over. Despite my weather concerns, I’m still enjoying weaving scarves for spring and summer. I’m using up that hand painted yarn I ordered. And yeah, I’ve subsequently ordered two more batches of Tammy’s yummy yarn.

It’s no surprise that I like saturated colors, and gemtones, so it’s completely fitting that one of my personal favorites is Tammy’s Ocean Waves colorway. I’ve used it in rayon chenille, bamboo, bamboo-cotton, and tencel. It’s always successful, and always popular. So I ordered a bunch more. This time in a blend of bamboo & tencel.

I worked out a new lace design for my little 4-harness counterbalance loom, and warped for four scarves. I could vary the treadling and create two somewhat different lace designs – either an open cross of four lace squares or a mini checkerboard of five.

The two scarves on the right look the same color in real life – no idea why they look so different in this picture. For the first three scarves, I used the same variegated yarn for both warp and weft. For the fourth, on the left in the photo, I used a solid, bright turquoise bamboo. It really lightens those scarves up a lot. I wasn’t positive if I’d like it, but I do. I like them all.

After I twisted the fringes and wet finished these scarves, I wasn’t ready to be done with the watery-colored yarn. So I measured out another warp of three scarves, this time in a log cabin pattern with black bamboo.

Although weaving with two shuttles takes me more than twice the time of weaving with one, the end result in a log cabin weave makes the time investment worthwhile. It turns a plain weave into something that thrills the eye. At least it does for me. I will definitely have to weave some more log cabin for this season.

I have so many more things I want to weave, so many ideas. There’s no way I can build in time to weave everything I want to. A least not if I want to sleep. And I do love to sleep. Still, despite my long stretch of unproductive time due to the nasty virus, I’ve completed 67 handwoven scarves, plus the 10 towels and 3 baby blankets since the first of the year. 30 scarves in March alone. I’m threading a loom for a warp of 2 shawls right now, and I’m hoping I can add them to my list of March completions.

Can you tell I’m a bit obsessive-compulsive? But you knew that already, didn’t you.

March 29th, 2012 | 

Handwoven Lace Shawl

I've finished an order that I took in at a show in December. I feel really badly that it took so long. Yes, the customer assured me she wasn’t in a hurry, and yes, I told her I wouldn’t get it done before the end of the year, but February?! How the heck did I mak it take this long?

Well, I ordered the yarn in early January, but it was out of stock, not scheduled to arrive till late January. Ok. Then they sent it, and I waited a few days to open the box till I was ready to put it on the loom. Uh oh. Not the right color. I looked at my notes, and I’d put the correct color number in my notes, but it was wrong on the order form. Did I tell the woman the wrong color number, o did she write it down wrong? I don’t know, and it doesn’t really matter. If I hadn’t had an order for it, I would have used the color they sent me, since it was close, but my customer specifically ordered a color, and that’s what I was going to make.

So what was the order? A huck lace shawl in 5/2 natural/eggshell pearl cotton.

I knew that not only would this customer like it, but others would, too. So I warped the loom for three shawls. I wove them, twisted the fringe, wet finished, and pressed all three shawls.

Here’s a closeup of a section of the finished shawl...

...and a section of the draft.

Such an easy threading and treadling! And this all-over huck pattern is nice and soft, even in 5/2 pearl cotton. As always, I made this handwoven lace on my little counterbalance loom. The loom, and these shawls, make me happy. As does the snow that’s softly falling outside my window.

Your turn: what made you smile today?

February 11th, 2012 |

Eggshell Cotton Huck Lace

 My eggshell cashmere silk scarves were a failure, at least as far as being saleable. So I combined my customers’ requests for white or eggshell scarves and their desire for cottons into one product.

After my recent experience with the 5/2 handpainted Egyptian cotton, I knew that I wanted to sett the eggshell cotton farther apart than the 15 ends per inch I used then. I also wanted to make them be handwoven lace, because that would help with softness and drape. Lace weaves need to be sett and beat loosely, so I took a gulp and set the neutral 5/2 pearl cotton at 12 ends per inch. I threaded the loom for an all over huck, and sat down to weave.

I LOVE THESE SCARVES!

They’re soft drape really well for cotton. The color and lace provide a very classic look; the cotton ensures great versatility. I’ll be amazed if they don’t sell at the Roycroft summer show this weekend. I’m sure I’ll be making more of these. (Hope I don’t end up eating those words.)

Like with most of my handwoven lace, I made these scarves on my delightful little counterbalance loom. It is totally possible to weave with 3 shafts against 1 on a counterbalance. It just takes a bit more care, since the shed (the opening where you pass th shuttle through) isn’t as large.

No, once again I didn’t sample these scarves. I am much more confident when I’m working on my little loom. We operate on the same mental plane, and I just knew this one would work.

June 24th, 2011 

Weaving Napkins

 After finally figuring out how to draft a design in block theory, I spent a long time designing my actual napkins for the International Napkin Exchange. I wanted to do something with a sort of architectural feel to it, something that reminded me of Frank Lloyd Wright’s sensibilities. This sounded relatively straightforward to me. HAH!

I should know by now that it takes more skill to make a clean, attractive, simple design than one that’s crowded with activity. Frank certainly was a master of his craft, and I would certainly not call myself a master weaver!

So I spent hours drawing. First on graph paper, then on my weaving software. Then I realized that I didn’t have the graph paper design right, and I didn’t have enough graph paper to do what I wanted, so I went to Excel and created a grid that resembled the squares of graph paper. I spent hours getting the design that I thought I wanted, then went back to the weaving software.

Hmmm....still not right. The basis of a summer & winter pattern, which is what I wanted, is that what’s light on one side is dark o the other. To keep me happy, I had to like both sides of this piece. So back to the drawing board.

To add to the challenge, the napkins had to be a certain size, 18′′ to 22′′ square. So I had to have the right number of threads across both the width and length of the piece. Again, my obsessive-compulsive nature slowed my design time — I really wanted a pattern that was completely symmetrical, both left to right and top to bottom. And one that had a reasonable balance of light and dark on both the top and the bottom.

FINALLY I got a design that I liked, got the warp prepared and on the loom, and started weaving.

The above picture shows you both the top side and underside of the weaving, so you can see how the colors reverse themselves. It still amazes me that I can do this bit of weaving magic, particularly on my little 4 harness counterbalance loom. This type of weaving is possible by using two shuttles, one with your background color (white) and one with the alternate color (purple for the napkin below).

To make things look the way I wanted them to, I had to use two of my colored threads and one thinner white thread. If I were a spinner, I’d have spun those two or maybe even three purple threads together to make one fatter thread, but alas, I don’t spin. S I had to be satisfied with two threads and use my double shuttle for the purple, sending both through simultaneously.

I’m pleased with the way they’re weaving up. The warp is presenting some problems, however. The right side is substantially looser than the left. I’ve hung weights on it to even out the tension, but I doubt that this will be enough for the entire length of the warp. Time will tell.

March 16th, 2011

When the student is ready...

...the teacher will appear.”

It’s a pretty famous Buddhist saying. And it just became real for me.

When I posted my 2010 wannas, one of the things I mentioned was that I wanted to learn new weaving techniques. And that I’d joined a Su Butler’s napkin exchange as one concrete strategy to help me do so. I’d already told Su that block weaves was one of the options for things that I’d like to try.

I hadn’t done any block weaving before. The last few times I’d looked at that chapter in Deborah Chandler’s Learning To Weave book, she may as well have been speaking Zubulian — I didn’t understand anything she was trying to tell me.

At the February Southern Tier Fiber Arts Guild meeting, I asked a woman if she had a good handle on block theory, figuring I could get the concept if someone was telling me vs. reading a book. Unfortunately, she didn’t.

A few days later I got the new issue of Handwoven, and there were designs in there that were similar to what I had in mind for the napkins. So I got out my graph paper and started drawing, thinking that was the place to start.

Hah! I couldn’t even replicate the design in the magazine, much less create one of my own! And I sure wasn’t any closer to understanding what the heck I was doing.

So I pulled out Chandler’s book again. I started reading. Still looked like Zubulian to me.

Then all of a sudden something clicked and those foreign characters start to turn into English! I went back to the graph paper again, and could actually draw something that made sense! And I understood that each of those graph paper squares represent 4 threaded heddles and 4 throws of the shuttle, and how to plan all that detail.

Amazingly, within about 24 hours, I got an email hawking a new book – delivered electronically in PDF format – all about weavin block theory.

I haven’t yet figured out how many threads I’ll need in the napkins, so haven’t begun to do the final planning yet, but I KNOW I can design what I want. Even more surprising to me, I know that there’s at least an 85% chance that the design in my head can be woven on my beloved four-harness counterbalance loom.

Sometimes life is sweet. I try to really appreciate it when it is.

February 12th, 2011 

Handwoven Swedish Lace Scarves

 I’ve been a very bad blogger, but at least I’ve been a good weaver. I have good excuses. In the space of 21 days between May 22 and June 8 I have two shows — Routes to Art and Kenan Center’s 100 American Craftsmen — a major fundraiser for Pfeiffer Nature Center where I work, and, most importantly, MY DAUGHTER’S wedding!

I won’t bore you with a post on every scarf I’ve made; instead I’ll show you the recent scarves by grouping.

Although when I’m showing new handwoven scarves to Margaret to gather local critique I always show her my favorites last, I’m going to reverse that here, and show you my favorites first.

And what are those favorites, you might ask? It’s the new Swedish lace scarves. I wove them in alternating blocks. I was initially afraid it’d look a bit like a checkerboard, detracting from the classy look I was going for.

First I did them in a fine gauge Mora wool, approximately 4,700 yards per pound (ypp).

Yippee – I liked the way they looked! Although that wool is pretty fine, they look clunky compared to the next batch...

Now it was time to move to the fiber I really wanted to do them with, a VERY fine cashmere-silk blend in a lovely orange color. Â This yarn is about 6,000 ypp

I’m not usually an orange person, but I really love these scarves. Obviously, the scarf on the left is the Swedish lace blocks, and the one on the right is a simple tabby weave. In both cases, the finished product is light as air, soft as silk, and drapes like a dream.

Like my other handwoven lace scarves, I wove these on my little counterbalance loom. I do love this vintage, handmade beauty, and use it whenever possible, and it never complains, even when I ask it to go outside its comfort zone and weave 1 harness against 3, such as when I’m making woven lace.

I took them to Routes to Art this weekend, my first show of the season, and got lots of great feedback. I will DEFINITELY be making more cashmere silk scarves! In fact, I think I’d better go order more of that yarn right now!

May 22nd, 2010