Harder than I expected

Back when I lived in the sticks I didn’t need or have any curtains on my windows, a feature that disconcerted some visitors but that I really liked. All the light that was outside came right in.

My little house in the city came with blinds on all the windows. Based on what I see in my walks around the neighborhood and the stains on my window frames, I’m guessing that the prior owner had the blinds down most of the time. Not me. My blinds go up to their full heights every morning and go down in the evening when I have to turn the lights on. While the blinds work, the look is harsh for me. So I’ve been planning on weaving curtains.

I thought I’d start in with the bay window in the kitchen, but for a variety of reasons changed my plans and decided to start with the bedroom. And I’m very glad I did.

I love weaving lace. I’ve woven lots of it. I’m usually good at having my beat be consistent. But this time? After I’d woven the firs few lace blocks I was struck by how critical it is for the beat to be absolutely consistent this time. If the size of a lace block is a tiny bit different at one end of a scarf than at the other, it wouldn’t be noticed. But in curtains? When two panels will hang next to each other on the window? Especially when an accent color outlines each block? Any differences in the beat of those two panel would be immediately obvious, and would draw my eye, certainly not in a good way.

First I thought I’d simply pay more attention and get my beat consistent. But that wasn’t working well. Then I figured I’d measure a few squares and build up muscle memory for the beat. Even that wasn’t getting me the results that I wanted. I had to walk away from the loom and do something else for a while to figure out this puzzle, so I did the necessary planning to order the yarn for my next 2 warps of baby wraps.

That’s when I got the idea to build myself a little jig. Cut out of cardstock, I used the widths to make the outside of the square fit perfectly into the plain weave section and the inside square outline the lace section.

Then when I turn the jig sideways, and match up the lines, the motif will be perfectly square.

I wove that square for several motifs, and then a little light went off in my head. Uh oh. They’re square under the tension of the loom. But when I release that tension the length will ‘shrink’ and they won’t be square anymore. I need to weave just a tad bigge than the jig. That’s where I am now.

So what does all this mean? Since I’m already working on my 2nd panel, it means that the best I can hope for at this point is to have 2 panels on one window that match. The 2 panels on the other window won’t match, since that first panel has rectangles o different sizes as well as squares. The total length will be right, but the periwinkle lines won’t match up right.

Depending on how bad they look, I may end up having to buy some more yarn and weave another panel or two. But I won’t kno until I weave these off, wet finish, pin their hems, and see how they look in real life.

In case you’re wondering, this is a modification of the ‘mosquito net’ curtains in Laila Lundell’s Big Book of Swedish Weaving. I’m using 16/2 baby blue with periwinkle 8/2 doubled for the accents. I modified the draft for my 8-shaft Macomber, evening out the number of heddles to the extent possible so I didn’t have move lots from one shaft to another. This pattern requires only 3 treadles, so that’s incredibly easy. It’s all about the beat. If I could do all the weaving in one sitting it would be easier to be consistent, but of course I can’t do that. Not good for my body, plus my life has other obligations. I’ll do the best I can.

Note to self: when doing curtains for kitchen, use all 1 color yarn; then any inconsistencies will be much less obvious.

March 1st, 2016 | 

Huck patterned shawls

I know I’m really short on shawls for the coming show season. I also know that shawls take more than twice as long to wind the warp, twice as long to thread the heddles and reed, twice as long to do the hemming. Still, I felt like I needed to weave more shawls. So I went back to one of my standbys – 5/2 eggshell mercerized cotton and huck lace. As shawls go, they’re quick & easy.

Because I’ve made friends with my Macomber loom, I decided to do an 8 harness lace pattern instead of my usual 4 harness patterns. I spent a bit of time on the computer playing with different tie ups and came up with one that I really like.

Look how much texture this pattern has while it’s under tension on the loom.

And here’s how the finished cloth looks after wet finishing.

For 5/2 lace I sett the threads at 12 EPI – experience has shown me that’s what I like for the finished piece. The cotton drapes nicely, and although the floats are a bit long, I think it’s not too fussy to be fully functional.

I’d wound a warp for 3 shawls, knowing I have a lot of 5/2 eggshell cotton in my stash. As I was weaving the second shawl I was getting to the end of a cone of cotton so pulled out a new cone. Uh oh. Different manufacturer, very different look. Can’t mix

those yarns in one piece, at least not if I want to achieve the effect – classy – that I’m looking for. As it was, I ran out of yarn 7 rows before I wanted to – my second end has only 11 rows of plain weave, where the beginning has 18 rows. Due to the length of a pattern repeat, in order to unweave enough pattern to get me 18 rows of plain weave, the shawl would have been almost 6 inches shorter than I wanted. So one shawl has a shorter end. Probably very few people would ever notice, but I know.

For the third shawl, instead of using that different eggshell yarn, I opted for an 8/2 barber-pole yarn in eggshell & light tan. It’s fine, too. To my eye looks a bit less formal.

I decided to do some beading on that first shawl, the one with 18 rows of plain weave at both ends.

Instead of doing dangling beads all the way across – which struck me as a bit too much – I did little 3-bead groups near the hem across much of the shawl width. I think it gives a nicer overall look.

Now I really need to be done with shawls for a while and produce more scarves. I have a show next weekend. I didn’t even get t weaving more other things that I’d contemplated for this year – like pillows, or wall hangings, or.....

June 24th, 2013 |

Oops

 Weaving is all about threads. Which threads go through which heddles. Which harnesses are tied to which treadles. Which harnesses are up and which are down. Make one little change, purposely or not, and the differences can be dramatic.

That’s what happened when I was weaving some cotton shawls. The results are fine, but not what I’d intended. I’ll start with my finished products. First, a shawl of 10/2 unmercerized cotton in huck boxes.

The second shawl on the warp was woven with a half-lace treadling, what I called huckish for my sunset shawls, and a variegated thick-thin unmercerized cotton weft.

In the sunset shawl post I showed you the draft I used. Here it is again, since it’s the same draft I used for these brown shawls.

Looks fine. But that’s not what the first shawl turned out like, is it? I didn’t get that all over traditional huck pattern, but instead huck boxes. I’ve woven enough huck that I should have realized it immediately as I wove, but I wasn’t paying enough attention – at least not the right kind of attention. I was attending to having the same number of warp & weft threads per inch, not to what th pattern itself looked like.

After the shawl came off the loom and I wet finished & pressed it I set out to find out what I had done differently that gave me an entirely different effect than what I wanted. It took me far too long to figure it out. Why? Because it was so simple, so little.

Here’s the draft I actually used, instead of the one above I meant to use.

It’s easy enough to see how different the fabric will be, but where’s the difference that created it? Look at the red square in this draft.

I SHOULD have tied that fourth treadle to harnesses 2, 3, & 4, but I inadvertently tied it to only 2 & 4, leaving 3 out of the mix.

As I said, the end result is fine, just not what I had intended. Next time I might not be so lucky. Then again, sometimes ‘mistakes can produce wonderful new weavings.

June 21st, 2013 | 

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

Silk lace handwoven scarves

Back in May I wove some lace ‘checkerboard’ scarves in bamboo. Although I called it huck at the time, it’s not really. It’s a Swedish lace. I’m certain that’s neither important nor meaningful to anyone but a weaver.

Anyway, I liked the way the scarves looked even if the checkerboard pattern only showed up if you caught the light just right. I only had three handwoven silk scarves for my July show, and since I had some lovely 20/2 undyed spun silk I decided I’d repea that weaving pattern.

This time I remembered to snap a few pix while it was on the loom, since the checkerboard pattern shows up well while I’m weaving. Thank goodness, or I’m sure I’d make lots of treadling errors!

Even here, the design isn’t as pronounced as I might like. So I enhanced the next picture to show the lines clearly.

With the scarf wet finished & pressed, I think these silk scarves are elegant, even if the design is somewhat subtle.

Interestingly, although my July show was really wonderful, I didn’t sell any of these silk scarves. Nor did I sell my ice green silk lace. You just never know what people will buy. Or at least I don’t.

I’m sure not complaining — I sold 6 shawls and 47 scarves at that show!!!! So now I’m weaving like mad again. Fortunately, I lef myself almost seven weeks between the July & August shows, so I’m not making myself crazy.

For you weavers, here’s the draft of the checkerboard lace if you’re interested.

July 26th, 2012 | Tags: handwoven lace, handwoven scarves, silk | Category: Weaving | Edit this post 4 comments to 

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. 

Twofer

Since I haven’t posted in a week, today will be a twofer. And you may get more tomorrow, too.

When I received my latest batch of hand painted bamboo-cotton yarn, I got to see some of Tammy’s new colorways that I’d ordered. Some I thought were stunning, some verged on being too bright for my tastes.

I decided to start with one of the latter, a colorway Tammy calls Carnations. It’s the bright pink & orange in the center of this photo.

Because I was concerned about it being a bit too much color, I decided to tone it down some with a stripe of burgundy cotton along one edge.

I measured the warp for three scarves, beamed the loom, threaded the heddles and set to weaving.

The first scarf I wove was the one on the top in the photo. I used that same burgundy cotton for weft. I like the way it shows the stripes, but I knew even on the loom that it would be a bit stiffer than I prefer in my scarves.

So next I used a solid orange bamboo-cotton weft Tammy’d dyed up for me. I find it interesting that with that orange weft, the burgundy stripe appears to be brown, not burgundy at all. Interesting what colors do when they play together, isn’t it?

Anyway, I really like it the orange scarf; in fact, I’ve worn it a few times. (It’s not as vibrant, in a good way, as it appears in the photo.) However, although I love them, my orange scarves haven’t been big sellers, so I didn’t want to weave the third with that weft also.

Instead I chose a bright raspberry bamboo-cotton. I was hoping it would be bright without knocking your eyes out of their sockets. I think it is. I also like the way the many other colors in that variegated warp show up.

All three scarves were threaded in a simple point twill, and treadled simply, too. I’m trying to remember that “simple pictures ar best” saying, to make it my new motto.

After all that 1-2-3-4 threading & treadling, I wanted to weave something with more creativity in the weaving pattern, less in the color choices. You know I love to weave lace, so decided I’d try some larger blocks of huck, with alternating warp and weft floats I call it a huck checkerboard.

I picked a lovely off-white bamboo and threaded up the loom. I wish I’d taken pictures of this while it was on the loom — to my eye, the monochrome warp and weft floats showed up better then than they have since. C’est la vie.

Anyway, after I wove one in solid off-white, I thought it would be fun to try one with a contrasting weft, and picked a medium- bright red rayon. Although the floats do show up much better, I’ll stick with the solid color, myself.

Before I even began weaving the red scarf, I decided I’d give it an added feature of an off-white border with ladder hemstitching In the past when the weft color differed greatly from the warp color, I’ve found the fringe a bit unsettling – the color difference jarring to my eyes. So I thought the edging would not only make the scarf a little dressier, it would make a nice end transition from the off-white fringe to the red weaving.

Do you agree?

Your turn: Are you having any celebrations this Memorial Day weekend, or is it a somber time for you?

May 27th, 2012 | 

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 | 

On fun, and not fun

Fun: taking care of my adorable grandson for 2 days so his parents can have a night away just for themselves. It’s even fun, of different sort, I admit, when I have to learn how to use their baby carrier so I can carry him around the house all day on Monday because that’s all he wants in his “I don’t feel good” mode. Well or sick, he’s a gem, and it’s only the tiniest part of my brain that’ worried about the fact that I’m not weaving for these 2 days.

Not Fun: getting the virus he had. I’ve been down for 4 days now, spending most of my time in bed or on the couch, and a little bit of time working on my rigid heddle loom. I do need to weave off the warp I have on there, which I put on in December for a specific purpose, because I have a woman waiting for a sample that I need to do on that loom. Plus, before I know it, it’ll be time to do weaving demos.

Fortunately, February had been a great month for me, productivity wise, until the Fun/Not Fun.
So here’s the next installment of weaving I did before hitting the couch. It’s Tammy’s beautiful colorway, Blue Violets.

I wove these scarves in a pattern I’ve used many times – Swedish lace blocks running along both edges, with plain weave in between. This simple look is always well received, probably because it’s light and airy and looks great with everything.

As always, these scarves wove up quickly on my counterbalance loom. Time for another nap now.

February 26th, 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 |

Loom issues #1

When I was weaving those eggshell cashmere silk lace scarves, I noted a problem that I thought might have been caused by an old reed, and decided to order a new stainless steel reed. That reed still hasn’t arrived, but I haven’t stopped weaving to wait for it.

After the eggshell scarf problems I decided to use my (rather disliked) 6 dent reed while I awaited the new 12 dent SS reed (like a few weeks). A customer had ordered a black lace cashmere & silk, and I didn’t want to make her wait that long.

So I put in the 6 dent, warped and threaded my wonderful, little counterbalance loom, and set off.

It all went great. I had a total of 3 broken warp threads for the entire 9 yard warp – not uncommon with fibers this fine. This confirmed for me that my old reed really was a problem.

After the black, I wove three 100% silk scarves in a lovely pale mint green. This was an 8/60 silk — I sure do wish I had a MUCH better handle on what these numbers mean. What I THOUGHT, incorrectly, was that I’d multiply the 60 x 1000 and divide that by 8 to get the yards per pound (ypp). Hah! That math would give me 7,500 ypp; in fact, it’s about 2,400 ypp. As is some 12/60 silk & linen blend I bought. WHAT??!! How can this be? Maybe I should just give up trying to understand that and be sure I get the ypp from the yarn seller.

Anyway, the mint silk has a beautiful sheen to it. It’s thicker than the cashmere silk, and way more expensive. So I didn’t want to screw it up. I set it at 16.5 ends per inch (epi), (2-3-3 on my 6 dent reed) as opposed to the 18 epi I normally use for the cashmere silk. It’s nice, but a bit stiffer than I’d like. Next time I’m going to try it looser – maybe 14 epi.

On a completely different note, here’s an odd tidbit. Flies that die upside down on your stove retain their iridescent blue color for days. This one died right by my burner a few days ago.

I didn’t see it at first, and then when I did, I was amazed that the color was still there. He’s been there long enough now that I don’t need to wait any longer to clean him up. Goodbye, fly.

Your turn: do you understand yarn counts and yardage?

January 30th, 2012 

Quite the wait

 This is not the way I wanted to start a new year – by having 10 days between blog posts. Writing a blog post has been on my lis of things to do for over a week, and somehow, other things kept taking precedence. There’s nothing I can do about that now; I can only try to do better as we move forward.

In my last post I showed you some cashmere silk eggshell lace scarves on my counterbalance loom, and promised more info about them. Here it is, finally.

At one of my December shows a customer ordered two custom cashmere silk lace scarves. I’m always happy to comply with these requests, although I had to tell this woman that she couldn’t have exactly what she wanted. She wanted a scarf just like th one I was wearing. Should have been simple, shouldn’t it? But it wasn’t.

I was wearing one of the eggshell lace scarves I’d made on my Macomber when I was trying a new pattern. Those scarves were not stable enough, and can’t be sold. I often wear one at a show because they go with everything, and when I’m wearing the scarf the problems are not obvious. So I explained why I would have to modify the pattern in her scarf. She understood, but was clear that she wanted me to get as close as possible. I assured her I’d try.

I knew that I couldn’t really know what would work by using another fiber; I had to do my testing with cashmere silk yarn. I also knew I had a limited quantity of the eggshell, a popular color, and I didn’t really want to use any of it up in samples/tests that ma or may not be successful. So I decided to use my least-requested color, a bright Christmas red.

I also decided that I would only use a lace pattern I could weave on my counterbalance loom. The cashmere silk scarves I’ve woven on the counterbalance loom have been almost completely successful; the ones I’ve woven on my Mac not so much. I think it’s a combination of the loom and the weave structures I’ve chosen, but I almost always make the tension too tight and distort the scarves.

So I spent some time with my Fiberworks software, and using block design strategies, created a Swedish lace draft. I measured out enough warp for two red scarves, and threaded up the loom. I set off weaving, and was pleased with the results. Although it clear that while a piece is still on the loom you can’t tell for certain what it will look like after wet finishing, with practice you can get a good idea.

As I was weaving the first scarf, I decided that I could get even closer to my customer’s wishes. So I cut off that scarf, wet finished it to be sure I was right, and re-threaded the loom. I was also happy with the second scarf. Here are both of them.

After wet finishing the second scarf, I decided I could make even more changes to get even closer to my customer’s wishes. I also figured that I ought to warp for four scarves instead of my usual three, since I have had lots of customer interest in eggshel scarves. So I was off and running.

Unfortunately, things didn’t go quite as smoothly with the eggshell scarves. It had nothing to do with the modifications to the draf For reasons that I never could quite identify, I had all sorts of problems with the threads near the selvedges. They broke often, they fuzzed up, the refused to produce straight selvedges. I tried all the tricks I knew — weighting the selvedge threads, doublin those threads, using a temple — nothing made any difference. Ultimately, I did get four saleable scarves woven, but I’m embarrassed by the selvedges on all of them to one degree or another. I’m not showing you a closeup of them with good reason But here are two of the scarves. (You can tell at a glance I haven’t pressed them yet.)

Actually, I did have one idea about the selvedge problem with the eggshell scarves. The reed I use on my counterbalance loom is the one that came with it when I bought the loom, after it had sat in a damp garage for more than a year. The reed was very

rusty, and I was poor, so I cleaned it with naval jelly, a stiff brush, and lots of elbow grease. Although it didn’t hassle the red yarn I guessed that the eggshell yarn was just a bit more delicate, and that there were possibly tiny burs on the red that frayed the yarn. So I bit the bullet and ordered a brand new stainless steel reed. I figured that my little loom got enough use that it (and I) deserved a new tool. The reed was out of stock, so I’ll have to wait a few weeks for it to arrive.

Of course, I’m weaving in the interim (tempus fugit, ya know), but I had to work on another order before I went back to the cashmere & silk. The eggshell was pretty frustrating, and the other special order is for black. The only other black cashmere silk scarves I made had a similar selvedge problem, and I didn’t think my brain could handle it. I’m hoping (probably without much chance of success) that the reed will come in quickly and I can use it for the black scarves.

I promise, I’ll try to post more frequently. I want to show you what I have on that little rigid heddle loom (and I want to get back to that!), the order that’s on my counterbalance now, and my plans for the towel exchange I joined this year.

January 11th, 2012 

Weaving for the Holidays

While certainly not exclusively for the holidays by any means, these handwoven cashmere & silk scarves are such a lovely, rich color, they make me think of the mid-winter holiday season. Hopefully people who come to either the Roycroft Winter Festival and my local Holiday Show think so, too.

I again tried a new huck lace pattern – the one at the bottom of the picture. And again, I much prefer the old standby of Swedish Lace, at the top. The lace diamonds don’t show up in the bottom until you view it at just the right angle, and it doesn’t do the lacy thing anywhere near as well as the Swedish Lace blocks. But I’d never have known that without trying it.

So I wound a warp for three scarves, threaded up for the new huck lace diamonds, and wove the first scarf. Even while I was weaving I knew it wouldn’t be one of my favorites, so I cut it off and totally re-threaded heddles and reed, and wove the last two in the Swedish Lace blocks.

November 22nd, 2011