Go around again!

When my kids were little we read a lot of picture story books. One of their favorite books (but not mine) was Go, Dog, Go. Like a easy readers, there are several recurring sentences. One I liked was, “Do you like my hat?” A favorite of my son was, “Go aroun again!” (I’m not going to try to explain the plot.) That latter sentiment has been the focus of many hours of my life in the last two days.

On Friday I’m registered for a 6-hour dyeing workshop. Led by Joyce Robards, one of two “Teacher’s of the Year” chosen by Handwoven Magazine and a long-time member of the Rochester Weaver’s Guild, this Dyer’s Choice workshop at the Weaving and Fiber Arts Center allows each of the 6 registrants to dye what we wish, as we wish. I’ve spoken with Joyce about what I want to do, and she assured me it was well within the realm of the day.

I’ve worked with lots of both machine variegated and hand painted yarns over the years, and I’m sure I’ll work with them again. As I’ve used these yarns I’ve tried various methods to get the colors to “pool” in the warp – that is to arrange the yarns so that I get whole sections of a single color in the yarn instead of the more common stripey effect. Planning, preparation, and then hand painting are required to achieve my desired result. Here’s an absolutely stunning handpainted shawl woven by artist Freya Willemoese-Wissing. I’m sure I can’t achieve anything like this without lots of attempts and lots more planning than I’m doing now!

So anyway I planned for a scarf made from 30/2 silk with more than 7,400 yards per pound of yarn. That means something on the order of 36 threads per inch in the warp and a similar number in weft. To prepare the yarn for dyeing I had to first ‘scour’ the skeins – wash it in the hottest water possible with a little bit of Dawn dish detergent. Then I had to let those skeins dry so I could measure & wind the warp. That meant 360 threads on the warping mill, with each thread requiring 3.5 complete rotations of my warping mill.

Then I wanted a shawl made from 8/2 rayon, with a mere 3,360 yards per pound. Because the rayon was on cones, not in skeins, I had to wind the warps first and scour second. There’s another 696 threads, again with 3.5 rotations of the mill for each length. Fortunately I could cut this number in half by winding 2 threads at once. That meant hours of standing, spinning, countin and tying, all in preparation for dyeing. I didn’t even think to take pictures of the activity, but they wouldn’t have been exciting anyway — all solid natural (undyed) yarn. Hopefully I’ll remember to take pictures on Friday, as well as whenever I’m able to get the warps on my looms.

When I wasn’t spinning the warping mill I was working on one of the warps I wound last weekend. (Yes, you read that right...I’d already wound two more warps over the weekend to weave a total of 6 scarves.) Since I’m between baby wraps at the moment, I’m able to do some weaving (and dyeing) that I’ve been wanting to get to. This is a pattern from Deb Strickland’s Book of 8 Sha Weaving Patterns. It reminds me of Morse Code. Or maybe Braille. But a language, for sure.

I’m using a dark green rayon warp and a light green rayon weft. It’s a two-shuttle weave, so it’s slow going. Here you can see both sides of it on the loom.

I’m working on the second scarf now, and thought I’d do a solid dusty rose, but then I got an idea...maybe I’d use sections of different colors.

To be honest, I’m not sure if I’ll like it when it’s all done. I’m definitely going to weave the third scarf in this warp using one color. At least I’ll know which color(s) I like best after this multi-colored scarf.

January 20th, 2016 | 

Fool the eye

I’ve always been a fan of trompe l’oeil — art that fools the eye into seeing things that aren’t there. Or not seeing things that are. Shadow weave can do some of that.

I’ve had this weaving draft on the Weaving Inspiration board of my Pinterest page for some months, and now I had time to do i Initially a potential for chair cushions, I’m weaving it out of rayon for scarves. I warped for three, and like all two-shuttle weaves, it’s slow going, but I’m really liking the outcome. A more distance view can give you an appreciation for the way threads seem to rise up or sink down in this flat piece of fabric.

Although you haven’t asked, I’ll give you a mini Jack update. I learned today that the poor fellow has hookworm. This has probably been a historical problem for the little guy based on his history, and the Heartgard was successfully dealing with it. I stopped giving Heartgard at the end of November, carrying its benefits till the end of December. Given that Jack is a poop eater, with bunny poop being a particular delicacy but other poop not out of the question (YUCK! but I’m guessing it was a common behavior in his hoarding home and it will be a lifelong thing with Jack), he will get treated for the hookworm now and will need to get the Heartgard year-round. Probably for life. Not a big deal for either of us. I’ve put it into my smartphone calendar as a recurring event to remind me.

January 6th, 2016 | 

Not a break

It may seem like I took a break. But no, not really. I had a show this past weekend. So travel & set up on Friday, show on Saturday & Sunday, then pack up and travel back home. I like getting feedback from both buyers and lookers. I really like spending time with my sister, which I get to do for many of the shows I do. I don’t like the set up or tear down, but it goes with th territory.

Jack spent the weekend with my daughter and her family. They all did fine.

That took up all of Friday and, along with things like getting groceries, much of Monday. On Tuesday I spent a few hours taking care of my grandson during the day and took Jack to his 3rd puppy class in the evening. I did manage to finish weaving KG’s short wrap with the charcoal weft in the middle.

Today I got the first section of my warp woven. I settled on black rayon chenille. I thought I’d do plain weave, but hated the way looked...you can see a few rows in the picture above. So I went to my computer’s weaving software and played around with various options. I changed the tie up and much prefer the weave pattern, although I had to do a double beat to get that rayon chenille weft packed in enough.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that I didn’t have as much black rayon chenille as I wanted. I ran out after 54′′. I’d wanted to weave another 10-12′′. I’ll make it work. I’m just not sure exactly what or how right now.

Then I switched to navy tencel. I thought I’d continue with the same weave pattern, but I didn’t like it in the tencel. So I went bac to my weaving software, played around some more, and decided on a simple zigzag pattern. I got almost 60′′ of that woven today, too.

My plan is that tomorrow I’ll finish (I hope) my Christmas shopping and get most of the rest of the way through the warp. I need get this warp off the loom, wet finished, and out to KG. Then I need to get a warp on the counterbalance loom for more Christmas presents.

December 9th, 2015 | 

Two terrific days

I have had 2 really terrific days in a row. Life is so good, it’s incredible. Let’s go chronologically.

Yesterday morning I managed to get about half of ZN’s second wrap — a short one for a ring sling — woven. Here’s where I went from a black Egyptian cotton weft in my common hearts weave to a navy tencel weft in what I call my flowers weave.

The tencel is a much lighter ‘hand’ – finer, softer, more drape – but the majority of the difference in look is the weave pattern itself. The structures are much different.

Although changing the tie up for this weave pattern was no fun at all, the weaving went smoothly and proceeded well.

Shortly before noon I left for Rochester and the engineer’s inspection on my new home. Both my son and my daughter joined us providing more eyes, more helpful hands, more listening ears, and more support. I really do have wonderful kids!

Son & I had taken some rough measurements, and while the inspector was doing his thing and we were following him around, my daughter was carefully drawing the layout, including placement of doors & windows. She obviously couldn’t do it to scale, bu it was really helpful. This morning I spent time with graph paper and did my best to translate the combination of her drawing and my rough measurements into a scale drawing. We didn’t measure windows & doors, just room sizes, so some things are approximations, but here’s the layout of my sweet, new house.

I know some bloggers have figured out how to post a relatively small image so that when you click on the picture it gets bigger. One of these days I’ll have to figure that out; you can’t get great info with it at its current size. But you’ve probably guessed that the 2 room I didn’t label are the kitchen & living room. Didn’t notice that till just now.

The inspector was quite happy with what he saw. (And with my kids.) The house has been well taken care of since its 1948 creation. It will need some attention, as does every house, but it’s solid and sound, and he didn’t find anything that I didn’t already know about.

Just one more little house detail. Most of the interior doors, including closet doors — I think 9 all told — have those great old glass door knobs. I think they’re beautiful, and have loved them since I was a kid. My sweet hubby made me a hall tree many years ago with these door knobs as the ‘holders’ for your jackets.

Back to yesterday...I had only been in the house for about 20 minutes the day I saw it and made my offer. I had some real stomach butterflies, I can assure you! Did I make the right decision? Was this the right house for me? Did I act too quickly? Would I really like it?

With the inspector I got to spend about an hour and a half in the house, and the answer to all of those questions is a resounding YES! I am SOOOOO happy with my decision! It’s definitely downsizing from my current space, but that was what I had in mind. And it’s so bright, and cute, and has the best weaving studio ever!

Needless to say, after the 2 hour drive home, I had a hard time sleeping last night. Too much happy excitement!

This morning the inspector from the County Health Department came to inspect my septic system – a requirement when selling house. Remember I told you what a bear the digging was? Here’s a view of the yard so you can get some concept of what it too to get the tank ready for the inspector.

For the past 18 months I knew this inspection was coming. We installed our system in 1978, so I was prepared having some problems arise and having to spend some real money. Like potentially several thousand dollars if it was real bad news.

But it wasn’t! I have to do a few small things, and I have someone coming tomorrow morning to look at the situation and give me pricing, but I’m sure it will be more like several hundred than several thousand. And part of what I’ll pay him to do is to re-cover that tank so I won’t have to do any more digging! YAY!!

Then I had to take my car to my mechanic this afternoon so he could replace a gasket on the exhaust system of my 2007 Yaris. He got it up on the lift and said, “It won’t take long...if these old bolts don’t break.” With complete confidence I replied, “They won’t.” And they didn’t. I was done in about 1/2 hour with a total bill of $47.

Does a day get any better than these two? I don’t think so!

It did end well. I got several boxes packed, which means more bags of garbage created as I continue to weed out. I also finishe weaving the flower wrap for Z. Here’s a shot of the ‘other side’ as it passes over the cloth beam — navy tencel weft.

Just for kicks, here’s the hearts weave with black cotton weft.

Tomorrow I’ll change the tie up back to hearts and start on NZ’s black tencel wrap.

July 7th, 2015 |

Remembering Mondrian

Sometimes when much of life is completely beyond my control I tend to obsess. One way to combat obsessive thoughts is to occupy my brain with complex tasks that don’t allow much room for other activity. That’s what I did for the past several days.

I’ve long wanted to do a different kind of doubleweave. My first doubleweave, accomplished back in 2009, just 2 years after I ha my first weaving lesson ever, was a double width baby blanket. I did a few more double width things, then got away from doubleweave for a bit. Recently I used doubleweave to weave the tubes that ended up being those little treasure pouches.

Although as a concept doubleweave takes a while to wrap your head around, for me, neither weaving double wide nor tubes is particularly difficult or time consuming. This project was different. I wanted to weave what’s typically called color windows. I can show you much better than I can explain what this means.

So the photo up top is an example of color windows. Each of the colored squares is surrounded by black, on the order of a bloc y stained glass. This is cool enough, but it’s double cool when you look at the other side. The design flips to black windows with colored borders!

I enjoyed watching the patterns build as I wove. What I didn’t enjoy was all of the bobbin-changing required in this piece. It’s a two-shuttle weave — one for the black thread & one for the colored thread — so it’s automatically slower, more than twice as slow for me, than using a single shuttle. But with these ‘perfect’ little squares, every time I got to the next square, approximately every inch, I had to change the thread in my colored bobbin to the next color. This dramatically slowed the process down even more. I used the warp color order forward & reverse for my weft colors. That is, I wove the colors as follows: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, F, E, D, C, B, A.

Then, I’m weaving along, and realize that I have miscalculated. When considering how much yarn I needed for the weft for each scarf, I did the calculations as if I was weaving a single layer. With doubleweave, the scarf is 2 layers thick, so you need twice a much yarn. For the colors, no problem. For the black, though....I ran out after about 66′′. I had more black rayon, but I’ve ‘been there done that’ enough to know that all blacks are not created equal. The other rayon was not just a different dye lot, it was a different manufacturer. Although they looked to same to my eyes on the cone, I wasn’t going to take a chance that the last 10′′ would look different and would therefore ruin the looks of the entire piece I’d already spent so much time on. So I decided that a well-done shorter scarf was better than a longer one that caught your eye with an error.

Ok, on to scarf #2. I didn’t want to change my bobbin every inch or so, so decided to alter the pattern slightly. I’d alternate the lengths of my windows and only change bobbins every 3′′ or so. I was surprised at how much quicker this was! I stuck with my color order though, with the weft colors following the same order as the warp colors, without reversing. I decided I didn’t want th much of the light colors grouped together, so wove with colors A-G, then started again at A.

I enjoyed weaving this scarf so much more that I figured I’d get a bit looser still for scarf #3, and change the size of the windows and the colors as my weaving muse saw fit at the moment. Sometimes there’s only 3′′ of color, sometimes more than 5′′. As I wa weaving this scarf it reminded me of Mondrian, a painter many of us became familiar with in the 60s. Although Mondrian had already been dead for 80 years, that was when Yves St. Laurent used his color block style in dresses. I couldn’t change the wid of my blocks, only their lengths.

I’ve now fringed and washed these 3 scarves. I’ve put them outside to dry, but may end up having to toss them in the dryer if the sun and/or breeze doesn’t appear. I’ve hung them on this rack so you can see part of both front and back of each.

I wove these scarves in 8/2 rayon, sett at 18 ends per inch per layer, so 36 ends per inch total. We’ll see how they feel and drap when they’re dry and pressed. I may need to use finer yarn next time. The woman who now, after seeing the time commitment, blows my mind even more with her work uses 60/2 silk – almost 15,000 yards of silk in one pound, compared to about 3,300 yards per pound in my 8/2 rayon. I think I showed an image of one of her shawls before, but here’s a treat for your eyes again.

Some day, when I’m not weaving baby wraps..........

June 25th, 2015 |

Silk waves

I used a nice, soft celery color for the first of those waves & corkscrews scarves I wove. Although I didn’t start it with the treadlin pattern I’d intended, I just LOVE the color. And the sheen of the silk. Even though green is not my color, this scarf knocks my socks off.

Next up I wove with a dark berry wine color. Thought I’d love it, but not so much. Ditto with the intended treadling pattern at both ends of the scarf. Huh. Once again, what I think I’ll like and what I do like aren’t always the same.

So for the third scarf I wanted another soft color, and chose a slate blue. This yarn is a 70/30 silk/linen blend, so it’s a bit stiffer than the 100% silk and doesn’t have the same sheen as 100% silk. I opted no alternate treadling at the ends, instead treadling for the waves throughout the length.

I’ll be amazed if I don’t sell the green and blue scarves at my first show, just about 10 days away. Then again, I almost never accurately predict with will sell.

June 17th, 2015 | 

Zing Bling

 

Some months ago I bought some ‘zing string’ — cotton thread with hand-tied beads strung along it. I haven’t had time to use it t now. This is a plain weave scarf, cotton warp, rayon weft, with the zing string adding some bling at random intervals. I wove two scarves with the silver rayon weft & plain weave.

Actually, the first one on the warp had a black cotton weft and I wove in lace blocks with the bling randomly placed. It was fine, but when I tried the tabby with the silver rayon, I knew I’d do the other 2 scarves in that.

Off the loom, I like them both. I like the black better than I thought I would, actually. But I showed you the tabby first because the bling shows up better. I sewed all 3 into infinity scarves.

I did a bunch of ‘not-weaving’ today. Although I wasn’t wasting time, I’ll be darned if I can tell you exactly how the day went – beyond seeing a black bear cross the road 63 steps in front of me on my morning walk!

I’m calling this weaving draft I came up with for my next warp of 3 scarves corkscrews & waves.

I got 262 ends of 20/2 natural silk measured, beamed, and threaded on the Macomber. I have all of about 6′′ woven...enough to know I don’t have any threading errors. I hope I can get all 3 scarves woven tomorrow.

Here’s a funny thing....I intended to start & end the scarves with the ‘corkscrews’ at the top of the draft because I like them bette than the ones on the bottom; I think they have more movement. But is that how I treadled the beginning of the first scarf? Noooo I’ll end it the same way I started, and do the 2nd scarf in the way I intended. I hope.

June 10th, 2015 |