Moving forward

If you’re visiting hoping to see photos of the gifts I made for Christmas, you’ll have to wait and come back. My visit with my frien got postponed so I’m still not sharing those and spoiling her surprise. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have anything to show you!

I’ve continued to knit for donating to people who need things. Just one hat-and I probably won’t knit more unless they are requested-and 3 pairs of mittens. Two are for primary-aged kids, one for toddlers. More mittens on my needles, this time for elementary-aged kids or adults with small hands. I’ll keep knitting mittens until the weather warms up dramatically.

I’ve also done a fair bit of work preparing for my 2022 Christmas cards. I spent a bunch of time deciding on a weave structure, planning it out for the number of ends I need and centering the design. Just 185 ends. Wanting to stick to my stash yarns, I decided on 20/2 mercerized cotton, sett at 36 ends per inch. Doesn’t take long to measure out the warp or get it on the loom.

I downloaded an audiobook, planning to listen while I wove. Well. Since this design is weave-as-drawn-in, that also means 185 picks. It therefore requires far more concentration than I can achieve while listening to a book, or even listening to music that wi

tempt me to sing along. So I stick with NPR. Still, I learn that I can’t weave more than 3 cards at one sitting or I lose my focus. N biggie; I don’t need these for 10 months. Although of course they can’t tie up my loom that long.

Now it’s time to start auditioning wefts, again sticking with the colors of 20/2 cotton in my stash. I started with a light-ish blue. No enough contrast. Plus I wasn’t beating hard enough so the design was elongated and unclear for that reason as well. Next I wen to a very dark purple. Both too dark and beat too firmly.

Moving on. Here’s a nice Christmas red, beat to just about square. Yep, this’ll work. I wove 5 of these.

I didn’t want to weave 30+ cards exactly the same, as it would be even more challenging for me to maintain sufficient focus. So dug out a Christmas green. That worked, too, so I wove 5 green.

Then I found a slightly darker blue, although it’s slightly thicker at roughly 6,000 yards per pound compared to the 7,200 yards per pound of the 20/2. So I couldn’t get this color quite square, but I was okay with that. And although it’s not my favorite color combo, I wove 5 blue.

Woah! I found a small spool of gold metallic, so wound a bobbin with that and the gold 20/2 and checked it out. I liked it so wove 5 of these, as well. You can’t really see the metallic in the straight-on photo, so I took one at an angle, too. I also couldn’t get thi design square as the gold & metal together are thicker than 20/2, but again was okay with that.

Because I liked that, I tried using that metallic thread with the red yarn. I definitely preferred the red on its own, but wove 2 cards with the red & gold because I’d wound a bobbin with that much thread.

Then, since I like the gold with the metallic, I figured I should try the gold on its own. Meh.

So I wove an additional 4 (so far) cards in just red.

If you’re counting, that’s up to 27 cards. I don’t need many more. But it’s clear that I have A LOT of warp left. I haven’t yet decided if I’ll keep weaving this design or just cut it off and toss the remaining warp. It’ll depend on where I am mood-wise when get to that point. I’ll weave one more red, then I want to try one with just metallic, then...we’ll see.

It’s a real change for me not to worry at all about the fact that my selvedges are sort of ugly. They won’t be seen.

January 16th, 2022 | 

Surprising myself

You know, I tell myself – and sometimes you – what I like and what I don’t. What turns me on and what leaves me cold. And the something happens and I change my mind.

Funny how that works, isn’t it? This latest work is an example of that.

Following my experience with that Fires Everywhere scarf, I wanted to do something similar but different for a shawl-width piece. After a bunch of playing around with various ideas, I decided on a black to white warp in solid colors, not gradients.

I also decided I was going to wind the warp out of 100% tencel, 8/2 sett at 24EPI, and even though 2 shuttle weaves are not my favorite, I would try out an alternating weft with tencel and rayon chenille. So I got busy winding. Here’s half of the width wound on my warping mill.

As always with tencel, the winding, beaming, and threading went smoothly. No hitches. So it was time to try the weaving. Again, everything was working well. Here’s the simple twill threading and treadling, as seen from the top while I was weaving. The warp alternates that 8/2 tencel in tabby with a fairly thick white rayon chenille, only about 800 yards per pound.

It is often the case that I like the ‘back’ side better than the ‘front’, and this was no exception. You can’t see much of it here, but think you get the idea. Little crosses inside the diamonds.

I had some company for a few days, and fringe twisting just takes time, so the pieces sat for about a week after they were cut of the loom. I finally got that all done and wet finished. This is where the surprise came in.

I had differential shrinkage. Or something similar that created strong vertical crinkles in the cloth. Which I surely didn’t expect. Here you can see the crinkly piece on the left and its fraternal twin that I’ve given a press to (needs more) on the right. Look at the width difference between these two pieces!

I honestly liked that crinkly piece, which surprised me. I sent photos of both pieces to my daughter and a friend to get their input Of course, I got two different opinions. And now that everything is totally fully dry I’m again second guessing. One piece will get mailed to The Copper Shop on the Roycroft Campus for sale, the other will go to the Weavers’ Guild Holiday Sale. I keep changing my mind and my opinion. Do I really like that crinkly piece, which is now a scarf and not a shawl? It feels so much different than the flatter, wider piece; harder/stiffer, of course, since it’s so much thicker. On the other hand, there are still so many wrinkles in the wider piece – will I be able to get them out if I use my steam press?

I need to move forward. I have one day to make a decision. Your input, dear readers?

September 8th, 2021 | 

More creating

I have no idea how a whole month has gone by without me posting. It’s not been for lack of doing things, some with photograph some not.

Let’s start with the not. I’ve used my Macomber pretty exclusively for a long time. Knowing that for the past (?)three(?) years the only thing I’d used my counterbalance loom for was holding fabric, I decided it was time to move it on. I thought about the best way to do that, and decided that I was going to gift it to a new weaver. I worked with one of the instructors from our Weaving & Fiber Arts Center and quickly had a taker. She and her husband picked it up a few weeks ago, and it happily fit in their van. I a thrilled with all the space created in my studio, and have used it for sewing, weaving, exercising, and card playing so far. It’s suc a pleasant space, I’m sure I’ll continue to enjoy it. And the new owner will hopefully enjoy the loom. She lives nearby, and I’ve encouraged her to call me if she needs help with it, so I’m betting I get to see it.

Next up, I did do a third round of geode dyeing, this time the final Tshirts for my grandson for his birthday. I used rubber bands fo some of the ties, till I ran out of rubber bands of an appropriate size, then re-using the artificial sinew with a slightly different strategy. I’m happy with them.

Still, when my daughter asked (jokingly, I’m sure) if I was willing to make them for all of my grandson’s friends who admired them, for a fee, of course, I immediately replied, “NO!” I learned a lot, but this was not worth my time and effort to make them to sell.

Sticking with my grands for a moment, we assume that they will both be wearing masks all day at school. So they picked out a bunch of fabrics, and today I cut out 3D masks, their favorite style. 14 for the 10-year old, 18 for the 5-year old.

I’m taking bets – which child will lose more masks more quickly, the 5th grader or the kindergartener?

Back to dyeing, Rebecca over at ChemKnits has LOTS of great YouTube tutorials about dyeing sock yarn and other wool-base yarns. She uses a WIDE variety of things to provide the color on her yarns: acid dyes, fiber reactive dyes, food dyes, Skittles, and many more unusual items. She makes everything accessible and fun. So I dyed another sock blank with my fiber reactive dyes, this time hand painting it.

Again, I learned things, this time mostly about how much dye I needed (way less than I mixed up) and the difference needed

between dark and light values of the same color (more than 50% difference). I’m really liking the chartreuse a lot, but wish there’d been more visual difference between the blue and the purple, and between the values, especially of those last 2 colors.

Still, I’m enjoying the process both of dyeing and of knitting with this yarn, and expect I’ll have to buy more sock blanks to dye.

On the weaving front, Elizabeth Tritthart did some amazingly beautiful pickup using vintage embroidery patterns. She inspired me. And since I’m not pressing to produce for selling, now is the time for me to try different things.

We are rapidly approaching the Weavers’ Guild’s 75th anniversary – the diamond anniversary. Some Guild members are planning for a great exhibition in honor of this event, one part of which will feature diamonds in weaving. So I decided to do som pickup. I threaded my rigid heddle, an appropriate and easily moveable loom for this. Then I did some sampling, trying various yarns, weights, and designs.

I decided I liked the relatively simple diamond-shaped designs, so did some really careful planning that had to include how my finished work would be displayed, since the back of these pieces have really long and ugly floats. I got my act together and slowly wove 4 sections and bought a frame to display them. I absolutely used the carpenter’s rule: measure twice and cut once. sewed a machine stitch, using both straight and zigzag stitches to secure the ends. Then cut the 4 pieces out. D*%#! I only measured the first piece, red to orange and counted the rows on that! Clearly my gauge isn’t identical on all 4 pieces. Only the first one is appropriately sized for the frame. The others are all too stitched and cut too small. They will have to be re-woven. Bu here you get the concept anyway.

And fortunately I have plenty of time to re-weave, as the exhibit isn’t until the spring of 2022. So first I will sew all those masks, then I have to get some rayon chenille woven for a gallery that sells a bit of my work. Maybe the rigid heddle will come back out after that; maybe I’ll need more time to get back to it. The good news is that I used readily available embroidery thread for the pickup, so at least that won’t be a problem.

August 4th, 2021 | 

Trees, plants, and rocks

 So no weaving to show, but...read to the end and you’ll find out where I’m at with that. Meanwhile, more about nature – real and attempted recreations.

The oak trees in my neighborhood were HEAVY with pollen this year. Yellow sidewalks were the norm. Then I thought that issue was over, only to have oak droppings (aka male pollen structures) SO thick that I literally could have shoveled them. Of course they were light and easy to pick up by hand, but SO much of it!

In my last post I shared a photo of some steps that had been painted. Here’s another way someone adorned their front steps, this time with potted plants. Isn’t that beautiful? Far more costly and short-lived than the painting, but so lovely!

In my garden...last year I planted a pink peony. I was pleased to see that I’d actually get flowers this year. And it is beautiful. BUT....

And this is a big but...this peony has virtually no fragrance! WHAT?!?! Since when have they been developing peonies with no fragrance? And WHY? I have 2 rose bushes that came with the house, and they produce lovely looking roses, but no fragrance. And now a peony with no fragrance? That’s NUTS!!! I’ve even considered pulling out those roses and replacing them with roses that smell like roses, but never even considered the possibility that peonies wouldn’t smell!

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Now for the attempted nature recreation. My daughter informed me that her son is enthralled with geode-dyed Tshirts, and she thought he’d like to make one with me for a project. I looked at some YouTube videos on them, and was clear that this was mos definitely not a project he would enjoy doing. So perhaps I’d make him a geode T for his birthday? Sure, I said, why not?

Hah! Why not, indeed! I knew I’d have to do some testing before I ready to do a T for the boy. So I tied up a few face masks, a piece of fabric, and an old blouse from my closet. Unlike most dyeing, the fabric has to dry completely before applying the dye.

Then I applied the dye – which was NOT easy – and the ice. I was not at all confident that the dye I’d put directly onto the fabric was where it needed to be, so I applied more dye on top of the ice.

Wait overnight for the ice to melt. I could clearly see that I’d used WAY too much dye. Wait 24 hours for the dye to set. Untie, rinse, hang to dry. Epic fail. While the fabric looks sort of like a typical tie dye, the masks and blouse were ugly and awful.

Of course, I’m not one to give up so easily. I did learn things in that attempt. One being that it’s important to use sinew to tie, not string, another being to use less dye powder, a third that a blouse is nothing like a Tshirt in terms of fabric softness or thickness. And I watched another YouTube video by a different person with a few helpful hints.

So today I tied up a Tshirt of mine for geode attempt #2.

It’s drying now. Tomorrow I’ll buy another bag of ice and dye it. Then Saturday it’ll sit for a day. Sunday I’ll untie it and rinse it and see how it looks. Depending on these results, I’ll decide if I need another trial, if I can go directly to dyeing a shirt for the child, o if I’m done with this whole thing.

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So. Weaving. Although it is true that I certainly don’t need any more clothes, I remain intrigued about weaving and then sewing garments. I bit the bullet and ordered some patterns from Sarah Howard at GetWeaving. Sarah specializes in making sewing patterns for handwoven fabric. Her patterns are generally simple and use narrow widths of plain weave fabrics, focusing more o color and texture than weave structure. And she’s been remarkably helpful and responsive to my emails.

That excited me. So I’m planning a cotton warp for lightweight crop pants. Yay! Time will tell, of course, how this will all work. I never claimed to be a seamstress. But at least I’m happy to be planning again, and using up some of my lightweight, mercerized cotton stash.

June 11th, 2021 | 

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 |