02.06.10
Feb 2 FO
I started with a draft from handweaving.net, then played around with different treadlings in some weaving software.
The warp is 10/2 mercerized cotton. The teal, lavendar, and burgandy wefts are 8/2 unmercerized cotton, and the multi colored weft is 10/2 mercerized cotton. These turned out feeling thinner than what I had imagined they would be. The patterns also didn’t show up as well in the actual towels as they did in the weaving software. In the future, I think I’ll use the 10/2 and 8/2 cottons more with twills or waffle weave.
A friend got a rigid heddle loom recently so I’m going to go see her tomorrow and offer my expert advice (insert maniacal laughter here), IF it stops raining. Since I’ve never warped a rigid heddle loom before, I tried it on the small Harrisville that I bought at a thrift shop last year. I don’t think rigid heddle weaving is for me. I had problems getting the selvedges even. I guess there’s a learning curve for everything and they’d probably improve if I kept at it. I also wasn’t getting a good shed so I don’t think I will keep at it on this particular loom. Then again, I could have done a bad job warping it.
01.11.10
Weaving with 60/2 silk, the finale
It’s done! It turns out that all the worry and stress were for nothing. There was not a single broken warp end. I really thought the flat steel heddles would have done a number on the threads, but it didn’t. After the scarf was done, I had a little warp left to play with. Being as I was in the safe zone, I wanted to see just how much of a beating the silk could take before it snapped. Using some 20/2 cotton, I wove what was left. Still no broken warp ends. 60/2 silk is much stronger than I thought. I took it to the weaving guild this past weekend for show and tell, and got many many compliments on it. Here are a few pictures, which do not do it justice if I do say so myself. (I swear I checked these pics in Picnik but now they look darker. When I grow up, I want to make pictures look like the real thing. *sigh*)
There are a few more on my Flickr page. I should have taken some from farther away but didn’t think about it until now.
Frost Crytals in Silk by Doramay Keasbey from the book Twill Thrills
Warp and Weft: RedFish DyeWorks 60/2 silk sett at 48 epi
Started threading Dec 19, 2009
Finished January 8, 2010
Funny story though. I was threading and probably 3/4 of the way through, I counted the threads and counted the heddles and the numbers. did. not. match! I went back through the threading and did find a mistake. I had threaded one set of four heddles twice. Rethreaded, being extremely careful. Again, 3/4 of the way through and counted. Again, no match. There might have been a few tears. I started pulling the threads out of the heddles again and after I’d pulled out about 200 threads, a thought came to mind. Maybe I should check my cheat sheet. Let’s say it should be threaded 1 2 3 4 over and over and end with 3. I had incorrectly marked that it should end on 2. (If only the threading were that short of a sequence!) Still, I had pulled out those 200 threads for nothing. They were right. When I started weaving the scarf, I told myself that if there was a threading error, I was going to cut the silk off the loom and throw it away because if it wasn’t right after rethreading that many times, it would never be right! I’m glad it was right.
01.05.10
New socks
Donna and I have been yarn and gift swapping for several years. This year, I fell behind. Time got away from me. I mean, I knew December 25th was coming but the procrastinator in me refused to believe it. I farted around long enough that I didn’t get her gift sent in time for it to reach her before she left for her holiday trip. Then when I knew she was going to be out of town, I farted around for another week. Bad Jill, Bad! My self inflicted punishment was to not open her gift to me until hers was at least sent and had time to get there. I actually opened these a couple of days ago but taking the picture… see procrastinator note above.
Hand knit socks!
Silly cat! Let’s try that again.
There we go! I even put little holly images on the corners.
01.02.10
January 2
Occasionally, I’ll go through all of my weaving magazines and books, looking for ideas for my next project. What I was really looking for were baby blankets and what fiber most seem to be made from. While I did find several blankets, I found something else too. A long coat that I think even I, with my simple skills, might possibly be able to sew together. I’m not sure I would really call it a coat. For me, a coat is something thick and sometimes bulky, with a lining. This is just woven fabric, cut, folded, and sewn. A long time ago, when I decided I wanted to learn to weave, I thought that would be a great way to use up my knitting stash. A friend warned me that it didn’t necessarily work that way (and she was right, I have more yarn now than before) but I think this coat would be good for using up some of that stash yarn. Now I just have to go through all that yarn and see what fiber I have the most of. This might take awhile!
12.31.09
A Day in the Life of my Looms
Meg of Unravelling asked for pictures of our looms on New Years Day. While it isn’t officially the first day of the year here, my looms will look the same in 6 hours.
Gilmore
Macomber
Harrisville, all folded up and tucked in the corner
May 2010 be a great year for all of us!
12.30.09
Dec 30
After some small issues, I’ve actually begun weaving the 60/2 silk project. It’s slow going, partly because I’m babying it. I don’t want any errors in this.
I’ve been down in the dumps since Christmas Eve. At some points, I feel totally useless and wonder what my purpose is in life (other than tormenting everyone I know 
). This coming year, I’m telling everyone that Christmas is off my list. If they want to get me something, they can donate to their local humane society or homeless shelter. There won’t be any get togethers for me. I’ll make that well known before the summer is over. Perhaps that will keep the ho-hums away. Of course, there is a lot more to all this but it would be boring. Regardless, I’m ready for the New Year to begin and everything go back to normal.
12.20.09
Weaving with 60/2 silk pt 1
Bleh. Apparently when they asked me to come back to work, they said they’d only need me through the end of December. The only reason I know this is because they’ve asked me to stay thru the end of January instead. This is going to put a serious dent in my purchasing of toys. Bleh.
I know it’s silly but I’ve been letting 6 little 25 gram hanks of yarn scare me. I’ve been putting off working with it because of that but it was time. It’s been both harder and easier than I imagined, and I’ve only just begun. I had planned on weaving it on the Gilmore, which has inserted eye heddles that would be better for the warp. Unfortunately, I only have 500 heddles on the Gilmore, and I need 600. The Mac has 1220 heddles so plenty there but flat steel heddles… more fear. I don’t have much warp yarn left but I did have enough to create a tiny dummy warp. I tied it on as tight as I could then raised shafts and moved the beater back and forth. I was surprised at how well it held up with as tight as I had it. Still, I’ll have to be careful and will definitely take more care when I weave on the real warp.
I have a little over half of the warp threaded. Still, more fear. This isn’t a straight 1234 threading. It’s more like 43213218218718768765 and on and on for a 176 thread repeat. I’ve always printed the draft and threaded directly from it. I tried it with this and almost skipped a small section. Fear fear fear. What if I already did miss a section and just didn’t realize it? I’ll find out soon enough. In the meantime, I created columns in the word processor and entered in the shaft numbers that needed threaded in sets of 4. Each time I finish threading 4 shafts, I put a pin next to those 4 numbers. This has actually helped speed up the threading process. No more looking at tiny boxes on a draft and making sure I’ve got the right shaft number. Now I just read off 4 numbers at a time. Hopefully I’ll get the threading finished tomorrow, and the weaving started on Tuesday.
12.14.09
Dec 14
Saturday was the weaving guild’s meeting/potluck/holiday get-together. I procrastinated making the dessert I was going to take but did finally get it done and ready to go. It also decided to rain Saturday. I didn’t get 15 miles from home and saw two accidents, so I wussed out and went back home. And saw several more accidents. Really people, when it rains where it doesn’t normally rain, going 80 miles per hour isn’t a smart thing to do. Every one of the accidents I saw were from cars driving in the fast lane. Not that people don’t go slow in the fast lane but most people around here don’t. Since I didn’t go to the party, we get to eat what I was taking.
In the meantime, The Man braved the rain and went to his uncle’s house, and ended up staying overnight since the rain got so bad. That gave me plenty of alone time to finish a scarf.
I played with this in Picnik trying to get the color right, and ended up putting that smudgy edging on it. I like it. The color of the scarf is a little darker than the picture shows. The draft is from the Sept/Oct 2009 issue of Handwoven, called the Budget Bamboo Shawl. Daughter liked the look but she doesn’t wear shawls, plus the yarn called for doesn’t come in the green she wanted. I used 8/2 Tencel, set at 20 epi to keep the lacy look and still shrink the width. The weaving went so fast that I forgot to put my measuring string on. Even after wet finishing, the thing almost reaches the ground when I drape it around my neck. Both of my daughters are taller than me and this daughter likes them long anyway, so it’ll work. I started weaving it Saturday night and finished it Sunday morning, then did the fringe in the afternoon.
I also finished weaving and fringing the black and white scarf for the other daughter. I’m procrastinating the attempting to full it part. I’m going to have to take a deep breath and just do it.
12.10.09
Facing it
I have come to the conclusion that no matter how careful I am, I’m going to do something stupid each time I start a new project. I put an olive green tencel warp on the Harrisville and totally missed going over the back beam. I always wondered how people could do that. Now I know.
I was putting a black and white warp on the Gilmore and hubby called on his way home. As I talked on the phone, I happily untied my cross holding threads. Didn’t realize it until I got to the front of the loom and didn’t have a cross to put my lease sticks in. I did get it warped and I think it turned out great for not having a cross. I would say no harm no foul, but hubby would attest to the fact that there was plenty of foul when he walked in the door and heard me cursing. Hello sailors, you have nothing on my potty mouth.
I did get the daughters waffle weave towels done, with the correct number of threads. Yay!
Only two are pictured here, and they’re not yet cut apart in the photo. They’ve been washed and dryed and are ready to be shipped out.
Here’s the black and white scarf on one of the looms.
This is called deflected doubleweave. I call it a pain in the ass. If the daughter hadn’t asked for it, I wouldn’t be doing it. I really dislike using two shuttles. Tucking all those ends in when you switch colors.. bleh! Since this is supposed to be fulled, I decided to cheat and carry the colors up the sides. While this yarn isn’t going to completely full, hell it might not partially full, I can only hope that you won’t be able to tell after it’s taken a bath. The reverse side looks different.
No picture of the green warp since it’s still just a warp and no weft threads have been thrown.
11.26.09
Happy Thanksgiving
Happy Turkey Day to any who celebrate it. I’ll be truthful and admit that I don’t care for holidays in general, since stress is not on my list of Things That I Enjoy. I’ll enjoy the food though so there’s that. Then again, that leads to Struggling To Button The Pants, again not on the Things That I Enjoy list.
Anyone that is a regular reader want a Google Wave invite? I have several that I can give out, just need an email address to send them to.
Two and a half of daughter K’s towels are woven. I hope to finish them tomorrow since I don’t have to work. Then I hope to get some scarf warps on the looms and have them finished by next weekend. My back is doing better so I think a goal of 2 scarves by next weekend sounds reasonable. That will get me almost caught up with Daughter Weaving and I can move on to the 60/2 silk.
