Dust Bunnies Under My Loom

Open Doors ~ My Comfort Weave

2012-01-23T20:53:00.000-08:00

I really enjoyed weaving this project; and it was truly acomfort weave, after all it’s just twill by another name.

The 12 shaft Drall pattern that I used had three blocks of3/1 twill. The first block 1-2-3-4 (a) weavesthe squares that sit in the vertical bands. The second block 5-6-7-8 (b) weaves the bar that runs completely acrossthe fabric. The third block 9-10-11-12 (c) weaves the background for the colourblocks.

I didn’t want to weave the pattern repetitively; I wanted todevelop the pattern as I went along to make it uniquely mine. I did make a couple of rules for myselfthough. I wanted to make sure that therewas continuity to the scarf, just not repetitiveness. The first rule was that block (a) wouldalways be bracketed by one block of (b) and one of (c). The second was that block (a) would never befollowed by block (b). As long as Ifollowed these rules I could vary the size of block (a) and change the placementof the other two blocks to my hearts desire.

This is the scarf just as it came off. It’s a stiff as a board and at this stage itshows all the valleys and hills where the twill blocks are threaded, not reallyexciting at this stage at all! The edgestended to curl under as I wove, not enough to cause a problem but enough to benoticeable. If you look really closelyyou can just make out that there is a colour change in the red stripe next tothe gold. I had originally planned toput more colours in the warp, but as I pulled the warp it started to look toobusy, so I stopped at three colours plus the base colour.

It’s quite amazing what just a short stint at the ironingboard can achieve. The valleys and hillsare completely eradicated as are the curled edges….and the shine finallyappeared! The scarf isn’t reallyfinished; I’ll haul out McSteamy for that final hard pressing. The randomness of the pattern shows up nicelyhere, every time I look at the photos I like it more.

There are definitely two sides to this scarf; one side ismuch lighter than the other with more of the colour popping out.

I am calling this scarf ‘Open Doors’, I wanted to call it ‘openwindows’ but though it would just confuse the heck out me ~ I can just seemyself pressing the file expecting to open my operating system and beingsurprised that I couldn’t ~ so ‘Open Doors’ it is!

There is something so very pleasing about a graphic patternisn’t there?

I said that I was doing some comfort weaving so that I couldthink my 3D problem through…..yeah right! I guess that isn’t going to happen any time soon, so here’s my nextproject. Maybe this one will get my mojoback on! I’m again doing my favouritetype of weaving and I’ve pulled the warp for a scarf in 2/8 Tencel. The colours are oyster for the warp and taupefor the weft.

PFFFFFFFFT!

2012-01-14T20:32:00.000-08:00

Pfffft – that’s the sound of my brain trying tofigure out my newest project. As soon asI started planning the project I had a huge brain fart and couldn’t think! I’m pretty sure that being away from the loomfor these past few weeks has made my synaptic receptors turn right off!
My plan was to do a three dimensional ‘art piece’ for myentry hall, figuring out what I want to do is usually the hardest job. My concept is a series of tapes of varying widths that can then beshaped off loom and put together on a flat background to make the three dimensional image.

So off I went to thestash cupboard and started pulling out the colours and textures that I wantedto use for my concept, plenty to choose from!

Then I sat in front of my library to choose the weave structure I’lluse; and that’s when it happened, that awfulfeeling that I couldn’t put my head around the problem…..I looked at every weave structure thatmight possibly work, I sat and fiddled at the computer, I mulled, I had a hotdrink, I paced; all to no avail! Big, big brain fart!

I do my best planning and thinking while I’m weaving. This must be the reason for the empty ideabin in my head, my time away from the loom. The obvious remedy is todo what I call ‘Comfort Weaving’.

So my first project in my new house is exactly that, staying in my comfort zone I’ve put on a 2/8 Tencel warp fora scarf. I’m using a modified version ofNgaires’ 12 Shaft Drall scarf and hopefully working through the process withmake those synaptic links open again! I had a great colour pallet in mind, slate grey, orange/red and gold ~ although the photo doesn't do it justice at all!

There are three blocks that can be woven using twelve shafts and my plan is to not stick to a pattern but to 'free weave' changing the blocks as they appeal to me, but still keeping some kind of loose patterning in play.

There is one more thing taking my mind off of weaving and that is the state of my garden. Well it isn't exactly in a state because it's a completely blank canvas. The builder put in some garden beds and right now they are ominously bare, and look very forlorn, just small weeds and bits of grass right now.

I must admit that I've got a lot to learn about what plant to put where. Today at the Library I think I've found the perfect book, after just a short browse through the pages I'm sold! I want everything including the Hardy Banana Plant. Why you may ask ~ because my brother in Manitoba can't!

Getting Settled

2012-01-04T11:19:00.000-08:00

Finally, we have some semblence of order appearing out of the choas! It's taken two full weeks to unpack and sort though the boxes and try to find a home for everything, and I must admit that I've hidden as much in closets as I can, because 'out of sight out of mind' works for me. I feel terribly guilty taking over the living room, but what a great space to have for a studio!

The two looms sit side by side and are looking very forlorne without warps on them, but now that we've unpacked the yarn, books and computers we'll get cracking!

My weaving stash used to take up a full wall in my studio and now here it is crammed higgeldy piggeldy into one armoire in the guest room. Every time I see it I have the urge to purge! I think that with the internet and the availability of yarn on line my stash hoarding will be a thing of the past. I may as well store less at home and only order what I need to complete a project and let the shops look after the storage. I will take a photo in a few months and see if I've lived up the the stash reduction binge.

Moving to Comox has meant that we chaged climatic regions in a big way, from zone 5 to zone 7/8. I try and get out for a walk daily and can't believe the beautiful plants we've encounted. Our home came with grass and predug beds, so we are on the hunt for what to put into the garden. This is a Mahonia (Winter Sun) and is blooming right now. These yellow/lime green cones are stunning and will definately be one of the plants for me.

I don't know the name of this beautiful berry, but it's a stunner and I have just the spot for it!

Last night we had an amazing storm with hard rain and very gusty winds. We saw the cushions for our lawn furniture moving around and went outside to find our large gas bbq had been moved from the patio about 10 meters onto the grass and tipped over. We rarely had strong winds in The Okanagan Valley so it was thrilling to say the least!

We are still having the builders subs in on a daily basis tweaking all the little foibles that a new house brings so getting out and learning my new neighbourhood is a real treat to get away from the noise. Today it is +12C and a light drizzle, so I'm off for a walk number two.

On The Move

2011-12-12T16:25:00.000-08:00

This will be the last post I'll be doing from this house! In a way it's really sad to leave a home that has served us very well for 20 years. This photo is from my back deck looking north as the sun is setting.

These four walls have seen us go from the pinnacle of our careers to retirement and have seen our children grow from adolescence to adulthood! This photo is of our cul-de-sac and the wonderful neighbours we'll be leaving. I'm getting a bit weepy just thinking about leaving, but the house will have a lovely young family in it soon.

Everywhere I look today I see boxes....stacked to the ceiling in several rooms! Where did all this stuff come from? I'm known for tossing things out on a regular basis, but right now I feel I've not used a heavy enough hand!

We have decided to leave the looms pretty much intact during the move - it just seemed to me there was much more chance of damage if they were in small piles - I really hope this is the right decision, we'll know soon enough because the big move is in two days! We have boxed and sorted for what seems to be weeks now, and on Wednesday morning the movers come and it's out of my hands.

To get the loom empty I had to bite the bullet and cut off my latest warp. It's a great looking project, but I just couldn't concentrate on weaving, so I did the nasty deed and cut off the second runner's warp...I will definitely do this warp again, but not until I can settle into the new studio.
I'm calling it a studio, but in actual fact my new space is the huge living room in the new house. The house is set out with the kitchen leading into the dining area and into a huge family room and that's where I think we will do most of our daily living ~ so the living room is mine, mine, mine (at least for now)!

The built in desk is something I will really miss, I had so much fun writing this blog and playing with my weaving program Fiberworks PCW, it looks so forlorn now!

The new house will be our very first brand new home and frankly I'm really excited, only 2 more sleeps ~ the only down side is that the appliance package that I ordered will not arrive until after we do, so I guess we'll be doing the 'inside camping' thing for a few days.

Lemonade out of Lemons

2011-12-03T17:54:00.000-08:00

I made a little mistake whenI pulled the warp for the polka dot scarves. I had changed the draft making the scarves narrower than the originals that Mum made, but I forgot to change the corresponding information in thenotes. So I pulled the warp with theoriginal numbers of ends. UnfortunatelyI didn’t figure that out until I had threaded the loom and found that I had 42ends extra. It was too much yarn tothrow away so I had to use it. That’s how these wonderful scarves started out!

I found a Fancy Twill on 12shafts and 12 treadles with a really interesting motif. The pattern repeat is huge, about 10 inches,so careful treadling was required. Butthe motif is really worth it, very sophisticated looking.

I love the large scale ofthe pattern repeat and the colour combination of lemongrass and navy. The lemongrass really warms up the navywarp.

The second scarf was goingto have a different intricate pattern repeat but with the house being soldthere just wasn’t time for it. So I wentwith a Point Twill treadling and powered through the scarf in two days, acouple of hours per day.

The silver of the weft justgleams against the navy warp. Thediamond motif is very striking. Thetreadling wasn’t my first choice but I really like it.

I would definitely use thisdraft again and I think that there are a lot more variations to be discovered.

These are the last scarvesto be woven at this house. The packinghas started in earnest and there is no more time to weave until we get to thenew house in only a few days time!

A Big Change

2011-11-20T21:17:00.000-08:00

We put our house on the market in the spring and despite plenty of viewings, our market was flat. So, we did what all sensible people do - we went on vacation! Our month in France was wonderful and you'll be happy to know that I won't bore you with my travel photos.

After our return we accepted the fact that our house would be ours throughout the winter, so we decided to pull out our pellet stove and put in a fabulous top of the line gas fireplace. Now things get interesting.....

On the last day of our listing November 3 - we got a request for a viewing. My immediate answer was to say no since we were in mid demo mode, but saner minds prevailed and I agreed to spit polish the house one final time. On November 4 the new fireplace was installed at the same time we were negotiating the offer for our house!

So now we trade this Okanagan beauty
For this Island dream
In the course of one week we got the offer, traveled to Vancouver Island and bought a brand new rancher.....my head is still spinning. We did this so fast that I couldn't remember what colour the house was painted! We move on December 14 and it feels like everything is happening so fast! So it will be Christmas in the small city of Comox which is about 1/2 way up Vancouver Island and about 3 hours drive from my best friend Susan in Duncan.

I thought I'd show you a couple of photos of our booth at the South Okanagan Slow Fibre Festival. I really think the booth looked great and the sale was a success for us.
We really had a wonderful space and the colour blocking we did with the scarves really increased their impact.
Just before the house offer came through I decided that I wanted to put a warp on the loom for a couple of table squares. I wanted to work on a fine piece and I was looking for a challenge. The warp is long enough for two table squares and it is only 2-1/2 yards long!
I decided to use white 4/24 mercerized cotton for the warp and 1/14 linen for the weft on the first table square. The square is 21-1/2" wide in the reed and the finished fabric should be 20" x 20". The sett is 40 epi and I needed 857 heddles for the pattern and border. I only have 100 heddles on each of my shafts and adding heddles is a pain, so I traded looms with Ngaire as she has 150 heddles per shaft. So now I'm working with very fine fiddly yarn and on a loom that although is the same make and model as my beloved Lily Louet - it's different!

The piece is bordered and so it has unique corners. The pink line is just a hem marker that will be removed later.
This is the bottom border repeat for the reversible hem I intend to do.

The photo above is the first glimpse of the pattern developing. I really like the large sunburst motif. I think that mixing a modern motif with traditional technique and materials can be very exciting. Now I'm in huge rush to finish both pieces so we can dismantle the looms! Such an exciting time for us!

Spot On

2011-11-10T19:30:00.000-08:00

I have always adored thepolka dot scarves that Mum did a fair while back. I love the fact that I can lay in straight lines of weft and magically producepretty little circles; it is amazing what networking a draft will do! I have finally woven two of my own scarves and I thank Alice Schlein for the pattern. The warp is navy 2/8 Tencel and I put enoughwarp on for two 70 inch long scarves. The weft forthe first scarf is red violet 2/8 Tencel and the second scarf is a stunning celadon green2/8 Tencel.

As I was weaving I noticedthat the navy warp was releasing a lot of fibre dust, it was making the proverbial dustbunny under my loom! After washing the scarves I hung them upto dry and careful smoothed the wrinkles away then I noticed that my hand was covered with navyfibres.

WhenI was steam pressing the scarves I noticed that they had a halo of navyfibres that really blurred the pattern. So I used a sticky lint remover sheeton each scarf to remove the excess fibres and the scarves look amazing, the pattern is now crisp and clear.

These polka dot scarves arejust wonderful! I loved weaving them and Ilove the look of them, fun and funky enough for a young woman, but classic enough too. The light dots on one side anddark dots on the other give the scarf a sense of depth and make them a versatile wardrobe addition.

This green is much, much fresher in real life -seems that greens are very temperamental about having their photos taken.

Both looms have had to bemoved into the dining room and here they sit, back to back while the studio ishaving a remodel. The dining table ispushed against the picture window and the chairs have had to be put into ourguest room! What a kerfuffle! We'vepulled out the pellet stove and are in the middle of installing a gasfireplace, so the dust will be flying for a few days more.

Right now the plan is toput one loom in the den/office and the other in the family room. I keep tellingmyself that change is a good thing!

Getting Ready to Go Slow

2011-10-22T17:00:00.000-07:00

Ngaire and I are getting ready to be vendors at the Slow Fiber Festival in Penticton next weekend, so if you are in the area, please come and say hello! This will be our second time as stand alone vendors and there seems there’s a huge amount to get done, far more than I expected!

In the past the sales that I’ve participated in have always been group affairs and always in conjunction with other weavers, spinners and fiber artists. It’s a very different situation when you venture out on your own, so many things to think about and to buy. When Ngaire joined forces with me, suddenly our combined production made it possible to have a booth dedicated to weaving only.I have had two black wire mannequins named Fric and Frac for a number of years and they have been so versitile that I’ve purchased some companions for them. But first Ngaire had to spruce them up as their original white paint was showing through! Here’s the first photo of Tyra and Naomi – so named because they are taller and skinnier, they should really make the scarves pop!

We’ve pulled out the black fabric that I had originally purchased for Hallowe’en costumes yonks ago (OK I'm a few years behind on my sewing projects!) and I’ve cut and hemmed to fit the eight foot long tables that are provided. Oh yeah, we’ve ironed and defuzzed too, neatness counts as far as I’m concerned!We’ve purchased a small swivel mirror and added a couple of extra lights for the display and now it’s time to think presentation. Every item has to be pressed and labeled and I’m always surprised at how far behind I can get on this! I love to weave and I hate to label….go figure!

I’m not a huge fan of items overlapping or laying flat on tables, so we are looking at everything in the house to use for props, from glass vases to stainless steel waste paper bins! I’ve recently woven bookmarks and rather than have them lie about limply I’ve mounted them on cardstock and plan to fan out a selected few at a time. These are my least expensive item, but I swear I’ve spent more effort on them than they’re worth!I’ve hauled out my stainless steel towel rack as a display stand for tea towels. I’m planning to display one of each style of tea towel per rung with the remaining stock stacked neatly below - much neater than in this photo! This is a lot more difficult than I thought because those red tea towels don’t play well with the other colours!

I found that hanging scarves exclusively on the metal hangers that fit on the wire display racks can look neat, but being shown edge on didn’t do them justice.

This year we’ll have fewer items on the wire display and they will be featured on these small busts, I have three now, but I've decided to add three more. We don't know what the walls will be like in the hall, so Ngaire came up with a the idea to use brown paper to back to panels - the width is perfect and we'll use bulldogs to hold everything in place.

The South Okanagan Slow Fibre Festival will be from 10-5, Saturday October 29 at 2965 Main Street in Penticton, and we'll be there with bells on!

A Whole Bunch of Wrong

2011-10-13T16:51:00.001-07:00

This project started out with the very best of intentions. I was on a stash busting mission and I wanted to challenge myself to NOT weave a defined pattern. I have come to the conclusion that ‘hording stash is tying up cash’, don’t you just love truisms? A quick look through my stash and I saw these bits and bobs of thick silk which spoke to me – mistake number one.

These are some dyeing samples that I produced when I was in a study group last year and I love the vibrant colours. I found a huge cone of this milk chocolate coloured single silk to act as a foil for the thick random dyed silk. Now my goal was to find a ‘non pattern’ to show them off. Aztec Wanderings by Russell Groff was my choice as it had potential.I pulled the thin silk warp separately from the thick silk warp. I can’t remember why this seemed like a good idea, but since I was getting ready for my trip to Europe, I’ll use that as my excuse. I warp from back to front on my Louet Spring – having two separate warps that needed to be interleaved – mistake number two just reared its ugly head. I ended up beaming the thin silk onto my back beam rod and the thick silk onto a supplementary wooden rod which I tied to the steel back beam rod. Not a pretty sight, but it worked

This is when I left for my month in France and while I was away I’ve got to say I didn’t think about my loom at all, so coming home to this jury rigged warp was a reality jolt.

I treadled a bit of broken twill to start and then swung right into the small band of pattern I had planned. Mistake number three just showed up, I had screwed up the threading on the thick silk ends. Not so much that I couldn’t make a pattern, but enough that it wasn’t the pattern I’d intended. This is the point that I looked at this warp and decided I loathed it. Not just disliked, but vehemently hated it! The pattern was all sorts of ugly and the lovely milk chocolate coloured silk looked like poop! I treadled most of the scarf without the pattern. I had wound two regular bobbins of the thin silk a few months earlier for a project that didn’t pan out, so rather than rewind onto pirns I decided to plunk the regular bobbins onto my end feed shuttle – yup, being lazy made mistake number four! I’m quite determined and did force myself to deal with it nibbling my edges, but I probably cost hours to save minutes! I just couldn’t contemplate cutting the warp off, so I soldiered on and just did the broken twill. This proved to be my only good choice and the way the colours peak through are very enticing – don’t get me wrong it’s all kinds of funky and I still don’t really like it, but I’ve gone from hate back to dislike…..and that’s a good thing.

As the end of the warp approached, mistake number two reared its ugly head; the funky beaming became a sticky mess, so I decided to cut off about ten inches early and avoid the snarls. That’s when I discovered I’d made sackcloth…..you could just about cut yourself on the edges of this burlap! I’m holding my breath that wet finishing makes the difference. On another note, this is one of our last Fred’s Plum tomatoes and it’s huge, but beautifully sweet and meaty. A really wonderful tomato to grow.

The Same But Different

2011-10-05T18:30:00.000-07:00

I really enjoyed weavingthe fancy twill runners so much so that I tied on. For this set of runners I wanted to have thecolour in the warp so they are different from the previous runners. In the stash a four ply round cord in blueleapt out.

The blue cotton was amystery cone that I didn’t know how much was on it so I pulled the warp in 50thread groups. And I tied on from themiddle of the warp so if I ran out I could change the pattern as I needed. Thankfully I was able to squeak out enoughfor the entire warp although I did make the warp short but the width remainedthe same.

For the weft I used whitecotton, actually the same stuff that was the warp in the previous runners (itis a really big cone of white cotton!). I love blue and white colour combination; it’s so clean and classic.

The last 6 inches ofweaving was terrible. I had eased theknots through the heddles and they were sitting just behind the beater. Every time I changed treadles I had to clearthe shed, all the knots were sticking. How come the knots were OK behind the heddles but in front they were asticky mess?! I was able to slowly weaveuntil I was 4 inches away from the knots.

I don’t think that I willtie on another warp. I don’t think thatit actually is a faster warping process than what I do now. I don’t think that it saves me any warpeither. This time I was able to haveonly 4 inches of warp waste but next time I wouldn’t weave with the knots pastthe heddles so I wouldn’t save any warp. I just found the whole process tedious, slow and frustrating.

But the runners are off theloom. They are sitting in a pile waitingto be washed. I hope to get to themsometime this week. They look great andI can’t wait to see them washed, hemmed and on a table!

Fancy Twill Table Runners

2011-09-22T19:55:00.000-07:00

It's harvest time and I’ve been busy trying to keep up with the tomatoes, by planting over sixty plants means that there are tomatoes ready every couple of days. The raspberries are also ready so I had to make some jam too!This post is about the table runners that I started back in August, they are a cotton warp and silk weft in a plum and a grey and the pattern is a fancy twill. Here they are side by side before washing. I was able to get them the same length with the same number of pattern repeats!After washing and pressing them I noticed that they are not longer the same. The grey runner is longer than the plum runner by five inches. And the plum runner is wider than the grey runner by two inches. It is amazing the difference weft can make to a project even when the two colours are supposed to be the same.The both runners are finished with a two inch border with fancy hemstitching in the middle. The plum runner has trellis stitching and the grey has ladder hemstitching which I am going to be lacing a ribbon through to add a punch of colour. I haven’t bought the ribbon so I don’t know the colour yet but I am thinking blue.For the plum runner I chose the weft dominant side. I think the warp dominant side too white and it washes out the pattern, although in the picture it looks pretty good.For the grey runner I also chose the weft dominant side but for a different reason. The weft is a thick and thin variegated grey and black silk so on the warp dominant side there are splotches of black that look like mistakes.On the weft dominant side there is more colour and the black blends in better.The runners were so much fun to weave and I love the colours. The runners made a nice change to all the scarves that I have been weaving. I really like these runners, so much so that I have tied on, but that is another post!

False Damask Yet Again

2011-09-06T16:42:00.000-07:00

I’ve just finished another six tea towels in one of my favourite ‘go to’ patterns; False Damask on 8 shafts. I love weaving this pattern and playing around with the colour sequences. Sorry, there hasn’t been time to press them though! I have hand hemmed these two, but I’m leaving for France in two days and these four will just have to wait until October when I come home! This pattern really allows me to play around with warp colours the stripe placement. I pulled the warp with stripes in three different shades of grey, black, mauve and white as the divider threads. I used black weft on all six tea towels but every tea towel has a unique weft stripe sequence. These colours just look amazing with stainless steel appliances.I thought I’d share my way of ensuring that all the stripes begin and end at the same place, so that when the tea towels are displayed they look their best.

I like to weave 4 inches of pattern before beginning a stripe sequence. I never just weave tabby for hems unless the pattern is tabby, I’ve found that tabby often weaves up wider than patterns. The 4 inches allows me a 1 inch hem (1/2 inch turned under twice) and about 2 inches before the stripe begins.

I like to weave my tea towels 36 inches long and generally end up with about 28 inches when hemmed. I have a non stretchy piece of trim that is 36 inches long and that I’ve marked off with a line 4 inches from one end. I pin this to my woven cloth after a few picks and weave to the marker.I then begin to weave any stripe sequence I feel like; when I’m happy with the result I pull the other end of the trim forward and match it up with the piece pinned to my fabric. I then insert a straight pin to mark where my stripes end. I can then forget about measuring my woven cloth, I just pin the tape to the cloth as I go along. I ‘frog leap’ two pins as I go along so that there is never a time when the tape isn’t attached to the cloth. When I reach my straight pin I start the stripe sequence I’ve chosen and weave it in reverse. This ensures that both ends match perfectly. I thought I’d share this photo….I feel like a proud mama with my first really ripe Meyer Lemon! I got one lemon last year that I had to remove when still under ripe; but this year I have 10 on my wee tree and one just about ready to eat!

Summer Tea Towels Two

2011-08-31T21:52:00.000-07:00

My very quick Turned Summer and Winter tea towels are done. They were such a fun project to weave; and especially nice to weave since Ngaire pulled the warp for me! This is a photo of one of the towels before washing. I have just finished machine stabilizing the hems and this is my ‘final inspection’ to make sure there are no errors. Thankfully only one tea towel out of the six had an error and it was a very easy fix! I had to sley these towels 20 epi in a 12 dent reed and so you can see the reed marks at this stage.I noticed when I was standing off square to the tea towel that there was a really interesting zigzag effect. This was totally unexpected since the pattern is basically rectangular blocks, but it certainly adds to the visual appeal.This is a closer look at the Summer side and the Winter side and you can see that all those pesky reed marks have miraculously disappeared. I guess crossing your fingers and toes really does work!I only had the enough of the soft teal weft to complete four tea towels, but luckily I had a slightly darker green/blue 2/8 cotton for the final two tea towels. Here they are side by side and I’m really pleased with both colours.So here they are, all hemmed and pressed and ready for our fall sale in October. The only thing I would change is the length of the repeat. Each full pattern is just over three inches in length on the loom; and by tightening it up I could add weft stripes. Ah well ~ next time.We grew a type of basil this year called ‘Lettuce Leaf’ and it grew fantastically. As you can see ~ bigger than my hand! This basil tastes lovely and if I could just keep the garden pests from enjoying them too, I’d be in heaven!

Running with Scissors

2011-08-22T16:57:00.000-07:00

I’ve been thinking that adding some table linens to our sales inventory for awhile, and now seemed like the perfect time as we have scarves galore! I seldom weave outside of the 2/8 grist, but I'm really enjoying weaving with bigger grist, things weave up so fast! I am using a draft that Mum has used with great success in the past; below is a photo of the runner she made with 2/12 cotton warp and 1/16 natural linen weft and it is one of her go-to-runners. I love the large motif of the fancy twill and these colours are very subtle.
The warp for my runners is unbleached 2/5 cotton and I have enough for two runners. The weft that I’m using for the first runner is silk noil in a soft plum that has bits of cream, brown, black and red. The pattern really shows up well with the plum weft.If you have ever wondered what the difference between a table runner and yardage is, it’s the fact that a table runner has a border on all edges. This runner has 2 inches of border on each side and the finish hem will also have 2 inches of border with trellis hemstitching in the middle.
The weft for the second runner is a similar silk noil but in grey. The weft has more variation in grist than the plum weft, unfortunately there are a lot of knots in the skeins so I am constantly reaching for the scissors, hence the title running with scissors!The second runner is actually weaving up a little differently then the first runner, it’s a little wider and the picks per inch is a little different but not enough to impact the 45 degree angle of the pattern.
The runners are still on the loom at this point and I am really looking forward to seeing them completed. I’m really enjoying the easy weaving of the runners and so I am thinking about tying on to the warp.

Summer Tea Towels

2011-08-14T15:10:00.000-07:00

I’ve got a 2/8 cotton warp in white and mid-range blue/green on the loom right now. I should get six tea towels in Turned Summer and Winter from the seven yard warp. I’m already so enthused by this pattern that I plan to tie on again in black and white with solid dark colours in the weft. Ngaire developed this pattern from a pattern by Mark Wilhite found in Handwoven November/December 1990, but I asked if I could weave it as I loved the colour. It’s quite amazing how each weaver changes patterns and how they evolve. Ngaire took out the plain blocks and merged the two pattern sequences as well as turning the draft.

The original pattern had 8 shafts and 10 treadles but after Ngaire modified the pattern it was on 10 shafts and 6 treadles. The warp is alternating light and dark threads and the weft is the dark colour only – who doesn’t like a one shuttle weave? When the pattern was turned two of the treadles lifted 7 against 3 harnesses, but since I have a direct countermarché loom this poses no problem. The treadling is done in duplicate pairs, so although the pattern has 68 picks, it’s a cinch to remember. (1-3-2-3, 1-4-2-4, 1-5-2-5 etc) I’ve tied the loom up so the treadling is a walking sequence. My left foot does the alternating tabby treadles and my right foot takes care of the four pattern treadles. Sooooooo easy! This photo is the reverse side of the fabric ~ the Summer side, and it actually has the truest colours of all the photos today. The tube lying down is the sum total of the weft I have left after weaving only four tea towels! The other two tubes are pretty close in colour and have enough blue in the green and I’m hoping that one or the other will work on my final two towels! The garden keeps me from my loom, but my nicely filling pantry is showing the fruits of our labour. We have jars of jams galore and beautiful Okanagan peaches and green filet beans just waiting to be opened on a cold winter day!

A Definition of Woven Fabric – A woven fabric consists of two systems of parallel threads, crossing at right angles and interlinked according to fixed rules called weaves.

Love in a Mist

2011-08-07T19:43:00.000-07:00

I had a full pirn of Azure Tencel and two hanging selvages already wound and in film canisters that didn’t work with the last project so I decide to build a project around them. I have been doing a series of lace weaves with Bamboo warp and Tencel weft so I looked at the small Bamboo section of the stash and luckily there was one that would work!This may come as a surprise (not!) but I wanted to try a new lace weave and Swedish lace came to mind. I liked the pictorial properties that the lace has. I found a draft on Handweaving.net for hearts on 16 shaft showing hearts facing each other and changed the draft to suit my loom, which only has 12 shafts. I ended up with a 9 shaft pattern.Due to the size of the hearts and not wanting to cram them too tightly I was only able to get three hearts across and for added interest the hearts are offset. When I saw them on the loom I was a little concerned because the floats were quite long at just a smidgen over ¼”.The weaving went quite quickly once I actually sat down to weave, funny how that works! I took my time and measured every pattern repeat as I went because it would have been noticeable if they were differently sized. I didn’t have to do any un-weaving as miraculously each pattern repeat was the right size which is a first for me!At the halfway point I changed the direction of the hearts, because I wanted the ends of the scarf to match. There was an optical illusion that made the upside down heart rounder and shorter, but they weren’t!After washing I stuck the scarf outside and learned something interesting. Bamboo takes a very long time to dry but if you stick it outside at 35C with a light breeze in about an hour it will be dry!This scarf is so lacy, truly lovely – even with the wrinkles!There is a shiny side and a matte side to this scarf. The shiny side is the weft dominant side, the Tencel side, and the hearts gleam. The matte side is the warp dominant side which is where the Bamboo really takes over.When I was twisting the fringe I was using a cookbook called Mediterranean Diet to hold the scarf and that gave me the idea to call the scarf Love in a Mist because it reminds me of the delicate blue flowers of the same name. They are also known as Nigella and the seeds are edible, tasting of pepper and lemon and is mostly used in Middle Eastern Food. The picture is from the herb garden that lines the path to the front door.The scarf has a wonderful drape and I love the combination of Bamboo and Tencel. Bamboo has such a richness of colour and the Tencel adds lightness and shine. It is a wonderful match as long as the Bamboo is used as the warp and Tencel is the weft ~ reversing the two can create linen-like hard selvage turns as the Bamboo keeps it round shape and doesn’t snug up quite as well.

The heart shapes are really subtle and not ‘cutsie’, just lovely and elegant.

Summer Funk!

2011-07-26T14:09:00.000-07:00

The past few weeks have been notable only by my lack of weaving! I’ve found every excuse under the sun to avoid the loom! Even our lack of sunshine hasn’t kept me weaving. Our ‘summer that never was’ has had me dragging around in a funk!

Our family has been following ‘Le Tour de France’ avidly for the past three weeks and sitting glued to the DVR for 4 hours a day has sadly encroached on my productivity. I can’t believe how invested I became in the 3000 km bike race around France. I must admit that the aerial shots of all the Chateau and Churches has really whetted my appetite and has managed to really fire me up for our September in France.

Boys in spandex notwithstanding I did manage to knit quite a few of these sweet seed bead necklaces while glued to the telly.
I’ve knit the pendant necklaces in three different styles which are directly from Louisa Chadwick’s’ pattern book. My only contribution is my colour choices, gauge and finishing embellishments. They are amazingly fun to knit and end up being about 3 inches in length – soooo tiny for having more than 1000 seed beads in each!
This is the beginners’ pattern and it is the easiest to knit as the increments are easy to remember. This pattern is very much like the first but has a more tailored look.
This pattern is by far my favourite and is definitely the one you have to pay the most attention to while knitting. I love the diamonds!

I was asked recently how my Vogue blouse turned out and…..even though I had to pack everything up and put it all away several times, I have managed to complete the white cotton version. I rarely sample while weaving, but sewing is another matter entirely – this is my sample blouse in 100% cotton. I am a petite size so I had to alter every piece to fit, thankfully it all worked out! I can’t believe how much sewing and unpicking I did! It seems that if there were two ways to read the pattern I always chose the gauche! The pattern is very well laid out, but I over analyzed the collar to the point that I was ready to toss the whole thing. When I just followed the directions, it worked out just fine. I am now an expert in flat felled seams!Regardless of the lack of sun our garden is doing amazingly well. We are already dining very well on peas, beans, cucumbers, herbs and the inevitable zucchini. We have 64 tomato plants in 16 varieties that have set fruit and just need some serious sun to get sweet and plump.

I have the loom loaded up and waiting to go and hopefully I will have something on topic next time.

Tale of Woe

2011-07-19T22:38:00.001-07:00

I’ve wanted to re weave a Crackle pattern that I designed and wove awhile ago. It’s a great pattern that has a beautiful motif that resembles a city skyline. And as well I’ve had my eye on one of the cones of Tencel for a long time, it’s absolutely stunning. It’s dark sea foam green, a name which doesn’t really do the colour justice. I’ve also found out that it’s a really hard colour to photograph.
I had to try a lot of different colours of weft to go with the green of the warp. If the colour was too dark, slate grey for instance, it leached the colour from the warp. If the colour was too light like yellow it drew all the attention to the weft. Blue was the best colour but none of the four different shades that we have really worked. I didn’t take any photos of the Crackle because it didn’t work with the colour of the warp. The weft was too light coloured and the pattern wasn’t balanced. I knew that there wasn’t going to be any weft that I could use so I decided to scrap the whole Crackle idea.

The only choice that I felt I had was to use the same sea foam green for both the warp and weft. For me the best pattern for a solid colour is a lace weave. Another pattern that I wanted to weave again was the huck circles that I wove a while back.
This pattern is a joy to weave, the pattern develops quickly and the warp and weft floats pick up wonderful luster. The finished scarf is really pretty, I just love the circles.
The scarf needed a little something to help it along, like beads! I haven’t been beading scarves lately but something about this scarf just needed a bit of sparkle. Luckily the bead stash just happened to have the perfect colour!Rarely have I been so challenged by colour but the end result was worth the struggle.

Playing with Colours

2011-07-12T13:46:00.000-07:00

As Mum said in a previous post we went through our inventory looking at the colours and how they played with each other. It was a really interesting process as we pulled the scarves out and kept rearranging them, for example, one of the scarves looked blue but when it went into the blue pile it looked green but with the greens it looked too blue. So we looked for solid colours that would help to build the story of the collection.We also noticed that we don’t have a lot of lace weaves in the scarves so we are going to be killing two birds with one stone, using solid colours and lace weaves together. The scarf that I am doing is a Twill Lace in blue Bamboo weft and blue Tencel in the warp. I really like playing with highlights and tones as it adds interest to what could be a plain scarf.I liked the pattern so much that I did it again with yellow Bamboo and yellow Tencel. I love the fact that one side is weft faced medallions and so shiny from the Tencel and the other side is warp faced medallions and is matte from the Bamboo. The play of the shine and matte really make the pattern stand out.For the first time I had a problem with Tencel, the yellow one, we had bought a large cone and there is black machine oil marks throughout the cone, it was really frustrating as some of them are faint but once it is woven and next to other picks you can really see it. I spent a lot of time unweaving these marks. I did leave some of the fainter marks because they were hard to see but with light behind the scarf they could be seen (so after it was off the loom) but they have washed out which I am really thankful otherwise I would have a new scarf!I am always astonished by the difference a hard pressing makes on the left the yellow scarf hasn't been pressed. The shine that seems to magically appear from beneath the steam press and the scarf now has a liquid movement. The pattern really pops after the pressing also.I love the play of colours with these scarves. The two tones of colour really bring a depth and interest to the scarves. Also I really love this pattern, it was easy to weave and so rewarding. It is definitely going to be a 'go to' pattern for me.There is a little tree in the back garden that has a new nest by a Cedar Waxwing. She is the prettiest bird with a lovely black mask and the shiniest smoothest feathers. The tree is really special because there is also a Robin’s nest just a couple of branches below so the tree it is a now a condominium!

Knots...

2011-07-05T10:51:00.000-07:00

Not much weaving going on this week as I’ve caught the sewing bug! My local fabric store was changing ownership and everything in the store was 70-80% off! I decided that this was the perfect time to try and make that ‘perfect’ blouse. I purchased an amazing Vogue pattern and have been trying to get it done for the past three days! Life and house viewings seem to be getting in my way! Today I’m determined to get it done…. I'm making one blouse out of 100% white cotton (I'll live with the fine wrinkles to avoid the awful feel of polyester!) and once I've figured it all out I've purchased some beautiful silk noil fabric for my 'special' blouse.

I did manage to fit in a tiny bit of weaving though. I decided to weave the Malbec scarf again after tweaking it and have named my newest creation Trebbiano after a lovely green grape. I rarely weave the same scarf twice without making a number of changes. In this case I changed the warp colour to Moss Green and the weft to Lemongrass. I made the scarf a tad narrower and moved the positions of the spot lace.
I wanted a clear asymmetrical vertical line and working with three blocks achieved this. I changed the sett from 28 epi to 24 epi and I’m thrilled with the result, it has a wonderful light feel. The tone on tone colours just shimmer with one side being predominantly Moss Green and the other being Lemongrass.

I do have another scarf on the loom right now and while I was weaving I ran into a huge problem……I am using 2/8 bamboo for my weft and while I was winding my pirn I came across this big weird lump. I thought nothing of it and just cut it out and tied the yarn back together and proceeded to finish the pirn. When I started to weave with this new pirn I noticed that the yarn was distinctly different – much heavier in grist! It seems that when the manufacturer repaired the broken end they carried additional fibre for yards and yards. I was despondent thinking that I couldn’t finish my project!I wound the larger yarn off the pirn and went back to the tube and started winding off the thick grist. What a waste!This lump in where the manufacturer finally got back to the correct grist of bamboo….I was so happy to find this spot. I was sure that my lovely scarf was going to end up as 28 inches of scrap….thankfully it’s going to be finished, just a little shorter than my usual 70 inches.

Showcasing Colour

2011-06-28T10:51:00.000-07:00

I’m going to confess…..I’m an organizer! I feel most comfortable having everything in its place with few visual distractions; I like space around things so I can concentrate on each item. When I was planning my projects it seemed a good idea to pull out all the scarves Ngaire and I have for sale, have a good look at them and plan our new projects around them. Sales season cometh all too soon!

Generally my woven scarves have a warp of one colour and a contrasting weft, admittedly I’m a pattern person and I love to see the woven motifs clearly. Each scarf is beautiful by itself, but shown in close proximity to others, the colours can all blah out and you get a big eyeful of grey or beige or heaven forefend brown! Not what I want to achieve…So the game plan is to use solid or tone on tone warp and weft and weave foils for the scarves we have. These solid breaks would showcase the scarves around them as well as pull the eye toward the scarves ~ well that’s the plan anyway!Lace weaves seemed to be the best option for these solid or tone on tone scarves as the texture would provide interest that one colour patterned twill might not have. My new line of scarves is named for grape varieties (after all I do live in British Columbia’s biggest grape growing area), so this golden beauty is called Malbec. The weave structure is dropped tabby on eight shafts that I’ve turned and amended to weave vertically on ten shafts. I’ve woven the scarf using 2 tones of gold 2/8 tencel, one in the warp and the other in the weft. This weave structure has floats on one side that run vertically, in one tone of gold and horizontally on the other side in the second tone. Using the tone on tone gives amazing depth of colour. The foil for the unwoven areas is a 50/50 tabby, so the scarf has amazing structural integrity. In my enthusiasm to get going I forgot to change my reed, so wove this scarf at 28 epi…and it turned out stiff as a board off the loom. I must admit I was a tad worried.In the past I’ve always twisted my fringe before I wash the scarf, but for some reason I’ve found that my knots move around after washing. I’m sure it’s the miniscule differences in the take up while twisting. This has meant that I’ve had to fiddle with the fringes twice – not fun. This time I decided to lightly braid my fringes and wash the scarf, then twist the fringes when they were dry…..this really worked for me. I had no trouble undoing the loose braid when I hung the scarf to dry and twisting after washing was easy and the knots stayed where I put them! Thankfully Tencel is an extremely forgiving medium and after washing this scarf has beautiful drape and feel….whew!

Try, try again

2011-06-18T19:21:00.001-07:00

When I first started weaving one of the first projects that I did was Bead Leno. I absolutely loved it! So when I found a ball of hand dyed yellow/orange/red 2/20 Cotton/Tencel I automatically thought Bead Leno.For some reason I didn’t like weaving it this time. I wove and unwove numerous times getting the same result and disliking it. I didn’t like my edges or the fact the scarf was getting narrower as I wove.The warp was threaded with a straight 4 shaft twill and I tried to find a pattern that I liked but nothing leaped off the computer screen. I like patterns that are busy and complicated and I wanted to keep to 4 shafts so the best weave structure to go to was Crackle. I love the shapes and colours that Crackle produces.The weft is black 2/20 Tencel and the pattern repeat is 180 picks. On the computer the centre motif looks like a honeycomb, all hexagonal. But when I was weaving the area where the pattern starts again came across the stronger image. Which I didn’t really like but the guild meeting was the next day and I only had a couple of hours until bedtime to start and finish the scarf! I didn’t want to bring the placemats as I was still upset by them, and by the way thank you for all the great comments. The placemats have made it into the remaking box instead of the trash.The scarf was almost finished by bedtime I had about 10 inches to finish weaving in the morning then twizzling, washing and pressing. I thought I was going to be OK because the meeting was at 7pm, until my Mum said that we were going in early to update the library and we were leaving after lunch. Yikes! I was rushing to the finish when I realized that my hemstitching looked funny. It was upside down.After doing it again, I added black threads to the fringe, to help transition the black; otherwise the yellow fringe looked jarring. Then I got the scarf washed and damp pressed, it would have to dry on the road. During the pressing I noticed the tension and beat issues that I had with the scarf. Ooops.From a distance the scarf looks great. I love all the little motifs that I can pick out, the pinecones on the edges, the circle in the centre and the bowties. I don’t usually do such a busy pattern with a variegated warp but the depth of colours and shine that this scarf has is amazing!I had put on enough warp for two scarves so I changed the treadling for the second scarf to get rid of the jarring transition between pattern repeats. I also picked a different weft. I went with the top choice which is orange 2/10 Tencel, the other two are hand dyed singles silk.I like what the larger grist weft does to the pattern; also I did an advancing repeat so the pattern was also elongated. The shapes that are made are incredible.I ran out of weft so the scarf is quite short but I love it. The warmth of the yellow and orange are just wonderful. I love the jigsaw effect of the Crackle, just stunning.Below is a picture of the two scarves side by side and the difference is just amazing. The pattern shows much better with the orange scarf and the shine is marvelous.I have learned a lot of lessons with this warp and I am glad that I didn’t do Bead Leno. I love Crackle!!

Vines and Wines

2011-06-10T19:25:00.000-07:00

I’m in love with this pattern! The scarf turned out beautifully and I know that I’ll definitely be using this pattern again! The pattern is a ten shaft, ten treadle advancing twill. It was woven as drawn in and has only a three thread float. The pattern repeat is 33 threads, so it goes on extremely easily and weaves quickly. The warp was 2/20 hand painted silk, and while the painted warp was lovely it really posed a huge set of problems. Every weft that I tried seemed to blend in with one of the colours or the other, so basic black was my best option. It wasn’t the option that I wanted because it masked and changed the values of the warp colours. The warp was very lively in colour when I dyed it, and now it’s very subdued….ah well, the best laid plans and all that! The great thing about this scarf is the optical illusions that the pattern produced. The scarf is totally flat, but appears to be a series of raised pillows – very cool. The reverse of the scarf is the essentially the same. After looking at the grapes on my arbour which are budding up nicely – Pinot Gris came to mind as a name for this scarf as it has all the same colours as the grape variety.Our weather has not been stellar this year, but my faithful clematis vines are almost all in bloom now, so I thought I’d share a few photos I took this morning. This clematis is pale pink with lilac stripes and has blossoms the size of dinner plates – really massive!This is a local native variety and soon the whole fence will be covered in these sweet yellow bells and then the seed heads give another great show in the autumn.This is one of my oldest vines, it was here when we bought the house twenty years ago and the flowers are a dark magenta, it will completely cover on side of my garden shed by fall. Not too many of these vibrant purple with pink stripes are in bloom right now, but soon they will put on a huge display.An electric red violet is the closest I can describe this one….so pretty.I used to have six or seven peony varieties, but it seemed as soon as they started to bloom we would get rain and then I’d be left with a huge mess – this pink peony is the last man standing!

What the Huck?!

2011-06-04T16:14:00.001-07:00

The washing of the placemats was a bit of a process because the dye ran so I am thankful that the warp and weft were the same 2/8 cotton in teal. I washed the sets of placemats in groups of two so that they got the same treatment within the same set. I was also able to take my time to block the placemats.

The pressing sucked because of all the issues that I have with the placemats. The sets are all the same size within the pairs but there was shrinking issues with all the placemats. The areas of huck lace shrunk in width and length more than the areas of plain weave. So the placemats all have wrinkles in them that all the steam pressing in the world can’t get out. The size of the placemats after washing and pressing are 17” x 14” which are a very good size for placemats, if anything they are a little too big. The pattern on the above placemat is really pretty. I like the strong diagonals across the placemat yet when looking closer circles are the dominant structure. With the second set of placemats the centre panel is all over huck lace and had the greatest amount of shrinkage. The third set of placemats has more of a lattice appearance. And is a little boring when compared to the other sets. I wove these placemats for sale and I’m unable to sell them because of the wrinkles. Even if I was able to get the wrinkles out by pressing, once the placemats were washed the wrinkles would be back and that is not acceptable. So now I have to come up with an idea to use the placemats in a creative way. I don’t really want to add more material costs or time with these placemats as they are not a high cost item so if I can’t come up with something in the next couple weeks I will be throwing them out. And that is really hard to say but it is necessary in a business sense.
I'm still searching for a reliable placemat pattern, so far every one that Mom and I have tried have had issues....any ideas?

A Really Good Day

2011-05-27T20:26:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was one of the best days! I received an email from a lady in Montana saying that she had just received her May/June Issue of Handwoven magazine and she saw me in it. Now that the issue is in circulation I can at last stop being a ‘secret squirrel’ about it – it was very, very hard not to say anything all these months! Later the same day I received the parcel from Handwoven returning the scarves along with a cheque and a lovely note from Madelyn Van Der Hoogt the editor; this day just keeps getting better! If you get Handwoven Magazine – yup that’s me on pages 46 and 47….and my article is titled ‘Spaced Warp with Leno’.

I wove these scarves last fall and submitted the idea to Handwoven and was thrilled when it was accepted. I wove two scarves for this article one in silk and one in bamboo. My idea was that you use a leno twist to hold the spaces in the warp and to prevent the warp threads from wandering– it sounds much more complicated than it is.

I wanted my first (and I hope not my only) submission to really look nice, so beading the fringe was essential. I’m really very happy with the way they turned out. Handwoven chose to feature the natural silk scarf, but personally the lilac bamboo was my favourite, its' the colour that really gets me and the beading was a little more flash.

Then, as the final cherry on top Michael and I went out and bought our tickets for our September holiday. We will be spending three weeks in France and I can’t believe how much I’m looking forward to the adventure. I feel that I’ve spent the last week online getting our accommodation and car organized, but it seems that the best airfare was eluding me, so off to the travel agent we went.We have booked an apartment in Paris for a week in the Montmartre a minute from the Moulon Rouge. I'm jumping the gun on this one a bit because I haven't confirmed the booking, but I'm pretty confident as the owner has agreed. Today the Paris apartment was confirmed - now I'm really getting excited!This is our gîte (a self-catering holiday home) in The Dordogne region, this one is confirmed and paid. It is in a tiny medeval village and we have it for a week.Then a few hours south east and we have our gîte in The Languedoc region for another week. This time we chose to be in the centre of a small town and right next door to the village church, it's going to be great! Then one night in a Paris hotel near the airport, then home on October 2. I can foresee some excellent wine and cheese in my future!

Now for the big question – are there any special weaving sights I should be sure to take in? If you have been to any of these regions and know of hidden fibre related gems, please, please let me know about them. We will have a car for the last two weeks and so we will be able to mosey along at our own speed and hopefully get a lovely feel for these regions of France.

Our weather continues to be unpleasant to say the least, we are having the coldest spring in fifty years according to the news and today there was 20 centimeters of wet snow dumped on the surrounding high hills. Fingers crossed for some warm weather!

Home Again

2011-05-22T11:23:00.000-07:00

After spending a wonderful week on Vancouver Island it’s lovely to be home again. We had a great visit with Susan in Duncan and I got a sneak preview of what she has on her Louet Spring. While I was there Susan gave me one of the lovely 'breaks and recesses' tea towels that just came off her loom…..visiting sure has it’s advantages!

Before I could sit at my loom and get down to weaving I had to get my veggie garden planted immediately. Michael roto tilled the garden plot and we were away! Our very cool spring made planting extremely late and my poor tomatoes are mere babes, maybe if you squint you can see a leaf or two! The rhubarb however is amazing this year and the dark marks in the soil is where we've watered the seeds and plants! I grow my organic heirloom tomatoes from seed that I save myself, and this year I started them outside in my potting shed/greenhouse. Needless to say the weather conspired against me, but nature will win out and they will soon catch up. The lilac in my back garden is simply amazing this year, with abundant blossom heads over a foot long! And the chestnut tree in the front garden is covered in snow white cone shaped flower heads, while the ginko tree in the background is just coming into leaf. Before we left for the Island I warped ‘Lily Louet’ with 3 yards of hand painted 2/20 silk, so when I got home all I had to do was thread and tie-on. The silk was dyed in very bold deep purple, red and yellow. My goal was to weave a scarf that would show strong colour changes; I dyed some 1/20 bombyx silk purple for the weft. What I hadn’t counted on was that the weft I’d planned on using (in the ball) completely killed my pattern when it crossed the purple patches. Now I was on the hunt for weft, which seems to be a never ending saga in my life! I pulled out my Itten’s Star and found the split complementary was olive green, after a few picks I thought that the olive overwhelmed the yellow portions of the warp, actually changing the colour to a weak dull lime green, yuk! Then I tried a yellow gold which blended into the yellow and hid the pattern, the same with red…….so back to basic black which was the only colour that seems to enhance all my colour changes! I chose 2/20 black tencel as the fine grist of the weft makes the scarf very light and still allows the colours to show through.The pattern is advancing twill on ten shafts, which is treadled ‘trom as writ’, and I’m extremely pleased with it. You can really see the neat pillow shapes that this pattern makes and the black weft doesn't seem to darken the colours too much.

Lame Huck

2011-05-14T18:49:00.000-07:00

I wanted to weave something different and remembered how much I liked weaving placemats. While flipping through an old Handwoven I saw a nifty draft for Huck placemats with three different treadlings. The placemats are made from 2/4 Cotton in teal for both warp and weft.
The thing with placemats is that it is hard to get them to be the same size so I am using the idea that my Mum had with the book marks. I am weaving two placemats at the same time. The draft is a 4 shaft Huck so the first warp is on shaft 1 through 4 and the second warp is on shaft 5 through 8. So two warps with 300 ends each, it made for a long time threading!
The placemats are 15” in the reed so I placed them as far apart as I could so the extra heddles had to go in the centre. I was able to get 5 inches between them, making room for me to manipulate the shuttles.
Actually weaving the placemats is pretty easy; the one thing that I have trouble with is the tension, I am used to using fine yarn grist and changing to such a thick grist meant that I had to re tension the loom. For the Louet Spring that means releasing or tightening the texslov cord that leads from the springs on the back of the castle to the floating front beam.
The first set of placemats has the huck blocks offset which produce diagonal lines. This one is my favorite of the three. The colour in the picture is true, a very pretty teal.
The second set of placemats has a pattern of huck blocks all over. They are very light and airy.
The third and final set has huck blocks and then the next row is the huck blocks up side down.
The interesting thing that I found was the sheds were different on the two placemats. The placemat that was on shafts 1 through 4 had a much larger shed then the placemat on shafts 5 through 8. I then realized that geometry had reared its ugly head. Because shafts 1 through 4 are so much closer to the fell line, the angle that is produced when the shafts are moved is more obtuse. But shafts 5 through 8 are much further away to the fell line so although the shafts move the same amount to angle is much more acute. In this case the shed was half an inch smaller.
The size of the shed really impacted me at the end of the warp. I was able to weave with the normal shuttle on one placemat but the other one I had to change shuttle to a little tapestry shuttle so I could get the last couple of picks that I needed to finish the placemat. I also wove as far to the very end of the warp that I could!
I didn’t like weaving these placemats because they were boring! So I finally got them off the loom and put them away in a drawer. I am going to have to get them out and wash them at some point but not today!

Just Okey Dokey

2011-05-08T12:29:00.000-07:00

I put on this six tea towel warp to do some relaxing weaving and to have an easy project to work on while we were working on our house. House is complete and so are these tea towels, but I’ve got to say they were soooooooo boring to weave, it was a straight eight shaft twill and it got old pretty fast. I actually found it difficult to go to the loom, I just wasn’t into them at all! I've go to tell you that none of my photos came out with the right colour - they are much more yellow than they appear in my photos - mea culpa!I wove three of the towels with the same lemon yellow weft that was in the warp. I had alternated two yellows and this weft was one of them. These are really fresh looking and I like them well enough. I knew I had enough weft for these three towels and enough of the butter yellow for three more, but...As soon as I changed the weft to this butter yellow I knew this was destined to be the only one, it really looked peachy on the loom and I wasn’t sure I liked it. Turns out this colour became my favourite after washing! Go figure. I hunted through my stash and found this darker yellow and so this became weft number three. I liked it on the loom, but found that the stripes came out reading a different colour. I used the same green for my stripes as I used in the warp, but when it crossed this dark yellow it seems to read bluer somehow.
I didn’t love any of the new wefts and since this was my final tea towel I thought I’d take a chance and I switched my weft to a lime green. The lime had a bit of a blue tinge to it so I though it might work. I’m pleased with this one, it looks fresh and clean and now I wish I’d been brave sooner!

Needless to say I’m not in love with these tea towels and so I thought I’d forego my usual hand sewing on the hems and bring out the sewing machine. I’ve never done this before, but I just couldn’t see putting much more time into these tea towels that are now destined to be mailed to my son as they are the perfect colour to brighten up his apartment. I was really careful in my ironing before sewing and pinned the hems in place every 2 inches or so, but find that my stripes are not perfectly aligned, it seems to have gotten progressively worse as I sewed along the hem. Any suggestions on how to avoid this without purchasing a walking foot for my machine? Do I need to pin more frequently? I realize that it is the different speed between my feed dogs and the top layer of fabric, but if you have a fool proof method, please share!I also noticed after the fact that I’d hemmed one of the tea towels wrong side up and it’s really noticeable. Seems that this warp is one blunder after another!Here they are all together. From left to right is the lemon yellow weft, lime green weft, lemon yellow weft, dark yellow weft, lemon yellow weft and finally the butter yellow weft.

Here’s the draft:

Making A Move

2011-05-01T16:24:00.000-07:00

Those of you who read this blog on a regular basis can probably tell that there is a bit of a kafuffle going on. We usually post a blog about every 4-5 days and now it’s a scramble to get one blog a week!
We have been in the process of listing our home and so we have been extremely busy for the past three months. My husband, daughter and I have painted every interior room, re-trimmed, made two new closets and put hardwood floor on the only room that didn’t have it and styled the house like crazy folk. I swear we’ve cleaned like Will and Kate are honeymooning here! We finally got through the arduous process of choosing an agent and the house will hit our market on Tuesday…..whew! This is a photo of my studio as it was during the month of tear down – it looks like a bomb went off! I find that I’m the kind of person who doesn’t do well in clutter, so the past few months have been very difficult for me. But since I’m the kind of gal who likes to plan ahead ~ Ngaire and I pulled a bunch of warps in anticipation of this commotion and now we’ll start working our way through them.There are two tea towel warps, 5 scarves and 1 set of placemats to weave while we are tucked into a corner of the room that we are showing as the family room.I have a seven yard tea towel warp on the loom right now and I am just finishing towel number four. It’s a very graphic pattern for me and I’m able to vary the weft colour and so far have used three different yellows. This is a 2/8 unmercerized cotton warp in twill and it’s weaving up really quickly. I love this type of weaving as it gives me a chance to center myself and practice technique rather than concentrating on the pattern. I have used a broken twill for the two tone green stripes and two different yellows for the 2/2 twill portion and the broken twill gives a very interesting pattern due to the colour changes. I have also done weft stripes in green beginning three inches from the beginning of each towel to add interest.A member of the spinning study group that I belong to is in Nepal right now and so are these two hats. Her group is taking a dozen pair of new hiking boots for the lady guides they are using for their trek and she asked us to knit a wool hat to tuck into each pair of boots. These two are made using Merino and silk. I created the yarn variations by spinning more than five different pinks and purples at the same time. These are so soft; hopefully the ladies who receive them will like pink!

Plethora of Shibori

2011-04-25T20:39:00.000-07:00

We dyed the woven shibori scarves and forgot to take any photos of us doing it, don’t know what we were thinking; but you can go here to see the dyeing process . Here is a photo of all the dyed scarves patiently waiting the 24 hours before we wash the Procion MX dye out. The basin is filled to overflowing because we also dyed a number of silk hanks to use up the residual dyes. On the top of the rack are the 8 scarves rinsed, we don’t take out the Shibori threads until the scarves are dried.
The middle rack has some 1/12 silk that we dyed to go with some silk previously dyed for a colour study group. The silk that we dyed this time is the solid colours to go with the thick painted hanks and Mum has a really neat idea for the silk.
On the bottom rack is some more silk and the skein to the front of the photo is 2/20 Tencel that I am going to use for some bead leno scarves.
But you really want to see the scarves and here they are. We each dyed one of our scarves the same colour way but they came out radically differently.
The first set of scarves are dyed jade on one side and robin egg’s blue on the other.
The second set are dyed red violet on one side and teal on the other, my personal favourite.
The third set are fuchsia down the centre and royal blue on the edges.
The last two are for us and I did another pink one and Mum did yellow on one side and royal blue on the other. There was some weird colour mixing on Mum’s scarf so it shows a lot of olive green!
The scarves are all so different in the dyeing and in the texture that they produced. The plain weave scarves are all about the dyeing patterns. The twill scarves have a lot more texture that even with a hard pressing doesn’t come out.

It was a truly fascinating experience to weave the same thing as my Mum, it is interesting to see how we do things differently even though she taught me to weave and we weave on the same type of loom! Then to have the product dyed the same yet come out so different.

Burn Testing an Unknown Fibre

2011-04-16T15:22:00.001-07:00

Last fall when we purchase Ngaire’s Louet Spring I bought some great cotton and silk yarns and at the same time I got these very pretty shiny cones, now why is that not a surprise? I bought the whole stock of this yarn, because I'm a magpie and love shiny things! But what the heck is it? After a fruitless internet search, I decided that I’d better do a burn test to find out exactly what the fibre content is.I decided to run the test on known fibres to act as a base line and to ensure that I was doing the burn tests correctly. I chose to burn silk, linen, cotton and this unknown fibre. Armed with my Mary Blacks ‘Key to Weaving’ a box of matches and a plate I was ready for my burn tests. Silk was the first under the flame and it should burn with a sparkling orange yellow mantle. Silk should burn steadily with a slight sizzle then self extinguish. Linen was next in line and it should burn orange yellow and sparkle and crackle.Linen then smolders until self extinguishing. Cotton burns with yellow orange flame and leaves a delicate black or grey skeleton and emits wisps of bluish smoke. Cotton doesn’t self extinguish.Now it’s time for the Chyrsella, my mystery fibre. It exploded into flame and burned with a bright yellow flame and gave off black smoke. It burned so fast that I got of small speck of this napalm on my fingernail and OMG I hit the water pretty fast! The yarn ignites and burns very readily and is not self extinguishing and left a tarlike residue. I believe is Acrylic yarn. This is the result of my burn tests. It was a fun fibre exercise and I learned how to pay attention to details while you hold onto fire and ~ to always keep a bowl of water at hand! I had a bit of cotton warp left on my loom and I quickly wove up a sample with the red Chyrsella to see how it behaved. It stayed on the bobbin very nicely, unlike some rayon which can have a tendency to sproing off the bobbin. When I popped the sample in the water I was gob smacked by the smell! Weirdly, acridly, manmade is the only description that fits. The yarn was colour fast and when dried had no odour and a beautiful soft feel. The odour of the yarn when wet is something that I don’t think can be overcome, so this yarn will never be used in garments or table linens. I now have some very beautiful yarn that will be dedicated to weaving cards or wall hangings or whatever I can come up with…..but ohhhhh it’s so pretty!

Shibori Duet

2011-04-09T19:23:00.000-07:00

Mum and I did something that we have never done before . . . we wove the same thing at the same time! We were looking at the stash and noticed that we had a lot of natural cotton so woven Shibori was the perfect solution. I pulled both 10 yard warps in 2/8 natural cotton each with about 240 ends.Shibori is a traditional Japanese technique for dyeing cloth by stitching secondary threads into fabric and pulling the threads in a manner similar to smocking. After dyeing the secondary threads are pulled out. In woven Shibori the secondary threads are added during the weaving process instead of afterwards by hand. The weft for the scarves is natural cotton and the Shibori threads are Orlec. I learned that if you are doing a pattern with the Shibori picks it is best to use a colour that you can see; it helps to minimize mistakes as the pattern really shows clearly.The 10 yard warp is enough to do four scarves and two 12 inch samples. For each scarf I tried to do different 8 shaft twill treadling for the background in the natural cotton and a different twill pattern for the Shibori pattern picks. Mum was doing plain weave background with Monks’ Belt for the Shibori pattern on 4 shafts so it went really fast, so fast that by the time that I had done two scarves she had done four scarves! The finished scarves stretch from the living room to the dining room. Here is a closer look at two of the scarves, the one on the left is mine and the one of the right is Mum’s. The loops on the side are the Shibori picks and are used when gathering the scarves, like smocking. We had used the cotton before for dyeing and noticed that it had quite a bit of spinning oil that tended to discolour. So before we twizzled or gathered the Shibori picks we washed the scarves. We did this only because of the oiliness of the cotton. The samples on the top have not been washed and you can really see the difference. We wanted the fringe to also wash clean so we loosely braided them. After washing and drying we had to twizzle the fringes. Eight scarves and lots of little twists makes for a long two days of twizzling, thank goodness for a quadruple fringe twister! The scarves are now pulled and ready for dyeing. Before gathering they were five inches wide and now are about one inch wide. The next blog post is going to be about the exciting part, the dyeing and the reveal of the finished scarves.

Huck Butterflies

2011-04-01T05:55:00.000-07:00

Isn’t the scarf stunning?! I haven’t done a lace weave in a long time so I went looking for an idea and saw this butterfly in Best of Weavers – Huck Lace. The original draft was done on a 16 shaft loom and needs 17 treadles but I modified it using PCW Fiberworks down to 14 treadles, just perfect for my 12 shaft loom. The butterfly motif looks similar to the one in the book, but by shaft switching and modifying I really simplified and tightened up the motif. I wanted to make these scarves for summer wear so I modified my width and length. I chose to weave the scarves 5 inches wide and 50 inches long, this is a full 20 inches shorter than my usual scarf length. The warp and weft for my first scarf is 2/8 Bamboo in Red Violet. The butterflies are the star of the scarf so I wanted to have the warp and weft the same so there was nothing to distract the eye. The butterflies are quite large at almost 4 inches so I had a hard time figuring out placement. Finally I decided that I needed a strong visual; so I cut out pieces of paper in the correct size and measured out the length of scarf I wanted and played until the spacing was right. The scarf I used is one my mother made me in Italian silk ribbon and Tencel – pretty eh? One thing with doing an image on a scarf is that at the half way point the image has to be flipped so that when the scarf is worn both sides have the motif going in the same direction and that they match perfectly. I ended up weaving five butterfly motifs going in one direction and four going the other. I finished my scarf with hemstitching in small increments and then did a plaited fringe treatment. I think it really adds that special touch to the scarf. For the second scarf on the warp I decided to change things up a bit and I used 2/8 Tencel in an almost matching Red Violet for the weft. Bamboo is lovely and smooth but it is slightly matte and I thought that the having the same colour but with added shine would be interesting. I wove the scarf with the same motif placement, but the Tencel makes the huck floats shimmer and catch the light. I finished this scarf with the same plaited fringe treatment. The Tencel and bamboo scarf is slightly darker then the all bamboo scarf. They both have a lovely drape. It was my first time working with bamboo and it was a joy! I love this pictorial type of weaving and I’ll be working on a few original ideas for my next designs.

A Bevy Of Book Marks

2011-03-23T14:00:00.000-07:00

Last year a lovely member of the GCW Scarf Exchange popped a couple of hand woven book marks into the parcels she sent with her exchange scarf. A few months later I noticed that my husband was marking the page in his library book with a bit of ‘poopy paper’ and decided that I’d better address that situation post haste!

I guess it will come as no surprise to those who know me; but warping up any of my looms for such a small project didn’t get me very excited. Sooooo, instead of a single book mark warp I decided to put on five…. instead of finishing with four book marks, I made twenty for essentially the same weaving time! Yup I'm an overachiever!I was sure that I could put the five individual warps, with five individual threadings on my loom and weave them at the same time as long as the grist of the warp threads was the same or at least very close. That would ensure that I would keep the fell line level as I wove. Once I had decided on 2/20 as my warp grist it was a quick task to make all five 2 inch wide warps. The warps were only 2 yards long and had an average 96 ends. I decided to weave the book marks as a 12 shaft Twill Gamp.Figuring out what shuttle to use on these tiny warps was my most challenging problem. Then I remembered the E-Z Bobs that I bought to use with my Kumihimo plates and Lucet.These worked fantastically; they held enough weft to complete a single book mark, held the weft in place with the snap feature and they were light enough so that if they fell off the loom they didn’t yank the weft out! Perfect in every way…I found that the five book mark warps with two inches between them worked out to be exactly 22 inches in the reed, so that was a great workable width for me, I'm pretty small and I wanted this project to be fun, not a arm stretching workout!Tadaaaa, here they are in all their glory! These book marks worked up so fast and they were so much fun to weave, hemstitching each one is what took the longest! Some of my first weft choices didn't show the patterns as well as I'd have liked; I had hoped to use all singles silk, but the slight slubs in my silk blurred the pattern, so I changed to 2/8 tencel in strongly contrasting colours and found this much more successful. I planned enough warp for four 8 inch book marks with 2-1/2 inch fringes, plus loom waste. I treadled two book marks Advancing, one Rosepath and one M’s & W’s. Here’s a selection of my favourites from each warp.The gold 2/20 mercerized cotton was threaded Advancing Twill.The peach 2/20 mercerized cotton was threaded Networked Twill.The pink 2/20 linen was threaded Rosepath.The green 2/22 mercerized cotton was threaded Point Twill. The 2/16 mercerized purple cotton was threaded M’s & W’s and this one was the widest of all the book marks by 1/2 inch.

This project was fast and fun, fun, fun! I plan on doing another set for the GCW 2011 Exchange.

Using Wool Combs

2011-03-16T10:48:00.000-07:00

A number of years ago my husband Michael bought me a set of English Wool Combs for Christmas. I must admit that they’ve sat in their sweet little carry bag ever since!

My Spinning Study Group came to the part in Deb Menz’s book about combining colour on wool combs, so out came the combs….. I had been given 50 grams of Ashford Rainbow Dyed BFL locks that were perfect for this purpose. I sorted these locks into two colour ways, red/orange/yellow and blue/green/purple and fanned out the tips a bit as they were matted. For this tutorial I've used the best photos from both batches, so sometimes I'm working the red batch and sometimes the blue!

I weighed out the wool locks, my aim was to use only 20 grams at a time.

My combs are Four Pitch English Combs as they have four rows of hackles (these hackles are deadly sharp bronze pins). This particular set came with two combs, a protective sleeve, the base plate with C clamp and locking tool, a tubular straightening tool, a hook and a diz. To start either one of the combs is placed in the holder, hackles upward and locked into position.The locks are loaded onto the stationary comb; this is called ‘lashing on’ and each lock is placed on the upright comb, with about ½ inch of the lock in the hackles. Insert each wool lock with the cut end into the combs every time. Load the comb evenly about 2/3 full. The comb is now turned on its side, again locked in place on the base plate. Spray lightly with water to keep the static down before you begin and throughout this process as necessary. Take the second comb and using the very tip of the comb swing downward in a chopping motion through the tips of the locks on the secured comb, this is called ‘jigging’. Make sure you carry this motion through and don’t remove the comb until it has passed thought the locks, so that you don’t loop the fibres into a knot or force the fibre too far back into the hackles. Each time you do this motion you will only go through the very tip of the bundle on the combs and the second comb will pick up a small amount of wool from the stationary comb, you can see the fibres straightening out. Eventually most of the fibre will have been moved from one comb to the other. With my system I can then just trade the combs and repeat the process. I will comb these fibres 3 times because my goal is not only to create ‘sliver’ but to colour blend as well.

When I’m happy with the look of my combed fibre I shape the bundle with my hands into a tear drop shape then I start the ‘planking’ process. The idea behind ‘planking’ is to ensure that every part of the ‘sliver’ has the same quality of fibre, a nice mixture of lengths of fibre throughout, because the combs tend to pull off the longest fibres first. Put the stationary comb in the upright position to start this process. Then with your thumb and forefinger pinch a group of fibres and gently pull the wool away in a smooth motion. Leapfrogging with your fingers continue this until you have a length about 2 feet long. This sounds easier than it is; but if you don’t pull hard and pull really slowly, it does come off in a fairly neat long rope. Mine still have a thick and thin tendency, but in time I’ll get better! As the sliver comes off the comb lay them down, always laying them in the same direction.What’s left on the comb is all the noils, dirt and short fibres. I toss this away, but have heard of people adding this waste to carded batts and spinning it for novelty yarn. Really not my thing but there is quite a bit of waste (about 5%) and the frugal will despair! Now each of the lengths of sliver is lashed back onto an upright stationary comb by holding halfway down and swinging it down onto the comb and letting it run through your hands. Aim for long tails about 6-7 inches long. This is your last jigging and it’s really quick and easy at this stage. You can stop when you have equal amounts of fibre on each comb. Smooth the fibres into a beard shape pull the tip of the beard through the diz. I have a diz hook and it really helps. Gently draw off the fibre through the diz. I do the finger pinch leapfrog and pull the beard to the left then to the right as I pull off the sliver. I’ve found that if I keep pulling straight on I get grid lock! When it eventually thins out and breaks off I take each sliver and giving it a little twist as I wrap it around my hand to make a neat bundle. When you get to the end of the sliver, pop two fingers up and catch the end pulling it inside a bit. Just start spinning from this tip.

Here is my sliver all ready to spin! This is definately work for a process person!

Silk Pleats

2011-03-11T12:42:00.000-08:00

This post is about the second scarf that I made from the grey and white striped warp. It is also a pleated scarf.
When I was pulling the warp I noticed that the grey silk was a little sticky because of the texture of the yarn from the flecks of black and white. It was enough of a problem that I decided to keep the lease sticks in, I have never woven with the lease sticks in so I wasn’t sure how it would affect the shed. I was pleasantly surprised by the fact that I didn’t really notice a difference. I think because I use a countermarche loom that the double movement of the shafts really limited any affect that the lease sticks could have produced.
During the weaving of the first scarf, having the lease sticks in didn’t seem to be really needed and I was thinking about taking them off. I am really glad that I didn’t because by the time I was half through the second scarf I really needed those lease sticks. The far right stripe was the problem stripe, it was really sticky. But a quick thrumming and the warp was good to go.
For the second scarf, I used the grey silk as the weft. It was difficult to use because the yarn kept twisting on itself. I had to be really careful and watch each pick to make sure that the weft was straight. The grey weft really darkens the scarf. The weave structure in the grey stripes disappears but with the white stripes the twill is clearly showing. I don’t know why the end-feed shuttle is in the picture but it is the best photo I have showing the top of the scarf!
The bottom of the scarf is really dark. The texture of the grey silk is really showing up with the scarf and it makes for a really interesting scarf.
I wove up to the very last inch of the warp that I could. I was a little short because when I measured for loom waste with this loom I measured from the back of the reed in the resting position to the back of the heddles but that isn’t right. The shuttle can’t weave all the way to the reed, there is just no way so I have to add those couple of inches to my loom waste calculation. Because in the below photo you can see that I was really trying to get the couple of inches that I needed so the warping bar was pushing into the heddles!
This scarf is heavier then the scarf with the rayon weft. It also had a lot more texture; it is really reminiscent of a pebbled stream bed.
The two sides of this scarf are very different and that makes for a striking look.
I like making this style of scarf, it is easy weaving and yet so effective. They look really unusual and eye catching when displayed. These scarves in grey and white are monochromatic yet have a depth and texture to them that makes them an interesting addition to any wardrobe.

Free Form Weaving Part Two

2011-03-06T13:58:00.000-08:00

I loved weaving the first Free Form scarf I did in February and so I searched through my stash and found some 2/20 silk that I had dyed sometime last year. I dyed this silk by immersing it in a dye bath. Quite different from my ‘smooshing’ method on Free Form One where I work splashes of colour into the wet silk with my hands.I decided to use a tone on tone colour way with this scarf and it didn’t take me long to see that the single, slubby silk in bronze was not going to work!This was the wrong weft to use on two fronts, colour and texture! The colour masks the pattern and the slubby texture just made it look sloppy! With no remorse at all, I cut it out.I changed my weft to 2/10 black Tencel and was immediately much happier!Although you can’t see it, I tried to tame the frilling on my selvedges by adding 6 extra warp threads in tabby on each edge. Although it was a good idea, it still didn’t quite tame the tendency of the selvedges to torque as the pattern threads came close to the selvedge.I’d better tell you that I steered you wrong in my last post about this pattern. I said that it was treadled network twill; what was I thinking? I just didn’t look at my paperwork I guess! In fact these scarves are both treadled Taqueté or in other words in Turned Summer and Winter. Taqueté is typically treadled using repeating shafts alternating with tabby picks (41424142 51525152 for example, with tabby being 1 and 2). Mea Culpa! Thanks Ngaire for seeing my mistake, seems the apprentice has learned very well indeed!As I wove this scarf I again took liberties with my treadling pattern and went with repetitions of the parts of the pattern that please me at the time, so although there is continuity, the scarf has no pattern repeat. What a wonderful way to weave!I’ve accepted and enhanced the frilling edges and I’m more than happy with the results. I would weave this again in a heartbeat! I love the way the slight variations in the rust colour come through randomly in the warp, and the pattern pops these variations to the surface without showing streaks of colour.

I can't wait to do it again!

Silk Ruffles

2011-03-01T09:14:00.000-08:00

Last year I made two pleated scarves, one in black and white and the other in shades of pink. They both sold in the first sale that they were shown in so Mum and I decided that the style of scarf should be redone.

I am trying to be smarter this year about pulling enough warp for two scarves, not only is it more economical but it is a time saver also. Although it can be hard because I want to make the scarves different so finding two wefts for the scarves can be difficult. I am going to be talking about only one scarf in this post and a different scarf from the same warp in another post in a couple of days.

The woven structure of this style of scarf makes pleats; colour is used to accentuate the pleats. Going through the stash a matte grey silk with flecks of white and black was really calling to me, it is a slightly textured yarn. I added a very smooth white rayon to add shine to the scarves. In the photo you can see my new tape measure that I got for Christmas, it’s pink!
Each stripe is one inch wide and there are nine stripes total. I started and ended with the white rayon because the grey silk has a lot of texture and it could have made for messy edges. Even before weaving, you can see pleats forming.
The humps are made from the tension between two different twills. The white stripes are 3/1 twill and the grey stripes are 1/3 twill. In the picture the slight cupping can be seen.
For the first scarf the weft is the white rayon. On the top of the scarf the white weft really made the grey stripes subdued and a lot of the texture and the flecks of colour was lost. I was really worried out my choice of weft.
But when I could see the back of the scarf I was happy. The grey silk was prominent and showy. I like how it pops against the white.
After washing, the scarves needed to lay flat. They need to be pulled lengthwise to even out the pleats. Halfway through that drying process they need to be flipped so the pleats can be rounded on both sides. To help make to pleats even, the handle of a wooden spoon was used to run up and down the furrows of the pleats.
The finished scarf measures 3” across, which is amazing since it started out at 9”! The pleats give the scarf an amazing draping affect. The scarf has a lovely movement and it just seems to fall into place.
I can’t wait to show the next scarf, it is the same but different!

JST Weaving Exchange - Results

2011-02-26T12:07:00.000-08:00

Way back in November I joined the Jane Stafford Tea Towel Exchange on Ravelry and wove these towels.
Yesterday the long awaited parcel arrived! I'm thrilled, the weaving quality is stellar and the colours chosen are fantastic - really inspirational. Here they are for you to see!

The first is a Plain Weave Towel in soft blue, peach and turquoise is from Val in Powell River, BC. Next is a Swedish Lace towel is called 'Banana Cream Pie' from Cathy in Alaska, USA.
This Plaid beauty in red, orange, yellow and blue is from Toni in Vancouver, BC. And a Twill and Basket Weave in vibrant yellow, lime, black and soft green from Sandra in Vancouver BC. My fifth towel is a very thirsty looking eight shaft Turned Twill from Debbie in Lousiana, USA.
The sixth and final towel is an amazing Plain Weave Colour Gamp in orange, blue, lime, fuschia, yellow, teal, black and violet! The photo's just don't do it justice! This comes from Jan in North Saanich BC.

Here's the group shot....I'm totally stoked at the vibrancy and beauty, I can't wait to do it again!Thought you might enjoy the wee poem I posted on Ravelry to express my thanks.

The postman dropped the package off, I really have to say,

That I’m one happy weaver gal with what I got today,

The tea towels that were sent to me are such a great display,

Of weaving ingenuity with colours bright and gay

A collective ‘Thanks’ to everyone from places far away,

And to JST for hosting this I’ll shout a big hooray!

Drall Planet

2011-02-20T20:08:00.000-08:00

I did another Drall scarf on the same warp as the first, this time it is lemongrass green across the flaxen warp. I wanted the scarf to be quite different from the sienna coloured scarf, so I did different hemstitching. It was my first time using Italian hemstitching and it was quite easy to do.

I had a technical issue with this scarf though! There was a bobbin with some lemongrass green Tencel on it left over from another project so I used it to start the scarf. I used a boat shuttle then when the bobbin ran out I switched to a pirn and an end feed shuttle. I wove about 2 inches and the edges were noticeably different, there was much more draw in with the bobbin.
I had to unweave the portion that I had woven with the end feed shuttle. And I had to continue to weave the scarf with a boat shuttle. I wound the bobbin from the pirn because I have always wanted to know how much a pirn can hold and how much a bobbin can hold. I filled a very full bobbin; it was almost too full, it had problems moving in the boat shuttle. The bobbin held about ¾ of the weft on the pirn. Weaving went much better once I went back to the boat shuttle and I've learned to keep with the same shuttle through a project because there is difference between boat shuttles and end feed shuttles! Below is a picture of the scarf on the loom, the colours are not true.
Like last time I had some rules that I used to make sure that this scarf would look different from the sienna orange scarf. There are three basic units to weave, the outline lines, the squares and the background. The outline lines were two pattern repeats and the squares had to touch the outline lines. Again I followed no set pattern, I just wove what I liked for as long as I liked. First is the lemongrass green side of the scarf.
The other side of the scarf is more golden with lovely lemongrass squares.
The Italian hemstitching looked a little small in scale to the scarf so I had to come up with something in the fringe to help. I saw this technique done on a shawl at a Shuswap Guild sale and I really liked it. So after a lot of trial and error I figured it out and it really adds the extra element that the scarf needed. The picture shows the true colours of the scarf.
It is really hard to get this scarf to photograph with true colours, but the lovely shine does come through! Below is the primarily golden side.
Below is the primarily lemongrass side.
I like the depth of colour with this colour combination. Also having the freedom to weave as I want was wonderful too.

When you google Drall the first links are about Star Wars and the aliens called Drall from the planet Drall in the Corellian System. Mum and I like to name our scarves so for these two scarves I have named them Corellia and Selonia.

Free Form Weaving

2011-02-16T15:47:00.000-08:00

I’m fascinated with the way that a weave structure, which is basically right angle intersections can appear to have curves and undulations. I ‘ve recently smoosh dyed some 2/20 silk in turquoise and purple and since the colour splotches had some curve to them I decided to see if I could enhance the effect.This photo doesn't have the best colour, but the photos later on capture the wonderful colours.I chose to thread the loom as advancing twill that moved only in one direction. Basically I did small inverted v’s climbing upward and never going downward. This creates a staircase effect. My treadling was in the network manner. I used 2/20 black tencel and treadled a long curve separated by alternating tabby picks. The tabby gave the scarf structure and allows the pattern to develope without the need for stability.I did have a general pattern, but as the scarf began to emerge I grabbed the opportunity to do some free form weaving. The colours in the photo above are a bit off, but you can really see the pattern changes. I stuck to the general pattern, but if I liked the look of what I was weaving I could repeat it as I liked.

I love this technique, it’s quite liberating to be able to just go with the flow and see what happens. The curving weft did create one small problem…wavy selvedges! As the weft moves across the warp, some threads have long sections when they are not in use for patterning, so they tend to lie flat, but when the weft gets close to the selvedges they curve. By the way this is the true colour.I tried to press the selvedges flat, but they really wanted to wave. So then I tried my corded selvedge treatment, but this didn’t seem to be able to tame the beast either. I decided to embrace the beauty of three dimensions and so I sprayed the selvedges with water and finger enhanced the curves!I love it, it’s such a beautiful scarf and I’ve decided that it’s perfect for me. The fringes were twizzled using four bouts of threads, so the fringe has a wonderful round appearance.I love this pattern so much I have tied on another bout of dyed 2/20 silk.

Flaxen Beauty

2011-02-12T12:10:00.000-08:00

When I design a project I usually pick a weave structure that I want to do but this time I started with colours that I wanted to use. They are gold and taupe, which really lend themselves to being warp. I tried a Fibonacci sequence but it really muddied the weave structure so I ended up with a 1 and 1 sequence of the gold and taupe. The colour of the warp is just amazing! As I took the picture of the warp I realized that the colours are the colours in the wood of my loom!
I am totally obsessed with using all of the 12 shafts on my loom; if they are there they must be used! So when I saw an eight shaft Drall that I liked, I developed my own 12 shaft Drall and I knew that I had to weave it.
The weft is orange, a lovely pumpkin colour. It warms up the warp and brings out the depth of colours. I like the fact that the Drall makes a reversible scarf; it is like having two really different scarves from which to choose. I am not sure what side I like the best, I can’t really decide until the scarf is off the loom.
I wove the scarf with no set pattern; I had three basic units to weave which are the outline lines, the squares and the background. As I wove I just did what I liked for as long as I liked. I had some rules that I made up so that the scarf had a consistent look and also because I am weaving a second scarf that I wanted to be different. The rules are that the outline lines could only be only one pattern repeat and that the squares could not touch the outline lines, they must be separated by the background. The fringe was finished by doing a quadruple fringe twist. Each twist has the same number of the gold and taupe but the way that they combined in the twisting made for each strand to look different. The four strands make a lovely round cord which makes for juxtaposition between the squares and lines of the scarf. Below is the picture of the orange side of the scarf
Below is the picture of the golden side of the scarf
I think that I like the golden side of the scarf best; I love the floating orange squares and the striking lines. This scarf defines classic elegance!

Piano Duet

2011-02-06T18:44:00.000-08:00

Lola Louet was naked for less then an hour before I had her beamed with the Chenille warp for the second batch of piano scarves. And an hour after that I was ready to weave again! There is something to say for 6 epi!
I had to change the pattern a little bit because there is slightly different shrinkage between a Tencel warp and a chenille warp, the thickness of the warp also made a difference and I wanted the scarves to end up the same width as my first batch of piano scarves.
I finished both of the piano scarves and they were the same length! Although I still had a lot of warp left. I carefully measured and I had enough to do another scarf! The last warp I did for the piano scarves was the same length as this one and I had run out of warp, go figure! As the only difference is that I had sampled, so the only explanation I have is that the evil sampling gnome ate my warp on the first set of scarves!

I didn’t want to do another piano scarf so I came up with the idea to do a scarf with a barcode. I sat down with a can of tomato soup (the famous one) and wrote down the barcode and then I expanded it so it would be about 1/3 of the scarf length.
It was a lot of fun to weave the barcode scarf and it wove up very quickly which was a nice change from the painstakingly slow piano pattern. At the end of the warp I had about 8” left!
Here is a photo of the barcode scarf off the loom. I wanted the scarf to be mostly white with the barcode on one side. It's really very graphic and I wanted to balance the stripes with the white. I really love this scarf and the whole barcode idea and I think that I will expand the idea in the future.
Below is a picture of the two piano scarves and they look great, even if I do say so myself!
The finished scarves have lovely drape and a fantastic feel to them. I can’t show you the finished scarves because I forgot to take pictures of them and they were gone very quickly! I can’t believe it! But here is a photo of the Barcode scarf and you can get an idea of the lushness of the other scarves.

Swing Coat Completion

2011-02-01T11:59:00.000-08:00

Finally, my swing coat is complete. Well, finished enough to post, but there are still a couple of finishing tweaks to take care of. I haven’t been able to find the kind metal clasp closures I envisioned at Fabricland which is the only sewing notions store in the Okanagan Valley! I’m either going to have to put on some big buttons with loops or search the internet for options! Here’s a photo of the coat with no closures. Thank you to my lovely model, Ngaire!The coat itself turned out pretty much like the pattern photo, but my fabric is still a bit stiff and so it doesn’t have quite the flow and swing that I was looking for. I’m confident that after having been worn a few times it will drape a little more.

My second problem is that I’d really like to top stitch the front of the jacket from hem right around the collar to the other hem. This will ensure that the facing stays where it should. My problem? The presser foot of my sewing machine won’t open enough! This means tracking down someone with an industrial machine to do it, or taking a hammer to the fabric to see if I can flatten it enough to get under the presser foot – daunting to say the least!The collar turned out so much better than I’d hoped. I did the general collar shape from the pattern, but elongated the pattern piece to make the collar have deeper, wider points .I then cut a smaller piece of a similar shape and layered it on top gathering it to soften the whole look. This is makes the swing coat a bit more individual and adds a modern touch, I think.I lined the coat with winterized satin lining in navy the same shade as the collar. The inside of the satin lining has a flannel like finish that adds an additional layer of warmth. It has a very luxurious feel and weight.

Here’s how the project started out… This is Alice Schleins network twill pattern from " The Best of Weavers - Twill Thrills".Warp Description

Warp Yarn: Wool
Count: 2 ply medium
Color: Alternating navy and black
Warp Length: 6 yards – only 5 yards woven as I ran out of weft
Warp Width: 33 inches
Set: 10 epi
Reed: 10 dent
Sley: 1 per dent
# Ends: 330 plus 2 floating selvedges

Weft Description

Weft Yarn: Wool
Count: 2 ply medium
Color: Natural – 2 different dye lots

The take up and shrinkage was 10% overall. I machine fulled the yardage and then air dried and pressed before placing the pattern pieces.
Next time I would sett the yarn at 8 epi and full a bit more...., but other than that I'm pretty good with the finished product.

Sewing Along

2011-01-27T18:59:00.000-08:00

My Polka Drop fabric was woven some time ago, and now it’s time to move on with the sewing, not my strong suit by any means. I’m a competent seamstress, but not an intuitive one, so it's a real challenge for me.

I found two patterns that I liked a lot. The Butterick pattern is a reproduction of a 1952 pattern and I love, love, love it – but it didn’t have set in sleeves or a separate collar. The sleeves and the collar were attached to the back and the front, so they were huge pattern pieces. The Burda pattern had separate sleeves and collar pieces, so this was the basic pattern that I used.When I did my final fabric inspection I found a skip float that was about 12 inches in from the selvedge right across the whole width of the fabric! I had to use every square inch of my 30 inch wide fabric, so to make sure that I didn’t forget it, I marked it with red thread.With a lot of messing around I managed to get the error right at the end of the sleeve, so it would be on the inside hem - whewwwww.

I tried laying the pattern pieces every way I could think of on my doubled fabric, but I just barely had enough to handle the four major pieces. This didn’t leave a lot of fabric unused and what was left was in small pieces and I didn’t have enough left over for my collar!

There wasn't much left over at all, and what was left was oddly shaped and the collar pieces just wouldn't fit!I decided to purchase some navy velvet to use for the collar.

Not only would this allow me to customize the collar to make the coat unique but it would overcome any fabric scratchiness around the neck and face. Here is the jacket at the based stage and other than being too big for my model - it's looking good.I made a huge effort to line up the dots on the back of the jacket, isn’t Ngaire a great model in that perfect hand to the collar pose? Originally I'd hoped to have this swing jacket unlined, so that the reverseable fabric could be seen, but after cutting I knew this was not going to be. Now to sit down and attack the lining and collar!

Taming the Savage Beast

2011-01-20T18:23:00.000-08:00

I think that I am using almost all the weird and wonderful shuttles that we have weaving these piano scarves. For the hem I am using black 2/20 Cotton/Tencel to reduce the bulk and I am using an end feed shuttle, although I just took a picture of the pirn because Mum is using both shuttles for her tea towel warp!
At the ends of the scarves I am doing a solid black section to represent the piano and to give a clear definition of the keyboard. I am using black chenille and I am using a LeClerc doubling shuttle because the rest of the scarf is done as clasped weft which is a double pick so the end of the scarf needs to be done doubled also to give the same weight and look to the scarf. I am not using floating selvedges so throwing the shuttle twice was not practical.
The other shuttle that I am using is the Howell’s Little Man because it has the longest bobbin, 8¼ inches. I can get all the white chenille that I need for one scarf on the bobbin. The shuttle is also great because the side slit is as long as the bobbin so there is no pulling on the yarn as it comes out. On some shuttles the opening is too short and the angle that the yarn is forced into stops any movement.
One of the great benefits to clasped weft is that the second weft is used when it is still on the cone, so my fourth shuttle is actually a cone sitting at my feet!
Disaster has struck, I have run out of warp and I still need to weave 20 inches. The warping bar is touching the heddles but if I can extend the warp I can finish the scarf. So with my Mum’s help we cut each warp thread and knot a purple thread 40 inches long to either side of the cut warp thread.
The view from the back is not so bad but the front is scary. To keep the back neat and tidy we pulled the warp forwards and it looked like a tangled mess.
It look a long time to finish because we had to be careful to make sure that the extender threads were the same length and that we were knotting at the same length also because it affects the warp tension. But I was able to finish the scarf although I had to shorten the scarf by 6”. By the end the knots were just touching the back of the reed!
Because the scarves are two different lengths I don’t feel that I can give them to the person that commissioned the scarves so I am planning on doing the scarves again; this time I'll be using 100% chenille.
The scarves look fantastic and overall I am happy with them. They are very striking and make for a very graphic punch when placed with the other scarves that we have for sale.

Music from the Loom

2011-01-16T16:27:00.000-08:00

I received my first commission for scarves in November but I couldn’t blog about them earlier because they were destined to be Christmas presents. But I wrote the blog as I was doing it so here is the blog in the present tense because when I tried to put it into past tense it read really funny/bad.

The commission is for scarves that look like a piano keyboard, which is a really nifty idea. The idea is to use clasped weft because it would be the same on both sides, if I used double weave one side would look like a piano but the other side would have the colours reversed.

The warp is 2/20 Cotton/Tencel because I am hoping that the white warp will be hidden by the chenille that I am using for the weft. The picture below shows the warp and the clasping of the wefts.
I actually sampled, I had to because I wasn’t sure if the weft was going to cover the warp and I had to figure out the pattern, and I wanted to have the keys the correct size after washing. I don't have a piano, so I went to the internet and printed off a real keyboard. I copied it exactly, right down to the note/half note placement. I did two samples, the first I had black chenille as my floating selvedges because I was trying to hide the black chenille going up the side when I didn’t need it but it just looked messy on both sides, so I nixed that idea. The second sample was without the floating selvedges and it looks cleaner and I also changed the pattern a little. In the picture below is both samples, the first sample is the background and has been washed. The second sample had not been washed so I could get an idea of the shrinkage.
I developed the pattern on the warp because there isn’t a really good way to graph the keys. I used a picture of a keyboard and carefully wrote down the pattern. At the end I had the main pattern repeat having steps A through X, with a step having 5 to 8 picks. It is a long repeat and it takes me about an 1 hour to do, by the end I was a little faster but it was still slow going.
Here is a little peek of the scarf. It looks very neat!
The first scarf is finished, although still on the loom, and I am starting on the second. Watching a piano grow on my loom is a little surreal but fun! Stay tuned, the second installment will be soon!

A Fresh Snowfall of a Scarf

2011-01-08T11:58:00.001-08:00

With the Snowflake Twill Scarf off the loom, I faced a little problem. The warp had been hand painted so there was a lot of variation of colours in the fringe and I didn’t want to end up with a candy cane effect in the fringe. So my solution is to make a fringe with lots of thin twizzles. If I could go back and repaint the scarf I would make sure to paint the fringe area in one solid colour.The fringe looks really nice, the colours are clear and there is only a little candy caning but it only really can be seen close up. Because there are so many twizzles in the fringe and so many colours I don’t think that I am going to be beading this fringe. The scarf is a really interesting piece. The plum and navy splashes highlight different parts of the pattern which makes it truly attention grabbing. Weaving this scarf was a challenge because each snowflake has to be the same size. It was all about having the same beat every hour of every day of weaving which is really hard to do. I took a lot of measurements as I was going but I still had to do some unweaving! But the effort is really worth it; in both the scarf and my new awareness of my beat. The scarf has a lovely drape; it makes an almost liquid puddle. After washing that scarf was really stiff but after beating the scarf against the couch the gorgeous drape magically appears. I learned a lot about weaving with this scarf. I learned how to design a snowflake twill; it is almost as much fun watching the snowflakes appear on a computer screen as weaving one is! I also have a new awareness of my beat which I am going to be developing and improving this year, I hope!

Knitting and Stuff

2011-01-02T15:30:00.000-08:00

I'm really look forward to a New Year and all the optimism that goes with it. All the opportunites to start fresh armed with all my weaving resolutions I can't go wrong...right?

I’m still on a stash busting frenzy….so while I was weaving my yardage I was also knitting a pocket scarf for Ngaire. This is to go with a sweet little black boiled wool jacket that due to the peplum doesn’t have pockets. I didn’t use a pattern for the construction of this scarf because I was using my own handspun merino and figuring out gauges can be difficult with the variations in handspun. I decided to knit both sides of this scarf at the same time to ensure that both sides would be the same length….nothing worse than running out with one side only half the length of the other! Nahhhh, I've never done that!I started with a pattern called ‘candle pattern’ in my knitting book for the pockets and when I had the pockets deep enough I changed to stocking stitch for the back of the pockets, so they would lay flat and not catch on rings. I love the way the top of the pocket frills out. When I had the back of the pockets completed, I changed back to ‘candle pattern’ for the front of the scarf. When it looked like I had just about used up my yarn, I switched to a 3x3 rib for about 6 inches on each side. This was to make the scarf thin enough to sit nicely under a collar. Now came the hard part …I tried to do ‘Kitchener stitch’ and sat down and followed an excellent Youtube tutorial only to find that I’d knitted one side right side up and the other upside down….I was following a tutorial for doing the toe of socks….duh, no wonder it didn’t work!I scrapped that idea and used my own finishing technique. I decided to graft the stitches together with a nice pink seed bead….cute eh? And just perfect to keep the scarf weighted at the nape of Ngaire's neck.

Now onto something weaving related. I usually weave with an end feed shuttle and pirns, so when I was winding these bobbins I followed the same procedure as when I wind a pirn.When I wind my pirns I start off with the first bit of the yarn tucked into the hole in the pirn and then wind away….when I put the pirn on the end feed shuttle I just keep the wee bit tucked inside and away I go. This did not work with my bobbins….I was weaving away happily and then I came to a grinding halt….seriously, stopped dead in my tracks!

Seems that the wee bit of yarn didn’t stay tucked in as it does with a pirn, it wound itself tightly around the bobbin shaft on the shuttle and refused to budge.Lesson learned….clip that wee bit of sticking out yarn off before beginning to weaveI find it quite amazing that this tiny bit of yarn could cause me so much grief!

Loom Snow!

2010-12-27T21:59:00.000-08:00

Mum and I dyed some silk warps in October with Procion MX and I have used one warp (Blog Part 1 and Part 2) and have one left. This one is 2/20 Bombyx silk dyed Moss, Plum and what was supposed to be Steel Gray but turned out to be Navy blue. I dyed the silk in patches that were shaped in triangles because I wanted more movement between the colours of the warp, no straight lines across the warp. The weft is slubby singles silk also dyed Moss, it is on the outside of the circle of the warp in the picture below. There was a little trouble with the weft; we pulled the weft on the warping board 3 yards long but no cross. It dyed beautifully but getting the weft into a ball was a little painful. The weft had to be draped over the warping board and gently teased out if it was pulled to vigorously it tangled! The weft is really pretty, lots of different shades of green and some browns even. It truly looks like moss. And I loaded a beautiful looking pirn that I just had to take a picture of because, well, it is rare that the pirn looks this good!
In the picture below the jagged warp painting can be seen. I really like Procion MX dye because the dyes are really well behaved, they stay where you put them so there is little to no bleeding therefore little to no muddying of the colours. The pattern for the scarf is a snowflake twill. It is one that I designed myself because there isn’t a lot of 12 shaft patterns! Looking at the back of the loom you really can see the pattern appearing in the heddles.
The snowflake is really pretty I like the big table in the centre, I just counted and there are 12 diamonds which I think is cool! There is a lot of texture to the pattern.
This is the first time that I have woven a snowflake twill and I can see why people love them. Watching the pattern appear with each pick thrown is really rewarding. Also the colours in the warp and how they are interacting with the snowflake is really fascinating.

Creating Polka Drops

2010-12-18T15:30:00.000-08:00

I love this photo, when these shapes appeared in the heddles, I really got a great foreshadowing of my yardage project. I put on 6 yards of warp 30” in the reed, alternating navy and black 2 ply sport weight weaving wool. As I mentioned in my last post, the weft yarns I chose to use were quite different from each other both in colour and ever so slightly in grist. The only way I could effectively use them was to alternate picks as I wove to ensure that I used both wefts up at the same time and so that they blended in the cloth. I kept each of the wefts separate by labeling one of the shuttles ‘dark’. This helped me to keep track when I wove in the evenings and the light was less than perfect because they really did look alike at first glance. I was lucky to have 2 Leclerc rag shuttles that had been modified for extra large bobbins, so I could really load up the weft.I have woven this pattern several times in the past as scarves, but modified to fairly large grist wool has made the spots less distinct, so I’m calling this yardage Polka Drops as the dots looks a bit splattered to me! This is an 8 shaft network twill created by Alice Schlein and found in Twill Thrills. Polka Drops wove up quite quickly at 10 epi and 10 ppi, but I was definitely slowed down by the constant shuttle switching….what a pain! I was quite disgusted whenever I looked under my loom too….dustbuffaloes abounded. Seriously huge drifts of dark fibre everywhere I looked! The roll of yardage was really quite substantial and stood quite well on its own. Here is Polka Drops unfurled…..I ran out of weft at 5-1/2 yards so I wove up ½ yard with a mid blue weft. I don’t think that my calculations with the McMorran Yarn Balance were off at all, I just didn’t anticipate the amount of stretch that would occur due to weaving under tension. Not sure what purpose I’ll get out of my wee bit of blue yardage, but the main portion is destined to be a 1952 style swing jacket….

McMorran Yarn Balance

2010-12-14T16:36:00.000-08:00

My stash has been an ongoing thorn in my side...particularly the older wool that I've managed to accumulate. I've noticed that it just sits on the shelf muttering to itself! I'm getting quite tired of the constant dirty looks that go along with the muttering that I've been getting, so with that in mind I decided that a wool yardage project was the thing to do - that'll shut it up and give me a bit of respite! Granted the Condon's factory closed wayyyyyy back when, but I was getting to it!

When I took down my medium grist wool bin (it was the loudest of the bunch) I found that I had about 1 pound of medium weight natural and about 1.5 pounds of sport weight natural. These are essentially the same weight, but they were slightly different colours of natural.

I also had 1 pound of black sport weight and 1.5 pounds of navy sport weight. I was beginning to get a glimmer of an idea for the wool yardage, but what would the ends per inch be and how much yarn would I need? Just how many yards per pound were there in each skein? The ends per inch were easily figured out by wrapping a 1" ruler but I couldn't start a project unless I was sure that I had enough warp and weft to complete it, so out came my McMorran Yarn Balance.

The McMorran Yarn balance is a small clear plastic cube with a lid and with a bit of sponge in the bottom which has a small lever arm tucked into it, you can still see the mark where the lever arm sits for storage. This tool will tell you the approximate yards per pound of any fibre. First off you pull out the lever arm and place the fulcrum point in the middle of the pivot on the notches dug into the top of the McMorran balance.

To start the process you cut about a 12 inch piece (more if it's very fine yarn) of yarn and place it on the lever arm, as you can see in the photo above, it's way out of balance. You just keep snipping off wee bits of yarn.

Finally after being quite ruthless I've got the balance arms pretty well level. Good enough for a gal like me at any rate!

As you can see, there was a lot of yarn snipped off, taking the piece of yarn off the lever arm is the next step.

You measure the wee bit of yarn left in inches and then multiply the result by 100, so in this case the result is that my 2 ply medium wool has approximately 800 yards per pound.

I did the same process for each of the different yarns and found that I had 1000 yards per pound with the sport weight yarn. With this information in hand, I could plan my yardage project with confidence!

Despite what Blogger says, this was posted by Lynnette, photos courtesy of Ngaire

Transparency Workshop

2010-12-08T20:08:00.000-08:00

I went to my first weaving workshop, it was on transparency. Transparencies are supplementary weft inlay on a sheer background, usually plain weave. The inlay techniques are used to create shapes and textures. I went mainly because I’d never been to a workshop before not because of what was offered. I didn’t have much interest in wall hangings . . . then!

In the mail I received the warp, which was beautifully tied up with different coloured ties to aid with the warping, I should have taken a photo! The warp was 12/1 linen. I have never used linen was warp so I was surprised by the liveliness of the linen. We also used the same linen as the tabby weft.

The first inlay technique is called Greek inlay (can also be called French inlay). It produces an intense block of colour. And on the left side you can see where I pulled the inlay weft too tight and it pulled the warp thread out of place. The first photo is on the loom and woven with the wrong side up.
The second photo is off the loom and right side up. The second technique is called Twill inlay. The inlay weft is laid down in a 3/1 twill. It produces a lighter coverage of colour but the texture and movement of the twill adds interest.
The first photo is on the loom and woven with the wrong side up.
The second photo is off the loom and right side up. The third technique is Greek inlay 2. It has double rows of tabby weft (the linen) which makes for a more diffuse colour.
The first photo is on the loom and woven with the wrong side up.
The second photo is off the loom and right side up. Here is a picture of the first three techniques and you can see that the coverage and colour is getting diluted.
The fourth technique is Ryss Weave, which has a three thread float. We were weaving with the wrong side of the transparency on top; a lot of these techniques can be used both ways. So on the top of the block I have flipped the pattern so now the three thread floats on the wrong side.
The next is Dukagang, which has two samples. The only difference is the number of tabby wefts between the inlay. It has a stacked block appearance, good for images.
The second sample.
My favourite style of the day was the Finnish techniques, there are four of them and I really liked all of them. The first makes little blocks of colour.
The second makes stacks of colour.
The third has a diagonal movement to it.
The fourth makes stacks of colour with a longer float then the second.
I was the only person to finish a cartoon that day. I did a butterfly in blue chenille. I used the third Finnish technique for the wings and Greek inlay for the body. Only up close can you see the difference. The white thread on the right hand side is the thread that I used to stitch the cartoon to the warp, it makes using the cartoon really easy to use.
When I got home I still had some warp left so I did some more cartoons, another two butterflies and two birds. Below the butterfly’s wings were done with Twill inlay and the body was Finnish inlay 1. The inlay weft is silk, both the green and orange.
The second butterfly was entirely done in the Ryss method. Again the inlay weft is silk.
The kiwi was done in Greek inlay and the inlay weft is chenille.
The shallow was done in Finnish inlay 1. The inlay weft is blue chenille and the beak is orange silk.
I was really excited at the end of the day and I really like transparencies. I have visions of transparencies in my future!

Another Silk Thread

2010-12-04T21:12:00.001-08:00

I just noticed that I’d forgotten to update you about the raspberry and orange silk scarf . My last post showed it on the loom, but now it’s completed. I’ve beaded the scarf with glass beads that mirror the different colours and shades of colours in the scarf.
When I was smoosh dyeing the scarf I didn’t even think about matching the halves of the scarf and so I was delighted (read giddy with relief!) when I saw that it does mirror image. In the picture it looks like there is a white outline to the colours but it is just hue variations, paler tones. The scarf definitely has two sides. The warp dominate side is on the left hand side and shows all the lovely colours. The weft dominate side really shows the pattern. The pattern is a 12 shaft dropped tabby that looks like an undulating twill. The pattern repeat is quite small and it really allows the painted warp to show through.
The process I used when dyeing the scarf also added interest to the scarf because the dye was applied with a lighter hand at the beginning. So the colours get darker along the length of the scarf.
One thing that I would change about this scarf is that I would have painted the warp on more of an acute angle to make the colour patches more jagged. I could have pulled some of the individual warp threads to make it more jagged, and I would do that next time. But the scarf is still very beautiful and I’m really happy with it and looking forward to weaving smooshed silk scarf number two!

Trading Traditions Part Two

2010-12-02T11:55:00.000-08:00

When I pulled the exchange tea towels off the loom, did a quick machine zigzag and tossed them in the washer and dryer. I made myself a lovely cappuccino, OK it was instant, but really, really good; and sat down to hand hem.Again, best laid plans and all that … I couldn’t get my pins through the hems because there was too much texture to keep the hems in line. It was difficult to get a photo showing the texture, but the pattern didn’t line up flat, it humped and bumped all over the place.My only recourse was to haul out ‘McSteamy’ and give it a pre-press! I really love my Singer Steam Press and it does make pretty easy work of pressing. I take my item; from a napkin to a table cloth I do the same thing. I make small accordion folds in the fabric. And tuck it into the space between the raised presser arm and the bottom plate. Then I simply press as much as fits on the plate, and move it forward incrementally. If it’s wide like a table cloth I move laterally along the length before pulling it forward. I really hate buying a commercial table linen only to find that after the first washing it’s no longer square….so I take a few extra minutes and make sure that I’m starting out straight and square. I just find some line in my weaving – whether it’s a pattern line or a colour line and make sure it’s spot on before I press.I can’t believe how much the texture flattened out. It sure made hemming much easier, but of course after it’s washed a time or two the texture will pop back up, which is exactly what I want in a tea towel, nice and thirsty!Now I’m done, done, done! Pretty as a picture, don’t ya think?

Trading Traditions

2010-11-29T10:58:00.000-08:00

I joined the Jane Stafford Textiles (JST) tea towel exchange on Ravelry last month, mostly because my friend Susan suggested it, but also because I just love exchanges. I am the exchange coordinator for the Guild of Canadian Weavers and I find it so exciting to see what weavers out of my area are producing.

The first participant to post her colours chose some lovely yellows, greens and black, her inspiration was a beautiful photo of laburnum flowers. So, running with her flower theme I decided to use the lilac bush in my garden with pink tulips growing under it as my inspiration. Not wanting to reinvent the wheel, I used the same pattern as I used in my Stainless Steel tea towel warp, just changed up the colours and the colour placement.
The tea towel exchange called for 6 towels to be sent to the coordinator in February, so I pulled a 13 yard warp so that I could have a few extras. And being one of the ‘better too early than too late’ group I started right away.I used a new to me warping board, a 14 yard Leclerc and although it did the job, it had a hidden design problem. I pulled the warp in two separate bouts, and as you can see from the photo, the pegs on the warping board canted inward as the warp was added. Seems that as I piled up the warp, they just kept pulling in…..I lost almost 10 inches of warp from the first pass to the last over the 13 yards! You can clearly see in this photo the start of each bout and the end....amazing. This is not something that has ever happened to me before, so I don't believe that I pulled too tightly as I made the bouts, just bendy pegs I think! I’m going back to my old warping board, that’s for sure! The warp did pull on beautifully though and I just love the look of the warp through the built in raddle on Lily Louet! I decided to weave the first 6 tea towels, those intended for the JST exchange, using white weft with different coloured plaid stripes for each pair. Two have 3 green stripes at each end, two have 3 pink stripes at each end and two have 3 purple stripes at each end, each towel is 36 inches long. Then for myself I wove 2 using lilac weft, 1 using slate blue weft and 3 using white weft. I did cut the first 2 tea towels off the loom to take to a guild meeting, and after losing that bit of warp needed to retie, and the warp loss from the warping board, I ended up weaving right up to the heddles to get towel number 12. I find it amazing that my Louet Spring can still give me a great shed when I weave this closely! Here are the final 10 all snug and happy wrapped around the front beam. I have taken them off the loom and washed them, so now the hand hemming begins!
Next time I’ll show the finished product.

Spinning Study Group Part Two

2010-11-23T12:30:00.000-08:00

We had our second session and our study group took on Chapter 3 in Deb Menz book Color in Spinning. We skipped Chapter 2, Immersion Dyeing as we felt that we had adequately covered the topic over the past few group dyeing days.

Chapter 3 is titled Painting rovings for multicolored yarns. I chose to take on Series 3 – complementary colors. The problem reads as follows. Using five colors for each roving, do six rovings in all, one for each of the following pairs: yellow and violet, yellow-orange and blue-violet, orange and blue, red-orange and blue-green, red and green, red-violet and yellow green. I was excited and ready to have some fun, and since there was room for interpretation I decided to go for the gusto!

As I am primarily a weaver, I chose to dye some great 1/6 tussah silk that I had recently purchased, rather than just wool roving for spinning. I started by soaking my tussah silk in soda ash and water for 30 minutes.

I decided to do some fine pencil roving so that I would have it to use for later exercises in the book. The wool was soaked in vinegar and water for 30 minutes also.I used Procion MX as that is my dye of choice and I have all the colours. The Procion MX booklet says it will dye wool, just not very well, and that was good enough for me as my goal was to get some lovely silk yarn dyed.
They were both squeezed dry after soaking. I put plastic wrap on my work surface and laid the silk and the wool side by side and followed this process for all 6 samples.Then I mixed the dye, and I decided to do a gradation of colour. I made up a 100% yellow dye, a 25/75 violet/yellow dye, a 50/50 violet/yellow dye, a 75/25 violet/yellow dye and 100% violet dye. Using sponge brushes I painted equal(ish) amounts of the dye staying in the same order on the silk and then did the same on the wool, and I did this painting sequence throughout the exercise on all the dye lots. I repeated this exact ratio of dyes for the yellow-orange and blue-violet dye lot.I decided to change the ratios for the orange and blue dye lot as I was getting a bit bored with it by now; and did 100% orange, a 1 to 6 ratio of orange/blue, 2 to 6 ratio of orange to blue and 3 to 6 ratio of orange to blue and 100% blue. I did the same ratios for the red-orange (I used scarlet) and blue-green dye lot. For the red and green I used Crimson and Maiwa standard green. I again used 100% crimson, but wanted less colour change so tried ¼ tsp to 1/8 cup crimson/green, ½ tsp to 1/8 cup crimson/green, ¾ tsp to 1/8 cup crimson to green and 100% green. I was starting to get tired and just wanted to get done….I also changed up the length of my painting repeats, yup they were getting bigger!

My last dye lot was red-violet and yellow-green and I was done with measuring and done with painting by now, so I made up 100% red-violet and then added 1 drop of red-violet to 1/8 cup of yellow-green, then 3 drops to 1/8 cup of yellow-green and then 6 drops red-violet to yellow-green then 100% yellow-green. I was definitely getting slap dash by now. Each of the samples was wrapped in the plastic and left for 24 hours. We found a really good way to keep the dyes from mixing while we wrapped in plastic. We had one sheet of plastic under the silk when we painted, then flipped the whole thing onto another sheet of plastic wrap to get the other side, then used the original sheet, making sure the dye left on the sheet matched the painted silk, to cover before we made our 'jelly rolls'. After the 24 hours the silk and wool were rinsed until the dye was gone (I used Synthrapol), then hung to dry.

The silk is wonderfully vibrant and you can actually see each of the colours I used, this is a definite success. The wool however- hmmmm not so good! The dye really didn’t take and what I have is a pale shadow of the colours that were intended. Here are the results.Yellow and Violet

Yellow Orange and Blue Violet

Orange and Blue

Red Orange and Blue Green

Red and Green

Red Violet and Yellow Green

Thankfully this is a learning exercise and I’ve learned a number of things:
#1 Procion MX really doesn’t like wool roving
#2 I have the concentration of a gnat and I get bored really, really easily
#3 I’ll throw process to the wind when I’m tired and grumpy
#4 I can buy my roving any colour I want and don’t have to dye it

Smooshed Scarf

2010-11-17T18:29:00.000-08:00

Having a new loom made me want to put on a special first project. The painted silk warp that I did in the smooshed method was the prefect choice. Not only was the painted warp barely dry but the vivid colours really called to me. The warp is 2/20 silk in orange and raspberry, very bright and cheerful.
The weft is silk singles with a little slub in brilliant orange. It was also painted in the marathon dyeing day. To make it easier to fill the pirn I placed the weft ball in a mason jar.
It was really hard to choose a pattern that would work with a painted warp; the best fit was an undulating pattern. The undulating effect helps to ease the transitions between the two colours in the warp. Also I wanted a 12 shaft pattern to give the loom a good ‘shake-down cruise’.
On the top the scarf is more weft dominate – lots of orange but the underside is more warp dominate. The raspberry really shows up well.
Here is a closer look at the pattern. The picture is showing the colours a little darker than they really are.
I am really enjoying using my new Louet Spring Lola. It’s a great loom which has an amazingly large shed because it is a counter marche which pulls the warp threads both up and down at the same time.
I’m finding the treadling really easy because once you push the treadle down it stays down so there’s a lot less labor involved, meaning I can weave longer!
So good loom, good weaving and a good time!

Spring into Autumn

2010-11-10T19:42:00.000-08:00

There have been big changes in the studio in the last two months. We decided to put the AVL Avril up for sale, as it did the same job as the Leclerc Minerva. We also felt that the amount and weight of the dobby bars really limited the length of pattern repeats we could do. So the AVL sold and I was getting used to the Minerva again, back to 8 shafts.

On the Left is the LeClerc Minerva and on the right is the AVL Mechanical Dobby

On the last day that Susan (Thrums) was here on her visit she received an email about a Louet Spring for sale on Vancouver Island. Mum phoned the lady and bought it within 10 minutes of Susan receiving the email!

So we have a new addition to the studio . . . Lola, Lily’s (Mum’s Louet Spring) older sister!

There are some differences between the two looms. Lola is older as she has a lovely amber honey colour. She also has silver screws instead of the black ones that Lily has.
The front brake is different also.

On the left is Lola and on the right is Mum's Lily

Lola has two warping beams and dual back beams. The second back beam has a tape measure attached to it, a really handy thing even though it’s a bit faded. Every lamm, both upper and lower had a piece of Texslov attached, it took three people an hour to take them off, and they had to come off because the lamms needed to be moved. Also it was really confusing to know which lamm to button up to the treadle since there were two for each.
The loom was set up to weave as a counter balance system with a sinking shed, I wanted to put the loom back to a countermarche as it was intended. Thankfully I had Mum’s loom to use as an archetype so after some measuring I knew that I needed to move the shafts up about 4 inches, the upper lamms up 4 inches and the lower lamms down about 6 inches.

On the left is the previous set up and on the right is the new set up

It was really painful to move all the pegs, there was 4 per shaft with 12 shafts, plus 2 per upper lamm and 2 per lower lamm making for a total of 96 and two painful days and completely swollen fingers and thumbs!
The new loom is already in use and it has been a delight to learn the workings of a 12 shaft countermarche loom. Sadly to make room in the studio we’ve had to sell Minerva. She will be going to a new home in Washington State on Orca Island.

Spinning Study Group Part One

2010-11-02T15:26:00.000-07:00

I've joined a Spinning Study Group with 8 friends from the Monashee Spinners group. We will be exploring ‘colour in spinning’ rather than spinning for perfection or size or anything like that. The way this group was set up, thanks to Rosalie, was really very inventive and thoughtful. Each person was asked to get a copy of Deb Menz’s book Spinning for Colour and to read it before the first meeting which was in September. A few days prior to the meeting Rosalie emailed a questionnaire to everyone asking them to pick out one or two exercises from the book and to figure out what was needed in the way of fibre, dyes etc to perform the exercise.

At our first meeting in September the outline of the study group was set out – we would meet once a month – we even agreed on each date for the entire 9 months of the study – and we agreed to omit a meeting in December as everyone's frantic at that time.

Each person read the exercise out loud to the group and we had a short general discussion about what we felt the exercise entailed and we put a post-it note on the page. Surprising how often more than one of us had the same choice.

Since the book seemed to be set out sequentially, we decided to start at the first exercise chosen and give it to the month of October and so on through to the end of the book. Needless to say we are not coming anywhere close to covering every exercise in the book.

So my homework for the month of October was Chapter 1 exercises 17, 18 and 19.

Here is my take on exercise 17(a) Contrast of Saturation. Choose a colour and combine it with any of its tints, shades or tones in a single yarn. I chose periwinkle blue and blended it with black to create it's shade, then plied pure periwinkle with the shade.
Exercise 17(b) Contrast of Saturation. Choose a colour then find another colour to make it brighter, and another to make it duller. I chose green, then added yellow to make it brighter and then purple to make it duller.Exercise 18 Contrast of Proportion. Choose several colours and combine them in Goethe’s proportions. Goethe assigned numbers to each colour and you combine proportionately. Yellow=3, Orange=4, Red=6, Violet=9, Blue=8, Green=6. My colours were violet, blue and green in the above proportions. This is a complete epiphany!
Exercise 19 Colour Harmonies. Create yarn using some of the colour harmonies. My first harmony was complementary , violet and green in equal proportions. Then I did a split complementary harmony and chose violet, green and red in equal proportions. My last harmony was a triad and I chose yellow, blue and red in equal proportions. On the triad, you can truly see why yellow should be used in small amounts when blending colours for spinning; overpowering or what! I'm really looking forward to next month when we explore painting colour on roving.

A Tale of Two Dye Days

2010-10-28T13:36:00.000-07:00

The Ponderosa Spinners and Weavers Guild had a warp dyeing day in the guild room and Ngaire and I decided to go. We brought along our wet silk warps and prepared to dye! We had soaked our warps in 500 ml of white vinegar to 2 litres of water the night before, so we were ready to get colouring!

The first thing we did was to roll out inexpensive plastic wrap the length of our wet warp; we lay the warp on the wrap and poured the prepared Lanaset dye onto it. Naturally, I forgot my camera, but I've recreated a few of the steps at home. Then with hands encased in gloves we smooshed…..I don’t know any other way to explain the process of working the dye in with your fingertips, making sure the dye went all the way through the warp! When the whole warp was dyed, we rolled it up jelly roll fashion and then overwrapped again. Then with trepidation, I popped it in the microwave on full power for 1-1/2 minutes per 100 grams….then turned it over and repeated.

My warp weighed in at 199 grams, so 3 minutes per side – I couldn’t believe the high pitched shriek that came out of the microwave. I’m sure dogs for miles came running! I was sure it was going to explode, but it didn’t and out came my warp. Within moments it started to shrink wrap and cool. After it was cool enough to handle I unwrapped it and rinsed under cool water. Amazingly no excess dye came off! The warps we dyed with Lanaset are purple and orange for me, and raspberry and orange for Ngaire.

We came home and dyed the weft for these two warps and another warp and weft scarf each. I don’t have Lanaset dyes so I fell back onto my preferred dye Procion MX. I soaked the warps and wefts in soda ash for 30 minutes. Meanwhile I mixed up the Procion, 1 teaspoon Procion, 1 tablespoon kosher salt, and 1 teaspoon urea to 1/2 cup of warm water. We then painted the dye on with sponge brushes.

Then wrapped the warps up in the plastic wrap, slipped into a baggie and left for 24 hours.

I honestly can’t tell the difference in the dye colour intensity, so for silk, both Lanaset and Procion seem to work well. We are both thrilled with our 4 silk scarf warps and matching silk singles wefts although the orange weft I dyed for my purple and orange warp (above) looked much better with Ngaire’s raspberry and orange warp ( on the loom already!) and her rust weft looked better with mine!This is Ngaire's, moss, plum and steel blue warp with the moss weft.My periwinkle, turquoise,royal blue and purple warp with the royal blue and periwinkle weft.

We had a bit of extra dye, and of course not ones to be wasteful we quickly dropped in a few hanks of 2/8 cotton and had a smoosh! Not too sure what they are for yet.Now we've added a lovely soft plum, turqouise and navy and steel blue cotton to the stash!

All in all it was a really successful dye session.

Instant Ikat

2010-10-22T17:47:00.000-07:00

Every time I weave, I learn something new. It may be something about a weave structure or about a fibre; this time I learned that if your shuttle is three times larger than your project it is too large! I wasn’t letting the shuttle glide across the reed race; no it was more like I was passing a large and heavy block of wood hand to hand. I got a great arm work out though!
The finished scarf looks amazing! The interplay between the weft, a 2/16 mercerized cotton in ‘aubergine’ and the ladder ribbon is just remarkable. It takes a really simple weave structure and makes it into something special.
The bonus surprise from this scarf is the ikat look. This came out due to the fact that the ribbon yarn is dyed in a staggered manner. When I put the warp on the loom naturally some of these staggers line up and – instant ikat!
I twisted the fringe and it looks incredible. I was careful to not over twist because I wanted the blocks of colour from the ribbon to show through. The fringe looks like it has been studded with jewels.
The fringe twisting also went twice as fast because Mum just purchased a Leclerc quadruple fringe twister. It is totally the way to go, it is so versatile, two doubles, one triple or one quadruple – fantastic!
I love this scarf; I wish that it was mine! But I already have a similar one and I am sure that this scarf is going to find itself a nice new home at the Ponderosa Guild’s Christmas Sale which takes place at the Rotary Centre for the Arts in Kelowna November 13 and 14th.

Graphic Grape

2010-10-15T19:59:00.001-07:00

I was going through the stash looking for something to weave when I saw a cone of ladder ribbon and I knew what I wanted to weave . . .

My favorite scarf is one that Mum wove for me; it is a silk ladder ribbon in peacock colours, purple, lime green, and blue. It is crossed with a teal Orlec and every time it is worn I get a compliment.
The scarf looks like it is woven as undulating but that effect is from the interaction of the silk squares with the weft. And I am looking forward to experimenting with this effect, with the pink ladder ribbon.
Recently I have put back on the sectional warp beam and second back beam on the Minerva. So I had to remember how to beam a sectional again. I am using a modified version of the Louet method, because the ladder ribbon could be difficult in a tension box.
I placed a metal bar between the sectional sections to attach the extenders for the warp. The warp has been separated in a raddle at the top of the castle to help corral the ribbon and to place even tension on the warp. The warp is then pulled on slowly making sure that the ribbons stay in their designated sections.
In the very first photo is a pink cone of Orlec which I was going to use as weft, but it was too thick and obscured the ribbon. I don’t have a picture, of course, but I had to cut out about 5 inches because I was in denial. I do have one piece of advice about ladder ribbon which is when hemstitching do it during the day when you can see, I lost count of how many times I had to undo, lots of two steps forward, one step back!
I had to find a weft that was finer then 2/8. I spent a lot of time going through the stash looking for weft, the 2/20 black Tencel was too fine and looked like a spider web. The 2/20 pink cotton was too pale and too fine. The weft that worked turned out to be a purple 2/16 mercerized cotton!
It just disappears and lets the warp do its thing. I am being very careful to just tap the weft into position; I want the lumps and bumps. I really like the weaving of this scarf, in just a couple of hours this afternoon I have already woven 40 inches, only 30 inches left! I am really looking forward to seeing this scarf off the loom; I think that it is going to be amazing!

Taking The Show On The Road

2010-10-11T11:33:00.000-07:00

Ngaire and I were given the opportunity to have a booth at the First Annual ‘Slow’ Fibre Festival last weekend. The intention was to revive, promote and perpetuate the intrinsic concept of locally sourced and created products. This would be our first foray out on our own, so with a little trepidation we decided to ‘take the show on the road’. The first thing we decided to do was do a mock up of how we wanted the booth to look. Michael dragged his sawhorses onto the deck and we had a chance to try everything out.
Thankfully our display racks from the studio are portable and they stood up by themselves.We got to the Youth Centre in Summerland and saw that we had been assigned two tables against the wall. This was wonderful, we could really go to town and give all the scarves room to glow! We made a mistake on the tea towels by having the hang tags showing in front – they were soon turned over and the tags were put at the back. Most of the vendors were selling fleeces, roving, and dyed locks with some end products knitted and woven. We were the only booth with only hand woven accessories.We dropped the four Chenille scarves onto the table and with a bit of creative rolling, I think they look wonderful! This was how we left the booth on Friday night after set up; I think it looks pretty good! On Saturday morning, after getting up at 5 a.m. and driving for 1-1/2 hours to make the 8 a.m. opening we moved the lights to the front of the table and everything came to life.
Since we had been given an additional table, we brought another mannequin and more props and played around with the set up on Saturday morning. Unfortunately I didn’t take any photos of the improvements we made.

I’m so happy that we went to the “First Annual Slow Fibre Festival” as it was very profitable for us and it was such a nice first experience for Ngaire and me. The Desert Sage Spinners and Weavers Guild were our hosts and they were wonderfully organized and hopefully we will be there again next year!

An Exciting Few Days

2010-10-05T17:56:00.001-07:00

I have decided to abandon this project….it’s called Skip Plain Weave and it’s from Peter Collingwood’s’ book The Techniques of Rug Weaving. Sorry for the blurry image....
The weave structure is plain weave and the premise of the weave is that selected sections of warp are woven in plain weave in colour A and the weft skips behind the sections that are to be woven in colour B. I love the idea of this, but after 2 inches and masses of wool warp, the bell rung and I knew it was not the weave structure to use for my 4th “hand manipulated rug” sample! Well, more research is needed I guess. Lily Louet, my wonderful Spring loom has the old faithful spaced blocks on her. I’ve used a truly beautiful lavender 2/8 bamboo yarn for this scarf and so far, so good! My guild the Ponderosa Spinners and Weavers in Kelowna BC had our 15th annual Spinning Day on Saturday and we had a wonderful turnout. I managed to convince my friend Susan of Thrums fame to come for a visit at the same time. We had a wonderful day, although I didn’t get much spinning done, I did manage to keep the vendors busy. We were lucky enough to have 4 vendors at our Spinning day and I think that they all did well.Homespun Haven brought her Ashford looms and lots of yarn.
Aurelia Fibres brought stunning New Zealand roving.
Art of Yarn brought Louet Black Faced Leicester roving that was amazing as well as a great selection of Sweet Georgia BFL roving’s and Joybelee Farms came with a selection of natural dyes….it was wonderful! Susan and I managed to cram a lot into just 4 days and yesterday we drove up to her old stomping ground in The Shuswap. Don't you love the colour coordination? The Adams River Sockeye Salmon run is the biggest in a century, so we knew it was something not to be missed. This is Ngaire and Susan at the Interpretation Centre.To get to The Adams River the Sockeye have swum upriver some 350+ miles to get to their spawning grounds, to mate and die. They grow a wicked looking hump and beak and turn an amazingly brilliant red with a lime green head. Nature is astonishing in the colours she dresses her fellows – you just try getting the males in your life to wear that combination! The river breaks into slower running side streams and the salmon complete their four year life cycle by laying and fertilizing eggs only to then die by the millions. Yup, the smell is something special!The Department of Fisheries was busy checking for salmon that had been tagged in the Pacific Ocean and keeping a count of the run. They were hauling very full nets so it was quite a sight.

Susan's blog will have our very short but sweet visit from her perspective, so check it out at Thrums!

Unexpected Road Trip

2010-09-28T11:12:00.000-07:00

What a Sunday! My son and friends were visiting The Okanagan and had planned on staying until Monday, but ….work called. Eamon was being sent up to The Yukon and had to be in Williams Lake poste haste! Eamon's friends had plans, so first thing Sunday morning we were off, a flying trip to Williams Lake and home about a 900 km distance, or 10 hours driving…..crazy, fun day! I took a few photos of the on the way. We started in the southern interior, a fertile valley on a 100 km long lake. The Okanagan Valley is a premier grape and tree fruit growing area and I love living here!We set off north east toward Kamloops, above, which is located where the fast flowing mighty Thompson River carves a canyon which widens into Tunkwa Lake (formerly and much more beautifully called Lake Tranquille). This is the start of serious dry high ridges.From Kamloops we continued north east toward Cache Creek. We passed Walachin , above and below, which is on a high prairie overlooking the Thompson River canyon. Walachin was settled in 1909 by the English who were led to believe this was a bountiful place. In fact it’s a dry belt and gets only 20 cm of rain per year. When the First World War broke out and the men went to Europe to fight, almost none of the settlers returned. There is a train on the left side of the photo, to give you some perspective.Now we reached Cache Creek the beginning of The Gold Rush Trail to the Klondike! Again this is on the Thompson River, but dry, dry, dry…. The river has carved remarkable hoodoos which show the iron in the rocks. We are now heading north toward 100 Mile House, 108 Mile House and 150 Mile House. Great names eh? These are all stopping points for those who trekked to the Klondike in search of gold. This is very high plateau country with very little top soil! We really did feel on top of the world as the sky was huge!There are some really lovely lakes and Lac La Hache is one of them. The fall colours were really starting to show, so pretty. As you can see from my photos, there aren't all that many old building between the towns, just a whole bunch of space....we really are a very new country and little remains of original settlements along the road.

Turned Taquetè

2010-09-19T18:39:00.000-07:00

When I was putting the warp on the loom for my twill yardage I found out that I had miscalculated and that there were some extra warp threads – enough to do a scarf! The warp is two colours of teal blue in 2/8 Tencel.
The warp was pulled so the teal blues were in stripes but I didn’t want a stripe-y scarf so the idea was to use one dark teal blue then one light teal blue etc. So, I had a warp colour plan, but no pattern in mind. Looking at that style of warp, in that size and that type of yarn just shouts Turned Taquetè. This is one type of weaving I haven’t done one yet and the chance to design a new pattern is always exciting.

This meant that when I put the warp through the raddle I changed the warp threads from coloured stripes into alternating threads.
The funny thing is that when I beamed the warp it went back to the stripes! All that work separating and alternating the warp thread colours for nothing! Sorry about the photo it is a little blurry.
It took a while to design a 12 shaft Turned Taquetè pattern because I had a finite number of warp threads to use; I only needed to add 6 Hunter green Tencel threads to each side to create the scarf!
This pattern is really nifty because at different angles the pattern changes, the photo above is like diamonds. The photo below is more like a Greek key.
There are two different sides to this scarf, one side having more green and a lot of texture. The other side is bluer and has no texture. It is really interesting that the weft is only hunter green and yet there seems to be horizontal stripes in teal.
The scarf has a lovely sheen, but little iridescence. As you can see there are definitely two different sides to this pattern.
The scarf has wonderful drape and is really pretty, and I’d definitely weave it again in the future with a different colour way.

Sheep to Shawl Competition

2010-09-13T11:26:00.000-07:00

Saturday was the Sheep to Shawl competition at the Salmon Arm Fall Fair. The Shuswap Spinners and Weavers were our hosts and they put on a wonderful day for those of us competing in the event as well as a sale, display, weaving, carding and spinning demonstrations.

This year there was a major rule change – for the first time we supplied our own weft fleece and drum carders were allowed. This may seem like a minor change, but it made a huge difference. For the first time we could plan our shawl to include weft colours! This is the shawl that Ngaire and I planned and warped, the group chose to dye our corriedale handspun warp in gradations of red to yellow and we layed it in the warp randomly. We used natural brown romney lamb for the weft and we chose to do huck lace circles on six shafts.

There were only three teams of 6 this year, but the competition was fierce. The teams are made up of one weaver, one plyer and four spinners. Each team comes with their looms completely warped and over the course of four hours we spin, ply, weave and wet finish a 60” long shawl.

Much to our delight our team came in 1st with a score of 290 out of 300! We got full marks for everything, with a small deduction for selvedge mousing. There are only four of us in this photo as two members had to leave before judging. Right to left are Chris MacKenzie (spinner), Ngaire (weaver), Brenda Howe (plyer and drum carder) and me (spinner) with our blue ribbon! Missing from this photo is Kirsti Jarret and Susan Garvie both spinners.The Monashee Spinners and Weavers (my other spinning group!) had a stunning shawl in turned Atwater-Bronson lace in blocks of greyed red to yellow.The Shuswap Spinners and Weavers shawl was going to be wonderful, but alas, they did not get if off the loom in time. A complicated twill pattern in black and apricot.

Do you see something of a theme here? Yup, unknowingly we all chose the same colours! Something about fall makes one think of gold, orange and red doesn’t it?I just finished this shrug in a soft pink handspun wool for Ngaire. I love this pattern and this is the second time I’ve knit it.

There is something about the lace areas that make handspun yarn look great. Remember I used 2 foot of rigid insulation for blocking my weaving, this is a great use of the remaining 4 foot length!

Here are a few more photos of the Shuswap Weavers and Spinners display. The mauve shawl is in very fine wool and is double weave blocks, by master weaver Gudrun Weisinger.

Thrown for a Loop Scarf

2010-09-05T11:14:00.000-07:00

This scarf started a little unusually for me; I mainly start with a weave structure that I want to do then draft around that but this time it all started with a yarn. It is a 77% wool and 23% viscose blend that has little loops and it is variegated dark greens. It is partnered with a 2/12 olive green pure merino wool. The picture below shows the true colours.
I knew that I wanted the novelty yarn to be an accent but I also wanted to use it in a way that made sense. So came up with the idea of boxes with the novelty yarn used as the defining perimeter. That left the interior of the box for something interesting. A huck lace block seemed to fit the bill. It is a two shuttle weave so I needed to have a way of knowing when to throw the novelty yarn. As the huck is an 8 shaft pattern I was able to have shaft 12 raise with the pattern shafts which told me to throw the novelty yarn, much better then counting the pattern repeat!
After washing all the loops and bumps showed more prominently which is fantastic. It really gives this scarf interest and shows of the novelty yarn to its best advantage.
I wasn’t sure on how to finish the fringe on this scarf and so I tried a couple of things. I tried just twizzling the fringe but for some reason it didn’t look to be in scale with the scarf, they looked too thin. So I went to my tried and true wool fringe technique – the fish tail braid! It is thick enough to fill in the fringe and I was able to do the novelty yarn the same way so the fringe is cohesive.
The squares of huck lace are really pretty and add interest to the scarf without competing with the novelty yarn.
This is scarf has a lovely drape and feels amazingly soft, before washing I was a little worried about the novelty but it has become wonderfully supple after wet finishing.
I am the weaver for the Salmon Arm Fall Fair Sheep to Shawl competition again this year. Since it is always a learning experience with wool as this is not my usual yarn of choice; creating this wool scarf is very timely. It seems to take some getting used to the springiness of wool and having the correct beat. Now that I’ve had this little bit of practice I am looking forward to the Sheep to Shawl!

Making a Blocking Board

2010-08-30T10:09:00.000-07:00

I’ve been putting off the task of finishing my Overshot with borders piece for some reason, I just can’t seem to get enthused at all. It took me several woven pieces to finally make an original overshot pattern that worked out perfectly square, with 45 degree angles. After I finished this one, I pulled it off the loom and walked away; I just couldn’t face fiddling around with it anymore.

Several weeks have passed and I kept getting a huge case of the guilt’s every time I walk past to see it sitting forlornly on my work table!

Yesterday I decided to pick it up and do the finishing…..and found that after a few weeks languishing, the width had taken up about an inch! Not a good thing as the cloth was woven to be square….so I needed to block it to get it back in shape.

I started looking around for something to pin it to and couldn’t find anything, so I decided to make a blocking board. My friend Susan uses a board like this to finish her scarves and shawls, so I used her idea and thought I’d share it with you.

My husband went to the hardware store and picked up a length of rigid insulation, it came in a 2 foot by 6 foot length. He cut off a piece 2 foot long for me to use.

I also borrowed his builders square for this job, a bit rusty but the only way I could keep everything even. I used the builders square lined up against the factory edge to keep my lines straight and using a ball point pen I scored lines about 1/16 of an inch deep. I then turned the board and did the same to make my grid.I didn’t want to take a chance on the ink or dirt coming off the board, so a good soaping with dish detergent ensured that I have a clean work surface. I pinned the Overshot piece every inch or so lengthwise along one of my lines. Lengthwise it was still the correct size, then using my laundry sprayer I soaked the piece and stretched it out to the desired width. It worked really well as the rigid insulation is about 1 inch deep and I can really push the pins in.

I will keep it pinned out for a few more days and lightly spray it a few more times to make sure the wool is properly stretched. I will then use my McSteamy and give it a good hard press to finish it completely.

Wandering All Over the Place

2010-08-23T11:30:00.001-07:00

Seems that August is flying by and I’ve little to show for it! I have finally started weaving on my sunflower placemats after a really shaky start. I had a complete brain fart while I was planning and put the warp on the wrong way!I made the warp 20 inches wide and was weaving 14 inches long! This would have made the placemats have the fringe on the top and bottom rather than on the right and left of the placemat. So I had to turn the draft and rewarp the loom….Here is the start of the first placemat; it really doesn’t look like much from this angle. I've had to use a temple to keep the edges even as this pattern seems to want to draw in substantially.From this angle you can see the start of the sunflower or sunburst pattern developing. This is an interesting weave because there is no pattern repeat; I’m actually weaving a picture of sorts, so there is no repeat, just 309 unique picks.

Here is the draft I'm using, these placemats seem to be quite quick to weave, so hopefully I'll get them done poste haste.

I received an unexpected gift in the mail the other day from Ann Maxvill in Montana, one of the GCW scarf exchange participants.

Ann wove this book mark in very fine variegated yarn and dropped in a washer part way though; she then stabelized the washer by needle weaving through the centre hole to ensure that it didn't move and then allowed the yarn to find it's own level around the washer. Great idea eh?

There always seems to be things to keep me off loom in the summer. Imagine how nice a bowl of these local peaches is going to be in November with a dollop of yoghurt! The jams are pure peach and a peach and mango blend……yummy doesn’t begin to cover it! Now I hear the tomatoes calling me. I went to the Art of Yarn in Kelowna a couple of days ago, and needless to say, couldn’t walk out the door without something. I was completely gob smacked by this amazing sock yarn from Germany. The purples fading through pink to orange had me as soon as I saw them!

Colourful Cloth

2010-08-16T21:16:00.000-07:00

I’ve finished weaving the six yards of cloth that I put on Avril, my purpose is to try my hand at making a few garments. It was really fun to weave, especially as my Mum filled all the pirns for me – all 14 of them! This is pretty amazing number as most scarves only take 1.5 pirns.
I had to pull some threads out to make the yardage fit the loom as 36 inch loom isn’t actually 36 inches! There is a total of 144 threads at 6 yards so there is going to be two very pretty teal blue scarves in my future.
I have only used the AVL a couple of times so getting the tension and the beat correct can be a challenge but it seems that I was doing pretty well as the cloth looks just great. My beat is very consistent, I’m pleased to say. Here is the yardage fresh off the loom and ready to wet finish.
I’m looking forward to seeing the finished product but it won’t be for a while as I have to relearn to sew first! I haven’t sat at a sewing machine since high school, so another challenge ahead.

I already have a new project on the loom, no moss on this stone!

Can't Get Going!

2010-08-09T10:35:00.000-07:00

Not too much happening on the weaving front for me this week. It seems that summer and the long sunny days in the garden are taking priority right now! I’m overwhelmed with French filet beans at the moment!
I thought I’d show you how the studio looks today.I have one inch woven on the Jane loom, this is yet another rug sample that I don’t want to do! I just can’t seem to get enthusiastic about this warp at all! I’ve made a promise to myself to get it done by the end of the month….mmmmm, well, maybe! This is the warp I've pulled for placemats sitting on Lily Louet. I have never tried weaving placemats in 4/8 cotton so this should be interesting. I’ve chosen this lovely warm yellow for the warp and a sweet milky chocolate for the weft. The pattern promises to look something like a sunburst or a sunflower – wish me luck! This should be up and going in a few days; but not too soon as I’ve given Ngaire the use of my warp protector for her yardage warp….need to source another 36” length of cardboard for her!I am actively working on yet another Overshot piece. This is a modification from my previous Overshot and is working out splendidly. The LeClerc Minerva jack loom allows me to get a really good strong beat to push all that wool down and make a 50/50 cloth. If you remember I moved the 2/8 cotton warp from the Spring loom to the LeClerc a few weeks ago and it was a very good call. Ngaire, my daughter, and I did a crazy day trip to Vancouver last Thursday; we drove to Vancouver (373 km) and back again in one day; trading the driving between us, it wasn’t bad at all! My son popped home for a surprise visit and using it as an excuse we decided to drive him home to save him airfare. Well, it wasn’t completely altruistic…I got to hit Maiwa and pick up a few bits and pieces at the same time. I was in a real rush so just bought every Procion MX dye colour that they had in stock, some Urea, Synthrapol and Soda Ash. Now I’m really ready to take advantage of the summer weather and get some dyeing done.I also found two lovely hand carved wooden print blocks at Maiwa. I’m hoping to try them out on the natural silk scarves that Ngaire wove.

Weaving Words
Diaper – is any turned twill as long as it is not proper damask. Thus both dimity and dornick are diapers.