12 Shaft Advancing Silk Scarf

Another week, another painted silk scarf, another conundrum; this seems to be the never ending theme of my weaving life.

I picked a lovely teal and purple warp because I thought it would be any easy one to find a weft for and this could not have been more wrong!  But, I’m getting ahead of myself because the first thing I do is pick the pattern I’m going to weave.

The 12 Shaft Advancing Twill draft has large diamonds and has quite a large repeat of 95 threads. It is amazingly pretty and gives spots of weft, spots of warp and a definite diagonal. 

Ngaire wove this scarf a while ago and I thought it was time for a re-visit.  Ngaires full post can be found here.

Now that I had the painted warp chosen and the pattern, now choosing the weft for the scarf.

I lined up the first of the possible candidates: magenta, dark teal, eggplant, light teal and mauve.  I draped the warp over them and was able to delete a couple right away.

I was down to dark teal, magenta and mauve and these I took to the loom to trial out.

I wove a few picks of each and just for the heck of it I added silver.  The dark teal made the purple look brown, so no to that one.  The magenta was exciting, but took over the whole scarf, again a big no.  The  silver made the warp fade into the background, a resounding no.  The mauve was  the only choice for me.  It made the warp colour show through and rosey’d up the purple.

We have been in a November fog for days now, so getting a photo has been a challenge, it is so, so grey outside!  Here is an early photo of the scarf showing the lovely shine as it goes over the breast beam.

And another from a slightly different angle.

Now that gardening season over for awhile, time to hit the knitting needles.  This is my latest project using hand spun natural merino and hand spun merino/silk blend in dark purple.  I’m quite pleased with it and I know it will look even better once I block it.  The pattern is called FARA Hat, by Anniki Leppik and I bought the pattern on Ravelry.

Twelve Shaft Painted Silk Scarf

I have also put on one of the newly dyed silk warps onto the loom.  This warp is full of colour, moss green, plum purple, turquoise, royal blue and purple.  I’m not sure what I was thinking with this colourway but it is exciting! 

Picking out a weft colour proved to be quite difficult, I want a colour that highlights everything going on in the warp but doesn’t overpower.  I tried iris, amethyst, olive, navy and a denim blue all in Tencel.  The dark blues and purples seem to work the best. 

But I still wasn’t sure so for the second weft auditions I tried eggplant, navy, dark teal and amethyst.  I worried that the purples would fight against the plum in the warp so I went with the navy blue for the weft of the scarf.

For the pattern I went with a tried and true pattern, a 6 shaft crackle that has been used successfully with several painted warps before.  But this time the pattern and the weft seemed to hide the lovely painted warp.

So I unwove that woven four inches, unpicked the hem stitching, pulled the warp out of the reed then I remember that I should put the lease sticks back in.  So I found a sort of cross in the threading put the lease sticks in and pulled out the threading.  

I picked another pattern, this time a 12 shaft twill with lovely spiky diamonds.  I am weaving with the weft dominate side up but you can still see the streaks of colour moving through the warp.  It is a relief to find a pattern that is going to show off the warp.  It is a complicated treadling so it is weaving up slowly.

Final photos are from a botany walk at Miracle Beach Provincial Park.  The leaves of the big leaf maple are starting to turn colour but some are starting to drop leaves early due to drought stress.

There are several large fires burning in the mountains above us so there was a smoky haze combined with the sunlight piercing the tree canopy made for some spectacular photos.

12 Shaft Drall Scarf

Like so many of us I am forever looking at the news and social media and frankly, both of them can make you a tad sad.  I often feel that events beyond my control are flying off willy-nilly and it all seems a bit much at times.  

That's when I really enjoy weaving; there is something so very comforting about the simple process of warp, weft and colour.  

Usually I am drawn to weaving curves and spots, but the chaotic feel of life right now is leading me down a different path.

I am looking for structure and there is nothing more structured than a square!   

Now that I have decided to weave a simple design I started hunting through some of my previous drafts and I was immediately taken with some 12 shaft drall scarves I wove back in 2012.  I had named the post My Comfort Weave and I guess it still is.

I have been watching a lot of gardening shows on BBC of late and they have been showing a lot of Escheveria, and although I don’t have any of these lovlies in my garden I have embraced the colour scheme.  This photo is not mine, I give all credit to the photographer.

I began by pulling the warp in silver, sea coral, rose, mineral green and lavender.

The colours are in varying widths to try and replicate the overall colours of the Escheveria flower.  

I had previously woven my drall scarves in a random treadling pattern, creating the blocks as I went along, but this time I want structure, so I planned my colours very carefully and I decided to treadle the pattern ‘Exactly As Drawn In’. 

This gave me a nice mix of boxes with plenty of interest to the weave.  As I treadled it each different colour was woven once as a true square as the pattern progressed, the rest of the time they were rectangles.  I think this gives a little more interest to the weave.

Off the loom and before washing it looks a little flat and wavy, but after washing and steam pressing I am pleased.

Each side is different and lovely in their own right, but the squares are it for me!

I really loved creating this scarf and have already put on another warp in a different colourway with a different threading.  This scarf will appear on Etsy for sale and as a PDF pattern in a few days.

The garden this year has been amazing and the Brugmansia is a real show stopper.  Today I have 12 buds ready to open and to fill the garden with the sweet smell of baby powder. This is a bog standard Brugmansia and didn't come with a name so it is called a NOID.

Fleur de lis

Sorry for disappearing for the last two months.  I got diagnosed with Bell’s Palsy in May, which means that half my face is paralyzed and drooping.  One of the problems is that my left eye doesn’t close all the way so I haven’t wanted to weave in case fibres/dust get into my eye.  But now my face is starting to get better and I’ve started weaving again.

Last month I had someone interested in one of our original drafts, the fleur de lis diversified plain weave pattern.  The pattern needs some tweaking so I decided to weave the pattern again to get it perfect.

I started from the pattern which Mom created to make table runners.  I pulled everything out of the stash that could be used for a table runner.  Diversified plain weave is a very hungry weave, it needs two types of threads, one thick and one thin in the same (or similar) colour for both the warp and the weft.  So it can be challenging to find yarn that works. 

I’m also trying to make a project guide to sell as a PDF on Etsy, so I also need to use yarns that you can currently buy.  I ended up ditching the table runner idea and going with a Tencel scarf.  The warp is 2/8 Tencel in white and white sewing thread.  It was very slow going to pull the warp with such a fine thread as sewing thread!

One of my favourite steps is trying the different weft options, in this case grey teal, Ming blue, blueberry and azure, all different blues.

The fleur de lis pattern is looking pretty good but I can see a few more tweaks are needed to make it perfect. The pattern can appear quite different when woven compared to how it looks on the computer.  

The colours and motif looked quite familiar then it dawned on me that my scarf is going to be similar to the flag for Quebec!

The garden is still struggling with the colder weather, it is definitely Feb-uly.  But plants are starting to bloom and the summer colours are starting to come into their summery best.

The tomatoes in the greenhouse are almost to the ceiling and laden with fruit, but nothing ripe yet, but the cucumbers in the back corner are the star right now and giving us a cucumber almost every day!

Black Table Runners

I had noticed that we are a little low on table runners in the shop and black table runners are always popular.  I went through the weaving stash and I found some lovely mercerized 5/2 cotton in black and taupe.  They will be perfect for some table runners.

I have some favorite patterns that I like to use for table runner but I felt that this lovely gleaming black cotton deserves a special pattern.  So I picked a gorgeous 12 shaft pattern that featured circles.  I’m very excited by this pattern, I love weaving circles!  

I started to pull the warp for the table runners and I had to get Mom to take a photo of my hand because of the fine dust that was coming off of the black cotton.  That was the first hint that something was wrong.

I finished pulling the first 100 threads and then when I tried to tie onto the warping board for the second bout the black cotton just shredded in my hands.  I’ve never had this happen before.

The black cotton turned out to be unusable for warp, with just a soft tug the yarn would break apart.  It definitely would not hold up to the tensioning on the loom.  When I moved the cone, a circle of fine black dust was left on the floor.  The fine dust meant that I couldn’t take the risk of using the black cotton as weft, I had a feeling that it would disintegrate further.     

So I had to throw away the whole cone of black cotton, which was quite sad as it was lovely.  I’m glad that I found out that the black cotton was bad before I had spent more time setting up the loom with threading and such. 

I went back into the stash and thankfully found more black cotton this time 2/6.  I had to shorten the warp to from my planned three runners to two runners but thankfully I can still use the same pattern.  

I have finished threading and tying onto the loom.  I’m looking forward to seeing the pattern develop on the loom.  Hopefully I can weave today!

Final Garden Photo is the catkins on the Contorted Hazelnut - Corylus avellana 'Contorta' (Harry Lauder's Walking Stick).  The catkins and leaf buds are a wonderful sign of spring. 

12 Shaft Snowflake Twill

I’ve been looking at some of my original designed drafts so that I can put them up for sale on my Etsy store as PDF patterns.  I found a draft that I first wove in 2010, a 12 shaft snowflake twill  and I’m just as charmed by it as I was in 2010 so I decided to weave it again!

I put on a warp of 2/8 charcoal grey Tencel; there is enough for two scarves.  One of my favorite views is from the back of loom looking at the pattern that is made from the threads going through the heddles.

The weft for the first scarf is going to be red but picking the shade was tricky.  I looked at Tencel in burgundy, scarlet and spice.  

I went with the burgundy, which is a lovely dark red.  The motif is a large double pointed compass star running the length of the scarf.  Gorgeous!

The burgundy scarf wove up quickly and I was soon getting ready to weave the second scarf.  I use 1 inch metal venetian blinds as spacers between the scarves and the pattern that was highlighted by them was worth a photo.

For the second scarf I wanted to use gold so out came all the yellow Tencel.  I tried old gold, gold, straw and taupe.  I went with the gold.

I changed the treadling and the star now has three points and a slightly different diamond table in the middle.  It is really pretty.

The scarves are finished and up on Etsy.  Here are some beauty shots of the burgundy and grey scarf.  For Sale.

The beauty shots of the gold and grey scarf are below.  For Sale.

If you are interested in the weaving draft it will be available soon.

The weather has been wild for BC the last couple of weeks.  Final photo is one weather front moving out and the next moving in, part of the series of atmospheric rivers that paraded across the province.   Our area of Vancouver Island was on the outer band so didn’t get a lot of rain or flooding but we are feeling the effects of the washing out of the highways and towns.  We have gasoline, milk and egg rationing here on the Island.