Copper Verdigris Scarf

It has been a while since I have woven with some of the silk warps that Mum and I had dyed last summer; it is so nice to pull out colour on a grey winters day.  The warp that jumped out was painted in turquoise with bands of orange.

The buckets of Tencel come out and after careful consideration Mum pulled out Adobe, a red brown colour.  I will admit that I was really dubious but we went with it.  Bands of the red brown were added to outside edges of the scarf and it will also be the weft for the scarf.

The pattern is pretty 6 shaft crackle and thankfully the Adobe red brown Tencel weft works a treat.  The repeat is about 3 inches long. 

At 15 inches I saw something on the right hand side of the scarf, a strange double pick on both sides of the large motif.  So I unwove the scarf, picked out the hem stitching and found the two threading errors and start the scarf again!

The rest of the weaving went smoothly.  Standing back from the loom the scarf almost glows with a coppery shimmer.  It really reminds me of copper verdigris, which is usually green but can also be blue.

When I was dying the warp for the scarf I was hoping that the combination of turquoise and orange would make some pretty transitional colours like green but they seemed to not really mix or make a lighter orange-y brown.  But the jagged peaks of the turquoise into the orange bands makes for a really dynamic scarf. 

The scarf is finished and it is pretty stunning.  I think that the unusual colour choice of the red brown as really inspired.  The large motif can be better seen on the weft dominate side, upside down to when I wove it.  For Sale.

Final Garden Photo is Arctic Bells Daffodils (Narcissus bulbocodium 'Arctic Bells').  They are a form of hoop skirt daffodil, they are a lovely pale lemony colour and very fragrant.  They are not quite open in this picture but in the next couple of days they will be.

Fancy Twill in Green and Purple Silk

Mom and I have switched back to our original looms but we both decided to reuse the weaving patterns that are on the looms, in my case it is a lovely 8 shaft fancy twill.  I put on another hand painted silk warp, this one is 2/22 and is a lovely fresh green with a sinuous purple curves.

For the weft I was sure that a blue would be perfect, but I tried royal blue, navy and light blue 2/8 Tencel.  The darker blues matched the purple and would have hidden the pattern and the light blue over powered everything.

Next I tried Tencel in straw, taupe and birch, a silvery green.  They are brave choices but weren’t the right one.

The last round I tried black, charcoal, a different blue and a different navy.  The clear winner here is the black, it makes the green and purple pop.

The pattern is a beautiful fancy twill from Strickler with large diamond and cross motifs.  

I quite like the juxtaposition of the formality of the pattern with the organic movement of the colours on the warp, it makes for an interesting dichotomy.  I think that the finished scarf will be fantastic.

Final Garden Photo is Hydrangea paniculata 'Vanille Fraise' the shrub is over 6 feet tall and the heads are at least 1 foot in length.  The flowers start as white in the summer then as the nights get cooler they start to pinken going all the way to dark pink.  The charming blue violet flowers is hardy Geranium 'Rozanne' it spreads 2-3 feet and flowers until the frost.  The small pink flowers are fall blooming Japanese Anemone called 'Fall in Love Sweetly', and they truly live up to their name!

Falling back into Weaving

I have seriously been considering selling my 12 Shaft Louet Spring Loom, since for the past ten months it has been idle.  Well, now that my knee pain is under control and I’m feeling perky again I thought I’d give the Spring one more warp to make sure that letting go was the right answer.  We have two Louet Springs in the studio, a Louet Spring 1 from 2008 and the other an Original 1990’s Louet Spring; so we thought we’d better see which one we want to keep.

So Ngaire and I swapped looms and I put a warp on the Original Spring loom.  We thought it would be interesting to see what the differences were and if that factored into which one we should sell.

I put on a painted silk warp that was one of the ones that I dyed last summer.  This was the last warp I made and it had on 132 ends and the dye colours were super subtle.  Well, 132 ends are far too few when the sett for silk is a minimum of 24 epi; so borders were on my radar.

I found a very pretty pattern in the Strickler 8 Shaft Pattern book and built my scarf from there.  I found some silk in a complementary blue colour to bulk out the width and chose teal tencel for the warp. This is the border sequence I chose.

The most notable difference that I noticed in the looms right off the bat is that the Original Spring is made of heavier gauge timber, it just feels more solid and tends to move around less.  The second difference is the distance from the castle to the back beam is about 5 cm longer, not sure why that has changed but there is more headroom when you’re working with the lease sticks.  The third major difference is the braking system which is a tad more cumbersome to use.  Frankly, it feels just the same and actually feels more secure on the floor.

Now, that I’m actually weaving again, I find that my knees are doing great as long as I take a short break now and then so I’m really enjoying the whole weaving process.  Here is the scarf off the loom but unwashed.

The scarf is a joy to weave and I’m really stoked at the end result which is a lovely scarf and as a bonus, I think we’ll hang on to both looms for now because weaving feels fine!

Here is the beauty shot!  For Sale.

Right now the stars of the garden are the grasses and my urns one on each side of the garage at the front of the house.  The flowers are Scaevola aemula or Fairy Fan Flowers and they bloom from June to December.

Celtic Knots Silk Scarf

It has been a long time since I’ve blogged but summer is starting to wind down and there is more time for weaving.  It has been a busy summer with lots of guests and with that a lot of travelling up and down the island, showing off all the beauty and wonders.  This photo is one of the local beaches on the left is the mainland of BC and on the right is Hornby Island with Vancouver Island behind.  

To get back into the swing of things I put on one of my hand painted silk warps, they are always a favourite to weave.  This one is 2/22 silk and is half pink and half purple, the colours have variation of colour ranging from soft pinks and lavenders to dark purple and hot pink.

The pattern is a lovely plaited twill that looks like Celtic knots braid.  I went for a black 2/8 Tencel weft because I wanted the pattern to pop.

The weaving went quickly as the treadling is just a straight draw so very nice to do after being away from the loom for a while.  The finished scarf is fabulous.  For Sale.

The garden, like every year, has it heroes and its disasters.  The highlights this year are the ever bearing strawberries which means we get a harvest in the spring and a second larger harvest in the late summer.  They have been so prolific this year that we have froze some to make jam in the winter.

The raspberries have been wonderful this year.  We have eaten raspberries since June, this is a second flowering and the raspberries are as big as a thumb.  The bumblebees, honey bees and humming birds all really love the flowers the canes just hum from all the pollinators.

In the front garden we are changing the plantings to be more drought resistant and to have more shrubs.  The mass planting of the Rudbeckia is great and adds a cohesiveness to the garden and as a bonus they are a super low maintenance plant.

In the back garden the planting is also changing we are adding roses to give structure and elegance to the borders.  The favourite this year is the Waiheke rose, hidden behind the zinnias. 

Autumn Leaves Silk Scarf

In the last post I mentioned that the hand painted 2/22 silk warp that I had picked for my latest project looked like autumn leaves with its splashes of red, orange, plum, brown and moss.  So I went with a tried and true pattern, a 10 shaft network twill that I think looks like leaves.  It can be difficult to pick a weft colour, I like to try a lot before deciding.  First lot of weft choices are 2/8 Tencel, in scarlet, moss and spice.  I wanted to pick colours in the warp so I could highlight the colours of the warp but, nope, nothing worked, it all kind of blended into the warp.

Next weft choices are purple Tencel in amethyst, blue/purple and eggplant.  The eggplant is a possibility as it tones down the orange but the other colours in the warp can be seen.

The last weft choices are gold Tencel in straw, Havana (bronze), gold, taupe and old gold.  I like the two gold colours.  But I’m finding the sett of the warp to be too far apart at 24 epi, especially since the warp has been washed once already in the dyeing process.

I changed the reed to a 14 dent so now the epi is 28 and I’m much happier.  I also retested the short list of weft colours, gold, eggplant and straw.

The winner is eggplant!  And now you can see the leaf pattern in the network twill.

After three repeats of the pattern I’m getting some strange looping with the weft on the left hand side on the scarf.

I think that the looping is caused by one of the shafts, in the photo you can see that one of the shafts is rising higher than the others.

I lowered the tie on texsolv loops on the treadles that corresponded with the shaft that was too high.  I also added four threads of eggplant Tencel to each edge of the scarf to make a border to also help with the looping.

The loops have disappeared and I think that the eggplant makes for a nice frame for the scarf.

Final Garden Photo this week I thought it was going to be daffodils blooming but we got one last snow storm.

Choosing a Painted Silk Scarf

The navy blue tea towels are off the loom and the yellow ones have already gone to their new owner.  The red tea towels have had their final product photos taken and are almost ready to go up in our Etsy store.

Now I’m trying to find something to put on the loom.  All week I’ve taken out different bins of yarns to see if anything leaps up and grabs me.  So far nothing has inspired me, maybe it’s the grey sky.

I finally just pulled out the painted silk scarf warps that we painted last fall.  They are gleaming in the light and they are definitely making me happy!  I lined them up and then had a look at the scarves that we have in the Etsy store, to see what colour we are missing and if any of these would fill the gap.  

I went with the one in the middle of the pile, it is 2/22 silk dyed in moss green, brown, orange, scarlet and plum.  I think that it looks like autumn leaves.  I don’t have a pattern planned or a weft chosen but the warp has been pulled onto the loom and it looks exciting.

We are in the long pause where it isn’t winter anymore and spring is just waiting around the corner.  The daffodils are heading up and the rhubarb is starting to appear from the ground.

The catkins, female flowers and leaf buds of the contorted Hazelnut, Harry Lauder's walking stick (Corylus avellana 'Contorta') are always an early indicator of spring and frankly I can't wait!

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.