Designing on the Fly

Seeing my forlorn looking loom sitting empty has finally prompted me to haul out my little black book of yarns.

As I acquire yarn, I snip off a sample and file it in my binder making a note the fibre, grist and amount of yarn.  The aim of my book was to take it shopping with me to stop me purchasing; a) a yarn that goes with nothing that I have, or b) the same yarn yet again.

Today the yarn that piqued my interest was this rayon slub yarn in milky cream with peach and soft pink areas.  Yup, this will be the yarn that’s going to be the foundation of my weave.

Looking through the book, these two Orlec yarns from Maurice Brassard et fils seemed to work perfectly.

I decided that I wanted to weave a shawl and that I wanted to feature the slub yarn as a feature line.

The Orlec yarn weaves similarly to Tencel and both are of the same 2/8 grist, so I knew that a simple twill pattern would suit the yarn perfectly.

Please click on the pattern to enlarge.
I have woven this 8 shaft undulating twill before and it really lent itself to the insertion of the slub line.  After looking at the slub I decided to use it doubled to maximize the slubbiness....is that even a word?

The pattern and the size that I chose needs 420 ends at 20 ends per inch to give 21 inches in the reed; of which 411 are Orlec and 9 doubled ends are slub.

I discovered that I was using the peach Orlec up at a rather alarming rate and at 344 ends the Orlec ran out!  I was just about finished panel #6, just 4 ends short of finishing it, when.....nope...wasn’t going to happen.

I pulled back the last 40 ends of yarn and decided to add a panel at each side of the web using the same coloured Orlec as I had intended to use for the weft, a lovely soft, sweet rose.  This will give me a total of 378 ends, so I will have a width in the reed of 18.9 inches, which is still pretty good.

Since I am using my intended weft on the warp, I’m going to use a darker soft rose for the weft to make sure I have enough to complete this shawl, here are the new and old weft choices.

The funny thing is that the lovely rayon slub that was my feature and what I wanted to use from my stash sort of faded into the background.  In all I only used 48 yards in the warp and you can’t even see where I’ve been on the cone.

Click on the photo to enlarge; this is the pattern I have ended up with and the upshot is that designing on the fly is precarious, I didn’t really embrace my intended feature yarn and the whole project will look vastly different than I intended.

 Post Script ~ As I was finishing making up the warp it dawned on me that I should really have a stabilizing selvedge on this shawl.  So I added a 4 end twill and an additional slub end and this both added width and more slub, so I’m calling it a win.  It only took four warp chains!

Deflected Double Weave Scarf

Deflected Double Weave is a two shuttle weave; in this case I have one pirn filled with 2/8 plum Orlec and the other pirn filled with 2/10 cotton.  Before starting to weave the scarf it is important to make sure that each end feed shuttle has the correct tension for the different yarns.  I had to increase the tension for the 2/10 cotton, always remember to tighten BOTH sides of the tension plates in the end feed shuttle!

The Deflected Double Weave draft that I’m using has an advancing twill order to the blocks, which creates the strong diagonal look to the scarf.  In Deflected Double Weave the edges can be messy so I added some straight twill to the sides of the scarf.  It adds extra interest to the scarf and tidies up the edge.

In a close up of the weave, you can see the layering effect between the two colours.  It is also interesting how the pink cotton is holding its square shape but the plum Orlec is filling in.  I think when the scarf is finished the final look is going to be interesting.

I am actually quite surprised how fast the scarf is weaving up.  I thought that the switching up between the two shuttles would be annoying but there is a nice rhythm to it.  It also helps that the scarf is pretty and the back is just as lovely!

I’m not sure what the scarf is going to look like after washing, but here is a before photo of the scarf just off the loom.  I know that the cotton and Orlec will shrink differently so I lightly braided the fringe before washing it.  I will unbraid the fringe while it is drying so it doesn’t wrinkle and after the scarf dries I’ll twist the fringe.

This is a pretty and cheerful scarf.  Forgive me, I have not yet twist the fringe nor given the scarf its final pressing in the photo below, but I have washed it.

There is just a little bit of differential shrinkage between the two fibres of cotton and Orlec.  It has created a slight puffiness to the Orlec which I think is charming.  You can also see the edge treatment, I used a pink floating selvage on the left side and just skipped the four plum picks, and it is a fairly neat edge.  The other side was the plum side and you can’t see anything.

Overall I enjoyed weaving this scarf and I’m not sure what I’ll be weaving next but I do know that it is going to be something using this fascinating weave, Deflected Double Weave.

Final Garden Photo is pretty little tree called Red Bells (Enkianthus 'campanulatus').  The leaves are going to pop up any day now and behind the tree you can see the red haze of new leaves on the neighbours’ maple tree.

The Beginnings of a Deflected Double Weave Scarf

After doing a scarf is Double Weave (blog post here), it is now time for me to explore Deflected Double Weave.  I had a little bit of trouble picking out the colours for the warp and weft, but I decided to go with colours that made me happy.  I am using 2/8 Orlec in Plum and 2/10 Cotton in Pink.  Pretty and cheerful.

Yesterday I pulled the warp, pulled it onto the back beam, threaded, sleyed the reed, tied on and tied up the treadles.  Not bad for a mornings work!   Now it's waiting for me to start weaving.

In these interesting times I’m finding that I’m enjoying going outside and working in the garden.  We are doing some spring tidying up, here we cut down the lavender and now you can see the daffodils popping open.  We planted daffodils in the front garden last fall to add spring colour and because the deer don’t eat them.  Well, the deer must use our front garden as a nursery because they are trying to eat them and spitting out the daffodil flower heads!

In the back we are doing a massive garden reno, we are digging up almost everything in a garden bed, splitting plants, moving plants and increasing the size of the bed then moving onto the next section.

We are also moving the pathways through the garden; the old pathway was behind the rosemary between the two grasses.  Now we have moved to the corner of the patio beside a sprinkler.  We have also increased the size of the garden beds.  It is going to be a big job; we have only tackled the small gardens by the patio, and we still have the vast beds running along the entire fence line!  I’m excited to see what the gardens are going to look like in the summer.

Final Garden Shot is Russian Snowdrops (Puschkinia Libanotica), I planted a whole bunch of spring bulbs under a little tree and they are opening up in succession.  First was the crocuses, now the Puschkinia and I’m not sure what the next bunch is going to be but you can just see them peeking out behind the Russian Snowdrops.

The Evolution of a Weaving Project

How does a weaving project begin?  Today it began with a general need to weave something.  It’s a grey day and my lovely Lily Louet is naked. Tea towels have been selling well for me lately so I opened up my PCW draft folder and started poking around in my tea towel folder pattern folder looking for inspiration. Click on the photo to make it bigger.

I remembered a seeing an interesting pattern in 4 shaft twill from one of the Guild of Canadian Weavers exchanges; naturally I couldn’t find it right off so I thought I’d look through some photos of past projects to see if I could spot it.  Have I mentioned that my attention span is that of a gnat?

Still no luck so I went to the blog to search out past projects and ‘viola!’ found this great runner that Ngaire wove ~ yup I’m stealing from the daughter!

Now that I have the pattern picked, it is time to find the yarn.  I always want to use my stash first, so a foray into Excel is next ~ math is not my strong suit!

I wanted to use Orlec which is Orlon from Brassards in Quebec for this project because it washes and wears extremely well and has outstanding colours (and that is what Ngaire used!). I pulled out my stash bucket and started weighing to find my options; as you can see there really isn’t much left!

I decided on brown and robins egg blue….really fresh and pretty!

Now it’s just loading up the loom and enjoying the process.

We are huge cycling fans and right now the Vuelta a Espana is in progress, so I need to do something to keep my hands busy while I'm watching the boys in spandex climb mountains.

I've had this huge 30 ounce spool of 6 ply Pima Cotton in my stash for a few years.  This is truly beautiful cotton with a lovely sand colour and lustre.  I seriously can not find a use for this beauty!

So to while away the hours over the 21 day tour Ngaire and I take turns un-plying it.  What we will have in the end is 30 ounces of 2/10 Pima cotton and that we can use!