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 Scarf Finished

I can’t believe its been a month since the last post!  I’ve finished weaving the autumn leaves silk scarf.  To remind you the warp of the scarf was hand dyed in orange, plum, moss, bronze brown and scarlet and the weft is eggplant purple Tencel.  The pattern is a personal favourite, it is a network twill that kind of looks like leaves.

The finished scarf is quite lovely, the bright hit of the orange really stands out.  I think that a scarf needs to be bright and cheerful against a dark winter coat.  For Sale.

We went on the first botany walk for the year and while there wasn’t much to see yet, we did some identifying of trees by their bark, there was some hints of spring.  These are fawn lilies (Erythronium oregonum) and they are probably blooming now, three weeks later!

In our garden, we’ve add a new raised bed into the vegetable patch.  We put it into a difficult corner where the land dips making it hard to plant, but, it is the hottest part of the garden so we don’t want to waste it.  We are doing Hügelkultur which is a layering technique for a raised bed.  You start with a layer of wood/logs, then compost-able leaves and debris, then compost and lastly top soil.  It helps to bulk out the new bed so you aren’t having to buy lots of soil.  It is also composting so there will be nutrients available for years as the layers break down.  We are still in the process of layering.

The forget me nots (Myosotis scorpioides) are blooming, they have such a pretty delicate bloom.  And the lilacs are starting to leaf out and the blooms are just starting to form.  It is hard to believe that it is only the beginning on April.  I think that we are almost two weeks earlier than normal for spring here on our part of Vancouver Island.

In one of the Japanese maple trees there are two branches that are crossing but they are both integral for the shape of the tree.  So we are pulling one branch down using a piece of string tied to a rock, it is working but it does look like the tree has a pet rock that it is taking for a very, very slow walk!  Every time I walk past this tree it makes me giggle.

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!

Mistakes Happen

As a follow up to my last post ‘It’s All in the Sett’; I did decide to work on this tea towel pattern. The pattern has so much potential and by sleying it at the wrong sett I did the pattern an injustice.  I did however get some really lovely tea towels, just not exactly the tea towels I wanted.

I had to make 42 more ends to have the tea towel come in at the correct width, so this entailed reworking the entire pattern to ensure that the stripes are well balanced.

As well as adding more ends I was running low on the aquamarine blue, so I had to swap out some of the stripes.....essentially making an entirely new stripe sequence.

As you can see I’m nowhere near ready to weave, but I shall persevere and I know they will be wonderful!

While the weather here on Vancouver Island has been rainy and dull, dull, dull I decided to go to my happy place, which is my kitchen.

Three days ago I started making ‘Cold Rising Sourdough Bread’ from Martin Johansson’s book Bread, Bread, Bread.  This is actually a three day process, with Day 1 invigorating the sourdough culture,  (I made this no yeast culture about 10 years ago and she’s a goddess!)  Day 2 was actually making the bread and doing all the intermittent stretches and coil turns and then popping it into the Bannetons to chill overnight in the fridge.  This morning all I had to do was to bake the two loaves.

This is the round one.

This is the oblong one.

And this is what happens when you are too lazy to put them on separate baking sheets to bake independently!  Thankfully they still taste amazing.