Crackle Weave Painted Silk Scarf

I just removed this scarf off of the loom and I’m already calling her ‘Jean’.  This colour way is definitely the perfect match for a jean jacket or any denim outfit.

The pattern was one both Ngaire and I had used before and every time I weave it I remember why it is a firm favourite.  You can see the draft here and here. 

The treadling that I used this time is such a long pattern repeat that I only wove the pattern five times to get the full 70 inches.  It was such an engaging treadling that there was no time to get complacent or to memorize it, so I was on task the entire weave.

Now that ‘Jean’ is off the loom you can see how long the pattern repeat actually is.

I always start my finishing process by lightly braiding the fringe.  I find that this really helps keep the ends from knotting during the washing process.  Then once it has been washed and on the drying rack it is easy to undo the loose braid to allow the fringe to dry straight.

I start the washing process with Eucalan fine fabric wash.  Eucalan is a no-rinse, delicate wash that is non-toxic, biodegradable, free of bleach, phosphates, synthetic fragrance and dyes.  Since I am selling this scarf I think it is a good idea to use a soap that is essentially allergen free. The grapefruit fragrance is derived from natural plant oils, so it is super mild and fresh.  I avoid the lavender product as it can be a tad overwhelming.

It is blustery here on Vancouver Island today, so I'm please that we got the greenhouse tidied up for the winter yesterday.   I use it as a sun room and have moved our patio furniture in, all ready to cosy up with a good book! I still have three Brugmansia’s in the greenhouse because they have plenty of blooms on them that are just about to open.  These three are new cultivars for me and I’m really looking forward to seeing them for the first time, so waiting on Rhapsody, Zuni Yellow Spider and French Connection. Below is what Zuni Yellow Spider should look like, fingers crossed.

A Kitchen Reno and Two Scarves

During the summer I find weaving often takes second place to gardening as our climate makes everything grow at an amazing rate.  I seem to spend my time, weeding, picking and processing for most of June, July,  August and September.  It's no wonder I'm ready for vacation in October!

Mid June we started a kitchen renovation.   We did most of the work ourselves ~ and went from the kitchen chosen by the builder which looked like this, a tad too brown for me:

To a blank canvas; and it is at this point you always question yourself. It is daunting!

And we ended up with this, a light and bright kitchen to make our often cloudy winters just a bit less grey. We put two different quartz counter tops in, a plain white fleck on the perimiter and a bolder white and grey marble on the island.  We also increased the size of the island, cause who ever said they had enough work surface? The upgrade to quartz made all the difference for me as it lowered the overall height of the counters, by a full inch and since I'm a bit vertically challenged, it is a wonderful improvement. We put in a black granite sink which is HUGE and that was a bonus too.

Ngaire planned the back splash tile pattern by laying the tiles out on the foyer floor using a paper template made from a roll of my used beaming paper.  We found that offsetting the tile by 1/3 was perfect.  We chose white beveled edge subway tiles from England that match the colour of the perimeter quartz perfectly.

The actual tile setting was relatively straightforward due to the preplanning, but perfecting the grout was much more difficult.

I did manage to do a wee bit of weaving in June and wove two painted tencel warps.  I used the same pattern for both of them as it is one I love weaving and summer is not the time to tackle difficult tasks in my opinion.

The first warp I called Fire and Ice, this painted warp was predominantly blues and oranges and by  choosing a burgundy red weft I ensured that it really does look like fire.

I threaded the warp as an 8 shaft advancing twill and treadled it in a parallel fashion.  I have used this pattern several times before and the fluid nature of the treadling never ceases to please.  As long as I pick a general progression series and stick to it I am free to weave ad hoc which is perfect for summer and a general laziness.

The final result is for sale on our Etsy shop Woven Beauty.  For Sale.

The second warp I call Pink Cammo and it is various olives, peachy pinks with a bit of burgundy.  I used black for the weft and this one is a real stunner.  For Sale.

The garden photo today a clump of drumstick allium ~Allium sphaerocephalon ~ complete with honey bees.

Dye Day from June ~ The Forgotten Post

I have totally not kept up with the blog and with this post I actually forgot to publish it ~ oops!  We have a yearly dye day where we dye silk scarf warps and this year we pulled some warps using Tencel too.

We each pulled three white silk warps with 200 threads in each .  Then we used yellow Tencel to make three more warps.  We used yellow Tencel because for some reason we had bought two large cones of yellow a couple of years ago and it and the Coral we duplicated are not colours we use often, why did we buy them?!

For the Tencel we pulled three different styles of warps.  The first style is 200 threads divided into five groups of 40 threads, then two of the bunches are flipped so that the crosses are at the other end for painting. The second style is 96 threads divided into two groups of 48 threads.  The third style is just 96 threads, not sure if we want it for a scarf or a shawl at this point.

It is always surprising how hydroscopic the silk is, it takes forever for it to get completely wet!  In the picture you can see that we use weft twinning to keep the warp tidy and flat enough to paint.  The flashes of green are painter’s masking tape that we use to label the warps, about half of them fell off though!

We use Procion MX dyes and the technique can be found here.  We like to use sponge brushes to add the dyes.  We used the same technique for the Tencel warps.

Here is a picture of the warps batching.  We wrap the scarves in plastic wrap and then place them in plastic bags with like colours just in case there is any leakage.  We also did some silk scarf blanks.  It was a very long day of dyeing.

The next day we rinsed everything.  It always looks a little messy!

Here is a scarf freshly rinsed scrunched into a ball.  But just a couple of tugs and it is all straight again, like magic.

The scarves are all hung out to dry out of the sun.  Don’t they look exciting!

And here they are all finished.  We were both amazed at how well the yellow Tencel took the dye.  I’m going to describe the colours of each warp and who it belongs to because we will inevitably lose the tag and won’t remember who’s is who’s!

Here are Mum’s three silk warps.  The top is Gold, Plum, Moss and Rust/Brown.  The middle is Deep Navy Blue, Black and Silver.  And the bottom one is Purple, Turquoise, Green and Navy Blue.

Here is Mum’s two Tencel warps.  The top is Orange, Red, Brown, Rust and the original Yellow. There are some streaks of green from the brown dye breaking.  This warp is 200 threads and has been flip flopped.  The bottom warp is both 96 thread Tencel warps, it was getting late in the evening so we combined them.  The colours are Navy, Ink Blue, Bright Green, Orange, Red and original Yellow. There are lots of secondary colours like Brown, Purple and Greens.

Here are my three silk warps.  The top is Ink Blue and Leaf Green.  The middle is Gold, Rust and Bronze Brown.  And the bottom one is Plum and Moss.

Here are my two Tencel warps.  The top is Orange, Brown, Gold (Sunflower Yellow) and original Yellow.  There are some streaks of green from the brown dye breaking.  This warp is 200 threads and has been flip flopped.  The bottom warp is both 96 thread warps.  The colours are Purple, Teal, Green and the original Yellow.  There are secondary colours of blues and greens.

Final Garden Shot is the Black Mission Fig.  It was such a cold summer that the figs are really late. We only got two weeks of above 25C at the end of August then it was back to the cool weather, it was a truly sucky short summer.

The Last of the Collapse Weave

I think that collapse weave scarves have run their course for now.  I wove four of them and although I really enjoyed the process of weaving them, I’m longing to do some pattern weaving!

After the two  rose collapse weave scarves were finished, I tied on a scarf in cream merino and rayon slub and I think that this one is my favourite.  The merino became very lofty and soft after washing and the shrinkage was very even.  The overall effect is a very soft meander with shallow wrinkles.

Please excuse the poor photo; we have a very grey drizzly day today and it was impossible to find good light.

My last kick at the can and this time I threw caution to the wind and really mixed up the fibres; using 2/18 merino, tencel and a cotton novelty yarn.  Here it is off the loom, but before washing.  You can already see the movement in the scarf.

This scarf had much more warp shrinkage; mainly because the merino was much finer and there was more of it in the warp.  There is so much twisting and bumping, it is not like the previous scarves at all! We have had to pull and snap this scarf several times to calm down the curling fibres and it is still very lively!

Here they are side by side, so you can really see the differential shrinkage, so in this case, your fibre choices make all the difference!

Now that I’ve shaken off the collapse weave urge, here is my next warp.  This is one of my hand painted silk warps just through the raddle and ready to pull onto the loom.  The plan is to weave it in Crackle Weave.  Unfortunately you really can't see the stunning colours ~ darn rain!  I'm trying out a new pattern that I've modified for the 200 ends I had in the warp.  The pattern repeat is more than 240 picks long, so it will be quite a challenge after a month of plain weave!

Painted Hand Spun Silk Scarf

This is one of my Hand Spun and Hand Painted silk skeins.  I painted half in dark teal and half red/purple; each section was about 50 inches long.

The skein was 101 inches long and so I measured it out on my warping board with the idea of making a warp while keeping the colour blocks intact.

I tried everything I could think of to make that happen…but no matter how I pulled the warp I was seeing stripes.  I found this great article on Weavezine, by Sine Mitchell and tried all the tips to no avail. I could have cut the skein in half and tied on each end individually, but that was just too much work for a scarf!  So I filed that idea away for another day and proceeded to warp as usual.

You can see how confused it all becomes when you make a ball out of it!

I wanted to use up the entire skein so I decided to pull the warp first and think about everything else once I knew how many ends I’d have.  This is hand spun silk that is close to 2/6 grist.  I ended up with 227 ends at 100 inches long.  Since the silk has been washed several times during the spinning and dyeing process; I knew there would be no shrinkage, so I decided to sett the scarf at 28 ends per inch ~ so this gives me a scarf that will be slightly wider than 8 inches.

Deciding on a pattern was the easy part of this process.  I love a free form pattern so I have dusted off my ever faithful 8 shaft advancing networked pattern because it shows the beauty of the painted warp extremely well.  This warp came out as thin ever changing stripes….I’m going with kinda good at this point, even though it wasn't what I'd hoped for!

Now the hard part for me begins….weft….yup the ever familiar, ever daunting weft choices.  I pulled out all of my 2/8 shiny stuff and started the process.

From the bottom it is Iris ~ I like this one,  Navy ~ dull, dull, dull, Red/Purple ~ this will give me a very red scarf, Brassards Navy ~ again dull; on the top is Amethyst ~ I like this one.

I wanted to see if any other blues would work so I decided to try again.  On the bottom is Blue Ming ~ this made the blue in the silk look grey, Aquamarine ~ this is just plain wrong, Red/Purple again and the winner is…..Iris which is shown on top.  Of all the colours this seems to make everyone around it look good.

I never did show you the final result of my ‘Purple Blot’ scarf (last blog post).  The pattering on this scarf is very subtle and although this photo doesn’t show it well, there will be some beautiful shimmer when it is finally pressed.  Here it has been washed and fulled but not pressed.

This shows both sides and it really highlights the reverse patterning.  Again, washed but not pressed.

I love to show what I’m growing in my garden and here is one of the medium sized ‘Fred’s Plum’ tomatoes….yup there are a few even bigger.  This is an amazingly huge tomato and it weighed in at over a pound….and it was tasty too!  We have a very small garden and to optimize the space I grew this tomato in a construction tube on the ground next to the fence.  The tube allows the roots to get warm and it helps direct the roots downward into what little soil we have.  We have about 1 inch of soil on sand then bedrock...not the best for a veggie garden!

February Dye Day for Silk Warps

The day after dyeing the silk blanks we dyed some silk warps because we had some dye left over.  We had purchased some 2/22 bleached silk from Georgia Yarns and the silk has a grey tone.  In the picture is white 2/8 cotton and three tall cones of silk, so you can see the colour difference.

That evening was spent pulling silk warps, we got three warps each with 200 ends per scarf.

We soaked the warps in water first and they were very hydrophobic I had to use a plate to weigh them under water.

We then soaked them for an hour in Soda Ash.  It was the last of the soda ash we have and to buy more was going to involve a long trip to Victoria but doing some research I believe that a product called pH Up from the pool supply store is soda ash and I can get that here in town.  Has anybody used it?

We dyed the warps using our usual method of plastic wrap, disposable cups and sponge brushes.

From the last dye day I really enjoyed weaving the warps that I had dyed lengthwise so I did one warp blue and turquoise dyed lengthwise.

Next one is 2/3 orange and 1/3 pink also dyed lengthwise.

The last one is one of those warps that it doesn’t look so good but when it is woven up it could be amazing.  Or I could chicken out and over dye it.  It is gold, moss, plum, green and black.  

Mum's first warp is grey with areas of the natural silk showing through.

Next one is moss and plum dyed in streaks.  Similar to the Oil Slick Scarf.

The last one is a really pretty green and purple.  It is a dark and grey day today and the colours aren't really showing up well.

We also over dyed our two problem silk blank scarves with the too bright yellow.  Mum’s scarf has a yellow centre and pink ends.

And is now dyed with an orange centre and pink ends.  For Sale.

My problem scarf was dyed is dyed lengthwise yellow and green with the green dye 'breaking' into greens and blues.

I dyed the yellow area with large green splashes and I added some purple to the green area.  I just made a huge mess of the scarf, the green didn’t attach but the purple did, I probably should have soaked it in some soda ash first.  But it is ugly and I am going to over dye it again, correctly this time, using grey.  I think that grey is my only chance of covering the purple/green mess.

Final Garden Shot is Black Elderberry - Sambucus 'Black Lace'

A few days ago I made a Gougères, French cheese puffs, in a triskele pattern and I thought it looked pretty enough to share with you.