Sunny Day ~ Dye Day

What the heck has happened to Blogger???  This post took me 6 days, 2 computers, 3 browsers, 1 long distance phone call to a friend, 1 computer whiz and exiting and signing back in at least 30 times!

 A few months ago I bought 400 grams of natural coloured 2/22 silk on eBay. After a few blocks of time in and out of my freezer, we are ready to add some colour!

In the past I’ve just skeined off hunks of silk willy-nilly, dyed it, and then tried to figure out the best way to use it. This time I thought I’d take a different and I hope a smarter approach and pre-made warps. The entire 400 grams made warps for 9 scarves, 8 have 182 ends and 1 has 145 ends and will need to be supplemented to get to scarf width.

Here we are set up in the garage on a nice warm August afternoon!

The warps are basking in soda ash solution while they wait their turn.

As we pulled the warps we secured them with Weft Twining so they would lay flat for painting.

Then it is simply a matter of using a foamy brush to put the dye on the silk. You can see step by step photos on my post ‘To Dye For’.

These are some of the reds and yellows, aren't they stunners.

These are the blues and greens. You can see the Weft Twining  on the far left that we used to keep the warps flat.

I hunted through my silk bins and found some handspun tussah about 2/5 size, some handspun 3/30 size that had been dyed in locks and ended up looking washed out after spinning and some 1/30 single silk that was an odd shade, so they too went into the pile. The final addition to the mix was 2 pink shibori scarves that Ngaire wove last March. Don’t they look great drying outside in the shade?

Stripes and Squares Scarf

On this pair of scarves I am weaving specifically to sell on Etsy, so having a variety of scarf styles is very important to the look of the shop. Periodically I have a look at the overall appearance of the pages and try and spot any colour or style voids. Right now I seem to have a need for black and for stripes.

With that in mind I pulled a 2/8 tencel warp that has stripes in the following sequence 8 black, 2 slate grey, 2 blueberry, 4 silver, 2 white, 3 lemon drop and then the reverse. When I move into the next stripe I don’t double the number of black ends. The scarf has 5 stripes in total for a total of 163 ends which ends up as 6.8 inches wide.

I think it looks really neat over the back beam!

The weave structure is modified twill with some of the ends duplicated in the pattern.

Next to decide on the weft colour, after trying some of my other options; slate, black, navy and white….I chose this lovely grayed lavender. My goal was to make the first scarf fairly light coloured and to not hide any of the colours in the warp.

I have woven this pattern before with a different treadling and colour pallet. I found that if I wove long runs treadled 1-2-3-4 it produced stunning hills and valleys that gave an optical illusion but came with a price. Even after extensive wet finishing the weft threads tended to slip on the warp threads due to the smoothness of the tencel!

Needless to say, the scarf couldn’t be sold and I’m thankful for that because it is my very favourite to wear, warts and all it has a wonderful drape.

What I did discover is that if I treadled it in short runs the warp/weft was very stable, so here is a close up!

Back To The Loom

Last week we had a short trip to the Okanagan Valley to visit with my brother who is in the middle of Chemotherapy, so there was no time for weaving. I did pull a new two scarf warp and warped the loom, but  I’ll save that for next time.

I finished the fringes on the ‘Rhubarb’ scarf as soon as I came home and I can’t believe how much I love this colour pallet. The browns were lightened up by the red, lime and yellow and the whole scarf is a fiesta of fire! I’m definitely filing this colour combination away to work with again.

The Crackle weave pattern is so supple; the drape of this scarf is magical.

Since the Okanagan Valley is noted for it’s orchards I didn’t return home empty handed. I bought a flat of peaches, a flat of apricots and half a flat of lapin cherries. We immediately canned the peaches, made two batches of apricot jam and ate cherries like there was no tomorrow!

Just to fill up our spare time we went raspberry picking the day after our return, the berries were huge and don't they look pretty? We made two batches of jam and have these lovely berries ready to freeze. The blueberries were just starting to ripen, so these are just for eating with breakfast.

The same day, the two dozen French Filet bean plants that we threw into the garden in May decided that they were ready. This is what we didn’t give to our friends and neighbours ~ so lovely, and already blanched and ready to be put in the freezer. We have since done two more batches of about the same size and I swear my neighbours are hiding when we come with our hands full! I sort them into sizes and freeze the smallest ones whole for quick sautéing in the winter. The medium sized ones are cut in half and packaged ready for Greek bean and tomato casserole and the wonky curled up ones and the largest are cut up and frozen ready for soup. I love to be organized!

We stayed with my brother who lives on Predator Ridge Golf Course in Vernon while we were in the Okanagan,and we woke up on Sunday morning to these wee fellas just steps off the patio ~ their mother had stashed them in the shade while she foraged. They were there snoozing in the cool dirt for most of the day. Gotta love it!

Rhubarb Crackle Scarf

My loom is alive with colour right now. When the 12 Shaft Crackle weave scarves came off I immediately put on the new ‘Rhubarb Ombre’ three yard warp, just enough for a single beautiful scarf!

I purchased all of the tencel from Webs and the colours in order are Pompeii ~ Adobe ~ Spice ~ Olive ~ Lemongrass ~ Lemon drop, and then the reverse order to finish. When I had it completely pulled it looked exactly like cut rhubarb! If I was to pull it again I’d reverse the order of the Adobe and Spice, ahhh hindsight!  The Pompeii seemed to flow perfectly into the Adobe, but now that I see it on the loom, the Adobe has less colour depth than the Spice and they would work better if reversed.  Rather than making clear cut stripes, I’ve feathered the colours randomly to soften the edges and I did this on the loom as I was threading the pattern.

My plan was to be brave and to use Amethyst for the weft, but after a few picks I knew that purple was the wrong way to go, so I tried Dark Green, Gold and even Burnt Orange before I settled on Burgundy. The lovely deep red is the perfect colour to enliven the two brick tones without completely masking the yellow centre of the pattern.

I’m completely chuffed that one of our scarves, the Lemon Grass Drall has been featured in an Etsy Blog called ‘Adventures in Fibre Art’….we were thrilled to be included!

www.etsy.com/blog/en/2013/adventures-in-fiber-art

Our garden beds seem to be increasing daily. Michael managed to include a long ago purchase metal plaque when he made the trellis. We needed a very shady bed to hold the Hostas that were getting too much sun. The Akeba vine can tolerate shade and will hopefully fill out the trellis in time (although I've got my eye on a few more vines!) Since this photo we've also added some hot pink Sea Thrift to the front.....so sweet!

Twelve Shaft Crackle

I like to think that the only thing that keeps me away from my loom is the weather. Give me a sunny day and I want to be outside in the garden or walking on the beach or, well just about anywhere but inside.

So that’s my excuse for being such a lazy blogger….the sun made me do it!

I finished both of the 12 shaft turned Crackle Weave scarves and cut them off the loom yesterday. I could wait until I have ‘beauty shots’, but it’s been so long since I’ve blogged that I thought I’d better just go for it ~ even if they are unfinished.

The first scarf was woven using a lovely teal 2/8 tencel weft and I treadled the scarf with two different sized motifs. The first motif is quite round and the second is more elliptical.

The second scarf was woven with 2/8 black tencel and I modified the treadling to only use the round motif because I love a circle!

Here they are….un-pressed in a pile …… but oh, so pretty! 

I really love this pattern, so I have pulled another warp, and here it is on the warping board.  I have made an Ombre style warp with colours ranging from dark brick to yellow and I think I'll use purple for the weft.....Oh my, I think I'm getting brave!

This is our second spring in our house in Comox and last year we concentrated on putting in the front landscaping. Well, on May 20th we decided to make a perennial border completely around the back garden ~ lots of digging!

This is the garden on May 29th and the garden is just under 10 days old!

Amazing, how quickly it all grows!

This is my thrift store bird bath....a $1.75 for the glass ashtray, $3.25 for the glass vase, $3.00 for the glass serving dish and the rocks were free on the beach!

Reversible Twill Scarf ~ How Can This Be Wrong!

I have woven an absolutely stunning scarf and its allllllll wrong ~ three big errors!

I miscounted when I pulled the warp for this pair of Swedish Twill scarves and I was three threads short. Thinking I was a being a very efficient smarty pants, I pulled the three warp threads and wrapped them around a sewing bobbin together and hung them from the loom in a weighted canister.

Well let me tell you that was the wrong thing to do!

Can you see the selvedges? The three warp threads in peach are coming forward when they should be tucked onto the other side. This isn’t a huge mistake, but it really shows.

The second problem with this scarf is that because the hand dyed silk I chose to use as weft has long thick and thin areas, the motifs are different sizes, again not a huge problem, but since I weave to sell, not acceptable. Sometimes I really wish I thought things through just a little more!

The third problem is that the 2/18 mercerized cotton that I used as warp, shrunk an impossible amount! I wove 70 inches of pattern and finished up with a 53 inch scarf….no kidding 17 inches of shrinkage! I’m really glad that I love this scarf, because it’s mine, mine, mine and will look very jaunty with my peach jacket.

Before I started the second scarf I fixed the selvedge problem and hung each one of the missing warp threads from the back of the loom in its own weighted canister. Now they can take up independently.

I changed the weft to 2/8 magenta tencel, so the thick and thin problem is fixed too, above is the magenta side.

This is the peach side and I can’t believe the amazing iridescence the magenta tencel creates with the peach warp….this scarf is a real beauty. But, because I wasn’t aware of the impending doom caused by shrinkage, this too is a rather short scarf, coming in at 57 inches, plus fringe.

Not to be daunted by weaving failure here is my next set of scarves. This pattern is one I tweaked with and it is woven on twelve shafts in a modified crackle weave. The teal and ivory are amazing together.

I’m a sucker for shine and lustre and this scarf is going to deliver that in bags!

Choosing Weft and Taking a 180 Degree Turn

I've been having huge problems with loading photos on Blogger....can it get any slower?

Talk about changing my mind….I wanted to make a couple of summer weight cotton shibori scarves fine enough to wear with just a shirt so I started stash hunting. My stash is dwindling quickly but I did find two partial cones of 2/18 mercerized cotton, one in pale, pale pink and the other in coral. The coral really called to me and I knew it would be perfect dyed with navy; or at least that was the idea.

The plan was to make the scarves about 5 inches wide and 70 inches long. The shibori crinkles would make the finished width about 4 inches wide. I decided to sett the 2/18 cotton at 30 epi so that the scarves wouldn’t be stiff.

I started pulling the warp with every pass on the warping board I fell more and more in love with this almost iridescent coral colour. I had my 156 thread warp pulled and on the loom when I knew I couldn’t bear to dye it. So doing a 180 degree turn I’ve decided to weave these scarves in twill!

Now my problem was going to be to find a weft that would work with the 2/18 cotton. Again dipping into the stash I found this singles thick and thin silk that I dyed a few years ago in purple and aqua….perfect!

This is the pattern I’ve decided to use, it is an 8 shaft twill that used exactly the number of threads I had!

Here it is on the loom showing that side A will really show off the coral colour.

Side B features the variegations in the purple silk. Please forgive the lousy photography but I had to push the lens through the unwoven web to get it. Needless to say, it will look soooooo much better when it's been washed!

One of the best things about weaving is that you can change your mind, and the pink cotton is perfect for shibori, next time!