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.

Twill Table Runners on 8 Shafts

After threading the black 2/22 cottolin for the table runners, the next step is to pick the weft for them.  I choose to weave the 70 inch runner first so I wanted to pick a classic colour combination, black and beige.  I had two choices of colours in 2/22 cottolin, a more linen-y beige and a more cotton-y beige.

I went with the linen-y colour, but it looks quite grey in the photo.  I have done this pattern for years, it is an absolute favourite but I still take a photo of the end of the hem and the start of the pattern just to make sure that the other end of the table runner will match!

Surprisingly the picture above is the only photo that I took of the runner!  It wove up quickly and easily.  By the end of the runner I was starting to notice that the left hand side of the warp was getting a little spongy and loose.  I could really see the distortion when I started the new runner.

I unwove the start of the new runner and I added pipe insulation (or pool noodle) to the back of the warp beam.  It allows the warp to even out the tension by allowing the tighter threads to bite into the pipe insulation to give some ease of tension.

It works but the pipe insulation likes to move forward with the warp as you are advancing the warp so I have to get up and push the pipe insulation back into position every time, it is a little annoying.

For the second runner I choose a bright gold 2/16 ramie, ramie is a bast fibre made from a plant in the nettle family.  Again, here is the start of the runner just in case I need to refer back to it to correctly end the runner.

Some of you eagle eyed people may have noticed that I’ve changed my shuttle, the ramie needed to have a different tension in the shuttle than the 2/22 cottolin that I had used for the previous runner.  The ramie is quite stiff and a little sticky so the draw from the shuttle is a bit ‘hard’, it isn’t that nice to weave with but the runner is stunning.  I’m happy that the runner is only going to be 50 inches, though!

This summer we’ve been hearing the call of a pacific tree frog (Pseudacris regilla) also called the pacific chorus frog, in the back garden and last week I found it hiding under some pots by the greenhouse.  It is only about 5 cm long (about 2 inches) super cute and quite noisy!

10 Shaft Crackle Silk Scarf for Autumn

  My autumn crackle scarf is off the loom today, and I’m totally chuffed!

This scarf has been a joy to weave right from the beginning.  The colours of the silk were so inspiring and I loved seeing the foreshadowing of the pattern from the back of the loom.

Notice the floating selvedges?  On my last few projects I have doubled the floating selvedges on each side to give added presence to the edges and to help negate fraying.  It seems to have worked and I will continue to use a doubled floating selvedges when using silk and tencel.

The gold weft really is working well with all of the different colours in the warp, it contrasts beautifully with the burgundy and the olive and when it hits the brown portion, it just gleams like silk should.

The crackle trellis pattern was a really lovely weave, it is treadled as an advancing twill with fairly short runs that are woven from 1 – 10 and then reversed from 10 – 1.

I wove right up to the end of the warp and frankly couldn’t get any shed at all by the end of it.  I just managed to get 70 inches with the tension off.  I expect that I will end up with a scarf between 67 and 69 inches.

Here is the scarf right off the loom in our very weak November sunshine.

Same scarf and hour later in much stronger sun.  

The last two silk scarves have had their final photos taken and now are up on the store, WovenBeauty, on Etsy.  The first is the yellow and blue scarf, For Sale.

The second is the blue polka dots with the centre panel of pink and orange silk, For Sale.

Taking a 'brake'

I’ve put on a new project, and no, it's not another painted silk warp!  It is a project that will use a different reed. We share the 14-15 dent reed so I decided that it would be a good idea to do something completely different.  There is some black 2/22 cottolin that has just been begging to be made into table runners.  I pulled a warp that is 6 yards and 12 inches long, it should be long enough for one 70 inch runner and two 50 inch runners.  

There was a bit of a disaster when we were pulling on the warp, there was a loud wooden thunk and a metallic twang from a spring.  The brake for the cloth beam broke!  The wire had frayed apart where it had been looped over the eye hook at the top of the picture.  It was Friday afternoon when this happen so we sent an email to Louet to see if we can get a replacement.

We were able to finish pulling on the warp without using the brake, but it was slow going.  We’d pull on some of the warp and then lock the cloth beam with the lever and cog system.  After locking the beam we could pull the warp and the paper separator to tighten the warp threads on the cloth beam.

My Louet Spring I loom is one of the originals from the early 1990’s and on the Louet website everything has changed over to the new Spring II loom so we weren’t sure if they could help.  But thankfully Mom also has a Louet Spring I loom that she got in 2008 and it has a slightly different brake set up than mine.  There is a second eye hook in the brake lever and the wire is not looped together.

My clever Dad was able to find 12 gauge braided wire, it is slightly bigger than the original braided wire and a 1 3/4 closed loop screw that perfectly fit the hole in the brake lever.  The braided wire is looped at each end and is held by crimps.  He had to go out and buy a Swaging tool to properly lock (cold weld) the swage sleeve to the braided wire.  There is a lot of tension on the brake so it needs to be done right.  The brake had been fixed by Sunday morning!  The wire will stretch a bit so some fine tuning will be needed by using the upper eye hook.

I’ve already started to thread the loom, ready for the next project!  Oh, and this morning (Monday) we got an email back from Louet, but we were able to fix it ourselves!

Final Garden Photo is some fall colour featuring the lime green leaves of the Golden Smoke Tree (Cotinus Coggyria 'Golden Sprite') which turns a lovely burgundy colour, the Maiden Grass (Miscanthus sinesis' Morning Light') is just starting to bloom and the bright red of the Red Bells Tree (Enkianthus 'campanulatus') makes it a highlight in the autumn garden.

The Difference is in the Sett

 I have just put the third of my hand painted silk warps on the loom.  This time I’ve chosen to weave a 30/2 tussah silk warp painted in olive, plum and bronze, very autumnal.

When I am planning a project there are a few things that I need to know up front: the number of warp ends that I have to work with, and how close to sley the reed being the two most important.

When I first started weaving I bought Mary E Black’s The Key to Weaving which I swear contains everything you need to know about weaving within its 698 pages.  At the very end of the book in the appendix lies a sleying table with some common setts.  This is a good, but dated chart of what was commonly used in the 1950’s.

Mary Black’s table contains the grist, the fibre and setts for loose plain weave, firm plain weave and twill.  For example 8/2 cotton is sett at 20 epi for loose plain weave, 24 for firm plain weave and 28 for twill.  Years ago I put all of this information onto an Excel spreadsheet and I have been updating it with new information ever since including yards per pound and the sett for lace if I can find it.  My chart states that 30/2 should be sett at 26 epi for loose plain weave, 32 epi for firm plain weave and 40 epi for twill. I looked at my reeds and chose to sley the cloth at 36 epi, so 3 per dent in a 12 dent reed.

Once I had it sleyed I thought it looked a tad crammed, but I hoped that slimming down the weft would be the answer.  I tried 10/2 tencel in red and 20/2 tencel in black and neither of them were good.  The red tencel just fused into the back ground with the warp and the black tencel was too spidery.

I thought that the warp just looked too tight overall.

I decided to re-sley the warp at 30 epi, so 2 per dent in a 15 dent reed and I’m much happier with the look of the warp although the scarf will be a tad wider than anticipated since I had 256 ends of warp, I now have a 8 1/2 inch wide scarf.

The pattern I’ve chosen for this scarf is a 10 shaft Crackle weave grid and the weft I’ve chosen is 8/2 tencel in gold. Now I’ve just got to buckle down and weave it.

Can you see them?  We got 12 golf ball sized oranges off our wee tree and there is candied orange peel in our future.  

Pink and Orange Silk Scarf with Blue Network Twill Polka Dots

The scarf started with a small warp of 88 threads in 2/22 orange and pink Silk and I’ve added azure blue edges in 2/8 Tencel to make an 8 inch wide scarf.  I’m using a darker blue 2/8 Tencel called ming as the weft.  It has worked out very nicely in my humble opinion!

The pattern is an 8 shaft network twill that makes polka dots,  and it is just lovely.  The plentiful dots dance across the warp and are a joy to weave.  The photo is a little washed out but the blue edges with the tone on tone polka dots is really quite effective.

I’m quite surprized by how similar the pink and orange splashes are in the warp.  At certain angles they blur together and its hard to tell them apart.  And when the blue weft is added the centre stripe seems to be iridescent.  

The finished scarf is quite striking, even if I haven’t given it a pressing yet!

There are two sides of the scarf one with the Ming blue polka dots (weft faced) and the other side has orange and pink polka dots with the lighter blue dots on the edges (warp faced).  Sorry for the slightly blurry photo.

We’ve had two big storms with lots of rain so the mushrooms have started to show up in the local forests.  We went on a mushroom walk last week and there were two highlights, one was the Hydnellum peckii also called strawberries and cream or blood fungus or jam tart.  The cap leaks red fluid that pools and looks very creepy.

The second was Phellodon tomentosus also called owl eyes.  They are very cute, looking like the mask around the eyes of an owl, like the one at the top of the picture.  

Just as an FYI we are running a 20% off sale on selected items in our store Woven Beauty.

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.