Room to Move

Well, if you look at this picture

it looks like I really haven’t done anything on the weaving front. But, that is not the case. After mending the broken warp thread and giving the warp a nice, deep conditioning, there was just no getting around it: my main problem was that the spacing of the reed was too small, so this happened.

I cut off what I was weaving and changed to a reed with a larger size dent. And see all that fuzz in the reed. Yeah. That is a problem. It was collecting at the bottom of the reed and was mostly caused by the beating of the weft thread in place.

BTW, for those of you that aren’t weavers, a reed is used to space the warp threads evenly across the width of the project, as well as used (as part of the loom beater) to put the weft thread (the thread that runs across the warp) in place. It is called a reed, because originally, that is what they were made of, reeds. In fact, you may see some old looms with reeds that are actually made of reeds.

A dent is the spacing between the “teeth” of a reed (if you think of a reed as kind of like a comb.) A 12 dent reed means that there are 12 spaces per inch along the reed. A 6 dent reed means that there are 6 spaces per inch along the reed. (At least, this is true in the US.) Please note that just because a dent is there, doesn’t meant that you have to fill it with a warp thread, or can only fill it with one warp thread. How many warp threads go in a dent is dependent on the type of cloth that you plan to weave.

For this project, in going from a 12 dent reed to a 6 dent reed, I went from only threading 5 dents out of every 6 with a warp thread, leaving 1 empty (like this 1-1-1-1-1-0-1-1-1-1-1-0), to filling 2 out of every 3 dents with two warp threads and 1 out of every 3 with one warp thread (like this 2-2-1-2-2-1.)

Confused? If so, let me know, and I will try to explain it better in another post when I try to give a primer on weaving.

In any case, the warp in the reed now looks like this:

and the warp threads are not being abraided so much.

On the sock front, the diamond brocade sock is moving along, slowly but surely;

and one of the Jitterbug Parrot socks is done.

That is all for now!

Single

Posted on 14April08 by textillian

Reference

First, thank you all for your thoughts, concern, and prayers for my father. He says he is feeling fine, and he is looking much better (though just getting out of the hospital gown does wonders for that. Why do they pick a color for those things that washes out every skin color? Talk about what not to wear….)

Now, onto the fun stuff.

Well, I did some weaving of the scarf this weekend, but I thought I would be a lot further than this:

Do you see that stray little yarn?

Yep, a thread in the warp broke. I don’ t believe that this has anything to do with the yarn not being blocked, but rather that the yarn is a single with a high mohair content. Mohair is kind of notorious for being sticky, and all of the action with weaving is pretty abrasive to the yarn. In hindsight, I should have used my 6 dent reed rather than my 12 dent reed. (BTW, I figure on doing a post on all of this weaving terminology that I am using for those of you who are not weavers, so that your eyes don’t glaze over too much from reading this stuff.)

As for now, I am planning on spinning some more yarn to fix the broken warp end as well as use this:

From what I have read, this my help make the yarn not quite so hairy. We shall see.

As for knitting, things are moving along:

I last worked on this at the Wednesday night meet up. It is a pretty easy knit, but it is also a slow knit. That is kind of expected from a slip stitch pattern though.

And the Jitterbug?

Pooling as much as ever. Funny thing, I was recently looking at some of my statistics for this site, and I noticed a large number for referals from a site that I have never been to before. I checked it out, and someone had linked in a comment to my last Jitterbug sock, using it as an example of pooling. I just found it funny that something I did would be a prime (or convenient) example of something like that.

The Heart of the Matter

Posted on 9April08 by textillian

Reference

Well, I had a different title and everything for this post back on Monday morning; but just as I was publishing the last entry, I got a phone call from my mother. Now, my mother never calls me unless something is up. She, in particular, doesn’t call me in the morning just to chat. It turns out that they had taken my father to the hospital for chest pains the night before, and in their always protective way even though I am a 40-year-old man, waited until Monday morning to tell me. Oy.

So, Monday was spent at the hospital, keeping my mother company and trying to make sense of what was going on with my father. He was released from the hospital yesterday after a battery of tests, and they still don’t know what the problem is. The most likely candidate seems to be a muscle pull, according to the doctors. Hopefully, they are right. Unfortunately, as much science as there is in medicine, there is still a lot of art to it, which makes it so frustrating. In any case, my father is home and seems to be doing fine. Fingers crossed.

Of course, the first planned photo for this post made me think of my father:

The warping board that you see here is one that my father made for me to my specifications. My father enjoys working with wood, and I barely had to ask him to make a warping board for me before he was selecting the type of wood to be used and how he was going to make the pegs removeable. The board is made from maple, and all of the pegs can be removed, making it easier for me to wind a warp by only have the pegs in that I need and being able to take the warp off of the board by removing a peg. It is unusual for me to use this board now, because I have a warping mill; and it is faster for me to wind most warps on the mill. But with how things are situated in the house at the moment, it was easier for me to get out the board instead of the mill.

To wind this warp, I had spun one (mostly full) bobbin on my Lendrum Saxony, put the bobbin on the lazy kate, and wound the single directly from bobbin to board, as you see above. I didn’t bother tensioning the lazy kate, and it didn’t seem to matter here, as the resistance of the bobbin against the base of the lazy kate seemed to be enough for winding the warp.

As for the length of the warp, it is about four yards long. I wanted the warp to be long enough for a decent size scarf and some sampling. With the path that I took on the board, I got 98 ends. I figured this yarn to be between 14 and 15 epi; so for a 2×2 twill, I decided that I was going to sley the reed at 10 epi. This gives me a scarf that is almost 10 inches wide in the reed, with a finished size somewhere around 8 inches once it is off the loom and washed.

After tying all of the choke ties on the warp, I chained it and took it off of the board.

This is where I got to worry a bit about the project because of this:

That’s the cross in the warp chain, used to keep the threads in order when warping the loom. Once the yarn was no longer under tension, it did its thing and plied onto itself.

Fortunately, it really didn’t pose a problem. This is probably do to a couple things. One is that when sleying the reed, I cut the warp threads one at a time so that I wouldn’t lose the cross and have a big old tangled mess. (I have had that happen before. Trust me, it is no fun.) The other one is that I warped the loom from front to back (meaning that I sley the reed, then thread the heddles, tie the warp onto the back beam, beam the warp, and tie and tension the warp onto the front beam.) I think the action of the warp going through the reed and the heddles helped give an even tension when beaming the warp, with the reed and heddles acted as baffles.

So, with all of that the loom now looks like this:

And with weaving in some yarn to help spread the warp and to check my threading:

All systems are go for the weft, which I believe I have mostly spun up. Hopefully, things are calm again so I can work on this.

Spinning Around

Posted on 27March08 by textillian

Reference

Well, I am getting back to weaving, but by route of my spinning wheel.

No, I am not working on the rug yet. Instead, I am working on an idea that came to me a little while ago. I am hoping working on this idea will help me get my weaving mojo back so I can conquer the rug.

The idea? Weaving with singles fresh from the spinning wheel. I had actually given this some thought a while ago, when I saw mention that most industrial woven fabrics are woven from singles, not plied yarn. What brought it to mind again was an interview in Spin Off with Kathryn Alexander, who mentioned that she got the idea to knit with energized singles from talking to Peggy Osterkamp, who was weaving with energized singles at the time.

I have woven with singles before, but I had always blocked the yarn to set the twist before I used the singles. This time, I am going to wind the warp directly from the bobbins, and take the weft yarn directly from the bobbins, as well.

The yarn that I am spinning?

This is a Romney and mohair blend that I got from Colleen (The Barefoot Spinner) at last year’s MSWF.

I love this stuff. It spins so easily just as it is, with no pre-drafting whatsoever. The mohair gives the yarn a nice halo, in my opinion; and the feel is just so soft. The photos make the colors look kind of harsh, but they aren’t in person. Darn flash.

And the smell? I love the smell of clean wool. Really, I swoon.

As for what I will weave, it will either be a scarf or a shawl, depending on how long I spin. The pattern will be a four harness twill because 1) my four harness Dorset loom is the only loom without a warp on it, and 2) I believe doing plain weave will result in tracking, which is not something that I am going for at the moment.

Don’t worry, knitting has not been abandoned. I have a sock

and a hat

in progress. The sock is using a merino yarn that I tried earlier. I figured I would give it another shot. I has a high twist to it, so it feels kind of harsh when I knit with it. The hat is the same pattern as my beenie, but this time with extra length to be a full fledge hat. I am using Cascade 220 Superwash, and I am loving it. (Actually, I finished the hat last night at meetup.)

Nu Nu

Posted on 1March08 by textillian

Or Nuno Reference

Last weekend, I went to the Warped Weavers Guild meeting. I haven’t been to a meeting in a year because of the distance and scheduling conflicts. I dearly missed them, so when I was specifically invited to this meeting to celebrate my 40th with them (we will be celebrating my 40th all year!) I jumped at the opportunity.

The guild meetings were always such fun, because while there was an agenda with guild business, show and tell, and the program for the evening, the meetings were never so formal or so strict that anyone felt like she (or he, Hi Hank!) couldn’t participate or didn’t have input that was worth sharing. Rather, the opposite was true. Everyone was welcomed and encouraged to participate from the very first meeting. And being a small group, it is impossible to get lost in the crowd. This meeting was no exception.

I got there and met the new members of the group and got hugs from the veterans of the group. Everyone was pitching in to get stuff ready for the guild program, being presented by Becky. Once everyone had arrived that was going to arrive, the meeting began with guild business of reminding people of weaving demostrations that are coming up, setting up a special workshop, etc.

And then, my favorite part of most meetings, show and tell. This was always my favorite part with this guild because everyone seemed to come to the craft from a different direction and purpose, so I would get all kinds of ideas from everyone else. Rug weavers would bring one thing to the group, those doing tapestry something different, while those doing clothing something else. And then there are those that don’t weave at all. It is kind of like going surfing through all of these blogs; but the blogs discovered you rather than you discovering the blogs, if that makes sense.

This meeting, show and tell was comprised mostly of knitting. I took some comfort in this, since I haven’t woven anything since moving away from the guild. I think being away from the group has kind of stymied the flood of ideas that I had for weaving.

Following show and tell, was Becky’s program on nuno felting. Nuno felting differs from regular felting in that there is a layer of guazy silk fabric in amongst the wool. The silk helps the resulting felt have more drape as silk provides some of the stability for the felt that is normally taken care of by layers and layers of crossed wool fibers.

Becky had us make little nuno felt critters (or creatures or people, depending on how you look at them.) I won’t go into how the how thing is done, but it did involve bubble wrap, sheer curtains, pvc pipe, hot sudsy water, and lots of laughter. Use your imagination!

And my creation? Continue reading →

Give It Away

Posted on 8September07 by textillian

Reference

First, thanks to all of those that have made donations in support of my running in the Race for the Cure. I have already had to bump up my goal because I met the first one!

To kind of go with the theme of charity, here are a couple things that I have made in past years that were auctioned off for charity. These aren’t the only things that I have made that fall into this category, but the rest have either already been posted or don’t have digital images.

What brought all this to mind was having lunch with my friend Joe this past Monday. Joe would have a drag show once a month at the Hippo. September’s show became a benefit for breast cancer research after Joe’s mother died of the disease. After donating a woven scarf or shawl to be auctioned off during the show in the past, Joe asked if I would knit a sweater instead, thinking that it would fetch more money. I was skeptical, but I went along with it. This is what I made:

It is Elizabeth Zimmermann’s cable yoke sweater out of Vogue Knitting. I made it out of Tess’s Designer Yarns cultivated silk and merino. Making the size medium for men (large for women,) took pretty much the entire two skeins that I had of the yarn. I thought of overdyeing it because I was not sure if people would go for the color, which is kind of a silvery gray. The women in my guild convinced me not to, saying that it was a good neutral color for anyone.

Well, before the show where the sweater was to be auctioned off, someone came down, took a look at the sweater, and said, “What, did you get this from the Gap?”

Joe: “Patrick made that sweater.”

The guy turns beet red, as I am standing five feet away from him. (This guy does have quite the way of being an asshole, sometimes.)

This comment did give foreshadowing of what the sweater was going to go for. The amount it sold for? $75. The cost of the yarn just to make the sweater? $200.

The next year, I went back to making a scarf. I had quite the collection of rayon chenille that I got as mill ends from the Mannings, so I used that to weave a scarf using a shadowweave threading that I found in 1000 (+) Patterns in 4, 6, and 8 Harness Shadow Weaves by Marian Powell.

While the two colors that I chose were probably too close in value, and the yarn too texture to show the weave structure, the scarf still look nice (enough.)

Here are some close ups. See if you can make out the weave structure.

The scarf went for? $85. The cost of materials to make the scarf? < $10. (BTW, most every scarf or shawl that I have every donated for any kind of auction has always gone in the $75 to $95 range.)

What did I learn from all of this? Well, the main thing is, the general public values weaving more than knitting, IMHO. I think this is mostly because there are just fewer weavers than there are knitters, making weaving a much more mysterious thing for people. People see sweaters in the stores, even sweaters that are supposed to be handknit, for very low prices (considering the amount of time and effort put into making the sweater, if it is truly handknit.) Handwoven items just aren’t that plentiful.

It is all kind of strange to me, especially since I can do a piece of weaving in a lot less time (if I put my mind to it) than I can a knitted item. Any thoughts on your end?

Throw the Groove Down

Posted on 31August07 by textillian

Reference

I made this throw for my friend Kelly as a wedding present. She is one of them that contributed to the population explosion earlier this year. The yarn for this throw is a wool that I got at Webs. At the time, they had much more of this yarn. Also at the time, they had a two ply and a single ply; and it wasn’t readily apparent from the webpage which colors came in which plying. This mattered because my original design, which was going to be a shadowweave, required all of the yarns to be two-ply. (It was required in my mind, at least.) It turned out that only the brown and the green were two ply, while the gold was one ply. I had to change my plan.

Luckily, I had just found handweaving.net. By doing some searching on there, I found this design. After making a few modifications, some of which were so that the design would fall where I wanted it on the throw, I threaded up the loom, alternating the brown and the green two ply and using the gold single ply as the weft. The sett is 12 epi. Here is a close up of the weave structure.

I was kind of surprised about how the single ply puffed up and dominated so. It didn’t do that on the loom. In any case, I was happy with the result, and Kelly and Sandeep were happy when they finally got it. (I am rarely on time for these things…..)

Color Me Badd

Posted on 18July07 by textillian

Reference

This throw was made as a wedding present a few years back. Since I couldn’t really gather from the bridal registry how the couple was decorating, I left it up to them to choose the colors. They decided on these colors, as they were also expecting their first baby and wanted something for the baby’s room.

Honestly, I am really not crazy about the colors, but everyone’s color palette is different, so there you go. I tend to go for more saturated colors. I usually have at least one really saturated color against some neutrals, but that isn’t happening here.

That said, to my recollection, this project didn’t take that long to do. I believe that is mostly because I love working with this yarn, Cotton Fine from Brown Sheep. It is my default yarn for weaving baby blankets. I have always gotten good results from it, with the final fabric having a wonderful hand. This is woven using 3/1 – 1/3 twill blocks, with the warp sett at 16 e.p.i.

Now, I don’t let people choose the colors for their gifts anymore. I will ask them to give me ideas of colors that they might like, but I will add and subtract from there because the project has to have some visual interest for me to keep my attention so that the project doesn’t languish on the loom.

Blue Monday

Posted on 26June07 by textillian

Ok, Tuesday. Reference

This entry is in honor of Opal’s favorite colors.

I wove these towels a few years ago to play around with color. I feel one of my weaknesses is putting colors together. On occasion, I do a project like this to try things out and try to expand my horizons.

The weave structure is plain weave. The yarn is Cottolin, set at 20 e.p.i. I love using Cottolin for towels. They have such a substantial feel, to me, as well as a matte finish, which I prefer over the look of mercerized cotton. But there is just enough cotton in there to make them easy care. (I just throw these in the washer and dryer, as I would any cotton fabric.)

I started with tromp as writ (meaning the same sequence that is in the warp is in the weft.) Honestly, this was the hardest one to weave because I knew what to expect. It was kind of boring to me.

This is where I started to experiment. I substituted purple for the green of the last towel. I liked it, but was not overly impressed by it.

Next was replacing the blue weft of the tromp towel with purple, keeping the green in the plaid. This really didn’t read all that different to me than the tromp towel.

Finally, I replaced the blue in the tromp towel with the green, and the green in the tromp towel with the purple. This is the one that I really liked and would do again and again. It almost looks like there are two separate, transparent layers passing over each other. This was the towel that I entered into the Maryland State Fair and got a first prize for.

All of these towels are now in the hands of my family, given to them as part of a Christmas present. I don’t think any of them see the light of day anymore because, well, lets just say the colorways just are not them. My family tends to go for more subtle colorways.

About a month ago, I was asked by someone in a spinning group that I belong to why I would weave a dishtowel. My answer was this:

A dishtowel is something that I can weave and play around with different thoughts that are in my head for color, structure, and technique, and still have something of use after I am done. It is an incredibly useful swatch to me.

Of course, you can ask Roseann. I used to question why people would want to knit socks. (Don’t worry, I am a convert now.)

House of Blue Leaves

Posted on 13June07 by textillian

Reference

Ok, so they aren’t blue, but it is beautiful to see this in the morning, with the sunlight filtering through the trees in the front yard, hitting the trees in the back yard.

First, an update on one of my little rants. It seems that there is some information about this subject, or at least parts of it. Some of it seems to be in this book, from what I have read from other sources, and some of it was just recently published on Knitty. This might not be all inclusive, and I can’t vouch for the information in the book, personally; but what I have read from others seems to make me believe that it could be a good resource.

As an update, one half of the pair of socks is done:

A manly pose, isn’t it? It is not the best of photographs, but it does serve as proof that I am halfway there. But now, the other sock is going to have to wait, because I came to the realization that I am going to have to get a move on some of the other projects that actually have a deadline, be that deadline hard or soft.

A project with the hard deadline is the third baby sweater, which I began on Sunday afternoon.

Yes, it is bringing back the 80’s with a shaker knit. Add to that the fact that it is going to be double breasted and with a shawl collar, as we are ready to start playing our Kajagoogoo record (no plural) all of the time. I would never undertake this for an adult, but I think you can get away with just about anything for a baby because, lets face it, most every baby is adorable. Besides, from the last few concerts that Mr. Penney and I went to, it seems the 80’s are back anyway.

While I am still not crazy about the acrylic look this yarn has, and the fact that it is yellow (the one color I just really turns me off,) this yarn really knits up well and is sooooooo soft. It feels so good in my hands. The fact that is it warm water machine washable makes it good for this project.

I even got a little work done on Mr. Penney’s sweater, which has a soft deadline of his birthday in a little more than a month. Unfortunately, it is not enough to tell from the previous pictures, so that is that.

The rug on the loom? Well, that deadline came and went, but progress was made on the threading of that; but seeing the threading of loom heddles is like watching grass grow. I should actually just take a few hours and finish getting it on the loom, as I believe will weave off rather quickly. Time will tell.

Update:

Roseann asked about the yarn for the baby sweater, and I am to please, so here is the answer: It is RYC Cashsoft Baby DK, the stuff that I was sampling with here. Thanks, Roseann.

textillian

Why, I can make a hat or a brooch or a pterodactyl…

Category Archives: Weaving

Room to Move

Single

The Heart of the Matter

Spinning Around

Nu Nu

Give It Away

Throw the Groove Down

Color Me Badd

Blue Monday

House of Blue Leaves