MISSED DEADLINE

Posted by Peg in South Carolina

I am so angry with myself.  I  have started taking pictures of the shawl I have planned to submit to the fiber show sponsored by the Atlanta weaving guild.  Today I checked the deadline.  July 1.  I had remembered July 31.  And for some really stupid reason I never put it on my calendar.

Usually I put in this kind of deadline on my calendar and I add a warning for two weeks before the deadline and then I put in a mail-by date on my calendar.  I didn’t do any of that.

Lesson learned.

I had started working on the photography yesterday.  This was the first halfway decent one I came up with but I didn’t like it.  I had then done some more re-arranging and photography and was getting to something I liked better.  Planned to go find paper today that was some kind of light gray.

Here is the direction I was moving toward, but with a change of background, of course……….

 

Related Post: 
   Handspun Shawl Done….Almost
   Spinning for Weaving

“Missed Deadline” was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on July 20, 2009. ©2009 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina.

 

 

WEAVING BEGINS…AND SO DOES UNWEAVING

Posted by Peg in South Carolina

After throwing four shots with the handspun weft in pseudo plain weave, I went on to weave in the pattern. I treadled everything exactly as I was supposed to. The fabric looked like window screening. That is to be expected. After I had woven about 5 inches I realized something just was not right.

The nature of the yarn and the window-screening effect combined to make it difficult to see what was going on. But when I looked carefully I saw that the pattern that was supposed to happen simply was not happening. Yet I was treadling everything correctly.

Then I compared the written tie-up with the treadle tie-up. Whoops. Not the same. Though the treadles with correct tie up were there, they were not in the order that written draft specified.

My first thought was to change the treadle tie-ups so that they matched the tie-ups as I had them in PixeLoom

My second thought was to open PixeLoom and move the treadles to where they were supposed to be. I went with the second thought. PixeLoom’s move tool makes this ridiculously easy to do.

The first draft on the left shows the original drawdown. The top draft, called the initial draft, is the basis for the draft I created, which is the bottom draft. That original draft created a heavier fabric than I wanted. In the bottom draft, called the final draft, I have repeated the treadlings were only single shots were thrown in order to give a little space and air to the fabric.

The problem came when I treadled those treadles!

Here is how I re-ordered the tie-up and treadles. The second draft shows the re-ordered tie-up and treadling. The top draft is still the original draft; the bottom is the draft I am actually using for the shawl.

My only concern is that I might get confused when I actually start weaving. The spaces between treadles represent treadles which are tied up, but not for this particular weave. So I will be skipping treadles when I weave. Time will tell.

Having taken care of the tie-up and treadling, it was time to settle down to the actual unweaving. I carefully unwove about 40 shots of weft yarn, down to the initial pseudo plain weave beginning. To do this, I cut the weft yarn and wound it onto a spool that fits into my LeClerc boat shuttle. After removing 4 shots worth of weft, I started winding, then put the spool back into the shuttle and unwove 4 more shots. Removed it, and wound what I had just unwoven. And so I continued.

I could not use my Bluster Bay pirn and shuttle because there was no way I could wind that pirn correctly by hand.

So now I am ready to begin. Again………….

Related Posts:
Unweaving
Into Every Life…
Unweaving and Weaving
Pirn Winding

“Weaving Begins…and So Does Unweaving” was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on March 5, 2009. ©2009 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina

NO MORE WINDOW SCREENING

Posted by Peg in South Carolina

I couldn’t wait for the washing machine to be returned.  I soaked the samples in very hot water with a bit of Johnson’s baby shampoo for 45 minutes.  Then I squeezed and churned them for a few minutes with my hands.  I rinsed them twice, each time squeezing and churning them a bit more.  The last rinse was in cold water—to shock the cloth just a bit more. 

No more window screening! 

They are fulled and soft.  Most have a great deal of nice texture.  But the texture inhibits the drapeability and so are not really suitable for the shawl I am planning. However, my handspun is more airy than this wool, and I am taking that into consideration in my decision.

This sampling is the group that I beat to death.  It did turn out soft but very heavy.  This would have its uses—think upholstery.  Not meant for a shawl or scarf.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The second photo is of the first half of the more softly beaten group of

samples.  There is nothing here that I am particularly fond of for the shawl that I am planning.  I don’t care for the color effects and the fabric is still quite heavy.  It would be very very warm!

 

 

The samples in this third photo do have some promise.  The bottom group of samples consists of a number of rows of pseudo plain weave followed by a double overshot.  This group drapes nicely, is the right weight, but I don’t like them.  Mostly I don’t like the way the colors interact.

In the middle, however, is a sample I really like.  It is woven with white weft.  I like how the weft appears both on the white and on the blue. I also like a bit the sample below it.  It is treadled slightly differently, with blue weft, and has kind of a quirky basket-weave effect that I like. I like the color effects in both: when the blue and light gray combine, I like that the two colors seem to appear in non-equal amounts.  That is true of the sample at the top as well.  

So I am thinking right now that I like that white on blue and I think I might like the identical treadling with blue on white.  So I could envision the shawl as either all one color warp with a different color weft.  Or I could envision it as large blocks of color.

Meanwhile I’m off on a new threading. 

And I have ordered the silk yarn for the next crackle shawl, a project that is coming up quickly but needs more thinking and planning to be followed by more dyeing.

To learn a bit more about how to full woven (or knitted) fabric, go to this essay on All Fiber Arts.  To learn quite a bit on the history of fulling, go to this essay on Wikipedia.

"No More Window Screening" was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on January 20, 2009. ©2009 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina

CANVAS WEAVE SAMPLING DONE

Posted by Peg in South Carolina

Here are the last three samples I wove.  In the first picture is what I would consider the traditional canvas weave treadling.  In the bottom I have used blue for the overshot wefts and light gray for the pseudo-tabby.  On the top I have reversed the colors.

The second picture is the same treadling but here the colors are split up with a shot of blue and a shot of light gray both in the overshot and also in the pseudo-tabby.

My source for most of these treadlings has been from The Handweaver’s Pattern Directory by Anne Dixon.  Also helpful has been Donna Muller’s Handwoven Laces. Muller’s book has been especially helpful for helping me understand the structure of 8-shaft canvas weave and so in convincing me that 4-shaft canvas is what I really wanted, not 8-shaft. 

Now what I have woven comes off the loom to be wet-finished.  And then what?

I  had thought of tying on a very short warp of the handspun, enough to give me maybe 6” of width.  But then I decided against it. I have to admit that my laziness is cutting in here.  But it is not just laziness.  I want to use every last bit of the handspun I have for the shawl.

Tying on a narrow bit of the handspun would be the prudent way to go. But I am going to take the risk of not doing it.

Unless the washing reveals something new about the fabric, I am either going to use the red-orange for the warp and weave with the dark green, or bands of red-orange and dark green and weave with both colors.

Which treadling will I use?  I won’t make a decision until after I wash these samples.  And then I will use the beginning of the handspun warp to sample just a bit.

What about all the remaining warp on the loom?  Tune in later and find out!

"Canvas Weave Sampling Done" was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on January 17, 2009. ©2009 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina

MORE CANVAS WEAVE

Posted by Peg in South Carolina

Sampling continues.  Here my selvedges have improved considerably because I reduced the weft tension in my Bluster Bay shuttle (photo to the right) so that the shuttle went over only one hook instead of two.  For some perspective on this, when I weave with fine silk, I thread the weft yarn over four hooks.

One problem does occur, however, when the overshots occur over the selvedge edge of a sample, even with floating selvedges. It’s not all that clear in the photo, but there is really excessive looseness of the weft at the selvedges. This happens in the top sample, the sample treadled with light gray weft.

The best solution for that seems to be to have a bit of plain weave threaded at the selvedges.  It won’t be true plain weave because of the doubled warp ends.  But it will be close enough to control better what could be very messy selvedges.

Or alternatively, I could take advantage of the fact that I have four empty shafts (grin!) and thread those to genuine plain weave.  I  have not yet tried this with my 8-shaft loom.  Indeed, being able to do that is one reason I justified the purchase of an 8-shaft loom.  So perhaps the time is come.

Again, the selvedges have improved greatly with the change in threading the shuttle hooks. But the messy selvedge issue is clear on the bottom sample of this next photo as well, though not as bad as in the first photo.

Also, the samples at the bottom and top are, despite their have been beaten just as softly as the rest, definitely weft-dominant.  The middle fabric is less so.

One thing I am learning is that I rarely like blue warp with light gray weft.  But I like the reverse.  This might suggest that I would like a red warp with dark green weft.  In at least some of the samples, that would create an effect of over-all dark green with red peeking through.  At least that is what I am currently guessing.

Related Post:  Weaving with Multiple Shuttles

"More Canvas Weave" was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on January 15, 2009. ©2009 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina

WINDOW SCREENING CONTINUED

Posted by Peg in South Carolina

PLACING, PRESSING AND SQUEEZING

Next I wove with the same treadlings I had on the first set of samples but with a difference: I did not beat the warp to death.  This time, as in the second set, I gently pressed and then carefully squeezed the beater.  So these samples look (and feel) much different from the original first set.

One of the issues was how hard to squeeze those overshot threads which are thrown twice in the same shed.  I decided to barely place the first shot, then throw the second shot and barely place it.  Then I treadled the next treadle and pressed and squeezed the beater until those doubled threads seemed to be where I thought they needed to be.

Beat this way, the bottom sample with blue weft measured 8 picks per inch;  the top sample with gray weft measured 9 picks per inch. In counting the picks I counted the doubled wefts as 2 picks.

These samples seem much more promising.  But again, only removal from the loom and washing will tell the full story.

PHOTOGRAPHY AND COLOR NOTES

Normally when I photograph my weavings I have the bright colors settings on.  But photographing these blue and gray wools have given me trouble. The only way I could get close to the right color was to turn off all the color settings. Even so the colors were still too bright.

So today I decided to play with the software as well.  The result is much closer to the real thing.

But I took another photograph as well.  I had no lights turned on when I took the photo at the left, only the ambient light available from bright sunlight coming through the windows.  So I decided to try a daylight setting and a cloudy daylight setting.  With the cloudy daylight setting, this is what I got.  I almost didn’t take the picture when I saw it on the LCD screen because it seemed so wrong.  Then I looked at the fabric.  I was surprised to see that actually, right then, with the fabric at the distance it was from my eyes, these were pretty close to the colors I actually saw!  Color is definitely magical.

Related Posts:
Window Screening
Discouraged But Not Totally

"Window Screening Continued" was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on January 13, 2009. © 2009 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina

WINDOW SCREENING

Posted by Peg in South Carolina

My second attempt proves to have a great deal more promise than my first attempt.  I wove the same thing twice:  once with light gray and once with blue.  I watched the little empty squares between the warp and the weft.  I tried to make those spaces square. Clicking on the photo will enlarge it and reveal those spaces even more clearly.

I decided to weave a lot more of the “plain weave.”  It’s not true plain weave.  Note the doubled warp ends.  But I knew doing that would make it easier for me to read what was happening.

In the first attempt, with gray weft, the picks per inch were 7.  Almost square and the warp sett at 8 epi.  I was clearly moving in the right direction. 

When I started with the blue weft I concentrated very hard. I didn’t settle the weft in for its final placement until I changed the shed.  Then I pulled on the beater ever so slightly more.  For me, unused as I am to this kind of weaving, my concentration was fiercely intense.  But I won!   8 ppi!

The fabric looks better.  It feels better.  It is still coarse, but that will disappear in the washing.  The yarns now have plenty of room to expand and soften.

But before I cut this sampling off for washing I want to weave another sample, but this time with the overshots close together, as on that first sampling, but still keeping the plain weave shots open as they are here.

Related Post:  Discouraged But Not Totally

"Window Screening" was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on January 12, 2009. © 2009 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina

DISCOURAGED BUT NOT TOTALLY

Posted by Peg in South Carolina

The warp is on the loom for the handspun shawl sampling. For probably the first time, I threaded the loom without any tools. Why? None of my tools satisfactorily grabbed onto this heaviesh yarn. Being right-handed, that was the first way I tried it. Didn’t work because everything seemed to get in the way. Working left-handed, however, did work quite nicely. I tend to be slightly ambidextrous. I cannot write well with my left hand, but I do use it for other tasks. Fingers, however, will not be my tool of choice for threading 60/2 silk!

The photo shows that I have made a start. But I am not happy. Not at all.

First, the warp consists of two panels of blue on the outside and a slightly larger panel of light gray on the inside. When I weave with blue weft, the gray warp in the center is barely visible. When i weave with the gray weft, the blue warps are barely visible.

What is more, the feel of the fabric is just awful: thick and rough. Coarse. I immediately thought about trying a new threading—something like huck lace or Bronson lace. Then I remembered my tendency to beat wool to death. And the way the colors have occurred in the weaving, I am clearly beating a weft-dominant fabric. I don’t want a weft-dominant fabric.

It is so very hard for me to beat wool softly, loosely, so that it truly looks like window screening while it is on the loom. So that, in short, it looks like something the cat dragged in and I’d just as soon she get out promptly. Beating like that just always seems counter-intuitive to me.

When I am weaving plain weave or twill with wool it is easy to check the beat. I can measure or, in the case of twill, I can check the angle. When I weave with wool, I have to do this almost constantly. Perhaps this is a reflection of how little I weave with wool.

But this is canvas weave. Here is the threading.

In this case, the weaving does not provide me with an easy visual guide. At least not at the moment. So I have woven a few rows of bright red (visible at the top of the photo) to separate this off from the next sampling where I WILL weave window screening. Then I plan to remove this weaving from the loom, separate the two and wash them, full them, whatever, to see if they soften, bloom, to see if I really want to use this structure after all.

Meanwhile, a vigorous walk in the welcome (relatively) cold weather that has finally returned to South Carolina, is definitely in order. Sometimes, but only sometimes, I do long for the snow and freezing temperatures of Wisconsin………..

Related Post: Next Project: Handspun Shawl

"Discouraged But Not Totally" was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on January 09, 2009. © 2009 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina

NEXT PROJECT: HANDSPUN SHAWL

Posted by Peg in South Carolina

I now have only two dish towels left to weave.  Actually only one-and-a-half towels! So I had better get hopping on to finalizing plans for the next project. This is going to be a shawl from some of my handspun. 

CANVAS WEAVE

My first thoughts had been to do some kind of color-and-weave.  Go here to read about that. But I changed my mind.  When I re-read that post, by the way, I noted that I had changed my mind about the dish towels as well! Inspired by a scarf woven by Susan of Centerweave, I chose 4-shaft canvas weave as the weave structure for this scarf. Go here to see what Susan did with this structure. The draft, with the various treadlings I plan to try, is to the left. This structure is called canvas weave and is a kind of lace weave. 

SAMPLING

I have done a bit of lace weaving but no canvas weaving. Since this is a new weave for me, I decided that I should sample on some yarn that is not quite so “precious.”  I need to work out problems of sett and colors, as well as treadling.

In my stash I found some Harrisville Shetland in light gray and light blue.  These are leftover cones from a blanket I wove about four years ago. Two of the cones are to the right below. The size of this yarn (900 ypp) is very close to that of my handspun.  And when I wove that blanket, it bloomed very nicely when I fulled it in the washing machine.

THE PLAN (AS OF NOW…..)

My plan is to put on a long enough warp both to sample the treadlings and to weave off a scarf.  This assumes, of course, that I have enough  yarn!

I am thinking of warping sort of wide stripes in the blue and the gray, not because I think that is what I might want to do, but because I want to see what happens with blue crossing gray and gray crossing blue.  And, actually, I do want to see if using the two colors in stripes might work!

Related Post: 
    Handspun and Computing Sett: Part II
    Spinning for Weaving

"Next Project: Handspun Shawl" was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on December 8, 2008. © 2008 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina