Randall Darwall

I mentioned Randall Darwall in an earlier post when I was discussing weaving as fine art. In my early days as a weaver (I was but a raw beginner) I took a one-day workshop with him. The workshop was offered by my weaving guild in Atlanta . We were supposed to bring some of our weavings for him to critique. Few of us dared. Certainly I did not. Nevertheless it was an unforgettable day in which he shared his life, his weavings, his techniques.

Darwall was the first weaver I'd ever heard to suggest that scarves could be art. He told us that he wove his, not necessarily just to be worn, but to be draped over a chair, on a wall, used on a table.

Since that day, whenever I am in a boutique that carries his scarves, I study them intently. Studying them is like studying a magnificent oil painting. I get glimmers and smatterings, but I never fully understand. All I really know is how beautiful his scarves are.

Yesterday I discovered a blogger who had taken notes at a week-long hands-on workshop offered by Darwall last year in New Zealand. Her notes can be found here on her blog.

Meg introduces her blog entries: " It was like Christmas. But better. We waited and waited for the whole year. And then it finally happened. For six exciting days, our two Santas greeted us at 8.30 AM every morning and we got stuck into the magical world of colors (and values and proportions, but more on these later)." Do go read the whole thing for yourself.

And for her responses to the Darwall scarf she purchased (and also a gorgeous photo of it), go to her post here.

And do look at some of her other posts. A good blog. I now have a link to it on my blog.

Related Posts: Art Piece 2: Weaving Continues

Crackle Yardage Two

Here is a photo of the second crackle yardage bit I wove. It has been mended. That is not quite true. Aside from an unfixable mis-treadle, there was no need for mending. All I had to do was cut off all the extra bits of weft thread. Then I washed and hard-pressed it. And here it is as it looked while still on the ironing board:



Yes, the ironing board looks a bit big. That is because I have laid something called a Big Board over the top of the ironing board. It is covered with padding and muslin, just like a regular ironing board is. Sometimes, though, when I want a really hard press, as for silk, I press directly on the board itself with no padding or muslin cover. This has been a wonderful tool for me. For more information, check out the website for Big Board.

And here is a picture of the fabric draped over a lamp:


The fabric is quite light weight and, considering the structure, drapes rather nicely. The lampshade underneath, of course, causes the fabric to look bulkier than it really is.

My original intention was to use this piece as trim. Of course, that was only an intention. I do not know what will finally become of it. I do like it, however, and almost wish this had been the main yardage.

8 Crackle Blocks on 4 Shafts: More Treadling on Opposites

Here is the first set of samples from the 8 blocks on 4 shafts crackle warp. These are treadled on opposites, using two colors. There are 3 repeats, each repeat using a different set of colors. Interesting, but I can live without them.

The samples do show something interesting, however. At first glance, this looks like a row of long blocks 11 blocks to be more precise. Closer investigation, however, shows that each long block actually comprises two blocks. Treadling on opposites does not play up this distinction, though it is clearly there. Perhaps another treadling will.


This is a bit more interesting. Well, at least it is suggestive of some promise. This continues the treadling on opposites but using two different reds. It's difficult to see in the picture; it does show up more in reality, though it is still subtle (which is good, by the way). Now I am starting to get a glimmer of some possibilities.

The black wefts you see are 10/2 pearl cotton. I wound a length on a knitting bobbin and just inserted in sheds, choosing when quite arbitrarily. The heavy dab of black in the center results from winding the black around two warp ends every other shed.

A little to the left is a black thread following the warp for a bit. What I did there was to hang the black yarn on its bottom off the back of the loom. I put it through the reed but not through a heddle. Then, as I wove, I lifted it up or let it lay at the bottom of the shed, depending on where I wanted it to appear. It tended to want to stay at the bottom, but it was not hard to raise it using a crochet hook, or even my fingers.

This hand manipulation was not difficult to do. I am thinking of using it in the final fabric, picking up the black lines from the oyster shells. To see the picture I am using for my inspiration source, go back to this post.

I have now started working on polychrome treadling. More on this later.

Crackle Pleats?

Dorothy got me thinking. She has just published an interesting post on creating pleats while weaving. You can read it here.

I have read about this technique a number of times. It turns up in a lot of the weaving literature. But the idea has only brought a yawn from me. Something about Dorothy's piece, however, intrigued me.

I think what intrigued me was the description of her process, including good pics. I started to think: crackle pleats? I put this in a comment on her post, but meant it as little more than a small joke, since I am so enmeshed in crackle.

Maybe I shouldn't consider it as a joke? I have put it in my folder of ideas..............

Weaving and Blogging

Blogging does take time away from weaving. Blogging does not take time away from weaving. Huh????

It is obvious that sitting at the computer means that I am not sitting at my loom. But weaving is a craft that comprises a lot more than just sitting at the loom and throwing the shuttle. And one of the main things that is involved in weaving is thinking.

My last post, Who Spotted the Threading Errors, illustrates a bit of one of my recent thinking activities. What I want to point out here, however, is that I am not sure I would have done all this thinking had I not also been blogging. Blogging forces me to write stuff down. Writing stuff down means I have to think. Thinking, for me, is facilitated by writing things down.

There is an irony here. The whole threading error that I was talking about earlier occurred because I did not write the ending and beginning threading out so that I could see the threads in black and white on paper (well, really on the computer screen......).

So, I am grateful to Leigh, who encouraged me to blog. And I am grateful to Sara, who posted a long and cogent argument for weavers to blog.

Who Spotted the Threading Errors?

When I looked at the pictures I had taken of this first 8-blocks crackle sampling, one thing immediately jumped at me. Something I had not noticed in the weaving. Something I had not noticed in the computer drawdown. Here it is, with the black arrows pointing to the problems that caught my attention:



Those arrows point to places where the weft yarn skips over more warp ends than it ought to. I went back and looked at the computer drawdown. These skips are not there. Clearly I made a mistake in the actual threading. When I looked at my threading and my notes, however, I threaded exactly as I had printed the threading out. However......and this is a big however....

The error appears at the point where I end the last block of the repeated group of blocks and begin the first block of that group of blocks. And since I repeated the group of blocks three times, that error occurs two times.

Here is the threading for the end of the repeat:

4 1 4 2

Here is the threading for the beginning of the repeat:

3 1 4 1

It had looked to me like there would not be a problem here when I entered the threading blocks into my computer software. What I did not do, however, is write out the last block and the first block as they would appear together. And this is what I would have gotten, had bothered to do this instead of thinking I "knew it all:"

3 1 4 1 4 1 4 2

Now the error is obvious to me. There is a repetition of the 4 1 pair. That repetition destroys the crackle block structure at the point and results in an extra bit of weft going over the warp ends. To correct the matter, all I have to do is leave out two warp ends, one on 4 and one on 1. Doing that gives me:

3 1 4 1 4 2

The first four numbers (3 1 4 1) give me one unit of the first block. The second two numbers give me the last two threads of the last block. The entire unit of that block reads 1 4 2 4. So, the last unit of the last block and the first unit of the first block, when written out look like this:

3 1 4 1 / 4 2 4 1

The slash indicates the division between the two blocks. All is well.

Now I know I cannot trust my imagination to see what is going on in the threading. I must write it down.

No, I did not rethread. This is only a sample. And seeing these two errors over and over again as I weave will reinforce what I need to do from now on. Hopefully................!

8 Crackle Blocks on 4 Shafts: First Sample

Here is a photo of the first sample on the loom.



The weaving is very simple. I simple treadled on opposites. This means that when I treadled such that I raised shafts 1 and 2 (treadle 3), that treadle was followed by a treadle which raised shafts 3 and 4 (treadle 8). On the first treadle I threw brown weft; on the second I threw weft. I repeated this for a total of 6 times (2 shafts treadled constituting 1 time). Then I moved on to the next set of opposite treadles (4 amd 7) and repeated throwing the wefts for a total of 6 times. I continued with treadles 5 and 6, then 6 and 5, then 7 and 4, and finally 8 and 1.

One thing visible is a slight M's and O's effect. Zielinski warned about this in overshot style treadling. If you continually repeat the pattern treadle with the opposite shed for the binder, you will get this kind of effect. Apparently it happens even when the opposite shed is not used for a binder but for a second pattern shot. Perhaps the effect would be more apparent with a finer binder thread? One thing I will look for is whether or not this effect washes out in the washing and pressing.

Because I am using only 4 shafts, treadling on opposites can produce only three blocks. At first glance it might look like 6 blocks are being produced. The effect, however, is an illusion. The illusion is created by the handling of color.

The second set of three blocks is really nothing but a repetition of the first three blocks, only in reverse order. The order is reversed because beginning with the 4th treadling sequence and continuing with the 5th and 6th treadling sequence, the treadling is the same, only in reverse. Since I continued to throw the brown weft first and the red weft second, the colors are reversed.

Looking on the third group of shots and the fourth group of shots shows this clearly. The red weft floats in the third group (treadles 5 and 6) and replaced by brown weft floats in the fourth group (treadles 6 and 5).

The drawdown shows something interesting going on between the third and fourth set of blocks.


There is an awkward repetition of two treadles in a row. The red arrow points to the problem. This happens because treadles 5 and 6 are the last set of treadles of the first group, while 6 and 5 are the first set of treadles for the next group. I have moved from having the first treadle of each group being first 3, then 5, then 5. When I get to 6 (and 7 and 8), the opposite treadles turn out to be the first treadles of the first three groups.

When I saw this on the draft, I realized I needed to figure something out to get away from that awkwardness. But then I looked at the fabric.


The fabric is fine. The doubled treadle is virtually invisible. Drawdowns are not the last word.