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

GUILT AND SAMPLES

Posted by Peg in South Carolina

Leigh has gone and done it.  She has made me feel so guilty that I had to write yet another post about these towels…….just when everybody thought it was safe to come back to my blog!

Leigh made the following comment, which was the source of my guilt:  

        I need to heed your advice and do more washing
        of my samples.

OK, I never wove any samples for these towels so of course I did not wash any samples either.  These towels, after all, were not meant to be perfect, were not meant to be shown to the public, were not meant to be submitted to any show, not meant to display my amazing skill (irony here!) as a weaver.  These towels were meant to be useful (primary) and attractive (secondary).

Also I had woven towels years ago using the same yarn, though that, I realize, is probably not the best excuse.  Still, I did know something about sett and shrinkage rates.  Besides, there is some flexibility in the size of a dish towel.

I was trying for squares when I wove, but I knew it wouldn’t bother me or affect the usefulness or attractiveness of the cloth if they turned out not to be square.When I saw that the outer squares were a bit narrower than the rest of the squares I must confess that I did wish that I had sampled and washed. But when the squares turned into rectangles after all, I didn’t mind so much.

In truth, I did a bit of sampling at the beginning.  This was to test the beat.  I learned that I had to beat quite hard and still could not get the ppi to equal the wpi.  Thus I could not get the perfect 90-degree angle in the twill. If I had needed to be exact about this, I would have resleyed to a slightly wider sett. 

If I had felt that resleying would  have had a positive effect on the hand of the cloth or on its absorbent properties, I would have resleyed. Testing the effect of the hand of the cloth would have required washing the samples…….  I did not believe this kind of testing was called for. 

"Guilt and Samples" was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on January 08, 2009. © 2009 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina

SOME INTERESTING BLOG POSTS

Posted by Peg in South Carolina

Laziness – The Painter’s Keys (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn writes a twice-weekly newsletter, really another variant of a blog.  And recently he wrote this piece on laziness.  Much of what he says here spoke to me.  One statement especially caught my attention:

“Know that acquired proficiency breeds love of work.”

I was intrigued by this statement and as I thought about it I began to realize how true this has been for me.  But it is also circular:  love of work breeds, if not proficiency itself, the desire for proficiency and the willingness to do what is required to gain proficiency.

Experiment with Knitted Blanks – Tien’s Blog

I am always interested in reading about experiments with color and Tien’s experiments are a fascinating read.  I was particularly taken by this post on her latest experiments because of the careful analysis she does, both of what is happening and what happens to her predictions.

How to Build Your Own Loom – The Twisted Warp

Here, thanks to The Twisted Warp, I found a video on making your own loom to weave a scarf.  This is fascinating free-style weaving.  Quite the opposite of high-tech computerized weaving.  I was mesmerized. The source of the video is Threadbanger.  This as well is an interesting site to explore.

Fore and Aft Scarf—Off the Loom – Honeysuckle Loom

Though I have only dabbled a bit in it, double weave has always fascinated me.  I still have notions of combining crackle and double weave somehow. This post is an interesting report of the weaving of an unusual double-weave scarf from directions given in a 1998 Handwoven. I am almost tempted……

Reflections on the Berry Warp – T’katch

I do not know whether or not Cally’s post was stimulated by the New Year.  Not only did I enjoy her reflections, but it reminded me of how important it is for me to reflect carefully on what I have woven.  I find it much too easy just to move on to the next thing.  After all, the new holds much more fascination than the old. 

For another good reflection post is Fibre of Being’s Undulating Twill.

"Some Interesting Blog Posts" was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on January 07, 2009. © 2009 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina

CRACKLE SHAWL: INITIAL THOUGHTS ON DESIGN

Posted by Peg in South Carolina

My planning in terms of threading is to start with the threading I used for the crackle art pieces last year. Part of that draft is to the left. This is the right half of the draft. The left half is, more or less, a reflection of this right half.

The treadling is not polychrome. But because this treadling shows more clearly what happens in each individual block it should help me with designing this next piece.

Examining the draft shows where the pattern wefts will dominate depending on the treadling, or, more accurately, depending on which shafts are raised. And this is what I have learned so far:

Treadle 3 (raises shafts 1 and 2): pattern shows in blocks B and C
Treadle 4 (raises shafts 1 and 3): pattern shows in blocks C and D; G and H
Treadle 5 (raises shafts 2 and 3): pattern shows in blocks A and H
Treadle 6 (raises shafts 1 and 4): pattern shows in blocks D and E
Treadle 7 (raises shafts 2 and 4): pattern shows in blocks A and B; E and F
Treadle 8 (raises shafts 3 and 4): pattern shows in blocks F and G

The photo to the left shows the beginning of art piece number 5 that I wove last year. This was treadled polychrome style, one treadle after the other. Blue is the background color. Yellow is the pattern color. In the first group (at the bottom of the photo), I have treadled through the sequence four times. I used blue throughout except on treadle 3. There I used yellow. Yellow shows up on blocks B and C.

In the second group, I have used yellow when I treadled 8; yellow shows up on blocks F and G. In the third group, yellow shows on blocks A,B, E, and F when I treadled 7. And in the the last group, yellow shows on blocks D and E when I treadled 6.

This shows one way that I can uses individual units to compose a design motif: I simply repeat the given unit. And this also shows one way I can group motifs to form a larger design. I simply move from one treadle, treadled multiple times, to another treadle, treadled multiple times, and so on.

So an individual unit can be repeated so that it becomes in and of itself a single design motif. Units can be combined with each other. Units can be repeated and combined. And to make life just a bit more complex, I can weave simply background color with no pattern color in order to separate out the motifs along the length of the warp.

Exactly where these blocks show depends on the block design. The block design for my crackle art piece was this:

ABCDEFGHGHFEDCBA

This meant two things:

1. The motifs were automatically mirrored
2. There was the possibility of a long center motif

But before I can work any more with actual designing of the motifs, I need to determine how many blocks I want. Then I need to decide on the block design and that will depend on how I want the motifs to appear. I have some initial ideas based on my sampling at the end of the previous warp, shown at the left. But these are only initial ideas.

Related Post: Art Piece 5 Begun

"Crackle Shawl: Initial Thoughts on Design" was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on January 06, 2009. © 2009 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina

WEAVING RESOLUTIONS FOR THE NEW YEAR

Posted by Peg in South Carolina

Towards the end of 2008 I realized that I was not studying weaving. The difficulty and expense of attending workshops has precluded that experience. But, wonderful as they are, there are other ways to learn.

I may not have been attending workshops but neither was I reading books or articles—things that would help to advance my knowledge. What led me to realize this? A paragraph from a book I had been reading: Talent is Overrated by Geoff Colvin. Here is part of that paragraph:

“Imagine the difference if you made domain knowledge a direct objective rather than a byproduct of work. If you set a goal of becoming an expert on your business, you would immediately start doing all kinds of things you don’t do now. You would study the history of the business, identify today’s leading experts, read everything you could find, interview people inside your organization and outside it who could provide new perspectives…. The exact steps would vary depending on your business…..”

Colvin is clearly address peoples in business fields but, my gosh, what he has to say is just as important to me as a weaver. I have no desire to become a so-called “expert” but I do have an intense desire to grow as a weaver. Growth as a weaver requires more than just weaving. And it requires more than just thinking about weaving. It requires on-going and continuing study. And that, I realized at the end of last year, was my weak area.

At the same time I realized that using the best hours of my day—the morning hours—for weaving is not necessarily the best idea. I began to feel that these best hours should, when possible, be used for study and for creative design. Only when the weaving itself involves study and design in the process, as is often the case in sampling, will I start the day with weaving.

So that, last December, is what I started to do. And that is what I intend to continue doing in this year of 2009.

"Weaving Resolutions for the New Year" was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on January 05, 2009. © 2009 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina

NEW WARP

A week with daughter and grandson was wonderful, exciting, and.........just a tiny bit tiring! After taking them to the airport in Charlotte (about two or so hours away), we spent two days in Charlotte recovering. Recovering, of course, included therapy shopping. When we returned home last night, the house seemed empty. but my mind was busy. I was eager to get on to the next warp.

Unfortunately my computer is in the computer hospital. Fortunately all the information I need for the next warp is not only in the computer but is also printed out on paper.

This next warp is a test warp. I want to learn how canvas weave, a new-to-me structure, works. And I want to get some idea of just how I want to use my hand spun yarns in this structure.

I happened to have some wool yarn roughly equivalent to my hand spun: Harrisville Highland. This yarn is left over from a blanket I wove a few years ago. It is a little finer than the hand spun yarn I am going to use. It is also much less bouncy and springy. Despite these differences (which are not insignificant), working with the Highland should give me some helpful clues.

Making this warp has been a far cry from my usual silk warps of 60/2 silk sett at 60-72 epi and wound in 2" to 1 1/2" bouts. This Harrisville warp, on the other hand, consists of 68 ends wound into two bouts. That is the whole warp.........

Now I need to be very careful that I do not think that this is going to be a quick and dirty warping process. Thinking that way can lead all too easily to disaster.

Related Post:
Next Project: Handspun Shawl