Warping with Handspun

The other day I finished knitting a sock and needed to cut off the yarn. I was a passenger in the car and had forgotten to bring scissors. So I broke it. That is, I tried to break it. With my bare hands.

I've broken knitting yarn before, even yarn with acrylic in it. But this sock yarn would not budge. So I untwisted the yarn enough to get at the 3 single plies. Individually, each of the singles broke with practically a feather touch.

I have always known that singles yarns could be problematic on the warp because they are not as strong as plied yard. And even more problematic would be handspun singles, especially if the handspun is softly spun. I have known for a long time that a two-ply yarn is stronger than a singles. I have known for a long time that a three-ply is stronger yet. I had learned these things when I was weaving with linen and when I started spinning. But I didn't really "know" any of this until I tried to break the sock yarn with my bare hands.

Now I really know in my bones why my plied handspun does not break when I use it as warp.

Ready to Weave

The warp is lashed onto the front rod. And the front rod is attached to the front apron rod with Texsolv loop cord. I decided to try the Texsolv for joining the 2 rods in an attempt to keep the rods an equal distance from each other. This was hard to do just with tying them with pieces of string. The Texsolv keeps the two rods perfectly spaced.


And here is a picture of the trick I borrowed from Leigh. To support the two front rods while lashing on, Leigh had put a ruler on either side of the warp. The ruler rested on the beater lip and the front beam. Onto this the rods were slipped. I couldn't quickly find any rulers, but I did have pick-up sticks, so I used one of these on each end. It worked like a charm. It was much easier for me to get even tension because I wasn't fighting the waving around of the front rods.

This picture also shows more clearly how I used the Texolv loop cord to join the two rods.

I then decided to try a tip I had learned from Sandra Rude. When I had the warp evenly tensioned, I left it overnight. The idea was to get any soft spots to declare themselves in the dark hours of the night. Perhaps also the idea was to come back to testing on a good night's sleep. I discovered that it had softened up a bit on the right hand side so I tightened up the lashing cord there.

Then I proceeded to throw shots with blue 20/2 weft. I discovered a crossed thread on the right-hand side. Strangely, it was the last warp end on the right. Instead of sleying it in the dent with its partner, I had sleyed it one dent to the left. So I cut the offending warp end and rethreaded and sleyed a temporary end in the correct spots. Hence the pin you see on the right hand side of the warp. The pin is holding that warp end in place. The pin is visible on the right side in the following photo.



Visible in the photo also is a correction I had to make to softening ends on the right side. This time I couldn't simply pull the lashing cord tighter. The knots were just too tight to loosen up easily. So I got out a bamboo double-pointed needle and stuck it through the two end loops of the lashing cord. Then, to keep it in place, I pushed the ends of the needle into the holes of the Texsolv.

The warp is looking good. I am ready to start weaving.

Inspiration

"Inspiration is found in the studio while you are working."

Source: Art News Blog

This is one reason I find it so important to weave every day. Weaving, by the way, does not mean just sitting at the loom. It also means things like warping, mending cloth, working on drafts. Most of my ideas come during these times. The remaining ideas generally come in the middle of the night. But without the actual weaving activities, they probably would not have come either.

Sometimes they come at fiber shows and art museums as well. A painting can just get me somehow and I dig out my notebook and pen from my purse and write frantically.

And this is why it is important always to have paper and pen/pencil at the ready. When my ideas come in the middle of the night, I can hold onto them till morning without writing them down. But if they come in the midst of weaving-related activities, or at galleries and art museums, the ideas are likely to be lost if not written down fairly quickly.

More on Sett

The figures I gave on sett from the Osterkamp book are rather typical figures for her. In her tables she frequently has very peculiar numbers such as 19, 27. The only way I could achieve these kinds of setts is through uneven sleyings. Uneven sleyings occur when you do not put the same number of ends in each dent. The sleying might be, for example, 2-3-3-3-2-2-3-3.

I do not like uneven sleyings. First, I am much more apt to make a sleying error when I have to change, even in a regular fashion, the number of warp ends in a dent. Worse still, I would find it much too easy to miss a sleying error until I was in the process of weaving.

Also it is my experience that fabric weaves better with equal numbers of threads in each dent. There is less possibility of ends slipping around in the final fabric or, perhaps even worse, of the whole fabric simply not evening out in the final finishing. In this case, the warp ends would not be evenly spaced.

Uneven spacing of warp ends can be a design feature, but if it is, it ought to be intentional. Uneven spacings, skipped dents, crowded dents, are all ways of achieving this kind of design feature. But right now my concern is obtaining a regular cloth.

The result of this rejection of uneven sleying is that I have a large number of reeds. I would like more, but I would have to have them made to order. I don't consider this particularly a problem, but whenever I think about it, I cannot make up my mind which of several possibilities I would get the most use from. Reeds do not come cheap!

Crackle Yardage Sample

Here is a photo of the sampler piece that I saved to do some washing experiments on. I washed and hard-pressed the sample two times.


What totally surprised me was how fine and drapeable this little piece is. There is no feeling of the warp having been sett too far apart. Looking at the figures explains this unexpected result.

At the reed, the width of the fabric on the loom was 36.5"
The width on the loom, measured at the front, was 34.0"
The width off the loom was 33.0"
The width after the first washing in hot water and drying on perm press setting was 32.5"
The width after the second washing in hot water and hot dry was 32.25"

The total shrinkage in the width was 4.25" The total shrinkage in the with was a bit more than 10%

The length on the loom was 7.25"; the length after the first and second washings was 7.0" That is less than 5%.

I also computed the epi in the plain weave section. The epi turned out to be 34, in contrast to the weaving sett of 30 epi.

I also measured the picks per inch in that section,. The ppi turned out to be 32.

I find it humbling to hold finished cloth up to the light to see how evenly I managed to treadle. Perhaps I would be better to say, how UNevenly I treadle. Really humbling. And the cloth always looks like window screening. Here is a photo of that fabric, before washing, taped to a window:



And here is another photo of the same fabric, but after the final washing and pressing:



The closing up of the "window screening" is quite obvious. Also, the imperfections in the treadling have disappeared.

I have hopes for the fabric once I have mended, washed, ironed................ But, I will have to rethink what I was planning to make. A somewhat fitted jacket will no longer do. The jacket must be much looser and more fluid.

More Weaving Misadventures

I sat down this morning to finish sleying the reed. I had finished two-thirds of it on Wednesday. This meant that I was now working left of center. I pulled out the first group of threads and separated them into groups of two. I inserted my sley hook in the appropriate space and grabbed the first thread. As I did this I saw, to my immediate right, on the first shaft, approximately 30 empty heddles.

An occasional empty heddle is nothing to cry about. It happens. It can just stay there. If it doesn't mean re-threading too many threads, I will correct it. Otherwise I just let it stay there. But 30 empty heddles? No way.

How on earth did this happen? How on earth could I have skipped 30 heddles in a row on the first shaft? I did have a cold. I was also sick from my flu shot. But surely.....................

Fortunately I had tied my threaded heddles in groups such that each group represented one block. So it was very easy to figure out where I was in the threading draft. And I saw that this error had happened in an interesting place: at the beginning of the third repeat.

Anyway, I pulled all the ends out of their heddles, rearranged the heddles, put books under the shafts again to facilitate access to the cross, and am back at it.

Have been surprised that it's not really terribly awkward to thread in this way, with the front beam on, the cloth beam on, the reed in and the beater upright. The most awkward thing is getting on and off the bench because it is right up there close to the cloth beam. Fortunately I'm pretty agile. I just need to make sure that my coffee mug is out of the way so my feet don't kick it over in the process of mounting or dismounting!

Getting Sidetracked

I belong to the Online Guild of Weavers, Spinners and Dyers, affectionately called OLGA. This wonderful group sponsors month-long workshops on various topics, led primarily by list members. The next workshop, beginning in January, is on knitting with wire.

For several years now I have been intrigued with possibilities of working with wire. For a while I investigated weaving with wire. There were two HGA Learning Exchanges on the subject (for more on HGA Learning Exchanges, go here ). I was definitely interested but at the time I was involved with something else. I no longer remember what that something else was. I think I was also playing the coward.

At some point I was interested enough in this to purchase a beautiful book by Arline M. Fisch called Textiles Techniques in Metal. I would have purchased it for the photos alone. They are wonderful. She writes chapters on knitting, crochet, braiding, sprang, basketry, and knotting. Oh yes, she does have a chapter on weaving. The pages on weaving are getting a bit dog-eared.

And one year there was a seminar/workshop at HGA's Convergence on the subject, but I was unable to attend Convergence. Did I really want to attend? Did I really want to take that workshop?

Then a few years ago I took a weekend workshop sponsored by a jewelry group on crocheting with wire. Aha. I took it and decided I really didn't want anything more to do with it. I was a total klutz. End of story. Sure.

So now OLGA is sponsoring an online knitting with wire workshop. Learning that destroyed by weaving plans for the day. I was on the internet researching materials. I was on the internet Googling knitting with wire. I managed to find a book I had purchased for some unknown reason on knitting with wire. It's by Nancie M. Wiseman and called, appropriately enough Knitting With Wire.

Then I started thinking about weaving with wire. Not with my big floor loom. I was thinking how I might use my small tapestry loom. Then I started thinking in terms of a copper pipe loom where the loom itself might serve as a frame for the piece. And then I found Fisch's book again and saw possible off-loom techniques. The mind boggles.

Now it is dinner time. My hubby wants to go out for dinner. Huh? He wants to watch a DVD tonight. Huh? Well, he does begin his Thanksgiving vacation this evening so he's entitled. Maybe. Grudgingly (though not so as he would know that), I will give up my current temporary diversion and go out to eat, watch a DVD and have a very pleasant evening.

Tomorrow. No, tomorrow is Thanksgiving and I have other plans...........

Friday. Friday I will be back at the loom..................for at least some of the day.