DECISION TIME

Posted by Peg in South Carolina

The time has come for me to knuckle down and make color decisions.  This is always an exciting and yet very frightening time for me.  Suddenly I feel so helpless.  I feel like I am acting on whims and can no longer see what the piece is going to look like.  Its idea is gone.  Everything feels like guessing.

But I have made my decisions and I have worked out the dyeing details insofar as I could.

Basically I am using only colors that come from my yellow-green/red-violet dyeing samples.  This is a safe decision because each color will relate in some way to all the other colors.  And it is a complementary color-scheme. There are some exceptions, but those exceptions will happen in the less obvious binder wefts.

For the warp I decided to use three very dull colors, one which veers towards the red-violet, the other two which veer a bit to the yellow-green. The colors will move from left to center and from right to center.  Calculations for these yarns are easy.  I will simply dye three Treenway 60/2 silk skeins.  They weigh 100 grams each.  The calculations are already done.

The warp yarn colors will be the background support for the weft yarns. It is in the weft yarns that the major color play will happen. The pattern wefts will use these same dulled warp colors, plus various gradations of the brighter yellow-green as well as the pure red-violet. The binder wefts, in 120/2 silk,  will be the same colors plus there will be some red, blue, and yellow wefts.  Not very much of this latter group.

I  have worked out how many yards I want for each of the colors I am going to use, for both the 120/2 silk and the 60/2 silk.Now I have to wind these off into skeins and weigh them before I can complete the calculations.

Related Posts: 
Yellow-Greens and Some Red-Violet
More on Color

"Decision Time” was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on October 27, 2009. ©2009 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina.

I MIGHT TRY THE GOKO AGAIN

Posted by Peg in South Carolina 

Why?   Because this second skein is winding off so easily. 

So easily that it tends to loop around.  I solved that by putting a tension box* between the skein and the cone and then running the yarn through it.  Any whipping and looping that happens will happen before the yarn enters and tension box, not after.

The only thing I have to continue to watch with an eagle eye is the yarn as it winds onto the cone.  The yarn can get caught and start winding either underneath or above the wound part of the cone. With the tension controlled, this rarely happens.  And catching it immediately when it does happens makes it quick and easy to fix.

Here is a close up of the skein itself as it looks on the skeinwinder (viewed from the top). 

It looks exactly like a skein should look.   Smooth.  Spread across the whole width of the skein winder.  Flat.  And the yarn feeds back and forth from across the top of the skein.

Now I finally know exactly what the skein should look like when it is stretched out.  I also know I can try each end to see which end feeds from the top.  Knowing these two things gives me the courage to try the Goko again.  For if that skein unwinds in the same manner as the current skein unwinding, the Goko will work exactly as it ought to, turning free an easy as it lets the yarn unwind. 

With the LeClerc, because it is so heavy, I have to turn the winder as well as the cone winder in order for the yarn to feed off.  With the super-light Goko, the pull from the cone winder is all that is needed to cause the yarn to feed off of it.

*This particular tension box is sold at Purrington Looms.

"I Might Try the Goko Again” was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on October 26, 2009. ©2009 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina.

 

FIRST 60/2 SILK SKEIN CONED

Posted by Peg in South Carolina 

I wasn’t sure I could get one whole skein onto a cone;  I’d never tried that before.  But it worked.  Just took a while……….

Only 3 knots in the entire cone.  Not bad.

From these cones I will make skeins for dyeing.

Why not make the skeins directly from the Treenway skeins? I could put the Treenway skein on my Goko* and wind from it onto my LeClerc skein winder.

I had tried that on an earlier project.  But it was not totally successfully, as you can see if you read this post.  Indeed, I got frustrated enough that I gave up and made cones instead which I then wound into skeins.

*Go here and scroll down the page to see Schacht’s Goko skein winder. To be clear, I want to say that the problem is NOT with the Goko.  The Goko is a good piece of equipment.  I just have to learn more about handling 60/2 silk!

Related Post:  Winding Weft Yarn for Dyeing Continues

"First 60/2 Silk Skein Coned” was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on October 23, 2009. ©2009 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina.

 

 

 

MORE CALCULATING

Posted by Peg in South Carolina

The next thing I needed to calculate was how much yarn I needed.  My arithmetic (never trustworthy, even with a calculator) revealed I would need 8,305 yards of 60/2 silk for warp and another 8,305 yards of the same silk for the pattern wefts. 

The amount figured for weft is not an honest calculation.  An honest calculation would have required me to figure out the picks per inch and multiply this by the amount of yarn one weft shot would require, then figure out how many picks all the weaving (and only the weaving) would require.  I simply took the lazy way out and figured I would need approximately as much warp as weft, assuming, of course, a balanced weave, which this will probably not quite be.

One skein of 60/2 silk from Treenway Silks has approximately 3,500 yards on it.  So I will need a minimum of 4.7 skeins.  I have 6 skeins, but think that for the time being I will wind off only 5 skeins as all my calculations are on the very generous side. 

Then I will need 8,305 yards of 120/2 silk for the binder weft.  Since I will be throwing a binder weft with each pattern shot (surely, this is bordering on insanity……..), I figure I need the same amount of binder weft as pattern weft.

One cone of 120/2 silk from Treenway has a little more than 15,000 yards.  I need only one cone.

Now I need to calculate how much I will need of each color, once I have chosen  the colors I plan to use.

Related Post:  Initial Calculations 

"More Calculating” was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on October 22, 2009. ©2009 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina.

 

 

GREEN AND RED DYE SAMPLING

Posted by Peg in South Carolina

The movement is from 75% red + 25% green on the far left to 1.5% red + 98.5% green on the far right.  The depth of shade is 4%.

I’m glad I did this.

The dye sampling is now done.

Related Post:   Done with Dye Sampling?

"Green and Red Dye Sampling” was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on October 21, 2009. ©2009 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina.

INITIAL CALCULATIONS

Posted by Peg in South Carolina

I have done things a little backwards. Normally I would figure out the width I wanted a piece to be and start with that.  But because I am not interested in the precise width of this project but am more concerned with precise thread patterning, I started with the number of ends. Here is a copy of these initial calculations:

5.5 yards seems like a doable length for me to get a well- and evenly-tensioned warp. But for weighting the warp ends, I shall have to check to see if I have enough weights to add them to one-inch segments.

This does not yet tell me how I am going to use different colors in the warp.  I am not quite ready to deal with the issue just yet.

RED

By the way, I changed my mind about the red as I started dyeing today.  I decided that Sabraset Scarlet leaned a bit too much towards yellow, so I decided to use a mix of 50% SAB Scarlet and 50% WFA Magenta, which leans to blue.  Mixing a yellow-leaning red with a blue-leaning red will never result in the brilliant kind of red that a pure red would be.  But there are no pure reds in the Sabraset dyes.  So this is my best compromise.

Related Post:  Recent Comments and Questions

"Initial Calculations” was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on October 20, 2009. ©2009 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina.

SLOW (VERY SLOW) MOVEMENT FORWARD

Posted by Peg in South Carolina

DYEING

As I should have been able to predict last Friday, I have decided to do one more set of dye sampling. I will use the green of the last sampling but for the red I will use Sabraset Scarlet.  As this is a very busy day for me, however, the dyeing will happen tomorrow.

THREADING DRAFT

Also, I have saved another copy of the threading draft.  But in this copy I have eliminated the gaps between groups of blocks.  To do the actual threading, I will print out the original version with the gaps.  But for the calculations, I needed to eliminate those gaps.

Eliminating the gaps gives me 1506 warp ends plus four more for doubled floating selvedges.  That gives me a final total of 1510 warp ends.

ANTICIPATED PROBLEMS

1510 warp ends of 60/2 silk makes me catch my breath.  That many ends in a complex threading leaves plenty of room for making errors.  Also, that many ends provides for plenty of opportunity for stuck warp ends and so problematic sheds in the actual weaving.

I am hoping that leaving the gaps in the printed threading that I take with me to the loom for threading will help with the threading errors.  And I am going to change the sett from my usual of 60 ends per inch to 54 ends per inch in the hopes that doing this will make for easier sheds.  To help with the latter I also plan to use a temple.

Onward and upward!

Related Post:  Done with Dye Sampling?

"Slow (Very Slow) Movement Forward” was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on October 16, 2009. ©2009 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina.