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.

8 Crackle Blocks on 4 Shafts: Sett

I am now in the process of sleying the reed. I am using a 12-dent reed sleyed 2 ends per dent. This gives me an epi of 24.

24 was the epi I had originally intended to use. But when I discovered that my warp consisted not of 10/2 pearl cotton but a combination of 10/2 and 20/2, I began to have concerns.

My previous warp (the fabric I am now finishing) was sett at 30 epi. It consisted solely of 20/2 pearl cotton. The result seemed to me a too loose sleying. The jury is still out on that decision by the way. However, the way I had woven that crackle was essentially a twill treadling, not a plain weave setting. Had a done a plain weave kind of treadling, the sett would have been fine.

The warp I am currently sleying is half 20/2 pearl cotton and half 10/2. Osterkamp recommends a sett of 19 for 10/2 and a sett of 27 for 20/2 if you are weaving clothing for garments. 24 seems comfortably in the middle. So, even though I will probably experiment with a bit of polychrome, I have decided to stick with a sett of 24.

Of course, having looked at Osterkamp, I now realize that if the warp had consisted solely of 10/2 pearl cotton, I should have tried a 20 epi sett instead of a 24 epi sett. The only reason, by the way, that I did not use 27 epi for the 20/2 warp is that I wanted the same number of ends in each dent and with the reeds in my collection, that would have meant choosing between 24 epi and 30 epi. I knew that 24 epi would be way too loose, so I settled for 30 epi.

Perhaps I should have named this blog, My Weaving Misadventures!

I like Peggy Osterkamp's books very much, including her sett charts These very detailed charts can be found in her Volume I, Winding a Warp and Using a Paddle. She also devotes a chapter to how to work out your own sett with a yarn which is not covered in her chart. I have found that chapter invaluable. Well, actually, I have found the whole volume invaluable.

For more on Peggy Osterkamp, go here. Or just Google her name!

Photographing Textiles

I don't really know anything about photographing textiles. So I was delighted when I saw that Curious Weaver has a very good piece on photographing textiles. She shares her setup for taking pictures of her own weaving. I really liked seeing her setup. This is a case where a picture (or two) is really worth a thousand words. Go here to read the piece.

Crackle Yardage Progress

The crackle yardage has been sitting lumped in my sewing room over a chair. Out of sight, out of mind. I try to devote at least a part of my weekend to sewing and/or spinning. Of course, when I went to my sewing room to continue work on a pair of slacks I am making, there it sat. An ugly lump on the back of my chair. OK, I promised myself that once I had zigzagged all the edges and cut the pieces apart, I could then move on to my slacks. I did just that.

In the course of the zigzagging I discovered just how vulnerable the yardage was. As I was adjusting and sewing, it would catch on edges of my sewing table (rounded edges, mind you), and groups of yarn would pull out of place. Here was but more evidence that the sett for the polychrome was too wide. Sigh..........

When I cut up the pieces I had, in addition to the three deliberately woven pieces, a series of sample treadlings preceding the third piece. I saw something there I rather liked so decided to save that.

I am going to use that sample piece to experiment with the washing process. I will measure it, wash it in hot water and dry it in the dryer. Measure. Wash and dry again. Measure. I will probably also hard press it after the first washing and again after the second washing. What I am trying to do is to shrink the fabric to see if that helps the fragility of the weaving caused by the too-wide sett. I will report back.

Meanwhile, I now have no excuse not to start examining the three fabrics for errors to correct and loose ends to cut off.


At the very bottom of the stack, barely visible, is the original yardage. On top of that (blue dominant) is the yardage I wove for trim. On top of that (yellow dominant) is the bit I wove with the same treadling as the trim fabric, but using 10/2 pearl cotton instead of 20/2. The top piece is the little sample I will be doing my washing/drying experiment on.

I do have, by the way, a couple of wool jackets I have made with some long floats. These floats do tend to catch and occasionally break. When they do, I cut them off. With wool this is not such a horrible problem because the wool will kind of stick to itself. Mercerized cotton, on the other hand, is much too slippery to do that. Another sigh.

Crackle with Handspun

Sunday I was still feeling a bit of head cold misery so I spent some lazy time plying some of my singles. I have been getting tired of knitting socks in my odd waiting hours when I am away from the loom (and computer), so had begun thinking of knitting a lace silk scarf or two with some of my handspun. . I thought, if I designed a simple lace pattern, this would be a pleasant change. And so I was motivated to get to work on plying. And I needed something easy and repetitive to do to put me out of my misery.

Normally I truly hate plying. It is boring, boring, boring, and I try desperately to play games to make it more quickly. Yesterday morning, however, it was a pleasant occupation. And I just kind of let my head run wherever it wanted to go.

I was very surprised. My mind started coming up with ideas for weaving with handspun. Weaving crackle with handspun. Clearly I must have been feeling a bit better than I realized. I began to think of the possibility of using two different colors of handspun as pattern wefts. I would then use the same two colors for warp and tabby binders. But these yarns would be silk.

As my mind continued playing with this particular possibility, I realized I already had spun one color of merino I really like, a very deep but heathered blue teal. I have not plied it yet, but when I do, I suspect/hope it will be about fingering weight. So, I thought about getting another merino from same source (link to source) and spinning and plying that.

Later that day I went to my source, Lisa Souza, and found the perfect red. It is called Garnet. You can find the color here. Look under "heathered solids." I ordered it. How soon it will come will depend whether she has it on hand or has to dye it. She is usually quite prompt in filling orders.

Lisa also has a lovely color called Warm Gold. Later I might order a bit of that to use as an occasional spark.

Here is a skein of the yarn I plied yesterday, washed and dried. 330 yards. I have two more bobbins to skein. One should be about 330 yards and the other significantly less.


A while ago, I figured out how much yarn I would need for warp and weft for a scarf roughly 12" wide x 72" long, including fringe. I figured the sett at 10-12 epi. 620 yards to 642 yards were the absolute minimum figures I came up with.

When I spun the singles for this, I came up with one full bobbin and one bobbin a little more than 3/4 full. All of this is helpful information for me in figuring out how much I will need for weaving. The one thing I did not document is how many ounces of fiber this was originally! Next time.....................

The source of the fiber for this yarn was Three Bags Full, sold by The Bellweather. I have their subscription which comes out 4 times a year with the latest samples. It is wonderful stuff and great fun to spin.