Weaverly

Curtains

 

Which One of These Is Not Like the Others

A break in the action. It's time to finish warping the TC-1. At the beginning of May I beamed a black and white warp to tie on to the existing warp. Yesterday I tied knots. Two-thirds finished. My iPod has gone missing, so I had to listen to my inner voices during the process. They told me it's bad to have a naked loom in the studio. They told me other things as well, but that's the gist of it.

There are lots of things to see in my studio. Not all of them are pretty. For instance, this ever growing pile of thrums. What to do with them? Sometimes I stuff pillows with them. They make very hard pillows that are perfect lumbar cushions. Sometimes I use them in embroidery projects. That hardly makes a dent in the pile. Once I tied a bunch of them together, one strand at a time, and knitted a dishcloth. 

Last night as I was making dinner I was struck by the accidental composition of pieces of Swiss chard in a red bowl. Moments like this should be noticed.

Gold Dust

A few evenings watching the Stanley Cup has left me with lots of handspun. Here's the latest batch drying in the bathroom. I bought two 2-oz batts of a Cotswold/Targhee blend from Enchanted Knoll Farms at a conference; this blend boes by the name of "Gold Dust Woman." In addition to the wools, it contains tussah, recycled sari silk, and angelina. You can just see a little of the sparkle if you click to enlarge.

This will eventually make its way into a plain weave shawl in combination with other handspuns in the stash.

A Cotton Weft This Time

I didn't have any rayon or Tencel in a color that spoke to me (remember, this is a dye-free studio), so went over to the cotton side. I found a partial cone of magenta 10/2 mercerized, and off we go. Here is striped shawl #3 on the loom, under tension. It's all 8-end crepe, except for the twill selvedges. What will this look like after wet finishing? You'll be the first to know.

For the curious, here is the 8-shaft draft for the crepe portion.

Moving on to another topic…Crackskull Bob has a great post today. He's a curmudgeonly humorist and draws better than anyone I know (except for maybe my Uncle Potch), and today he has a fabric reference that really spoke to me.

Striped Warp, Black Weft

The second shawl in the crepe series, this time with a black Tencel weft, is cut off, washed, & dried. The warp yarns are a mixture of rayon and Tencel, and the structures are various crepe weaves. The before and after pictures on this one are very dramatic, because the structures show so well with the contrasty yarns. The first scan is before washing, and the second one after. Click to enlarge. Selvedges are on the right.

 

A Carolinas Kind of Weekend

Friday, on Paris Mountain, there was a thunderstorm and then a rainbow.

Saturday we went for a drive in North Carolina. The roadsides were abloom with lilies.

Overgrown cabins are always picture-worthy in NC.

On Sunday, Michele stopped by on her way home to Tallahassee from a warping workshop in Hendersonville, and we went downtown for a look at Falls Park and Liberty Bridge. Here's Michele enjoying a waters-edge view of the Reedy River.

We had lunch at an outdoor cafe overlooking the falls. This was our table.

The gardens in the park were at their peak.

Crepe Stripes After Wet Finishing

These are scans, all at the same resolution. Click to enlarge. Selvedges at the right.

The extreme shrinkage in the weft direction (25%) is from the rayon yarn, not the weave structures. In the warp direction, the pink granite stripes shrank a bit more than the orangey rayon/Tencel crepe stripes, also because of the rayon yarn, not the weave structure. This sample really doesn't tell me anything about relative shrinkage of weave structures; nevertheless, it was fun to design and weave. But it's not a great teaching sample.

A Black Weft This Time

The first shawl is cut off and tumbling around in the dryer after its washing. In sampling for the second striped shawl I wondered about weft colors. I have enough peach and/or light blue weft for another shawl, but at the last minute wondered what black Tencel would do as weft. I wove a few inches to sample, and to my surprise it looks quite good! I think I'll go for it. The stripe sequence this time is composed of twill selvedges, two 8-shaft crepe weaves, and granite blocks.

Black Diamond

That 8 ounces of carbonized bamboo (sometimes called "Black Diamond") I bought last year on a whim—I liked the dull pewter color—is now spun up, plied, and washed.

What on earth am I going to do with it? It's pretty heavy and limp, has none of the loft & bounce of a woolen yarn. No surprise. Maybe I should have blended it with something else before spinning. At any rate, there is it. Waiting. 

My first thought is to weave a shawl alternating the bamboo end-and-end with a natural wool yarn in warp and weft, and do a log cabin effect. That would lighten it up a bit. There's roughly 650 yards of bamboo yarn in this batch.

Did you know that Thomas Edison used carbonized bamboo as the filaments in his first light bulbs?

Bibliophoria II

I had applied to the Bibliophoria II show some time ago, and when the deadline for juror notification had passed and I still hadn't heard yea or nay, I went online and found to my surprise that my work had been accepted into the show. Mad scramble to send the work out in time for the show opening this coming Monday!

The show is at the Sebastopol Center for the Arts in Sebastopol, California, and was juried by Sas Colby. It includes artwork in the form of handmade artist's books in any media. I submitted a jacquard woven book based on a day at the Atlanta Botanical Gardens. 

Since the woven structure is double twill, the pages are viewable from either side. 

The cover, also jacquard woven, is lined with a dobby fabric. The wraparound cover has a magnetic snap. 

It's not likely I will get out to California for the show, so if any of you are near Sebastopol and go to the show, I'd love to have a report (and maybe a few snapshots).