Weaverly

A Pattern Mish Mash

Now where I came from, we pronounced the mash part of "mish mash" to rhyme with wash. That's my position and I'm sticking to it.

The following photo surfaced yesterday while I was working on a project. It's a sample of an 8-shaft crepe combined with a 2/2 twill. Click to enlarge.

Around noonish I went out to lunch with my mother, and while we were waiting for our table, I took the following picture of the upholstery in the restaurant lobby. It's hand-held in very low light, but I think you can still see the plain weave ground and supplementary warp & weft.

After lunch, we went to our favorite shopping spot, Fresh Market. 

Shedding More Light on Lampas

I've been trying to force more weaves out of the lampas warp, and want to establish a really good set of weaves that works with yarns of different textures, before I commit to another major piece. I've done several sample blankets, and you can see that some of the structures have way too much takeup when paired with others. But I think I have a good set in this latest strip. Some of the structures are just the same old structure in reverse (i.e., inverted in the pattern preset), but it's nice to have them on the face of the blanket where I can see all of them together.

Warp is black 20/2 cotton and peach silk, weft is turquoise cotton, white tencel, and beige cotton pigtail. 

Maids, Cooks, and Housekeepers—and Crepe

Last night I finished watching video recordings of the very last of the Inspector Frost series ("A Touch of Frost"), which ran on the BBC through 2010. That's fifteen seasons, folks. A lot of TV. And most of it was first rate: the very high quality of the videography, the well-rounded interesting characters, the humor, the great writing, and the gorgeous soundtrack. I think the reason it holds up so well over so many seasons is that more than one writer wrote the episodes; that kept it fresh. David Jason is compelling as the irascible inspector, and the rest of the cast is also wonderful. 

A really funny thing happened toward the end of the broadcasts—I started seeing Downton Abbey characters in the Frost episodes. A little younger, and in modern dress, but the same actors. There may have been more, but here are the three I recognized: Joanne Froggatt (Anna, the housemaid and ladies' maid in Downton); Lesley Nicol, (Mrs. Patmore, the cook in Downton); and Phyllis Logan (Mrs. Hughes, the housekeeper in Downton). Ms. Logan was Frost's love interest in the final episode of A Touch of Frost; it was quite a shock to see the prim and proper Mrs. Hughes as an attractive fortyish lady in a long black wig.

On the weaving front, here is a crepe draft with color added. I think this particular draft for 32 shafts would be a great one for featuring special yarns at certain points in the threading. I had fun playing around with it. This is my favorite version (click to embiggen):

Crepe for 16 Shafts

We'll be doing virtual weaving at Weaverly for the forseeable future, as the dobby loom is still not operational. 

In today's computer session, the following 16-shaft crepe popped up. I like it because:

(1) it has a lot of movement and

(2) there are no floats longer than 3.

If you'd like to weave it, let me know and I'll send you a WIF file.

And for good luck, I'll post this little bird. Who knows? Maybe it will help.

Tiny House Blog

I am a devoted follower of Tiny House Blog and the Tiny House Movement, and you can imagine my delight when Kent Griswold published this account of Ampersand House today. Check it out!

Can We?

Can we network a crepe? Of course we can! 

p.s. This drawdown looks much better if you click to enlarge it and get rid of the moiré effect.

In Which We Alter Our Course

Textile Constructions

An exhibition currently on view at The Arts Center, Greenwood SC, was our destination this past Thursday. It's entitled Exploration + Evidence = Resolution, and features the work of Terry & Tom Dimond and Syd Cross. It's a glorious show and is beautifully mounted in a bright, airy space. The work of all three artists is notable, but Terry's textile constructions interested me the most. I've written about Terry's work here before; here are a few snapshots from the current show, which is on view until February 24.

Terry blogs frequently here about her work in progress; it's wonderful to see the fully realized pieces. She'll be teaching a textile art workshop entitled "Discovering Shape" at the Arts Center on February 25.

Fine Tuning Lampas

For some reason the twill & satin lampas weaves were just not pleasing me. I decided to switch to a 4-end broken twill for pattern and ground. Both pattern wefts will be woven in 1/3 broken twill with the fine silk warp, and the ground warp & weft will be 1/3, 2/2, or 3/1 broken twill, with an option to weave tied or untied. Here's a color-and-weave simulation of the new mini sample blanket:

…and a simulation of a small design file in the new weaves:

…and finally, the two files woven.

I like the balance of the new weaves much better, and also the way they interact with each other. Click on the above photo for a clearer view of the structure. I may want to do a little more tuning of the selvedge weaves, but otherwise I'm pretty much finished with this phase of the lampas warp. Next step will be the actual designing.

Some Blankets

The first sample blanket for my new lampas warp showed several structural errors. I went back to the original Photoshop file and eventually found the culprits. A second blanket confirmed that my alterations were correct, but the satin weave I chose for the background of the blanket (and the selvedges in the eventual weavings) took up way too much in comparison with the lampas weaves. So I made a new structure for the background—a 16-end granite weave, elongated—and this works fine. I will use it for selvedges. The granite gives a nice grainy twilled effect, and I may use that in the designs as well.

In this blanket, the leftmost group of four circles is shaded satin ground (you can see the gradation from light to dark) with no ties (sometimes called a pocketed weave, as the two layers are entirely separate), and the next group of four is the same, except with ties. The three larger circles are pattern 1, pattern 2, and pats 1 & 2 together.

The back of the blanket is interesting, too, and after this piece is cut off so that I can examine it more closely, I may want to use some of the reverse side weaves as well. It would just mean inverting the pattern presets.