Weaverly

Departure

A headline from this morning's paper says it all (thank you, Willy, for finding this):

An old friend is being disassembled for its trip to a new home, where it will be well cared for and put to very good use. First the existing warp is cut off & secured.

Then the frame is taken apart piece by piece.

The pieces are all carried out to the van.

Now a nice big empty space. Must sweep up first.

Then...

Tree Improvements

A third version of the January tree in samitum. So far I like this one best. The background weft is a kettle-dyed bamboo, and the other two wefts are handspun singles wool. 

An Unexpected Symmetry

While playing around with some networked twill designs, I came up with this draft; it has a surprising symmetry, not what I usually create in networked drafts. From a distance, it resembles a traditional overshot coverlet design. But then when you peer closer, you see the asymmetry. 

An Orange Tree

Here is the lampas tree of a few days ago, but in a different colorway. 

I've chosen some handspun—a gray Corriedale and a brown glittery wool of unknown parentage—with an orange mercerized cotton as the three wefts. Here's a closer look:

This too will be a book cover.

Related articles

Wintertree for a New Year

Manatees: More on 16

Click to enlarge.

 

Arrowheads: An Essay on 16 Shafts

Click to enlarge.

16 Shaft Doodle

On a 4-end network. Broken twill liftplan. If you'd like to learn more about this method of design, check out the books in the sidebar.

I've Got Sunshine on a Cloudy Day

With a nod to The Temptations, of course.

And it's not a cloudy day as I write this (Friday) but a full blown rainy day. Nevertheless, the Fed Ex man arrived promptly even before the breakfast dishes had been cleared. He brought in five big boxes of sunshine, and they will stay here upstairs until next week, when I will be able to move them downstairs and open them. I took a few liberties in Photoshop (the oil paint filter, which I never otherwise get a chance to use—fun!) so the printing on the boxes won't give away the surprise.

Wintertree for a New Year

I love using bare trees as a jumping off place for jacquard weaving. I've done similar images in double weave and lampas. Here's one in samitum:

I blurred the image slightly before reducing it to six colors for six weaves. Even so, there were many speckles of just a few pixels each. I left these as is, and it gives the cloth a very rough, irregular appearance, something like the crudeness of a woodblock print. I think it'll be an interesting book cover.

Click to enlarge.

Some Prep Work: a Little Sample Blanket

There are still a few feet of black warp left on the TC-1 and I wanted to try another Samitum variation, this one based on 1/2 twill, with a 1:3 ratio of tie-down to inner warps. I used the presets #054—#060 from Chapter 9 of The Woven Pixel (see sidebar for more information).

The seven options are as follows: ties 1, 2, and 3 alone; 1-2-3; and combinations of two together: 1-2, 2-3, and 3-1. The astute weaver will realize that raising all three ties together for every pick gives a weave structure with perpetual warp floats on the reverse side of the fabric, therefore unusable. But it is interesting to include all seven structures in a sample blanket, which is what I did on the lefthand side of this blanket. Click to enlarge. I have x-ed out the unusable structure in white pencil. 

I realized that the reverse sides of all the weaves are unique and slightly darker than the face side, because instead of 1/2 twill they are based on 2/1 twill. So I inverted all the presets to make a second set of weave structures. For example, here is #054 and its inverse:

  

On the righthand side of the blanket (in the first photo) are the new weaves; the "bad" weave, now with its perpetual floats on the face, is also x-ed out.

Of course you may think of situations where the "bad" weaves may be useful, i.e., small areas where the introduction of all black warp is just the accent needed.