Weaverly

Goodbye October

Even on a gray day I love October.

And if this isn't enough to warm your heart, how about Southeastern Animal Fiber Fair? Drove up there in the gray, and saw rainbows of fiber and yarn, acres of books, and old friends. I was so busy looking, that I didn't take many pictures, but I did bring home this piece of good advice:

An Exercise

Some days when the muse won't come it's helpful to just doodle and see what happens. I like to doodle with little snippets of drawn circles in ProWeave.

 

This is the networked twill that resulted from today's doodle. 

It's a broken twill. Click to enlarge. Here's another version, this time with a liftplan designed in Photoshop Elements:

And with a further tweaking in Elements, it becomes this:

They're all for 16 shafts. I'll file them away for another day.

Paper

Last week as I was finishing up a session in my photography corner, I turned off the flood lamps and saw the backdrop paper by window light. It was actually much more interesting than the stuff I was photographing. 

It reminds me of my favorite river birch.

Four Little Looms

While cleaning up and organizing for Open Studios, these four little looms found themselves grouped onto one table. I thought they merited a family photo, especially as they are all warped and demonstration-ready. Click to enlarge.

From left to right, may I present: the Gilmore Mini Wave, the Schacht Cricket, a little-bitty frame loom (I can't remember where I bought it), and John Mallarkey's card loom. 

I have achieved my (ridiculous) goal of having all my looms warped at the same time for this event. That includes the TC-1, the Wolf Pup, and the Louet 16-shaft Megado. The 8-shaft loom, which resides upstairs, is not included in the event, nor is the spinning wheel, also upstairs. But all are ready to go. I have this fantasy of leaving town and the loom fairies move in and take over, working away in a frenzy, completing all the weaving. As you may know, in addition to my loom addiction, I love designing and warping, and as to weaving…not as much. 

All that personal history aside, my studio is ready for visitors, and it will be a very educational event for people who want to get a quick overview of what is possible in handweaving. 

Shrinking More

Further messing around with the 16-shaft version of Oak Leaves, this time to decrease the size of the threading repeat. I've now got it down to an 80-end repeat. If the sett is 24 epi, that makes each motif 3-1/3 inches. If 28 epi, it's down to 2-7/8 inches. Here it is in repeat with some extra straight threadings at the sides for a border.

They don't look much like oak leaves any more, but that's OK. Click to enlarge.

Telescoped

I've been wanting to weave new placemats and thought the Oak Leaves draft from my previous post would serve, but that would mean I'd have to shuffle heddles around on my little 16-shaft loom, a task I avoid at all costs. My 8-shaft loom would work better, as it is wider and has more than enough heddles. I telescoped the original 16-shaft draft (see previous post) down to eight shafts, and here is the result:

This versions is developed with broken twill instead of straight twill, but the general outline of the design is the same. Here it is in repeat:

These drafts look better if you click on them to enlarge.

For more information about network drafting, see Network Drafting: an Introduction in the sidebar.

Oak Leaves

The oak leaves hereabouts are just starting to change color. They've inspired me to invent a networked twill in vaguely oakleaf shape.

Sixteen shafts. Threading and liftplan repeat on 124 ends. Here's what two repeats look like:

If you'd like a copy of this draft in wif form for your own personal (non-commercial) weaving, I'd be happy to send it to you. Just ask.

 

Three Bags

Here's a closeup of three of the bags featured in my previous post. I thought it would be interesting to identify the weave structures. But alas, I could name only two of them. 

The middle bag is a structure called warp tapestry. You can read more about warp tap in The Woven Pixel (see sidebar). It's not really tapestry but is known by this name in the world of industrial weaving. The bag on the right is double weave, combining a layer of plain weave with a layer of 2/2 twill. The bag on the left is perhaps weft-backed satin, as there are very long floats on the wrong side (hidden by the blue lining, I hasten to add). But I'm not entirely sure, and my records for this sample are missing. Nevertheless, it has glints of metallic in it and looks pretty perky sitting there on the fence.

The design work for all three was entirely in Photoshop. 

The Nines

This group of nine drawstring bags came about after I was rummaging through old scraps of jacquard cloth. The handwoven bits from my beginning days of jacquard weaving were too small for clothing & pillows, and structurally inadequate for books. But they had to be used or sent to a new home. Decision time.

I paired them with odd bits of lining material, black kona cloth, and twisted cords, and here is the result. Nine little drawstring bags, repurposed from my stash.

They're useful as knitting project bags, for packing small items such as socks in a large suitcase for travel, as lunchbags, or whatever else strikes your fancy. They'll be ready for you to take home at Open Studios on November 7-8. Y'all come!

Images of October

I found another picture of the Reedy River Falls taken on Oct. 4, the day the rains stopped. Notice the people in the upper left, to give you some idea of the scale of these falls:

And in my back yard this Wednesday afternoon, my favorite River Birch, with its bark looking like the pages of a book: