Weaverly

Wednesday Notes

Hello friends. Since we were last together, I've had company:

And I've been to the mountains. It was early spring there.

The old post office is still there, and still in use as a post office. 

I saw some interesting examples of complementary colors on my walks...

And when I got back home I finished another halvdräll towel. This one is hemmed and laundered. Cotton & cottolin. No shrinkage events here.


Up close and personal.

Recently read: Max Perkins: Editor of Genius by A. Scott Berg, and Leaving the Atocha Station by Ben Lerner.

 

Weaving & Unweaving & Weaving

For a while now I've had an urge to use some handspun in a tied weave, & put this project on my 8-shaft table loom. The warp is a purplish wool/lyocell blend and the weft is wool/lyocell in a pastel coloration, which reads as pale green. Every other thread in warp & weft is a super-fine wool/tencel commercially spun yarn.

I didn't like the way the colors looked in person (although they look fine on my screen). I also didn't like the pattern.

So I unwove. Then I went for a walk.

Then I slept on the problem. Then I had breakfast.

I reworked the draft, and wound a new weft on the shuttle. This time it's a gray handspun merino. Although it doesn't look very different on my monitor, in person I like this version much better. 

And I think it will look even better after washing.

Stay tuned.

Stored Energy

For the remaining yard or so of the towel warp, I used an old stash of handspun hemp as weft. This was a singles yarn I had spun years ago and just left it on the bobbin. What I didn't realize was that the stored energy of the singles, not being neutralized by any plying, would create havoc after washing: 

This was a hard wrinkled mess. I was able to iron out the wrinkles with a steam iron, but who needs towels that have to be ironed after every washing? 

Any suggestions short of nuking the towel will be welcome.

On to newer ventures. Another towel warp from the stash.

The structure is halvdräll. 

Revisions

The first scarf from the dobby warp has been cut off and washed, and it has a lovely hand. 

However, I do find the pattern to be way too elongated and the colors too restrained.

Revisions are in order. Here's the current screen in ProWeave.

And I did depart from stash-busting with a purchase of cayenne colored tencel yesterday. I'm using it as weft, and I've changed the design to interlocking circles. What a difference! 

The appearance of the cloth changes dramatically as you change viewing position. 

There's quite a bit of iridescence.

I'm having a good time with this one!

More Spring, a Towel, and a Heddle Vista

Ruth introduced me to a delightful place for a woodland walk just up the road. It's the Bunched Arrowhead Heritage Preserve, and as the name implies it contains a trove of Bunched Arrowhead. The BA's do not appear to be out just yet, but I hugely enjoyed the walk through fields, woods, and swampy parts. Spring!

I cut the first hemp towel off the Nilus warp, gave it a good washing & drying, and took it out on the porch for a photo. The cloth was quite stiff on the loom, but after its bath it feels soft and squishy, a perfect towel!

It's very vain, and wants you to see a few more pictures.

And a close-up, of course.

I usually don't like to cut off the projects one at a time, but I couldn't wait to see the finished towel. There's really not too much loom waste here, just a couple of inches lost to the re-tying. Now it's ready for a second towel, for which I have just enough hemp left in my stash.

On the dobby loom, meanwhile, I just noticed the intriguing arrangement of heddles as seen behind the reed. It's a kind of echo of the threading arrangement, and in certain times of day it looks just like the organ pipes on a large chapel organ. Or so it seems to me.