Weaverly

Round & Round She Goes

Still working on making a dent in the stash. These are all handspun yarns. Four chains, six yards long.

At one end is a raddle cross and at the other end is a threading cross.

Round & round she goes.

Somewhere in the middle are a few choke ties.

And then the fun begins. At the top of the following picture, where you can't see it, is a raddle, clamped to the back beam. After the warp is all wound onto the warp beam, the warp will be flipped over the back beam in the proper direction. The following view is from the inside of the loom, looking toward the back.

This is still the back of the loom, now seen from the outside. Rear-hinged treadles. The lease sticks are in place behind the shafts, ready for threading. The plan is for two doublewoven blankets. We'll see what happens. I am always open to course correction. :-)

After a few errors I am too embarrassed to tell you about, here is the front of the loom, finally threaded, sleyed, and ready for weaving. Whew! Time for a cup of tea.

In the Department of Books, I have just finished reading The Pages by Hugo Hamilton.

Warm Fuzzies

The three scarves are finished, cut off, washed, and steam pressed.

I got lucky with the center stripe, which was so tight on the loom, but after washing turned out to be the loosest part of the warp.

In fact, it has a sort of seersucker effect, which I rather like.

All handspun warp & weft, mostly wool. Broken twill blocks, eight shafts.

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In the Department of Books, I have just finished reading Paula Byrne's wonderful biography of one of my favorite writers, Barbara Pym, The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym. Now I must go back and re-read the Pym novels!

 

Third Scarf and Some Observations

Raining again! This makes it hard to focus when what I really want is to be outside on the Trail. Time to close the blinds and get to work. No whining.

The third and final scarf on the handspun warp is nearly finished. The inequity of tension in the center stripe is very apparent here. It is because a different breed of sheep was used in the lighter striped section of the warp. I am hoping everything will even out in the wash. It was a great leap of faith to use these all together and I may reap the rewards of my impetuousness pretty soon. We shall see. When you have this many birthdays (as an optometrist used to tell me) you are bound to encounter these problems. 

The weft in this scarf is three very fine handspun strands plied together. Two are silk and one is camel. It's about laceweight. I love this yarn. Click to enlarge.

If you peer underneath, as all three scarves are now rolled up on the cloth beam, the tension inequity is obvious. Am I going over Niagara Falls in a barrel?

While all that drama is playing out on the loom, I continue to doodle on the computer. Following is a page of recent explorations for 8 shafts. 

And in the Department of Books -- 

I recently started a booklist with two sections: books I have read in 2023, and books I want to read in 2023. Then I lost the list! Not off to a very good start. My hope is that when the sun eventually comes out the list will reappear.

 

Second Scarf

The second scarf on the handspun wool warp features a handspun weft, a mixture of natural wool and light blue dyed bamboo fiber. The weave structure is the same as scarf #1, blocks of 3/1 and 1/3 broken twill.

Now let's shift gears. This morning, too cold and gray for a walk, a friend and I went to the Sigal Music Museum and enjoyed looking at the fine collection of historic pianos & harpsichords. The detail of craftsmanship on these instruments is remarkable. I took the following snapshot of the upper section of an Adam and William Geib pipe organ, c. 1825. The pleated cloth in starburst effect is a cheery note on a gray day.

Reset

After a major sorting and unskeining & ball-making week, fully intending to get started on a double width handspun blanket, I switched gears. I found that I had more lightweight (approximately sock-weight) yarn than I had thought, and not as much blanket-weight yarn. A reset was in order. I warped up my 8-shaft loom with handspun odds & ends at 12 epi. There's enough here for perhaps 3 scarves. The first two photos were taken by artificial light.

The weft for the first scarf is a mixture of wool and Angelina. You can't quite see the sparkles, but believe me, they are there!

The next photo is by window light. For some reason it shows the texture better. The structure is blocks of broken 1/2 and 3/1 twill.

When all the sock-wight yarn is finished, then I'll see how I feel about the blanket project. Change is my middle name.

Seeing Red

These pictures are all the same red. Funny how the ambient light conditions make such a difference.

Well, here we are at the end of the red warp. It's been on the loom for many months, but I just got around to weaving off the last few inches. It is four different yarns: three red-family cottons of various grists, and one tencel. They were warped together four strands at a time but threaded in random order. The threading is rosepath:1,2,3,4,3,2,1,4. The tie-up a straight 2/2 twill order. The treadling is point twill: 2,1,2,3,4,3. The weft is pink slub cotton.

I cut it off New Year's Eve morning. 

I washed & dried it New Year's Day. The front & reverse are very different. I prefer the side with the little cats' paws. Click to enlarge. There's about 2 1/2 yards, enough for a short summer pullover blouse. When I get around to it.

In the Department of Books:

I just finished reading  Dennis Duncan's Index, A History of the: A Bookish Adventure from Medieval Manuscripts to the Digital Age. Fascinating. Bibliophiles will love it.

Also read: Alan Furst's Kingdom of Shadows. I don't know how to categorize this book. Spy novel? Historical Fiction? Crime Noir? Or maybe just a damn good read.