Weaverly

Thankful

It doesn't take much. Just that little bit of red.

Sometimes I overdo it. A bit less red would be better. But then the other colors would change, too. Everything is connected to everything else.

The threading & treadling are interleaved & non-parallel. I'm enjoying the combination of left & right diagonals and a bit of birdseye effect. Now how on earth did that happen? I'm sure I don't know. Click for enlargement.

In the Department of Books, I have just finished reading Foster by Claire Keegan and Signal Fires by Dani Shapiro.

Naturally

On a whim I ordered a kit of naturally dyed yarns from Cotton Clouds. I was blown away by the colors. I was also attracted by the community service aspect of the yarns. The final product is to be a simple vest of four rectangular panels. Instructions are for a rigid heddle loom, but I thought it would be an easy thing to adapt for a table loom with shafts. As it happens, it was not so easy. The warps are double (two strands acting as one), which is easy to accomplish on a RH, but a bit fiddly for a shaft loom. But I persevered. 

Once the loom is warped, the weaving is straightforward. Plain weave. There is a pattern suggestion of bands of pickup and other texture weaves, but I decided to stick with plain weave, and perhaps add fancy button loops as an embellishment post-weaving.

The colors are indeed wonderful. More about the dyers of San Rafael, Guatemala, here.

In the Department of Books, I have just finished reading the new English translation of Alessandro Manzoni's I Promessi Sposi, or The Betrothed. I don't intentionally go seeking out novels about the Plague, but they seem to find me. This one was wonderful and I'm glad I stuck with it. Lot's of interesting Italian history here. And it apparently inspired Verdi to write his famous Requiem Mass.

New Moon, New Warps

This was a couple of nights ago, just as we were locking up. The moon and Venus.

There's more and more color on the Trail.

But plenty of good monochrome, too.

Remember the red warp I was trying to rescue? There were several false starts, miscounted heddles, typical newbies' mistakes.

But at the end of the day it turned out OK. I am using a single shuttle for this multicolor "garbage warp", with a pink cotton flake yarn.

The threading is rosepath on 4 shafts, and the treadling is a simple point twill.

It will eventually make its way into something wearable. 

And on the Jane, there is this linen sampler just tied onto an older warp. Eight shafts.



Department of Books: Finished reading The Summer Book by Tove Jansson and Unsettled Ground by Claire Fuller.

More Jin

When the sample on the left was still on the loom, I thought the dark double weave stripes were too wide in proportion to the jin stripes, so after cutting off the first sample I resleyed the warp, dropping out 4 threads from each 8-end double weave section. The sample on the right is the result, with narrower double weave sections. After washing, here is the result.

Now I actually prefer the wider stripes! Furthermore, I'm not thrilled with the way the fabrics crinkle up with the singles weft, and I will redo these, using a 2-ply yarn as weft (same as warp).

An early morning walk at the gardens put me in a green mood.

I wound the second warp with dark and light green, with the double weave stripes in yellow. 

I made a few warping errors and had to add in three sections of yellow. Not to worry. 

All these yarns are 30/2 linen from LoftyFiber. 

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In the Department of Books, I have just finished reading Fruit of the Drunken Tree by Ingrid Rojas Contreras.

Lin, Jin, Win.

Our local study group is taking a look at jin this year, so I thought I'd try a combination of jin and double weave in one cloth. I'm using 30/2 linen from LoftyFiber. Here are some warping snapshots. 36 epi.

The narrow black stripes are double weave, and the red and orange stripes are jin. The double weave places pouf up a bit, which I expected. It's a fun effect. I'm wondering how they will  change after wet finishing. 

Another point of interest is that the double weave stripes take up less than the jin areas. I may have to add a tensioning modification for these. Perhaps extra weights at the back beam. We shall see.

This is all a riff on double weave selvedges. I'm enjoying this project.

In the Department of Books, I've just finished reading After Lives by Abdulrazak Gurnah. Highly recommended.

A Shift in Color

Although there is still plenty of green, I have been spotting signs that a change of seasons is not far off.

In the studio, I'm still sampling jin in various configurations. I wanted to tie a new tencel warp onto this finished tencel-and-cotton warp, but I remembered that the end loops of the warp had no way of staying put while the tieing-on was happening. I trapped them with a liberal application of artist's tape over and under, and then proceeded with the tie-on.

Effort successful. Here's the finished scarf, tencel warp and weft. Red, beige and turquoise warp, orange weft. There are a few ends of black warp on either side for a tubular double weave selvedge (thank you, Pat!). 

Sixteen shafts, twelve for the pattern and four for selvedges. 

On the four-shaft loom, there is also jin. The dishtowel warp is yellow 5/2 cotton and two ends of 10/2 (blue & brown) held together for the second color. Weft is green 10/2 cotton. 24 epi, 18 ppi. I think in my zeal to practice stash reduction, I wound up with a less than wonderful color palette.

 

On the other hand...

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In the Department of Books:

Just finished reading Lily's Promise by Lily Ebert & Dov Forman. 

Quintet

A quintet of towels in jin weave on 4 shafts, cut off & hemmed, & given a good bath. 

Certainly a family resemblance, but the slightly different weft on each towel makes a subtle difference.

That sparkly effect is from a variegated cotton yarn in the warp. It slightly confounds the pattern recognition, but improves the flavor, like adding raisins to your rye bread recipe.

And the following is a complete surprise—right at my front door! 

In the Department of Books, I just finished reading Evelyn Waugh's "Sword of Honor." A bit of a slog in parts, but overall an excellent war novel. Wickedly funny with a very dark underpinning. Definitely worth the time I spent on it.

Cotton Jin

Pardon the pun, I couldn't help myself. 

Yesterday I finished beaming a new warp, and today I threaded and sleyed it. This will be a set of towels in 4-shaft jin (aka turned taqueté, aka warp-faced compound tabby).

One of the warp yarns is space-dyed cotton, the other is solid cotton in 3 different colors. Solid color weft, one shuttle. On four shafts I'm able to get two blocks. 

Here's the draft. Attention WFA study group members: this tieup is slightly rearranged from the one I showed you the other day.

In the Department of Books, I just finished reading another Shirley Hazzard novel, The Bay of Noon. Perhaps not as wonderful as The Transit of Venus, but a good one nevertheless. 

Points of View

What an entertaining warp this has been! It looks different from every angle and changing lighting conditions. I find myself going to the studio just to get a glimpse of it at different times of day.

At night the lamplight makes it warmer.

Both sides are interesting, but you kind of have to turn into a pretzel to see them.

Unfortunately there's not enough warp left for a third scarf, but I wound up some orange bobbins and this will do for a table runner.

Another angle.

And another.

Up close. This one ought to finish nicely. Three colors of tencel in the warp, and a single cotton weft.

In the department of books, I just finished reading another wonderful Shirley Hazzard novel, The Great Fire, about the aftermath of WWII in Japan & Hong Kong. 

Halvdräll Again

The current crop of halvdräll towels is now cut off and hemmed. 

They're all around the same size, 18" x 21". 

The warp is a mish-mash of cottons, linens, and other cellulose fibers from my stash. 

Likewise the weft.

I treadled each one differently.

A very satisfying 4-shaft project.

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In the Department of Books:

I just finished reading Shirley Hazzard's "The Transit of Venus." I will unreservedly say that this is one of the half dozen best books I've ever read. Ever.