Weaverly

Waiting

It appears that we may have gotten lucky with the track of Hurricane Ian. At this point (Friday evening) it is tracking somewhat more to the east of us. We haven't lost power. Fingers crossed.

This is what the sky looked like yesterday at sundown. Check out that moon.

On the 8-shaft loom I am struggling with some possibly poor color choices in a 3-color interleaved warp. The jury's still out. Must wash & dry first. 

On the 4-shaft loom I came to the end of the jin warp. 

All seven towels have been hemmed & washed (what else do you do when you're waiting for weather?).

I rewarped with a warp I had wound several months ago, but in my haste I lost the cross. I'm going to try to rescue this warp. I'll let you know how it goes. I'm about 50% hopeful.

Good luck to all who have not been as fortunate with the weather. 

 

Jin Samples at a Block Party

The green jin warp has been cut off. Now I have samples from two different warps to hem and wash.

Meanwhile there's the trail to check out. Color inspiration resides here, and it's always changing.

Here are all the recent jin samples having a block party. The basic threading is the same, two blocks on 8 shafts. The wider blocks are jin, and the narrow blocks are double weave. This puts a nice DW selvedge on the edges, and allows for DW hems all across the width. The warp is 30/2 linen. The wefts are 16/1 linen and also 30/2 linen. Sett 36 ipi. 

In the Department of Books, I just finished reading Ship Fever by Andrea Barrett. Recommended.

 

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 Dummy Warp

Perhaps you've been here. All your bobbins full, and nowhere to park the odds & ends of yarn on them.

Time to make a dummy warp. Its only function will be something on which to tie a new warp. This will be a straight threading on 16 shafts, two yards long. 

Then I made several warp chains out of the yarn on the aforementioned bobbins, and added in some more yarn, to make up enough warp ends to equal the number of ends in the dummy warp. Six yards long.

At some point this weekend I will tie the new warps onto the dummy, and then drag the whole mess through the reed and the heddles. I know, not my usual warping method (I'm a back-to-front warper). Am I crazy? Probably.

Meanwhile, on another loom, there is still jin. 

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.

Jin on 4 (Again)

This lovely long warp is perfect for using up little bits of yarn stash. I'm still weaving jin on 4 shafts, and the treadling is easy (musical interlude of "Summertime" here). 

Today I got into the greens.

And how can I avoid it? Yellows will have to be next.

Over at Swan Lake, the water level has been drawn way down. I assume they are doing maintenance. The wildlife are confused. Ducks have been walking in the roads.

Although this fellow seems content.

Back home, I am reminded just how much I love my little breakfast room. It's actually at its best in the evening, when the monstera casts a fine shadow.

Jin on 16

More fun and games with jin, aka warp-faced compound tabby, this time on 16 shafts. I did a little experimenting with 3-color jin, with 3 colors rotating in the warp, so that in a single block you can have one color on top or 2 colors on top, and of course the reverse on the other side. Here are the six possible combinations with six shafts for each block, and the remaining 4 shafts just perfect for a double weave selvedge. 

As always, the colors change character depending on the viewing angle and the lighting conditions.

An oddity about having two colors sharing the same space in the reed is that occasionally they change places, as you can plainly see in the following picture. Click to enlarge. This give a slightly streaked effect. It will be interesting to see what happens with this after cutting off and washing.

Is this an error? Do we have to figure out how to deal with it, or just embrace it as a fact of life? The jury is still out. 

Meanwhile, many thanks to Pat for providing me with the perfect yellow. I wanted a "nasty yellow" and this is certainly it. Aggressive, not too warm. Pat is also the one who pointed me in the direction of the double weave selvedge. Beautiful, dependable, and an elegant method of doing away with the unlovable floating selvedge. The only downside is that it consumes four of your shafts. 

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.