Weaverly

Blue. Not The Blues, just blue.

It's funny looking up at the sky. A skyscape, unlike a landscape, has no horizon. 

If you look down instead of up, it's easier to orient yourself. It's also easier to keep your balance.

Going indoors now. Here's the most recent lampas, cut off and roughly hemmed. 

And now by artificial light. But it's all lampas, with handspun wool (and sparkles) pattern weft. 

Now starting another lampas on the same warp. This one with two different pattern wefts in a (more or less) orderly sequence.

The brown is handspun Corriedale, and the gray is a combination of merino and Qiviut. 

In the Department of Books:

 

I've just finished reading Thunderclap: A memoir of art and life & sudden death by Laura Cumming. 

 

An Attraction to Sparkly Things

On a whim I bought this merino/Stellina blend to spin. It is very sparkly and I find it hard to photograph so that you can see the sparkles. I've just finished spinning up this batch, washed it and hung it up to dry.

It's plied, and about light DK weight.

Very squishy, too.

I've got a third (fourth?) lampas warp tied onto the original one. This version is a combination of brown cotton and Tencel in the ground warp, pink silk in the pattern warp, burgundy bamboo in the ground weft, and my sparkly blue yarn as pattern weft.

The blue takes on different shades according to the lighting.

Click on any of these to enlarge. 

Eight shafts, three pattern blocks.

 

Organized Chaos

Weavers: it all depends on your point of view. Are you a color person?

Or are you a structure person?

I'm a little bit of both. 

Here is my latest warp. I call this organized chaos. I have faith that it will all straighten out in the end. 

And it does.

I'm sampling this lampas threading with a variety of pattern wefts.

Fuzzy ones.

Smooth ones.

Stay tuned.

_______________________

Department of Books:

I have finished reading The Peacock and the Sparrow by I. S. Berry and Becoming Nicole by Amy Ellis Nutt.

Apples and Other Things

It's apple season a little way up the mountain.

We drove up to an orchard yesterday and brought home a bag of Honey Crisp apples. Apples morning, noon, and night for a few days now. Good stuff.

I finished spinning the qiviut/Shetland blend. Here it is before washing…

…and after. Much squishier now. 

I used a tiny bit of it in a rigid heddle scarf made of scraps from the stash. The rest is truly bits and pieces. 

Last week I got a start on this spinning project.

It's all spun up now, and here is the result after washing:

Now there are calculations under way for a rather complicated multicolor warp. Some things I still do in the pre-computer fashion. It's crazy, I know.

Six yarns, two warping paddles.

Here's the first of the two resulting warp chains. Next week: will tie on to an existing lampas warp.

But first, some R & R.

Cut Off Time

A recent walk in a nearby nature preserve to celebrate a welcome break in the weather:

 

If you're looking for a new color scheme, this is the place to find it.

But today the temp is up again, to the normal seasonal heat and mugginess, so I am grateful for the AC in my studio.

This morning I cut off the most recent lampas piece and hemmed it. It hasn't been washed yet, but here is a quick snapshot on the floor. That funky green border is what happens when you are in a hurry and weaving from stash. I had hoped I would get away with it, but ???

Handspun beige-ish pattern weft. I think it will do well as a pillow. 13.5" x 39".

In the Department of Books, I have finally finished reading Bleak House. It was a long slog, but I'm glad I stuck with it. A scathing indictment of the Chancery Court system in 19th century England. 

Lampas Yet Again

Another lampas warp, this time plain/plain (plain weave ground, plain weave pattern), ratio of ground to pattern 2/1. It was an easy setup, and I used up a number of 10/2 cottons in random color order in the ground warp. Pattern warp is 60/2 silk, of which I have several lifetimes' supply.

As weft, I'm using a handspun merino blend with bits of multicolor sparkly glitz added to the roving.

This is all happening on an 8-shaft loom, which leaves me enough shafts for 3 pattern blocks of plain/plain lampas (1,2 for ground, remaining shafts for plain weave pattern, 3-4, 5-6, 7-8). Working out the rhythm of the blocks in the draft was an interesting game, and I spent a couple of days on it. I finally came up with a combination I liked.

Click to enlarge. 

In the Department of Spinning, the qiviut was combined with Shetland roving on the blending board, and I am spinning the resulting blend a little bit at a time while watching baseball on TV. There's a whole lot more left to process. A little qiviut goes a long way.

More Lampas

With no ceremony (I usually like to round up anyone nearby and have a glass of wine), I just took the scissors to the warp and voilà: 

I guess this qualifies as a selfie, as those are my very own feet. At this distance, the color choices look a little better than they did on the loom. I will hem them, put them on the wall, and then look at them from the next county. Then perhaps I'll feel better about the colors.

Here we are at the sewing machine, and a view of the lampas on the wrong side. That sinister looking tool is very handy for keeping my fingers out of harm's way while sewing. 

I'm now weaving a third lampas piece on this warp. I've added ties to the areas that previously had double weave. This will become more apparent when the piece is off the loom and washed. 

The colors change dramatically at different times of day.

Reds & Blues…& Greens

No work gets done on Sundays until after the Grand Prix (in season, of course). Yesterday's race was held in Hungary.

Then I started a second version of the lampas project. This time I varied the sizes of the blocks, and tried a variegated handspun wool as the pattern weft.

I'm not too sure of the wisdom of my color choices in this one, but it's still too early to tell.

A beautiful gift of 2 ounces of Qiviut is drying on my back porch after a warm bath to remove some dust & dirt. It has expanded into quite a large volume. I'll be combining it with brown Shetland wool for spinning. 

In the department of books, I have just finished reading The Diver's Clothes Lie Empty: A Novel by Vendela Vida. If I had to describe it in four words, I'd say clever, funny, intense, and dark. Recommended.

Old Friends, Best Friends

Yes, it's time to weave lampas again. After I finished working on the lampas monograph (see sidebar), I put lampas aside for a few years. Then there was a pandemic. I consoled myself with some old friends. As I recall, there was lots of chocolate.

And long walks close to home.

But a few days ago I was surveying this evidence of stash-busting in my garage:

And a little voice said, "it's really time for more lampas."

And so I put a new warp on my 8-shaft loom...

...and started sampling lampas blocks. Warp is a mixture of 10/2 cotton and 8/2 tencel for the primary warp, and a fine wool/tencel blend for the secondary warp. The weft is 10/2 cotton for primary warp and sport-weight 2-ply handspun wool for the secondary weft. 

The structure for the primary blocks (ground) is plain weave, and a jeans twill for the secondary (pattern) blocks. Shafts 1-3 for the jeans twill, shafts 4 & 5 for Block One plain weave, shafts 6 & 7 for Block Two plain weave, leaving me a handy shaft 8 for a selvedge. There is some tying going on in the secondary blocks (so there's no true double weave here), which is causing some blips which I'll have to address later. Also a few misbehaving selvedges. But this is a first run I'm showing you. 

Nice to see you again, Lampas, my old friend!

Department of Books

I just finished reading Plunder: A Memoir of Family Property and Nazi Treasure by Menachem Kaiser.

Lampas Samples Added to CW Library

Thanks to the generous help of a fellow CW member, all the samples from my monograph Lampas for Shaft Looms are now available for loan to CW members. Sheila Leverson has kindly organized the samples, laminated their labels, installed rivets, and grouped them according to chapter on metal rings. The whole collection, including a printed copy of the monograph, is installed in a zippered case ready for sharing with other CW members. Thank you, Sheila.

In other news—amid all the downsizing and organizing, I still make time for some designing every day. Eventually I"ll be able to get back to the loom. But meanwhile, here's a new draft with interleaved warps and wefts for 16 shafts.

Click to enlarge and get rid of the moire effects (unwanted).