Weaverly

Circular Reasoning

My thoughts have been running to smaller and smaller numbers of shafts these days, with interesting results. For those of you who don't know me, in addition to my jacquard work I have woven on looms of four, eight, sixteen, twenty-four and forty shafts. My current stable features 16 and 8 only, although that is always subject to change. :-)

OK, here's an original overshot threading. 

I've taken the threading, copied & pasted it into the threading beside the original threading. I've selected the duplicate and wrapped it up one shaft. Then I've selected the wrapped version & pasted it, and wrapped the new one up one shaft. I've repeated until all four iterations are side by side in the threading. Then I put in a twill tie-up and treadled as drawn in, overshot style. Tabby hasn't been added yet, but the tabby treadles are visible in the tie-up. Click to enlarge.

The result is four distinctly different versions of the overshot circle motif, and they all play nicely together. I will definitely weave this some day. Stay tuned.

BTW, if any of you try this draft, please let me see pictures of your results. If you have trouble copying it from the picture above, let me know and I'll upload the draft to handweaving.net. I'm calling it, not surprisingly, "Four Circles."

Another Amalgamation Adventure

The starting point for this little experiment is a broken twill on 8 shafts. First there is a straight threading on 4 shafts, then a reverse of same on shafts 5—8, except that the starting point for the reverse is shaft 7, not shaft 8, in order to preserve the odd-even alternation, which I like to do. With me so far? I repeated this 8-end motif four times. Then I performed an amalgamation to obtain the second part of the threading. Finally, I tromped as writ and applied a twill tieup. 

I was astonished to discover that the weaves produced are very different when you wrap the tieup. Here are eight possible variations of this wrapping. Click to enlarge.

For more information about amalgamation, see the link in the sidebar, under Monographs.

Now a bit of entertainment. May I present my granddog, Maggie, who is observing correct visiting protocols. She's sitting in the lap of Willy, who is taking a break from boatbuilding.

A Day for Quiet

The changeable weather is imparting a closed-in feeling and I don't have the energy for a very long walk today. Second best is to check on my houseplants. This one does stripes, and she is very good at it. She doesn't ask very much of me, either. 

A surprisingly pleasant indoor activity is mending. I never used to do much of that, except on sheets and pillowcases, and those I tended to mend with the sewing machine. But my favorite linen blouse, many years old and survivor of numerous washings, developed a hole and I thought, this is the time to learn proper mending. You know, the kind that's like weaving. The trick is to anchor your warp and weft on the margins of the hole, and do your weaving in the middle. I don't think this mend would get any prizes at the county fair, but I plan to improve.

Designing amalgamated drafts is a little like doodling. I may get around to weaving this one. Or maybe not.

In the book department, I read two really good ones this week, very different from each other but both about strong women: The Sheep Stell, by Janet White, and Ellen Foster, by Kaye Gibbons. 

Afternoon at Connemara

Yesterday afternoon we took advantage of the gorgeous weather and drove up to Connemara, the home of Carl Sandburg in Flat Rock, North Carolina.

We circled the lower lake.

I took a detour and walked up to the house to enjoy the view. I was rewarded by this magnificent magnolia just coming into blossom.

Back at the lakeside trail, I spied this I spied this blue thing nestled in a bed of moss. What on earth? A lost jewel? Turns out it was a glass button someone had left in that perfect setting. When I got up closer, I saw that it reflected the trees and sky in perfect miniature. Click to enlarge. 

Home at teatime. Warning: Monstera report follows. The new leaves are now fully unfurled, and are a much lighter green than the older leaves. I don't know if they will stay that way, but the contrast is pleasing. I love this plant.

 

In the studio, bookmaking is top dog this week. I have just completed an online class with the inimitable Ali Manning. What a wonderful teacher! I've done coptic bindings before, but not in this twin-needle fashion. Very helpful. Her cover structure is particularly interesting - just laminated paper, no boards to cut. 

On the Trail

Yes, I did stop and read this. But so far they haven't started renovations, and I continue to walk the trail with no interruptions from heavy machinery. Yesterday I was shocked (but not surprised) to see an entire camellia bush in bloom along the side.


And a tree just bursting into bloom near the baseball stadium. Tomorrow it will certainly be covered with blossoms.

At another part of the trail, this time nearer to Travelers Rest, was this curious ghost bicycle. Click to enlarge. Cycling is a risky business around here. So is being a pedestrian. One must be mindful. No cel phones!

And if you're looking for weaving content, no worries. Here's an odd little 8-shaft draft with amalgamation. I may even try to weave this one. But not quite yet.

Max float 4. Four repeats shown.

More Crackle Samples

Sampling crackle on four shafts is endlessly entertaining. 

Here's what the previous sample looks like after washing. 

And a few more post-wash samples, with various wefts.

No block changes for this one, just one block repeated endlessly. It makes a great stripe pattern.

When the blue and white warp was finished, I tied on another 2-color warp, using some fibers of unknown provenance from my stash. I think they were tencel and bamboo, but there might have been some soy silk in there too (???). The two warp colors are dark blue and pumpkin. The weft is purple, also unknown fiber. I wove 72" with hemstitching, and cut it off and washed it and ironed it. About 15% shrinkage, and now it has a lovely drape. The selvedges are a bit problematic. In spite of floating selvedges, the best I can say about them is that they are consistent.

Well, that was fun. I have an increasing respect for crackle. So simple yet so complex. With the warp that is left, I am using some more stash yarn, a pale gray cotton, machine spun but strongly resembling a thick and thin handspun. Same block liftplan as the previous. 

This piece will not be long enough for a scarf, but I'll put it aside with my other strip weaves and eventually it will make its way into a combo garment. 

Crackle

I'm thinking about ways to use a 4 shaft loom, and put a small sample warp onto my table loom, leaving 4 of the 8 shafts vacant. The warp is navy and yellow, end-and-end. Mercerized 10/2 cotton, 28 epi.

The threading is an original crackle variation.

Playing with blocks with a 16/4 cotton weft in turquoise.

Now some blocks with a weft of silk nail, natural.

Modifying the block sizes, with a peach silk weft.

Alternating weft colors with the block changes, here in cottons.

Meanwhile, in the kitchen, the Christmas cactus is running riot. 

In the Department of Books, I have a really, really good one to recommend to you today. It's Florida by Lauren Groff. 

At the Intersection of Bored and Audacious

The last of the many tied-on warps is finished.

It's a faux huck on 16 shafts. It repeats every 112 picks. Straight threading.

And here it is after cutting off and washing. Very scrunchy, highly textured. Click to enlarge.

After all that purple, I really welcomed some complementary orange at this morning's breakfast.

Now for a brand new warp. Here's the audacious part. I wanted to blend a 4-shaft overshot and an 8-shaft point twill, so that I could weave both of them on a 16-shaft warp. It was a fun exercise, one that kept me occupied for an entire day. After blending, it turned out that 4 of the shafts were not needed, but in order to better distribute the uneven numbers of heddles on the remaining shafts, I doubled some of the shafts, and came up with the following really strange threading:

Maybe some of you math wizards can explain to me why the blended drafts originally required only 12 shafts. Be that as it may, here is the new blended 16-shaft warp. Point twill and overshot. Check.

More audacity: my Christmas Cactus has produced a February blossom! 

Change, Changes, Changeable, Changing

We are among the 25% of people in the US without terrible winter weather. Nevertheless, it has been very changeable here lately, the skies recomposing minute by minute. 

Even a bit of sunshine breaking through.

Indoors, my Monstera continues to surprise me. I've discovered that the toothed leaves emerge in a very special way: tightly furled, like cigars, not like the plain ones.  It's so much fun to watch them. It takes about five days for one of these to emerge fully. 

When I'm not watching my Monstera, I'm doing wardrobe building. Here's the finished pullover, assembled from narrow strips from the narrow loom. The asymmetry is perhaps not pronounced enough, leading one to think the arrangement is accidentally lopsided. I think the next time I will be more aggressively asymmetrical, so there will be no doubt about my intentions.

I have enjoyed wearing it, however. It's as comfortable as an old sweatshirt.

In the Department of Books, I just finished reading Nell Painter's Old in Art School. Noted historian retires from Princeton in her sixties and goes to art school to earn a BFA and MFA in painting. What a story!

Thinking Small

Finally, a use for those itty bitty scraps of fabric I can't bear to throw away. Thanks to Victoria Gertenbach for her excellent tutorial on how to make quilted fabric beads, I have now embarked on this fascinating pursuit. I've put my own spin on the design with the addition of French knots. It's totally absorbing.

During the many hours of being glued to the TV over the past week, my spinning wheel was busy, both spinning and plying. Here's roughly 200g of BFL, spun very fine, my go to yarn, about 1400 yds, after washing.