A new warp, 6" wide sample this time, for deflected double weave. Dark purple and pale green. The yellow is to save the crosses. The red is the choke ties.
Or should we make it bright green and pale lavender?
I think I have too much time on my hands.
This was actually yesterday. Today it's gray and threatening.
I spread the turned taqueté (aka jin) scarf, recently completed, out on the grass for a snapshot. At that point it hadn't been washed yet. It will soften up a bit after that's done.
Eight shafts, silk noil warp, handspun wool weft. I've been asked about the draft. It's original, and at some point I'll upload it to handweaving.net. Stay tuned. And another word about that warp. It seemed very weak when I did the tug & snap test, but I decided to go for broke and use it anyway. And you know what? Not a single broken warp in the entire process! Small miracles.
Yesterday morning's moon.
And today first signs of fall. It was inevitable. But where did the summer go? What a year.
I keep saying I am luckier than most. It's true. I remind myself of that fact at least twenty times a day.
And now I think I'll go wind another warp.
The diaries are finished. Here's #12 on the wall for a snapshot. I don't know what will happen to them next. They'll have to sit and age for a while.
The weather was pleasant and I reconnected with the outdoors. Lots of green out there. I'm luckier than many.
Fresh mown grass. Can you smell it?
Time to reconnect with a project begun over a year ago. This was before the move. I had acquired an interesting little loom from Chuck Jones and put a warp on it. It was my first attempt at Sami band weaving. After a year I had forgotten everything I learned first time around, and had to relearn. So there were mistakes. And inconsistencies. But I finished a band with not too many wobbles and floaters. The characteristic curved Sami shuttle is in the background. A lot of what I learned came from this wonderful book.
Here's what a typical heddle looks like. You can find one here.
But I digress. Willy, who is building a boat (a flats skiff for fly fishing in the shallows), asked me to weave a band for his fishing hat. The Sami band was perfect. I delivered the hat with newly installed band this morning. He's got a considerable way to go on the boat, but at least he has his favorite hat back.
A closer look. Click to enlarge.
Now approaching the dozen mark of the Covid Diary series. This is #XI on the loom.
And here is #VIII after washing & steam press.
There's enough warp left for one more. Then I'll be ready to embark on a new project. I believe I've spent enough time on this topic.
I've branched out into other reading. Just finished Jane Urquhart's The Stone Carvers, historical novel about making a life in art.
I see the moon; the moon sees me
Under the shade of the old oak tree.
Please let the light that shines on me
Shine on the one I love.
That's the version we used to sing around the campfire at Girl Scout camp, and I'm sticking to it.
I look at the sky a lot these days. It's the one vista I have here that is limitless.
Here is yesterday's morning sky, just before I set out for a walk. It did not rain on me, I'm happy to report.
Also yesterday, for some reason there were more than the usual number of fungi around the trees. This was the most humongous one I saw - it was about two feet across.
For some reason it was the same colorway as the Covid Diary VIII just finished. That was purely accidental. Or was it?
I'm now up to the eleventh in the diary series. Here is the beginning of Covid Diary XI on the loom. It's more somber in tone than its precedents.
I attended a virtual watercolor workshop this week and brought in some flowers to draw. They lightened the mood. Bruce and I enjoyed photographing them, and then I did a few (unremarkable) watercolors.
I had much more fun messing with Photoshop. My days of designing for the TC-1 (jacquard) came into play here.
In the department of books, current reading includes John Barry's The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History. On the same topic, Katherine Anne Porter's Pale Horse Pale Rider. Also La Peste by Albert Camus in English translation as The Plague. That concludes my pandemic-themed reading for a while. I'm now reading some historical fiction about the American Revolution, which I'll report on later.
Now back to the loom, as soon as we deal with a smoke alarm which went off in the middle of last night. False alarm. But lost some z's.
The third warp is tied on, beamed, and gated. The weaving has begun. Slightly different colorway this time.
A few more inches of weaving on the double weave warp.
And a closer look. At the moment it looks like window screening, but after a good wash it will soften and close up.
Meanwhile I've been embroidering labels on my old Bernina. Each line of text has to be individually programmed, not a very brainy machine. But she gets the job done. I wouldn't trade her in for the fanciest of fancies. Besides, what's the hurry?
Hand stitching the label to the back of one of last week's diaries. This one's already been washed, & looking much softer.
An interesting aside - I found that the cottolin yarns were bleeding in the wash, especially the yarns containing red. So as a precaution, I've been using color catcher sheets in the washing machine for this project. Here are a couple of the used sheets, next to white paper for comparison. They've plainly done the job!
You may recall that the current warp was tied on to another, and was woven in double plain weave as in this post and also as Jin.
Jin is another name for turned tacqueté. It is one of the many structures that can be woven on the same warp setup as double weave: two colors, warped end and end. I wove a length of Jin at the end of the warp, enough for three small dishtowels.
I'll be tying another warp on to this one when color inspiration strikes. Meanwhile, I've washed and hemmed the towels.
Somehow I see similar patterning wherever I look these days.
The eight shaft table loom has been sitting naked for too long. After lunch I said "enough is enough" and wound a short warp of two colors of silk noil. The yarn was hiding in my stash because I had always thought it was too fragile for warp. But today was a day for seizing opportunity. It seems to be working out OK.
The structure is called Jin, another name for turned taqueté. The warp is 2 colors alternated. The weft is a handspun wool/silk blend.
Here is this morning's sky with a view toward Paris Mountain from my front porch. I'd like to say it was my color inspiration, but such is not the case. Mere coincidence.
At the end of the second double weave piece, you can see the hemstitching, a bit of stuffer weft, and a rod woven in with ties. This is all prep for cutting off.
Here's a peek at the reverse side of the double weave, as the cloth makes its way to the storage beam. For this piece, I chose the same 16/2 cottolin for weft that I used in the warp; only the colors are different: natural for the light weft, instead of yellow. The brown is the same.
The completed weaving has been cut off, and now the warp is reattached to the cloth apron rod, and weaving can recommence (that will happen tomorrow, if the creek don't rise).
There's only an inch or two of warp lost in the process. I suppose I could leave all the weaving on the loom, rolled up, until I got to the end of the warp, and then cut everything off together, but I am much too impatient to take that route. Besides, I like to evaluate each piece after washing, and plan modifications for the next piece.
I do occasionally take a break to see what is going on outdoors. Here is last night's sky, two different vantage points, from my back porch.
And this morning, early, the woods on my walk. I can catch a nice cool window of opportunity if I get up at 7.
Way back in the last millennium I wove some pieces based on the printed word, a nod to my interest in font design and page layouts. I decided to revisit this study last week. The structure was to be double plain weave on the dobby loom and I started by weaving some small samples for determining sett & yarn choices. I wanted to use cottolin for its scrunchy texture, similar to my favorite sketchbook paper. One of the weft yarns was a red cottolin of uncertain provenance. After washing, I had an unpleasant surprise. The red yarn bled badly. Glad I sampled.
The sample on the left is at 24 epi each layer, total 48, and the one on the right is 20 epi each layer, total 40. I liked the looser one best, so that is what I chose. I warped up with pale gold and chocolate brown. I made a number of threading errors and had to redo several times. It was a humbling experience, but it took my mind off the news. I finally prevailed. Here's a view at the back of the loom after warping.
Fortunately there's plenty of warp for more sampling. I discovered a sleying error (see red arrow) and had to resley the righthand section. Um, that's an error you expect to see in Weaving 101. Bad doggie.
Got that sorted out. Tried some different weft colors & materials.
Settled on pearl gray and dark green. I was going for the look of old ledger paper, and I think we're there. The turquoise lines are a nod to margin rules.
So far so good.
Just finished reading Camus's The Plague, in English translation. I think I read it before, in college, but I don't remember any of it.