Progress

I've finished 3 samples in one evening for the Ratings Program. I'm still going to let the judging wait until September, but I should be ready in April or May.

I need to re-sley the project and start on other samples now.

I'll take some pictures tonight and post about the rosepath scarf that I'm weaving in space-dyed purple merino and 2/20 deep purple worsted. It's a bit fussy because I have to lay in each pick --not tromp down on the beat. And it's on one of my table looms which I don't care as much to weave on. (Unless it's boundweave figures) So it's slow going. I'm trying to weave off about 4 inches per night. I'll have it finished in about two weeks at that rate.

Futility

Today I'm beating myself up a bit about that last failed project. I should have recognized that the yarn wasn't twisted tightly enough to be a warp. It pulled apart in my hands indicating that it was too soft for a warp tension.

Ah well. There's no sense in dwelling on it. The next project is part of the Ratings Program, so I won't be posting pics of the piece in weaving or finished until after the judging in September.

Finished the Silk Noil

....but I didn't finish a scarf. I'm kinda bummed, but that warp was just shredding. It wasn't just the abrasion from the reed. The warp itself couldn't handle the tension strain put on it. It started snapping from the front where it was winding around the cloth beam. At that point, when 5 threads gave at once, I gave up, wove a header, and cut it off the loom.

Here's what my 7.5" sample looks like:



And this is what the start of the piece looked like cut off the loom. (Remember, these were the unsuccessful attempts so it doesn't look like much.)



Not stopping to cry, I started beaming another project. This one is a long warp in wool:



I've spread the warp in the raddle, tied it on the back beam stick, and I've started to wind on. I need help to wind on since I can't hold the friction brake, pull the warp, and wind the beam at the same time. So, tomorrow when Norm has more time I'll get this on the loom and ready to thread.

And It Just Keeps Breaking...

I'm finally liking this project and in a weaving groove. I have to lay the weft in lightly so that the diamond pattern doesn't pack down and obscure the painted warp. So the weaving is a bit slow and fiddly. I'm about 6" into the weaving when this happens:



Another broken warp thread. And this one is after the real weaving started, which means I can't just cheat and tie on a length of warp and advance past the knot to start weaving again. This time I have to employ a weight off the back of the loom.



I haven't done this in a while. I don't know where my old film canisters are so that I can use a penny weight system. So looking around for something heavy enough to weight that thread but light enough it won't break it, I end up with the bracket for my raddle. It works.

I continue weaving along. Around 7.25", this happens:



And I'm fixing it off the back with the other raddle bracket:



I hope this won't happen again, but I fear that this is the beginning of the end. I think the painted silk noil yarn is just too soft to be a warp thread. It's snapping like mad. I think the skinny weft yarn that has 16 picks to the 3/8" is just too many abrasions with the reed for this warp.

If I break another one, I'll stop weaving on this project and pull it off the loom. Maybe I can make a small bag out of the tiny amount of fabric woven.

Fixed the Warp

I fixed the broken warp thread by tying the portion that was around the back beam and through the heddle to a long piece that I anchored in the web with a pin. Like this:



Once the warp thread was secured, I advanced the warp so that the knot wouldn't be in my weaving (or fringe on the finished piece) and started weaving the piece again. This time, I used that lovely deep purple cotton 10/2 yarn from the Lunatic Fringe --10 Purple Blue is the color. I just stuck with a straight vertical herringbone, and suddenly this failed project turned into something pretty:



The weave structure lets the painted warp peek through the solid zigzags. It's lovely. But that photo above isn't quite capturing the colors. This one does:



And there we go. I've gotten one inch woven off so far. Only 71" more to go. Pure work now that I've solved all the problems, but fun to see that pattern emerge.

Stubborn Scarf and Broken Warp Thread

See that? Right there kind of curled to the right side of the warp?



That's a broken warp thread. Grrr.

This hasn't been as successful as I'd like. I like the undulating twill effect at the bottom of the web, but the weft yarn is a heavier weight 2/10 merino tencel and was obscuring the silk noil warp.



The yarn has such potential. It's a luscious blend of silk nubbins in deep peacock colors. Witness:



And I don't think the camera does it justice.

But when I use the 2/10 merino tencel, the fabric is too dense and spongy and hides the beautiful warp. And when I cross it off with itself, it looks rather boring.

So, later today I'm going to try to fix that hanging broken warp thread in the usual manner. Then I'm going to try a different weft yarn --a 10/2 deep purple mercerized cotton from the Lunatic Fringe.

The noil warp is too soft to withstand weaving that beautiful undulating twill, unfortunately. That twill is very dependent on the floating selvedge because it does 3 weft shots for every shed opening. And the selvedge yarn isn't doubled because I didn't realize the strain that was going to be put on it. So I'm switching gears and just trying a straight vertical herringbone twill on it.

Silk Noil Scarf

I've started a skinny silk noil scarf on my Louet David floor loom. It's going to be a 5" wide undulating twill scarf set at 20 e.p.i.. It's a pretty silk noil yarn in peacock feather colors of dark blue, deep green, turquoise, and olive.

I've beamed the warp. Made the mistake of using the David's built-in raddle for this project. The raddle has too close a sett for this warp (1/5 inch or 1 cm), and this warp is too soft to handle any serious stress. I snapped about a dozen warp threads when I started to wind on, so I moved the warp down to a 1 inch raddle on the back beam. That decreased the stress and allowed me to finish winding it on without snapping the warp. I'm just going to be weaving an even skinnier scarf now.

I'm threading warp through the texsolv heddles. I'll probably use a 10-dent reed to sley.

WGGB.org Apprentice Weaver Ratings Program

I've started work on the WGGB Apprentice Weaver Ratings Program. I met with a study group last month. It's a fun group of people. Since then, I've completed the written work, dusted off my completed color wheel, and planned the warps for the projects.

The required weaving in linen will be the last piece that I do because I'll probably set up a long warp that will be that project and my napkin project. I expect that that project will tie up the loom for a long while.

It's a good refresher course in weaving. I haven't done any serious weaving in 10 years now. This is a thorough introduction again.

I won't talk about the individual project pieces in this blog because it is supposed to be kept private until you submit. However, I *can* say that I've finished points 1 and 2 of five. Only 12 woven samples left to go.

Yarn-aholics Anonymous Meeting Minutes

I opened the closet today to look at some linen that I've been saving for a formal napkin project. It's a lovely shade of green in a 40/2 line linen. A balanced plain weave sett for this yarn is 36 e.p.i.. There is 8.8 oz on a tube measuring a total of 3,300 yards per tube. At a very generous warp for 12 22" square napkins with 6" between each napkin and a whopping 72" of loom waste, I will need approximately 8,844 yards of warp. That's a bit less than 3 tubes. I'll shorthand the weft yarn needed to an equal amount (though it will be less than that). So, 6 tubes will weave 12 22" square napkins. (5.36 tubes, really, for that shorthand)

I have 17 tubes of this linen.

17. Seventeen.

That's enough to weave a napkin set for a dinner party, individual placemats, and probably a tablecloth.

There is no way that I'm weaving that much linen. I bore easily, and the thought of spending the next three years weaving linen napkins chills me. I had enough trouble weaving the cotton napkins for the WGGB 50th anniversary party. There's an iconic photo of me bent over my loom weaving the umpteenth napkin looking pretty unhappy that the warp still had quite a bit to run.

Even if I up the sett to a twill weave, I'd only consume about a tube more. Owning this much linen is insane.

And yet, I have that much linen and an entire tub of linen of other varieties in my reserve stock. I don't even like weaving linen very much. It's a fussy yarn to handle.

The Shawl Was Cut From The Loom Last Night!

OH AWESOME!!

I cut the shawl off the loom and evened the fringe. I'm starting to twist fringe now.

But the LOOM IS FREE!! Yay!!

A Shawl Woven With a Supplementary Warp

I'm excited that I'm finally getting this piece woven off of my loom. It is a very pretty warp, so I was reluctant to just give up on it. But the metallic silver supplementary warp was fiddly, so finding motivation to just weave it off once the initial push to beam was done was lacking.

I weighted the supplementary warp with water bottles off the back of the loom. The initial tie on with a slight amount of weight in each bottle went well, but I needed to increase the weights in the bottles so that the warp would get pulled taut. Otherwise, you end up with the supplementary warp having enough slack in it to start pulling up little loops in the warp as you weave. Since I'm not weaving velvet, I wanted the supplementary warp to lay flat.

So what does this extraordinary finicky loom set up look like, you ask? Like this:




The silver warp kind of bunches and twirls up. It has a lot of elasticity for a simple metallic. The weight pulls it out straight, and having the bottles on the other side of the back beam allows the weight to distribute out a bit.

But the cloth that's weaving off is really lovely:



I like the way the space-dyed yarn is interacting with itself. Weaving with space-dyed yarn is a bit of a crap shoot. If the color regions are aligned you can end up with pooling. What's pooling? Well, here's a post by YarnHarlot (Stephanie Pearl-McPhee) that has a picture that is the epitome of what pooling can be. (Not one of Steph's better posts. She really was cranky that day. But that's a stunning picture of exactly what pooling is/does.)

Most of the time, however, my space-dyed yarns just end up looking muddy or indistinct. I have succumbed on an occasion to the idea of using space-dyed yarn as a pattern yarn in an overshot or other heavily patterned weave that uses tabby. Unfortunately, the eye can't follow both the pattern and the color changes and typically it ends up looking washed out. You're better off using the space-dyed yarn as the tabby in the warp and weft, but then you'd better like the way the yarn looks wound into a ball because that's what it's going to look like in the plain weave structure.

There's a bit of striping going on in this web, but it's striping of a subtle, good sort. Overall, I'm pretty pleased with this project again. So it's ticking along quite nicely. I should have it woven off by this weekend. I wonder what I'll do when the loom is free?

My only gotcha on this warp is its length. You'd think, by now, that I'd throw on a couple of extra feet of warp just in case. But no, I'm going to be weaving up to the knots on this one. I've already planned to re-leash the water bottles with long ties so that they can hang off the back but allow the metallic warp to be woven all the way up to the heddles. I'm still about 24-30" from that scenario, though. A day of weaving.

TV, Holidays, and some Weaving News

We finally bought a 46" Samsung LED TV for $899. I still think that's pretty frivolous, but we've been enjoying it immensely (no pun intended). The three year stretch with our old TV when the flat panel was destroyed accidentally is over.

The holidays were quiet. We spent a week with the family in Virginia.

And the big weaving news? The shawl warp that's been languishing on my new Louet David loom for 2 1/2 years is now being woven off. I have half of it done. The warp had a secondary metallic yarn warp that was weighted off the back with water bottles for weights. Because doing a secondary warp with the weights is a bit finicky, I wasn't keen on messing with it. I finally got it threaded through the heddles, threaded through the reed, and tied on the front. Then I adjusted the weight in the bottles to pull the warp taut properly, and I was off and running. The sticking point for all those years was handling that secondary warp.

It's weaving beautifully. I like the mix of colors. The main warp is a rayon slub space-dyed in berry shades: deep grape, bright deep raspberry fuchsia, bubblegum pink. The silver metallic warp that peeps through is just a lovely complement. I only hope the warp is long enough. This is going to be one of those projects where I had so much trouble starting in the beginning that I wasted a lot of warp in the front. Now I'm going to be using the warp up to the knots on the back beam to make it long enough to drape properly.

I'll post pictures and a write-up on it later.

I'm also weaving a narrow scarf in a space-dyed merino yarn of purples and greys. I'm weaving it off with a deep purple 20/2 worsted wool. I'm not quite as enamored of that warp, but it will do. I still think that I should just weave it off fast. It's threaded to a basic rosepath threading.