Shades of Scotland

Finished up on April 6th, otherwise known as "Tartan Day".... this fiber colour way by Beesy Bee Fibers (on Etsy)  called  "Scotland". It's a blend of merino and tussah silk and yummy soft.

Wouldn't you fall for this too?  💕😁

So I ordered 450 grams  and have been spinning this off and on for 18 months.   Seems there are some 'thorns' in the Scottish heather. The two fibers of silk and merino don't mingle all that well and both have different length staples.  So it was more of a grudge match and one I was determined to win.     So I'd weave a bobbin of this 'highland heathen' and then spin up something that wanted to play nice.    And repeat until it was all done.     Sort of a carrot and stick approach  (to me 😳🥕 )

I was able to keep it consistently fine, with cussing as a sauce.    I had some nice compliments on it at the recent guild meeting and one member was sympathetic when he heard the fiber mix and said it must have been a long road...

So spun up on my Hansen Mini Pro as a lace weight  2 ply yarn. Washed in scent free soap and then skeined up when dry.

The 🇨🇦 dime for  context.

Then I used my swift, ball winder and yardage meter  to run it through into cakes and get the mileage.

The totals are:  (for all)  412 grams or 14.4 ounces.    991.42 yards or 901.2 meters

.... and for sale in my Etsy shop as one batch.    😊

Permission to Play

I'm back again... and fairly quick about it  too.  It's Easter weekend and I hope all of you who celebrate, have a nice time with family and friends.  🐣🐰

So do you recall this recent posted project?  It featured a painted warp by Loominaria, who are now sadly closed.  There was 25 ends of this painted warp  left over.    A smidgen.  Too little to do anything with, and too much to throw away.....    That started a nugget of thinking. A challenge even.  How to use that 25 ends to its best advantage.

So one end was reserved for any mishaps and the remaining 24 represented one inch in a warp.   How to maximize that one inch?   It's a series of plums, blues, bronze- brown and gold tones. Even some mossy green tones.   I decided to go with two shades of blue.   Greyed Blue and Azure.   

After mulling and playing around with various drafts, I fell back to my favourite.  I have it in 16 shafts and 8.... so I reworked it  to a 12 shaft (of draft #78116) to maximize the 24 ends.   With some gradient on either side as the blues shift from one side to the other.   Will it work?   I have no idea until we try....   The colours in the draft are NOT a good representation of the actual used.....

Here's the 8 shaft version #75578 (as a bonus 😊 )

Here it is being beamed on using the Helping Hands from Lofty Fiber, and below, I'm taking another try at using the paper holder from Gingerlocks Handwovens. This time with non skid matting underneath so they don't move and create torque in the paper.   It worked!

Closer look at the paper hangers below.

Gingerlocks Handwovens had slipped two of these 3D printed 'balls' in my order and you slip them on the (non removable) posts on the Megado.  They went from a hazard to a nifty hand up. 

Another new toy from Lofty Fibers is the sley assist and it's designed for Louet looms: Spring, David and Megado.  They also have a beater brace for the Spring and David but not yet for the Megado so you'll see I have used soft cords to tie off the beater to upright.   The assist is secured by a 'screw' that sits on the reed slot. The darker support shifts on a slot to accommodate any height reed.  You can have it angled (as shown) or lay it flat.   (I'm sure they are working on similar device for other loom brands)

Then you reach through and sley the ends through the reed.  I think next time I will tie off the beater so it leans backwards a bit and reduce the reach.

All done.... and time to shift it to an upright position and place the top of the beater back on. 

Here the reed is upright and is held in place by slots in the end of the sley assist brackets.  You loosen the light grey screw to shift it along in the reed track and snug it in tight to hold the reed in place.

Reed in the slot on the left..... and below, on the right. 

Once the top is back on and secured, the brackets can be loosened and removed.   I liked the process and will use it again for sure. I was reaching up and over the top of the beater to  sley the reed and this old body complained every time. 

So sometimes you just have to play with new toys, new ideas and  take a leap of faith.....  Next time, we'll see if my idea of how to save and use the painted warp ends plays out.....

🌷 🐣 🌷

Old Lady Learning New Things 🧶🧵

I have been steadily weaving away at a slow tartan yardage and it will appear here once I have it to a finished end result.  In the mean time I have been doing a lot of grown up type things such as taxes, medical appointments etc.  

This time of year saw both Hub and myself reaching birthdays with a zero in them so we celebrated both times with friends.    I turned 70 and it sorta bothered me some as it really feels like a slippery slope now.   Time to clear away the distractions and attend to what truly matters.  Well, that's the plan anyhow.....

Our local guild has a lot of great talent and one woman, Katherine, generously held a 4 hour afternoon workshop on making raffia wrapped coils on a ceramic base.   Her sister in law made the bases and they are lovely!

Here's Katherine explaining  the process to us newbies and we all selected our length of rope to wrap.

Here's mine underway and it doesn't look anything like the teachers finished bowl! 😳

Here's Ben who sat across from me just racing along. Another Katherine is working on her basket in her lap.  She makes beautiful Indigenous baskets so this was sort of like a 'busman's holiday' for her. 

At the end of the day, mine looked like this and everyone admired my cute scalloping. I blamed my arthritic fingers!  I had plans for it when I got it home. 

So here's my end result.  I checked through my bead collection and found some suitable candidates and some fine, tough line linen thread. (Having a stash is great at times like this!) I needle wove through the coils and secured the bowed portions and added beads at the ceramic hole sections. It tightened everything up. I then shaped it carefully and then dipped into warm water for 10 mins to soak.

The result after fully drying was that everything tightened and feels stronger.   Sort of a metaphor for Life I guess......

🍁🍇 Autumn Chardonnay Scarves

A bit off season since I'm looking at snow drops and primulas in my garden..... but yes, some weaving inspired by a grape harvest. 

Iridescent Fibers is no longer doing business sadly, but it was the 'dye' arm of the weaving business Loominarias.   The two women, Carrie and Mindy dyed and wove up the most exquisite warps.  They also sold painted warps and I have a few in my yarn closet.   One is called Autumn Chardonnay and was 7 yards long and  208 ends of 8/2 tencel.   Sorry I didn't take a picture of the warp  before I started.

My challenge was to find a draft that looks like leaves for a 16 shaft loom and I found  #79845    at Handweaving.net suited the task.    208 ends doesn't go very far for a scarf width so I decided to pair it up with navy tencel, and then break the painted warp into three sections.   That got tricky and required much patience and nerves of steel !    Then I decided it needed something to catch the eye and added double ends of a pale gold to outline the two outer navy blue sections.    Adding to the centre section was a step too far.    (Unlike some famous people, I know when to stop adding gold embellishments  😉)

 

So this is how my draft looked. The dobby uses the lift plan to activate the solenoids. 

And on the loom you can see both upper and lower patterns here. 

Here's a section where the  purpley blue is transitioning to a bronze gold.  It was fun seeing how the pattern played on the various colour sections  of medium blue, plum, bronze- gold, bronze- brown.  Even a kahki moss green shade. Definitely autumn colours.     

I auditioned other colours to use as weft but nothing did any justice to the painted warp, so I used navy on both scarves.    But !  There was a slight colour variation as I wound the navy blue warp with one dye batch and then used another dye batch as my weft. There is a real difference between the two navy blues and it worked nicely to even show pattern where it was navy on navy.    Stash busting at its finest for that small part cone.  😊

The photos below are of both scarves. They are the same 72 inches x 10 inches finished. Only the placement of dyed warp sections are different. 

As you can see, the loom in behind is warped and under way again.  The new arrangement of a smaller sized loom is working out nicely and I have no regrets.  By the way... I have 25 ends of the painted warp left over and so watch for the ends to be featured in some project to come. Meanwhile I'm thinking of how to show them off to their best advantage....   

So we do have spring flowers starting to appear here and we have noticed small flocks of little birds starting to appear again.   We hardly got any snow this winter so we will no doubt be under water restrictions  right away.     Spring and Fall are my favourite seasons now as the other two are too extreme. 

🍂🍇

 

Simply Silk

Yup, I'm back again....  the sun came out and so did the camera.  It's so nice to have extra daylight once again and it will only get better from here on.

I was digging around in my three bins of silks (gulp)   ... yes, 3 and decided it was high time to use some. I had small skeins of several colours but not enough of any one thing to do a substantial project such as two scarves (so to reduce loom waste).   I thought about it and realized it was never going to be used unless I was willing to combine them, and do one singleton project.  

I reckoned a colour and weave project such as houndstooth might be nice or a tartan.   I have an 8 shaft draft from handweaving. net that is called "The Spirit of Scotland".  I decided to make it a 4 shaft draft and looked at the colour arrangement and my colours were not close but  close enough to say "inspired" by the Spirit of Scotland Tartan.   😉     The colours below were close approximations....   I almost changed the yellow thin stripes for white but left it as it.  The yellow is opposite of purples and so provides a nice tug on the eyes.

Winding it was fun as the colours built up on the mill.  It went quite quickly and I think winding the skeins into cakes took longer to do.    3 yards is a short warp.   My shortest in years!

So what time I saved on winding was soon lost to weaving. It's a slow process changing colours and in some places, such as the smaller stripes, carrying colours neatly up the sides.  I often wondered who thought up this great idea as a day's work was measured in inches..... and that would be me. 😳

But it was worth it. There's nothing like the soft hand of silk.  I set it at 28 epi and I'm not sure that was correct as it covered the warp yarn in places.   So not appearing like a proper tartan per se. It is an inspirational plaid project after all.  Its all done now and I quite like the effect and colour mix together.

Now I have several small balls of left over silk to work out what to do with.  And still 3 full bins of silk to work through. 

Spring is coming.... we have primulas and snow drops up!

🌷🌷🌷