Snowflakes in my Sleep

Years ago I can recall falling head long in love with snowflake twills when I opened a copy of Weavers magazine, issue number13. Apparently a lot of other weavers did too as they went onto publish more versions and designs in later issues as well.
In issue number 18, with a Halloween themed cover of witches, there was a draft designed by Guild of Canadian Weavers Masterweaver Jane Evans that I have used time and again.  To me, its visually perfect!
Twill progressions are not difficult to design and play with.  You can create circles, elaborate boxes and even hearts!

I have woven shawls, scarves and runners using snowflake twills or variations and all are snapped up at sales or when gifted, given 'pride of place' in the recipient's home or wardrobe.  A creamy silk scarf for my mother in law's 80th birthday,  five  matching snowflake  runners for five dear guild friends who lost their homes in 2003 in a wildfire that ran through their properties and into a city.  It always turns out well, and is satisfying for both the weaver and the receiver. I think the only thing I haven't woven using snowflake twill is tea towels and now I'm wondering, why not?!    It always looks far more complex than eight shafts and so it can inspire newer weavers as well!

This shows the trellis hemstitching. If you click on the image you can see it better (or any of them!) The little 'v's' work well with the larger 'V's' in the cloth. I have shown this technique before in this post. I like to choose a technique that works with the pattern and end use of the cloth.

The beauty of snowflake twill is that its fully reversible! I like to bear that in mind when planning as well and so sometimes I will make runners with short fringes instead. They are usually measure two inches plus tassel.  Good friend and teacher, Gudrun Weisinger taught a lace weave class some years ago and the one thing I took away was the nifty method of switching up a fringe treatment! I'm not sure what you call this except "fancy- smancy"

This runner is 13" by 54" in length and looks a bit stiff as it just came off the pressing table!

A lesson in a few images:

Pin out your item on a foam board. {Basic instructions on regular fringe twisting can be found here }  You must carefully select the bouts to be twisted as shown. Its hard to describe and so here's another picture to enlarge  to show the arrangement: ( you can also right click and save it for review later)

Then you clip the pairs to your fringe twister. I happen to have a quad so can do two sets at a time.

Twisted tightly to the right. I usually keep count of the turns so it can be duplicated on each grouping for consistency. In this case, a count of 30.

Shift the ends to a single clip each....

Then twist to the left, usually the same number as turns as previously counted.  Then I release one group....

... Make an over hand knot and  pin to my chosen grid line, which in this case is two inches.  Once the new bout is released, it relaxes and will match the other previous ones.

Like so!  I feel its the consistency of the same number of turns, on a matching length of warp ends.  Sometimes we are using uneven lengths due to part of it being 'loom waste' on one end of the cloth. I trim them to the same length on either side. This makes counting your turns far easier.

Nothing makes me smile more than cruising around various weaving blogs and seeing foam boards and grids being used with fresh off the loom projects pinned out. My little invention to make my life easier clearly is being enjoyed in many other loom rooms!

Having said that, many weavers don't count and don't pin out. They simply hand twist, knot the end and release to let the bout twist back on itself. They might use books to weight the warp and I have even seen cats being used! I like to pin so it doesn't slip and slide out of position while being worked on. I found that very annoying and I quickly got tired of dragging books around (and we have no cats!).   Since my weaving tends to lean towards finer threads, I like consistency in my finishing and that includes the knots being all even when viewed. It shows that even a small detail like this was carefully done. Small details add up to an over all effect!

Attention to details start as you plan the warp....select your yarns, wind and carefully beam, thread and sley. The weaving part is the shortest time!  So plan on how to finish your work too. Its the frame around your new work of art!

A Yarn Infusion!

I was quite surprised when I reached for yarns for the last runner project and found that I had big gaps in my supply! Since there was a postal strike looming across Canada at that time, I was *forced* to rely on my reserves  and as a result went with the navy blue 16/2 cotton. It was a warp that needed daylight and an additional light source too. It seems my eyes aren't quite as young as they used to be.  My first choice was a white, or natural or flax coloured mercerized cotton and I was completely out!
So out came my colour charts for Brassards and I went shopping. I built a list and then let it sit over night, then I cut it back to a reasonable amount  :) I have plenty of 8/2 cottons and so decided to stick to just 16/2 cottons for this order.   All these colours are available in 16/2, 8/2, 4/8, 8/8 and even the mop cotton and a 8/2 boucle cotton. Its wonderful to have so many choices and colours... all with great service, and, happily for me, in Canada!

I ordered four cones of each of 16/2 mercerized cotton in white, natural and a colour called flax. They are smaller sized cones of 227 grams. These will be warp for things such as runners, guest towels where I want a better quality look and a bit of shine.

Then I ordered some basic white regular 16/2 cotton. As well as being warp of weft for 16/2 towels, I also use it as weft with some 8/2 projects to help reduce the over all weight of a cloth. These are half pound cones:

Okay! this is filling up my bare spot on the shelves, as those are some of my basics  Now for some colour as  I have a hankering to try more towels in 16/2 . The finer cloth feels nice to the hand, is still very absorbent and they sell well.

So I went with a soft lime green and hunter green, navy blue, brick, creamsicle orange and a colour called honey:

I tried to get a triad from the colour wheel. I have no set plan or draft right now but simple went for colours that appealed to me. I've done other colour arrangements in the past two years and it was time for something new!

So with my order all in place, I did allow myself one guilty indulgence! I saw from their sample cards that they have French linen and I was curious. I've seen Irish, and Eastern European and even Belgium linen....so I ordered two cones of 9/2 linen in natural, my preferred colour for linen.

I think you can see the lovely sheen to the cones here, but what you can't see is the nice even twist and then there is the way the yarn feels soft to the touch. Linen usually feels wiry and so this is is a nice feature! I'm looking forward to using this as weft to some of the new cotton I just bought.

So what's going on with the looms? Well, I'm winding an eleven yard warp for ten towels (plus samples) for my large Woolhouse Tools loom which seems to be constantly interrupted by 'Life' but is slowly making progress. More on this project at a later time!

I still have the 12 shaft tie up on my Louet and seem to have settled on an altered version of the bookmark draft. Here's a peek (taken with my cell phone camera). Details to come as its still under way right now. Its the lazy hazy dayz of Summer so nothing is happening quickly it seems!

I see that the local Fall Fairs are coming up soon and we are into the last weeks of summer before the kids go back to school.  It goes by so quickly huh?

Before I leave you for this this time, a small announcement: Treenway Silks has been sold and the business has been transferred to the new owners in Colorado! You can get all the details at the web site  here
Rather than come from the island just off shore from where I live, my silks will have to travel a bit further now...

Blues Review

I left you waiting for the big reveal on the runners! I got the hand hemming done just before this past weekend and then I had to leave the wet finishing part until we got back from some days away in Vancouver. We had gone over to visit with family again and spend some time in the "Big Smoke". I guess I'm a small town girl now as I found the sheer number of cars and people rather unnerving! Its just way too busy for me and the city noise doesn't stop at any time of day or night.  Sorry no pictures as I forgot my camera!

Calli went into a kennel for the first time and she had great fun playing with her new inmates. She went straight from the kennel to a groomer for a bath and a haircut!

I decided to hand wash the runners and used a normal washing detergent and squeezed out by hand after soaking for 15 minutes.  I rolled them into towels to absorb excess water and then hung to dry over night.
They pressed up nicely with a steam iron. Its been difficult to take good pictures of them as two are a solid blue shade and one is 'busy' looking, but I have given it my best shot (pun intended!)

There are three runners; the first has  40/2 linen weft in a natural colour: (click to enlarge)

Here's a close up:

The second runner is all blue with (approx) 8/2 orlec as weft. (Orlec is like a skinny cousin size wise to 8/2 cotton)

The orlec is crease resistant and more easy care.  A closer image:

Orlec has such a deep shine, coupled with the mercerized cotton warp, it makes getting a decent picture of the pattern a bit tricky.

Finally  the third runner has 10/2 mercerized cotton in blue as the weft:

I would say that the weight and hand of the all cotton runner is my favourite of the three. They were all woven to 50 inches or  bit more, all were ladder hemstitched and are fully reversible.  They all go into the box for the coming sales in the fall. More complete details on the draft and such can be found at this older post  and this one as well .

My little assistant is a hand twisted fencing wire gecko with glass beads. He's a flashy  little fellow and originally comes from South Africa. He and his friend, a chameleon, sit on my kitchen window ledge when not modelling in photo shoots.

Next time... book marks.

Making Blue

The tie up on a countermarche loom is fully double that of a jack loom but oh, so worth it! The large shed and easy treadling is a delight. For a twelve shaft /12 treadle project, that's 144 ties. Even a healthy back may have an issue or three by the time you waded through that! So, I decided to make the most of my projects by leaving a tie up in place and reworking the project and loading on another warp. First project was three scarves and this project will be three table runners, all woven in the gebrochene hind und under pattern.

I was inspired by Dorothy's runner (also shown at the link above) that she sent me for my birthday and so went looking for a fine 16/2 mercerised cotton in cream. I was more than a little stunned to find that I have none! How did that happen? In fact it always makes me laugh that I have a stash the size I do and still need to buy more. So I decided to see what I did have that would work and found a mercerised deep midnight blue 16/2 that might do. So I wound a 6 1/2 yard warp of 537 ends, for a width of 14.92" in the reed. I plan to sett the project at 36 epi, using a 12 dent reed.

Beaming a warp on the Louet Spring is a breeze and it goes quickly. Here's a review of the process. Here's the current project ready to load on the loom:

The bubble wrap stops the ends from slipping into the raddle slots on top! After a bit of work slipping the ends through the rod and lacing on, and filling the raddle, you have this:

Slip in the brown paper and wind on, tweaking the threads at the raddle every so often. The warp didn't give me any trouble winding on but it was another matter when it came to threading! Mercerised cottons have been treated to be smooth and shiny... right? They should behave.... right?  Well, no!

Every single warp thread did this (above) as I tried to thread. They clung to each other like they were mohair!

I like to pull my heddles across in an easy pattern, in this case one through four and then take four warp ends slotted between my fingers and then reach through with a hook to thread. 

Some times the thread pulled free of its clingy siblings and other times, they knotted. I kept a needle handy to open snarls. This meant the threading took far longer to do and my patience ran thin at times. Air got a little 'blue'  :)

I also took many breaks as it meant being hunched over far longer than I planned on. I wanted to use a natural beige 40/2 linen and so wound six pirns tightly and then dampened a clean new dishcloth and rolled the pirns into it, then slipped it all into a zip loc bag and placed in the fridge. In 24 hours they should be evenly damp and easier to weave with over the dry wirey linen straight off the cone. {but once you start a project with damp linen, you must continue till you finish and not switch to dry weft. This may mean winding  new pirns and having to wait till the next day to finish. } Its also best to allow the new cloth to dry before being curled up on the cloth roll.  If you are not able to weave with the damp pirns, store in the fridge. If you can't get to weaving for a few days, then slip the pirns into the freezer. Why all this fuss? Linen is susceptible to mildew if left damp and warp. Defrosting pirns only takes 15 to 20 minutes ahead of resuming your project. I just leave mine in a spot of sunshine and its ready in no time.

This is the first runner underway and I wasn't sure if I liked it or not. Its a busy pattern and that's why I was looking for softer shades of cream to play the greyed beige linen off. I thought it wouldn't hurt to complete it as someone would love it and buy it for their home or as a gift.  Its never failed to amaze me how something I have woven that I didn't like becomes someone's absolute favourite!

These two pictures are of my second runner in a 'tone on tone' approach to use a play of light to show the pattern to a good advantage.  Click to enlarge and you'll notice that there are 2 shades of blue: the lighter shade is the 16/2 cotton warp and my weft is an approx 'skinny' 8/2 orlec. Yup, a synthetic yarn. For one, it was a gorgeous shade of deep navy blue and it also means the runner will be more hard wearing and easier to iron.  {Orlec comes in 90+ colours and is super for day to day table linens such as placemats, napkins and such as today's households can't fuss with specialized laundry. I have alternated end for end with a good quality cotton as well and the table cloth turned out great!}

Runner number three is due to start and I have no idea what the weft will be! It will be from the stash though as Canada has a nation wide postal strike going on right now. Can you imagine it? Being cut off from yarn orders like this?

Oh, the horror!