Taking Another Path

I like to check in with the new owner of my old Megado and see what they are up to to.  Some months ago Jessica had some happy bright towels on and the pattern was very pretty!   It resembled a flower and she shared the draft number from handweaving.net with me.   16 shaft twill as shown below.

So I worked up  a draft in some colours to hand and was quit excited about the project.  612 ends, 24 epi and approximately 8 yards long.  A big commitment!   (colours below are much brighter than the actual ones used. I get lazy and use something 'close enough' and don't fuss about in Fiberworks)

 

# 79714

Once I got started I noticed an issue right away with a very long float, coming from shaft number 5 and about 10-12 pics long! 😳   I immediately checked the threading and all was correct.  I checked the shaft to see if it was floating.... nope.  I checked my dobby to make sure all the solenoids were firing as they should and all was working well.      

I thought about it for a few hours and decided that it simply wasn't worth the time and aggravation to track it to the source and so went looking for another tie up to use.    A year ago when my loom was brand new I wove up the draft below # 79912.    I did a test run and it looked great and so that's what I went with.

I used the threading from #79714 and the tie up from #79912 and went down another path entirely! 

                                    I used only the tie up only of #79912

A test run to see how they meld together....   All 8/2 cottons from Brassards, of Quebec.  Sett 24 epi.

And after a time, 8 yards came off the loom.    I had woven all 7 towels differently in some way.

This one with the window panes is my favourite.

This one I wove colour in the small stripes and white elsewhere.

Here a colour block followed by a same sized white.

Next up I simply wove all white weft so the warp stripes are more dominant.

The window pane effect was colour and then white for all small cross stripe.

This towel has alternating colour blocks in sequence and no white weft at all.

Then all white but with a border at either end: periwinkle, turquoise and salmon

Same again but this time with: periwinkle, pink and salmon.

So my kitchen towel Christmas war chest is nicely full!    I have a total of 23 towels on hand now.  I'm still planning another 8.5 yard herringbone twill towel warp though as they are very popular.   Times are going to be hard and money tight this next year or two.....   I'm trying to check the crystal ball  and read the tea leaves here....  Results may vary! 

🎁 Towels for the Times

There is an awful lot going on in the World right now and frankly, not much of it is good. I guess that's why many weavers are doing just that... weaving, or spinning.   

Counting our blessings where we find them.   

In the evenings we find ourselves watching movies and seeing people in them all gathered together for meals,  concerts and wonder at it all.  People hugging one another and walking side by side.  We took such simple things for granted.

Its almost like someone did open up Pandora's Box and let the demons out!

I started winding this warp  in the 'before times'. Ten yards of  soft,  nice quality Egyptian cotton.  It was in my stash as a large three pound cone, along with another three pound cone of black. Not entirely sure where I bought it but its lovely. (I think it was Lone Star Loom Room.)

The idea behind this warp was to simply sit and weave  and enjoy the process. Listen to music or podcasts or just the silence.   Then the pandemic hit and we  stayed inside our homes and the choice to use bright cheerful colours as weft really made sense to me to help lift spirits.   Little dancing boxes. 

I wish I could share the soft lofty feel of these towels. You can see how squishy they are!
Grape, creamsicle, honey, and key lime.

Then there are the blue cool tones: bubblegum, peacock, blueberry and raspberry.

Towel number nine was created from having left over yarn on many pirns. So I created a colour way that worked together to use them up.  I call this one Candy Mix..... but it easily could be called "All colours under the sun matter".   This towel  is winging its way to my daughter as she is trying to work out what colour to paint her kitchen so something in this one will work!  😁  🌈

The 16 shaft draft was sett at 24 epi and they were woven to 35 inches. Width in the reed was 24 inches.  After a small turned hem they measure  21 wide by 28 inches long. So a fair amount of shrinkage.   The threading is a point twill and so is the treadling; all the pattern is in the tie-up.

A couple with the hem flipped to show the other side, which is equally nice. Boxes again, or if you look at them with a tilt of the head, there is almost a Celtic like intertwining.  If I had woven two towels in each colour, I would have turned one towel the opposite way and so they would be a nice set.   Maybe next time....

Here's the draft from Handweaving.net that I used showing two repeats of the treadling.   The draft is our road map to a successful project, along with some 'local knowledge'.

Maybe that's why everyone is feeling so discombobulated right now? There's no clear road map to a goal. Life feels on hold and if things are opening up again, it feels weird.   

So perhaps the little daily personal successes mean so much more right now. 

Some lovely peonies from a friend's garden.... and left on our front doorstep as a gift.   Huge blossoms and so lush.  The white ones were especially fragrant.   Thank you Donna! 💞

It All Comes Out in the Wash...

I belong to a couple of weaving groups on Facebook and 'lurk' for the most part. One smart voice there is Margaret Coe  who ably stick handles questions from newbie weavers. Some months ago Margaret recommended a neat trick for when you start a new warp off. There it is shown in the picture above and some of my more regular readers will have noticed I have been using it for the past few projects.  Its the Two Stick Start. It the best tip I have tried in a long, long time! It just works. 

The warp above is 9/2 linen, for a 8 shaft huck lace that I have tied an overhand knot every sixteen ends and then laced on. I laid in three shots of a similar sized 'scrap' yarn which in this case is regular 8/2 cotton. I beat to close the gap and then laid in three more weft shots and beat again. It closed it but there is a slight gap. There can also be tension issues until the weaving progresses further. So I placed a short lease stick into one of the plain weave sheds, changed to the other plain weave shed and placed the second stick. I carried the cotton weft up behind the sticks on the right and started weaving plain weave and you can see how quickly it came together! The sticks provide a nice firm, flat base and from the knots to the top of the gold yarn is four inches! You are off to a real good start almost right away. { ...but it didn't spare me from a denting error and I had to redo some sleying two to three inches on the far right side as I had doubled my ends in one slot.  Geesh!}

When I wound my pirns I ran the weft yarn through a clean damp cloth as I wound them. This tames the wirey linen and you can get a nice tightly wound pirn. The cloth is damp, and not overly wet so the yarn dries quickly. Once you use this on one pirn, all weft for the project must be done the same way or there will be changes in the cloth and the way it weaves up.

I wove six inches of plain weave for my hem allowance and then ladder hemstitched every four ends. I used a slippery synthetic cord doubled as my spacer.  It slips out quite nicely with a gentle tug. Next was one inch of plain weave to frame the lace, then the lace dance begins!

Last time I wove this pattern I used red 9/2 linen and used a sett of 22 epi. It was well balanced when all finished and pressed but I wanted it a smidge tighter so this time I set it 24 epi. Between the coarse linen, the reed marks and the lace five end groupings, the new cloth on the loom has streaks and lines all over the place. You can only hold your breath and hope it all comes out in the wash! (more on this line of thought later...)

I wove two runners using the same natural grayed / beige linen as weft. The runners were woven to roughly sixty inches from the end of one hemstitching to the next at the other end.  There is a small plain weave border down both selvedges and by the time you get to the end of a runner you begin to see the start of some troubled times to come. The plain weave and the lace areas take up differently as the lace centre is more textured and the plain weave is flat.  By the end of the runner you can see the plain weave edges pull down more and then curve upwards to the lace. I didn't experience this effect with the red linen runners. I checked a cone of the red today and it has a much softer touch to it. Perhaps as a result of the dyeing process?  This natural grayed beige linen has a much firmer feel to it... more wirey.  I decided to cut off the runners after each one was woven and retie back on. So the Two Stick Start got a good work out!

The third runner was understandably a bit shorter but I skipped weaving samples this time round and so that twelve inches helped out a lot. I used a snowy white 9/2 linen as my weft and it looked great! There is a nice colour separation on the lace floats so they frame the diamonds. White in one direction and beige in the other.  This type of two colour lace where the colours are more subtle appeals to me. Traditionally lace is woven in one solid colour warp and weft and usually the same yarn as warp and weft. {Beige projects are difficult and boring to photograph and if I used a lighting correction in the tweaking of the pictures, it turned all the colours really weird... so please bear up with the darker shots. I did use the camera flash and had lights on everywhere!}

I decided against using the serger on the raw edges as the serging line can be a tad bit lumpy. I didn't want that ridged line  with a flat hem. I used my sewing machine instead and did a stitched zig zag  which I think you can faintly make out on the raw edge in the picture above.  I steam pressed and measured the hem allowance. I'm going to turn it over by thirds.

The beauty of doing this with linen is that it takes a nice fold with just the fingers pressing. You can double check the measurement. I steam pressed it when I'm happy...then fold up to the hemstitching and press and pin.

As you can see by the close up above, a raised ridge line from the serger would have shown through and I wanted it flat, flat, flat!  The hand sewing was done by a running blind stitch and the three runners were an evenings work by the television.

Things started to get interesting the next morning when I filled the laundry tub to handwash the runners. The first to go in was the shorter white beige blend. I lay the runner on top of the suds and let it absorb the water. I came back a few minutes later and started to squeeze it out. I thought I could see a distinct line warp wise in the wet cloth! Oh crap....   I had used a full cone and part of another to wind the warp, but I had checked the batch numbers and they were both the same! Had someone somewhere made a mistake? I laid it to one side and then 'floated' the next runner on the surface of the water.

Look what happened below.... the side of the runner absorbed water at a much faster rate!

Even when wet there is still a colour difference between the two areas. I gently squeezed water through the cloth but did not wring it out. That would set creases into the cloth, especially the thicker hem allowance. After rinsing, I let it drain well and  rolled into a large towel to absorb the excess water. Once they were all into large towels and resting I sat and did some thinking on the situation. Two cones and two different  reactions.  I had a theory worked out.  Well, there was only one thing left to do and that was to see what happened when they were damp / dry and firmly pressed.

Here they are .... and first up is the white beige runner:

I could see no sign of any colour change! It looked completely even across the runner. This is a blend of beige and white so perhaps it obscures the issue? This one measures 12.5 inches by 55 inches finished.

So here are the all beige runners and both measure 12.5 inches by 61 inches finished.

Again, no sign of any variation in colour! Great!  So what was it?  I think the two cones, while the same batch number, there was a difference in the linen used. It would seem there was almost like a coating on the surface of two thirds of the yarn used.... and not so much on the new cone. It came down to the way the linen was processed.  I hope the washing process took care of this detail for the future. If not, there's no sign of it when dry thankfully. All the reed marks disappeared with wet finishing  and I would have to say the change in sett also worked very well. I would use this sett of 24 epi with this yarn again next time.

So now my Louet Spring is empty and I'm trying to work out what goes on next. Do you ever run out of inspiration from time to time? I know that there is a  ton of different weaves out there to try and so I just need to find one that appeals to me.  I have to clear off the Woolhouse loom and get a shorter towel sampling warp on there so there's lots of housekeeping details in the studio to take care of.   

My left knee has been troubling me and so weaving has been considerably slowed.... hence the long time periods between posts. Sorry about that but it can't be helped. I'm just happy to be able to be able to still weave!

Hubby Bruce hasn't received a surgery date as yet and as of our last check, they are now booking well into March (which is definitely not the promised January). This may end up placing his surgery and mine on a collision course later this late spring or early summer. Apparently there is a shortage of anesthesiologists.   Meanwhile my Dad is still in hospital and the news is he could be there for another week or two before being released.

I'm hoping this will all come out in the wash as well!