At the End of the Day

If this image looks familiar, then you'd be right. This was a warp put on last October no less and was to be a quick experiment in treadling variations. But then throw a sick Hubby and Christmas (with house guests) into the mix and you have a long drawn out affair.  I never claimed to be a fast weaver but this really is beyond believing.  I enjoyed the warp and so can't say this was a 'dog on the loom'... far from it!  Life simply decided that I had other things to be doing...

So the premise was to have one threading and one tie up and then by changing the treadling only produce three different patterned scarves.  Here is the previous post where I started, but I will repeat the drafts here for convenience:

The threading is an elaborate M's and W's and the tie up is a standard twill for eight shafts.  The first scarf was treadled 'as drawn in'. The second scarf was treadled in a 'network style'. The third scarf, and my personal favourite,  is treadled 'snowflake twill'.  (both scarf two and three treadlings are called twill progressions) Three separate looks all for only having changed the way you dance the treadles!   I would be the first to admit that this was made far easier by having a weaving program and so I could try things out ahead of time on the computer screen. 

I can recall having a conversation with my weaving mentor Margaret back in 1997 or 1998 about this very topic. I had an overshot threading on the loom and Margaret sat down and simply started playing with her feet!  Once she knew what style of threading it was, she understood how it was tied up and so could improvise on the fly. I sure wish I had kept the sample she made that afternoon. I also recall the big smile she wore as she wove as she was having fun. She said that being freed from the constraints of a rigid recipe was when weaving comes to life.  She did tell me that you have to know how the basic weave structures work first, then you can bend and stretch the rules!

The warp was 10/2 tencel, sett 28 epi and was 7.29 inches in the reed.  That's 204 ends.

The weft was 30/2 fine black silk which contrasted nicely with the rose, and mineral green, with a dash of violet.

All were woven to 72 inches, fringes twisted and left at roughly six inches including the tasseled end. All were hand beaded with various glass beads for a bit of sparkle. The shine and drape is beautiful.

A great project and I'm only sorry it took so long! Hopefully, it will encourage you to play with treadlings when you find yourself stuck and bored with a project.... you might be surprised at what you find!

Finishing up Loose Ends

When I got back from Vancouver I took a day to settle in and get my laundry done and then turned my thoughts to the studio again. It was time to bring the black silk project to a close and move onto something new! It's had a lot of obstacles thrown in its way, along with me simply ignoring it for a time but now I had to bring this to a happy ending!


First I have twisted the fringes into small groups and you can see how I do this here. In the picture above, I'm hand sewing some bead embellishments to the edges. My full 'how to' on this can be found here. It gave me a chance to browse through my bead boxes and that's always fun. In fact I reorganised the boxes into colour groupings and labeled them. A nice side diversion!

I used mainly black seed beads and featured a bronze bead on the silk yak blend scarf. The silk camel blend weft is brighter and has a subtle colour to it. A soft beige cream and so I used a mix of small black seed beads and an irregular beige bead. They were both a bit stiff as some warps can be off loom but they headed straight to the laundry tub to be gently hand washed.

Once rinsed and tugged into shape, I hung them outdoors to drip dry. It was such a lovely spring day and it didn't take long before they were just barely damp. I brought them in and gave them a good hard pressing and hung them back up to finish drying. The next morning I have them a final light pressing and then sewed my label on and attached a hang tag. Done!!

Here's the pressed silk camel blend scarf showing my bead selection. The drape is soft and beautiful! Now these are rather dark coloured scarves for this time of year so I expect they will sit in my inventory till later this fall.

Here's the front and back of the silk camel scarf. It is fully reversible and has a 'summer and winter' kind of effect colour wise. You can choose which side suits the occasion!

Here's the drape on the silk yak scarf (which is also on the manikin at the very top of the post)

silk camel weft

Now I have an empty Louet loom and it just so happens that I have a sister who is planning an exchange of vows later this year. So I have some ideas I'm mulling over to mark the occasion.

More on this later!

Reno news (yup, there's *still* things being completed...)

The stairs were recarpeted while I was away and it sure looks nice. Seems that one small remnant in the warehouse was just enough (barely!) to do the job.

Next up is the tile back splash in the kitchen and the tile guy is coming Monday to do the job. Then the kitchen is finally D.O.N.E.

Last job of the current interior renovation is to get a new hand rail for the stairwell and we are looking at various wood profiles. The standard ones are too wide and heavy for the space.

Mother's Day was a nice one! Not only did I get an orchid I bought for myself but I received a second larger one. Turns out that Dorothy got one almost identical to mine. It hovers over my wee one like an older sibling! Another flower bud has opened since I took this picture and another flower spike is well under way.

Phalaenopsis or Moth orchid

*if you click on the link, it takes you to a web site with care instructions for this variety of orchid*

If you have a reasonable humidity level in your home and a bright spot, but not direct sunlight, then you can grown them in your home too.

I want to thank you all for your comments and good wishes on my father's recovery! Unfortunately he's been moved into intensive care after some other problems appeared and now we wait some more. That's the hard part... the waiting! I have been weaving to keep my mind off things and some tricky treadling means I have no room for thinking other than numbers. That's a good thing.

Okay, I have a bridal shawl to go and plan out...

This 'n That

Its been a busy weekend around here. I have worked in the studio all weekend as we plan to take Monday off and go shopping.
I got busy with threading the 10/2 tencel warp which consist of 246 ends over 12 shafts and will be sleyed 30 epi. ( 2 per dent in a 15 dent reed). I'm using a 23" shorty reed as these are to be narrow 8" scarves. Skinny dents and a black warp.... and quickly fading daylight. These old eyes simply can't be trusted! So I got out my new toy that I bought at Woolhouse Tools in September when we were in the Okanagan.


Right at this minute, I can't recall it's proper name ( or who makes it) but I'm calling it the auto reed hook. Slip it into one dent *ahead* of where you want to start and push forward till it 'clicks' then slip the yarn ends over the bottom hook and pull back through the reed. The ends simply drop off and the tool moves forward into the next dent as if by magic. Honest. I never took the hook out the entire time and every dent was filled!

Now what it doesn't do is ensure that you have two and not three ends in your hand and later when I had to unlace the warp the bouts again for the second time, it didn't help me with the crossed ends behind the reed. Geesh. I haven't done that in very long time. In my defence, it is a black warp.... and its tightly sleyed. That's my story.

The draft for this project is in the last post and I'm starting to realize how ambitious it is. 12 shafts and 12 treadles... okay. But the treadling plan is 'tromp as writ'. Take a look at that draft again. There are 83 ends to the main pattern, with an additional 39 for the centre bit. Okay, no phone calls and no talking to anyone. If someone comes in, their hair better be on fire! These are my cheat sheets for treadling. There are another two for the start and finish of the scarves as well.The pattern does runs in threes, but *backwards* and the odd one or two thrown in for added confusion. It means you are glancing at the treadles to see where to place your feet all the time. So for the first time ever owning this loom, I placed large number stickers on the treadles to increase my success rate. I normally can keep them worked out by simply placing a thick rubber band ( like you get on broccoli) on the mid point. My foot feels that and knows where it is in the scheme of things.

I must admit the pattern is stunning and the scarf is going to look wonderful. Here's a sideways shot of the early portion. Blogger has turned my picture sideways for some reason. The hemstitching is done every 4 ends and I plan to twist the fringes every eight. It will be a fine fringe and be a bit more 'lady like'. I may add beads if there are any in my bead stash that will be just right. We'll see about that later... much later.
There's a lot of shine with the tencel and I'll try to get another shot to show you.

On Lilibet, the heart pattern towels are coming along. I'm on number four now and using a muted purple. The pattern doesn't jump at you quite as much as with the bright blue but really nice just the same. I must agree with Lynnette about the cloth beam filling up quickly and it does look like ten yards will be the limit using yarns this size. Never thought to ask about a thing like that when we were buying the looms. Fortunately for me, I get bored quickly and so ten yards should be plenty.

On my other loom, I have a sectional and so not dealing with sticks or paper. Just some sticks to help ease the bumps on the cloth beam for a turn. Having paper unrolling at the back is annoying as the treadles bump and hit it. So I hit upon a solution to the rustling paper. Two mini bull dog clips from my hubby's office supplies.

I'm going back there to unroll floating selvages anyhow......

So my mind is starting to turn to what's next after the towels are done. I'd like to try some spider weave or cannelle. I'll play with some drafts and get back to you....