Ticking All the Right Boxes

I imagine many of you are aware that I sell what I weave and so have an eye on my Etsy shop for what is running low and prepare warps with that in mind. I also weave something that interests me personally and so don't call myself a production weaver.   Going down that road is like turning weaving into a J.O.B.   I have no interest in that at all.

I get bored very quickly and so short runs of 7 to 10 yards are perfect for me. 

I got to playing around in the stash closet and discovered I have some really nice coloured 10/2 cottons that are really rich colours.   It was a toss up between towels and runners, but runners won out and I wound 9 yards of Valley yarns black, shell, lizard green (now discontinued), golden ochre and eggplant.   The sett is 28 ends per inch.

Here it is under way on the loom with black weft. The centre of the larger blocks can be as large as you'd like. This version shows two repeats of the required treadling as shown in the draft.

Then here's the lizard green as weft. It actually works quite well.  I wove one runner using the eggplant and a test run of the golden ochre didn't work very well for my eye and so was UNwoven quickly.  😳

I found the draft at Handweaving.net but didn't make a note of the number (sorry)....    So weaving this project took a long time for a few reasons.    I got started well enough but soon ran into some tension issues, so after a runner was complete, I cut off and re-lashed on again.    Now the tension was just fine but the shed was misbehaving. It wasn't as large and I had threads out of alignment.   I struggled to finish a short runner and cut off once again. 

We lifted the loom back up onto crates, and with the locking pin in place, I went through the tie up and checked the cord lengths.  Some were off by a hole or so and some treadles were too high over all.   I fiddled and tweaked and the next runner was woven much more successfully and I was much happier !

So now that this warp is all done, the plan is to thoroughly clean the loom and then slowly but surely make sure all lamms are level. Then I'm going to double check treadle heights and cut new tie up cords cut to the right length.   The loom was brand new in 2008 and so a tune up of this scale after 12 years isn't  too bad!   I also use a Woolhouse Tools commuter bench and so that will be cleaned and given a fresh oiling of the wood while we still have sunny days outside. 

In short, I really enjoy this loom and don't want to fight with it.   I guess you could say it was crying out for attention !  😊    Simply tightening nuts and bolts isn't enough.... 

So here are some 'beauty shots' of the completed runners.   Yes, all the fringe twisting  took some time to do.

Black weft -above and below.

Olive green weft- above and below.

and finally.... eggplant purple weft below

So before fall  and the traditional weaving season truly sets in, plan to make a list of what your loom's needs are so you can tweak away and get it in the best condition for your winter weaving.

• cords checked for fraying / replacing
• pulleys cleaned and oiled
• new tie up cords?
• nuts and bolts replaced and /or tightened
• clean the wood finish with Murphy's Oil Soap

I've heard some weavers wax poetic about the lovely patina the wood surfaces have ..... um, patina is just oils, dust and dirt  and that's all.  I clean my beater about once a month as its creepy how it can build up despite all the hand washing going on around here!

So the Spring loom  is naked for the time being and there are scarves under way on the Megado.   I have to wind some new warps for the Spring as well so there is always something on the go here.  But time is about to get precious here .... because.....

🍼 🐶 🍼

Puppy watch:    It seems we'll be getting our new little girl sometime around September 2nd, so have launched into acquiring all the items you need to have on hand. It reminds me of having a new (human) baby and carrying around vast quantities of diaper bags and  car seats and changes of clothing.   How can something so small, need so much??

The pups are 6 weeks old this Wednesday  the 26th and so we will be driving down island a week or so after that to get her. They release them between 7 and 8 weeks old.

Here are some pictures taken last week at age 5 weeks. They were introduced to an outside pen to get familiar with real grass and to check out lots of new smells!   Their mum is only nursing them twice daily now and they are being fed a special puppy food soaked in goats milk and so they will be getting puppy kibble soaked in goats milk to start with  here at home.   They are giving us full food recommendations and feeding instructions which we will follow carefully.

Still debating names.... but I  have my favourites of course.  We may end up waiting to meet her to see which name suits her best. 

 🍼 🐶  🍼

Anatomy of a Hand Towel

Its been just over two years now since I walked into my first Midnight Shuttles Guild meeting on a "dark and stormy" November night.  Being completely new to town, I had no idea where I was going; the wind was howling and the rain was coming in sideways and I was trying to find a little blue house down by the seashore.  Its called Sybil's cottage as that is where famous artist Sybil Andrews had lived.  I blew in a few minutes late and have felt at home there ever since.   A warm and caring group of people...

I have shown them some of my weaving as show and tell at meetings and one member asked if it was possible for me to do a small program on finishing details and techniques.  Reasonable enough request but it would mean having a variety of finished samples on hand, and some in mid progress to show them. Since I do all my work on floor looms, and finish things to completion (no WIP's), how could I demonstrate this in as a small program?   My work is done on finished items and then usually sold and gone. I have posted blog posts here that show different techniques I've used but that's meant for the solitary browser, who at best, may share the link with a friend or two.

Then I got the idea of setting something up on a table loom to demonstrate and show them..... then it evolved into a group project where the loom is passed around.  So the birth of the guest towel project was hatched.  🐣

I got ahold of the guild's 8 shaft Dorothy table loom and found it needed a good cleaning and tune up.  I cleaned it with Murphy's oil soap and some diligent scrubbing and took some corrosion off the metal bits.  All the lashing cords came off and were washed and rethreaded back on. 

I noticed it had some bits missing and some rather elderly and sparse wires heddles. Not enough for my project ( and there were no heddles at all on shafts five to eight!).  I was given approval to purchase some new inserted eye heddles from Leclerc and one member's husband kindly made some beautiful oak lease sticks. The old girl was looking rather grand now!

I had planned a four shaft Swedish lace project, found in The Handweaver's Pattern Directory by Anne Dixon (page 191),  to do a small hand towel each, using 10/2 cottons, and featuring hemstitching details.   So I wound a six yard warp, sett 24 epi and Hubby helped me beam it.

Here's the loom being threaded. Its a bit of a reach to even the front four shafts!  (There are holes predrilled in the sides so I suspect this could be added to to make it a twelve shaft. It would explain the reach.)

The new heddles just slip along nicely.....and being Swedish lace, its a heavier count for heddles on shafts one and two.

As you can see here in this close up below, the inserted eye is nicely open and smooth for any yarn type with out fear of snags or pinching. Being stainless steel, there's no corrosion to deal with either.

The new oak lease sticks are doing a fine job!

Finally, I trussed up the beater bar assembly to stand upright and sleyed the 12 dent reed.  

Ready to lace on. I'm being economical with the warp as there are 11-12 participants. I might even need to do a second warp if some want to weave more than one.

I had used my Fiberworks program to work out the project width and number of lace repeats. At 12.88 inches in the reed, its using a great deal of the loom's width.  I had  planned a rough outline of how the towel will be proportioned, but only weaving one up will tell you the final result.  Below are two pictures showing hem allowance of six inches done and the motif border is complete and hemstitching is under way.

I found this diagram on line which shows the steps nicely too.

Then I changed from the cream  10/2 cotton (same as the warp) and used a slightly deeper beige called Shell and wove the main part of the towel doing eleven repeats of blocks A and B and ended with a final A to balance.
Block A:  (do 3 times)
1, 3
2
1, 3
2
1, 3
2, 4

Block B: (do once)
1
2, 4
1
2, 4
1
2, 4
1, 3

This progressed along nicely and with a final block A and 8-9 pics of plain weave, it measured roughly 13- 13 1/2 inches and I switched to the cream 10/2 and wove an inch of plain weave.   Then using my colour change as my 'bottom line', I did a row of Italian hemstitching (or box hemstitching as I have also heard it called).  The entire box is in the cream section. You can also find diagrams showing this in  Finishing Touches for the Handweaver by Virginia West (page 24) .  This book should be in every weaver's library.

step one: choose the size of the box, here its 3 x 3 threads.

Step 2: bottom right hand corner to to left hand corner and make the 'floor of the house'

Step 3: Go from top right corner to bottom left corner to make the 'roof of the house'

Step 4: Go from top right corner to three threads left into new territory, and make the 'wall of the house'
...and repeat. 😊

I resumed weaving the five inch hem on the towel, and also added some fine scrap yarn to hold my edges and cut out off the loom! Why five inches and not six as the front was done? I like the look of a slightly smaller back hem and it places all the emphasis on the front where you did all that pretty stitching! The Italian hemstitching on the back hem gives it a neat treatment and emphasizes the colour change.  I machine straight stitched the edge of the cream hems to secure them and washed by hand.  While still damp, I gave it a good steam pressing with my Singer press.

The hems were folded into thirds, pressed and then hand sewn  as shown here.  Voila! the towel is complete.

Now: what would I do differently?   The over all length of the towel is just a tad bit too long for the narrow width so perhaps reduce the lace repeats to ten instead of eleven?  I feel it would have a better proportion.

I also struggled with getting a good tension on the loom and so my edges are not to my usual standard.... but as I have heard said many a time, that's a Dorothy loom for you.   I cranked it up as best I could but still end up laying the weft in pic by pic which meant it took a long time to weave.

Also it was difficult to get a good tap with the beater if you advanced that bit too far (spongy feel), so there really is a 'sweet spot' of only two inches with the table loom. You would advance the warp and then fight to get the tension right all over again.

 I considered using a small temple to help reduce draw in but reckoned my students may not have one to hand so best to work without it.  The end result of this is the lace portion draws in further than the hems.  I decided this is a teachable moment to discuss drawn in.  It produces a full sized towel sample of Swedish lace and its unique little windowpane look, and features  hemstitching techniques  and (for many) using finer threads than they normally do.  Lots of new things all wrapped into one project!

.... but give me a floor loom any day!

So here are some beauty shots....

My notes to travel with the loom are almost set and I will be in touch with a student shortly to take the loom.   I think this loom may be circulating for awhile given everyone's schedules!

Running into the Learning Curve

There's the loom line up.  A beautiful day with patio doors and windows open for the warm breeze, good tunes on the player and the room freshly tidied.    There is a possible offer on the Woolhouse down at the far end and I won't know for sure until July.  (The loom is available again ) The Louet Spring in the middle has a silk warp under way.   Yes, that is a live weaving program on the screen there next to the Megado and weaving is once more under way!

It was quite a process to get it to this point. First of all you avoid dealing with it for months, then you make a feeble attempt just before you have surgery and Christmas and it was obviously doomed to fail. 

Then you have two friends who gently, very gently embarrass you into looking at it again.   :)

I worked on getting the sixteenth shaft aligned properly.  Then next up was making my mind up as to which version of Fiberworks I was going to use.    PC or Mac.   Having seen both versions of the program, I decided Mac all the way, in both design and weaving operation.   

I think part of my previous 'rut' was that I designed in the Mac program and wove (or tried to) in the PC on a tiny notebook and I was trying to learn and run two programs and two operating systems.    Double the Fun!  (Um, not really.)

This Megado is one of the earlier models from 2002 and so it uses a serial port to USB cable between the interface and the computer.  That requires loading a driver onto your computer to run it.  Simple enough to do right?    Not really...   My Mac Air has no disc drive internally and so I must add one externally. But after buying an Apple external hard drive,  it would not accept the small mini cd, only the normal sized cd's.    So then  you plan to take it to the local technology store and get them to load it onto the computer.   Simple right?   not really...

The chain of stores ALL closed their doors as they under go a reorganization and will remerge as another chain of technology stores.      "We thank our customers for their patience".

Finally they got the stores re-open, and my computer and mini disc all together at the computer 'geek'  desk and it took one really nice tech guy five (5)  minutes and  no charge.   Geesh....

Next up in this little drama is the various diagnostic testing to see if everyone is happy and shaking hands with each other!    Found the right comm port right away!   Since I only have two USB ports I had a 50/50 chance of getting it right.     Yeah me!

Then I ran the solenoid test. The solenoids are like little 'wack-a-moles' that fire when the computer tells them to, from the pattern it has in the draft, pic by pic. They jump out and hit the back of what looks like piano pegs and then a knife like blade moves up and down as you treadle and collects the screw heads on the other side of the pegs that are sticking out proud and then releases the screws  when the blade moves past another sensor.

Well its supposed to....  the treadling sensor diagnostic test failed.  

So it wasn't the computer at fault,  and all parts of the loom were functioning properly except for the blade and the magnet.   The magnet is what tells sensors to release the 'pegs' at the right time.   Its small, very strong and apparently in the wrong place. 

So my next test is to double check the sensors to see if the fault lies with them. So off comes the interface and I run the magnet by them and ....presto.... they work!  Huge sigh of relief!   They would be very expensive to repair or replace and involve a road trip to be fixed to eastern Canada.    If I can't get a holiday there, they sure aren't if I can avoid it!  :)

So? place the magnet on top of the blade or underneath?   A simple question right?  no....      I had to read through the older manual that came with my loom. A second newer manual for later models, surf You Tube in vain for Megado how- to videos, join a multi shaft  comps / dobby group on Facebook and spend time browsing on the internet looking for pictures.   

Finally I found a how to guide in Dutch for the older model interface  on the Louet European web site and found that the magnet goes on the inside of the blade.   They show a white magnet in this picture, but mine is black on a black bar.

You can see the piano pegs that the solenoids hit and below you can see the interface (like mine) placed back on the side of the loom. The magnet is tucked behind the cutaway.

photo credit: Louet NE

Except on my loom the blade and magnet won't freely slide by  the sensors and it jams up.  The fact it would not slide freely is what caused my confusion as to which side it belonged.

So we undo two small dark screws at the bottom of the interface out by one small turn and put it back on and the bottom edge is now out a smidgen  and the blade / magnet combo clears!    

But it still didn't work.

We had a break and a discussion about the various possibilities.  Bruce had mentioned something about positive and negative polarities and so I just reached in and flipped the magnet over.   

....* and it worked!* 

We cautiously smiled to our success as we were worried about what was next to go wrong. Earlier that day I had dropped my iPad onto a tile floor corner point down and it was not turning back on.  It was a "black screen of death" for hours until I gave up on it.  Of course later the same day when I took it in to be looked at by a techie, it worked perfectly like nothing was ever wrong. In fact if it wasn't for the slight ding at the corner, you would never know. 

So was it worth going to all the this trouble and steep learning curve?   Yes.... the Mac program and its commands are much simpler than the PC version, well at least to me me that is.  I was able to set the ranges for what portion of the draft I want to weave right away and  now I have to learn the finer points of un-weave  vs. reverse and few other points.   

I have a narrow 2 inch warp on the loom for 12 shaft twill book marks and the neat thing is I can start and stop where I need to as I learn and makes mistakes.  If I do get a full one all woven up, then its a bonus!    I'm already thinking of what to weave next on the Megado and I think it might well be more towels as they are a great fresh start experience until you get all the nuances of the loom and the way it feels as you operate it.  

On a personal note:

My Dad is still with us and is enjoying a new, more modern, brighter hospice, but the fact remains that its a hospice...

The grand kids are growing:

Ethan's first haircut

Thomas the Tank bicycle for  Ethan's 3rd birthday.

...and little Madison is now 2 1/2 months old and very much all girl. 

I hope your 'April showers' brought you 'May's flowers'.

Towels and Tribulations

This sure is a busy time of year! Between Christmas shopping, regular life and errands... then throw indoor renovations into the mix and there hasn't been as much time for weaving as I would like. My big loom Emmatrude has a 9.5 yard towels project that was part of my experiment to try new methods of warping my loom. I tried to simulate the Louet method and after a fashion I did manage to get the warp on and beamed. Then the second warp beam placement raised the level of the warp at the back by 3 inches. Not ideal, but I have been weaving this warp off slowly. The threads are running elevated from the back and at the heddles the threads are touching the top of the heddle eye. While I get a shed, it's not the best to work with. There is a further complication in that the tie up assist cords appear to be out of sync and so I had to raise the beater bar assembly to keep a smooth bottom edge to throw the shuttle on. Add a narrower shed and then top threads at varying heights and it made for a slow slog.

What this means is when this warp is done and off the loom, there will need to be some adjustments made to my loom before another project can go on. For the 20+ tie up assist, it means raising the treadles to their optimum height and then placing weights on them to hold them securely in place. Then, at the back of the loom, all cords, one by one, must be pulled and tugged till all slack is gone and then pegged at the 'sweet spot'. Then all the sweet spots must be marked with a tie of non slippery yarn. I used red 2/8 cotton last time so it will be interesting to see how much discrepancy there will be this time. They say Texsolv doesn't stretch, but I have found with constant use and tension that it will 'ease' by as much as a centimetre. This can be enough to cause some problems at the front end! So in short, its time to tweak and fine tune. It's all part of knowing your loom well.

Speaking of knowing your loom well, I have decided to put the sectional back on and revert to my method of warping on this loom. I would have to practically rebuild my loom to take the second warp beam off to get the warp at the right level and I have decided I'd just rather not.
So it will be part of the 'big tweak' as well.

In the mean time, I'm weaving away, albeit a lot slower than I would like. Let's take a look at the various colours and combination so far. I'll post the finished results sometime down the road, most likely in January.

So the warp is 2/10 mercerized cotton, sett 28 epi and is a simple two block twill. I'm weaving to a towel length of 34 inches with decorative bands top and bottom. Above is white weft and decorative band. It really cuts the colours intensity! Below is the steel grey and I really like it.

More of the grey and you can see the optical diamonds the pattern creates. Neat!

Below I used the red as my main weft and while it looks okay, I'm not so keen on it. I wanted to have one towel with each colour, then repeat my favourites and possibly expand on the size of the twill blocks.

So, my favourite is the black! It really makes the colour *POP* and looks elegant. The inspiration for these towels was the new modern appliances that feature stainless steel and black exteriors. I thought they would different colour wise at sales and be a hit. ( Also being mercerized, they have a nice sheen).

So as part of our coming kitchen reno in January, it seems these fancy shmancie appliances will be coming here to our place!

Gosh darn, these look like they are going to be mine.... well, most of them!