Melinda's Shawl: Loom Set Up

I got the bright idea of weaving my sister Melinda shawl as a gift.  So my creative engine got revving and I'm going with a pattern that is an extension of one I have done before (so I know what I'm getting... but trying something new), using undyed tencel in white or off white ( she is a bride after all!) A twelve shaft snowflake twill in 2/10 tencel, sett 28 epi, and 26 inches in the reed. That's 708 ends and since I'm making two shawls, the warp is 8 yards. Its treadled 'as drawn in'.

click to enlarge (on this draft or any picture)

So I got busy winding my warp! I divided the 708 ends into 4 groups .....

Then I loaded those onto the Louet for winding on. Their warping system a la Jane Stafford is amazing and quite logical. Eight feet or eight yards, it all goes on the same way and is easy peasy!

I love the symmetry of the threads all aligned. A thread under tension is a thread under control!

Keep those puppies taut and they can't run amok.... (Control issues or what?!)

Here the ends are corralled into the built in metric raddle. It has 5 slots per inch which means you have to do some figuring. In this case six threads per slot to spread it the required 26 inches.

Here's the view from the other side of the loom as I wind on, alternating tugging at the warp and pulling on the brown paper that separates the warp as it winds on. It took me 15 to 20 minutes to wind on the eight yards! Not too shabby.

The threading took me a bit longer as I slowly worked my way across the threading draft, marking my spot with mini post it notes to isolate the portion being worked on.

Once that was done, I have to sly the reed ( 12 dent: sleyed 2,2,3) A bit tricky with white heddles and white thread. Above you can just see that I have pulled each group and flipped over the top in order for drawing through the reed.

Here they are all laying nice and orderly through the reed and working my way across took about an hour and a half.

Then my trusty assistant, Hubby, and I lift the loom up onto my 'loom elevators' and now I can sit and work on the tie up. Sure beats crawling underneath the loom. The Louet Spring is light enough for two people to lift. What you see currently on the treadles is my old tie up for the last silk scarves, plus I attached a tie cord to the loose treadles to keep them from flopping around when the loom is lift up.

I'll be tying up 12 of the 14 and so that means a grand total of 144 tie up cords between the upper and lower lamms. I thought I'd make a fresh start in the morning and went upstairs to start our dinner. While chopping onions to lay over a salmon fillet, I didn't get my thumb out of the way fast enough and gave myself a good cut. See?

I'm the walking wounded now and its amazing what you use your thumb for. It did get me out of dishes that night and I seem to garner extra help when I needed it. It was a bit on the painful side...

Next picture is not for the faint of heart, small children and wimps ....

See? I 'm not kidding... I stuck the piece back on and bandaged it up! It worked one other time some years ago so maybe twice? So next up is my tie up and I'm going in to try it one handed!

This is my tie up sheet. Using my PCW Fiberworks I'm able to print just the tie up on a single sheet and then I use it at the loom. (You can do this with the threading or the treadling too) As I have a countermarche loom I must do a tie up for each and every square on the chart. I'm treating the numbers like X's and tie to the upper lamms (they sink) and the O's are tied to the lower lamms (they rise).

So I isolate the column I'm working on with the long post it note papers and get to work. I took two hours to do five treadles out of my twelve to do but that's due only to my thumb! Normally I'm a lot faster and would have all of them done in an hour. Separating the texsolv hole to put the other end of the cord through was a bit tough! I have a new appreciation for primates who manage without opposable thumbs :)

Next post I'll continue on the other side of the tie up. Hopefully I'll get faster with the practise!

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...

The Apple Doesn't Fall Far From the Tree

Look what I got in the mail the day before I left for Vancouver! Handknit socks. These are a belated birthday gift from my daughter Carrie who lives way over on the other side of the continent in North Carolina. The knitting genes skipped a generation over me and landed with her! She now spins on her Kromski Prelude wheel as well and naturally progressed to dyeing her own fibre. Her fibre Etsy page is here. Her Ravelry name is Gnomenapper and her project list is worth a look.

Here's a close up shot of the heel. I just love the lavender colour....which she tells me is properly called 'hyacinth' and the yarn is a fine merino wool.

The pattern is called 'Ribbon Lace Socks ' and come from Wendy Johnson's book: "Socks from the Toe Up". I have them stretched over my hand in this picture to show the pattern work.

But it gets better!

These are my husband's birthday socks too. She's been busy!

Close up of the heel and the colour 'ash' is darn close to the real thing. Results vary according to your monitor.

That's my lumpy hand expanding the sock to show the mock cables. Again, also from Wendy Johnson's book "Socks from the Toe Up".

He loves them!

My mother was taught to knit by her father which is a bit different from most other families. He would knit to pass the time during his duty as part of the Home Guard in WW2. During the bombing blitz of London, he and other men who were too old to serve in the military were given the duty of attending the places where bombs hit and securing the scene and rescuing people if possible. Important job when you think of the scale of the bombing and how thin fire fighters were on the ground. Anyhoo, he passed his skills onto my mother who tried (in vain) to show me how to knit at age 16. It seemed that she couldn't slow it down enough for me to get the steps... and my teen age brain didn't like her style of teaching. Let's just say we didn't push it too hard and I went onto embroidery, which I did well... and she didn't. Then I learned to crochet from a neighbour... and she didn't know how and..... Ah, the teen years, a classic adolescent battleground.

My mother was a beautiful knitter and did some amazing pieces and I recall her aran knit sweaters clearly. I wish she was still here so we could try once more but she would be so proud of her grand daughter who now carries the torch. Yes, I did try to show Carrie how to weave 'once' and she beat the fell into submission with every whack! I played her Penelope and unwove it by night, then rewove it, and in time the runner came off the loom and was given to a friend of hers as a gift.

Secrets out of the bag now I guess :)

Getting out of the Comfort Zone

I had two amazing days at a workshop this past weekend! It was my first workshop in some time and I loved what it did for me. It pushed my comfort boundaries! More on this a bit later. The picture above is my Jane loom getting her party clothes on. Its my second warp on this loom due in part to my preference for floor looms, my lack of workshop attendance, and the fact the levers on the loom were a problem. With the workshop 'looming' (ha!) I broke down and quit fighting trying to weave my huck lace diamonds on it. The levers would not return the shafts back down and it was a struggle. The Louet people mailed out new corrected levers and I installed those after making the big cut.... cutting off a fine bamboo warp and calling it quits. They are sure snappy now but it was not a good start to my time with this loom. My loom was part of the initial first batch made and all in that run received replacement levers so this problem appears resolved.

So my warp is 4/8 cotton, sett 24 epi, and designed as three sections: one is alternating light and dark ends, the second is a solid dark colour and the third is two light, then two dark. The threading is a blissfully simple 1,2,3,4 and is 9 1/4 inches in the 6 dent reed (sleyed in exact four thread groupings). The workshop is called 'A Good Deal More on Four' and the instructor is Alison Irwin. We will be looking at double weave pick up, Finn weave pick up, and mock satin damask.

{For my Canadian readers: Alison was the Studio 4 weaving exchange coordinator in the Guild of Canadian Weavers newsletter. She now travels and teaches her weaving classes around BC.} While I have done a simple double weaver sampler, I have never woven Finn weave, or mock satin damask or tried any pick up techniques before. As Alison said, this is like being thrown into the deep end of the pool!

I now realize that I had fallen into a comfortable pattern of weaving the same old, same old stuff all the time. When you are weaving with sales in mind, you tend to go to what works and go for guaranteed results. You slowly lose your spontaneity along the way. Well that seems to be what has happened to me. Do you find that this happens to you? How do you keep things fresh? I found myself thinking about how exciting everything is to a new weaver as they attend workshops. So the answer is to keep going to them! Even techniques you have tried before as every teacher is different in their approach and style.

Or, try teaching what you have learned as Lynnette is now doing. I imagine that the excitement in the room is contagious! While that might be in my future, I'm not ready for that step right now. I'm happy to share here!

So here is my set up at the workshop just under way. I took my stand along and glad I did as I could sit on a chair opposed to standing at the taller long tables that most halls have. This was not a round robin class and I used my own loom for the entire two days. This eliminated the pressure to quickly weave up a sample and move on. We had plenty of time to weave at our own pace.

Most weavers say they hate the round robin pressure as they really don't have time to really understand the theory or thread interplay as they weave. They find all the shifting looms distracting as well. Then trying to review the notes later to pick up on what they might have missed, they depend on the clarity of the teacher's handouts or their own hastily scribbled notes to fill in the blanks!

This is my first bit of double weave pick up! Alison provided the piano wire to do the pick up with and being fine, we could beat with it in place. Alternatively 1.25 mm knitting needles can be used, though they do get a curve in them eventually. I learned that double weave pick up produces completely reversible cloth except when it comes to numerals and letters. It also seems to work up in a more balanced way. You can choose to leave the sides open or close depending on your finished project. We left our sides open to eliminate an extra step in a hectic sequence!

Next was Finn weave: I discovered that the sequence is easier to remember but I can't say that I'm a big fan of this structure. Its not a balanced weave and crowding in the pick up areas bends or distorts the threads to produce the curved effects and the the surrounding areas tend to look too open and loose. A group discussion decided that perhaps using finer threads would reduce this problem. We are using 4/8 which is a tad bit thick! You can see the other two sections simply go along for the ride but produce some interesting colour effects.

Mock satin damask pick up was fun to do and was so reminiscent of draw loom textiles! Alison had some examples of linen done in this technique using two similar colours and it was the play of light that shows up the pattern. We looked at designs and charting and how literally any picture or image could be recreated by using one of the three pick up techniques. Just your preference and the finished project determine which one is best.

Here is Alison (seated) helping Sandy with her sampler. There was a lot of help needed around the room this weekend and Alison had no end of patience!

Some of Alison's display material and in this case, her Finn weave sampler woven in 2/8 cotton.

Double weave pick up scarab beetle and its chart. I believe its done in 4/8 cottons.

Mock satin damask bunny love!

Detail on a denim carry bag....

This piece is called is called Free Fall and I sure wish my camera did the colours justice as its simply lovely!

There were eight of us in the class, besides me:

Here's Lois concentrating very hard on the task at hand....

Barbara is hard at it behind a bevy of looms (all Louet's)

Dawn seemed to be enjoying herself.

Sally seemed to use tea breaks to aid her concentration. It appeared to work as she had a lovely sampler.

Sandy paused for a smile...

Els (left) and Cynthia provided light entertainment.... plus Els brought some great goodies!

We met at a little senior's hall in the waterfront in Crofton, with a wonderful view of Osborne Bay and Salt Spring Island. Here you can see the small ferry coming in to drop off and pick up traffic for the island. Across the water is Treenway Silks, Jane Stafford Textile Studio and many other goodies! So close... and so the moat around the temptation is a good thing!

I created a photoshare of the two days if you'd like to see more pictures. Click here

When I get home again, I plan to try my hand at the techniques again as I have lots of warp left to try a 'do-over' to help reinforce what we learned. Yes, I'm heading back to Vancouver to help with my Dad. He's improved, but still has some difficulties to work out and so has been transferred to another hospital that will suit his needs better. I'm crashing at my sister's place which should be a good way for us to reconnect again.

Meanwhile, my Spring loom is naked. Sad image huh? Scarves waiting to be fringed. Scarf project in mid weave on the Woolhouse CM. Good thing they are all so patient with me. Hubby is staying behind to move some of the final reno stuff forward.

Seems I'll possibly get a tile kitchen back splash while I'm gone! On the other side of the coin, all the carpet on the stairs must be replaced with new (don't ask...) We need a piece 12' x 12'.... and the store only has one small section of our carpet style and colour left that measures 7' 10" x 12'. Crap. This renovation is toughing it out right to the bitter end.

Well, so are we! Back soon.....