2023: A Weaving Year in Review

 Happy New Year to you all..... where ever you may be!  🎉

It's become a custom here at my blog to do a weaving year in review. To see what I was able to accomplish in my studio. I will admit right now that my looms are very quiet.  The smaller Spring loom is waiting for me to resume threading on two huck lace shawls and two lovely painted warp scarves are just under way on the Megado.    

About mid December my left lower SI joint started to ache and I ignored it to my peril and now I have terrible back pain and hobbling through my day. Gel ice packs and pain meds are my main stay right now until this subsides.

In good news, this means I have much more time to use my Hansen e-spinner and have been enjoying the heck out of that. 

We were hit with an atmospheric river of rain, combined with high winds on Christmas Day night. The rain was literally coming in sideways. Late that night as we were heading to bed, we discovered one of our skylights was leaking.   So we put buckets under the drips and went to bed.   

I must have called every roofing company on our part of the island over the next two days and not one has called us back..... even to today as I write this.   We end up calling our house painter Glen who cheerfully came, went up and recaulked the skylight and said that come the better weather he'd reseal the other three skylights for us.   What a guy!    Both of us are under the weather right now so not able to do much of anything so his help was fabulous!

All the details and even drafts for some of these projects are in the archived months of 2023......

January

So this month was a bit of a bust as I was healing a muscle spasm in my right shoulder.   Apparently I'm not aging all that well.  I hope this doesn't get to be an annual thing! 😳

February

My dear friend Margaret passed away. She was instrumental in setting my feet firmly on the weaving path and then gifted me her loom. She's with me every day.

I placed a large 8/2 cotton order for the first time in 5 years.  How do I know it was 5 years? Because Brassards had given up on me reordering and gave my customer number to someone else.   So much of that was used in towel warps later in the year.    I also ordered some new 3D printed warping assist bits from Ginger Locks Handwovens to try out on the Megado.  I like to see if I can streamline the process and make it easier for me.   Out of this bunch of 3D printed parts, the beater lifter is great and the rest I will have to try again at some point and see.

March

Apparently this happened again.....sore back...  and no weaving.   Seems there is a pattern huh?

April

Finally some weaving! Three table runners in a fancy 16 shaft twill. 10/2 cotton, sett 28 epi.

I signed up for a towel exchange with two weavers and also started an intense search for some dusky peach silk. I had a very request by a client to reproduce a scarf and didn't have any of the weft yarn any longer. I eventually found it at Treenway Silks with owner Susan's help.  It's "spiced cognac" and almost a perfect match!

May

More gadgets:  3D printed Helping Hands warping assists from Lofty Fibers for my Spring loom. I have to say they work great and I have kept it up as part of my warping routine!   So I ordered a set for my Megado too.

I also completed two shawls that feature a soft pink Rose fiber warp and one shawl has tencel weft in taupe and the second has dandelion fiber weft yarn. The sett was 24 epi and featured an 8 shaft draft from Handweaving.net

My friend Hilary was selling off yarn from a very large stash she acquired and so I bought some silk / yak in an ivory colour.  I kept some for myself and sold about half of it and that paid for the entire purchase! Some of it will be used with the huck lace shawls currently now waiting for my cranky back to settle down again. 

June

I got (too) adventurous and tried incorporating a painted warp with solid shades and a 16 shaft diagonal pattern.   The black weft  one turned out okay but the second shows even I can get things wrong!  *sigh*  😳   I think parts of  the second purple scarf is destined to become greeting cards..... or ??

The commissioned scarf order was finally completed and delivered, so that's two more Abalone Shimmer scarves. These feature the 20/2 spiced cognac silk weft. I wove one for me too.  I have nothing to wear with it but I now have one too.

July

Finally, a chance to set up and warp using the new Helping Hands Megado version and I wrote three posts on the process. It's become easier each time I use them and it was a worthwhile purchase.  Of the other  parts I purchased first? I use the beater lifters all the time when threading.

Then there were two scarves woven after an initial cranky start.   I had a draft in mind and once I started to weave it up, I hated it.   So I cut out the weft, rolled the warp back and rethreaded, and resleyed..... but kept the same tie up  and got this unique  pattern. Thank heavens for Handweaving.net's special search features!  One scarf has a multi fleck, part alpaca, part silk weft.   The second is all tencel.  (*I always leave the lease sticks in place, pulled to the back of the loom and tied in place until I'm sure of no mistakes, and now additionally, that I like the draft.  I do remove them when everything is fine*)

At the very end of July, my younger sister passed away. She died on my parent's wedding anniversary and my father's birthday.    She was 58, so much too soon.   That's her with the bow in her hair, many years ago in New Zealand.    That's me as the eldest at the back.  I think I'm about 15 or 16 here. 

There was also another sad loss for me that day too and it's one I'm still coming to terms with. I'm not sure if that story will have a happy ending or not.  That's all I can say for now. 

August

The towels and small gift exchanges rolled in in August and helped to cheer me up.

 

My husband says our kitchen towel drawer is full to overflowing and we may need to cull some oldies to be able to close the drawer!   I think I'll sit the next annual Padre Wayne towel exchange out.....

Having said that, I have 5 towels warps planned, but there will be for Christmas thank you gifts and to sell in the Etsy shop.  The first batch of eight are based on 16 shaft point twill, 8/2 cotton warp and a variety of drafts from Handweaving.net

September

Second batch are the "Everything Everywhere"  towels and feature 10/2 cotton, sett 28 epi and turned twill.   I got six towels.

October

Next up was # 728 towels from Carol Strickler's "A Weavers Book of 8 Shaft Patterns". This was a modified version and featured blues, magenta and peacock 8/2 cottons from the Brassards yarn order earlier in the year. 

Then we discovered our roof was leaking above the garage attic. Eventually, some wider flashing and caulking fixed it but I learned all about insurance claims, adjusters and roofers.  Our roof is only 13 years old but it seems someone back when it was being replaced took a short cut and used a piece of flashing too small for the job, rather than go down and bring up a new one......   

November

The next towel batch was my "Kitchen elegance" towels.... and there were six towels and one table runner.  They are 10/2 cotton, 28 epi and a sixteen shaft twill.    I have a lot of 10/ cottons and decided this year to use it more.   It means more work winding, threading and weaving, but the cloth is so nice in the hand!

December

Last batch of towels was a repeat of the happy "Herringbone twill". They were such a hit last time I wove them and so this time I used natural cotton and another arrangement of doubled coloured ends.   This means you have many choices for wefts!  As you can see with the seven towels all stacked up here.

At the very end of November, my mother in law Lorraine passed away quietly in her sleep.  She was 100 1/2 years old so it wasn't unexpected, but sad none the less for her son and daughter. Bruce had many more years of conversations with her than most adult children get with their elderly parents.   She was an elegant lady, fierce Canucks hockey fan and loyal Blue Jays baseball fan.  She had jerseys for both teams. She celebrated all the events on the calendar, but her favourite holiday was Christmas and sadly she missed this one.

This is Lorraine as a two year old holding her doll while climbing up on the pilot of a steam locomotive 98 years ago.

So despite some back pains and heart aches I did manage to get some weaving done and the totals are"

towels 33

scarves 6

shawls 2 

runners 5

deaths 3

dental surgeries 2

roof leaks 2

towel exchanges 2

bad back spells  3

Sunrise at Willow Point, south of Campbell River, BC

Then a few hours later in full daylight.

I hope your coming year is healthy, happy and with smooth warps and swift shuttles!

🎄🎁 Merry Christmas to all my Readers

I found this Nordic Santa today on FB (no  photo accreditation sadly).    This is what Santa should look like!   Not that one made popular by a certain soda pop many years ago.  Anyhow, this gentleman's hat, coat and  boots look beautiful and functional.....  He's ready to fly tonight!

This is a different kind of Santa too. More earthy tones and rather polished appearance.  He seems to be doing quite well and can afford a better suit of clothes  I find it interesting that many cultures who don't normally celebrate Christmas, now embrace Santa and even put up a tree.   It's about peace on Earth and good will to Man.   Sadly, its in short supply with wars raging and people fleeing. 

This is where we all live. I can see no boundaries, no walls. We all breathe the same air that circles the globe.  We have no other place to go to and so we must focus on global warming as if our lives depend on it, because they do.   Everything else is a distraction to this goal.....

I'm not a religious person and  lean heavily towards embracing Nature's cycles and so the Solstice was my big day.  The days are slowly but surely getting longer.    No matter what you follow and celebrate, here's to shining a light in the darkness....

Herringbone towels 2 ....Why?... because they're fun 🎉

This is most likely the last finished project for 2023.... or maybe I can squeak out a couple of scarves before months end?  Christmas sorta slows things down for a spell!

This draft shown below may look familiar and yes I have done it before. It's a fun and easy weave and a great way to use up small part cones and play with colour.   They also make great gifts and people snap them up.   I gave a friend a choice of all the towels in my Etsy shop and she chose one of these as her gift, even though she got one last year.   So this has me thinking that us weavers perhaps over think what appeals to people? 

Last time I used white as the main colour and this time I used natural.  The colours popped just as well and  they looked somehow a bit softer when paired with weft colours.  Below is Brassard's cinnamon and periwinkle as weft yarns.    The bright colours in the weft are: royal, peacock, orange, magenta, limette, salmon pink, purple. Double ends though one heddle and one reed slot.   If using 8/2, then 22-24 epi, and if using 10/2 cottons then 26-28 epi.

The weaving is very straightforward, just hit treadles one through to six and start again.  Sometimes I'd miss number six and a slight but obvious line would appear and so after some UN-weaving I'd pay closer attention and count in my head.  It was a bit too complicated some days.....  

This is the mass of the cloth warp after just being taken off the loom. It was a satisfying armload!

So I did a rough fold up and placed it on the scale and it was 2 pounds and 13 ounces!

I serged the towels apart and then gave them a nice long soak and brief wash. Toss in the dryer for 20 minutes.

Trimmed off all the little tails and then gave them a good steam pressing. This helps to save my hands as I have arthritis. Thy do get a regular pressing when I'm turning the hems for sewing but nothing like what the press does. 

Once the hems are sewn (by hand while we watch TV), the hems get a final 'squeeze' in the press to compact the hem and smooth them after being worked.

Then the clouds rolled in and rain started and our house was dark enough at midday to have all the lights on.   Yesterday the sun came out and I quickly grabbed the camera (before my first coffee I might add.... so how's that for dedication?)

So from the top down, the weft colours are: stone ( a light grey), limette, cinnamon, taupe, blue green, ivory and periwinkle

Individual towels; I got seven towels and some samples from my 8 yard warp. The finished towels are 22" by 29.5".

periwinkle blue

Stone Grey

Limette, or what I prefer to call Key Lime

Cinnamon, or Pumpkin

This is taupe or a soft kaki green

Blue green and I must say this one is my favourite.

Ivory or I like to call it Devon Cream

Two are gone already and the rest won't last very long.  Give them a try and make a batch.

🌹🕯️

 🌹  Lorraine ~  July 1923- Nov 2023   🕯️

This is Lorraine my mother in law taken 20 years ago when we gifted her an all silk snowflake twill scarf for her 80th birthday. She was thrilled and wore it every chance she got. She even bought a new outfit and shoes!

 

Sadly, she recently passed away but at over 100 years old, Lorraine had a long and amazing life.  I had a 40 year relationship with her and  she welcomed me to the family by telling me "He's all yours my dear, I don't want him back!" A very gracious and elegant lady. 

Kitchen Elegance (yes, more towels!)

The first time I saw this draft at Handweaving.net it was in a rather stark combination of red and white.  I almost went by it but took another look and I saw a very pretty pattern that had a lot going on.  Kinda busy but it intrigued me.

When weaving up a busy pattern, I usually lean towards the motto 'less is more' and go with more neutral shades or softer colours. Let the pattern do all the talking!   The size of the yarn you choose also has a role to play.  Smaller grist means a smaller pattern, shorter floats (if they are over 5 ends).    I decided to go with 10/2 cottons. 

It will give a lighter weight cloth, and at 28 epi a smaller, tighter pattern.... plus I had a nice two pound cone of 10/2 Venne cotton from Lone Star that had been sitting in my stash long enough.  Sadly, they don't carry it any longer as I tried to get some more.  It's beautiful quality!   Venne cotton is carried by many dealers so it's just a matter of hunting it down. Thrill of the hunt and all that....

Here's the draft  #57312; 16 shafts. As you can see the threading isn't all that complicated or the treadling. The magic is in the tie up.   This went onto the Megado loom and I let it do all the hard work.  

This is what it look like in weaving mode on the Mac. It just chugs away at it line by line!  This is my new 'old' Mac as I had a recent computer crisis. It seems a 2013 Mac Air decided to up and quit on me and there was a frantic dash to find another with the right OS on it to run my loom.   All fixed now thankfully.  A good search, help from a long distance friend and money fixed it.   Otherwise my loom would be a large paperweight.....  

So deciding on finer threads means more of everything.  725 ends to this warp, making sure I had enough heddles on each shaft. Fiberworks gives me those numbers as a count per shaft and all I had to do was count the heddles.    Winding the warp was done in six bouts, all nine yards long. That took time as you can imagine.

Winding on took time and this time I opted to do it all by myself and used weights on the bouts and just took my time. It took an afternoon with lots of breaks in between.   I used the "helping hands" from Lofty Fibers again and I must say that I really like the devices.   They give much more stability to the process.

Threading was straightforward and I normally take my time as I'm not a fan of correcting threading errors if I can help it.  Happily, there were no errors!

Weaving also takes longer as you have to throw the shuttle many more times to build an inch!  One repeat of the main pattern plus the V was 133 treadlings.  Six full repeats plus the top and bottom border for the hem allowance gave you 36-37 inches.    I worked it out: 926 throws for one towel.  I wove six towels and one table runner of 46 inches in length.   The total shuttle throws for just the six towels alone is 5,556  😳  The runner was 1,160.   The grand total was 6,716 throws. Just looking at those numbers makes me wonder why I counted.... crazy right? 

Then came the serging the towels apart, washing, pressing and turning hems.  Hand sewing the hems and a final press of the hems again.

The runner was pinned to a foam board and fringes twisted, hand washed and pressed.

There they sat during some very gloomy days where we had lights on at midday and it poured rain.    The discovery of a leak in our 13 year old roof kept us busy with insurance claims, roofers and all. 

Eventually the sun came out and so did the camera!

The towels came in with finished dimensions of 22 inches in width and 30 inches in length.   Turning the hems, take up and shrinkage accounts for a loss of 7 inches in length. The width lost 3 inches due to drawn in and shrinkage of the cotton.  This sort of dimensional loss is something more veteran weavers can account for in their project calculations. It's also comes with sampling and simply weaving and getting to know your yarns. 

First up was a pretty weft that Webs calls 'sponge'. Hardly an attractive name so I call it Lichen instead. I wove two towels in this colour.  (above and below)

Next up was one towel woven in a colour that Webs call camel. Rather rosy camel don't you think?   So I call it Tawny Rose.  Its very pretty.

I have a lot of 10/2 colours but not all are softer or more neutral shades. I chose this crisp green shade which I think is actually called Willow and finally a name that suited! One weaver wrote that she thought this would make a lovely table cloth in this colour, paired with a formal table setting and candle light perhaps?  My choice would be a cloth using Tawny Rose....or Lichen.

Reaching into the stash, I found this bronze gold called Ochre Gold.   A bit darker than I was looking for but it's also rather nice once all done.  Since these are being sold and / or given as gifts, I have to appeal to all sorts of tastes and decor.

~bonus loom shot because I finally remembered to take a picture! 

The final towel was woven in a colour way called silver cloud but when you look at it, especially against the green of the table centre, you can see plum or mauve tones.   So I call it Mauve Frost.

I had a lot more warp left after six towels and an almost full pirn of the silvery mauve and so I left room for a fringe allowance and simply wove until I ran out of warp.   The result is a runner that is 22 x 46 inches with a neat and tidy 2 inch twisted fringe.

A peak of the reverse side. The darker side was my view throughout the entire weaving process, so cutting it off the loom and seeing the lighter side was a pleasant surprise.

So that's the end of this post and I'm apologizing for how long it's taken to post something here for you.  It's been a busy Fall getting ready for winter, plus some medical appointments, dental surgery and crown work.   💰💰💰     The roof leaked, the washing machine has been acting up, and our new cook top developed a thermal crack so lots to deal with and arrangements to make and people and warranties to chase.

There is one more towel warp under way on the Spring loom. I have two towels done of six, so more weaving for me and waiting for you. The Megado is being dressed in painted silk finery for two scarves.   So a return  to more normal fare. 

Now we're off to get our covid and flu shots. Be careful out there....it's not gone away! 😷🤧 💉🦠