Weaving

A Long Update

Firstly I must apologise for the length of time it’s been since I last made an update to this blog. The reasons for which I’ll briefly explain. Sometimes I read other craft blogs where the authors have wondered how much from their personal life they should put in the blog, and I don’t think anyone is sure what the right answer is. In my case I’ve decided I’ll mention a little of what’s going on in my personal life, then you don’t need to worry if I go all quiet again for a while, but in general I intend to keep this blog as a mostly craft only zone.

I’m in the process of divorcing my husband and, as it turns out, even if you’re able to sit in a room and discuss the options calmly with a mediator, rather than dragging the process through a court, things can still be said that surprise or upset. There were certainly surprises during that last mediation session a few weeks ago. One thing that upset was the suggestion, from my husband, that my spinning wheels should be considered as a “collection” that could be sold as a job lot to raise funds. When discussing this later it transpired that my husband considered this to be a joke.

As an act of defiance I came home and finally put together my main Ashford spinning wheel with the lace flyer. I polished it with a beeswax polish, and did two coats. But after doing that the undermining effect of the implicit suggestion that my craft hobby is unimportant and that my equipment can simply be considered as an asset to be sold has taken its toll and I’ve found it impossible to get any inspiration for any craft activity at all.

However, today the sun came out and I took my spinning wheel into my patio to supervise the children playing and impressed them with my long draw (and impressed myself with the 40:1 ratio that my wheel now has). It seems to have a rattle at the moment, so I’ll try and tighten everything up and get it running smoothly, but otherwise it’s delightful. And here it is glowing in the afternoon sunshine:

And here’s some Shetland and soybean fibre I carded together a long time ago, being spun on my new lace flyer (as you can see two coats of furniture polish isn’t really enough and the spinning oil has stained the flyer, I’ll add more polish over the summer):

Before the mediation session put the kibosh on my crafting energy, I had a lovely day at Creating Space and got my Purple Paradise Shawl off the loom:

Since then it’s had a wash but I’ve not done anything with the fringe. I think I’m going to work a twisted fringe. However, at the moment I’m unsure how to proceed, as it does appear to be a rather tedious process (this from someone happy to spin 100g of fibre into yarn – a process that takes many hours)!

Purple Paradise

What a terrible name for a shawl. The name is derived from the names of the tops I handspun and I’m now weaving into a shawl.

One of the yarns is a 2-ply Blue Faced Leicester, that I spun worsted style from hand-dyed tops called Violetta. The other is a single of Corriedale spun long draw from hand-dyed tops called Birds of Paradise. I spun these originally nearly 2 years ago!

I’ve tied a 100” (2.5m) warp onto my 16” rigid heddle loom, set at 7.5epi. I’ve warped up nearly the whole width, leaving just one eye on each end of the loom without a warp thread. When it came to warping up I wasn’t sure the thread was going to be robust enough and I want to minimise warp threads getting broken. The rigid heddle has slots and eyes, threads in eyes experience the most stress and wear during weaving. Threads at the selvedge often get drawn in and therefore also experience more stress and wear than other threads. So I wanted to avoid having a selvedge thread that would experience further wear from also being in an eye.

To further help with wear I’m keeping the tension as low as possible and winding the warp on regularly. As for an earlier project I’m winding paper onto the front roller when advancing the weaving. This is helping to keep the tension on the weaving even across the whole work.

I’ve woven about 18” so far and it’s looking good. The weft thread is fairly slubby, but that’s making the weaving look very interesting. I’m not too sure how the woven fabric will behave when it’s off the loom as the weft is a fairly active single, so it may collapse. I’ll have to see what happens!

Here’s progress after tying on the warp and weaving a few picks:

Last but not least

A little while ago I said my bamboo shawl was finally finished and off the loom. It took another week or two, but I eventually tackled trimming the fringe (I can thoroughly recommend checked table-cloths for this activity, with a towel on the item to hold it still while cutting).

I then asked my Mum to be my photographer (thank you Mum!) while we stood outside in the surprisingly mild January sunshine. As you can see in the first picture, the start and the end of the shawl are at a very different gauge. However, I’ll never wear it like this. As you can see in the second picture, the difference doesn’t matter.

I really like the way that the fabric drapes. It’s lovely and soft. However, the bamboo is very slippery and for a future project I would like to combine it with wool for a more stable fabric.

I know that you are now in shock – three finished objects all in a row (ok, I know one wasn’t really mine)! Don’t worry, normal service will be resumed with only WIPs and UFOs for quite a while!

Getting distracted

Today some new reeds arrived for my new 24” rigid heddle loom. Have I mentioned my new loom? Here it is, being put together a few weeks ago:

An additional reed for my 16” loom also arrived. With two looms empty my mind turned to getting the next projects on them, so I fished out my boxes with my “weaving” yarn in (I don’t think I’ve got a good criteria for it being weaving yarn – just that I think it’s more likely I’ll weave with it than anything else).

I played around with some colours together (I’m thinking cushions for the lounge) but wasn’t feeling inspired. Then I spotted some “knitting” yarn in another box and my tricot hooks/needles (are they needles or hooks? nooks? heedles?), and before I knew what was happening I was running up a quick sample (and liking it).

So, that’s one scarf in tricot from chunky eco wool in various subtle colours in the queue. The weaving’s still on the starting blocks.

I’m also liking this Sherlock Hat in the latest edition of Knitty.

A finished object

Now here’s a rarity on here. A finished object. Well, at the moment it’s an almost finished object as I need to trim the fringe, but close enough!

Last night I did the last few picks, hemstitched and removed from the loom a shawl made from bamboo sock yarn. Today I tided up some ends and washed/finished it. This is the first proper project I’ve made on my 16” rigid heddle loom. And as a first project here are some things I’ve learnt:

Don’t be too ambitious. A first project should be quite short, a scarf or a cushion cover perhaps. As a first project it’s likely that the gauge of the weaving will change (on this shawl there’s a noticeable difference in the number of picks I was working at the start of the piece and the number at the end). I, however, ignored this advice (it’s in all the books) and put a warp on for a long shawl. When I removed the shawl from the loom, I was shocked just how long it is.
Despite the fact that weaving is fairly quick, I can still take well over a year to finish a piece.
I should place markers as I go, so I know how long the piece is and can make a sensible decision on when to start the end border design (if that’s what I’m doing). In the end I sort of guessed at how much was still on the back roller (knowing the length of the paper wound onto the roller helped a bit here).
Placing paper into the front roller (as the finished weaving is wound on) really improves the tension and makes subsequent weaving easier. However, once the weaving is finished (i.e. washed), there’s no noticeable difference – but it does look better on the loom.
Sampling is a good idea. If I’d sampled the pattern I was planning, I may have chosen to work the leno in a different way (there are some very long threads in the leno section that are quite likely to catch).
A dessert spoon is just the right weight to use when repairing a broken warp end. It’s also the perfect shape!
Make better notes. In fact make much, much better notes and also take lots of photos, just in case. Here are my notes, written in my weaving book (yes, that’s really all I wrote down):

Some things I should have written down:
1. Length of warp
2. How many ends of warp
3. The DPI of the reed/heddle
4. Notes on the yarns (including composition and washing instructions – keeping the ball band would do)
5. Which yarn I’d used for the hemstitching (e.g. warp or weft)
6. Both the number of picks and ends that the hemstitching is over (a photo would also be helpful here)
7. How long the section of weaving was before the first leno section (at least I’d noted the number of picks)
8. Kept a photo of the leno work (and printed it out for easy reference).

I’m sure there are other things I have learnt and more things I should have written down, I may add to the list later.

In the meantime I bet you’d like to see a picture of my shawl? Well, as soon as I’ve finished the ends, found some sunshine (hmmm, it’s 4 days to the shortest day of the year…) and made a decision on whether to drape the shawl gracefully over a chair or model it myself (which will require finding a photographer) I’ll post up a photo…

Bargain!

Found this lovely skein of yarn (and a little left-over ball) in a charity shop for the knock down price of £1.50. Currently destined for a random-warp weaving project (probably cushions).

Saint Swithin’s Day

Today we went shopping in a field.

Nevermind! We still had fun at Fibre-East.

It was lovely seeing my friends’ stalls in particular Secret Spinner and FibreTastic at Spindependance and CamiKnitter at Outward Images.

There was sheep shearing (AKA child entertainment).

My daughter’s knitted dress was admired. I was asked for the pattern and got the details wrong! I said it was “Crazy Waves”. It’s actually the “Crazy Wavy Toddler Dress” from “Sock Yarn One Skein Wonders”. Here’s my daughter wearing it about a year ago:

I didn’t quite follow the instructions when making it – I decided I didn’t fancy picking up 128 stitches on one side of the waistband and 160 odd on the other! Therefore started by casting on 128 stitches and working 1 row 1×1 rib and 1 row knit for a few rows to give the waist band.

I bought a weaving book that I thought was out of print (I always manage to find a gem on the P&M woolcraft stand!) and a beautiful rim weighted IST spindle (it spins forever!) My son was shown how to ply on a beautiful Turkish spindle. However, he was bought a peg loom and as it’s only a week until the school holidays… I can see peg loom bags and scarfs being this year’s summer holiday projects!

As for St Swithin’s Day? Well I’m pretty sure it’s rained for the last 40 days (at least). It’s now gone 11pm and so far I don’t think we’ve had a drop…

Learning skills

I’m continuing to weave the bamboo sock-yarn stole. I’m feeling like it’s taking forever at the moment, but I’ve just had a careful look at the back roller, and there are just two sheets of paper still on there, and I’ve taken three sheets out, so I’m more than half way there! There’s little point in posting another picture of progress though – as it basically looks the same as the last one!

In the process of weaving over the last couple of days I’ve had to solve a couple of problems:

The first problem was a knot in my warp. I hadn’t noticed it as I was warping up the loom, but as I worked this knot became visible. I wasn’t sure what to do. Should the knot be left in the work, should I attempt to fix it, or should I fix the end after completing the weaving? In the end the weaving told me what to do: fix the end as it has now broken!

I fixed it using a temporary weighted warp end – as per the instructions in Anne Field’s book. She suggested a table fork as a weight – I grabbed a dessert spoon and found that worked very well (and comes in a very convenient shape for tying to a length of yarn).

The second problem related to the winding on of the finished work onto the front beam. I’ve found that the design of the loom (with plastic rods holding the front apron bar to the front beam) and the slight differences in the width of my weaving as I work; mean that I’m getting different tensions on the warp ends as I wind the work onto the front roller (with a noticeable difference in the ends at the salvage). I’m not sure how much difference this really makes, but I found a simple solution. I used the paper that had just come off the back roller and rolled it in with the work as I wound onto the front roller! For my next project I’ll make sure I’ve got an extra sheet of paper to do this for the initial winding on. At the moment it’s making the work look much neater so I’ll see what difference it makes as weaving progresses.

And all this problem solving? It’s developing my weaving skills and moving me beyond being a beginner weaver!

A very long time ago I put a lovely pink/purple/blue bamboo sock yarn onto my 16” rigid heddle loom. I wove a header and tried other yarns as wefts. I moved. Twice. The loom was played with by my young daughter. The ratchet for the top roller got knocked (more than once) and the warp got a bit messy.

I attempted to fix this, but the warp was still a bit uneven.

Last night I unwound the warp (a bit), winding it onto the front roller. I found some more lining paper, cut it to size and re-wound the warp back onto the back roller. I then unwove(!) all my attempts at weaving, just leaving the header. I then wove a bit more header (discovering, in the process, that I liked the play of colour with that yarn doubled, and will be revisiting it for a future project). I then started with some new yarn as the weft, and committed myself to this new weft by completing the hemstitching.

Today (after taking this picture) I added some bands of Leno to help show off the warp. I’m not sure it was quite the look I had imagined. However, it’ll be nice to get a (hopefully) usable stole, and to get this warp off the loom as I have lots of other projects I’d like to start!