Absorbency

Towel woven of 2/16 cotton for warp and a cotton slub for weft.


In August of 2007, I finally did something I'd been wanting to do for a long time - a test of absorbency of different textiles.

The following is a report I shared with members of a study group.


"I've just finished a rather rudimentary absorbency test on the towels
submitted for the Challenge, plus some samples of my own.

I weighed the dry sample, floated it on some warm water to which
detergent had been added for the surfactant effect (breaking down the
surface tension of the water) for a count of 10, removed the sample from
the water letting the water drain until the stream of water was just a
drip, and weighed the sample again. Then calculated the % of increase
in weight for each.

Towel #1 10/2 organic cotton warp and weft 28% increase

Towel #2 16/2 rayon warp, cotton novelty weft 16%

Towel #3 8/2 cotton (US standard, not warp twist) plus a slub -
probably rayon 28%

Towel #4 10/2 merc cotton warp, 16/2 unmerc. cotton and cotton flake
weft 18%

Towel #5 8/2 cotton (US standard), cotton flake, weft of cottolin 32%

Towel #6 10/2 unmerc cotton warp, 16/2 cotton and cotton flake weft 30%

Towel #7 10/2 Perle cotton warp, 8/2 Tencel and 5/2 Perle cotton weft 38%

2/16 cotton warp and weft 40%

2/8 (warp twist) cotton and singles linen 38%

2/16 cotton warp, cottolin weft 50%

2/20 cotton (merc but not Perle) 25%

2/16 cotton warp, single linen (tow) 20%

Strictly speaking, the absolute absorbency numbers still don't tell the
whole story. There is also the fact that some fabrics, while being
thirsty, also feel wet very quickly.

There are also some fabrics that, once wet, are slow to give up their
moisture. They take a long time to dry, and if you live in a humid
climate, they can take a *very* long time to dry.

Last, but not least, there is the issue of texture. I have some towels
made of 2/16 cotton and 2/10 Tencel. I don't like how they feel on my
hands - they feel very slick and even a bit "cold".

After all this, perhaps it becomes a lot more understandable that when
people ask me questions about what is "best", my first response is
inevitably "it depends". :)

The people involved in the towel exchange will receive these numbers as
part of their evaluation package, plus they will receive samples of my
textiles tested above (where available) for them to study.

Cheers,
Laura"
_______________________________________________

Broken

Bad things happen. Threads break.

It's especially annoying when they break during sectional beaming, because I don't always notice right away. This is what happened here. I'd wound on several turns before I twigged a thread had broken. :(

What I do in this instance is re-thread the offending end through the tension box, loosely coil about a yard and a half or so, tuck it into the warp and continue beaming.




When the broken end surfaces, I pull the coil out, tie it onto a repair end and hang it off the back of the loom.



The repair end goes from the bottom and up the centre of the cone. The cone is then run under the tension box rail, and over the rod in the ceiling that doubles as my warping valet.




It is but a matter of a moment to grab the loop at the butt of the cone and pull off a yard or so and then let the cone down to about an inch or so off the floor.

As I weave, the cone automatically rises. When it gets to within 6 or so inches of the bar in the ceiling, I go round to the back of the loom, yard off some more yarn and drop the cone down to near the floor level.

The flare of the cone prevents any more yarn from coming off than I deliberately pull off, and if I pull too much it's an easy matter to wrap a few coils around the butt, shortening the length.

When the original end is long enough, I then tie that onto the repair end and pull the knotted end through to the front.

When I'm doing short lengths like here for towels, I just wait until the original end is long enough that I can pull the knot through at a cutting line and I don't even have to needle weave the end into the cloth, just pin it into the already woven towel so that the join happens at the cutting line. :D

What can I say? I'm lazy!

Gone, Gone, Gone!

Well, I finally finished another yarn! This time it's the 3000 yd/pound rayon chenille.

Unfortunately there wasn't quite enough of it to do the length I wove the others so since this one is technically a 'second' I guess I get to keep it. :)

The greens and lavenders show up much more in this photo than they did in the photo of the warp itself, and I think it's really pretty so I'm pleased.

The treadling was a simplified version of the larger threading.

The next treadling will be the whole threading as treadling, done in twill blocks. Each towel will be 4 repeats of the pattern with about 3 inches at each end for the hems. Over all the towel length in the loom will be approximately 34". The width in the reed is about 19". Since the linen won't shrink much in the wet finishing, I expect the finished towels to be approximately 18 x 30" or a bit less.

I've also got some green linen in two ply, so I'll try a couple of table runners using that yarn after I've finished off the last of the singles 12. Whatever warp is left after the linen is woven will be woven off using the singles 6 cotton for weft.

This warp is, once again, 30 yards. I'm sorry to be leaving on Friday as this warp is so pretty I'm going to enjoy every inch of it. :) However, that does mean I've got something to look forward to when I get home. :D

Snowflakes Keep Falling....

....or the further adventures in wonderland......

This the threading I chose last night, shown woven as drawn in. This shows two repeats in the treadling as well as the threading. The warp is just over two repeats wide; the textiles will be several repeats long, of course.

I'm well over the half way mark in threading but I also need to start filling my suitcase, so I may not start weaving tonight. OTOH, I'm pretty excited to see how it turns out, soooo.....

The good news is that it stopped snowing, and the snow removal crew came by and cleaned our street. Trying to avoid the graders and get into my driveway before they came by, I actually wound up getting stuck in the road and one of the grader drivers had to push me! When I found myself stuck with the big machines coming up rapidly behind me, I knew I wouldn't be stuck for long. Or at least I hoped they wouldn't leave a damsel, er, lady? - in distress, and I was right. :D Sometimes having grey hair is useful!!!! (The lead driver got out when he saw me trying to dig the snow out from under the van's wheels.)

Back to the loom and drawing in (the old term for threading).

Ah, Winter!

After a record breaking 24 hour snow dump, this was the view from my front window this morning.

For those of you who don't have to deal with snow, the wooden stake attached to the fire hydrant is to alert city crews removing snow as to the where abouts of the hydrant, as well as fire fighters, in case of need.

As you can see the wooden stake is rather taller than current accumulated snowfall, and yes, there have been times when the snow has been much deeper by this time of the year. What we usually don't get is 20 cm (about 8") in 24 hours. We've had steady snow for several days - in fact Sunday we had an official blizzard! - and the roads are a mess because the city removal crews simply can't keep on top of it all. (A 'blizzard' is snowfall accompanied by winds of a specific velocity, making visibility next to nill.)

The dragonfly lights in my window were a gift from my brother a couple of years ago. I've kept them lit all winter, in memory.

The other dangles are gifts from friends. The stained glass was made by Allan. The little wooden filigree angel is sideways on in the photo and was a gift from Allan and Sheila.

Last of the Fine Stuff?

It took longer than I would like to get this warp beamed because I kept running out of yarn on the spools and having to stop and wind more. But this warp pretty much took care of the rest of the 2/40's mercerized cotton. I still have some fine yarn, but it's 3/40's and much stronger so it can be used on its own mixed in with the 2/20's yarns for another warp. Maybe even my last 2/20 warp? If not, it will be very nearly the last. :)

So although I'm not quite done my fine yarns, the really fine stuff is history. Yay!

This warp was beamed from the centre out. It was a mixture of blues from fairly pale to a darker mid-range greyed blue, some greyed green in a couple of shades and some blue-purples/lavender in several shades. There was just a little bit of a darker purple, so those were cut in last and make a bit of a border on the two selvedges. Not sure if the colours will show up very well on the blog.

The plan is to finish off the last of the rayon chenille (3000 yards/pound), the last of the singles 12 linen, and then use up as much of the singles 6 cotton as weft as I possibly can.

Once again I simply wound the warp without thought to which threading I will use. So now I will dip into ARS Textrina again, and see what captures my fancy. Probably another 12 shaft fancy twill. :) Not sure if I will do borders down each side, pattern down the centre, or overall pattern. Much will depend on how the chosen pattern 'fits' into how many threads I wound.

Since we've continued to have snow, perhaps I'll look for a snowflake pattern. Gee, I am so going to miss this weather when I get to Los Angeles and Tucson this weekend.

NOT!

If, that is, I can even get there. Keeping fingers crossed there will be no travel delays due to the weather............(heading off to anxiously check the Weather Network website)

Rolling On...

Here is a towel with a twill sequence, showing the hem area leading into the beginning of the pattern.

This is the cloth as it looks rolling onto the cloth storage roller. The towel here was done with a twill block tie up giving more areas of 'solid' colour than the twill lines shown above. Both were done with the same linen as weft, but the light reflects differently so one looks lighter than the other. The twill block towel is about how the towels will look after scouring.

The rayon chenille is nearly used up. Since I'll be doing one more warp like this with the 2/20 and 2/40 doubled at 24 epi, I saved the last of the chenille to do one more Big Scarf on the next warp.

I'm eyeballing how much of the 2/40's is left, trying to figure out how long/wide a warp I can make and really use up the last of it! The problem is that the yarn is so very skinny it's hard to judge how much is left. I may weigh an empty spool to find out approximately how much one weighs then weigh the remaining spools in order to better estimate how much is left, and therefore how many yards there are on the spools.

The boxes for the Birmingham workshops are in the mail, and I'm working on the Columbus, OH warps and will mail those before I leave this Friday. It's been a while since I taught the Magic in the Water workshop, so it needs some serious updating to include some of the new yarns that have become more readily available the last couple of years. It's going to take a bit longer to pull that topic together. The good news is that I'll be doing it twice this spring, so the Boise, ID workshop will be pretty much done by the same effort. :D

Karena is coming in on Monday so I'm trying really hard to finish this warp off so that she can cut and serge it as one of the tasks she can do for me. Running photo copies might be another, if I can get the workshop updates done tomorrow evening. We'll see how it goes. Nothing like deadlines to keep one focused and on track. :}