Have A Heart (or two)

cheese grater beam installed


scarf #2 and 3 off the loom, back and front sides...once the cloth has been wet finished I expect the motif side will 'read' better since the chenille will be all fluffed up and give better coverage...it already has a quite nice hand, though, not like how 100% rayon chenille woven in plain weave feels right off the loom!

Decided that the beams couldn't possibly weigh more than 6 or 7 pounds so when I finished scarf #3 I cut the web off and installed the cheese grater beam.

When I used to weave for a fashion designer, it would quite often be 10 yards of this, 12 yards of that, 3 yards of something else. When she was using rayon chenille and/or the long eyelash yarns it was just a whole lot more efficient to have two beams, one clad with the cg stuff so that it was a matter of moments to change over from one beam to the other.

The cg metal is actually a long strip about 2.5 or 3 inches wide and you install it by winding it in a spiral around the sandpaper beam. I worried about cutting my hands taking it on and off as often I would need to (at the time), not to mention the time it would take. In the long run it was much more efficient to just weave a few more yards to earn the money to buy a second beam. :)

With such a narrow warp my arms will be in danger of getting grated because the web simply won't provide much protection from the sharp teeth so as soon as the apron clears the beam I'll wrap a couple of ex-placemat rejects around the beam right up against the selvedges. I kept a bunch of these flawed mats for rags and other purposes, like wrapping the beams.

This morning I tweaked the tie up slightly to give more definition to the small hearts and wove a second scarf in that design but using a slightly varigated pinkish colour. I don't normally use a variegated in the weft much because so often the colours will stripe in various ways, some of them pleasant, some of them not so much. But this yarn only has the one hue and it changes from a medium light to a medium dark shade.

I like it well enough that I'll do another design with this colour - a traditional motif often used in things like charted embroidery - essentially it is four 'hearts' all with their points aimed at each other. It sort of looks like a flower. Well, you'll see tomorrow. :)