Overwhelming

 

some of the silk in my stash

Now that I'm nearly 'done' (for certain values of done) with the 2/16 cotton, I have been contemplating the rest of my yarn stash.

I love fine threads.  I love the quality of cloth you can make with fine yarns.  I especially love intense gem colours.  

But you get an awful lot of play value with fine threads.  In other words, it takes time.  Every thread needs to be beamed, threaded, sleyed, tied on.  Then every pick needs to be placed in the cloth.

So instead of 20 or 32 or 48 epi/ppi, fine threads might require 60 or 72 or 100 epi/ppi.

Unfortunately I simply can't see that well anymore.  (Old age sucks.)  So I stop frequently to appreciate this finefinefine silk and come to the same conclusion.  I need to ply it to make it thick enough to see, let alone weave with.

It has taken a year to (mostly) use up the 2/16 cotton yarn in my stash.  I can't even begin to think how long it will take to use up 2/60 and finer silk.  

I do, however, also have 2/16 rayon yarns.  So once the tea towels are 'done', more scarves will be made using up some of the 2/16 and unknown sized but fairly fine rayon.  I do have scarves, but they are a bit thicker - about 2/8 grist, crossed with 2/16-ish bamboo rayon for the most part.  And in the meantime I can be plying this very fine silk yarn.

A lot of newer weavers think that if you have a certain size as warp you must cross it with the same thickness of yarn.  I'm here to say that isn't so.  You might need to adjust the epi, but it can make a thicker yarn in the warp behave quite nicely when it is crossed with a thinner weft.

There are so many variables involved in the creation of cloth.  As a new weaver I found it quite confusing and overwhelming.  So many decisions needed to be made.  On the other hand, tweaking all of those decisions became quite fascinating.  Mostly the changes are very subtle and of course personal preference then makes one person like one combination better than another.

But that's the thing.  If you like it, if it meets your needs, it isn't wrong.  

And?  It's a journey.  A journey of exploration.  A deep dive into the kind of variables that can bring tiny changes to how a cloth feels.  Drapes.  Wears.

Because every decision is built on a sliding scale.

And learning is never a waste of time.