Awkward Photo

photo taken from under the loom, late at night

draft of the design

The draft is sideways - I forgot to rotate it before saving it, but you can see the general gist of it.

This is the latest draft I used from Ars Textrina.  (No, the book does not 'name' the drafts, they are merely numbered.  For anyone interested it is Ars Textrina vol. 14, 1990, page 373, L.249, Lumscher Section 51, draft 5.  Be aware I also changed the small blocks to weave rose fashion while leaving the table in star fashion.)

The drafts in the book are just one repeat - the weaver/designer decides how to apply the repeat.  In this instance, I was working within the constraints of the size for a tea towel.  With very little editing, two and a half repeats fit, with a couple of straight runs for a border at the selvedge.

The length was more difficult.  The repeat was either going to be too long or too short.  After fiddling with it for a while I realized I didn't have to have the rosette but could repeat the 'table' in the middle.  In the end I fancied that it looked like a rose trellis around windows and doors.

But then another consideration.  There were rather a lot of heddles on shafts 5-8 while my loom is set up with the most heddles per shaft on 1-4.  No problem - I simply exchanged the threads from 5-8 to 1-4 and vice versa.  An easy edit given the shaft shuffler tool in Fiberworks.

Beaming this warp I nearly emptied a tube and ran a bunch of others down to the point where I am looking at using those up as weft on the next warp.

For this warp I am using up some more pirns full of yarn beginning with this soft greyed green.  Over the weekend I pulled some medium blue, and some brighter pale leaf green.  If there is warp once those are used up, I have some peach that I'd like to get rid of, too.

Yesterday I got two towels woven.  There should be enough warp for 19 or 20 towels although these are a little bit on the long side so might be only 18 or 19.  I don't really care because I will just keep weaving until it is done.

As for which side of the cloth will be the 'right' side?  I don't know.  Yet.  I may hem some with the white as 'right', some with the colour.  I'm sure either will be fine.  But I'm weaving them with the least number of shafts rising so the colour is what I see.  And I quite like it.

Currently reading The Clockwork Boys by T. Kingfisher

Mulling Things Over

draft for next towel warp

The current warp is nearing completion and it is time to begin organizing the next warp in the queue.

Drawing upon the Ars Textrina information provided by Patricia Hilts, I selected a twill block design, tinkering with it to be suitable for a tea towel.

Over several days I revisted the draft, editing it, tweaking it here and there until I had something I thought would work.

But.

It was 'too long' for a tea towel.  Not really, but longer than most people would find comfortable to use.  But not really suitable for a table runner.

So I parked the idea firmly on the back burner and let it simmer while I looked at it from several angles - so to speak.

In the end I decided it really was going to be too long and last night edited the draft one more time making a minor change that shortened the draft by about 2 inches, bringing it much closer to a standard tea towel size.

Now my tea towels are not all the exact same size.  I do have to make allowances for size of motif, how big a repeat is and so on, but they do tend to stay withing a range.  This draft now does that.

When I finished weaving for the day yesterday I took a look at how much warp is left on the beam.  I still have a hard time judging how much is left on the tiny warp beam of the Megado although I am beginning to get a sense of it.  So I think that maybe there might be enough warp for three more towels, but if there is only enough for two, I'm good with that.

If there is only enough for two, I should be able to cut this warp off the loom today and begin setting the loom up tomorrow for the above project.

Just as an aside...the original draft put the bulk of the warp yarns on shafts 5-12.  Since most of the heddles on the Megado were put onto the first four shafts, I did a shaft shuffle and changed the threads around so that they were placed on the shafts with the most heddles.  In the end I ran out of heddles on one of the shafts and had to tie on more.  But that sort of thing isn't a big problem, just a little annoyance that I know how to overcome.

And now I will begin working on the warp after this one.  I have been eyeing a mid-range blue, thinking about Delft pottery...

Percolating

Now that company has gone and I'm back to thinking about what I want to be weaving, and because the current warp is well underway, it is time to start thinking about the next warp.

There are two boxes of pirns filled with two shades of beige so it seems time to do another beige warp.  This time, instead of skewing to peach, I will add some pale yellow to the blend.  Since I hadn't put away the tubes from the last beige warp, I began by pulling some of the tubes out of the previous warp to see how many I had and what I might add to the rest of the pile I pulled yesterday (not shown).

My last beige warp had mostly that coppery brown linen as weft, but this time the weft is also beige so I'm looking to have a more subtle effect happening.  The other yarns that will be used range from a very pale beige through several shades plus a little yellow, then fill in from the pile on the floor until I get a total of 32 tubes (my epi).

There is still some linen left but I need to empty these pirns.  I have actually done a pretty good job of getting the yarn on the pirns woven - there are now two  boxes filled with the empty pirns.  I was hoping that if I teach at the Sunshine Coast I could drive and deliver the pirns to the buyer of the pirn winder.  Still no word on that and with their new policies I may not hear until the cut off date which is just one month prior to class starting.  So, just in case, I'd like to empty as many pirns as I possibly can.  Which will also free up a shelf in the storage room.

Once I've decided on which yarns I'm going to use I'll start thumbing through Ars Textrina (Max Ziegler's pattern book, translated by Pat Hilts) which I use for inspiration.  Many of the drafts are written for 12 shafts with a 'key' to change them to 16.  I tend to look at the 12 shaft drafts, then fiddle with them to create a draft that is similar but easier (for me) to thread.  I can expand the drafts included or re-arrange them, or manipulate them to make borders, etc.  By starting with something that already exists, I can fast track getting a design that I want to use.

We stand on the shoulders of giants...

Tricky Twills

Most weavers have experienced the phenomenon of having the outside ends of their warp 'fall out' of the cloth when they reverse the direction of a twill.  It is the reason so many weavers recommend that a floating selvedge be used for twills.

Since I don't like using floating selvedges, I try to find work arounds.  For example, instead of using a large 'goose eye' draft, I will break the twill sequence and use what is sometimes called a herringbone or Dornick twill.

On the current warp, I designed a towel that has a twill diagonal going one direction at one selvedge and the other direction at the other.  The central motif is bracketed with \ and / at the selvedge.   For the majority of the towel, all is well - both selvedges weave as they are meant to.  But I also changed the twill direction in the hems, so when I get to the end of the towel, the change in the twill direction causes the two selvedge ends to drop out.  This is at pick 1140 of the treadling (I generate the entire treadling for one towel).  When I get to pick 1140, I stop, cut the weft off and then enter the shuttle from the other direction, which then brings the selvedge ends back into the cloth.

When that towel is done, I have programmed a lag that is empty and when that lag comes along, it is a visual/physical cue to stop, add a cut line in a different colour so that when the web comes off the loom it is an easy task to separate each towel and serge the raw edges for wet finishing.

The one pick of cut line automagically brings the shuttle back to the other side of the cloth and the towel weaves as it is meant to do with the shuttle catching the outside ends - until I hit pick 1140 when I cut off and insert from the other side of the cloth.  (Yes, I tuck the ends back into the selvedge of both ends.)

The treadling sequence is too long to 'capture' or I would share it here.

However, here is the threading draft showing 1.5 treadling repeats.  I ended on the half repeat to balance the motif.

Yes, there are areas in the treadling where the outside ends are not captured.  They equal 5 picks.  With a textile being woven at 32 ppi, I do not consider this 5 pick float to be detrimental to the textile and it's intended function.  YMMV.  If it was truly an issue, I'd change the tie up to add more plain weave to the mix and shorten the floats/skips.

This is a 16 shaft 'fancy' twill, the motif was taken from an Ars Textrina article about 17th century 'gebrochene' twills, modified to fit my towel format.  Thank you to Pat Hilts for providing the article to the publication.

Fancy Twills

four shaft Wall of Troy (M. P. Davison)

Wall of Troy extended to 8 shafts

For the past few years I have played with 'fancy' twills.  Someone asked me what I meant by 'fancy' and I had to think about that term for a bit.  While I knew what I meant, I had to think about how to define it.  There are many examples of 'fancy' twills in many resources e.g. the little booklet called The Fanciest Twills, which is likely where I first heard about fancy twill.

Beginning with the four shaft Wall of Troy, it is not a straight draw but reverses in a /\/ progression and repeats.  Technically one might refer to this as an extended point progression.  In the drawdown area of the draft, there are connected diamonds and a clear straight diagonal running through the cloth.

Extending this over eight shafts enlarges the design and makes it more dramatic.  The tie up can change from a 2:2 twill to a 1:3:3:1.

When you have more shafts, the combinations can become much larger, more complex and the tie up can also become more complex.  One of my favourites is 1:3:2:2:3:1:2:2   This keeps floats to 5 (usually) and in the finer yarns I tend to use, a five end float does not adversely affect the cloth.

The key to unlocking how fancy twills worked was from S. A. Zielinski's publications.  Robert Leclerc collected Mr. Zielinski's works, edited them into topics and published them in the late 1980s early 1990s (if I remember correctly).  One of them took twills and played with them on four shafts creating very complex patterning.  His premise was that you didn't need to have more than four to make cloth with complexity.  Since I had 16, I began to play with twill progressions to make quite large repeats.  Having a loom with a dobby meant that I could then enter the tie up and treadling into the computer, and at a flick of a switch change from one tie up/treadling to another making scarves and shawls that were related but different.  Working in a series like this made my inventory more diverse and gave customers a choice over which options they liked best.

Last night I thumbed through Ars Textrina - the information translated from the Old German by Patricia Hilts - about a class of weaves called Gebrochene.  I'm looking for inspiration for my next warp and being entranced once again by 'fancy' twills.  I think I could just weave these kinds of drafts for the rest of my life and still find fascination in them!  

The test warp currently on the Megado is one of these fancy type of twills.  Each shawl is being woven with a different weft colour, but also a different tie up/treadling.  As I mix and match the threading with different treadlings, the resulting cloth is similar but different.  

At the end of my thumbing, however, I reflected on the colours I was going to use for the next warp and instead of a fancy twill, I will do something with twill blocks.  My inspiration will be the colours of the south west and my pattern will reflect something of my feeling of the desert when I visited New Mexico and Arizona.  

At least, that's the plan.  For now.

8 shaft Swedish Snowflake.  Another example of a 'fancy' twill.  Areas of straight and point progression, advancing and satin.

This 'n That

Finally collected and cleaned off enough bobbins for a full day's weaving. Having woven with linen previously starting out without soaking bobbins, then half way through soaking them, I knew that the yarn would beat in differently. Or could. So I didn't want to dampen the bobbins if I couldn't weave a whole towel with bobbins that had been treated the same.

So now that I have enough bobbins for a day, I fill all the bobbins at the end of the weaving day, place them in a baggie with a wet piece of tissue and leave them overnight.

This higher humidity doesn't entirely tame the weft as the interior doesn't get as moist as the exterior, but it does help somewhat. The big change I've noticed is an improvement in the selvedges. With the linen slightly moist it is more pliable and turns the corners better. For that reason alone it's worth doing.

Frankly my selvedges aren't great on these towels, but the overall quality of the cloth is such that I'm not stressing over selvedges that aren't as good as usual. We are talking linen, so I'm just sayin.....

The last couple of days have been taken up with a lot of admin work so I haven't done as much weaving as I'd prefer. But the admin stuff has to be done too, and with the imminent arrival of the fibres from Ashland Bay it was time to deal with it.

The good news is that the iron supplements appear to be helping and my energy levels have been getting better so there is less tendency to just sit and play games on the computer. :}

My webmaster is working on a Paypal shopping cart for the fibres on my website and I'm trying to decide if I keep my Art Fire store going after this year. (I pre-paid for the year locking in a low price.) But if I have a shopping cart on my own website, do I really need Art Fire? Hmm.

And developing a customer list, crunching numbers for pricing, applying for shows and ignoring the deadline for teaching at conferences and events because I've still got a couple of weeks left to do those.

Being a professional weaver isn't just about weaving. It's about keeping your business going, too, and things administrative tasks like up coming shows, doing the books, filing taxes etc., can't be ignored.

The internet is well and good, but I find - at least here in Canada - that people are reluctant to buy textiles and yarns on the 'net unless they've seen and felt them in person first. So shows are an important part of staying in business.

And then there's my volunteer work. I'm secretary for an association that has taken to having on-line meetings so it seems like there are a few emails everyday that I need to track and decide if it is necessary to record them or if they fall under the heading of 'chatter'. I also volunteered (who was that person raising my hand????) to sell the local guild's surplus/duplicate library books. Little did I know how many there were! I've brought home two boxes filled with books and there are two more boxes at the guild room! Today I listed 10 titles, including The Magic of Linen by Linda Heinrich (our local guild's very first president!), Allen Fannin's Handloom Weaving Technology and a couple of Peter Collingwood's books. More - many more - titles to come. http://3.ly/Qut

But I have an eBay account, a Paypal account, and I sold my brother's library on eBay last summer so I'm familiar with the process. And the guild needs the revenue.

I also have 12 Ars Textrina I'm going to sell once the guild books are sold.

I've fallen way behind on transcribing WeaveCast - something I totally enjoy doing when I'm not feeling pressured by other stuff. Hopefully I will learn enough about the Ashford and Ashland Bay products quickly - and that my energy will come back fully - so that I'm not feeling quite so overwhelmed with all the admin stuff.


Currently reading The Story Teller by Margaret Coel

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).

Flowers in November

After the weekly errand run with my mom I came home and finished threading the warp and sleyed it at 24 epi (with the doubled ends counting as 'one').

This is the very beginning of the weaving. I keep left over weft on bobbins to use for headers, cut lines, testing colours and so on, so I began with the natural singles 20. It was difficult to see the pattern to check for oopsies so I switched to the red singles 20. Thankfully there were no threading or sleying errors, so I was able to begin weaving.

While threading, I continued to mull over my plan of using the white singles for weft, and after comparing it to the singles 20 noting that the white was much finer than the singles 20 (in spite of being labelled singles 12, both on the cone and the invoice) decided that I had to double it. Especially for the floral motif. So I dragged out my trusty doubling stand.

The resulting fabric is open and not suitable for towels, but the length of the floats would rule out use as towel fabric anyway. It would, however, make really nice fabric for a window covering. It's light enough and open enough that it would not block out the light entirely, but would provide sufficient privacy.

Once again I'm weaving this fabric up-side-down in terms of which side will be used for the face. No real reason except that I used the draft as given, which was probably written for a counter balanced or countra marche loom.

The draft is taken from the monograph done by Pat Hilts for Ars Textrina. She translated two old German weaving books of patterns. Many of the patterns are similar to Irene Woods monograph The Fanciest Twills, another book I often peruse for ideas. A third resource is Olesner's book.

Yes, I could draft these patterns from scratch, but when I have a concept of what I want, I will sometimes flip through these old books until I see something close to what I want. Sometimes I find precisely what I want, in which case I give a nod to the resource, thanking them for not having to spend a couple of hours at the computer clicking the mouse. :)

Sometimes I take their draft as a starting point and adapt it to my vision. In this instance, I was just looking for something to weave for the Seattle Guild newsletter, and somehow weaving flowers in deary November seemed very appealing.

PS - while winding a bobbin, the cone on the top of the doubling stand had a break in the thread and I lost the end. The yarn is so fine it's difficult to see, and finding the broken end proved fruitless. Inspiration struck, and I grabbed the lint roller, rolling it around the cone in the direction the yarn was winding off the cone. It only took a swipe 1/4 of the way around the cone for the broken end to be caught on the sticky roller, saving minutes - possibly quite a few minutes - not to mention the frustration. :D