Everything Old

is new again...

Some of you may know that I began this textile journey by spinning and dyeing.  Then I got sucked into the warped side and simply didn't have the time or energy to spin and set that aside.  Except a few years ago, spinning wheels kept showing up in my life.  Unfortunately they weren't the 'right' wheel for me and I kept trying and not enjoying it much.

After talking to a couple of people, I decided I needed a wheel with a much higher ratio to accommodate my supported long draw style of spinning and got a Canadian Production Wheel.

Unfortunately Larry (after the maker) is old, a true antique.  As such he's a bit - shall we say - testy, at times.  He is also not conveniently portable so I tend to leave him at the guild room and only spin up there.  Which is not exactly convenient for the guild room, storing a rather large delicate piece of equipment.

After my surgery, though, I got started on spinning more seriously and find myself thoroughly enjoying coming back to this craft.  It is fun to create truly one of a kind yarns.  Buying a blending board means I can make the rolags I prefer to spin from and I can make unique blends.  

I don't weave with my hand spun yarns.  Spinning has become a true 'hobby' - an activity that I do just for the pleasure of it.  I knit with it, then give those items away to friends or for donations to worthy causes.  There is far too much labour in hand spinning and knitting to have many people willing to pay a price that acknowledges that and rather than sell these items for pennies, I'd rather they just be gifts.

With the restrictions on using Larry, though, I have been looking around for something with a high ratio/speed plus a level of portability that would make it possible to say, spin at the fall fair or other public demonstrations.

Recently I had a bit of a windfall and I contacted Questionable Origins to inquire after their new electric spinning wheel.  I had heard about it last fall and - considering spinning is a hobby, not my business - hesitated to invest that much money into a new wheel.  Except that when I checked around, 'regular' spinning wheels were not that much cheaper and did not provide the aspect of portability I was looking for.  While there are other electric spinning wheels, this one came with some features that I felt would be helpful.  Since I had almost the exact purchase price burning a hole in my Paypal account, I tossed caution to the wind and ordered a Device (as they call it).

In the meantime I have borrowed an electric wheel on which I ply my singles and one day when I'm feeling brave I will try to actually spin singles on it.  Because my Device should be here in June.  

It's All Relative

I'm so used to beaming 'long' warps (10+ yards) that these relatively short warps (5.6 meters) seem to zip onto the beam in no time at all.

Since I've worked a lot with variegated yarns I decided to submit an article to Handwoven about how I use them.  The challenge, of course, is that they prefer readily available yarns so that their readers can source the yarns profiled in their projects.  With so many of Handwoven readers being somewhat inexperienced, I felt I ought to use a yarn that is reasonably friendly to work with, not the rick rack and bamboo yarns in these particular scarves.  So I will work on that article in December and hope to submit early in January.  The deadline is mid-February, and since I don't get home until after the deadline, it's either do it now or not at all.

However, as I was winding this yarn onto a cone I thought of a little hint that some people may not know about.  A skein of variegated yarn can be a bit 'tricky' - this particular yarn has several shades of red, gold and purple in it.  Sometimes it is hard to know which yarn to pair with a variegated.

Now the photo here makes the warp look very red.  Part of that is because I paired the rick rack with a red bamboo.  But the reason I used the red is because as the cone winder was winding the yarn from the skein onto the cone, the motion of the yarn travelling round and round blurred into a predominantly red colour.

I could have used other colours instead of the red, but for this first warp I had the right shade of red on hand for both warp and weft and went the easy route.

So if you aren't sure what yarn colour will go with your variegated yarn, try winding it onto a cone or ball winder and see what colour it looks as it is being wound.....

Unwinding

This is a squirrel cage swift.  I find that it works much better than the more common umbrella swifts that are available.  The skein behaves better in this orientation, so even when I'm using an umbrella swift, I will mount it with the axle horizontal rather than vertical as seen in every ad for them I've ever seen.  :)  Notice that I am taking the yarn off the bottom of the skein, preferably from the outside of it.  The skein is placed as low down on the swift as possible.  If it is up higher there is a tendency for it to tip if a snag develops.

And this is a Silver Needles cone winder.  It's not as good as an industrial cone winder but actually works quite well for doing small numbers of cones.  If used for any length of time the motor tends to overheat, eventually shutting itself off until it is cool enough to run again.  But for winding off of a skein, it does work.  I do find that placing the winder in this orientation when winding directly from a skein it works better than having it come from the side as I would if I were winding off of a cone.

The winder should never be left to wind off of a skein unattended.  If the skein is a dense or slippery yarn, the upper layers of yarn can cut down into the lower layers and snag.  The motor will stop winding, but does not shut off and therefore the motor could burn out if left stuck like that.  For yarns like rayon it is sometimes necessary to help the swift unwind so that the motor doesn't labour unnecessarily.

When we got the cone winder it did not have a vent to help cool the motor, so Doug cut one into the top and filled the hole with a piece of screening to help prevent fibres from being sucked into the hole - or anything else, like unwary fingers.

So while I tend to put off coning skeins off, it is necessary if I'm going to wind a warp.  If I'm just winding from the skein for weft I will take the yarn directly from the skein onto the bobbins.  I got the skein onto cones and will wind the 'sample' warp for the Handwoven article sometime today, in between running loads of textiles through the washer and dryer.

Dye Day

20 skeins of Bamboo Rain and 40 fifty gram skeins of 2/20 silk

I bought this drying rack a couple of weeks ago, knowing I needed to do a lot of dyeing. Having gotten fed up with the two dinky racks I had and which were falling apart, it seemed time to buy something else. It was more expensive than I'd hoped, but after setting it up last night I realized that it was much bigger and studier than the one I'd originally seen and had gone to buy - until I spotted this one.


The silk skeins are tied too tightly, so there are some issues with resisting the dye on some of the skeins. However, it will be a lot faster to simply re-tie the skeins than buy the yarn on cones and skein the yarn myself. So now I have another tv watching job - re-tieing silk skeins and cutting off the too tight tie. One per skein. Sigh.

Fortunately the new tv season is starting soon, so at least there will be (one hopes!) new episodes to watch. Speaking of which, I've sort of gotten hooked by Defying Gravity. And I've gotten hooked on So You Think You Can Dance Canada, too. :) I watched the finals last year because a dancer from my town made the final 20, and then Sharon said she enjoyed So You Think You Can Dance. So we watched the first couple of episodes while she was here and I've continued watching..........

Given the areas of resist on some of the skeins, I toyed with the idea of doing shadow weave with one white end and one dyed. This idea is in keeping with the realization that I don't have to only do the fastest techniques possible, but can invest a little more time in more complex/time consuming approaches to weaving. And shadow weave has intrigued me for a long time - I've just never had the time to really work with it and weave with two shuttles making textiles for sale. :)

The Bamboo Rain is a merino/bamboo/silk blend. The bamboo doesn't take the acid dyes the way the protein fibres do, so the result is a kind of tweedy effect. The plan is to make afghans with it. The yarn feels wonderful, and throws should feel scrumptious. But first I have to finish dyeing the yarn.

Equipment Failure

I admit it - I expect my equipment to perform under what some would label 'adverse conditions'.

So it was with the warping valet at the AVL last night.

Now the bar mounted in the ceiling was not originally intended to support a lot of weight. It was originally intended to get repair ends up off the floor. As such, the bar was mounted inside the footprint of the loom.

What this meant was that the water jugs would jam up against the tension box rail as the warp was being beamed. And last night they jammed up against the rail one too many times and just yards away from finishing the warp, one of the support brackets pulled out of the ceiling and dumped the bar, lease sticks/reed/warp into my arms. Since I'm taking Plavix, I bruise like a peach (as Doug puts it) so I have the bruises to show for it. :}

Now that Doug has to repair the valet anyway, the plan is for him to move it a foot towards the back of the loom so that in future the water jugs will not jam against the tension box rail. He'll also install much sturdier screws into the ceiling to help support the weight of the water jugs (and the tugging I give the warp to straighten it) and in the end, that should make beaming the painted warps much easier, ergo faster.

Sometimes there are little things that need to be fixed but they haven't been a big enough pain for me to ask Doug to find time in his schedule to actually do the fix. And sometimes things break so that I have to deal with equipment down time and let him get to it.

Fortunately in this case I can finish beaming the warp without the valet - albeit more slowly - and continue to weave, but I really need the valet in order to beam the last painted shawl warp.

For today, however, I'm off to the dyepots with the 2/20 silk. I'm hoping to get the skeins up on my Art Fire store soon.

Queen of Procrastination

Apologies again if this photo isn't in focus. While I'm doing well with other tasks, the computer is still a bit of a blur - although it's getting better. :}

So, it's confession time. I've been avoiding the AVL and the two shuttle DPW - and the shuttle boxes that started misbehaving for some unknown reason. It's intermittant, so I just get going nicely and then the boxes don't align properly which means the shuttle gets launched into the stratosphere and winds up on the floor on the right hand side of the loom. You know, the side that is inaccessible unless I run aaaaallllll the way around the loom to get to it. :}

In spite of my best intentions to fire it up today, I wound up
a) finishing my book
b) weaving another rayon chenille scarf (finishing warp #2)
c) packaging up a copy of Magic (only 84 copies left - let your friends know that there is one week left in the special offer as outlined in my May 9 blog post) and mailing it
d) running to the annex to pick up my lace stuff, more silk boucle to wind into skeins
e) winding skeins
f) visiting with the neighbour and knitting while she hand sewed on a dress for her grand daughter
g) well, by now it was dinner time
h) you get the drift..........

So, my intention for tomorrow is to Fire Up The AVL! I have bags full of painted warps that need to be woven into shawls because another box of painted warps is en route and due to arrive in a few days.

Not to mention all the other yarn that I already have. Like the yarn in the above photo. This is a lovely wool/bamboo/silk blend that knits up wonderfully. I'm trying to get a sample shawl done in case I decide to sell the skeins I've been dyeing. I bought it to weave with, but it's a little heavier/denser than I like to go with the Bambu 7. :(

However it knits up into a luscious textile that feels quite wonderful. I'm using a size 7 (American) needles with about 7 stitches per inch and the shawl is coming along quite nicely. The skeins are 4 ounces, and I'm about half done the skein and the shawl is a nice size so it goes a long way.

With 15% bamboo, the yarn takes the colour so it has a nice tweedy effect (what I imagine the abrash the rug people talk about in rugs would look like) - solid but not quite.

And yes, the shawl is shaped. I started with 251 stitches, reduced two stitches on either side of the centre until there were 211 left and now I'm just knitting in the knits and purling in the purls until the shawl is the length I want.

Since I'm used to knitting scarves with about 36 stitches, I was afraid this shawl was going to take forever, but my AVL avoidance has resulted in my spending more time knitting than I would do ordinarily. :D Silver linings - there are always silver linings - even if you have to dig deep at times to find them. :^)

Currently reading Alexandria by Lindsey Davis

Seeing Red - Again

I seem to be having a red-fest. :) In the past week I've woven a couple of red shawl warps on the AVL, a red shawl on the Fanny, a red chenille scarf warp today and am just now dressing the Fanny again with a black and red warp. ;)

Red - the colour of energy. Perhaps my week of rest has allowed my energy to come back and my colour choice reflects that.

Don't know if I will finish weaving it before I leave tomorrow, but that's okay. The AVL is (gasp!) naked and destined to remain that way for a couple weeks. Well, not quite naked - the last warp still needs to be stripped off, but somehow a completely naked loom always looks so - hmm - pathetic? sad? :^)

I will go away and think about my priorities for when I get back and then decide what to weave on the AVL next.

A huge priority will be to get the studio cleaned up to the point where one can walk without the do-see-do between boxes. I have students coming this summer, and the studio has to be able to hold more than just me!

Another priority (sub-priority?) will be to finish skeining the yarn to be dyed and get that dyed this summer. Once I've done that I will have to decide if I continue to purchase natural yarn and dye it to sell and for my own use. I could get rid of a lot of stuff if I stopped doing that. OTOH, with my Art Fire store, perhaps I can sell it on the internet.

So I will be doing a lot of mulling over options and thinking about how I really want to spend my time for the forseeable future.

That's one of the nice thing about long road trips - lots of time to think without too many distractions.

When I come home I have a number of medical type appointments - I need new eyeglasses, a crown on one of my molars and a meeting with my family doctor to discuss changing my cholesterol medication (and find out what to expect in terms of my blocked arteries in terms of symptoms/treatment).

Bette Davis had it oh, so right - getting old is not for sissies! Who knew I'd reach that stage in my late 50's! ;^)

Skeins

As part of my preparations for the workshop in Grand Forks, I was coning off some skeins and was reminded that I had planned to discuss working with skeins at some point. Today seemed like a good day.

My preferred tool for working with skeins is a squirrel cage swift. Unfortunately they aren't very common, and when you do find a good one it's more expensive than an umbrella swift.

One of the advantages is that the sc swift is free standing so I have a lot more options about where I can work with it.





In spite of all the photos one sees of the umbrella swift being displayed and used in the vertical position, it is a lot more efficient to use it with the central axis horizontal.



Orienting it this way is a bit more awkward because you need some place to mount it, and then sufficient room for it to rotate and flare when the skein is totally used up. But it does work much better positioned this way than vertically.

When opening a skein, find the centre. I prefer skeins with at least 3 ties because if there are 3 or 4 points of containment, it is much easier to find the centre than if the skein only has one or two ties.

Regardless of how many ties the skein has, find the exact centre by examining the ties and ensuring that none of the threads are folded back over a tie.

Once you have found the centre of the skein, insert both hands and drape the skein over your wrists. (Best not to wear a watch or bracelet for this job.) Bring your hands together, then pull them apart swiftly, giving the skein a good 'snap'. Rotate the skein and repeat this snapping out of it until you have gone round the entire circumference of the skein.

Remember my rule - a thread under tension is a thread under control? By snapping the skein in this manner, you reposition the threads if they have come out of alignment and encourage them to lie straight in the skein.

Place the skein onto your swift, then remove the ties. I leave the tie that is attached to the skein itself for the last. Check the skein to make sure you are pulling the yarn from the 'outside' of the skein and that the leading end is not wrapped around any of the other threads in the skein proper. You may have to rotate the skein to get the leading edge to the outside. Try to have the threads lie as straight as possible - no twists in the skein.

I always pull off from the bottom rather than the top of the skein as it is mounted on the swift. This seems to encourage the skein to unwind more easily. (See photo at top)

It's time to leave for lace. The sun is shining and the snow is melting. Yippee!