Changing Direction....

Generally, by the time I'm sitting at the loom shuttle in hand, I've thought through all the possibilities and have made up my mind what I'm going to do. Sometimes minor changes are made, but I've spent a lot of time thinking before I start weaving.

This warp, however, seems particularly fluid. After thinking about how I would set the warp up for two weeks, when it came time to start beaming I radically changed what I was going to do in order to use up some 2/40's cotton along with the 2/20's. This meant a change in density, and doubling the very fine linen weft for the samples.

As I wove the samples, I was quite pleased with the results, but the fabric was not really suitable for towels. In order to make good towel fabric, I figured that I'd need to re-sley to 27 or maybe even 30 epi. That would make the fabric a bit skimpy on width for towels, so I really didn't want to do that.

However, I felt that if I used 2/8 Tencel for weft, I wouldn't have to change anything, and I'd get a pretty nice shawl out of it. So I wove one using some 2/8 lavender Tencel for weft, which turned out quite nice, I thought.

Unfortunately, most of my 2/8 Tencel is in rather intense jewel tones, not pastels. My only other option was bleached white.

About the time I thought about using bleached white weft, my fibre choice radar pinged, and I suddenly remembered that I had some 3000 yard/pound white rayon chenille. Quite a lot of it, in fact.

So here I am in mid-stream, radically changing my weft choice, and being rather pleased with the results.

Sometimes you just have to be open to alternate possibilities.

Asaph's Place Mats

After spending about 4 hours in the guild room dyeing yarn and threading/sleying the guild loom for a group project (Bronson Lace place mats/table runners) I really didn't feel like weaving when I got home.

Since I was also beginning to feel the pressure of all the finishing that needs to be done, I decided to sit in front of the tv and do some of the hand hemming that had accumulated.

One of the things I've been doing is helping a 10 year old boy by the name of Asaph learn how to weave. He'd done a little bit with his mom, but life has been a little too interesting of late so she asked if I could give him a hand.

We started with a 5 yard warp in July. I wound it for him out of my stash of 4/8 cotton. He said he liked blues, purples, greens and grey, so I wound a randomly striped warp wide enough for place mats and table runner.

He finished weaving it a while ago, and I made it to their house and cut it off the loom on Monday.

While there we planned his next project - more place mats for Christmas gifts. The look of dismay on his face was a wonder to behold when I told him that the first thing we had to do was some math!

We worked through the calculations to see how long and wide the warp was to be, then used the Fibonacci sequence to design an asymmetric stripe. He started winding the warp. By lunch time he was nearly done, so I took over and finished it off, then beamed and threaded it while he ate his lunch and did some chores.

Tonight I finished hemming the red linen/cotton towels I wove in October, and started hemming Asaph's place mats. For a 3rd or 4th project, he did pretty well. And now he has a deadline - get the current warp done in time to give the place mats as a Christmas gift - weaving may go a little faster? :D Nothing like a deadline!!!!

Measuring

One of the ways I earned my income as a production weaver was to weave yardage for a fashion designer. Since I billed per yard woven, I needed a fast and accurate way to measure the fabric, both on and off the loom.

I found a meter - a very expensive one, I might add - built for the textile industry which is accurate in the way that the cheap small ones aren't. Since I was going to rely on the meter for my invoicing, accuracy was of the highest priority.

The meter could be purchased with various measuring wheels so I bought two - one with a textured circumference (as shown above) for measuring fabric, the second with a channel for measuring yarn (for when I'm filling spools for beaming sectionally, etc.)

This meter has been well used and was well worth the price - for me. It's probably overkill for most.

Doug made a wooden gizmo to use for attaching it to the bottom of the loom between the cloth storage roller and the front directional roller. It sits just inside (about an inch) of the selvedge, and counts in feet, rather than yards or inches.

Once done weaving, I would transfer the cloth to my inspection table (also built by Doug - what can I say - he's a keeper!) where I would measure for billing purposes, then inspect and repair the cloth before shipping.

I still use the table for inspection and repair although I no longer weave for the fashion designer. It's just so much easier to stand at the table which was built for me and Doug to do this job than anywhere else. (Doug used to be my studio assistant.)

This method of measuring was much more efficient than any other. Since I was weaving anywhere from 3 to 50 yards (or more) of any particular fabric, using a measuring tape or string or any other method was not going to work particularly well. All I have to do is figure out how much length I need in feet, and then check the meter from time to time to see how close I'm getting to the finish line.

Speaking of finishing lines, I figure I need about 20 feet of this 20" wide fabric to do the samples for Seattle Weavers Guild. They send out between 350 and 360 newsletters, so it's a pretty big job for everyone involved. OTOH, they are still sending out actual samples most of the time, and that's something that not every guild is doing anymore.

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

Sheep Puzzle

I enjoy jigsaw puzzles, and have been making them on-line at http://jigsaw.com

They allow the option of adding puzzles to your blog, so thought I'd give it a try. Not sure how successful this is, but as an experiment..........

Enjoy if you like puzzles, too.


Boat & Sheep Jigsaw Puzzle

Next up!

After thinking about my next warp while weaving the last of the red, turning possibilities over and around, much like a jigsaw puzzle with too many pieces - I tossed all my plans out when I walked into my storage area and spotted the 4 cones of 2/40's mercerized cotton I'd purchased from Lunatic Fringe, lo these many years ago. :}

There is still a lot of bleached white 2/20's cotton left, so after mulling over what might be the best approach to using up the 2/40's (a fairly 'fragile' yarn), in the end I decided to pair each of the 2/40's with a 2/20's white.

My best guestimate for set is 24 epi with the very fine singles white linen planned for weft on this warp, but until I start weaving I won't know for sure. So I may wind up with some rather narrow (for me) towels if I have to re-sley to a higher epi. Oh well. People tell me my towels are on the generous side, so a smaller size is probably going to be fine.

It's not visible in the picture, but I have a lamp (anglepoint in England, not sure what they are called in NA - swing arm?) that I attach to the loom at the back. Doug mounted a small square block of wood with a hole drilled into it onto the back of the loom that the light fits into. There are two more blocks on the front of the loom for additional supplemental lights for threading.

My studio is in the basement and at this time of year light can be rather dim so the extra light really helps, especially with such fine yarns.

My spool rack is from Leclerc and allows me to work from spools/tubes from the side, or take the yarn off the top of the tubes/cones. Doug modified it with an additional rail along the very top so I can beam from 60 packages of yarn (from the side) or 50 packages (from the top).

For this warp I'm working with 40 packages. I'll wind 25 sections (one inch sections) but sley at a working set of 24 and see how it looks.

There's a rather sweet draft I found for a small floral motif. The threading is just point twill over 16 shafts. Part of this warp will be samples for the Seattle Weavers Guild newsletter for next year so I thought I'd do that for the samples and then play with twills for the towels. The guild samples are just 3 inches, so I wanted a repeat that would fit into that size. I think the small floral will look quite nice in this pastel fabric.

BP Meds and Me, Weaving

So, here are the towels woven with red linen after wet finishing. And the second red warp is done, too, hooray!

One of the challenges this year has been to get my blood pressure under control. After my brother died, my bp soared through the stratosphere, and in addition to bp meds I was put on Lipitor to reduce cholesterol. My bp bounced around like a yo-yo, and my doctor tried just about everything under the sun and nothing seemed to work. On the contrary, as the summer progressed, I got sicker and sicker. For 6 weeks in July and August, I could not weave. At all.

Finally I realized that it was the Lipator causing problems, and although my doctor can't confirm that I was having an allergic reaction on top of a severe adverse reaction, I'm pretty convinced that that was what was happening.

Since my cholesterol wasn't high to begin with, we did blood work the end of September to find out if the Lipitor had been working. It was. My cholesterol level was now low instead of high normal, and he agreed I could stop taking the Lipitor.

Once the drug had cleared out of my system, I found that I could weave for 30 to 40 minutes with little discomfort (i.e. no muscle pain) with short (5-15 second) breaks. A sip of water, raising the weight on the cloth storage system, changing the bobbin - just that little break in weaving rhythm and I could carry on.

One of the other drugs I was taking was Metoprolol, which is a beta-blocker. Beta-blockers are given to cardiac patients to prevent their heart rate from speeding up, and they often work to reduce blood pressure. As I wove for longer periods of time I found that my heart could not keep up with my weaving speed, and I wanted to get off of that drug.

The doctor agreed that I could begin to wean myself off the Metoprolol after I had a severe reaction to the combination of a new bp medication called Norvasc, and the Metoprolol. As the beta-blocker dose gradually reduced, I found myself with more energy and on Sunday I took the last partial tablet.

Warned that my heart rate could now speed up, I started wearing my heart rate monitor all day, not just while I was weaving. On Monday, my heart rate was high as forewarned, and recalling that I'd seen a cd called Theraputic Drumming at the local independant book store, I swung by on my errand run to town and bought it.

After listening to the cd, my heart rate dropped significantly, and I was able to continue weaving with my heart rate at between 95-105 for about 30 mintues, after which it began to climb to 110. (It had been between 115 and 130 earlier in the day - higher than the 110 that had been recommended to me by the cardiac nurse as the upper limit for cardiac patients.)

For the rest of Monday and throughout Tuesday, my heart rate stayed at that level, but on Wed. and Thurs. it started climbing again. Unfortunately I spent all day, both days, roaring about with appointments and commitments such that there was no time to lay down and listen to the cd. This morning my pulse continued between 120 and 130 while weaving, so I made time to lay down and listen to the cd again.

The good news is that my heart rate came down nicely and I was able to finish weaving the red warp after dinner.

The other good news is that the current combination of drugs seems to be slowly working to bring my blood pressure down. It's not happening as quickly as I'd like, but patience has never been a character trait I could claim. :^) The other good news is that since I'm no longer taking the beta-blocker, there is one more drug that is a possibility should the numbers remain higher than the doctor would like to see them.

This year has been - well - challenging. However, now that I'm feeling so much better and able to weave for 40 to 45 minutes at a time, several times a day, I have to admit that not only am I feeling better than I was this past summer, I'm probably feeling better than I was before all of this happened. My energy is finally returning, and so is my brain. I'm even managing to sleep most of the night, nearly every night.

Amazing what getting sufficient oxygen will do!!!