Cotton

Four different cotton yarns - from left - seine twine, 2/8 warp twist, 8/2 and 3/2 Perle

click to biggify

Chart showing cotton close up and fibre characteristics

New weavers sometimes don't understand that just because a yarn is made from a particular fibre, that doesn't mean that they are the same in terms of how they function.

Cotton fibres for textiles range from about .75 of an inch to up to 3" depending on the variety.  Some of the best quality fibres are Egyptian, pima and Sea Island.  A new variety called Supima is now available commercially although I doubt handweavers can get their hands on that, yet.

Even though all four of the above yarns are made from cotton, they are very, very different in how they behave as yarns, and therefore will create very different qualities of textiles.

Cotton seine twine is the original netting yarn.  It is extremely dense, hard wearing and stiff.  It is very useful to weavers for rug warp.

2/8 warp twist cotton is less dense than seine twine but more than strong enough for warp.  It is more flexible than seine twine and can be used for things like placemats, table runners, heavier weight garment fabric.  I've even used it doubled for rep weave rugs where it behaved quite nicely.  I still have some of these rugs and they are wearing quite well in lightly trafficked areas.

8/2 cotton is carded and much more loosely twisted than 2/8 warp twist yarn.  It is loftier and more absorbent.  It is also weaker than 2/8 and not much loved for warp because of that.  It is useful for weft in towels, baby blankets and other textiles where a lofty, flexible textile is desired.

Perle cotton is combed, not carded, mercerized and engineered for embroidery so built to withstand abrasion.  In comparison to 8/2 cotton, Perle cottons are extremely strong and much loved by US weavers for warp.  The yarn is generally available in a multitude of beautiful colours.

While all of these yarns are made from cotton, they are very different and weavers need to look beyond the colour at how their yarns have been manufactured to know and appreciate them for what they are, and what can successfully be made from them.

Currently readying Lying Dead by Aline Templeton

Spring Flowers

A tiny, perfect little orchid

bouquet delivered a week ago and still going strong

Latest arrangement

Plum shawl warp

April is not the nicest month here, especially when winter has overstayed it's welcome.  The tulips in my front bed are barely above ground, buds still tightly furled.

So it was especially nice to be gifted with lovely fresh flowers the last couple of weeks - their cheery blossoms chasing the drab grey days away. 

The plum shawl warp is turning out very nicely, too.  Often when I do a run of something on the same warp I will try to make each item different in some way - changing the treadling/tie up or the weft yarn.  Since this yarn is all about stash reduction and I know that this particular combination makes a lovely quality of cloth, and because I am also trying to use up a bunch of very fine yarn for weft, I'm making all of the shawls on this warp the same.   Besides, with shows in the Seattle area (2), here, Vancouver and Calgary, hopefully the shawls will sell in different geographic regions.  :)

The weft is a lace weight alpaca and I'm hoping to use it up on either this warp, or another.  I think I've got 5 or 6 more shawl warps in the queue.

Unfortunately just before lunch time the fly shuttle stopped working.  The piston on the left hand side came apart so I took that as a sign to take a break, have lunch and do the repair after I ate.  I have to dig out the wrenches that will remove the bolt that holds the piston coupling onto the picker, screw the end part of the coupling back onto the piston itself, then reattach that to the picker.  Not a big deal, but awkward with my ankle still tingling and protesting too much flexing. 

But Doug isn't home and won't be for several hours, so if I want to finish this shawl today I have to be the loom mechanic.

As You Think....

...so shall you be.

I believe that thoughts are powerful.  I try very hard to think positive thoughts, rather than negative ones.  Not always successfully.  :} 

Recently I saw a sig line that said "Worry is to pray for what you do not want."  So I also try very hard to not worry.  Unfortunately in the face of no information, as was the case the last two months, worry is about all what one can do.

But since I do believe that thoughts are powerful, that metaphors are more than just words, and that symbols can be mighty tools to help keep one's thoughts on what one wants rather than on what one doesn't want, I was intrigued with Peg Cherre's website http://secondwindjewelry.com/ because as part of her offerings she makes talismen.

I am aware that precious and semi-precious stones have properties attributed to them but don't know what they all are.  It was very interesting to me that rubies (my birthstone) build "courage, provide emotional and physical energy and promote cheerfulness."

Peg sent 3 talismen, one of which she suggested should be kept by me as much as possible.  With the use of the ring attached to it, I threaded it through my Medic Alert necklace, which I wear pretty much every day.  I'm not sure where the other two will go yet, but they will be nearby to help me remember to be strong, energetic and cheerful.

Currently reading Cape Storm by Rachel Caine

Dilemma

The Quebec presentation is much on my mind these days as the deadline slowly creeps up on me.  I decided to not use this photo as it is rather dark, and I had a somewhat better photo of the work table to put in the Power Point presentation.  This one better shows how the cloth storage roller fits onto the table for inspection/repair/cutting.  If you look closely at the upright in the front left of the photo you can see a 'notch'.  There is another one at the other end of the table and into these notches the second warp beam fits.  The table top comes off and then the table can be used to beam a warp while the other (dressed) warp beam is being woven off in the loom. 

Having the ability to prep the next warp while the loom was functionally weaving cut down turn around time by at least a day, if not two, when I was in high gear.  Now such efficiency isn't required so I rarely use this tool, just dress the loom each time it is empty.

But I've come up against a scheduling dilemma.  My 3rd chemo treatment is supposed to be June 1, but I'm booked to leave on the 6 am (yuk) flight on the 3rd of June for the conference in Quebec.  This prospect does not thrill me, so I'm hoping to shuffle my treatments in order to allow me to continue to live my life and meet my work committments.

In the pell-mell rush to treatment, life can get shoved to one side.  But there are a couple hundred people counting on me to be in Quebec and cancelling now would be detrimental to them - and my bankbook.  :(

Unfortunately my oncologist is in India - busy man, flying all over the world! - and no one else at the clinic wants to take responsibility for re-scheduling my treatments.  And so I have to wait until May 10 when I can talk to him personally and find out if he is agreeable to moving my treatments to accommodate my life/work.

I do not want this dis-ease to take over my life to the point where that is all that is considered.  Neither do I want to disappoint a couple hundred people who are willing to pay me to talk about weaving.  I know that weaving isn't in the same league as a whole lot of other human endeavours, but it's important to me and it's important to enough other people that I don't want to cancel any of my teaching contracts during treatment.  There are only 3 contracts - June, July and August - and hopefully this will happen.

So, once again I'm on hold, waiting to hear how this is going to play out.  If my treatments can get shuffled to better accommodate my teaching schedule, I won't have to cancel anything.  But right now all I can do is wait and see.

Currently reading Mennonite in a Black Dress by Rhoda Janzen

Latest Creation

This is the jacket pattern packet

And here is the jacket on the dummy..........click photo to biggify

The fabric was woven in 2001/2 and entered into the Convergence 2002 Carnegie Yardage Exhibit in Vancouver, BC.  It was one of those occassions when I had a warp on the loom and decided to use some of it to make fabric for a garment, fabric that could be entered into the exhibit.  Mostly I wanted to get some feedback from the juror, and there was talk that the organisers would attempt to provide translations of the comments, but that never happened.

OTOH, receiving second place in the exhibit was a pretty eloquent degree of feedback.  :D

When I got the fabric back I realized that 3 yards wasn't really enough cloth to create a jacket for someone of my size and I wound up having to dress the loom again anyway for additional samples for Magic, so it was a simple matter to make the warp a little longer and incorporate enough for sufficient fabric that I could actually get a jacket out of the cloth.

Since life never runs smoothly, however, I wound up weaving about a yard before I realized I was using the wrong file and had to quickly find the correct treadling and weaving some more.

This was one of the warps that I needed to do more than once in order to get enough samples for the print run of Magic in the Water, partly because I wove the jacket fabric for myself, too.  Unfortunately, it wasn't the only warp that needed to be woven more than once.  There were several that needed 3 warps before enough samples were produced to fill the sample pages of the book.

Even so, the print run was capped at 900 instead of the originally planned 1000.  I just could not face dressing the loom again with 6 more warps to weave up 100 more samples to fill the last few copies!

I still have about 60 copies of Magic that have 14 or so samples instead of the original 20.  Once the last 23 full sized copies of Magic are gone, I'll once again offer the abridged copies for sale at a reduced price.  But when these books are sold, Magic will officially be Out Of Print.

Currently reading The Cruelest Month by Louise Penny

Memory Lane

One of the things writing the presentation for Quebec is doing is taking me down Memory Lane.

This is the wedding photo of Doug's niece Heather.  (Unfortunately I don't have a photo of Shannon's wedding dress.)  I offered to weave the fabric for both girls wedding dresses and they wound up using the same seamtstress to sew their dresses.

Both girls got silk yardage - about 10 yeards worth, 48" wide.  The design for Heather's dress was a woven heart - Hearts for Heather.

It's been fun going through old slides and pulling out images of garments that I wove and had sewn - for myself, primarily, but also for other special people in my life - Doug, my mother, the two nieces and some friends.

I'm finding that writing the presentation in sections over a couple of weeks is allowing me to rummage through my memories and choose stories I particularly want to share.  Right now I'm trying to figure out how to add in some of the special things I've woven - the fabric for the Ukrainian dance troupe, Doug's sport coat, the wedding dress and so on.

Most recently the fabric that won second prize at Convergence 2002 yardage exhibit.  Selah sent me a jpg of the completed jacket, which looks great on the dress dummy.  Hope it looks as good on me when I get it this fall! 

Currently reading River Marked by Patricia Briggs

Thinking Ahead

So, here is a much younger me with my Whitin winder.  One of the things I want to talk about during the general session address in Quebec is the equipment I have invested in over the years.  This winder is the cat's meow in terms of winding pirns.

I bought it from Allen Fannin in about 1986.  I remember telling him I wanted 100 pirns with it and he laughed and said  "more like a 1000, Fry".

It cost as much to have it shipped from New York as it did to purchase it, but it was worth the price.  We actually decided to buy two heads although I've only ever used the one - the other is there for spare parts if nothing else.

So long as you keep pirns in the carousel and yarn for it to wind from, it will continue to dutifully wind and doff nearly perfect pirns.  And all with a minimum of supervision.  I'm just in the photo to give scale to the machine.  My left hand is resting on the carousel that holds the pirns, you should be able to see a pirn being wound and which will get doffed and fall down a chute below the red 'tab' you can see in the foreground.  Click photo to biggify.

The one feature the machine does not have is the tail cutter, so after the collection box is filled with pirns, I generally cut the tails off and stack the pirns neatly in another small box which then gets taken to the loom.

I don't usually use the AVL shuttles and pirns which I have to wind by hand unless I'm using something like rayon chenille or a really heavy wool which doesn't wind in the Whitin winder without major adjustments.  In the years that I've had the winder I've accumulated something like 1700+ hours of winding time on it.  But that time has meant good, well wound pirns, and generally allowed me to work on other things while the machine just keeps reliably chugging along.