Of Faith and Finesse

First the finesse....

I am always looking for new ways to do things that will either allow me to do what's necessary in less time, or cause the least amount of angst whilst doing it.

While whining to a friend this morning about that pesky linen, which was causing me the most grief not in the weaving but in the winding of the bobbins, the proverbial light came on over my head.

My doubling stand is set up so that the two yarns come up out of a two stage bucket and run over an S hook that dangles from a hook in the ceiling.

The linen is just springy and wire-y enough that if I wound too fast, or just because it wanted to be pesky, the linen would leap off the S hook. Sometimes just one, sometimes both, but either way it meant that the yarn broke, or the two threads got out of alignment. In the long run it meant that winding bobbins was becoming a bit of a teeth grinding time for me.

As I was describing the pesky behaviour, I thought how much better it would be if the yarn ran through a ring. No way the yarn could escape! Ah-ha, says I - I do believe that I have a one inch tack ring in my toolbox!





I did have a ring handy so I put it up on the hook....



....a close up so you can see how it looks....and voila! Well behaved - or at least well controlled - linen!

Now for the item of faith...

The other thing related to the tea towels that had been vaguely bothering me was beaming the 2/16 warps. Since I had never been taught how to do this but just kept working at it until I sort of got it figured out I wondered if there wasn't a still simpler and faster way than what I was doing.




On the last warp I thought to myself, why am I strumming and brushing this warp? Didn't I do a good enough job that it should just wind on? So I didn't, and it did, with just one thread that snagged and broke.

This time I thought, okay, let's try this again and see if it was just a fluke, but let's also try something a little bit different. So instead of keeping the lease sticks between the reed and the breast beam I moved them beyond the breast beam to between that and the valet.

There were several improvements noticed. For one thing I had a much longer area that could be wound on before anything needed to be adjusted/moved. The chains stayed much neater. There were very few snags or loose threads until the last two yards (11 meter long warp) at which point I took out the brush and quickly dealt with those.

In the end I figure I halved the beaming time and much less fussing.

Happy new year and lots of fibre finessing to everyone!

Notches and Next

No matter how carefully I wind the bobbins or throw and catch the shuttle the weft will occasionally snarl around the axis in the shuttle and notch the selvedge with too much tension.




When this happens I immediately stop - do not beat! - and re-seat the weft.




I do not tug the selvedge threads sideways to remove the notch but stick my finger into the shed and gently ease the threads open. Once the warp threads have released the weft, I then re-seat the weft, change the shed and continue weaving, vowing to be more attentive - until the next time. :)




This is how the pick in the photo above looks after beating.





The green and purple warp is now finished and cut off the loom. I have two warps to cut and serge, hopefully wet finishing them New Year's Day. Doug is supposed to work so I may as well go up to the annex while my neighbours probably aren't working and press.

The next warp is wound, ready to be rough sleyed and the loom dressed. Another mostly dark warp, I'm trying to use up as much of my 2/16 yarn stash as possible. Some of it is really old - I acquired some of it from an estate sale and the company - Wabasso - hasn't been in business for probably 20 years, so that tells you how old the yarn must be!

And I've pulled colours for the next warp after that. If my student has no preferences, she will get a light beige, grey and medium blue warp to weave on. I'll weave the first half with the pesky linen, and let her weave off the rest with a nice co-operative cotton slub.

Currently reading Bay of Spirits; a love story by Farley Mowat (Canadian literary icon - but one with a sense of humour)

Coping with Wire-y Thread

You can clearly see how spring-y this yarn is - it doesn't want to lie nice and tidy on the bobbins but leaps off at every opportunity.

It's especially difficult when it's being doubled (click on the doubling stand tag to the right) as each end can spring off in different directions.

So the first strategy in dealing with this yarn is to hold it close to the bobbin as it is being wound on. That way the placement of the yarn onto the bobbin can be better controlled. My fingers are no more than 2" away from the bobbin during winding, more usually 1".

Secondly, fill the bobbin only equal to the height of the flanges. There are two reasons for this - a) linen is dense and filling the bobbin any fuller makes the drag on the weft too heavy and b) keeping the yarn filled to a low profile makes it easier to weave. Since it wants to spring off at every opportunity, any higher and the snarls and tangles around the spindle in the shuttle just increase proprotionately. (Ask how I know!)

Third, when inserting the bobbin into the shuttle make sure that both threads are coming off the bobbin equally. It is common for one of the threads to spring off the bobbin 3 turns while the other one springs off 4 or 5 turns. So take the time when inserting the bobbin to make sure they are coming off together.

I think I've just finished towel #4 - or is it 5? Whatever, progress is being made and it's time to think about the next warp. Will I have the patience to do another warp using this yarn as weft? Hmmmmmm...a break using something friendlier may be in order. :^)

White Dilutes

green/purple/blue towels



close up showing the herringbone border


This warp is a wonderful example of Michelle Whiplinger's mantra about the effect of colour values.

If you substitute 'light value' for white you get the same effect - the intense green/purple/dark blue almost black has been diluted by the natural grey linen weft.


(The complete mantra is "White dilutes, black intensifies, grey muddies")

The cutting line - woven in a slightly darker than medium value blue stands out as a very dark line, showing that dark values intensify too.

With such a deep intensity of colour and a fairly high contrast value weft I wanted a very simple weave structure rather than a 'fancy' one which I felt would overpower the textile.

So for this warp I just threaded straight draw for the green and purple and the dark blue is reverse twill herringbone. In other words, I skipped a shaft when I changed direction:

4,3,2,1 (Straight order)

3,4,1,2 (Reversed order)

There are just four threads in each blue stripe to add an accent to the design. I didn't want equal amounts of the green and purple, but neither did I want unrelieved purple in the centre field. You can just see a very subtle stripe happening in the purple stripes.

The close up photo shows the twill direction and the herringbone border which will decorate one end of the towels.

The little lines are reed marks which likely won't entirely come out in the wet finishing but since they are regular I'm not overly concerned about them. (If you can't be perfect, be consistent!)

Opted to not have plain weave hems. Plain weave and twill take up at different rates and I didn't want hems that flared. Since cotton and linen will behave quite differently in the wet finishing, I didn't want to use cotton for hems, either. A cutting line will be inserted between the towels for ease in cutting and serging once the warp is woven.

I am also having to adapt my shuttle throwing. The weft is so very fine that I'm doubling it using a doubling stand. But being as how it is linen, it tends to wrap around the spindle in the shuttle unless I pull off sufficient weft for each pick, braking the bobbin as I catch the shuttle so that it doesn't cast off any more until I actually pull the weft off the bobbin.

This is the sort of yarn that weavers love to put onto an end feed shuttle but since I don't have any hand end feed shuttles and because I can adapt my shuttle throwing/catching, it's not something that bothers me over much. With 11 meters to weave, I'll soon be doing what's necessary without having to think about it.

And every time it does catch and wrap around the spindle I will remind myself that I am weaving with a fine, wiry linen with special needs and aren't these towels going to be mighty fine once they're done. :^)

Happy Holidays

Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah etc.

We are having a very white Christmas with lots of snow sparkling on the trees and ground and just now the sun has finally broken through the high overcast.

Doug and I will be going to my mom's for dinner later today but in the meantime I am looking forward to weaving on the blue/grey tea towel warp. The next warp is so pretty I'm anxious to get it into the loom to see how it looks woven up.

And yes, that is a pirn on my mantel - it's been modified to make a dandy candle snuffer. The hanging behind the tree is 2/8 cotton woven in Bronson Lace pick up. The motif is a butterfly. Hard to see, I know - it looks better hung in a window but I don't have an appropriate window in which to display it so we put it against the brick chimney.

Currently reading The Widow's Revenge by James D. Doss

Of Dyeing and Warp Winding

Winding three colour warp with cheat sheet

When I'm winding a long or complex stripe sequence I post a cheat sheet above the warping board so that I can keep track of which colour comes next and how many ends of each colour are required.

In this case my counting string will count not merely threads but repeats of the stripe sequence. There will be two warp chains. I will break the warp into two more or less equal numbers of ends so that there will be about 3.5 of the middle stripe repeats in each warp chain. The trick, of course, is to get the warp chains side by side properly, but with this design that won't be difficult.

dyed 2/20 silk

Yesterday was a 'dye day' and I got 40 fifty gram skeins dyed. I'd been having some problems with resist marks from the skein ties and whined about this to someone I respect as a dyer who made her living for many years dyeing silk and would therefore know. She told me to remove all of the X ties and just tie circles of string loosely around the skeins.

Well, I was a bit hesitant but followed her advice and voila, no resist marks. Yes, the skeins did get a little unruly, but not much more so than with X ties.

Which leads me to step onto my soapbox. Many people complain bitterly about fugitive dyes ruining their projects. Often when I ask them how they wet finish they begin by saying something like "I soak the cloth for 24 hours....."

This is an open invitation for any fugitive dye to release and settle elsewhere on the cloth.

I always assume that any dyed yarn has fugitive dye in it and treat it accordingly.

Therefore I never ever soak a web but get it into the water and rinse, rinse, rinse until I am sure there is no fugitive dye lurking to settle elsewhere and ruin my weaving. I use Color Catchers (made by the people who bring you Shout products) when I know for a fact there is fugitive dye in the yarn - and generally any cellulose yarns that have been hand dyed will for sure have fugitive dyes.

I've been told by some dyers that they rinse until there is just 'blush' left which means that there may not be much dye, but there is some left.

I've also found that in acid dyes magenta can have fugitive dye molecules that are difficult to rinse completely out and sometimes cyan can be problematic, too.

So as I say, always assume there will be fugitive dyes and wet finish accordingly.

Just one more good reason to wet finish your handwovens and not gift or sell un-wet finished articles.

And yes, the silk yarn will be on my Art Fire store in the new year.

Blue Towels

blue/grey towels on loom


close up showing Wall of Troy and straight twill threadings

A few posts ago Sharon commented on weaving being a whole body experience. This is something that new weavers don't understand at first, especially if they have only woven on narrow warps.

The wider the warp you have on the loom, the more you need to use your whole body. Perfecting throwing and catching technique will allow a weaver to weave quite wide warps. How wide depends on the individual's body - how long their arms are for one thing. :)

The motion for throwing the shuttle is such that the weaver needs to shift their body weight onto the right hip when throwing the shuttle from right to left then onto the left hip for when throwing the shuttle from left to right.

The torso pivots around the centre of the body leaning slightly to the right to throw with the right hand, leaning forward slightly as the shuttle traverses from right to left and leaning slightly to the left to catch the shuttle and grab the beater. As the beater comes forward, the body rocks slightly backwards as the feet change position on the treadles.

And so the cycle begins again.

It is a very good idea to learn how to sit up on the hip bones and not rotated back on the coccyx so that this range of motions can happen with the least amount of stress on the body.

It is a good idea to tone the abdominal muscles - the core muscles as they are sometimes called - as having good strong core muscles will help protect the lower back muscles from strain.

Review the video clips (click on the Video Clip tag to the right or the label below) showing weaving to help see what I mean.