Towels

Every now and then, I like to think that I really have my ducks in a row.

A week or so ago, I realised that I was going to have an empty loom for a little bit, as I had several custom orders that are all in the design stage.

I thought to myself, “Great! Now I can get a towel warp on the loom, and I will get a head start on stock for the holidays”

(You might be thinking that I am a little off balanced for planning so far ahead, but I really do things like this. I weave mainly custom orders, which means that I do not have an empty loom regularly, so when I do have one, I make sure to get some towels done, as they are popular for gifts, and it is more efficient to weave many at a time)

So I sat down with my “want to weave” spreadsheet (yes, I do have one of those, don’t you?? LOL) and picked out a draft. I did the math to figure out how much yarn I needed, I got out my sample books, and looked at what colours I wanted to use. I made lists, and calculations, then I checked the budget. All was well, everything was looking great.

I realised that I could order half pound spools for my warp, which while a tiny bit more expensive, they are easier to store, and they fit right onto my spool rack, and from 24 spools, I would be able to split them onto another 24 spools, and I would have enough yarn for two warps. (that is 40, 320 yards of warp yarn, in case you like to know these things). Then I realised that I could order the larger 1 pound cones (slightly cheaper, but harder to store due to their size) in 6 of the colours I wanted to use, and by the time I am done the two warps, they would be used up, so I wouldn’t have to store them!

I sat back at my desk, with a satisfied grin, and placed the order with my favourite yarn supplier.

A few days later, I received a surprise. It was my expected yarn order, but it was a toddler weight of yarn. 36 pounds, to be exact. That was more than I had ordered, I thought. A LOT more.

Turns out I had made a rookie mistake. The large cones that I ordered, that I thought were one pound? Well, turns out that they are 2 pounds. each. I ordered double the weft that I need.

So now I need to figure out what I am going to do with 12 pounds of extra yarn, that I don’t really want to store, and don’t have a plan for.

Does anyone want some solid coloured towels??

One…or is it two?

Well, I would say that tying onto the old warp was a success.

I really love how all the knots look here, almost like a sound wave…

(Note to self…practice tying knots in a more consistent way so they all line up like well behaved children)

The black warp was amazing, it is pretty rare that I use a solid colour warp, and I have to admit that I really enjoyed the simplicity of it. The combination of solid warp and weft, with a lovely undulating twill weave was a fun weave.

This is one of my favourite things to weave. It is simple, and elegant, but I can change it up in several ways to get different effects.

On this piece, I reversed the treadling in the middle of the length, for a subtle way to easily find the centre of the piece.

This weave really is a star, playing nicely with many different wefts, and the drape of it…oh my….

I might decide to tie another warp on sometime, but right now, I am switching projects, and I have a natural warp on the loom for towels. Lots and lots of towels.

(I’ll show them to you in a week or so when the weaving is done)

1 + 1 = ………1?

Here is a little bit of weaving trivia for you; when does one plus one equal one?

The answer, while seemingly simple, can actually be a bit convoluted. One plus one, equals one, when you are talking about warps, and tying a new warp onto an old one.

There are many reasons to do this, and really, if we are being truthful, just as many not to.

I have chosen both ways, many times.

Right now, I am choosing to tie onto the old warp.  The biggest reason I chose this is because the two warps will be woven with the same threading. If they were to be different threadings, there would be no point in tying on.

Now when I put the “old” warp on, I carefully threaded it, checking along the way for mistakes. Then I sleyed the reed, checking again for threading mistakes. Once that was done, and I had even tension on the warp, I wove a few repeats of the pattern, using a weft that contrasted highly with the colours of the warp. This allowed me to…..you guessed it, check for threading errors (along with sleying errors, and any other random errors that I might have made).

Once I carefully inspected the weaving, and was satisfied that I had found and fixed any errors (I will admit that there are inevitably a few, but I reserve the right to save my ego, and not give an exact number 😛 ), I switched wefts, and settled right into my weaving rhythm.

Now, the process of threading, checking, sleying, checking, tensioning, checking, weaving, and checking AGAIN, all takes time. approximately 4-6 hours, depending on how complex the threading is, and how many mistakes I find and fix.

The process of tying on is relatively simple. you reach the end point of a warp, and you cut it off. You need to decide if you want to tie on to the old warp at the front of the loom  or at the back (We can talk about why you would chose one of the other another time).

So you cut off the old warp, and prepare the new one. Then you simply grab a thread of each warp, tie them together, and you are off to the races.

Sort of.

Because you see dear friend, nothing is REALLY that simple. tying on can be an interesting exercise in keeping the threads of not only one, but TWO warps in the correct order. Sometimes the order matters very much, other times not so much. It is up to the weaver to decide the appropriate level of attention that should be directed to the thread orders.

Then you need to consider your knots. Overhand? surgeon’s? weavers knot? Many people choose the weavers knot for this purpose. It is a strong knot that is relatively quick to tie, strong, and best of all, it doesn’t need long tails sticking out to keep it’s strength. (You should google you tube videos of these knots, but only if you have a ridiculous amount of time, because it is a bit of a wormhole). Tails are important, they can effectively attach a thread to the one (or more) next to it, and cause all kinds of headaches)

So you choose your knot (we’ll go with a weaver’s knot, because that is my favourite). Then you tie one. Then another, and another, and another. In the case of the warp that I am currently working on, there will be 720 knots tied by the time I am done with them.

Once the knots are tied, you look at the giant mess of seemingly hopelessly tangled yarns, take a deep breathe, cross your fingers, eyes, toes, and anything else that is available for crossing, and (we’ll skip a step or two here, because it depends on the warping method you chose wayyyyyyy back there ^^^^^) put tension on the two warps that are now, hopefully, united into a single warp of interesting composition.

So after all of that, you might wonder what the benefit of tying on is. In this case, I KNOW that my current warp is threaded and sleyed without error. So, roughly 5 hours of knot tying seems to be a good replacement for roughly 5 hours of threading and sleying. however, I know that I will not have to spend time finding those sneaky little errors that tend to creep into warps while threading and sleying, particularly in houses with children who regularly interrupt their household weaver.

So the combination of an error free “old” warp, a new, solid coloured warp where a correct thread order doesn’t have to be particularly adhered to, and my unreasonable tendancy to practice known skills (like tying weaver’s knots) a silly amount of times, I am tying my new warp onto the old.

Here is my tangled mess (that is only a small portion of the whole width, I have about two more hours of tying to go), I’ll let you know soon how it turns out.

(If you would cross a spare body part or two for me, I would really appreciate it……)

This year in photos…..

I fully admit that I have been slacking on the website/blog side of things this year.

I have just been really busy making all kinds of things that are pretty, useful, practical, soft, snuggly, and all kinds of fun!

So, in order to distract you from my abysmal posting record, here are some photos to distract you! *grin*

 

Cotton warp and weft, twill weave.

A lovely monochrome that because several cowls, and some larger pieces.

This faux crackle weave was so much fun to weave!

A custom colour mix, for an amazing client.

This mass of yarn is not as scary as it looks!

The result of mixing two hand dyed warps.

This photo makes me smile every time!

Faux crackle diamonds.

A change of weave to indicate the middle of a large piece.

Ahhh…the potential of spools of yarn….

Tea towels, ready for gifting!

A stack of colourful towels.

Folding fabric can be an art in itself.

More colour!

I really like this weave, so elegant.

This warp is on the loom now, coming off soon!

Summer Days

Some of you know that we (my family and I) spend our summers at the cottage. It is an amazing place to spend a few months, surrounded by northern Ontario trees and rocks, while sipping my morning coffee on the beach.

Keep in mind that it isn’t all fun and games here, there is some SERIOUS work to be done. We need to feed the inhabitants of the lake (the fish like worms, so much that they sometimes come home with us for dinner!),  check the water temperature by swimming, the density of the sand by making sand castles, and most importantly, use family time around the fire to check the exact method of properly making s’mores.

All of this means not so much time for weaving, although I do have a couple of looms here. I have been playing with tapestry, and some new (to me) hem treatments, and I am chock-full of ideas of lovely things to weave.

My soul is being filled with beauty, and I can’t wait to share some of the results with you soon!

I will be back to “normal” life mid September, once the family schedules are up and running again, but I am looking forward to working with you to create something amazing!

 

 

 

 

The easy way

Weaving is often an exercise in frustration. I am playing with hundreds of threads, in many colours sometimes, and often the colour order really matters.

The threads occasionally have minds of their own, and tangle, break, slip out of my hands, and otherwise behave like toddlers that have just had three espressos with sugar.

But sometimes, just sometimes, things go smoothly.

The last few days have been like that for me. I am getting a new piece on the loom right now, and things are going really well. The spools wound nicely, and that sometimes seemingly endless chore went relatively quickly. I threaded the tension box with no issues. Beaming went well, with only one broken thread, due to a knot that I missed.

I finally figured out the sweet spot on my AVL loom for threading, a combination of extra yardsticks, string, lifted shafts, and a stool that is a height that allows me to both see what I am doing, and keep my back straight and comfortable, all while sitting close enough to the shafts to reach them easily.

Sleying, which is ALMOST done, has gone quickly.

I am a little afraid that I am going to “jinx” myself, or anger the weaving gods, or otherwise mess something up in an extraordinarily spectacular fashion now that I have said all this, but this beauty is seriously making my days right now.

 

Summer yarn.

I have a confession to make. I am not a yarn dyer. I love the amazing work of so many dyers, and I occasionally treat myself to a wonderful hand dyed warp, or weft (or both!) to work with.

Even though I have an engineering background, and math is my thing, I don’t like the precision required to produce reproducible hand dyed yarns. I have friends who do amazing things, one in particular specialises in amazing naturally dyed yarn, in particular, her own handspun wool. She gets wonderful colours, and takes copious, detailed notes throughout each dye session.

This is not something that I will do. I won’t say I will NEVER do it, because that is an awfully strong word, but it is highly unlikely, at best.

What I DO do (hush now, I know I said doodoo, and yes, I giggled a little too), is decide that I want to dye something, grab whatever yarn and dye are on hand, and throw colours on the yarn in a wild experiment that will never be repeated.

I did this crazy colourful dye, because I couldn’t decide what colour I wanted to use. So I picked “all of them”.

See that blue warp on the loom? That was the warp that I literally took off the loom, and put in the leftover dye from the colours skeins. Here’s a better look:

and THEN I wanted to see what would happen if I put some blue and yellow in a pot with some bamboo yarn:

That experiment resulted in a giant skein of shimmering shades of delicate green, and yellow, with a bit of “greenish white” thrown in for fun!

My most recent adventure was intended to be greenish blue, with spots here and there of reddish brown and golden yellow.

I ended up with something that strongly resembles my oldest daughters’ mermaid tail!

Not quite the look I was going for, but I quite like it. I don’t know what I should have done differently to get what I wanted, but I suspect a different dye colour would help, and I probably should have done a little test dying before going crazy on a 15yd warp, but hey, it was FUN!

I am looking forward to weaving with some of these yarns, and a few more from my “hand dyed” bin over the summer. Keep your eyes peeled to see what I do with these, and I will do my best to post photos with some sort of regularity. (yes, I do realise that I have been neglecting my blog-owner duties, and I apologise for that oversight)

 

Happy summer!

How weaving makes me a better housekeeper

OK, I admit it. Housekeeping is not my favourite (or even tenth favourite) activity. I can think of LOTS of things that I would rather do that clean or tidy.

But I do it a lot more frequently now that I weave.

When I sit down to design a warp, I first need to tidy off my desk, so I can put any sketches out, and I can stack up my sample cards and books to get the colours on the screen as close as possible to the colours that I will eventually order. (we all know the screen to real life comparison isn’t great, but I do my best).

Then I need to get my spreadsheet out, to see how much of which colours I have in stock, so I can work up a yarn order.

Once the order arrives, I need to clear the kitchen table, and move my laptop over there (cleaning off my desk first, because the laptop is generally in the middle of a pile of school papers and such) with my scale, so i can enter it all into my invetory. I also mark all the newly entered yarns, and all the “old” inventory yarns that will be used in the spreadsheet, and pull everything together in one box.

When I start warping, I need to either clear a place for the empty and full spools, as well as the spools of ordered yarn (when I am using the spool rack) or bring the warping wheel up from the basement, and make space for that in the living room (which needs tidying, so I can move the furniture around), and set out my lovely box of joy along with my warping order.

Once the warp is beamed, I dust and vaccuum the loom, and the area around  it, so it is ready for a new piece. (I usually do the whole main floor, because really, I have the stuff out, and it isn’t that large of a space, maybe 600 square feet).

Then I move all the furniture back, and get working. A week or two later, I have the piece complete.

I need to take it off the loom, but first I move the furniture (again) and clean the floor (again), so I don’t pick up any extra dust and leaves and Cheerio bits with the fabric. (handwoven scraps make AMAZING dust cloths, by the way)

Then I move over to the kitchen table, which has been freshly cleared, wiped down, and swept underneath, for the above reasons.

Inspections, measuring, repairs etc happen here. then I serge the ends of the pieces, and go clean the bath tub.

Once the tub is clean, I soak the fabric in it for a few hours to make sure no dyes will run, and to minimize tracking.

Next step it to take it all in a freshly emptied laundry bin down to the basement, and put it through a wash and dry cycle.

When the fabric is still damp, I take it out (in the still empty laundry bin), and bring back up to the kitchen table, which has again been subjected to more cleaning, because at this point, SOMEONE must have had a snack on it, and probably used some glitter glue on something too. (By the way, please, for the love of whatever you hold dear, do NOT EVER send me glitter glue)

The fabric gets another inspection of both sides while damp, and is then moved over to the ironing board in the kitchen (which SURPRISE, has had the floor cleaned just before the fabric moves over there). I do another inspection, and final trimming of threads as I iron.

Then it all goes BACK to the (hopefully still clean) kitchen table for hemming, and marking with my mark, final measuring, photos, and packing.

So all in all, over the course of 2-3 weeks, my living/dining/kitchen areas get cleaned at least 3 times, my desk gets cleared a couple of times, and the bathroom (or at least the tub) gets done once.

Not too bad, eh?

Dressing the loom.

It has been a few days, and I have tried to take photos of the method that I used on this warp. Bear with me as I go through it in detail. Keep in mind that this is not the only/right/best way to do this, just the method that I happened to use on this warp. I often try out new techniques, and mix and match the parts of each that seem appropriate for whatever I am working on.

Now, we left off with the spools of warp yarn being wound.

My house is not large, and I have a pile of kids, so things are….crowded in the house sometimes. The first step in beaming the warp (not surprisingly, this term describes getting the warp onto the warp beam) is to move the living room furniture around.

I promise that my house isn’t always this messy, but it never looks good when you pile thing up to get them out of the way! (hence the unicorn pillow on the chair).

First step is to clear the needed space.

The spool rack is rather large, 72″ tall, and almost 60″ wide when completely opened up. It isn’t pretty, because it is a DIY that I made in order to have the capacity that I wanted, not to mention the fact that building it myself saved me over $200. It lives in the basement, so every time I use it, I need to bring it upstairs.

Here is a “pretty” picture of my new rack!

The spool rack is positioned behind the loom.

I have all my filled spools in a bin next to the rack, ready to go on in order. They are numbered, because I have the short term memory of a gnat and would absolutely mess up the order otherwise.

The spools are filled, and numbered so they stay in the correct order.

I then spend some quality time with the loom and the spools. I put the tension box track on the loom, then put each spool on the loom, and thread each end first through a screw eye, then through the two reeds and multiple bars of the tension box. Once this is done, I attach the tension box to the track, grab  coffee, and am ready to beam.

The track for the tension box is installed.

Each spool is placed on the rack, and the yarn is threaded through the screw eye.

The threads from the spools are all threaded into the tension box in the correct order.

I then progress from one side of the beam to the other (thinking VERY carefully about which end I need to start on, based on how I wound my spools) and fill each section. The warp shown is just over 30 yards in length, and each section takes me 5-7 minutes to wind and secure.

Each section is wound, then secured on the beam.

Once all the sections are complete, and I have secured the threads to a yard stick, I remove the track, put it, and the spool rack away, and replace the furniture.

Furniture (and unicorn) back in place.

I then move the yardstick (and the warp secured to it) to the front of the loom. This keeps everything in order for me, as I rarely have the luxury of threading an entire warp in one sitting.

I then take the warp, and thread by thread (all 816 in this case) put each end through a heddle, hopefully in the correct order. I have a few tricks to keep things in order, but that is for another day.

Threading is complete.

I then put the beater assembly back on the loom (I took it off before i started threading, as it is not comfortable for me to lean over it while I thread), and sley the reed. This means that I take each of those ends that I threaded (remember, 816 of them) and pull them through the slots (dents) of the reed. While I do this, I am also looking for threading errors, of which there are inevitably a few. I fix those as I see them, and hope that I don’t miss any! It is then time to put the front beam on.

The reed is sleyed, and the front beam is replaced on the loom.

See that weird looking beam? It is my frenemy. I LOVE the sandpaper beam on my AVL, it takes the fear out of the phrase “tying on”, but it also tends to rip up my forearms if I am not paying attention.

The last step to dressing the loom is to take all of those ends, again, and place them on that beam. I take care to place them so the yarn runs in a straight line from the back beam through the heddles and reed, to the front beam. Once I have them all in place, I turn into a fusspot, and adjust the tension on the threads, so it is as even as possible. I have been known to work my way across a warp, one thread at a time, and to readjust portions of the warp multiple times.

The threads are straightened, and place on the front beam in order.

Now it looks all pretty (well, it did a few minutes after this photo was taken, and the loose threads were all tightened), and the loom is officially dressed.

Now the fun starts! I wind my pirns, and am ready to weave.

Pirns are wound, ready for weaving.

I usually weave a “header”, often using up some leftover yarn, generally in a colour that strongly contrasts the warp, in order to look for any threading errors. I also use the header to fix any sleying errors that I become aware of while I weave the header.

After all of that (about 2-4 days in my life, but more like 10 hours in “real time”) I am ready to start weaving.

Ooooo……pretty fabric!

I love my job, even though there is a LOT of repetition, I get to make beautiful fabric out of yarn.

An end to the slacking…..

hmm….Somehow 5 months have gone by, without a single post here. How did that happen???

Oh yes, spring showed up and the crazy busy season blended into summer (in which I have crap internet access, and tend to be outside more than inside), and suddenly it is fall, and we are back in the winter house.

How was your summer? I hope it was fantastic, with lots of fun, friends, and laughter to go with good weather.

I did a bit of weaving over July and August, 15 yds of teatowels, 5 yds of baby blankets, about 25 yds of plain weave samples (which was actually a LOT of fun, even though they will remain samples), and a 12 yard warp for the fall “Competition of Weavers” that is held on the Loom to Wrap facebook group.

Well then, I guess that 50 odd yards over two months is not too shabby a summer, especially when you consider that I also did a ton of knitting (mostly while sitting in the shade on our beach with a cold beverage, watching the kids play) and a fair amount of fishing.

I am back at the winter house now, the kids are settling into school and the associated routines and activities, and I have sorted out my weaving area, as well as several other parts of our home that are stripped down for the summer season.

I am happy to be reweaving (this is unusual, as I tend to have too many new and exciting things to try to go back to old drafts/designs, with the exception of a couple of towel projects) the barcode warp. This one is dark and moody, and based on a magical story of a young boy who doesn’t know who he is, but quickly finds out the strength wtihin himself, with a little (OK, a LOT) of help from his friends

I thought you might like to see how and where I work (especially as it is particularly tidy at this moment), so I am going to try and take you through the process with this warp, from start to finish, if I can remember to take the needed photos.

Because this warp is a reweave, I already had the design saved on the computer, along with my winding chart. I changed a few threads to give a little differentiation between this warp and the last one, and got down to work.

There are many ways to warp a loom, and this is just my version (which is by no means perfect, so please don’t take any of this as finite instructions).

In the photo below, you can see my winding station. the drawers hold all manner of useful things, although most are sewing related. On top of that is my AVL double ended bobbin winder, I use this to wind bobbins and pirns for my shuttles, as well as spools for sectional warping. I LOVE this tool, and use it regularly.

On the left of the winder, I have a small folding table that holds yarn spools, as well as completed spools. They are numbered to make sure that I keep the threads in the correct order and I use the winding chart (on the wall to the right) to tell me which yarn to wind on which spool in which order. (PHEW! That is a lot of “which”-es!)

Winding the spools will take me a couple of days, but the beaming is quick fast once it is all set up, which for me is a bonus because it means that I can wind warps that are quite long, without having to move my living room furniture multiple times a day, for several days.

The next step in warping is to set up the spool rack (I have a brand spankin’ new one, that I am super excited to tell you all about) and the tension box, but we will get to that in a few days.

Working on winding spools, which will take me several days.