Sleeping Dog Weaving

Untangled and Sampled

2011-06-28T15:56:00.001-07:00

Too long since I’ve posted. Since the last time, when I was still untangling the mess I made, the yarn has been wound into two warp bouts, beamed onto the back beam and threaded:

The main warp is 20/2 Tencel and I’ve planned a turned M’s & O’s pattern. I’m using a blue 5/2 Tencel as a supplementary warp to put nice borders around the cells that happen when you weave M’s & O’s.You can see the supplementary warp hanging from the castle in the second photo. There are 14 ends of this warp that will be weighted in pairs using 7 pill bottles. I’m pretty sure this warp would have worked just fine if I had warped the supplementary warp on the beam with the main warp but I wanted to be able to change the supplementary warp on the second scarf – maybe to use a green instead of a blue.

I had to sample this warp because I wasn’t sure about the sett. I sett the main warp at 36 epi using 3 ends per dent in a 12 dent reed. Then, I just put the supplementary warp in the same dent as the last three ground warp ends of each interior block. For the first scarf, I chose a beautiful blue 60/2 silk weft. This is what it looked like before and after washing and drying:

It worked great! This is the sett I will use for the scarves. As always with Tencel, it felt stiff coming off the loom. It didn’t take the cells long to form once the sample hit the water – the plain weave cells are surrounded by sections with five-thread floats that collapse when washed and distort the plain weave sections into nice ovals. After washing and drying the hand of the sample is perfect, so I made a good guess. The green in the warp gets overwhelmed by the blue but it still contributes, especially in the float areas. You can also see how nicely the thicker 5/2 warp threads outline the cells.

I did have some problems with the sample, though. I broke two interior threads early in the piece. It’s really unusual for me to break interior threads, so I’m not sure what happened but these broke close to the start of the weaving and no more broke, so I’m hoping it was a startup issue, perhaps with some twisted threads. I also had some issues with the selvedges, especially the left one. This is also unusual for me and I plan to slightly modify the treading for the short plain weave edges that I have on the piece and see if that helps. I also need to look at the treadling to see if I can see what might be making the left edge behave badly. Maybe something funny due to cramming three ends in a dent. We’ll see if I can figure it out.

It Takes Two to Tangle

2011-06-17T06:46:00.001-07:00

Over the years that I’ve been weaving I’ve learned there are some items that, when controlled by me, can be dangerous.

The first lesson was with scissors. Actually, I learned that lesson twice (so much for the “You’ll never do that again” theory). The first time, I was weaving napkins with a difficult pattern and, after messing up two napkins, I finally nearly finished a good one when the scissors, which I had placed on the castle, slipped off and landed in the middle of the warp, blades open, and sliced through about the middle third of the warp. The second time was when I had actually finished two scarves, complete with hem stitching on the loom, and decided to cut them apart while they were still on the loom. As I cut through the division between the two scarves, I neatly cut the bottom scarf in half. Both times resulted in my saying many words not in any weaver’s glossary, but scissors don’t live on the castle any more and things don’t get cut apart until they are well clear of the loom.

The next dangerous item was the sewing machine. It’s my wife’s and it hates me. I only ever do two things on it – zig-zagging before hand hemming or hemming with a straight stitch. I’ve come perilously close to ruining nice towels by getting snags due to whatever I did that day to displease the sewing machine. I’ve now learned to trick it by using a scrap piece of fabric when I first sit down at the machine. I let the machine play its sadistic game on that and then adjust things until they run smoothly before giving it one of my woven articles.

Now, apparently, I can’t be trusted with yarn in skeins. I had this beautiful 2000-yard skein of 20/2 Tencel hand-dyed by the wonderful ladies at Just Our Yarn. I couldn’t quite figure out if it needed to go on the swift in one loop or if one of the ties was supposed to be undone and opened up before putting it on the swift. Well, I cut one of the ties before putting the skein on the swift to see if it would unfold. It didn’t, of course, but what it did do was tangle so badly that I was temped to put it in the trash and take a two-week sabbatical from weaving. Thanks to my lovely wife, together we spent over a week, in shifts, winding the yarn onto bobbins and untangling it, sometimes inches at a time, until it was all unwound. There are plenty of knots in the yarn because we sometime just got to places where we gave up and cut somewhere else to start over, but we got it all unwound and I’ll deal with the knots when I wind the warp.

This is what it looked like as we got close to the end:

Note the six bobbins on the table. Finally, here is what we have to warp from:

After eight days working on this project, I should have had scarves, but I only have seven, painfully won bobbins. You can bet I’ll never again cut a tie before putting the skein of yarn on the swift.

London Trip

2011-06-09T06:54:00.001-07:00

I’m just back from two weeks in England. I don’t like posting in advance that I’m going to be out of town (paranoia?) but now that I’m back I’ll have a few posts about the trip.

First, a huge disappointment. For years, I’ve been looking forward to visiting the textile collection in the Victoria & Albert museum. Here’s a picture of the Mecca of decorative arts with a classic double-decker bus in front:

Imagine our shock when we got there only to find out that all six textile study rooms are closed permanently! We got several different stories about why, but the real reason is that in 2013 they will be opening a new museum just for fashion and textiles. I have no idea why they had to shut down the existing rooms three months before we got there and two years before the new museum opens, but there you go. Info on the new museum is here:

The Clothworkers' Centre for Textiles and Fashion Study and Conservation

There were still plenty of textiles in other parts of the museum and we did spend two half-days there but this was going to be the focus of our trip and we got an apartment within walking distance so we could pop in whenever we wanted. I guess we could have checked before we went but who would have imagined this would happen?

More later.

Two Towels Finished

2011-05-20T07:28:00.001-07:00

Here are two of the three towels, washed and hemmed:

All towels have an 8/2 cotton warp. The blue towel has an 8/2 cotton weft and the green towel has a 10/2 perle cotton weft. I used 16/2 cotton for the hem but you can see I’m still getting a flared hem, especially in the green, satin, towel. I guess I'll have to try 20/2 or even 30/2 in the next batch of towels. I think 20/2 might be enough for twills like the blue towel but on something with longer floats like the satin I may need 30/2. I hope I don’t have to resort to sewing thread!

And, finally, I can’t resist posting the picture of this cute guy who I met at the Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival a few weeks ago:

My Weaving Setup

2011-05-19T07:57:00.001-07:00

OK, the pictures of the towels are still in the camera! But, in the meantime, here is my setup on the AVL loom:

I have a wonderful sliding bench made by Walt Turpening. I don’t need the sliding bench for this loom but I use it because it is so comfortable. We designed the top part so that it can be used as a threading bench and it is great for that task – just the right height. Nothing can make threading comfortable, but this is the best setup I’ve had.

Then, there’s the Ott-lite over the piece I’m weaving. I have decent overhead light but find the task light helps. I think Ott-lites are overpriced and there are other options available now, but this is what I have and it works well. The other lamp over the castle is used when I’m warping from the back.

Finally, the computer sits on the castle where I can keep an eye on what the dobby is doing. This is an old laptop and its only job is to drive the loom, so it lives here permanently. Mostly, once I get started, I don’t look at the computer much unless I have to reverse to unweave something or when I get near the end of the piece to know when I finish a repeat so I can stop.

Not shown is a little table to the left of the loom where I keep paper and pencil, bobbins and pirns, and other stuff that I want handy. Also to the left is my 8-shaft 46” Schacht floor loom which is also a pleasure to weave on and gets projects that either don’t need the complexity of the AVL or the very few things I weave that need the extra width. I’ve said this before but I do think these two will be my “forever” looms – they’re a perfect pair for the kinds of weaving I do.

Washing and Hemming

2011-05-16T09:24:00.001-07:00

Here are the three towels as they came off the loom. The two satin ones have different sides but the blue block twill one looks the same from either side.

I should have left them together until after I washed them but I cut them apart while zig-zagging the hems to make it easier to sew. By cutting them apart before washing, though, my ends look like fuzzy caterpillars:

I have to trim these before turning under to make the hem. This is what it looks like trimmed – still not as nice as it would have been if I waited and cut them after washing:

My pictures of the finished towels are still in the camera – I’ll show them next post.

I managed once again to conquer the dreaded sewing machine. You’ve heard of dogs that are “one-person dogs.” Well, our sewing machine is a one-person dog – it clearly favors my wife. I’ve learned to outsmart it, though, and after I set it up I use a scrap piece of fabric to sew a little before I let it touch one of my woven articles.

Three Towels Done and Off the Loom

2011-05-14T14:22:00.001-07:00

Monday is jury day at the gallery and I wanted to put a few towels in this month, so after I wove the third towel on this warp I cut them off the loom. A few threads were getting a little wonky anyway, so this will let me fix the tension on them. Here’s the third towel on the loom:

(Should have trimmed the loose thread before taking the picture). This is similar to the last towel I showed and I actually designed this one first and then thought it was a little too busy so I took out some of the spots. I like the sparser, green one better, but this is ok. Again, this one used 10/2 perle cotton for the weft. Here is the other side as I was cutting it off:

I called this a satin block weave, but it’s I’m not sure that’s a good description. Satin has warp floats and sateen has weft floats. The reverse side of any satin cloth is sateen and when both appear on the same side of the cloth it is called damask. On these last two towels, the side that was up on the loom (the side with the colored spots) has a mostly satin background and the spots are a single, somewhat altered, block of sateen.

Now, my least favorite part of weaving – I need to use the dreaded sewing machine to zig-zag the hem ends, then wash the towels and cut them apart and hand hem them. The sewing machine used to hate me although, over time, we have come to a sort of grudging peace. I don’t mind hemming so much although it is time consuming. The gallery would accept machine-hemmed items but I like them better when they’re done by hand, so I just do it.

Now on the Loom

2011-05-08T20:45:00.001-07:00

OK, this is do or die for the blog. I’m either going to post at least once a week or finally decide that blogging is not for me.

I got a 40 shaft loom last year and I’m still learning how to design with that much flexibility. I long ago decided that I’m not an artist but a fine craftsperson. If you give me a blank piece of paper and a box of crayons and tell me to draw something, and then come back in two hours I’ll be sitting there with a blank piece of paper and a box of crayons. But I have no problem taking one or more weave structures and making something interesting happen with them. I have no desire for a Jacquard loom because I consider that “art” and wouldn’t know what to do with it, but with 40 shafts I’m just constrained enough that I feel more comfortable designing something.

Well, what’s on the loom now is a long warp of 8/2 unmercerized natural cotton threaded as a 36-shaft straight draw with another two shafts allocated to a half-basket selvage. I put this on so I can play with different designs and get something useful out of them. For the second towel on this warp I decided I’d like to do a block satin design. Well, that sounded easier than it was.

First problem was that satin blocks don’t fit together nicely without producing horrendous floats. Without going into a lot of detail, true satin requires at least 5 shafts and the most basic satin has 4-thread floats. When you put these together you get a lot of 8-thread floats, which are not acceptable in a towel (or most other functional items). So, the first thing I need to do was spend a lot of time enumerating the different blocks of 5-thread satin and inverting them or rotating them to find ways to combine them without getting the big floats. I haven’t done and exhaustive study (but probably will – I’m a mathematician by training) but I did enough to get the floats down to 5 threads.

The next problem was that I had a 36 shaft threading which is not a multiple of the 5-thread satin blocks. I used 35 shafts with the satin and had to figure out what to do with the 36th thread. The easy solutions either brought back longer floats than I wanted or produced an ugly line between pattern repeats. As you’ll see in the photo, my solution was ok but you can still see where the 36th shaft is. So a lesson I’ve already learned but managed to make myself re-learn is to design things where the design repeats are even multiples of the threading.

Anyway, I did two satin block designs and here is the first one I’ve woven:

The weft here is 10/2 perle cotton. This is what it looks like on the computer as I’m weaving:

Warp Planning

2011-01-24T20:43:00.001-08:00

I dyed four 2 ounce skeins of 8/2 Tencel a while back and two of them went together pretty well but I didn’t have enough of them to make a long warp without combining them with some commercially-dyed Tencel. This was my box of possibilities – the funny looking cones are the hand-dyed yarn.

I ended up not using the yellow yarn, the silver yarn or the blue/red yarn that is under the silver yarn. I did use all the others. The warp has been wound (8 yards for three scarves) and threaded on the loom. I did a straight draw 32-shaft threading. I’ll show pictures of the warp on the loom in a day or two.

I’ve only designed one of the three drafts that I will use and I haven’t yet decided on the weft colors. It took about two weeks for me to settle on the warp. I’ll try a few weft colors with the one draft I designed and then see what I like. I didn’t put enough warp on the loom to allow for sampling, so I’ll weave a little in the header to test colors but then I’ll have to pull it out before twisting the fringe.

Putting 2200 Heddles on the Loom

2010-09-12T16:59:00.001-07:00

Here are my new 40 shafts waiting patiently to get their quota of heddles.

I’ll put 100 each on shafts 1-4 and 50 each on the other shafts, so that I can do tied weaves without messing with the heddles. Here’s the loom patiently waiting to get its shafts back:

And here (I don’t think this is going to be fun) are the 2200 heddles:

But it will be fun when they’re all on and I can start using the loom.

Crossed Thread – Broken Thread

2010-04-21T13:03:00.001-07:00

I had something very weird happen today. I had a warp on the loom for two scarves. I wove one scarf, cut it off and finished it. Then I tied on again and wove about 35 inches when I made a mistake and had to unweave about an inch. While I was unweaving I kept catching a thread about half way through the warp. I finally figured out that two threads were crossed between the heddles and the reed. However, I saw no evidence of this in the first scarf or the first 35 inches of the second scarf! In fact, I looked back on the scarf on the loom and only one “cell” had a float in it that would indicate a problem – everything before that wove correctly. So, …, did the weaving gods visit during the night and cross two threads just to make the project more interesting? Or, did the cross somehow stay back where it wasn’t obvious and just managed to work its way forward after 120 inches of weaving? Who knows.

Anyhow, I had to cut the two threads and resley them. I then had to treat them as broken threads. I don’t use the '”book” method for broken threads because it just leaves you with two sets of ends to needle weave in. I just get a new thread (or in this case two threads) long enough to finish the scarf and T-pin them in with weights on the back of the loom. Then, I just forget about the original thread unless, e.g., I had a third scarf on the loom, in which case I would reattach if for the third scarf. This way I only have one place where broken warp ends overlap instead of two.

Here’s the new set of threads (the ends of the old threads are already woven in:

Just-in-time Gift

2010-04-18T08:05:00.001-07:00

Finished weaving Thursday night about 10:30 pm. Friday morning into washer and dryer. Came off the ironing board at 1:15 and we were out the door on the way to the wedding at 2:15. Whew! They loved it, though.

Busy Week – Table Runner

2010-04-06T14:05:00.001-07:00

Too many deadlines this week. Friends are getting married on Friday and last week Dolly said why don’t we weave them something. So, I took her up on the offer and she wound the warp, I beamed it, she threaded and sleyed, and now I’m weaving. Goal is 20” per day for the next three days and then off the loom and into the washer and dryer Friday morning.

On top of that, I’m twisting fringe on three scarves that just came off one of the looms and I’m starting to weave two deflected doubleweave scarves that I hope to have all done by Sunday because Monday is jury day at the gallery. I’m thinking the beginning of next week will not see much weaving – I’ll need a break.

My amiga, Catherine Mayo, who has a great writer’s blog, just had a post about blogging, and she advises writers to write about something other than their new book. I’m thinking it might be nice to blog about something other than what’s on the loom – maybe I’ll post more.

Anyway, here’s the design for the table runner. It’s basically a shadow weave design with some variations. I’m pretty sure these friends don’t read my blog ;-)

Color Gamps Drying on the Line

2010-03-21T17:18:00.001-07:00

I’ve had a color gamp warp on one of my table looms for longer than I’d like to admit and this week I decided to weave with two colors per day until I finished it and could cut it off the loom. Today it came off – finally!

The one I just finished was a plain weave gamp, but I had four others that used different weave structures.

Here are all five of them hanging out to dry:

Once they’re dry and ironed, I’ll try to get close-up pictures of some of the more interesting ones and post them.

(Incidentally, I love Windows Live Writer).

New Blogging Software and Doubleweave Windows

2010-03-20T07:12:00.001-07:00

I’m trying out the Windows Live Writer as a way to generate my posts instead of the web interface on blogspot, which I’ve never been crazy about.

Here’s a picture of a doubleweave placemat that I wove recently.

Doubleweave is my favorite weave structure. This is a fairly simple two-block doubleweave on 8 shafts using five different colors of red yarn. Most of it was either 8/2 cotton or 8/2 cotlin but I think there was some finer cotlin also, maybe 14/2 or something like that.

Right now on the loom I have a warp for three Tencel scarves but it turns out that it’s not a very interesting design, so it’s a struggle for me to sit at the loom and weave. I’ll be selling the loom it’s on (a 16-shaft, 40-inch Macomber). I just finished the second scarf and may cut it off and leave the rest of the warp on for potential buyers to play with.

If I like this Windows Live Writer, I just might post more!

Dyeing

2010-02-22T12:07:00.000-08:00

I have done a little bit of dyeing but not enough to feel comfortable with it. We have two dyeing study groups locally but both are full and not taking new members, so when a third group started I jumped in. We had our first dyeing session last weekend and used Procion MX fiber reactive dyes. I dyed four skeins of Tencel, two of cotton and two of a Tencel/silk blend. The results are shown here:

The four Tencel skeins are on the right, the orange ones are cotton and the pale ones are the Tencel/silk blends. I agitated too much when I washed them so they look like a tangled mess. I did wind one of the Tencel skeins into a ball and it worked fine. I'm sure the cotton skeins will also unravel well, but I'm pretty sure the Tencel/silk blend skeins are toast. They're not only very tangled but for some reason they didn't take the dye very well, so I'm not all that unhappy to lose them. I'll try to unravel them but I don't have much hope.

Now that I've got these under my belt, I may be more inclined to just set aside a day for dyeing in the basement. I'd like to play with more color blending and then, later, try some acid dyes on protein fibers.

Reading for Study Group

2009-09-18T20:58:00.000-07:00

I am in a fantastic study group for multishaft weaving and this year our topic is "Design Your Own Cloth." We are doing an intensive study of weave structures. Here are the books I'm reading as we go along. I'm trying (but not always succeeding) to read the appropriate chapters in each book for each month's topic. It's incredibly interesting and I'm learning a lot.

Sharon Alderman's Mastering Weave Structures is an amazing book. All you have to do is read the chapter on plain weave to know that if you read this book carefully you will have a lifetime of weaving ideas.

Ann Sutton's book, The Structure of Weaving, is another great inspirational book. When I read this book or Sharon Alderman's, I just want to run to the loom and try things. Unfortunately, it's a lot easier to get ideas than to actually execute them - the loom refuses to warp itself.

Irene Emery's book, The Primary Structure of Fabrics, is a classic, and rightly so. It puts all of these structures in context.

And, finally, there is Doramay Keasbey's great book, Pattern Techniques for Handweavers, which shows you how to design the textiles.

All in all, it looks to be a fabulous, although fairly intense year for this study group. We've also grown this year and have several new members who will bring their ideas into the group.

Bookbinding

2009-09-11T12:51:00.001-07:00

I haven't yet posted anything about my bookbinding. I haven't been as active with that craft but I recently started back up and made a few books. These are two of them. Bookbinding is a nice sideline to weaving because the books get done a lot quicker than a textile, so there is a bit more immediate satisfaction from having completed something. I'm planning to do some experimenting with weaving my own book cloth so that I can bind the books with handwoven material. Right now, I'm using commercial book cloth and decorated paper, some hand make (but not by me) and some printed.

Doubleweave and Color-and-Weave

2009-09-07T19:58:00.000-07:00

I haven't been posting for a while - more on that later - but for now, here are two scarves I recently wove on the same warp. The first is a doubleweave scarf that I designed and was the reason I put this warp on the loom. It was quite difficult to weave - 4 blocks on 16 shafts and heavy lifting - so I didn't want to weave a second one even though I put on a warp for two scarves. So, I resleyed the warp to a looser sett and wove the second scarf as color-and-weave. Two interesting but totally different scarves.

As for why I haven't been posting, I just feel that I should post photos with my posts, but I'm willing to spend five minutes writing a post, but the extra little time involved in taking a photo, uploading it to the computer, adjusting it so it looks nice, etc. is just enough to discourage me. So, I think I'll try posting for a while but not showing current photos - I'll wait until I've processed the photos and then talk about that project.

The two scarves that just came off the loom today use a combination of five-thread plain weave blocks alternating with five-thread satin blocks on a painted warp. One has a purple weft and the other a red, slightly bumpy weft. I like them both but you'll have to wait until at least next Monday to see them ;-)

Towels Off Loom

2009-02-28T19:40:00.000-08:00

The six towels (and a towelette from extra warp) are off the loom. Here are pictures of them, some from the "front" and some from the "back:"

And, here's a close-up picture of one of them:

I was happy with them as they came off the loom, but when I washed them I got a lot of tracking and the patterns became quite muddled. You can still see them from a distance, but up close, the pattern gets lost. Quite a disappointment. I used a combination of cotlin and 8/2 unmercerized cotton from a mill-end batch. Next time I may try mercerized cotton for the colored yarn, although I'm not sure which of the yarns caused the problem. Maybe next time I won't do six towels before I see how they wash.

Towels

2009-02-05T17:59:00.000-08:00

I've been out of town and not weaving for a few days but I just finished towel #6. I warped for six towels but still have warp left for another, possibly shorter, 7th towel. Here's a picture of the first one:

This isn't my favorite pattern of the ones I've done - I'll post more when they're off the loom. I need to get the 7th one woven tomorrow and finish at least a few to put in our gallery on Tuesday, which is jury day.

I joined another guild - three wasn't enough. For years I resisted joining the Weaver's Guild of Greater Baltimore because they meet the night before the Central Pennsylvania Guild of Handweavers and I just can't bring myself to go to two guild meetings in twelve hours - one 45 minutes away and the other 2 hours away. But I also felt bad about not belonging to a close and very active guild. Some day I'll find the secret of 36 hour days.

2009-01-20T07:24:00.000-08:00

Well, let's give this blog thing another try. I seem to stop and go in spurts.

The crackle scarves have been off the loom a long time - one is actually sold and gone. Maybe I'll post pictures of them sometime later just for closure.

I now have a warp on the Macomber loom to make six towels. The warp is half cotton and half cotlin, both in a natural color. Here is a picture of how I thread the loom when going back-to-front.

I hold all the shafts up by sticking a strong rod under the metal lifters at the castle. Then I still need to use a really short stool so the heddle eyes are about at my eye level. I tried a regular chair but it hurt my back. Of course, the lower stool hurts my knees, but not as much as the other one hurts my back.

My studio is in the lower level of the house and it's winter, so the room is about 5 degrees colder than the rest of the house, hence the heater blowing warm air on my feet.

The towels will be a set of fancy 16-shaft twills. I'm actually weaving the third one today, but will save the pictures for later in the week.

When the Cardboard Falls

2008-09-21T15:08:00.000-07:00

I use corrugated cardboard rolls to pack my warp beam and one of the most satisfying parts of a project is when the cardboard falls off and thunks onto the floor. That means the project is almost finished and ready to come off the loom.

I recently heard about something called rosin paper, though, and bought a big roll at Home Depot and plan to use it instead of the cardboard. It is a thinner paper, but very sturdy. More on this in some later post.

I got my crackle scarves off the loom last week but don't plan to post pictures until I get them finished and washed. They are quite different. On one I treadled 24 picks of each block A to H and back to A and repeated that for the whole scarf. I got a nice diamond an X pattern. On the other one, I had a regular pattern but I varied the picks per block and I did five blocks in sequence, then backed up three, then forward again ... On that one I got a series of wobbly V's. The patterns are both pretty subtle, though, and I'm anxious to see how they look when washed. But not anxious enough to be in a huge hurry to twist fringe ;-)

Next project, in the planning stages, is a bunch of tea towels in an 8/2 Cotton/linen blend using different fancy twill patterns. I haven't decided whether to use 8-shaft or 16-shaft twills. The latter, of course, have more variety, but they probably mean I have to crawl under the Macomber in the middle of the project to change the tie-up. That prospect alone heavily favors the 8-shaft twills.

Snakes!

2008-09-16T12:55:00.000-07:00

For most of you I don't think finding a nest of snakes in your yard would exactly make your day, but today it made mine. My wife found these two cuties snuggling in a nest they made in one of our large azalea bushes (click on the photo for a larger picture):

I like having snakes in the yard. My friend Lisa Couturier, a fine writer, wrote a great book of nature essays called The Hope of Snakes: And Other Tales of the Urban Landscape. I enjoyed reading it and you might, too.

End-Fed Shuttles

2008-09-12T19:35:00.000-07:00

I've been weaving with a Bluster Bay end-fed shuttle (EFS) for close to a year now, and recently bought two AVL EFS's at an estate sale. If I'm doing a one-shuttle weave, I usually use the Bluster Bay. For the most part, I like it and it does what it is supposed to do.

I think I'm winding the pirns correctly, but I still sometimes get sections of the weft that pull more than other sections.

I'm now weaving with a Jaggerspun merino/silk blend for the weft and I've found that when weaving with a yarn like this that is a little sticky, I have to put a lot of tension on the warp for everything to work correctly. I also have quite a bit of tension in the shuttle and when I throw the shuttle, there is sometimes quite a pull on the selvage and I have to remember to release that tension before beating. If I do that, everything seems to be ok. I may get a little more draw in than normal, but I'm not even sure about that.

I have really good selvages even with boat shuttles, but I do still like weaving with EFS's. I don't, however, think they're the cat's meow as some weavers seem to think. With a bit of care, boat shuttles can do just as well.

I haven't tried the AVL's yet because they are quite a bit longer than the Bluster Bay. Next time I have something wider on the loom, I'll give them a whirl.

Even Further Off Topic (Hillary / Sarah)

2008-09-10T21:22:00.000-07:00

OK, I'm really, truly, no kidding, not very political (although I do have rather strong opinions), but within the last few days I saw an article in the newspaper that implied there had been a 20% shift with white women voters (who formerly supported Hillary) who shifted from Obama to McCain, presumably because of Sarah Palin. Here's what I have to say about that: Are they nuts??? I mean, really, if that's true, these people should have their voter registration rescinded. It's like saying you were going to vote for Mother Teresa but changed your mind and were going to vote for Adolph Hitler because you liked mustaches. (Not to imply that Sarah Palin is like Adoplh Hitler - she obviously would never grow a mustache.)

So much for voting on the issues. Sigh!

Way Off Topic

2008-09-10T20:59:00.000-07:00

I found two cool things today.

1. If you click on a photo in my (or probably any other) blog, you can get a bigger picture! For instance, if you click on my shawl, you get a huge, ginormous picture of the shawl. I didn't know you could do that. Actually, the shawl picture is probably too big and I should try to prune my photos a little before uploading.

2. I found this really cool test while surfing on the Weaving Web Ring - it was at Melissa's site:

Try it! (She does better than I do.)

60 words
I did it a bunch of time and 60 was my best time - more often I was in the mid-50's.

Crackle (Finally!) and the Shawl

2008-09-09T15:03:00.000-07:00

To answer Bev's question about the shawl first: There are actually five different supplementary warp yarns in this shawl, most of which is 5/2 perle cotton. I'm sure you can't see them all in the little photo. One of them is Dazzle, a green and gold ladder ribbon yarn. Another is Tartelette, a chenille that was a blue/green mix. It wormed when washed but since the floats were so small it actually produce a pretty nice effect.

After the Complex Weavers conference in Florida this year, I told a friend of mine that my favorite class was the polychrome crackle workshop. She laughed and, after a pregnant pause, said, "You're kidding, right? That stuff is so ugly." Well, I wasn't kidding, although some four block crackles can be pretty unsightly. With more blocks, though, I think you can get some wonderful subtle blending of colors.

Crackle is a block weave that allows you to have one block per shaft, which is pretty unusual. They aren't pure blocks because some of them sort of weave together, but you can still see the blocks. In four shafts, the blocks are (A: 1-2-3-2), (B: 2-3-4-3), (C: 3-4-1-3) and (D: 4-1-2-1). When you move from one block to the adjacent one, you need to add an "incidental" to keep the odd/even shaft sequence. For instance, threading A and B next to each other would be: 1-2-3-2-1-2-3-4-3, with the middle, bold, 1, being the incidental.

There are several ways to tie up and treadle crackle, but a common way is to make it a twill derivative. When you do polychrome crackle, you usually thread the warp with one color and use multiple colors (and, thus, multiple shuttles) in the weft.

The crackle warp I have on the loom now is a concoction I call crack-hell. I started with an 8-block polychrome crackle and then turned it (flipped the warp and weft) so I could put the colors in the warp and weave with a single shuttle. That worked well until after I wound the warp and beamed it on the loom and then noticed that when it turned, it also morphed into a 10-shaft structure. Of course, if I had put it on my 16-shaft loom this wouldn't have been a problem, but I put it on my 8-shaft loom. So ... back to the drawing board to come up with something that I could salvage. I finally came up with something that works and sort of looks like polychrome crackle, but I'm not sure exactly what it is. Anyway, the draft, if treadled one block after the next, produces cloth that looks like this:

I'm not weaving it exactly like this - I'm varying the block sequence as I weave. I'll post pictures of the two scarves when they've come off the loom and have been washed.

I think blogging is supposed to be about short posts, which I don't seem to do well ;-) Thanks to those of you who actually read it.

Gallery Jury Day

2008-09-08T19:18:00.000-07:00

In June, I got juried into the Potomac Craftsmen Fiber Gallery, which is in Gallery 18 at the Torpedo Factory Art Center in Alexandria, Va. I had to go through some training before being allowed to submit things for the Gallery, but I completed that recently. The Gallery has 11 shows each year and all of the individual pieces have to be juried into each show. Today was the first jury day when I was eligible to submit items. I put five things in - three scarves, a table runner and a shawl and all five made it into the show.

Here is a picture of the shawl:

This is exciting for me on several levels. It gives me someplace to sell some of the things I make, which is good because there are only so many things you can give away for gifts. But more importantly for me, it is corroboration that I've achieved some level of recognized competence in my craft. It's also very motivating for me to be part of the Gallery - it's a co-op of about 70 fiber artists who are very talented. I once had a smart boss who said, "Competence breeds competence." It's exciting to be part of such a talented group and every time I work at the Gallery I come away with a new burst of energy for my own work.

I also have been thinking lately about what I want to achieve with my crafts. Right now, my "core theme" for my work is that I want to make beautiful, but functional things. That applies to my weaving and my bookbinding. (I do like to make wall hangings, so I guess I have to assume they are "functional.") I see too many things in both the fiber and book arts that I wouldn't want to make - I guess someone thinks they are art but if all you can do with a "book" is look at it, I don't get the point.

OK, enough of that. Next post really will be about crackle.

Dumb Weaving Tricks

2008-09-04T13:11:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I mentioned a funny weaving story (at least it's funny now.) With two exceptions, I've always warped my loom from front to back. A few weeks ago, I was using a fine bumpy yarn for the warp and decided it would work better back to front. There are two ways to beam the warp on - one with the warp going through to the front of the loom and the other with both you and the warp at the back of the loom. I like the second way better because you don't have to get up all the time and I think it makes for a better warp - you wind one turn and then pull on sections of the warp to tighten them.

But, when you do it that way, the warp goes over the back beam backwards (I don't have pictures of this part, but you tie the warp onto the apron then bring it trough the inside of the back beam and through the raddle to the back of the loom.) After beaming on you have to remember to bring the other end of the warp around the back beam before threading the heddles. Well, I was so happy with the ease of beaming on that I just forgot about that part until after I had the heddles threaded and the reed sleyed. On my Schacht loom, this wouldn't be a huge problem because the back beam lifts off and I could have just moved it under the warp and put it back on and it would have been fixed. But on my Macomber loom, the back beam is screwed on and glued - it doesn't go anywhere.

So, what to do? Fortunately, it wasn't a really wide warp and I had a section of an old beam laying around (doesn't everyone have a spare beam?). With clamps and spacers, I essentially made a new back beam inside the real one, so that I could get a proper shed. Here's my Rube Goldberg loom:

And, if you think this is one of those mistakes that are so bad that you'll only make them once, you'd be wrong ;-) I did the same thing on the very next warp! Fortunately that one was on the Schacht loom and I just fixed it by removing the back beam and slipping it under the warp before putting it back on. Despite all of this, I think I've been converted to warping back to front for most things.

Next time, I'll post a bit on crackle and what I have on the loom now.

p.s. Thanks to Peg from South Carolina for nudging me on the photos and telling me that Blogger will trim them down - I don't have to do that.

Maybe I'm not Meant to Blog

2008-09-03T15:48:00.001-07:00

I've been listening to some of the great interviews at Craft Sanity and have gotten inspired to blog again - we'll see if it lasts. I am primarily a weaver and have just gotten juried into a gallery (more about that later), so I'm busy getting some of my pieces ready to go into the gallery. I also spent some time in Florence, Italy this past spring and came back excited about resuming my latent bookbinding skills. I've also been spending time learning kumihimo and tablet weaving. So, I've had a pretty unproductive summer but feel ready to go with some new ideas for the coming season.

I think the reason my blogs bog down is that I always feel that I need to put some pictures in my posts and that little bit of extra work is enough to stop me. It's not a big deal, but sometimes I just don't feel like getting the camera out, taking the pictures, downloading them, processing them to make them web-ready and then uploading them. This time, I think I'll try to just blog and not worry about the pictures. I have a funny weaving story for which I already have pictures (but they need processing), and I'll try to post that soon.

Right now, I have a warp on the loom for two polychrome crackle scarves made from Jaggerspun wool/silk plus an alpaca/silk blend. I have about half of the first scarf done. I also have about a half-dozen pieces off the loom but in need of finishing - either hemming or fringe twisting. Finishing isn't my favorite thing, but I do need to work off some of this backlog. I want to put two pieces in the gallery and need to finish them by Sunday (today's Friday), so I have an incentive for those.

More later (I hope more regularly).

New Yarn Shelves

2006-09-30T19:49:00.000-07:00

Slowly but surely, we're transforming a cluttered basement room into a nice crafts room that is fun to work in. After installing some cabinets, I had a 24" space between the cabinets and the doors that wasn't being used, so I added some yarn shelves. I couldn't find shelves that were an exact fit so I went to Ikea and bought shelves that were 30" wide. I took everything all apart, cut the shelf wood to the right size, then put it all back together again. I just got them together and filled up this morning. This is only about 1/2 of my yarn stash but it freed up space that is better used for something else and got this yarn into a much better organized place.

To the left is my Dorothy table loom that I'm warping with some alpaca to make a scarf during a weaving demo that I'm doing at an alpaca farm in N.Y. next Saturday. I'm also nearly ready to start weaving on the rayon scarves that I've got on one of the big looms. I've got enough warp on to sample before I start the scarves, so I should be able to post a picture of the sample when it's finished.

Sorry for the Pause

2006-09-26T19:57:00.000-07:00

Sorry I haven't been posting. It's been a bad week - a car accident and water damage in the basement. All seems to be under control again (nobody hurt and nothing valuable damaged) and I'll try to get back to posting about weaving tomorrow.

Towel #13 - Deflected Double Weave

2006-09-19T18:18:00.000-07:00

This one is different! It is an 8-shaft deflected double weave and I've shown the front and back of the fabric. I haven't studied this one enough to be able to say a lot about it except that this structure has long warp and weft floats surrounding blocks of plain weave. When washed the floats allow the threads under them to collapse and get "deflected" from their normal positions and they create curved lines.

I'm not sure it makes a good towel fabric because of the floats but I've seen a killer scarf made with this structure. The Jan/Feb 2001 issue of Handwoven magazine has an article about this structure and the cover shows a scarf done with it. At The Mannings, they have another scarf on display that is similar and every time I see it I want to make one.

In my towel, all the yarn is 8/2 cotton (sett at 20 epi) and the threads don't deflect in quite the same way as they do in the scarf which has the cells outlined in 18/2 black wool with the cells woven in Tencel®. When the scarf is washed, it is washed in hot water with agitation and then rinsed in cold water so the wool actually felts and it really makes the cells pop out. Someday I'll make one and I'll post it here.

I'm done with this set of towels, but I have another set that was done with a variety of lace weave structures and if my pictures are good enough, I'll start another series of posts based on them. Right now, I'm putting two scarves on the 4-shaft loom. I'm using a white rayon warp and two different variegated rayon yarns for the weft. These are going to be gifts and are "due" by October 21st. I'm using a vertical skip twill from Marguerite Davison's book as the structure. I'm putting extra warp on so I can sample - I think it will look nice but I need to see how it turns out on the loom.

Towel #12 - 4-Shaft Tricot

2006-09-17T18:46:00.000-07:00

This 4-shaft tricot has a somewhat similar look and feel to the crepe weave but it has ridges and troughs in the fabric instead of the random pattern of crepe. They don't show up as well in the picture as they do in the fabric. It's another nice fabric.

This one is in 8/2 cotton sett at 16 epi with green warp and tan weft. It is threaded as a straight draw - just 1,2,3,4 repeated and the tie-up is plain weave with a third treadling of (1,2) added. So, it's (1,2), (1,3), (2,4) and the treadling just repeats the three in sequence. The ribs are formed because the threads on shafts 1 and 2 form small warp floats that are offset by one pick so the effect is that you get two threads with warp floats (a ridge), two without (the valleys), then two more with (another ridge), etc.

Here again, if you've been reading my earlier posts, is another structure that you can weave with a straight draw on a 4-shaft loom. This is great to know for times when you either feel like putting a really long warp on the loom or when you have some warp left over after a project. You can just change the tie-up and you can go from plain weave to basket weave to twill to point twill to tricot, etc.

There are other tricot variations, all of which produce ribbed fabric.

I finished the project on the Dorothy today. Once I figured out the trick about the long shuttle I don't mind weaving on the table loom nearly as much as I did before. I still find it pretty easy to lose track of where I am in the treadling sequence. I don't seem to be able to get into the same kind of rhythm that I do on a floor loom where most patterns settle into a nice routine after a short time. With the floor loom, you only have to remember which treadle to push but on the table loom you have to simulate the tie-up with your finger for each pick. You also have to put the shuttle down when it is on the right side of the loom so you can use that hand to change the shed. This may be one advantage of having the levers on the front of the loom as in some newer table looms - you don't have to put the shuttle down.

Dorothy Loom

2006-09-16T13:10:00.000-07:00

I'll get back to towels in my next post. Here is the Dorothy table loom that I recently refinished. The four-shaft section to the right of the loom has not been refinished and gives you some idea what the whole thing looked like before I started - covered in paint. It now looks nice and weaves nicely, too. This post shows it when it was apart.

I finally figured out the secret of weaving on a table loom -- weave with a long shuttle! I had thought that you should use a small thin shuttle to get through the small sheds of most table looms but I kept picking up threads from the bottom (unraised shafts) when I threw the shuttle. It drove me nuts. Today, the light bulb went off and I tried a huge shuttle - the one in the picture is 14" long - and I just sort of pass it from one hand to the other. Voila! No more mistakenly picked up threads! I'm sure this would work just as well with a stick shuttle but I like the long boat shuttle because it's easier to weave with. Maybe everyone else in the world knows this, but it sure took a while for me to discover it.

Towel #11 - 6-shaft crepe weave

2006-09-15T19:52:00.000-07:00

This is another nice one - a six-shaft crepe weave. The interesting thing about crepe weave is that it is threaded as a straight draw: just 1-2-3-4-5-6 repeated. The magic is in the tie-up. This is another structure that lends itself to long warps - imagine all the things you can do with that threading and just by changing the tie-up and treadling, you could weave 25 different towels.

Sharon Alderman, in Mastering Weave Structures, has a great section on crepe weaves. This is another one that needs more than four shafts to work well. It's fun to design new crepe structures (they're probably not really new but they're fun anyway). There is a technique called "dicing" that is used here. You start with a 3x3 tie-up section and then reflect it as if looking in a mirror but also use the opposite harnesses - tie up those that were not tied up in the original.

It's too hard to explain without pictures but if you look up "dicing" you should find an explanation that would be better than I can give here. In any case, by starting with different 3x3 sections for the lower left corner of the tie-up, you end up with a different 6x6 tie-up which may or may not work as another crepe structure. I hope this isn't more than you wanted to know.

Anyhow, the idea behind crepe is to have small warp and weft floats but also to have a pattern that isn't regular so you get texture without a noticeable pattern. The picture here uses two colors but you can also get nice fabric with just one color and let the texture stand out more. As with many of these towels, this one is 8/2 cotton at 20 epi. To get good crepe, you need a very consistent beat, so you may want to weave one whole towel before taking a break. Also, if you use a yarn that is more tightly spun, the crepe texture will stand out more. It's a little like lace - the threads under the floats collapse to make the texture.

I also should have noted on my last post that the threading for honeycomb is the same as for Monk's Belt.

I got my warp on the Dorothy today and started weaving. I'll post pictures after I've woven a bit more. I'm happy to say that the loom is working well. On the other hand, it's a table loom and I just don't like table looms. It's one of those things, though, I feel that I need one for workshops and weaving demos, but I surely don't plan on doing a lot of weaving on it.

Towel #10 - Honeycomb

2006-09-13T18:21:00.000-07:00

Today's towel is a 4-shaft honeycomb. It's an interesting weave structure but I think its use is pretty limited because it is a "one-sided" structure - it has nice cells on one side and on the other side (see photo) it has ugly floats. In my towel, I used it as a border stripe, which creates its own problems because the honeycomb shrinks a lot and the plainweave towel did not, so the honeycomb border draws in from the selvage and looks pretty bad.

This might be a good structure if it were woven as an "all-over" honeycomb and then lined on the back side to make placemats. Mary Black, in The Key to Weaving, says it can be used for household linens, upholstery, pillow covers, small mats, purses and bags. She also says its use is somewhat limited because of the floats.

In any case, this towel was done with 8/2 cotton sett at 16 epi. The "thin" weft was also 8/2 cotton. The outlines of the cells are done with two picks of heavier yarn - in this case a soft 4/2 cotton. The wavy lines are unusual in woven structures and to get them you need to use a big arc in the heavy weft so that there is plenty of yarn to take up and wrap. If you don't do this, or if you use too hard of a yarn, you won't get the nice cells. The cells are done with six picks of the fine weft with two thick weft picks on each side.

I think it has a lot of eye appeal as long as you're looking at the right side.

Towel #9 - 8-shaft (three color) M's & O's

2006-09-12T19:42:00.000-07:00

If two colors are good, are three colors better? This is an 8-shaft M's & O's with three blocks, each with a different color. I used the same three colors for the warp and weft. You can use different colors but you definitely want to sample first if you do because you can get some weird effects.

The way this was treadled, I put the floats in the blocks of solid color. Notice that the floats are in the blocks with pink warp and pink weft, etc. With a different treadling, you could move the floats to blocks where you have mixed colors if you like.

With this structure, it's hard to get really nice selvages if you use three weft colors. In this towel, I carried both unused weft colors up the selvages. When doing this, I think there will always be times when the two unused wefts will be on opposite sides of the fabric and times when they will be on the same side. Maybe there's a way to avoid this but I haven't tried to work it out. In any case, if that happens the places where both unused wefts are on the same side will be slightly pushed out from the blocks where they are on opposite sides, so you get wavy selvages. Mine weren't too bad, but this is not the structure to use if you like great selvages.

I haven't done anything more on my Dorothy, although I do plan to do something tomorrow. I just don't know where the time goes. I'm retired, so I'm supposed to be sitting around with my feet up staring into space. Boy is that wrong! I think I have less time now than when I was working - but I have no intentions of going back ;-) The problem is that when you're retired, everything you do is something you like (except the chore list that your working spouse leaves for you) and it's really easy to get overloaded. I try to make weaving and writing priorities but this week I've been painting trim on the house among other things and weaving has slipped a little.

This is the last of the M's & O's -- the next post will be honeycomb.

Towel #8 - Two color M's & O's

2006-09-09T11:34:00.000-07:00

Boy, time flies! I didn't realize it had been so many days since my last post. On Wednesday, I attended my guild meeting (The Central Pennsylvania Handweaver's Guild) which meet at The Mannings. I must like this guild because I drive two hours each way to attend once each month. Of course, having an excuse to shop at The Mannings is also a good reason to go. I usually kill three birds with one stone on guild days - the guild, The Mannings, and antiquing on the way home. It makes a fun day.

The past few days, I've been busy with my Dorothy loom. A while back I posted pictures of it when I had it apart to clean up. It is now back together again (at least with four shafts) with a nice fresh coat of lacquer and silicone spray on the moving parts and I'm putting on a small warp to make two washcloths just to test the loom to see how it works. I have the reed sleyed and today plan to thread the heddles. I'll probably beam on and start weaving tomorrow. I may post some pictures a little later.

The picture above is a two-color M's and O's from the towel class. I didn't care much for this on the loom but after washing I like it better. It is a 4-shaft draft with alternate 8-thread blocks of dark and light colors. The treadling also alternated light and dark every 8 picks. It is woven in 8/2 cotton at 16 epi. When weaving, I carried the unused weft up the selvage instead of cutting at each color change.

Towel #7 - M's & O's

2006-09-05T09:41:00.000-07:00

OK, enough waffle weave.

Today's towel is just a normal M's & O's pattern on 4 shafts using two colors of 8/2 cotton sett at 16 epi - more open than the previous towels. The warp is natural and I used a green yarn for the weft.

This towel shrunk about 20% after washing. This was another one of my favorites - it makes a beautiful cloth. It is thinner than the waffle weave fabrics, so it makes a lighter towel.

The next two days will have M's & O's variations.

I made a scarf with M's & O's a while ago, from cotton and Tencel® using multiple colors and it turned out wonderfully - I made one as a gift and my wife had to keep the second one. Here is a picture of a section of the scarf.

Towel #6 - 8-shaft waffle weave

2006-09-04T10:24:00.001-07:00

Today's towel is a variation of an 8-shaft waffle weave. It is threaded just like towel #5 but the tie-up and treadling are different. In this one, there are two blocks - one block is threaded and tied-up just like a 4-shaft waffle weave and the other block weaves tabby. One repeat of the treadling weaves side-by-side blocks of waffle and plain weave followed by the reversal of the blocks, so you get a checkerboard pattern, but with texture instead of color. With alternate treadling, you could make long stripes of waffle next to tabby if you wanted.

This sample has been washed. It shrank about 18% - not nearly as much as all-over waffle weave but somewhat more than plain weave would shrink. It was done with 8/2 cotton sett at 20 epi. It was woven with one color in the warp and a second color for the weft.

I know I skipped towel #4 - it was just a 4-shaft waffle weave but it used a darker thread at the "turning points" - shafts 1 and 4 in the warp and picks 1 and 5 in the treadling, so the waffle cells had dark borders and a dark dot in the middle. It was an interesting color effect but otherwise it was the same as towel #3.

Towel #5 - 8-Shaft Textured Waffle Weave

2006-09-03T06:30:00.000-07:00

This was my favorite weave structure of the 13 we did in class. It is called an 8-shaft textured waffle weave. I can't find this draft in any of the standard references that I have, although it might be called something else in those books. It is threaded with two point twills pointing at each other: it has a 1-2-3-4-3-2-1 section followed by an 8-7-6-5-6-7-8 section. It has a similar, but not identical treadling and a fairly complex tie-up. It makes a beautiful cloth with the small criss-crossing ridges. It doesn't exactly "waffle" like a normal waffle weave because the cell borders overlap but it makes a gorgeous fabric. I think it would look great in a scarf and I think I'm going to have one on the loom in the very near future. This, like most of the towels in this grouping, was woven with 8/2 cotton sett at 20 epi.

Towel #3 - Waffle Weave

2006-08-31T19:38:00.000-07:00

Today's towel is a 4-shaft waffle weave. The top photo is unwashed and the bottom photo is washed. What a difference! Under tension on the loom the waffle cells don't show up very well but as soon as the tension is released, you get these nice regular waffle cells. Then, when the fabric is washed it really shrinks and you get these more irregular cells. On this towel, the width on the loom was 15 inches and after washing it was 11 inches, or shrinkage of about 25%. When calculating your warp, if you want 11 inches you have to weave 15, so you have to add a whopping 35% to the desired width! It's a nice soft, absorbent towel, though.

This 4-shaft waffle weave is threaded as a point twill (1-2-3-4-3-2-1). The tie-up, though, uses five treadles and is done in such a way that it produces long warp and weft floats that form the outlines of the square cells. The treadling is like a point twill but with five treadles (1-2-3-4-5-4-3-2-1). This towel was done in 8/2 cotton sett at 20 epi - a little looser than you would use for a point twill. The nice thing about this structure is that you can put on a long warp threaded as a point twill and weave some things with point twill then, by changing the tie-up (and possibly setting a little looser) you can then weave some waffle weave on the same warp.

Supposedly, waffle weave also makes a good blanket. I wove the hem area on this with 16/2 cotton, otherwise the tabby hem would have been wider than the waffle weave towel and would have looked ugly. There are three other variations of waffle weave that we did in class - and I'll talk about them in future posts.

Refinishing a Loom

2006-08-30T15:31:00.001-07:00

There will be more towels tomorrow but today I've started refinishing an 8-shaft Le Clerc Dorothy table loom. I got this loom at an auction for about 20% of the retail price because it was very dirty and had paint spilled all over it. This is what one of the 4-shaft harness sections looks like after I took it apart, cleaned it and removed the paint from the wood. I now need to put a coat of finish on the wood, put silicone spray on the heddle bars and lifters and then hope I can get it back together again. I thought about replacing the heddles while it's apart but they seem OK if a bit grungy. I think I'll leave these on and weave with them for a trial project and if they don't work well I'll replace the ones on the other 4-shaft harness section that I still need to take apart and clean up.

Towel #1 - Satin

2006-08-29T10:58:00.000-07:00

Here is the errant towel #1 - a 5-shaft satin weave. This was woven in 10/2 cotton at 40 epi. Notice the checkerboard on one side and stripes on the other.

Satin weaves are derivatives of twills. The threading on this is a straight draw (1-2-3-4-5) and the treadling is the same (1-2-3-4-5). With a twill tie-up you would get diagonal twill lines but the tie-up for satin scrambles the structure so the diagonals get blurred (although you can still see hints of them in the fabric). Because of the way the twill is scrambled, you need at least 5 shafts to weave a true satin. This one was tied (1-3-5-2-4) and, technically, wove sateen (weft floats) on the top surface and satin (warp floats) on the reverse. It's easier to weave sateen on the top surface because you can do it by lifting only one shaft. If you wanted to weave satin on the top layer you'd have to lift four shafts. Whenever you weave one, the other appears on the reverse side.

The checkerboard shows up on the sateen side because it is weft dominant. The reverse only has hints of the weft color, so it produces warpway stripes instead. If this were sett at 50 epi you would see solid colors - the weft wouldn't show through at all.

My previous post could have been called false damask instead of false satin. Damask is a fabric that has satin and sateen on the same face. To do that you need at least two blocks with at least 5 shafts each, or 10 shafts. That piece was woven with 8 shafts and it scrambles a 4-shaft twill that simulates satin but isn't a true satin weave.

There is a lot more to say about these weave structures, but you'll have to get out your books. Sharon Alderman's Mastering Weave Structures is a good source.

Towel 2 - False Satin

2006-08-27T14:37:00.000-07:00

OK, I know this is the first towel I'm posting but it's warp #2 in my workbook. It's hard to herd 13 towels and #1 escaped during the transfer from the washer to the dryer and is now on a drying rack downstairs. All 13 are zig-zag-ed and washed and 12 are dry.

This one is called False Satin and is woven on 8 shafts. (See my next post for details of satin weaves). It's a pretty classy pattern done in 16/2 cotton and sett at 40 epi. It has two blocks - one is weft-dominant and the other is warp-dominant. It makes a fairly stiff towel and would make a nice napkin. It would be great as a hand towel in the bathroom - it would have that "don't touch me" look and everyone would come out of the bathroom with wet hands.

Here it is before washing:

and after washing:

There wasn't a dramatic change when it was washed. The fabric tightened up a bit and only shrunk about 10%.

Another towel tomorrow. Now I have to find the energy to hem these things - not my favorite activity.

Thirteen Towels

2006-08-25T10:55:00.000-07:00

Sung to the tune of Sixteen Candles ...

I just got back from a four day class by Tom Knisely at The Mannings where we learned 13 different textured weave structures and wove them all into towels. Some of the structures won't really make good towels but others will make excellent towels, and we wove them on from four to eight shafts. We did variations of waffle weave, satin, tricot, crepe, M's & O's and Honeycomb. I especially liked one called 8-shaft textured waffle weave and can't wait to try to weave a nice scarf in tencel or rayon using this structure.

Over the next week or two, I'll post pictures of individual towels. Right now, I need to zig-zag the edges and wash them and then stack them for hemming. Many of these towels will look quite different when they are washed.

These classes are a lot of fun but also hard work so I'm taking a day of R&R today. In the class, we are either listening to a lecture or weaving for 10-11 hours a day and this old body gets pretty beat up by the end of the week. This week we had the added excitement of following the status of Tom's 10-pound dog, who was bitten by a copperhead snake on Monday morning and had to get antivenin and spend three days at the vet. Everyone had a happy reunion on Wednesday night.

More to follow on the towels.

Scarf Done - Towels Next

2006-08-19T08:06:00.000-07:00

I should have noted that I would not be blogging for a while. Last week was "insulator week" (more later) and next week I'll be at The Mannings taking a class on textured weave structures.

I did finish the scarf, though, and , except for a bump or two on the selvages where I didn't do such a good job of weaving in the broken threads, it looks pretty good. It is very heavy, though, and very, very scratchy. I couldn't wear it. Maybe it should be a table runner ;-)

While I'm in class next week, I'll try to sneak in some advice about weaving with alpaca.

Just for continuity with my last post: I did mail off my Austin article to a magazine and I abandoned reading The Transit of Venus. Parts of it were beautifully written but long sections were just too opaque for me. She has a hard time writing anything in a straightforward way and it's just too hard to figure out what she's trying to say.

So, the insulators. I collect old glass insulators, like the ones that used to be used on the telegraph and telephone lines. Because of my knowledge of insulators, I got involved with the Smithsonian Institute here in Washington, D.C. I helped catalog their collection of about 1200 insulators (and you thought I was crazy at the beginning of this paragraph, didn't you). Some of the nicer ones are shown here, in a web site that I'm trying to find time to enhance. I've been a "behind the scenes" volunteer at the Smithonian for over six years. Last week, we had some researchers in town who wanted to research some of the insulator-related trade catalogs in the Smithsonian's collection, and I got to work with them, so I was gone most of the week.

I should be back posting after the 25th.

Story Almost Ready

2006-08-04T21:11:00.000-07:00

No weaving today but I made the next-to-final pass through my Austin travel article. Over the weekend I will take one more pass through it and on Monday it will be out the door, trying to find someone to love it and publish it. After it is out the door, I'll go on to my Hetch Hetchy article. If you don't know it, Hetch Hetchy is a valley in Yosemite National Park that was dammed to create a reservoir to supply water to San Francisco. It is an icon for environmentalists and is credited with helping create the environmental movement in the early 20th century. John Muir lost his battle to stop the dam from being built but created so much public awareness that about three years later the National Park Service was created. This article is going to take some time to finish and it will be a fairly long piece.

I've just started reading The Transit of Venus, by Shirley Hazzard, for my book club. So far, I like the very beginning of the book (the lead) because it grabs you and makes you want to keep reading. Much of the writing is almost poetic. When it works, it works well, but I think it may be overdone. We'll see how I feel after a hundred pages or so.

Also on the schedule for this weekend is to make all the repairs and tie in loose ends on the alpaca scarf and then wash it to see if I can salvage this monster. Of course, the dog also has to go for walks - he has cabin fever after four days of 100+ degree heat with high humidity. The weekend is supposed to be marginally better, so early morning walks are probably in order.

Alpaca Scarf Off Loom

2006-08-02T14:36:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure whether to classify this as "done" or "abandoned." I got to about 56" in length and I felt like I was engineering the scarf rather than weaving it. The selvage threads kept breaking, another interior thread broke and the tension problems were just awful. When I cut it off the loom, neither selvage was on, so I may have to find a way to stick something on those edges to bind the edge and to give me something for the fringe at the corners. That should be fun!

Anyway, here's the whole scarf - off the loom but not finished (fringed and washed). I do have some repair work to do before I do the fringe. I've only really abandoned one project in my weaving career but this one came close. Unless a miracle happens when I wash it, I think this will be a "not for sale" item because it has too may repairs even though they may not be obvious to a non-weaver.

The blogger seems to have shrunk my picture, so see a larger one here.

Charleen asked where my nephew's alpaca farm is. It is near Ithaca, NY.

I'm not sure what will go on the loom next. I normally don't like to have two empty looms in the studio. We just got new windows in the house (nice double-pane, argon-filled windows) just in time for the 100-degree weather and now I'm thinking I need new curtains in the master bathroom. That may be the next project - something nice and easy like Huck or Bronson lace in cotton.

On to the repairs and finishing!

Tension Problems

2006-08-01T17:09:00.000-07:00

Tension problems? What tension problems? The cones are weighting my floating selvages - the ones that keep breaking - so they're not indicative of any problems, but the two wrenches, the clamp and the multiple wooden slats are correcting for warp that has worked itself loose. If you read my earlier post where I said that this was one of the easiest warps I ever put on the loom, you'll believe in the "reversion to the mean" theory. Since going on the loom, this project has been nothing but problems. I'll be glad when it's off and it WILL be off tomorrow. I'm at the 48-inch mark now and plan to weave about 60 inches but it may be a little shorter - it depends how many more times the selvages break and how many more boards I have to add to keep the fell line straight.

I have more warp on the loom that I will use for sampling but I will cut this off and retie to reestablish even tension.

Writer's Idea Backlog

2006-08-01T08:41:00.000-07:00

I did some more weaving last night and hope to have this scarf off the loom tomorrow. I sure am getting a lot of practice darning in the ends of the replacement selvage thread when the original (or its replacement, or its replacement, ...) breaks.

I don't understand writers who don't have good ideas about what to write. I have so many ideas that instead of writer's block I have writer's backlog. I have to admit that I've gone a long time, until recently, without writing. Recently, though, I decided that weaving and writing (in that order) were the most important things to me and that I had to do one or the other, if not both, every day before going to chores, projects, excursions, etc.

So now, I have two stories I'm actively working on. One is about our recent trip to Austin and the other is left over from last year's vacation in Yosemite. On our Austin/San Antonio trip, I came back with at least two more ideas for articles - one of which requires a trip back to San Antonio, but I think I can manage that. I loved San Antonio and would be happy to go back but will probably wait until the weather cools down a bit. I keep a list of article ideas and it now has 64 things on it. If I were writing full time I couldn't keep up with all the ideas I generate.

Now, down to work to finish some of the ones I have in progress so I can at least get something off my list.

More weaving tomorrow.

Alpaca Scarf II

2006-07-30T10:12:00.000-07:00

Well, this is turning out to be some project! This scarf is sucking up so much yarn I've had to improvise to make sure it will be long enough to be a scarf. However, the improvisation has led to some interesting discoveries - like the four different patterns of black on gray shown in the photo. I started with two skeins of gray and two of blue and it didn't take long to figure out that I needed more than that to make a scarf. I had some black and purple yarn, so I started using some of those to extend the blue and gray.

This scarf has also been a real pain with broken selvages. I'm about half way through, with about 30 inches woven, and I must have had six broken selvages. With this weft-dominant fabric, I found that weaving in the ends of the new selvage thread was ugly but darning them in like you would with a wool rug works better.

This is also a very heavy scarf. I'm guessing your average fashion model would be doubled over while wearing it. We'll see ...

Alpaca Project

2006-07-28T08:39:00.000-07:00

Well, ..., this has been interesting. My original warp at 10 ends per inch produced a weft-dominant fabric that seemed too thick for a scarf so the first eight inches turned into a sample. I resleyed at 12 epi and tried again. After washing, the original 10 epi fabric was nice and soft and seemed to have a good drape, although thick. I think it will make a good scarf. The 12 epi was too stiff. So, I'm getting a lot of practice sleying and tying on. I'm now back to 10 epi and weaving away.

maus's comment talked about alpaca snapping - boy, was she right! I got about five inches into the scarf and within a few picks both selvages broke. With the pattern I'm using it's not easy to weave in the replacement thread without having it show, but I did what I could. I'm now trying to weave closer to the reed so there isn't so much abrasion on the selvage, and I'm trying a little less tension on the warp plus trying as best I can not to pull the yarn against the sevlage. This last part is hard because the yarn is sticky and if I don't pull some the selvages get loose and loopy.

This scarf is going to use tons of yarn for the weft and I don't have enough of any one color, so I'm weaving stripes of different colors and I'm blending them between stripes by using two shuttles and alternating picks. I like the effect. Maybe I'll have a photo with tomorrow's post.

Scarves

2006-07-25T15:55:00.000-07:00

I've been invited to give a weaving demo at my nephew's alpaca farm in October. I've never used alpaca before, so he sent me some from his animals and I just put a five-yard warp on the loom using that yarn. It is a heavy yarn - about 1200 yards per pound - and I'm sleying it at 10 ends per inch for a twill. I plan to use a three-thread herringbone pattern from Marguerite Davison's book (p. 24) and I'll make two scarves with two different treadlings and maybe two different weft yarns. I have several colors of alpaca yarn that I bought and will use for the weft in both scarves. I was surprised how easily this warp went on the loom - it was one of the easiest I've ever done - not even a hint of a tangle or snag during the entire process. Maybe I'll have to pay later ;-)

The photo today is a closeup of an advancing twill scarf that I designed and made earlier this year using rayon yarn. I entered the scarf in a show at The Mannings and it won third prize in the fashion accessory category. A photo of the whole scarf wouldn't show it off very well, so I just posted a close-up of the pattern from the middle of the scarf.

Dog Days of Summer

2006-07-23T16:02:00.000-07:00

Andy had a play day today with his best friend Molly. Molly has a pool but no one can convince her that she is a water dog. Molly also has a new little sister, Savannah, who kept interrupting Andy's and Molly's games. Savannah, a 10-week old Brittany Spaniel is a great swimmer and we see a lot of potential there. Molly finally did go in the pool with some help from the people she owns and even seemed to enjoy it but she wouldn't admit it. Andy couldn't be talked into going in the water, not even for a strawberry - a new taste treat he discovered today. Nevertheless, it was a fun day by the pool for everybody.

Back To Weaving - Iris Towel

2006-07-22T15:08:00.000-07:00

I thought I'd get back to weaving today. Here is one of my more recent creations - a turned summer & winter iris towel. It's from the latest edition of Handwoven magazine although I changed the colors and the yarn size. I wove it with 8/2 unmercerized cotton for the yellow warp and the weft and 5/2 perle cotton for the green warp. You can see why it's called summer and winter - one side has yellow flowers on a green background and the other side is the reverse - green flowers on a yellow background. This combination of yarn sizes makes a really nice, fairly heavy kitchen towel. I wove one for a friend of mine and since I rarely go to the trouble of warping the loom to weave one thing, I put enough warp on the loom for two towels - one for my friend and one for us. That's Andy in the upper right corner of the photo - he helped weave the towel so he wanted to be in the picture, too.

For a larger photo, click here.

Inconvenient Truth

2006-07-21T13:07:00.000-07:00

See this movie!

Find An Inconvenient Truth in a theater near you and go see it. My new motto is: "Ignore Global Warming - Help Make Greenland Green." A front-page article in the Wall Street Journal last week talked about how some people in Greenland are happy that they are getting more agricultural land as the glaciers melt. I hope the Wall Street Journal follows up on this story because if the glaciers melt they may be looking for new offices on dry land. You can't see this film and not want to do something about the problem.

Go to the Inconvenient Truth Web Site and see what you can do.

Maybe I'm Back

2006-07-20T20:01:00.001-07:00

Wow! It's been so long since I blogged I forgot how to log on to my blog and post a new item. I have been trying hard to make weaving and writing the two important priorities in my life but I'm not sure I'm winning that battle. I am getting a little better - at least now I am weaving and writing, just not as much as I'd like. It almost seems that I got more done when I was working 50+ hours a week than now when I'm retired.

I recently finished the novel, Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen. It is the best novel I've read in a long time and highly recommend it. It triggered one of the liveliest discussions my book club ever had, although not all the topics we discussed had direct relevance to the book.

For weaving, I'm working on a prototype for a wall hanging art piece that I'd like to make. For writing, I'm working on two pieces that came out of my recent trip to Austin and San Antonio - one a humorous piece about our trip and the other about a neat find for San Antonio visitors.

I'm still here

2005-07-20T07:14:00.000-07:00

I haven't disappeared. I can't believe it has been months since I posted. I've been weaving, weaving, weaving, but not posting, posting, posting. I've been out of town a lot (including two trips for weaving classes). I'll try to bring things up-t0-date over the next week or so.

Scarf Finished and Carpet On The Floor

2005-04-24T13:46:00.000-07:00

I finished the tencel scarf a few days ago and if I do say so myself, it is absolutely beautiful. It's the best thing I've done so far in my weaving career. The whole project went well for me (very unusual) and I'm really happy with the result. After washing and ironing the scarf has a great feel. I think I will do this exact pattern again using only two colors of yarn with fairly high contrast and see if I can't get the pattern to "pop" out a bit more. Here are three pictures.

The scarf:

A closeup of the fringe:

And a closeup of the pattern:

I also have a new rule - every time I finish a project I have to go back and finish an older project that is still waiting to be put into service. I had a few fixes to make on the bathroom carpet, so I did those and washed the carpet. It is now in its new home in Dolly's bathroom:

What's the next project? I'm not sure. I have an older table loom that was given to me and it needs to be cleaned up before it can be used. It came with a 15 dent reed and I bought a 12 dent reed but need to cut it down from 22 inches to 20-1/2 inches. I also ordered 200 extra heddles that need to be put on. I think I'll at least start cleaning up this loom before I start a new project.

Projects that I want to do are:

A few hot pads for a friend
A double weave project. I've never done double weave and I was inspired by a wall hanging I saw at the Renwick museum in D.C.
Something with linen or cotolin.

Weaving Rates

2005-04-17T08:24:00.000-07:00

I wove for a little over an hour this morning and now have about 33 inches of the scarf done. This morning, without interruptions, I managed to weave about 12 inches per hour, or about 280 picks. This is with a two-shuttle fabric, so I expect it to be a little slower than if I were weaving with one shuttle.

This is the first time I've used the Mighty Wolf loom and there isn't as much room between the beater and the breast beam as there is on my big floor loom and my rhythm isn't as good because it's harder for me to get the shuttle out of the way before beating. The sheds I'm getting aren't always great - I may need to get under the loom after this project is off and adjust the tie-up cords so the sheds are more consistent. I'm also having a little problem with the yarn sticking once in a while when I throw the shuttle, so I'm a little hesitant when I throw. I'm sure all of this is slowing me down. But, in any case, I'll need a little more than 3-1/2 more hours to finish the scarf, not counting the final hemstitching and fringe twisting.

Tencel Scarf - Weaving

2005-04-16T12:36:00.000-07:00

I got the warp beamed on yesterday afternoon and started weaving. I had to fix three problems - the broken gray thread (easy); two crossed threads that I noticed before I started weaving (pretty easy); and two threading errors that I didn't notice until I had woven four picks (pretty easy but I hate undoing things).

The pattern is coming out as expected but it's more subtle than I had hoped. I think I needed the two dark colors (the blue and teal) to be closer together. I think if I had used a darker blue it would have been more striking. I originally had a darker blue but was talked out of it by someone I asked for advice. This will make me think twice before questioning my judgment ;-)

The pattern is a bit hard to see in the photos, but here is the beginning of the scarf. This is after the end has been hemstitched (using three threads per stitch, or about 76 stitches, but who's counting):

And a bit closer view. At the time I'm writing this, I have finished about 20 inches of the scarf. It seems to be going at about 10 inches per hour which is only about 4 picks per minute - I must be going faster than that! I'm not subtracting for the times I let the dog out, get a drink, watch the birds, etc., so it's probably a bit faster. I tend to be a slow weaver anyway - I fuss at the fabric a lot to make sure it's coming out right. I also had to unwind a few picks a couple of times because I got them wrong.

And here's another piece of my homemade equipment - my $15 bobbin winder:

I made it from an old drill that I found in an antique shop for $15. I made a bobbin holder from a 3/8-inch dowel and used a dremel tool to taper it so it would hold the bobbin. I like this one so much that I sold a Harrisville Designs bobbin winder that I got when I bought one of my looms. It works just as well as the $100 bobbin winders.

Starting Tencel Scarf

2005-04-13T08:22:00.000-07:00

Last week at the weaver's guild meeting (which is conveniently at the Manning's) I bought five 2 oz. skeins of tencel to make a scarf. The scarf is a modified version of the shawl that is on the cover of the latest Handwoven magazine. It is my first 8-shaft project - also my first tencel.

On Saturday, we went to the Renwick Gallery in Washington, D.C. and saw a wonderful exhibit called "High Fiber." They have one piece by Anni Albers and another by one of her students, Lore Lindenfield. The one by Lore Lindenfield is one I want to try someday. It was a black and tan doubleweave with many sections where the top layer wasn't woven, but tied and it gave a nice open pattern against the contrasting bottom layer. Two other pieces that particularly struck me were by Richard Landis and Mariska Karasz. There were plenty of others that were jaw droppers. There are woven materials including rugs, tapestries, quilts, and other fabric art. I will undoubtedly go back at least one more time before it closes.

The exhibit will be open until July 10, 2005 and admission is free. It is worth the trip if you're in the area.

I've been under the weather with a stomach virus for the past few days but I did manage to get the scarf warped. I made two warps - one with the blue and gray wound together because most of the warp has them alternating. I wound a second warp with the mauve and more blue to fill in the pattern. I almost had to call for a mail order resupply of the blue. I looked at the yardage on the 10/2 tencel and 2 oz. skeins were 525 yards. I forgot that the blue, which is what I needed the most of was 8/2 and only 420 yards per skein. I came out two threads short! So, I just used the silver for the floating selvedge instead of the blue - I doubt anyone but me will know the difference. I just hope I don't break a blue thread while weaving.

Here are two pictures - one of the yarn and one of the warp sleyed in the reed.

Carpet is Finished

2005-04-05T17:21:00.000-07:00

I got the carpet done last night. Finishing isn't my favorite thing but Peter Collingwood's book says you need a weft protector and a warp protector. For the weft protector, I did a Damascus edge and for the warp protector I decided to do a five-strand flat braid. That braid took a long time! Anyway, here's the finished product:

If you want to see a large photo, click on the image.

Here are two closeups of the edge - first, part way through the first pass on tying the Damascus edge and then a closeup of the finished edge including the braid.

And tonight, that lovely weaver dog that you can see below almost became an ex-weaver dog. I had the new carpet on the floor in the family room and I was in the study. I heard a funny noise and when I looked out, he had a corner of the carpet between his paws and was gnawing on the braid. Fortunately, he had just started and no damage was done - just a slighty wet braid. But he's very very very sorry and won't do anything like that again ;-)

My next project is going to be a tencel scarf on the 8-shaft loom. I'm going to use a modified pattern from the latest edition of Handwoven magazine. They have a wonderful tencel shawl that I'm going to shorten into a scarf and probably change colors, too. My guild meets tomorrow morning and I plan to buy the yarn after the meeting. It will be my first 8-shaft project and my first tencel project. I hope I'm not getting in over my head.

Carpet Progress (and the dog)

2005-04-03T17:08:00.000-07:00

I made lots of progress on the carpet today and hope to finish it tomorrow.

But first, why this blog is named "Sleeping Dog Weaving" (his name is Andy):

Back to the carpet. Here it is tied on to the apron rod with a little header in to spread warp evenly.

The first few inches of the carpet are a multi-pattern border. Here, the border is done:

And here is what the main body of the carpet will look like:

All seems to be going well but the border doesn't look like I wanted. I did a sample of the pattern I wanted ("railroad tracks") and this is what the sample looked like:

But this is what the carpet looks like:

Unless I'm losing my mind (which is not out of the question) everything about the sample and the carpet is the same. It just seems like the carpet is not beating together like the sample did. I'm beating hard enough to lift the loom off the floor at times, so I'm not sure why it's not making a tighter weave. Is it just because the sample was narrow? It's a bit frustrating but too late to fix for this carpet.

Almost Warped

2005-04-01T18:08:00.000-08:00

We spent a long four day weekend in New Orleans, so I'm just getting back to the loom. We made several trips to the Crescent City Brewery, saw Ingrid Lucia at the Blue Nile, visited the wonderful aquarium, had beignets at the Cafe du Monde, pecan waffles at the Camellia Grill, saw the French Market and adjoining flea market, did walking tours of the French Quarter and the Garden District, watched the Easter parade in the French Quarter and caught beads, and had a somewhat disappointing experience at the highly rated Commander's Palace restaurant. All in all a great fun trip.

Back to weaving. The bathroom carpet that I'm making is almost on the loom. The reed is sleyed, the heddles are threaded, and the warp is on the warp beam. I'll tie on to the cloth beam tomorrow morning and start weaving. There are 165 doubled warp threads, two in every other dent of the 12 dent reed, plus an extra one at each end to reinforce the selvedge. The threading is a straight draw. I still need to decide how to finish the rug. Here's where it stands now:

From the back

And from the front, still uncut

My Equipment and a warp

2005-03-25T16:11:00.000-08:00

I have two floor looms in my "studio" - a 45" Nilus LeClerc with four shafts and a Schacht Mighty Wolf 36" wide with eight shafts. I've been using the LeClerc loom for about three months and am getting pretty comfortable with it. The Mighty Wolf hasn't been used yet but after I finish the carpet that I'm making now I plan to do my next project using 8 shafts.

The big loom:

And the Mighty Wolf:

I've just started a bathroom carpet. I'm using Maysville carpet warp doubled for the warp and part of the weft. The rest of the weft is 8-ply mop cotton. I'm using a trick that I learned to save time warping - I'm making the warp twice as long as I need and making two crosses. Then, when I take the warp off, I double it over, combine the two crosses and I have the right length with twice the threads. A nice time saver. Here is one-half of the warp on my home made maple warping board:

Blog - Day 1

2005-03-11T23:42:00.000-08:00

I just read about the shortage of weavers' blogs in Handwoven magazine. I have only been weaving for about three months but my projects tend to have lots of "lessons learned", so maybe someone besides me can learn these lessons, too.

The blog will be mostly about weaving but I'm also passionate about nature and public lands, so some of this will undoubtedly creep in.

I'll post some of my completed projects as I have time and I'll try to keep a running log of current weaving projects as I do them. Mostly I try to do something with weaving almost every day and I take lots of pictures, so we'll see where this goes.