Of course this year, we had a week of summer [...]]]> This time of year, I just keep weaving, and weaving, and weaving to build up my inventory for the coming show season. It’s nice to weave light, lacy fabrics when it’s cold out – it makes spring seem right around the corner.

Of course this year, we had a week of summer before winter was even over. Despite my weather concerns, I’m still enjoying weaving scarves for spring and summer. I’m using up that hand painted yarn I ordered. And yeah, I’ve subsequently ordered two more batches of Tammy’s yummy yarn.

It’s no surprise that I like saturated colors, and gemtones, so it’s completely fitting that one of my personal favorites is Tammy’s Ocean Waves colorway. I’ve used it in rayon chenille, bamboo, bamboo-cotton, and tencel. It’s always successful, and always popular. So I ordered a bunch more. This time in a blend of bamboo & tencel.

I worked out a new lace design for my little 4-harness counterbalance loom, and warped for four scarves. I could vary the treadling and create two somewhat different lace designs – either an open cross of four lace squares or a mini checkerboard of five.

The two scarves on the right look the same color in real life – no idea why they look so different in this picture. For the first three scarves, I used the same variegated yarn for both warp and weft. For the fourth, on the left in the photo, I used a solid, bright turquoise bamboo. It really lightens those scarves up a lot. I wasn’t positive if I’d like it, but I do. I like them all.

After I twisted the fringes and wet finished these scarves, I wasn’t ready to be done with the watery-colored yarn. So I measured out another warp of three scarves, this time in a log cabin pattern with black bamboo.

Although weaving with two shuttles takes me more than twice the time of weaving with one, the end result in a log cabin weave makes the time investment worthwhile. It turns a plain weave into something that thrills the eye. At least it does for me. I will definitely have to weave some more log cabin for this season.

I have so many more things I want to weave, so many ideas. There’s no way I can build in time to weave everything I want to. At least not if I want to sleep. And I do love to sleep. Still, despite my long stretch of unproductive time due to the nasty virus, I’ve completed 67 handwoven scarves, plus the 10 towels and 3 baby blankets since the first of the year. 30 scarves in March alone. I’m threading a loom for a warp of 2 shawls right now, and I’m hoping I can add them to my list of March completions.

Can you tell I’m a bit obsessive-compulsive? But you knew that already, didn’t you.

Your turn: what’s one of your personal characteristics, or behaviors, if you prefer?

The delicate colors of Silver Linings call out to me for handwoven lace. [...]]]> I’ve worked with Tammy’s Silver Linings colorway before. I’ve woven rayon chenille scarves, tencel scarves, and bamboo scarves with it. It’s always a hit with customers. When it became available in a bamboo-tencel blend, I had to give it a try.

The delicate colors of Silver Linings call out to me for handwoven lace. I like weaving huck, but I’m trying to remember that recent lesson – simple pictures are best. I think huck works better with solid colors than variegations, so I went back to an old standby pattern — Swedish lace borders.

I warped the loom up for 4 scarves this time instead of my usual 3, because these scarves are always popular. I used the same warp as weft for the first 3 scarves, and decided to try something different for the 4th. I used a fine, 10/2, pale blue cotton.

The cotton weft gives the scarves more of a subtle striped appearance instead of the almost-plaid look of the variegated warp. I like it, and will definitely do it again. The bamboo-tencel warp is so soft, that even with a cotton weft this scarf still drapes and wraps nicely.

Despite my best efforts, both of these scarves look more gray in the picture than they do in real life. I’m never sure why sometimes it’s easy to get the colors right, and other times it’s impossible.

After the eggshell scarf problems I decided to [...]]]> When I was weaving those eggshell cashmere silk lace scarves, I noted a problem that I thought might have been caused by an old reed, and decided to order a new stainless steel reed. That reed still hasn’t arrived, but I haven’t stopped weaving to wait for it.

After the eggshell scarf problems I decided to use my (rather disliked) 6 dent reed while I awaited the new 12 dent SS reed (likely a few weeks). A customer had ordered a black lace cashmere & silk, and I didn’t want to make her wait that long.

So I put in the 6 dent, warped and threaded my wonderful, little counterbalance loom, and set off.

It all went great. I had a total of 3 broken warp threads for the entire 9 yard warp – not uncommon with fibers this fine. This confirmed for me that my old reed really was a problem.

After the black, I wove three 100% silk scarves in a lovely pale mint green. This was an 8/60 silk — I sure do wish I had a MUCH better handle on what these numbers mean. What I THOUGHT, incorrectly, was that I’d multiply the 60 x 1000 and divide that by 8 to get the yards per pound (ypp). Hah! That math would give me 7,500 ypp; in fact, it’s about 2,400 ypp. As is some 12/60 silk & linen blend I bought. WHAT??!! How can this be? Maybe I should just give up trying to understand that and be sure I get the ypp from the yarn seller.

Anyway, the mint silk has a beautiful sheen to it. It’s thicker than the cashmere silk, and way more expensive. So I didn’t want to screw it up. I set it at 16.5 ends per inch (epi), (2-3-3 on my 6 dent reed) as opposed to the 18 epi I normally use for the cashmere silk. It’s nice, but a bit stiffer than I’d like. Next time I’m going to try it looser – maybe 14 epi.

On a completely different note, here’s an odd tidbit. Flies that die upside down on your stove retain their iridescent blue color for days. This one died right by my burner a few days ago.

I didn’t see it at first, and then when I did, I was amazed that the color was still there. He’s been there long enough now that I don’t need to wait any longer to clean him up. Goodbye, fly.

Your turn: do you understand yarn counts and yardage?

I again tried a new huck lace [...]]]> While certainly not exclusively for the holidays by any means, these handwoven cashmere & silk scarves are such a lovely, rich color, they make me think of the mid-winter holiday season. Hopefully people who come to either the Roycroft Winter Festival and my local Holiday Show think so, too.

I again tried a new huck lace pattern – the one at the bottom of the picture. And again, I much prefer the old standby of Swedish Lace, at the top. The lace diamonds don’t show up in the bottom until you view it at just the right angle, and it doesn’t do the lacy thing anywhere near as well as the Swedish Lace blocks. But I’d never have known that without trying it.

So I wound a warp for three scarves, threaded up for the new huck lace diamonds, and wove the first scarf. Even while I was weaving I knew it wouldn’t be one of my favorites, so I cut it off and totally re-threaded heddles and reed, and wove the last two in the Swedish Lace blocks.

I was a bit challenged in my thinking about this. As an admitted obsessive-compulsive person with the [...]]]> While my daughter and her husband were in the hospital laboring to birth their beautiful son, my assignment was to be at their house to take care of their three animals. I was happy to do so.

I was a bit challenged in my thinking about this. As an admitted obsessive-compulsive person with the busiest show season rapidly approaching, I knew it’d make me crazy if I didn’t have something productive to do while I was house-and-animal sitting. I warped up my rigid heddle loom with some mohair to recreate that gorgeous purple & silver scarf. Then I thought about it and decided that I would bring that to my next show instead, weaving with it while I was there. Instead, I brought lots of fabric to sew my scarf bags. Every handwoven piece I sell comes in a hand sewn bag. My bags are all made of repurposed fabric – pillowcases work beautifully. It’s part of my philosophy, and my business name – giving things their second wind.

I arrived in Rochester on Thursday morning, and by the time that my grandson was born, I’d sewn 3 dozen bags and used up all my fabric. What would I do to occupy myself the next day?

I took a ride to the local thrift store on Friday morning and bought some used curtains. By nightfall I’d sewn another 3 dozen bags.

I still have to put my labels on all of those bags. And I’ll need to develop an alternate strategy for many of them. Usually I print my logo & website on iron-on fabric. That works great on 100% cotton, but is inappropriate for manmade fibers, and many of my new bags are manmade or a blend. I’m thinking that the easiest way (which doesn’t sound like a piece of cake) is to iron my logos onto 100% cotton and then use my free-arm sewing machine to sew that on to the bags. If you have a better, quicker, easier thought, PLEASE let me know!

Before I headed up to Amanda’s, I did manage to get three of those gorgeous eggshell cotton huck lace scarves woven. They went so fast at the Roycroft show, I’m confident they’ll sell quickly at one of my upcoming shows. So now I need to weave some things with lots of color.

Any fears I had about having too much time and not enough warp were completely unfounded. I put on 4-1/2 yards, and got less than 2 woven. I learned LOTS!

I was [...]]]> Robyn Spady is an amazing teacher! She’s knowledgeable, organized, friendly, patient, and flexible. Her Extreme Warp Makeover workshop was really great.

Any fears I had about having too much time and not enough warp were completely unfounded. I put on 4-1/2 yards, and got less than 2 woven. I learned LOTS!

I was supposed to weave 30 different patterns on one treadling. I realized after I got home and wet finished that I left one out, so I have only 29. Oh well. Anyway, here they are, in all their glory (not). You’ll notice that you don’t usually see my selvedges – they are BAD. I was focused on trying the various treadlings on a new-to-me loom, not on my selvedges. I also made several treadling errors, some of which are really obvious, some not so much. If I saw the error as I was weaving, I went back and fixed it; the ones that remain I didn’t see during class.

First we did four different lace weaves. As I said, I’d chosen the overshot threading, so I was a surprised we could do any type of lace weave with it. Because the warp & weft were the same color (white), it’s hard to see the detail in the photo.

Next we did waffle fashion. This isn’t a true waffle weave, which requires a specific threading and treadling combo, but rather a treadling that creates some amount of dimension in the weaving. This didn’t work so well on the overshot threading, particularly when combined with the fact that I couldn’t beat very hard on the table loom. This last fact impacted many of the patterns.

Following waffle fashion were 5 different twills. The lace and the twills were the parts that were most familiar to me. Here’s the one sole example of when the lack of a hard beat improved the look – the patterns were more open than the samples Robyn had woven on her floor loom.

Next came some traditional overshot. I’d never woven any overshot before. In general, I think for me, it may be best used sparingly instead of all over the way the coverlets were. But I may feel differently as I explore it more.

It’s pretty easy to see where I missed two of the picks in the treadling sequence in the star fashion.

After the overshot came shadow fashion. You can see the pattern better if you squint. This is an example of when the lack of a firm beat hurt the visual.

On opposites was interesting. Determine the pattern you want to follow, then insert another pick between each of the pattern picks. In this ‘extra’ pick, raise the two shafts that were up in the first pick. So if in pick 1 I raised 1&2, in pick 2 I raised 3&4.

On opposites polychrome was nice, too – you worked with 2 complementary colors instead of your pattern color and warp color.

Next up was monk’s belt. I’ve never been fond of this pattern visually, and found I didn’t like weaving it much, either, so I wove only half of the treadlings and moved on.

Before the class, I would have told you that I wouldn’t have liked weaving that looked like fine needlework. And I would have been wrong yet again. I do. I like weaving it, and I like the way it looks. I liked the cleanliness of the swivel and petit-point better than the polychrome. This is where I inadvertently skipped a sample. I was supposed to weave the swivel with the colors switched – white where it had been dark and vice versa. It does give a different, complementary pattern.

Next up was crackle fashion. Again, not a true crackle weave, but an imitation of one. Crackle weave is supposed to remind the viewer of pottery with crackle finishes. I don’t much care for that pottery, or that weave pattern.

Then came the summer and winter fashion weaves. (Nope, not true summer & winter.) Again a surprise for me. I didn’t think I’d like the dukagang (a Swedish structure), but I do.

The double faced weave was quite interesting. (It’s quite different from doubleweave.) You can see that it’s the same pattern, dark brown on one side and light blue on the other. It takes a long time to weave, and the finished fabric is quite thick.

A ribbed weave was next. I made several treadling errors, so mine didn’t rib the way it should have. I’ll admit it – I saw before I was done with the sample that I’d made errors, but I didn’t have the energy to unweave and reweave.

Now was the corduroy. This really didn’t work well with the lack of firm beat of the table loom. I did cut a few of the rows of cords, but I’m positive it will all pull out easily, so I stopped. So don’t take my example as a good one. It’s really an amazingly impressive technique.

I used three strands of heavier yarn together for the deflected weave, which worked quite well.

We finished our selection with the echo fashion. When beat more firmly, it appears that there’s a glow around the darker pattern.

I learned other things, too, that I didn’t have time to weave over the weekend. They’re for some future post.