Lots of color going on

I finished the three silk shawls I’d woven with the two different hand painted warps. First up, here’s the group of three, before wet finishing, just so you can see the overall differences. Reminder – the warp is all 20/2 silk.

I wove them in the bottom-up order of the photo. So first is a navy 60/2 silk, woven in tabby. Here’s a beauty shot from the front.

And from the back, so you can get a better sense of its weightlessness.

Then I used a sage green tramm silk. Tramm is a very loosely spun yarn, often used for embroidery, and is very fine. I used 3 strands at once to approximate a 60/2 silk grist.

If the navy was weightless, I can’t think of a good word for this one. SOOO soft and lovely.

Unfortunately, that very loveliness is a drawback. I sett this yarn at 24 ends per inch, which I have done with this yarn with much success in the past. And since tabby is usually sett more loosely than twill, if anything I was concerned that the fabric would be a bit stiffer than I wanted. Well. This tramm silk is so fine that the finished cloth is not as stable as it needs to be. Here’s an example of what happens with an errant push of a finger.

The threads shift. Easily. Far too easily. So I won’t be selling this shawl.

Last up, I used 20/2 silk in a twilight blue, using a turned twill tie up and treadling. I followed the same ‘pattern’ as the threading. So for example if my threading pattern was 40A, 24B, 8A, 12B…that’s how I treadled, too. While I like the ‘randomness,’ this piece is way too busy for me.

Usually as I am weaving my brain is working on what comes next. But this time I just didn’t know. I thought I needed a bit of a break from towels, but what would I weave? No answer came, so I let that just be for a few days. Since it takes time to twist all that fringe on those shawls, and a lot more than usual as I beaded the fringe on the 2 tabby-weave pieces, I had plenty of time to think-while-not-thinking.

And my brain told me I needed to do another paint 2 warps piece. It kept saying Sunrise/Sunset. So I went through my stash, picked some mercerized cotton (since I can’t use that for towels), and measured out warp lengths.

(Side note: this wasn’t without problems. I didn’t have enough of the oddly-sized 8/3 cotton I wanted to use so planned to mix it with some 5/2 as they were a similar grist. But as I was measuring out the 5/2 I said, ‘nope.’ The yarn smelled funky. Why did I continue measuring out the whole thing before I made this decision? Who knows, but I did, even though I’ve not been successful at getting rid of that smell in the past. But since the warp was measured and chained, I decided what the heck, nothing to lose. So I washed it with very hot water, Dawn dish soap and a bit of white vinegar, then draped it over my fence. For a few days. And a few rains. When I re-chained it and brought it in I can’t detect a smell. But I put it in a bag by itself. If there’s still no smell in a few days or weeks, I’ll use it. Oh yeah…as it turns out, good thing I couldn’t use it right away as it’s actually 3/2, not 5/2, so is quite a bit heavier than my 8/3. Sometimes life works out as it is supposed to.)

Although without any additional yarn the piece would be narrower than I’d planned, but I couldn’t find any other yarn in my stash that I wanted to use with it, so I went down to the basement and dyed the 2 warps I made. Here’s what I ended up with.

Kind of shouts at you, eh? While I was a bit apprehensive that it would all be too bright, I fell totally in love while I was beaming these warps. I hope the weaving turns out well.

Unrelated, I picked my first pink brandywine tomato. Isn’t she a beauty?

I made my first-of-the-season tomato salad. SO YUMMY!!