Busy weekend

I was very busy this weekend. I finished those rayon chenille shawls, did the billing, took some finished photos and got them packaged up for mailing. I really struggled with the photos for these pieces. Either the purple was way off or the green was. Mostly the green looked like black in the photos, and it doesn’t in real life. This is the best I could do.

I love how when I just draped it on Dolly it looked like a shawl-collared swing coat. Wouldn’t you love to wear that coat? I sure would!

Then I decided to get that other custom order woven. I needed to clear my brain, and my plate, so I could move onto more hand painting and weaving for my jury photos.

I decided to wind the warp just for the one ordered scarf, a very unusual thing for me since it is not time efficient. But I knew I wouldn’t use this piece for jurying and had to get those things done.

Here I am at the beginning of the weaving. Spice tencel for the warp, black tencel for the weft.

All is going well, although my knee does not like weaving this pattern. I have one treadle that requires that I lift 7 harnesses – that’s heavy. If I reverse the tie up so I only lift 1 treadle, I pay for it with all the other treadles, having to lift 5 instead of 3. Not worth it.

So I’m weaving along, making good progress, feeling positive.

Then I notice that one of the hooks fell off the 7-lift treadle and it’s only lifting 6. My leg always knows and alerts me immediately if one falls off if it’s lifting 3 or 4 or 5 treadle, but apparently lifting 7 was heavy enough that it couldn’t tell the difference when it was ‘only’ lifting 6. And the visual for this difference only shows on the underside of the cloth, so I didn’t notice it when it happened. In the photo the orange drawn lines point to the last correct treadling and the first incorrect treadling. See the missing dark horizontals?

Ok, so I have to do some un-weaving. No big deal. Examine the cloth to see how much I have to remove.

AAAARRRRRGGGGHHHH! 27 inches?!?!? Really?!?!?

If I’d done my ‘usual’ and warped for 2 or 3 scarves I would have simply called the length I’d woven so far waste and started the custom weave anew. But I’d only warped for 1 scarf so that option was closed to me.

I wasn’t going to un-weave 27″, but I did have to cut and remove the weft from those 27″. Then re-weave that many inches again.

Anyway, being the stubborn person I am, I decided to just keep going, moving forward. You can bet I paid very careful attention to that 7-harness treadle. I also changed the tie-up so that my right leg lifted it instead of my left leg with the funky knee.

I also committed to not weaving this pattern again, or other weave structures that require such a lift. Re-confirmed for me that although I do have harness envy, loving weave patterns that require 12, 16, or more shafts, I will never purchase a loom with that many harnesses. Period.

So I finished the weaving last night.

Today I will cut it off the loom, twist the fringe, and do the wet finishing. If all goes well I’ll also have time to plan and wind a warp or two for hand painting.