Weaving A Gem Of A Life

A Giveaway & More Handwoven Shawls

A few weeks ago I was doing something on my computer and realized that this very month, March of 2013, is five years since I began blogging. Wow! So I decided that I’d have a blogiversary giveaway this month. Everyone who leaves me a comment on any post this month will be entered into a random drawing. At the end of the month I’ll put all the names in a hat & pull one lucky winner for one of my handwoven towels. Even though I didn’t announce the giveaway till this post, I will go back and include names from earlier posts in the drawing. (Comment as often as you like, but just one entry per person.) In addition to the towels I wove in February, and one I have left from last year, I’ll be weaving more in the next few weeks, so you haven’t seen them all yet.

It didn’t take me too long to finish weaving the shawls I mentioned in my last post – in another of Tammy’s hand painted yarns called Frost. Then I fringed & wet finished.

This time I think the photo turned out well. Perhaps the key is the amount of natural light. Today was a bright, sunny day, with sunshine not falling directly on the shawl itself. If only I could always control the sunshine. 🙂 If we have sun, or at least brightness again tomorrow I think I’m going to try and re-shoot the Silver Linings shawls.

The sunshine yesterday & today was really wonderful after many days of gray skies. I had lovely walks with my dog instead of having to drag myself up the hill. I didn’t get any pictures, though. I’m really disappointed in my camera. It wants brand new batteries after taking about 3 photos. Same thing happened with my last camera & I ended up buying a new one. I think I’m going to try and find an AC cord for this one. UPDATE: In doing an online search for an AC cord I changed my mind and bought a set of 4 Eneloops batteries & a charger. They are reportedly the best. I’ll let you know what happens.

Leave me a comment and get entered into my towel giveaway!

Handwoven Shawls

This time of year I just keep weaving and weaving and weaving. I’m working to build up my stock for the shows that will start this summer. I know that’s months away. I also know that I’ve been successful enough at these shows that I have to have lots of stock, lots of variety before the season starts. Once the shows start I have only a few weeks between them and can’t get a lot woven during that time. So now, when the weather’s too cold to be outside for long anyway, I spend lots of time at the loom, exercising my leg muscles pushing on treadles and my arms moving the shuttle and beater.

I’m trying to vary the weaving patterns, yarn sizes, fiber types, and finished piece sizes both to make sure I’m having a great time and to build up a varied stock. Plus I’m trying to time different things as a means of making my pricing more systematic and sensible. So after weaving 16 scarves in bamboo or rayon in February, I decided it was time to do a few shawls. I’d purchased some of Tammy’s lovely hand painted yarn specifically for this purpose.

Yesterday I finished two of these scrumptious shawls.

They’re handwoven from a colorway Tammy calls Silver Linings. I really like the fact that I had two different dye lots with very different color intensity. It worked beautifully to put a very thin band of solid purple at one end, then warp with the darker variegation, move to the lighter variegation, and end with a wide band of solid silver. I also used solid silver for the weft on both shawls.

I’m working on another warp of 2 rayon chenille shawls, with a blend Tammy calls Frost. No sneak peeks today – they’ll be done soon enough.

I sure do wish I had a way to get better color representations on pieces with a sheen to them. I’m never happy with the photos. Do you have any good ideas, short of setting up a whole photo studio complete with white walls, light shades, and more?

P.S. Looking back, the shots of the rayon scarves in the last post are pretty true and clear. Wonder what I did differently….

Finishing Scarves and Other Tasks

Since you only got to see the drall scarves on the loom, I thought it would be nice to show you the finished scarves all at once. This way you can see the color differences between the three scarves and you also get to see how nicely they drape after wet finishing and pressing.

On the left is the periwinkle weft, dark jade in the middle, and turquoise on the right. I don’t know that I can choose a favorite among these three – I like them all in their own right. That’s uncommon for me – I usually know my favs right away.

At the end of my last post I mentioned that the gemtones stripes warp was a problem from beginning to end. Let me count the ways.

I knew I wanted to do an Ms & Ws weaving pattern – one of my fall back 4 harness favorites. So first I spent WAY too much time on my computer, trying to get close to the actual colors of my yarn in Fiberworks and then plan out that warp. How much of each warp color would I use and what order what I put them in. I finally got to a design I was happy with.

Then I went to the warping board to measure the threads out. As per my plan I started by winding 11 threads of navy, 11 threads of gold, and 33 threads of turquoise. And I couldn’t go forward. I hated it. The order of the gold & the navy really needed to be reversed. I tried to simply flip the colors while they were on the warping board, and that worked fine till I got to the cross, and then I couldn’t do it. So I ended up UNwinding the 55 threads I’d already wound and starting again.

The warp went on the loom like a rayon dream and threading went without a hitch.

I intended to do two scarves with a periwinkle weft (the scarf on the left), but a foot into the first scarf and I knew I wasn’t going to make two periwinkles. It wasn’t rich enough to bring out the best in the other colors. So I wove ‘samples’ of about a dozen picks each of several colors to see how they’d work – a few different reds, black, dark purple, and navy.

My absolute favorite was the royal purple, but I didn’t have much. I did all the math calculations and according to my scale and my math, I should have had just enough for one scarf. So I set about weaving scarf number two (in the middle) and did love it. Unfortunately, apparently because my scale isn’t very sensitive, I didn’t have anywhere near enough for my typical 72″ (finished length) scarf. As it turns out, my finished length on this is just 50″. Sigh.

So then I had to pick the third weft color. I went with navy, even though I didn’t want to use one of the warp colors. I’m happy with it.

Today was the day I set aside to do some nasty tasks that had been on my to-do list for weeks.

I spent the entire morning gathering all the rest of the information I needed for my income taxes. I thought I’d done the majority of the work a month ago and would have little left to do. Hah! Three hours later, I was finally done.

Then it was time to press and tag 11 scarves I’ve finished recently. Bad enough in and of itself, but in order to put them away I had to re-tag most of the scarves that were already boxes. (In an earlier post, I noted that I was rethinking my pricing.) Fortunately simply changing the price tags on those already tagged scarves really wasn’t bad at all – not as bad as thinking about it was.

And now two dreaded tasks are off my to-do list! YAY!! I get such a feeling of accomplishment from that. It’s really a great deal of the reason why I make lists. Ok, 50% of the reason, with the remainder being that I’d forget my head if it wasn’t attached.

Et tu? Do you make lists? Why or why not?

Back at the Mac

I’m really becoming very good friends with my Macomber loom. I’m more comfortable with everything about it, from warping it to threading the heddles, doing the tie up to dancing across the treadles. So I decided to go for it and do another pattern I’ve been admiring for some time and wanted to try.

Like all my weaving, once I have the pattern worked out and the threads chosen, I start the manipulation of the fibers at my warping board. This is how I make sure that all of the threads are exactly the same length. I always like the way the warping board looks with the threads all measured out. It’s all so symmetrical, so angular, so neat and orderly, so I decided I had to take a few photos. This is 197 threads of red-violet rayon.

I got it on the loom, threaded up, and started weaving. Susan Harvey over at Thrums taught me several months ago that this is a classic Swedish drall pattern. Those words didn’t even make sense to me, so Susan graciously gave me some info and I did some online research. Then I worked with my computer program to work out how to achieve the look of the contrasting blocks of color. The pattern is very simple, but since I’d never done it before I had a hard time figuring it out.

For the first scarf I paired that red-violet warp with a dark jade green weft. The colors are much richer than they look in this shot. But I was soooo happy with the way the pattern was working out that I didn’t want to spend a lot more time playing with lighting and taking more shots to get the color more accurate.

Next I used a periwinkle weft, giving and overall much lighter look to scarf.

For the third scarf I used a turquoise weft.

This went so well that I jumped right into the next warp – gemtone stripes, again in rayon. Here it is on the warping board. I’ll just tell you that everything about this particular warp was problemmatic. Some warps are like that. You just gotta keep moving forward.

Not the Same

You may recall that back when I was watching my grandson for a week I brought the Missouri loom with me, with a rayon warp already wound on the back beam. Without thinking about it, I had warped it with enough length for four huck lace scarves. In solid black. Black is clearly the most challenging color to work with, wanting really good light to see everything. Of course I didn’t bring a light with me – I had a car entirely full of everything from dog bed to loom, pillowcases to sew to clothes for a week. Light? Never crossed my mind. I wasn’t going to be working outside, after all, I was working in my daughter’s house.

Hah! The room I needed to work in, her office, is well enough lit for an office, but not for weaving. Certainly not for weaving with black. I made do, using mostly the natural light coming from the window with all that bounce off the snow. It was nice and bright, but not exactly where I needed it to be. I figured I’d do okay since the loom gives me a nice wide shed — all I had to do was go a little slower and pay attention to feel.

The good news is that I’ve now wet finished and pressed those scarves & I don’t think I made any weaving errors. The bad news is that my beating was CLEARLY much harder than it is at home on my counterbalance, harder than I would have liked. If I could have seen the work in progress clearly I surely could have made it be the way I wanted it to be.

Here’s what I mean.

On the left is the periwinkle rayon, same size as the black, same threading, same treadling, woven on the counterbalance at home. On the right is the black, woven on the Missouri at my daughter’s.

I much prefer the ‘squareness’ and balance of warp and weft on the periwinkle. That’s also more correct – the way the weave is supposed to be. I trust someone will be fine with the black, it just won’t be me. (Note: in each warp of 4 scarves I wove two of the scarves in a typical all-over-huck, 2 of them in this, which I call – incorrectly – huck windows. One of these days I’ll learn the correct terminology & have it stick in my brain.)

Next time, if there is one, I’ll both remember not to bring black yarn and to bring a clip on light for the loom. Live and learn – that’s the best we can do.

Weaving A Gem Of A Life

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