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I recently had a customer who wanted me to weave her a solid black rayon chenille scarf in a specific size. No problem. As usual, I warped for three scarves. I wove my customer’s solid black, plus another solid black, since I had no more of them in stock.
I had another idea for the third scarf. I so love the handwoven shawls I’ve made rayon chenille rainbows, I thought I’d try a different twist. I’d use the same rainbow concept, but switch the colors along the length of the scarf instead of across the width, like the shawls.
Hmph. There’s no comparison. The shawls are so striking, so beautiful, so rich. The scarf? It’s ok. Period. I would not do this again, either in rayon chenille or another fiber. It just doesn’t send me.
Live and learn. As long as I keep learning, and remembering, it’s all good.
I’ve long admired the finished product of soft, flowing curves in woven items. Particularly with only 4 shafts, this isn’t always easy to produce. So when I saw Bonnie Inouye’s article on Weavezine, I decided I had to give it a shot. I had several other projects that had to take priority, though, so while I waited my desire just increased.
This week I was finally at a point where I could check it out. I used Bonnie’s draft and set up my loom. Trust me when I tell you it took LOTS of attention to thread the heddles correctly – 72 threads in one pattern repeat!
I used a deep, rich purple 8/2 rayon for the warp, sett at 18 ends per inch. I’ve used this sett with this yarn for a variety of patterns, and always liked the result. To show the curves off well, I picked a medium green rayon for weft. I figured it would be as lovely as the amethyst & peridot jewelry I’ve made.
Hah! Wrong again!
I started with a few rows of plain weave, as I usually do for stability. Then I wove one repeat of the 70-row treadling pattern. This was clearly too loose to make a stable fabric, plus I didn’t like how it looked.
Next I tried another repeat of the 70-row treadling, this time beating much more firmly. Much more stable, but not much better looking, to my eye at least.
I waited overnight to see if I’d like it better the next day. That sometimes works. I can see the beauty of things after a time away, or their flaws, or get an idea on how to improve things.
I didn’t like it any better, but did have an idea. Maybe my weft needed to be much thicker than the warp for it to work well. So I made two shots of each row, doubling the weft thickness, for a third 70-row pattern. Yes, the pattern shows up better, but I still don’t like it.
I’m going to unweave all this, unthread reed & heddles, and re-thread in another pattern. Not sure exactly what yet, but I’ll use a tried & true, I think. I want to weave something I’m pretty certain to like!
While it’s a little scary how mild this winter was here in western New York, it is SOOOOOOO nice to have wonderful, sunny, breezy March days in the 60s. It’s not totally unheard of, although yesterday did set a record for high temperature in Buffalo.
Yesterday was so nice that I couldn’t content myself with just my usual 2 mile walk. I was sitting at my loom, but outside was calling me. Repeatedly. At about 10:30 I answered, knowing that rain was predicted for the afternoon. I have gardens galore — way more than I’d like to take care of at this point in my life. Would I do some spring clean up in one of them? It would be relatively easy, a way to break my body into the manual labor of the gardens. I considered, but decided no.
I’d undertake step one of an important task. I thought I’d need help with it, but help wasn’t here and the weather was. I have an asparagus bed that needs to be moved as a result of poor planning on my part – I’d planted some spruce trees too close to it, and they’re growing rapidly. Can’t move the trees, gotta move the asparagus or lose it. In the fall I’d considered a variety of potential locations for the asparagus, which needs a deep, rich bed – something in major short supply here in my mostly clay yard.
I finally decided that I’d rip out my old raspberry bed. We put it in at least 20 years ago, and despite my attention spring and fall, I get very few berries for the amount of work. Little return on my time investment. But it has great soil after all those years, so would make a fine place for the asparagus.
I should have taken a before photo, but the thought never crossed my mind. I couldn’t help myself from taking an after, though.
This is the end result of about an hour and a half of work. I thought it would take longer, or that my muscles or energy would give out before I was done, and was pleased that I could complete the job in one sitting. I’m also pleased that my back is not complaining today. My hamstrings are sore, but that’s fine. It tells me I was appropriately pulling more with my legs than my back, which is what we’re supposed to do. Go figure.
I’m not looking forward to that next step – digging out the asparagus roots – but maybe that won’t be as hard as I anticipate, either. I know it has to be done as soon as possible, before those little green delicacies start growing.
Step three, which can wait till I have someone, possibly someone with a machine, will be to refill that old asparagus bed with soil so that the tree roots can grow and I can mow.
Speaking of growing things, on my afternoon walk with my dog, this shock of bright green was so pleasant I had to shoot it.
I think it’s watercress, but I could be wrong. I’m not eating it, in any case.
Your turn: what’s going on near your house?
It’s funny how the smallest things can make a big difference.
Back in February I explained that one of the reasons my Macomber loom isn’t my favorite is that it has issues. The primary one is that with a warp more than a few inches wide, the warp threads on both selvedges become quite loose, requiring extreme tightening of the warp – a situation many fibers don’t care for.
After the towel warp came off the loom, I started by following through on my plan to tighten every screw and bolt I’d put in when I assembled it. Most were nice and tight, one was a bit loose, one quite loose. But lo and behold, I was shocked to be reminded that when I initially assembled it, I didn’t have enough screws to put one every place that it should have been, and simply left four screws out! Two on each side of the castle where it connects to the bottom cross member – YIKES!!
I exchanged a few emails with Sarah Haskell, the primary contact for Macomber. She got me the information about what size screws I needed to get, and my hardware store had them. I put them in, and then used the Mac to weave those baby blankets.
Now trust me, although I knew that it was wrong to operate the loom without those screws, I couldn’t imagine that it would make a difference in my loose warp threads issue. I didn’t expect any change in that situation.
HAH! Wrong again!
I had to use every single inch of width for that warp, going so far as to remove a few hundred extra heddles to allow the warp to extend to the full width of the harnesses. I set it all up, crossed my fingers, and lo and behold, every warp thread behaved perfectly! Nothing loose anywhere!
So while I my little counterbalance will always be my first love, it was a relative pleasure to weave on the Mac. So many other people absolutely love their Macs, and have nothing but praise for them — I’m hoping I can begin to appreciate all that the Mac has to offer as the years pass.
Your turn: what proved you wrong lately?
Despite the fact that my grandson gave me a terrific virus (a trade I’d make again in a heartbeat for a chance to watch him), what can be sweeter than cuddling a little one? Not much, in my book.
I had a customer request a handwoven baby blanket for her new preemie granddaughter. Particularly because the baby was a preemie, softness was of major concern. She also wanted something in the palest of shades, using pink, white, and blue, so that the blanket could be used equally well for a future sibling.
We settled on a hand painted blend of bamboo and cotton yarn because it is both remarkably soft and machine washable – critical for baby things. Tammy happily did some more custom dyeing for me while I drafted an 8-shaft pattern on my Fiberworks software. Here’s what I came up with.
A pretty straightforward threading and treadling pattern, and one that (a) has no floats longer than 3 threads (I sure double-checked on this one after my towel error!) and (b) emphasizes warp color on one side and weft color on the other – a feature that always appeals to me.
In fact, I like this draft well enough that I believe I’ll use it for some scarves in the foreseeable future.
I measured up my white warp yarn with enough length for three baby blankets, threaded my Mac (there’s a bit more story there, for the next post), and was off and running.
Because of the subtleness of the colors on the custom blanket, it’s not as easy to see the pattern as it is in the draft. But you can tell how soft the fabric is.
Always happy to weave what my customers want, my personal preference is for brighter colors for babies. So I wove a bright green weft for the second blanket…
…and a bright mulberry for the third.
On the brighter colors you can see the pattern better, and see how each side has a different predominating color. I think you can also see that my binding is a bit more “wrinkly” than is ideal. I worked all my prior binding magic tricks with some limited success. I think that it’s because the fabric is sooooo soft it made it more of a challenge. It was a compromise I was willing to live with.
I’m on the mend – just a bit of stuffy nose and occasional cough left hanging on, so I’m back to weaving. Unfortunately not as much as I’d like, since that means I’m back to my paycheck job, too. Ahhh, the trade-offs we make in this life ! 🙂
Meanwhile, I’m loving our beautiful spring weather, and EXTREMELY grateful that we’ve not been struck by any of the weather terror in other states.
Your turn: what are you grateful for today?
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