Weaving A Gem Of A Life

Glam shots

This morning I pressed the hand painted silk scarves and the sample for the COE. (Realized after I’d put away the iron and ironing board that I haven’t yet pressed those cotton & linen towels. Next time.)

I tried a variety of locations and layouts to photograph things outside in the shady natural light. Mostly it was too breezy, but even when I managed to get a shot that had only a little movement in it, I didn’t think it showed off the scarves very well. So back into the studio I went, laying them out individually on the floor and taking my photos. It was sometimes a challenge to keep Jack from photo bombing. I decided to let him on the COE sample but had to keep him away from the silk.

I am HAPPY! The first time I wove a sample I had to weave it three times to make it acceptable. The second time I had to weave the sample twice to get it right. This time I go it right – that is, with the squares actually square – on my first time!

I’m going to weave off the rest of the warp for a towel. It will both lighter weight and narrower than I usually make a towel. It will work for my kitchen or for a gift, but I won’t sell it.

On to the glam shots. First up are the hand painted rayon scarves I wove in March but never posted. I’ll start with my least favorite and work to the one I like the best. All are woven in twill blocks with different treadling patterns.

Way too dark for me is the purple weft. I also don’t like the treadling in this one. I used a similar treadling pattern with the silk hand painted scarves I did last time and really liked it, but now, not. I also don’t like how long the color changes are in this scarf.

Way too bright for me is a very bright peacock blue weft. The color changes are way too long again. The consistency of the squares is somewhat pleasing, but not the look I like best.

Rather like Goldilocks, I find this scarf just right. I love the periwinkle weft, am ok with the length of the color changes, and like the treadling.

Now for the silks. This is the first warp dyed in my second session, when I had a better handle on how frequently to transition the colors. I like each of these scarves for different reasons.

First up is the celery cashmere-silk weft. I like it much better up close than at a distance. I’m not crazy about the places where I used two colors in one section, but it’s interesting.

Next up is the light blue silk weft. First a close up, just ‘cuz I love it.

And now for the whole scarf. Subtle, but quite nice.

Finally, the royal purple rayon weft. You saw a closeup in the last post, so I won’t give you another here, just the whole scarf.

Hmmmm…..what will I weave next?

Martha & me

I wasn’t lost in the process for the past week, but rather taking a mini-vacation, visiting a wonderful friend from high school who lives in West Virginia. No weaving, no gardening, no work. Lots of great food, wonderful conversation, and laughter. Back on the home front…

I remember many years ago when I saw Martha Stewart on TV talking about how she ties up her daffodils after they bloom to keep her garden looking neat. “That woman has too much time on her hands,” I thought. “And she’s crazy.” Well, look what I did this afternoon.

I have so many daffodils and so little garden space that the daffies took over. Although this is a large sedum (I think an Autumn Joy), you couldn’t even see it because of all the daffodil foliage. And who knew there was a tulip in that bed? I think I need to divide some of those daffodil bulbs in the fall so I get more flowers, but for now, I just needed to (a) keep the daffies alive and (b) give the sedum some sunlight!

For some reason, when I was done, these tied up daffodils reminded me of spoolies. I bet most people don’t remember these little rubber curlers, and don’t know why I did.

Before I left town I finished preparing my north garden for planting. I worked in many buckets of leaf mulch and smoothed everything out. I’ve since planted/moved a few hellebores (Lenten Rose) and pulmonaria (lungwort).

Yesterday in addition to mowing my lawn, I spent almost 3 hours outside assembling a glider chair my daughter kindly bought me. (She thought my little arm-less camp chair was depressing.) Although a bear to assemble, it’s wonderfully comfortable. Since it’s made of composite, it will weather fine 3 seasons; I’ll move it into the garage for the winter.

Before I left home I also got a bunch of weaving done. The warps I’d recently hand painted were calling to me. I thought I’d start with my favorite one, but interestingly, it was my least favorite that kept sticking up its hand and saying, “Pick me!” So I did. This warp is mostly purples and greens with some blues and an occasional yellow tossed in for good measure. This is the one that I experimented with, painting different colors in the same section. I needed to see how this worked. I decided on an 8-harness complex twill.

First up was a royal purple weft, in 20/2 rayon. I love it.

Next I used 60/2 silk, doubled, in a baby blue. The weft is very prominent in this scarf, so all the warp colors are very subdued. But it will surely be the scarf with the most sheen.

Last I used a celery green cashmere silk blend. I liked this scarf as I was sitting at the loom, now I’m not at all sure.

I have now removed all 3 from the loom, fringed, and wet-finished the scarves, but still have to press them. Once that’s done I’ll give you my best ‘glam’ shots of all 3.

I’ve also done my first run at the next required weaving for the COE: a color gamp. That means I used 12 colors in the warp and the same 12 colors in the weft – in this case in the same proportions – so that you can see how the colors interact. It’s drying now and will then need to be pressed as well so I can determine if I need to try again to make the weaving perfectly square. (Sorry the photo is out of focus. Squint and it won’t look so bad.)

Still lost

I’ve continued to get lost in process, spending hours on tasks, mostly enjoying them, also mostly needing to change from one to another and back again for a variety of reasons, generally related to my body. It can take just so much of things before I have to switch. Not sure what to show you first, so I’ll just jump in.

But before I start, I just have to say that one of the REALLY GOOD THINGS about my new MacBook Pro is the retina display. I can work outside! Never could happen on my old MacBook – things basically couldn’t be seen outdoors, unless it was seriously overcast or evening. I’m outside now at 3:30 pm on a mostly cloudy day. I’ll have to check out the capability on a mostly sunny day.

Ok, back to what I want to show you. I’ve woven off 8 of the towels with a cotton warp and linen singles weft. With roughly 36 picks per inch, this was most definitely not fast weaving, especially since I had to pay serious attention at each selvedge with every pick. The towels are now off the loom, hemmed, washed, and dried. Hard pressing remains to be done…but not today.

The first towel was solid weft, plain weave, the second solid weft, straight twill weave. Although I prefer the way the plain weave works with the colors, the twill is certainly more flexible, as you’d expect.

After I washed and dried those first ‘sample’ towels, I decided that I’d weave another tabby, and all the rest of the warp twill – so much easier on the selvedges. So I wove one more with a solid weft, and then started putting colored borders on them. But I didn’t make that border decision till I’d already woven more than I should have for length; the border isn’t placed where it ‘should’ be on the towel. (Boy, you sure can see how much pressing this needs!) UPDATE: Hah! In bed last night I said to myself, “You know, Peg, you could have simply ‘wasted’ a few inches of weft at the beginning of that towel, then weave the second border closer to the end. Duh!” But I didn’t think of it till then, and if I hemmed closer to the borders now the towel would be too short. C’est la vie.

For the other towels, I placed the border closer to the ends of the towel. Each one has a slightly little different color combo.

I really like this fabric. I like the Mojave variegation enough that I’m seriously considering weaving myself some yardage for cotton/linen pants. Heck, it took just over an ounce of linen per towel for that weft, and I have 12 POUNDS of the stuff!

So when I needed to move away from the loom, what did I do? Did I sit on the couch and read a book? Um, no. I went outside and worked in the garden. I did the early spring weeding of my already-planted beds. Easy peasy. I got someone to come and rototill up the area for my potatoes, carrots, and kale. A little more work because I had to remove the sod first, then work in the leaf mulch, then plant. You can’t see both of my potato trenches clearly here, but there are 2, each with 6 potatoes planted, and 2 short rows of carrots. And Jack photo bombing again.

Then the really hard part. The north side of my house had a bed that was almost completely full of masses of violets. A few daffodils and a bunch of wild asters, but mostly masses of violets. I wanted to dig out the violets and plant hostas, astilbe, lenten rose, lungwort, and other shade lovers.

Although violets form root mats, I didn’t think it’d be bad to dig them out. And it wasn’t too bad for the first 15 feet or so. Then I hit the roots from that tree I had taken down in the fall.

I moved from my hand tools to my shovel. Then I added my pickax and pruning saw to the needed tools. Although there were millions of little hair roots, there were plenty of roots that were roughly the diameter of my pinky finger, and some that were almost as big around as my wrist. Since I want to plant perennials, now is the time to get rid of those roots – digging that deep once the perennials are there will be too disruptive. To get down the 8-12″ that I needed to go to get out the majority of the tree roots required me to build mounds of soil next to the area where I was digging. Here’s how that looked. And how much Jack helped. FYI that bed was just below level with the pavers before, and will be again once I’m finally done.

I can do about an hour of this really heavy work at a time. Usually twice a day. But in an hour sometimes I can only get 2′ of length dug. And I started with about 40′. Thankfully I only have about 5′ of length left. Because I’m now farther away from where the tree was, I believe there are less roots there, and I will hopefully get it finished tomorrow.

Once it’s all dug out I can mix in leaf mulch – and I’ll probably have to go load some more of that into buckets. Sigh. Then I can go to my daughter’s, dig up and divide some of her plants, replanting and making her beds look decent again, and then coming to my house and plant them. Sound like a bunch of work left? Yep. But the hard part will be over.

Hey, check this out! My peas have finally started to sprout!

Getting lost in the process

There have been several times lately when I’ve gotten lost in the process of making things. Spending hours doing things, mostly enjoying them.

First, I noted recently that Jack has been limping again. So I needed to take action. 1st was limiting the length of his walks even more. 2nd was calling the vet for a refill of his pain meds. 3rd was going to the recommendation from Jill to a recent post, and doing research on golden paste. I decided to make it, and to make it into blobs and freeze them.

I ended up with 1,068 blobs! (Think I got a little lost in this process?) Each blob was supposed to be roughly 1/4 teaspoon. After they dried and were frozen, it turns out my blobs were MUCH smaller than they should have been: 10-12 blobs per teaspoon. No wonder I got so many!

Jack is now getting 2-3 blobs with each meal. Plus a baby aspirin in the morning. The vet doesn’t want to renew the prescription (Deramaxx) without x-rays, and I don’t want to do x-rays, so that’s where we’re currently at. But it’s okay, since I did some research and the negative side effects of Deramaxx and baby aspirin (potential damage to liver and kidneys) are similar. So I need to continue with the golden paste, and if it doesn’t do the trick, proceed with other natural remedies.

Along those lines, on Saturday I took a full day of Reiki training with the plan of helping Jack. Did I learn a lot? Yes. Do I need to learn more? Yes. In the meantime I’m practicing with both Jack and myself. This practice, along with the Reiki support groups I’m going to attend for a while, will all enhance my learning and effectiveness. I also found a show, For the Love of Reiki, on the Voice America Health & Wellness channel radio, that I can get on my Sonos system. I’ve only listened to the first episode so far, but I think this is high quality and will also help.

On Sunday I took another full day of dyeing. I managed my expectations better, preparing 3 warps. (5, which I did last time, was WAY too many.) Each warp is 370 ends of 30/2 silk, around 9.5 yards each so I can weave 3 scarves each. I also knew more about how long to make my color sections, and how the colors would look when I was done. Here are the 3 warps I made, with Jack photo bombing.

The red/orange/yellow warp is my fav. Then the blue/green warp. With the teacher’s encouragement I tried something different with the blue/purple/green warp – painting part of sections in 2 different colors. For example, there might be part of the warp that is 8″ long total, starting with solid purple, then a combination of purple and blue, then solid blue. There’s no way to know where the colors will fall in the warp, but I’m looking forward to seeing it. Got a bit lost in this process, too.

On Monday the man I hired to paint my bedroom was here all day, coming back to finish this and a few other little jobs on Tuesday. My bedroom was previously okay. Now I LOVE my bedroom, and the way my handwoven curtains look!

I’m working through the issues with the new computer. As always, the old programs and processes aren’t fully compatible when you get new hardware. Lots of things take a lot longer as we adapt to the changes.

I’ve made contact with a man who will come to my house and rototill the area I want to plant my potatoes, carrots, and maybe some other veggies and/or flowers. His tiller is getting a tune up so it’ll be another week or so, but I am SO looking forward to this. I’ll still have plenty of manual labor, but at least I won’t have to start at square one.

Next topic: weaving with linen. I mentioned this in my last post, but realized I started in the middle of the topic. The beginning is that I ‘won’ 12 POUNDS of linen singles at my guild’s silent auction in March. It is 1 strand of linen, not plied or twisted like most yarn I use. It was apparently not ‘wet spun,’ so it’s quite ‘hairy’. Here’s what it looks like up close.

This yarn has about 5,300 yards per pound, so my 12 pounds contain more than 63,000 yards! Anyway, I know that weaving with linen can be tricky, so I went to Weavolution to get some advice from other weavers. They suggested I not try to use it for warp…at least not right away. So I warped the loom with 16/2 and 20/2 cotton – 668 ends – and set about weaving. AARRRGH!!! Not good!

The selvedges, especially the right one, were TERRIBLE! Bunching up, doing the ‘smile’ (usually a sign of warp tension problems), and generally being awful. So I tried putting in wooden header sticks. First attempt, no real improvement. Second attempt, not much better.

Then I got the idea to try weaving some with the 16/2 cotton. Figured this would tell me if it was an issue with the warp or the linen weft. Determined quite quickly that the warp was fine…it was all a weft issue, likely caused by the hairiness of that linen catching on the warp threads. No matter how careful I was, that ‘smile’ came back really quickly.

So I tried a few ideas to make this work. Eventually settled on a technique from my early weaving experiences, one which is not recommended for a variety of reasons, but in my early weaving I didn’t know that. Basically I throw the shuttle, press the selvedge in with my finger, and then beat. Every time. With every pick. This was effective in almost eliminating the smile, but I have some pretty wonky selvedges on my first sample (still on the loom). It’s okay with me for me to keep or give away, but certainly not to sell.

Then I got this other new-to-me phenomenon…rippling warp.

The only thing I can guess is that it’s the difference between the lovely desert variegation, which is 20/2, and the solids, which are 16/2. Except that the navy is also 20/2. But those stripes are much more narrow. I’m hoping this will be fine after the towels are wet finished.

In any case, I love the color interplay of these towels. The variegation is called Mojave, from Lunatic Fringe yarns. The solids are baby blue, soft green and navy marl, respectively from Maurice Brassard, Wabasso (old Quebec company), and Lunatic Fringe. And look at the beautiful texture.

I wove enough for one towel in tabby, and started a second in twill. The selvedges are MUCH better in the twill section I’ve woven than they were in the tabby. I can only assume it’s a result of the fact that in the twill, the linen is going over 2 threads at the selvedge each time instead of just one – a bit ‘looser’ selvedge shed.

When I have this one woven I’ll cut both off the loom and wet finish to see what happens before I proceed with the remaining warp.

Can you tell I’ve also gotten lost in this process?

Mama said

Yesterday was a challenging day for sure. Forgot my Fitbit on my dresser in the morning. Picked up my new MacBook, loaded with all my data, and had to stand at the Genius Bar for more than an hour while they got all my many hundreds of photos to be accessible. Tried to weave with the linen singles and had nothing but problems. Fought with the people at QuickBooks for a while to order, return, and get my old version of the program operational again.

Suffice it to say I did lots of things that I shouldn’t have – like get angry, worry, and was ungrateful and unkind – basically put all sorts of negative energy out there.

Today’s a new day. The sun is shining and I’m in a mentally happy place. I’ll share lots more with you – about good things, I’m sure – in the next post.

Weaving A Gem Of A Life

Categories

Archives

Glam shots

Martha & me

Still lost

Getting lost in the process

Mama said

Weaving

What Else I'm Reading Now

Tags