Pattern switch to a different twill

The 'firebird' pattern was interesting on the beginning of these towels, but it produced way too many long floating threads, which would be snaggy and which looked untidy.  The pattern didn't read very well, either, so I delved into 16 Harnesses: the Fanciest Twills of All to look for something that would work well.  I narrowed it down to several patterns, all similar, with maximum floats at 3 threads instead of 5 and 9 and what-not.

 

I'm very pleased with how the new pattern is showing.  It looks good with self-weft and with contrasting color.  The darker linen looks especially good.  There's a damask-y feel about it.  The floats are much more contained and they work with this thread.  The design reads well.

 

One difficult thing about working with floating selvedges: if by hazard you happen to re-treadle the same shed because the dobby didn't catch and move, it won't feel like the same shed because the thread passes around the floating selvedge thread, instead of pulling back out of the shed due to duplication.  Must beware of misweaves!  Two wefts in the same shed immediately read as an error.  Luckily, I'm getting better about not being afraid to un-weave a few rows.



 

Here you can see where the design switches; the lower part of the web, curving out of sight on the sandpaper beam, is woven in the firebird twill, while somewhat above that you can see where the new diagonal pattern begins smartly.

With the pattern alongside.

Weaving on the "Perugia" towels.

 

Last night I tied on and began weaving the Perugia towel warp. 

Mostly very good - oddly, I ended up having two places where the threads were crossed into the wrong dents, but I attribute that to my super-fast eager sleying the night before last.  I fixed them, and everything's fine. 

I find I don't love the shade of the blue (synth) perle cotton - it does not look like an indigo-based color at all.  I think that when I get to the state of the warp where I make our challah cover, which won't need to be machine-washed, I'll use the real indigo-dyed thread. 

 

Mostly problem-free, apart from the two twisted warp threads.  I also discovered that the beater reed, the 15-dent that I'm using, is not 'tall' enough for the beater, so it rattles a bit and can slide from one side to another.  I think I'm going to shim it with some folded paper or something so that it doesn't rattle or shimmy.  The tension of the warp does seem to hold it generally aligned with the warp, but I don't like the noise or the unsettling movement of the reed in the beater.

 

The reed was rusty.  Odd as it might seem I do prefer carbon steel reeds rather than the stainless.  I brushed off most of the rust but left a little bit in order to experiment with the iron oxide rubbing off on the cloth.  It stopped after about six inches, but what is there is very interesting.  But is it art?  ;-)

 

I'm using the same pattern I used in the Screamy Bollywood color gamp, but since it's mostly white-on-white here it comes out as a texture.  I'm going to weave a sample, and then 'punish' it by machine-washing and drying it.  As I look at the interlacements, and see the floating threads, it occurs to me that the web will probably retract quite intensely in the wet finishing...it's cotton, and it's a slightly more open web than I'm used to (I measured the reed, and it's 15 dpi, but the web looks more open than I thought it would.)  I know from experience that it will of course tighten up as the web is removed from tension and then again in the wet-finishing, so we'll see how the pattern shows after all that.  And after steam ironing.

 

Overall, I'm delighted with how it is going.  It looks like 'real' linens on the loom!  Tonight I'm going to keep on with the sample using the cottolin, and also the bleached white perle cotton.  And some silk, too - why not?  It'll have a different shrinkage rate, of course, but I love the adventures in sampling.  I'll also use some unbleached natural 100% linen of which I have just a bit, and then wash it all to see how it behaves. 

 



 

Sleying the Reed

Sleyed the reed last night all in one sitting.  Only 540 ends, so it went swiftly.  BUT but but there was just enough time to finish before running upstairs to cook dinner before we watched Wolf Hall.  So no time to tie on and start weaving...that'll be for tonight!

Also I picked up the box from Yarn Barn yesterday at the Lakeview Post Office here in SF.  I had bought some blue yarn in what I was hoping to be an indigo color, since my cousin will want to be able to wash them in the washer, in which real indigo would suffer from the detergent.  So I tried to choose a nice perle cotton that was dyed with synthetic dye that would hold up in a modern washer but still look kind of like the right color for indigo.  Note to self: "Yale Blue" does not look like indigo.

I also received the cottolin (40% linen, 60% cotton) I'd ordered.   It's not as smooth or as even as the perle cotton, of course, but that might make a nice weft, and with the linen it would add absorbency that the perle cotton warp would not do quite as well.  I think I'll weave one of the towels with the cottolin as the weft.

The Warp for the Perugia Towels.

I've had some problems with the ancient tennis-elbow injury on my right arm...it was diagnosed as tennis elbow many years ago, though I've never been a tennis player!  I got this condition during my first stint weightlifting twenty-three years ago, and it's been with me ever since.  Ordinarily it does not bother me, but there's a sort of permanent 'pain spot' on my right forearm that I just avoid touching.  I bonked it accidentally on a doorknob last week going into a conference room, and so I was not able to weave for about a week.  I couldn't even keep my arm up long enough to thread the heddles, but yesterday I felt fine, and so was able to resume work on the Perugia towels that my cousin ordered.

For the first time ever in my weaving life, I was able to thread a complete warp in one sitting!  It's only 540 threads in all, but historically I tend to do the threading in brief increments, taking long breaks in  between.  This time I was doing laundry downstairs while Carlos was cleaning upstairs, so I just stayed downstairs and kept threading.   I listened to two albums while I threaded: Dire Straits Brothers in Arms, and an ambient music album whose author I can't quite recall this morning.

The other thing that speeded up the threading came about through a task analysis I did for my threading technique.  Carlos came downstairs and filmed me threading, and while he was filming I somehow noticed two unnecessary motions I was making for each heddle threaded.  It entailed switching hands at one point and passing the thread from one hand and then back to the other; when I removed these two motions the whole process sped up so that I was done in under three hours.  That is significantly faster than I've done before, and by the time I got into it, I had memorized the new motions sufficiently so that it had become effortless. 

At one point I did get up and stretch, but then sat right back down and continued.  This would usually be the time when I would get up and go take a break, but I didn't.  And so it got done.

I couldn't find my 15-dent reed, but I ended up locating it on top of the disassembled Cranbrook in another part of the garage.  Since it's carbon steel (hard to maintain, but my preference) it has rusted a bit, but I'll scrub it first before threading tonight.

Below is the gossamer beauty of fine lustrous mercerized cotton just after beaming and then threading.

Nice weekend



Hadn't been back to our garden up on the hill in about five days, but when we went up early yesterday morning we were flabbergasted to see how much growth there has been!

 

The mulch definitely keeps down the weeds and keeps surface evaporation down. 

 

I also stopped slothing around and finished warping the dish towel warp.  Weaving it at 18 inches in width, which will shrink in the finishing to about 16 inches.  Weaving length is 30 inches which will shrink down to about 26 or 27 inches.

 

I'm excited about these.  I'm very honored to be weaving dish towels on request, and these are on a commission from my cousin Patsy, who ordered three.  There should be three or four more on the warp, of which I'm hoping to keep one for us, and a couple for the siblings.   The weaving should go swiftly.  Tonight I am planning to thread the towels, at least halfway through the warp of 540 ends.

 

Next warp after this one will be the screamingly bright violet-and-chartreuse dish towels, which will go to neighbors, and perhaps one for us too. 

 



 

Warping

The AVL Warping Wheel is really making a difference with this new warp (for the dishtowels).  Winding with four cones really make it go fast!! 

Wound a few 2" bouts yesterday.  7 more to go.  Hopefully I'll get at least 4 on today, or even the rest, if I'm industrious.  It is really, really so much faster and expedient than using a warping board.
I'm anxious to start this one, since I have to deliver the finished towels to the East Coast by 4/24/15 to my cousin. 

I'll use the same threading as the Screamy Bollywood warp, and potentially the same pattern, though that can wait until I finish warping the loom, since any of the patterns I'm thinking of using on this warp are on a point threading.  I have a feeling that with the indigo-dyed blue weft stripes, the firebird design will end up looking beautiful.  It will read smaller, since the yarn I'm using is twice as fine as the stuff I used to make the Screamy Bollywood runner.

In other news, I was terribly chuffed on Saturday to be admitted as a full member of the Loom & Shuttle Handweavers' Guild.  In a way it's not a big deal - the entrance criteria being only that you can prove that one can actually weave.  I wasn't that worried that they would refuse admission, since my I can weave, and submitted three pieces for jurying. 

However, the other aspect to it *is* a big deal, to me.  To be formally and publicly recognized as a peer was a big deal.  This guild has been around since shortly after WWII, and it's a distinct honor to be regarded as one among peers.  The guild has been a bastion of knowledge all this time, and to have the opportunity to be one of the members delights me.  It's not the same thing it was during the medieval period, but it still means so much.