Didn't warp this weekend. Instead, we went up to Guernville by the Russian River to stay in a quiet cabin above the riverbank. All I did was cook, sleep, and twist the fringe on the Screaming Bollywood Table Runner from before (I had ignored the untwisted until now, but I brought the piece with me along with the amazing fringe twister).
The missing tube of 20/2 wetspun linen arrived from Vavastuga, along with a nice note of apology for the omission!
Tuesday, May 26, 2015
Monday, May 18, 2015
Lonely Loom: the next warp!
My cousin's towels are all ready to go back East. I love completing projects (unfinished projects are something that would lurk in the back of my mind, guilting me) but following closely on the heels of a finished project is the Dread of the Empty Loom.
That's something I consider a good quality, as it impels me to strive towards the next project!
So...the next project will ALSO be kitchen towels, but this time they will not be traditional at all: they will be chartreuse, violet, pink, and orange. Same size as the ones I just finished, but with a more jaunty pattern (not a diasper twill, like the previous ones). And in fun freaky colors!
Not sure exactly what comes after that, but I have ordered some 1st-quality Swedish-made linen. I'd like to use it as a warp, but as the AVL is a jack loom, the warp, at rest, is not held in a straight line. So the Cranbrook, which is not set up at the moment, is good for that. However, the AVL does quite beautifully with a cotton warp, so I think that I will make a tablecloth using a cotton warp and a linen weft. The small sections of the towels I wove previously on a cotton warp using a linen weft actually came out quite nicely. The unbleached linen in particular was very beautiful contrasted with the unbleached color of the cotton warp.
In other news today, I was invited to be a guest on an arts show on the radio soon for a radio station in Bennington, VT., where I was born! More on that later, but I'm chuffed!
That's something I consider a good quality, as it impels me to strive towards the next project!
So...the next project will ALSO be kitchen towels, but this time they will not be traditional at all: they will be chartreuse, violet, pink, and orange. Same size as the ones I just finished, but with a more jaunty pattern (not a diasper twill, like the previous ones). And in fun freaky colors!
Not sure exactly what comes after that, but I have ordered some 1st-quality Swedish-made linen. I'd like to use it as a warp, but as the AVL is a jack loom, the warp, at rest, is not held in a straight line. So the Cranbrook, which is not set up at the moment, is good for that. However, the AVL does quite beautifully with a cotton warp, so I think that I will make a tablecloth using a cotton warp and a linen weft. The small sections of the towels I wove previously on a cotton warp using a linen weft actually came out quite nicely. The unbleached linen in particular was very beautiful contrasted with the unbleached color of the cotton warp.
In other news today, I was invited to be a guest on an arts show on the radio soon for a radio station in Bennington, VT., where I was born! More on that later, but I'm chuffed!
Here's the towel I wove for our little table; instead of blue, I used unbleached linen for the contrasting stripes. Old celadon bowl at top.
The towels woven for my cousin.
Some samples from the same warp. Ribbon is the same cotton warp and pattern, but the weft here is natural indigo-dyed silk.
Monday, May 11, 2015
Perugia Towels are off the loom!
Yesterday I managed to get in four hours at the loom, and I finished weaving the Perugia Towels and drew them off the loom. I started wet-finishing, too, and as I sit here typing, the length of cotton and linen that will be cut into individual towels is draped over a tall glass door, drying. I'm very much looking forward to steam-pressing them and then cutting them apart in preparation for hemming and finishing.
Above you can see the length of cloth, after wet-finishing and fulling, being stretched out over the top of the frosted glass door - you can see the same color motif through the transparent door.
I love the wet-finishing stage; the cloth comes from the loom 'notte comeleye for the Wearinge', really still in a way a bunch of threads; the wet-finishing equalizes the tension of the piece and spreads it out over the whole textile so that the textile is energetically unified. The differences between unfinished and post-finished is amazing.
Above you can see two of the four towels drying while draped over the door. The thin dark line between the other blue stripes is the place where the towels are to be cut apart prior to hemming.
Wednesday, May 6, 2015
The un-delight of un-weaving
Last night I had a particularly fleet and happy and trouble-free session weaving on the Perugia towels (two down, two to go!)...
...Until...
...
...
...until I noticed that I had woven two inches in blue that ought to have been one inch.
Sigh.
I've always hated un-weaving...not only is it laborious and fiddly; not only does it degrade the already-woven-on warp threads for that section; but it is also an example of un-making, something that in general gives me the creeps. As I am lifted up by making, so am I let down by un-making.
I'd never had to unweave on the AVL loom before. There's a nice cord to yank on to make the dobby go in reverse, which was good, but I'm also weaving a warp with floating selvedges, which made for unwieldy and gingerly efforts to not abrade the selvedge threads while disentangling.
32 picks to unweave. ::shudder::
That said, as soon as it was done, I wove it right back with the correct undyed thread, and it didn't look too bad at all. And then I continued merrily and finally finished the towel. Now it's onto the next one.
After the un-weaving, it was pure joy to weave forward again. All is well.
...Until...
...
...
...until I noticed that I had woven two inches in blue that ought to have been one inch.
Sigh.
I've always hated un-weaving...not only is it laborious and fiddly; not only does it degrade the already-woven-on warp threads for that section; but it is also an example of un-making, something that in general gives me the creeps. As I am lifted up by making, so am I let down by un-making.
I'd never had to unweave on the AVL loom before. There's a nice cord to yank on to make the dobby go in reverse, which was good, but I'm also weaving a warp with floating selvedges, which made for unwieldy and gingerly efforts to not abrade the selvedge threads while disentangling.
32 picks to unweave. ::shudder::
That said, as soon as it was done, I wove it right back with the correct undyed thread, and it didn't look too bad at all. And then I continued merrily and finally finished the towel. Now it's onto the next one.
After the un-weaving, it was pure joy to weave forward again. All is well.
Monday, May 4, 2015
Great Harmony
I had a lovely amount of time to spend at the loom this weekend. Good music playing on the speakers, garage door open admitting fresh air and wonderful sunshine, and I established a good rhythm.
As always, I am astonished and mesmerized by the almost magical ease with which a big bunch of thread can morph into a piece of cloth, a complex interlacement that produces a flat plane kept in tense order.
Those threads really do become a unified energetic whole. As a bow becomes energetically unified once a bowstring is tensed on it, so it follows with a textile. I have a difficult time coming up with the wording to describe what happens exactly, but the bow is the best analogy that I know. Wet-finishing does a huge part to energetically unify the components of a textile, equalizing energy from thread twist, tension differentials and weave structures.
Every once in a while someone will see me weaving, and say 'You know - that looks almost like real cloth!" LOL.
Looking quite nice with the blue, if I say so myself. And everything looks much better when I move the temple forward after each pattern repeat, which is 31 picks.
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