It's actually cold here...

It's been cold here for about four days - actually, almost too cold to go downstairs and weave at all!


I did weave on Saturday - it was cold, but I had to do laundry, and since the laundry machines are next to the loom, especially with the dryer running, it was slightly less cold.  Not warm, mind you: slightly less cold.   I just kept running upstairs and adding layers.  I tend to pride myself on my ability to withstand cold - after all, I was born in Vermont - but lately it's been harder as I get older, and it was nearly freezing in the basement.  The vigorous movement of weaving also helped, but I was very glad for the wool turtleneck I was wearing, and Sylvia's wonderful fingerless mitts made of SuperWash Merino kept my hands warm without encumbering my fingers.




I did get about 24" of the silk woven on Saturday, on the same sample as I've been blogging about in previous posts.  I alternately wove horizontal stripes with the grey-blue tram, and then the Japanese antique silver thread.  Looks good, though the direct horizontal stripes somewhat muddy the pronounced effect of the diagonal movement in 'color and weave' of the finished web.




I'm thoroughly pleased, though, on a couple of counts: one being that I can confidently weave thread as fine as 60/2 and probably 120/2 on the AVL.  The other count is that, as I mentioned in an earlier post, I discovered that I'd been doing the AVL tension totally wrong, and that that was the reason I was having sheds in which all the raised threads went noticeably slacker than the un-raised ones - but the secret is that on an AVL, the tensioning is really a dynamic system (hate to sound trite with 'dynamic', but that really is the right word here) and doesn't work properly if the tension arm is firmly fixed instead of adjusting to each shed.  I had been worried that the free-floating tension arm with the weight would prevent the warp from being tight enough to weave the firm setts and beats I like.  Erroneous thinking.  In order to have a heavier tension on the warp, it does help to have a little extra weight on the pulley that keeps the cloth-storage beam taut, but the main thing is to have the rope that connects the weighted pulley bar to the actual warp beam taut enough to really hold the weight, but loose enough so that the warp beam isn't totally stopped because of too much friction.  There has to be a functioning friction rate, that is to say, it has to be tight enough to keep the warp taut, but not so taut that you can't advance the warp from the weaver's bench without getting up to loosen the rope, advancing the warp beam, and re-tightening.  There really is a happy medium.  Silly that I just didn't understand how it worked exactly, but wonderful that I know now!




And it is that firmly-woven web that I'm thinking about now...the cloth is 60/2 essentially woven firmly...it's drapey, but in the way that waistcoat fabric might be drapey - it's not the drape of the same thread woven at 48 epi (which was the sett for all the 2002-2003 broken twill tallitot I wove then), which is very scarflike and almost slinky.  But it's a wonderful hand, with a little bit of what the French refer to as 'carte' (an almost papery quality to the firmly woven taffetas) that I love.

Rain in the air, rain in the web

It's been raining again, finally!  Raining for days.  Sodden wet.  I love it!  We've been so thirsty for this for years.  Haven't had a real socked-in rain soaking in a very long time - even last year's rain storms that hit here while Carlos and I were in Texas was a flash in the pan - rained very hard, but not for very long.  This time, it's been raining substantially and the hills are greening up!

Sunday I finished threading the last few threads on the warp, and then sleyed the 20-dpi reed, and lashed on (which with the fine threads worked MUCH better than tying on).  And I wove about 10 inches on the sampler, using the following wefts:

1) Golden brown tram from Laos, from Tien

2) Gold round thread from John Marshall, from Nishijin

3) 60/2 spun silk dyed with indigo, same as the blue warp

4) Madder red tram from Laos, from Tien

5) Pale grey-blue tram from Laos, from Tien

I had an objective for each color/type. 

Turns out that each of the different weft types looks wonderful, but by far it is the brown (which pal Sylvia refers to as 'the delicious cacao'), the red, and the pale grey-blue trams which look best, but in color and in lustre.   The indigo blue weft completely cancelled out the contrast between the diagonal stripes at a 72-degree angle, and the 35-degree ones.  This effect is pronounced in the brown, the red, and the soft grey-blue silk wefts.  There's also a nice iridescent quality present in the brown.  When the differently-angled diagonal stripes are able to show, the effect on the cloth - and this is especially true of the light grey-blue weft - is reminiscent of rain falling.

I cut off the sample, and will lash on again tonight.  There're a few yards left of the sample warp, so I'm thinking that I could really make two lute straps, or long strips of fabric to cut cell phone cases from, and I think I'll use the red, brown, and pale grey-blue trams, in succession.

One threading error appeared in the sample, which I don't fix because it's just a sample.  And as I had suspected, the white silk warp is slightly tender.  There have been three broken warp threads, and they're all white. 

Looks and feels good at 60 epi/80 ppi.  It would probably be more drapey at 48-54 epi, but I like the slightly stiff quality to this fabric - it's like the kind of thing you'd make an obi from.

I was also trying to weave under higher tension - this I accomplished by adding another 5-lb weight to the cloth storage beam and by adjusting the weight on and the tensioning of the warp beam, and that did the trick.  At one point it was too tight to make a good shed, so I just loosened it very gradually from there until I found a spot that both kept the weaving tension high, but which allowed the warp to advance as needed.  The cloth is as firmly-woven as on the Cranbrook loom.

And, interestingly, I realized that I'd been doing the tension completely wrong for ALL the other weaving projects I've finished on this loom; I finally made it work properly, having come to the understanding that the tension on the warp beam and the tension on either the sandpaper beam OR the cloth storage beam need to work in tandem.  Once set, it was very cool to watch as the warp beam weight swings ever so slightly when the shed is opened upon depressing the treadle, and I'm having NO MORE slack warp threads on the raised threads - it was all dependent on the weighted pivot arm keeping the warp beam taut being able to be movable during weaving.  I had had a less-than-functional understanding about how the tension really works on an AVL.

Almost There

I decided that even though I was tired and it was cold that I would go down to the studio and finish threading heddles (the 'reaching in') last night.  Turned out that it wasn't very cold downstairs, so I just threw on a sweater and wool socks and was perfectly comfortable down there.  Since this project is not a straight threading, and since I still haven't memorized the 64-sequence repeat, I was able to thread as long as my iPad was still charged (couldn't print it out; no toner).  I got all the way through the second-to-last bout when the power went out on my iPad.  Also, it was time to go upstairs and cook dinner (even though it was about 9:00), so, very uncharacteristically, I left the last 40 or so threads for tonight.  Ordinarily I would not leave such a small quantity undone, but there were hungry family members upstairs!

Tonight I am off to do grocery shopping, but am planning to finish those last 40-odd threads, and at least to sley the reed.  Might not have enough time to tie on and start weaving, but you never know...the sleying of the reed should only take about 20 minutes or so, since the test warp is only 6" wide. 

I've decided to sley the threads 3 ends per dent in a 20-dent-per-inch reed.  60 epi should be quite firm a web once woven, even in a twill.  If that proves to be too firm or otherwise problematic, I will re-sley at 4 ends per dent in a 12 reed, for a sett of 48, which I know works well with this 60/2 silk.

Monday which comes after Sunday

We went to the beach Saturday afternoon with our friend Bart.  It was cold, but sunny, and we'd wanted to see the ocean after Friday's 'king tide'. 


We got there just in time to see magnificent roiling waves, thunderous and loud, and lots of 'foambergs', which are foam (perhaps from detergent?) blobs on the beach churned up by the roiling surf.


It was very beautiful.  Tried taking slo-mo footage of the foambergs, but their terribilita didn't come through in the footage.  But what a fun memory.


Above is the poster for my senior concert at Bennington College in May, 1986.  Friend AT drew the cartoon, and included Virginia Woolf.  :-)


Earlier on Saturday I was discussing gold, yellow, and brown dyes with Bart.  I had been talking about the beauty of gamboge, which of course no one here can use due to its toxicity, and how I'd like to find another dye combination that can produce that amazing golden 'kuchiba' color.  Bart suggested walnut hulls; then I recalled that I still had a little of the yarn I'd spun long ago on the Carson Cooper wheel (before I sold it) and which I had dyed with walnut hulls and leaves.  I found it, and showed it to Bart.  I'm still delighted at the rich color.





On Carlos' suggestion yesterday morning I cooked a 'Dutch Baby' pancake.  It came out perfectly delicious!  One of the challenges is to heat the iron skillet in the oven, but not so much that the butter burns when it is tossed into the pan; it needs to be hot enough to melt quickly and to very slightly brown the butter to a noisette flavor just before the batter is poured into the pan.  And yesterday it worked like a dream - nice nutty toasty flavor to the butter with no smell of scorch, and the pancake popped right out of the pan cleanly.  Flavor was awesome!  I used less sugar than the recipe called for, cutting it by about 1/3, and halved the salt.  We drizzled fresh lemon juice on it and then sprinkled it with confectioner's sugar.



Here it is, in the oven, and I pulled it out, sprinkled powdered sugar on it, and put it back into the oven for a little extra browning.  I still marvel at how so little batter and no leavening can produce so much more volume than I expected.  And it was delicious.


I was still feeling quite under the weather through most of the day, sore throat and all, but rallied myself enough to go down and do half the threading on the new project on the loom, which is not straight threading.  The threading repeat is 64, and the treadling repeat is 56.  I still left the remaining half of the threading to do, but I then went back upstairs since it was very cold in the basement, and laid out the 56 dobby bars on the floor in order to peg the pattern.  Most of the dobby chain was the 38 bars I used for my most recent project (the colorful cotton dish towels) but I added the remaining bars from the bunch of new dobby bars I recently purchased from AVL.  Nice and clean.  These last don't connect with the chain links as the older ones did; they connect with mylar strips and screws.  The mylar connected neatly with the old bars with screws, and I was able to attach the new bars bringing the number up to the required 56.  Since it is an 8-shaft pattern, it was quite fun and easy and quick to peg up the bars - after having done 16-shaft patterns, the 8-shaft pattern was easy to look at and read - almost like sight-reading music.  I put the new dobby chain into the mechanical dobby on the AVL, joined the ends, and adjusted the depth screws until it worked.  Smooth.


So now all I have to do is to finish the threading, which will take about another two hours, and then tie on and weave some samples.  I'm wondering how 60/2 at 60 epi will come out on this loom v.s. on the Cranbrook with its magnificently high warp tension capability. 


As always, sampling is one of the most enjoyable parts of the weaving, since it can be done with some spontaneity.  "I think I'll use the red tram weft here...", one muses.

Cross.

The threading cross from the 60/2 warp currently being threaded.  Since this has parallel threading, it makes for an interesting effect at the threading cross.