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.
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