Here is a photo of the results of the indigo dyeing session at a friend's house this past weekend:

These had all been dyed with Osage orange heartwood sawdust last weekend, and were a variety of bright yellows.  Interestingly, the ones that I thought would be most green, the lighter yellows, were the most teal, and the richest midhue greens came from the skeins that had been dyed the most saturated yellow.  The vat we used was much stronger than I had assumed it would be, and so the color range was richer and much more different from the 'usui' hues I was expecting.  In any case, when it comes to natural dyeing, I always have more fun with the unexpected, or at least most of the time I do.  Unexpected richness and jewel tones came of the session, and the resultant colors that came out made me recall an old New England legend, the story of Ocean-Born Mary.

Ocean-Born Mary was born on a ship bound for Boston in 1720.  The ship was set upon by pirates during the voyage, and just as the pirates were going to put the passengers to the sword, the pirate captain was suddenly surprised by the sound of a baby crying below deck.  Upon investigating, he learned that a Mrs. Wilson had just given birth below deck.  He descended to the hold, and asked to see the newborn girl.  She had been born with a head covered with fuzzy bright orange hair.

The pirate captain announced that he would spare the life of the ship's passengers if the parents would agree to name the newborn child Mary, after his mother.  They readily agreed.

Before the pirates departed, the pirate captain called for something to be brought from his ship.  It turned out to be a bolt of "sea-colour'd silk brocade from farthest China", which, said the pirate captain, was to be used to make a wedding dress for the infant Mary when she became of a marriageable age.

I have heard that there are remnants of the sea green silk brocade, off-cuts from when the precious silk was finally cut to make a wedding dress for Mary, which have survived to this day and which are kept in a museum in Henniker, NH.

These colors are my homage to Ocean-Born Mary.

It's been a while!  Fallow time followed the completion of the Large Scratchy Wool Stash Buster Blanket a couple of months ago.

Still nothing on the loom yet, but here's a photo of the 30/2 silk I've been dyeing yellow in preparation for dips in the indigo vat to make a range of greens, which is to eventually go onto the AVL to weave a series of silk scarves in a 16-shaft pattern.  Below see a photo of some of the skeins, including a hank of one of the greens I've made using Osage orange/indigo.

 



Onto the Next Warp

The other day, I stopped weaving on the wool blanket warp; too many broken warp threads from old, overly-tender wool.  Not worth it.  That said, I did get three yards of nice, scratchy woolen fabric woven in a diaper twill.  It fulled very nicely, and retains its rather three-dimensional appearance, on both sides.

On Saturday, I went with Tien to the June meeting of Loom and Shuttle Handweavers' Guild.  This time, I wrote the dues check and became a real member of this venerable old guild.  It was great fun actually wearing my own handwovens in public (the multicolor/muga superscarf) and hanging out with a surprisingly large number of my fellow weavers.  I passed around the things I've woven since the arrival of the wonderful AVL loom.  And as it turns out, I was not the only aficionado present of John Marshall's gold thread.   It's really cool to address a group of people, and when you say "...and so I think that for the next project involving gold thread, I'd use it as a supplementary weft rather than the ground weave structure..." and see nods of agreement rather than of puzzlement.  I really need to remember to be active in the fiber community!

The speaker was Robyn Spady, who gave a really engaging program on weave structure analysis methods.  We analyzed speaker cloth from the '40's!

Somebody had made a tart of goat cheese, onion, and roasted yellow squash for the refreshments.  I only got a tiny taste of it, but it was so amazingly delicious...

Lighting experiments

Clipped to the AVL loom in our garage is a ancient, super-dented utility light with an old 60w incandescent light bulb in it.  It's been attached to the loom, first the Cranbrook and now the AVL, since I bought it at Cliff's Hardware in the Castro in 2001.  I've dropped it a million times, but the bulb is the same one I've had in it since I bought it, and so far it has not burned out yet.  I love the flood of golden light it casts on the fell of the cloth as I weave. 

But...electric bills are becoming scarier than they used to be.  Most of our lighting upstairs has been converted either to those annoyingly charm-free twisty fluorescent bulbs (great for electric bills, lousy for ambience) or to LED lights.  Some halogens too, though I think that those might use a lot of juice.   Carlos recently bought a tiny LED spotlight torchere lamp for our living room, and it's wonderful...pleasant light that focuses in a nice pool just wide enough to light up a reading area for one person. 

Last weekend, we were out at Home Depot.   Ahhhh...how I love a good hardware store.  While we were there, I decided to purchase a 12" LED light strip, as Tien did for her loom, for the AVL.  Tien mounted hers on the underside of the front piece of the castle of her loom, so I've decided I might do that.  There is a small loop hook for the fly shuttle that is already there in the center of the underside of my castle, which if I want to mount the LED strip in the center of the castle will have to be removed.  Perhaps I'll buy another of the LED strips since if there were two, they could be mounted on either side of the little hook for the fly shuttle without it needing to be removed.

Of course the electrical cord that came with the LED light strip is about two inches long, so Carlos bought me a long extension cord yesterday. 

I held the lit LED strip up to where it would be on the loom, and it worked, but it was somehow odd - a brighter, whiter light than the incandescent I've been using for years, but somehow...it did not seem to look bright enough to see the details of things.  Maybe it'll be different when I'm sitting on the bench weaving.  And it would be nice to do anything to keep those electric bills down...

Weekend at the Loom

No photographs this weekend, though I spent a good long time in the garage at the loom. 

I think I wove only about two yards on the woolen blanket warp this weekend, but I spent a great deal of time applying the Slipit to the wooden parts of the loom.  After it all dried, I started to weave again, and it was amazing how little friction there was.  And no squeaks at all. 

I think that before the next project I might take down the mechanical dobby, lubricate between the dobby fingers et al, and then refix the Compu-dobby so that I can do networked twills and long repeats, as well as being able to do such things as tabby at the beginning of a project and then switch to another weave.  That's not easy with the mechanical dobby.

Weaving huge wool yarn has its drawback: although the weaving itself goes faster, the need to change pirns every six minutes is annoying, and the number of broken warp threads is up to six.

It is so cool, though, to see the woven cloth edging backwards to the rear cloth storage roller as I go.

Lots of internal stress and worry this weekend about Other Things, so that I did not feel quietened, not even with nice calm music playing.  Existential stuff.

Waste no Time



 

It's been a novelty to have the loom up and weaving so quickly. 

 

I decided that after the failed organzine warp, I'd indulge myself in using the biggest, fattest, fluffiest yarn I've ever used.  12 epi!  I first sleyed it at 15 epi, but it was so dense that the yarns were abrading each other, so I re-sett at 12 epi and everything fell into place nicely.  I wanted it dense enough so that the diagonally-running float threads of the point twill would come together like satin, and they did.

 

It was pure bliss weaving downstairs yesterday.  Happy to have the day off, happy that the weather is springy and gorgeous, delighted to have the garage door AND the back door open for a zephyr crossbreeze.  Beautiful Gregorian chant on the radio.  A warp that is easy to see, and the quiet harmony of everything chugging along as it should.  It took me all of 40 minutes to thread the whole warp, another 25 to sley the reed.  Add 45 minutes or so for pegging the dobby and tying up.  Then the weaving began - and neither threading nor pegging errors.  Wooood!

 

Immediately below are the tidily-beamed wool threads for this warp.  Only six yards.  Looks fluffy but it's actually well-beamed and the threads are beamed at the appropriate width within each bout.  It all looks so creamy and gorgeous I buried my face in it; for a moment, though, I had forgotten how old this wool is.  I can't recall where I got it, but I've had it for at least ten years, and it was old then.  It smells like...well, old wool, old wool that has been sitting around in not the best conditions, but it's still clean enough to use.  There are tender parts on the wool that mostly came to light during the warping, when there was sufficient tension on the yarn so that if there was a weak spot, it'd break.  One broken thread so far on the warp, which was repaired.

 





 

Here's a pic of the weaving after about five minutes into it.  It's another medieval point twill, this time woven in huge fluffy wool.  Of course the repeat is much more giant than on a fine silk, so it's very dramatic to see.  Looks like a coffered ceiling I saw in Florence at the Laurentian Library years ago.  I think that if I were to steam press this, the three-dimensional effect would go away, so when it's done I'm going to try and retain this quality - perhaps wet-finishing followed by steaming and blocking, but not pressing. 

 

It is entirely the tension of the yarn combined with its positions within the pattern, and its energetic interaction with the other threads that causes this amazing coffering.

Finally here is a quick shot I took just before I started weaving the header.  It's the AVL loom, all loaded with the warp and passing elegantly through the heddles and thence to the reed.  In front I tied an antique basket which friend Liza gave me so long ago - I can't remember if it's French or Japanese, but it is an openwork basketry handbag.  I've used it for a number of things, such as for flower-arranging, but I realized that it would be perfect for stashing my precious handmade hardwood shuttles.  One of them, which actually belongs to my friend Rosemary, is a Jim Ahrens shuttle which he himself made many many years ago.   The other two are Bluster Bay shuttles which Terry made for me - one is tensioned by freestanding hooks, and the other one - my Dream Come True shuttle, the one made of marblewood, has a Honex tensioner.   Nice.  I strung up the shuttle basket to the left, tied with an acid-green habutai scarf I dyed at Tien's not long ago.  The brilliant color makes for a very cheery note in the dim garage.