New Warps, New Year

It’s the beginning of a new year, so it’s a good time for reflection on the past year, a look at what is in progress and plans for the new year.

In 2016 I managed to weave 12 scarves, here's one of the Geelong ones

18 tea towels,

6 meters of yardage for a jacket,

a warp for felted hats/pots,

a band for glasses cases,

just finished, 

and worked out how to use the double harness attachment on my loom.

I also worked on my sock knitting skills and completed 3½ pairs socks, and sent 4 scarves to the Geelong Scarf Festival and sold all of them.

Oh, did I mention that in my ‘spare time’, I worked full time?

What’s on the looms at the moment?

One of the new warps in the title has just gone on to the 4 shaft floor loom.  I need to replenish my tea towel stock for a market coming up at the beginning of March, more about that later.  I thought some tea towels in turned taqueté with a white background and a rainbow of stripes in what I like to call gelato colours would work.  It’s been very hot the last couple of days and it was hard work getting it threaded and sleyed with the help of a fan. 

Fortunately it has now cooled down and it’s amazing how much more quickly things get done when the weather is kinder.  The first tea towel is half done already.

I’m thinking of calling them the paintbox tea towels.

There are still 2 scarves to finish on the second double harness warp, and as soon as the weather is cool enough, I want to get back into the garage and finish the 2 red scarves on the loom. 

What’s coming up in 2017?

I’ve been going to the Hawthorn Craft Market for a while now, initially in the suburb of the same name, then a move to a new venue in Hawthorn and then to the adjacent suburb but still with the same name.  It’s fair to say the some of the customers are confused and some probably think it’s closed.  Every March there is a street festival in Hawthorn and in 2017 the Craft Market is returning to the suburb of its name.  We’re hoping some of our past customers will reconnect with us and new ones will find us.  We’re already praying for a dry, warm but not too hot day with a cool breeze if that’s what’s needed for a successful outdoor market and working on extra stock, hence the need for tea towels.

I’m enjoying using the double harness attachment on my Toika loom and I have some other ideas to try with the attachment.  The other job I really need to do is to fix a problem with a couple of the treadles.  My loom has a homemade system for tying up the treadles, a bit like the 20+ system.  One of the cords on treadle 1 has pulled out and the cords on treadle 4 have jammed, I suspect a fallen pin from a broken warp is the culprit.  I’m sure it can be fixed if I crawl under the loom for long enough.  At the moment I am restricted to 8 treadle drafts, with a straight treadling on 2,3,5,6,7,8,9,10.  It seems a bit odd but the mind does adapt.  Sooner or later I will see a draft that needs the whole 10 treadles and is so good that I will be forced to fix the problem.

The Geelong Scarf Festival is coming up in a few months with entries due at the end of April and after selling all the scarves I entered last year, I’m keen to enter again this year.  It would be great if I could start a bit earlier and not leave everything to the last minute.  Having said that I’d like to avoid the last minute rush, I guess it applies just as much to the Bendigo Sheep Show although that’s a couple of months later.

I have started planning for both events and will need to have a dyeing day in the near future and while I had the warping mill out for the tea towel warp, I wound the warps I need for some of the projects which need to be dyed first.

I think that should be enough to keep me entertained for the next few months, I’d better get back to the loom 

Helen

A little weaving and a little gardening

I wrote a while ago about the tea towel weft I wound while my brain was occupied with recovering from a cold and I have to confess that it has turned out to be rather boring weaving.  Using the double harness attachment and a bright red warp on the big loom on the other hand has proven to be much more interesting.  I have finished the first of the red scarves and have started the second. I’m very happy with the first red scarf here

and showing more detail here

.

However it’s the last market for the year next Sunday, so I have reluctantly returned to the tea towels.  I managed to do the first 3 with small squares

but I’ve moved on the other designs with longer blocks

and fewer colour changes

in an attempt to get them finished before the weekend.  They are looking quite good in a slightly boring but classic way and will no doubt improve with wet finishing.  I rather like the idea of tying ribbons around them but then I looked at the price of even a simple unbleached tape at my local shops. I decided that at those prices the tea towels will probably have to stay unadorned.  I can find some really good ribbons on the internet but I don’t think they would get here by the weekend.

Earlier this year I replanted the garden bed at the top of my drive and included some kangaroo paws, called that, because they look like, you guessed it, kangaroo paws.

They are an Australian native, but Victoria is still a long way from their home in Western Australia.  They were just in small tubes when I bought them and I’m surprised how well they have done,

my only worry is that they are very close to the foot path, I’m hoping some passer-by doesn’t decide that they need them more than I do.

Something new – or maybe very old

When I bought my Toika loom in 2006 in the last year of my weaving certificate course, it was advertised as having a a draw loom attachment.  Sure enough it had 4 levers along the front of the castle and a couple of brackets on either side, just one lever and one bracket shown here.

There were no instructions and despite emailing Toika and looking at various books, magazines and websites I could not find any explanations or anything similar.  All the draw looms were much more complicated and had provision for many more extra shafts.  I think I had been hoping to find someone who had a similar set up and that they would say that they had one the same and this was the way to make it work. 

A couple of years ago there was an article in VÄV (1/2013) about the reproduction of an old Gotland textile.  The author thought that it would have required 32 shafts but looms like that were not available when it was made.  She worked out that it had been made with a double harness loom with 4 ground shafts in front and 4 pattern shafts behind.  After re-reading the article a few times, I realised that this was the set up I had but didn’t get around to doing anything with it.  Then a weaving friend gave me a small bundle of what looked like tangled strings but on closer inspection turned out to be long eyed and long heddles – just what I needed to turn my loom into a double harness loom but still I didn’t feel ready to try it out. 

A few weeks ago there was discussion of double harness weaving on Facebook and just after that Weavolution started their annual Halloweave challenge where weavers are encouraged to do something different with their weaving during October.   It might be to weave every day, try a new technique or just to try something they have been putting off for far too long.  So I joined the Polo House – the Halloweave house just for weavers who, like Marco Polo, wanted to explore something new and I plunged in.  As I was not really sure how it would all turn out, I made a warp narrow enough to use just the heddles I had and used yarn that could be discarded without too much regret if it all turned into an unworkable tangle.

It turned out to be not nearly as difficult as I had expected.  The setting up was complicated especially for the first time but I expect it will become easier with time and the weaving itself was very straightforward with plenty of opportunity for spontaneous exploration.  I’d liken it to setting up a warp with a very complicated stripe pattern – once that’s done, the weaving is easy.  I’ve written about it in much more detail on Weavolution as louiseinoz here and here.

I enjoyed it so much that I wanted to explore double harness weaving further.  A proper draw loom isn’t even on the horizon at the moment but I know that with the set up I have, there are lots of other things I can do.  At the weekend I found a 4 shaft overshot pattern to use as a profile draft, made a couple of jigs to make more of the special heddles, made the heddles and wound a warp, burgundy 8/2 tencel, as I wanted to try something finer and wider, hence the need for more heddles.

The new warp is already wound on to the loom and half threaded - I wonder how it will turn out?

It must be Spring in Melbourne as I've started weaving in the garage again and for even more proof, here's my clematis in full bloom