I’m back – and with a cure for ‘dog on the loom’

As we live through these very strange times, the urge to blog and the urge to weave seems to have deserted me for quite a while.  Maybe it’s just what was happening in my life – once we came out of lock down at the end of October last year, work was very busy and then I had a family member staying with me for a few days each week until March.

I wrote last time about the dog on the loom and I have to report that there has been no weaving action there at all

There actually has been some weaving happening – I finished the tea towels based on Stubenitsky. With a natural cotton warp, I’d used the darkest yarns in the stash to give the best contrast.  I ended up with a rather dark and dull pile of tea towels, the nicest thing I could say about them was they looked as though they’d been woven during a pandemic.

I decided that the next warp needed to be brighter so I pulled out the brighter cones of cotton and designed my version of #728 from Carol Strickler’s book.  Apart from hemming them on the wrong side, they turned out well and now even the hems are fixed.

And the ‘dog on the loom’? – still waiting for inspiration.

Then I remembered that I’d entered a piece in the Complex Weavers exhibition in Canberra, postponed from last year.  I finally found my notes and realised that I was going to attempt something on my 4 unit drawloom.  I needed lots more of the long eyed and long heddles.  I tied all the heddles,

changed the shafts, set everything up for the drawloom, made the warp, threaded it through both sets of heddles and realised that I had almost zero shed and that the side I could see was the wrong side.  I knew that there would be many many mistakes with such a small shed and that it was time for Plan B.  Plan B was much the same design but done in Summer and Winter.  So I took all the extra heddles off the loom and put the normal ones back and, as I couldn’t find the original email with the dates, emailed the organiser.  Turned out that I had just over a week before my entry was due but somehow It was done in time, with I think about 3 minutes to spare.  

Here’s the wrap. The theme of the exhibition was Cartography of Cloth and I had been spinning a wool and silk braid from Moseley Park in shades of coral and magenta with some black and white as well.  It reminded me of the various colours of red wine from Merlot to Shiraz and my entry became Map of the Vineyard.  I used Zephyr as the warp, a fine wool yarn for the tabby weft and the handspun, plied with plum reeled silk, as the pattern weft. If you look carefully, you might see the gate into the vineyard at the bottom, the long rows of vines and the roses at the ends of the ends of the rows to indicate the grape varieties. 

Although we have few cases of COVID 19 in Victoria, our health officials want to keep it that way and as soon as a few cases appear we’re back in lockdown, usually just for a couple of weeks.  I think at the moment we’re in our fourth for 2021 and it’s just been extended by another 2 weeks

We went into lockdown at the end of May but it still looked as though the Sheep Show would go ahead. I wanted to make a jacket for the ‘Hand woven garment’ section but I still had enough warp left on the loom from the Complex Weavers piece, for another wrap. The Zephyr wool and silk warp was far too expensive to just cut off.  As I had a bit more time because of lock down, and enough of the handspun for another wrap, I decided that I would use the left over warp for another entry.  I played around with the weaving software, thinking I would be able to come up with something that looked like tiles.  As I experimented, the tiles elongated and turned into stylised eyes.  It just happened that the theme this year was ‘Vision’, I should know a bit about that. And just like that, the design was done and I even had a title – ‘The night has a thousand eyes’.

In the right light it does look like eyes peering out of the darkness but to be honest I think I can only find 472 eyes.

Once that was done, I still had enough time to weave fabric for the jacket and the facings.  I used 2/28 wool from Geelong Dyeing, a colour and weave draft from Robyn Spady’s Heddlecraft July/August 2020 for the main fabric and Strickler #43 for the facings. The pattern was Vogue pattern 1648 by Júlio César, a simple jacket suitable for handwoven fabric.

Once I finished weaving the fabric out in the cold garage, I told my 8 shaft loom that I would see it again in the Spring and went inside where it was much warmer

I rolled my yardage onto a cardboard roll,

 it almost looked store bought, and got on with the tailoring. 

I decided that it was time to try bound buttonholes in hand woven fabric. I used plenty of iron on interfacing and Fray Check and they turned out quite well. 

I’m not sorry though that I only need to do bound buttonholes occasionally

I delivered my entries to the Guild, they were taken to Bendigo, judged and put on display – and a few minutes after that we went into lockdown again and the entire show was cancelled.  I felt so sorry for all the people who run the Sheep Show every year. They were so close to going ahead but I heard that there were traders who took all their goodies out of their vans, set up their displays and then had to just pack them away and go home. Of course they weren't the only ones, everyone involved from the food vendors who had to throw out all the food they had, to the sheep breeders some of whom ended up stranded in Victoria along with their sheep and sheep dogs, missed out on the excitement, fun and income they get there each year.  Let's hope we can have a real Sheep Show in 2022

And the dog on the loom? Even though it was now the only loom with a warp on it, I still wasn’t inspired

We were in lockdown for the last couple of weeks of July, I got back to work for a couple of days, had my second COVID vaccination and found that night I had lost my appetite.  It wasn’t fixed by a good sleep and my stomach became sore.  I was a bit concerned about myself, went to the doctor and was promptly diagnosed with appendicitis and found myself on the way to the emergency department followed by surgery the next day.  

It all happened so fast I still have a surprised look on my face. I have been assured that I am too old to have appendicitis, apparently 15 to 30 is the peak age, and that the timing relative to the injection was just an unfortunate co-incidence.  Everything went smoothly and I was home in a couple of days with a long list of dos and don’ts.  My surgeon’s nurse rang after a couple of days to check on me and to reinforce what I was meant to be doing.  Nothing strenuous or any heavy lifting for the first couple of weeks, then more exercise, perhaps an exercise bike.  That’s certainly not going to happen but it did occur to me that the effort involved with an exercise bike was probably similar to weaving on my small loom. I asked her the question and once I had explained what weaving was – she told me that I shouldn’t weave for at least 2 weeks. It was however a good opportunity to re-hem the tea towels. It made no difference to the drying qualities but I felt better once they were done.

I can’t tell you how interesting that dog on the loom became once I was told not to weave.  I’ve examined it from all angles, have decided that I will finish the first piece with the hand spun yarn.  I read somewhere that rather than having needles disappear into the middle of the pincushion, it’s better to have a separate needle cushion with loops to secure the needles on the surface so I’m planning to weave a small strip to make into ‘needle cushions’.  Then I think I will re-thread the remainder to a different overshot design and use it for a table runner.

So there you have it, a rather drastic cure for dog on the loom

Must go, my 2 weeks of not weaving finishes today and I’ve got a dog on the loom that needs some attention

Helen

Sheep Show 2019 - Part 2

Here’s the second part of this year’s Sheep Show report with the details of my jacket for all those who want to know a bit more about it.

I wrote earlier this year about making a pattern from a jacket.  I bought the original jacket years ago in the US.  It was made in a very drapey polyester georgette, and has been a wardrobe favourite, great to wear over something sleeveless when it's hot. I thought the shape had possibilities for other fabrics, especially handwoven ones.

I traced a pattern off the first jacket and made it in much stiffer upholstery fabric. 

The latest woollen version is actually a better balance between body and drape

I had taken Nancye Whitman’s workshop on Iridescent Weaving at the Guild’s Summer School, and with some information from Heddlecraft May 2018, the 4-colour Echo weave issue, and Bertha Grey Hayes Jitterbug draft as a design line, I came up with a draft.  I had to search to find 4 colours that I thought could work together and added a strand of silk or viscose to the wool yarns to give a bit of extra shine.

Here are the colours for the warp

The warp itself

Weaving, with a black weft, in progress, 

helped somewhat by a few days off work with laryngitis. The echo weave is really starting to show here (thank goodness!)

I based the bands  on a weft face weave I’d used for glasses cases but  if I were doing it again, I would look at a different glasses case draft to give softer stripes in the band. 

I calculated carefully and used 2 repeats so that the band would have stripes inside as well as outside, see picture of inside below.

I finished weaving and wet-finished the two fabrics. I didn’t even have enough time for my usual trick of rolling it onto a cardboard tube to make me think the fabric is ‘store bought’ but I did make sure I measured everything at least twice, if not more, before cutting it.

I’d made the jacket before so the construction went smoothly and the jacket was completed and delivered to the pick- up point at the Guild with at least 45 minutes to spare. 

I showed a couple of the runway shots in the last post but here are a couple posed on Polly, my model, with the 'oil on a wet road' effect of the Echo weave showing up well, especially on the larger area of the back.

Here's the inside. I managed to find some silk/viscose fabric, probably meant to be a garment in its own right, but it was just the right weight and colour to make a great lining and it feels very luxurious

I should probably start designing something for next year now - maybe I can deliver it to the Guild with more than 45 minutes to spare.  I see in the catalogue that the theme for 2020 is 'Vision'. I can probably come up with a few ideas for that one.

Helen

Red crosses and poppies

Here, as promised last post, is the story of my entry for the 2018 Australian Sheep and Wool Show, hand woven garment.

The Woolcraft theme for 2018 was ‘Homefront’ presumably in celebration of the end of the First World War. This got me thinking about what my female relatives would have been doing at the time.  My great aunts, with whom I share the textile gene, would have been mourning the loss of their younger brother at Pozieres, and, at the same time, and along with my grandmother, his fiancée, worrying about their older brother, my grandfather, who had been wounded at Bullecourt and ended up in hospital in England.

Here are my grandfather and his twin sister at the back, with their younger brother and sister in front, taken at a guess, around 1891/92, with the brothers below when they were in the army some time after 1915

I rather fancied making a coat, using my favourite Vogue Yves St Laurent coat pattern from 1979 again, but in a different colour from the 2 previous versions. 

It’s a great pattern for hand woven fabric as there are not many pieces and I’ve adapted it to remove the fullness at the top of the sleeve and added a lining. I settled on red and black and wanted a bold pattern.

Then there was the question of weave structure.  I had made a couple of scarves in summer and winter and liked the firm fabric it produced, probably better for sewing into a garment than for a scarf.  I got out my favourite summer and winter references - in no particular order - The Best Of Weaver's Summer plus Winter, Tien Chu's article in Handwoven May/June 2014 and the the recent March/April 2018 issue of Heddlecraft.

I started playing with the weaving software.  I knew that I’d done a skeleton tie up on the Toika loom before and that I still had one treadle that was jammed.  Using a design which required every treadle and shaft wasn’t the best idea.  I tried a profile draft that needed 7 shafts to give 5 pattern blocks and as I was playing with the design, red crosses popped into view, a couple more clicks and I had stylised poppies on the other side of the fabric as well.  It could all be done with 7 shafts and 9 treadles, it was a bold pattern, and I could use one side for the main part of the coat and the reverse for the bands. I had poppies for my aunts who were mourning their brother and for my grandmother who was a florist and red crosses for the medical services looking after my grandfather. Design done!

I had a red yarn in the stash, actually from Sylvia Mason's stash, that was just fine for weft but not enough for a warp as well, so, as I wrote last time, made a couple of trips to Yarn Barn to make sure I had enough yarn and there would be no need to tie on extra warp. 

The weft yarns were a bit thinner than the warp and the first row of motifs in the sample was a bit flattened. That's the top row in the picture below. I added an extra repeat to each block for the second row, wet finished it, and I was ready to go

Some 52 motifs later

the tie on rod had come up over the back beam

and I'm always surprised how little loom waste there is on the Toika loom

I cut it off, told the Toika loom I'd see it again when the weather warmed up and ran back to the warm part of the house.

I had 5.2 m of fabric, more than I really needed fortunately as I had woven most of it wrong side up and there were a lot of skipped threads and other things to be mended.

I wet finished it in the washing machine and it was time to make the first cut.  I like to roll it on to a cardboard tube as it makes it easier to handle and I can almost convince myself it’s store bought - and how many meters would you like madam? - so that cutting into it isn’t such a drama

I still managed to waste a lot of time getting ready to cut – made the lining, made the seam binding, measured it more than twice, several times.

Eventually it could wait no longer so I started cutting and I had it mostly finished within a couple of days and at the Guild, the pick up point for entries, at least an hour before the deadline. 

Here it is on parade, it's not the rosy red it appears here but much more like the true red in the picture above.  I'm not planning to wear it with bare legs as the model did, I'd have preferred it to be worn with some dramatic high heeled black boots - or perhaps red ones

The judges must have liked it as it won its section but I have to confess that there were only two entries in the section. There were not  a lot of weaving entries apart from the scarf /article section and it would be great to have more entries.

The theme for 2019 has been announced - Season - I'd better start planning

Helen

Sheep Show 2018 – and an unexpected ending

Last Sunday I made my annual trip to the 141st Australian Sheep and Wool Show in Bendigo run by the Australian Sheep Breeders Association. My plans changed this year as I was unable to stay with the friend who lives nearby and was in hospital and Norma who normally joins us was in Darwin.

I knew it would be a long and cold day, but had no idea how long it would be and how much I would appreciate the hand knitted socks and thermals I wore. I got up bright and early, like a small child with a treat in store, left home before 7.30 am and made it to Bendigo, about 2 hours away in good time to do a little shopping before I met Virginia at the parade where we settled down with coffee in hand to enjoy some of the very creative garments in the Woolcraft display.

  

Here’s a small selection of the paraded entries, some felted, some knitted and some woven, unfortunately I was too busy taking photos to record all the very creative makers

And here's a preview of my coat on parade, I'll write about it in detail next post.

After the parade we started to look at some of the temptations on offer but decided that we needed lunch before we started shopping.  We went to the showgrounds dining room  - mostly lamb dishes on offer and tossed up between roast lamb and lamb pot pie.  The roast lamb won and cleared our plates apart from the pumpkin skin and corn cobs

After lunch we visited some sheep, looked at looms, spent some money, gathered information for future projects and generally had a good time.

When I’d seen and bought as much as I needed, I went to the Bendigo Woollen Mills for some basic black yarn and then had some afternoon tea and waited until it was time to collect my coat.

The Woolcraft volunteers had everything ready and I was on the road just before the official collection time.  It all went well for about 40 minutes when the cars ahead of me stopped  - and there we sat for about 2 hours in the middle of nowhere on a cold winter night.  

There had been an accident about 10 cars ahead, just over a small rise so we really couldn’t see what was happening.  Some drivers walked up to see what was happening and reported back to the rest of us.  Apparently a hazardous goods tanker had driven into the back of a B double cattle truck and then a sedan drove into the back of the tanker.  While it had the potential to be a ghastly accident, it really wasn’t.  The hazardous goods tanker was empty, one cow died, the driver of the tanker broke his arm and the driver of the sedan had leg injuries which were not life threatening.  

The emergency services came out in force – Police, Fire Brigade, MICA ambulance, State Emergency Service, probably about 20 vehicles in all.  Most of the traffic following us had been diverted down an alternate route but the emergency services eventually managed to clear a single lane so we could get past the tanker and the cattle truck and go home.  I finally arrived home at 10.00 pm, about 2 hours later than I planned although it could have been a lot later as the road did not re-open completely until about 3 am.

Despite being a bit tired, there were no real dramas but I did have 2 hours to sit and think about being prepared for the unexpected.  I was really glad that I’d dressed warmly to walk around outside on a cold day.  While we were waiting, I did see someone walk past in shorts but I was more concerned about staying warm. I was very glad I had put on a wool cardigan for the drive home, that my car has sheepskin seat covers and that I had a rug on the back seat.  I also had my favourite vintage 1990 English trenchcoat that I’d worn during the day, my coat from the competition as well as a woollen scarf. 

I had water but as there were no facilities to be seen, not even a convenient tree, I held back on the water.  I’d have liked something to eat but with plenty of food during the day including the large plate of roast lamb and vegetables, I wasn’t going to starve.

I had a charged back up battery for my phone so I was able to keep that charged.  I did wish that I’d taken my knitting and a light source so that I could have done something useful while I was waiting.

And to finish, here’s a picture of my haul for the day.

I was really quite restrained and some of the yarns and some of the fibre were part of the prize for my coat.  I did get a new ball winder, using the prize voucher from Glenora from last year – thanks Christine – but as the old one, purchased second hand at the guild when I started spinning in the mid 1970s, was on its last legs, I didn’t think I was being overly extravagant.

Helen

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