I have been
busy weaving for the Woolcraft section of the Royal Geelong Show, hence the
need to keep things under wraps. I just managed
to finish all the items I’d put on the entry form.
The first
was a bright rug, that I thought it could be for the very young or even for the
very old. I was inspired by a wrap I saw
draped over the back of a chair at work and decided to translate it into a
rug. I was able to buy some red 4 ply
wool on special when I was in Bendigo, but it wasn’t quite enough so I added
some 4 ply baby wool, a different red but I alternated the 2 yarns right across
the warp. I dyed the brightly coloured
stripes on an unexpected day off.
Here it is
on the trapeze
and is there anything better than a new warp all tied on and
ready to start weaving? Yes it’s the
same warp with all the mistakes identified and fixed, the tie up done and
behaving nicely so that I’m really ready to start weaving.
It wasn’t as straight forward as I thought it
would be. The right sett for the yarn
was 15 to 16 epi. As it was machine
washable wool and I wasn’t expecting a lot of fulling, I sleyed it 2 ends per
dent in an 8 dent reed. Although the
yarn was all wool, it seemed to think it was mohair. The ends clung together and the first rug was
pretty much a large sample. I re-sleyed
in to 1 end per dent in a 15 dent reed and it behaved much better, not
perfectly but much better.
The draft was
adapted from an 8 shaft advancing twill in ‘The Best of Weavers: Twill Thrills.
The next project
was the second half of the summer and winter warp. I had been inspired by Tien’s article in
Handwoven May June 2014 and had come up with a point draft with 2 and 3 block
units. The first scarf had a Moorish
look to it
and I wrote about it July but I fancied something more geometrical for
the second scarf and thought of windows.
Then I read somewhere that it’s good to have a border and so ‘Windows
and Doors’ was born. I experimented with
the tie-up on the computer to see what sort of windows I would get. I found I had a single and two double windows
and one of these turned out to have special significance. In 2012 I went to the Weaving Summer School
at the Australian National University in Canberra. It was a terrific workshop where I got to
play on a 24 shaft computer controlled loom for the first time.
A staff member very generously offered me
accommodation in her studio – a studio with a bed and a bathroom – what’s not
to like? When I looked on the internet
to find where I was staying I caught sight of a link to ‘Tocumwal Houses’. During the Second World War at the age of 18,
my mother had joined the WAAAF – Women’s Auxiliary Australian Air Force –
learned Morse Code, and with 5 of her fellow recruits had been posted to a big
Air Force training base at Tocumwal, just the 6 of them and 3000 young
men. According to the oral history
project, when the base was built, instead of typical long rectangular army
huts, the huts at Tocumwal were house shaped.
The idea was that if enemy pilots flew over the base they might think it
was just another country town, one with all the houses the same size and shape
and a couple of large air strips as well.
After the War, when Canberra needed a lot of new houses for the
returning military personnel who were marrying and settling down with their
baby boomer children, the huts from Tocumwal were moved across country, about
300 kilometres, and turned into suburbs.
It was a very thoughtfully planned estate for young families with courts
along two sides and plenty of open space, accessible without any need to cross
roads. When I looked at the houses they
did certainly looked as though they had come from a military base. I took a few photos
and compared them with
some of my mother’s old photos and indeed the windows were an exact match (I think my mother is the one on the far left but not sure why they are sleeping outside).
Of course I imagined that the house where I
stayed was my mother’s old hut.
So when
the tie up gave me double windows, I made sure that one version had the same
proportions as the windows on the Tocumwal Houses, right down to the narrow
glazing bar across the middle.
Here it is –
on
– and off
The third
project was to use a lovely ball of Juniper Moon Farm Findley Dappled in soft
greys, sent to me by my aunt in the US.
It was 50/50 merino/silk and I thought that with a darker grey cashmere
yarn from the stash for the contrast warp stripes and the weft, it could be entered in the other natural fibres class.
I wanted to
make the most of the wool/silk and opted for satin stripes with plain weave
stripes in the cashmere. I found
something close to what I wanted in Sharon Alderman’s Mastering Weave
Structures but there was no draft. Off
to the computer and I worked it out, then I thought I had seen the same fabric
in Handwoven, checked, and there was the draft in the March April 2003 issue – the shafts were a bit different as they had
put the tabby on 1 and 2 and I had put it on 6 and 7 but the resulting cloth
would have been the same. Weaving must
be good exercise for the brain.
Although
the dark grey yarn was labelled ‘cashmere’, I’d bought it years ago and wasn’t
completely sure what it was. Once it was
wet finished there was no doubt, it was just so soft. The satin stripes with their closely sett
merino/silk gave it just the right amount of weight and drape.
It’s now on its way back to the US as a gift
for my aunt, I hope she likes it.
The judges
liked what I’d done, a third prize for the red rug and blue ribbons for the two
scarves.
Helen