In which I finally admit that wise weavers use choke ties

Have finally got back to the blog, fortunately no major dramas to account for the silence, just busy with life, work and having more fun weaving rather than writing about it.

I mainly weave with fine wools and 8/2 unmercerised cotton.  These are not particularly slippery yarns and I have not had any trouble winding even long warps up to 15 metres on my warping mill, so tend not to use choke ties.  Last time I was at the local yarn shop I spied a cone of a fine Italian rayon ribbon knitting yarn.  Although I didn’t have a firm plan for it, the colour – somewhere between red and coral with a great rayon shine – spoke to me and of course it followed me home.

I used some in some black scarves with a supplementary warp.  The red was the first and looks great but I didn’t really think the project through and the red accent yarns were not secured well enough and if caught behave like threads for smocking or woven shibori.

I guess that’s one for my scarf collection but for the next 2 I used less slippery handspun yarns, and secured them much better.

About this time I realised my stock of glasses cases was getting low so decided to use the rest of the red yarn to top up the stock.  I thought that the shiny red rayon would contrast well in colour and texture with some black chenille in the stash and I started to wind the warp.  The rayon yarn was much heavier than the yarns I normally use and very slippery but I didn’t think about choke ties.  As I started to take it off the warping mill it mostly fell down under its own weight and was not helped by getting the guide string mixed in with it.  It was one of those ‘it’s just yarn’ moments but I knew that there had only been one cone at the yarn shop so I persevered.  In the end I wound it on to the warp beam, then on to the front beam and back on to the back beam, working out the mess as I went. 

Fortunately the crosses were well secured and even though it looked bad in the process, definitely worse than in this photo,

I eventually (after working on it for a whole day) managed to get it on with reasonable tension as this picture of the very end of the warp shows. 

The end result was just what I had planned so I was glad I didn’t give in to the ‘it’s just yarn’ moment but know that I really do need to use choke ties for any yarns like the red rayon.

I’ve also been busy making some scarves for the scarf festival in Geelong later in the year.  They need to be in Geelong by Friday but I posted them tonight so I had a day to spare, I'm not always so efficient

Helen 

Just a little bit obsessive

Last post I said I was having a clear out of excess paper and I’m pleased to report that I finished the shredding, cleaned up almost every last piece of shredded paper, a few are still appearing, and sorted my back issues of Handwoven so they now have their very own book shelf.  It might look obsessive but it’s really good to be able to put my hand on the issue of Handwoven I want.  There are still a few missing, hiding in various piles of books around the house but they will turn up eventually and be restored to their rightful place.

My warping mill is having a holiday with weaving friend W who wound half a warp, ran out of yarn and is waiting for the rest in a parcel that the post office has misplaced.  Rather than disturb the part wound warp, I have been working my way through the warps lurking at the back of the cupboard.  They’re the ones where inspiration hits, a warp is wound, more inspiration hits, another warp is wound and somehow makes its way on to the loom ahead of the already wound warps.  I’m sure I’m not the only weaver with this problem.

So far I’ve found and woven a dyed cotton warp for glasses cases, they might look finished but still need to be lined.

The painted tencel warp which was on my loom on January 1 is now finished, I'm very happy with the result but frustrated that I can’t seem to capture the sheen of the tencel in any of the photos.

I also found a wool warp, originally planned as men’s scarves about 6 years ago.  On closer inspection it’s really a bit heavy for scarves but I think it has potential for covers for bolster cushions so that’s the current plan and it’s now on the 4 shaft floor loom in a straightforward if somewhat muted, log cabin.

There has even been some progress on the 8 shaft loom, not sure why it’s been sitting there for so long as it’s very simple weaving, simply treadles 1 through to 10 following each other.  The stripes are 5 shaft satin so this is the wrong side and this right side is still hiding under the beam but it’s progress.

Even though it’s the middle of Summer, the weather hasn’t been really hot so I hope to get a some more done while the good weaving weather holds.  There are plenty of warps in the cupboard and if I happen to need to refer to Handwoven that’s not a problem

Helen

Looms Day 2015

Here's my contribution to Meg's Day in the Life of Looms 2015.  So what’s happening with my looms today? Some good, some not so good and some just plain embarrassing.

The good is a painted Tencel warp in a 4 shaft twill variation,on Rasma, my 4 shaft direct tie up Druva loom from the mid 1970s.  It looks a lot like the US Dorset looms, I suspect a common ancestor somewhere.

The warp is a scarf length in blues. greens and aquas, just my sort of colours.  I had to try a few wefts before I found one which worked.  The Ming Tencel was just too ‘Ming’, the Caribbean 10/2 cotton was probably better left in the Caribbean despite being close to the warp colours but, like Goldilocks and the 3 bears, the Greyed Teal Tencel was ‘just right’.

It was different enough from the warp to show up but close enough to blend the colours together.  I can’t wait to finish it.

The 8 shaft Toika Lisa, also from the 1970s and known as Iris after the previous owner, looks as though it is tied up and ready to go – it is, and has been like this since early October. 

It’s the second half of the merino/silk/cashmere warp I wrote about here.  Nothing like having to photograph your loom to bring on a bout of studio tidying so it’s all clean and tidy out in the garage and no excuses for not finishing this warp apart from that Tencel warp which just keeps calling.

My 8 shaft Noble table loom, probably from the 1980s, is naked but this isn’t really an issue.  I use it mostly for workshops and for projects where I need more treadles than I have on the floor loom.  None of that is happening at the moment so it’s just waiting its turn.

And the plain embarrassing – in 2010 we had Jason Collingwood come and teach a rug weaving workshop at our guild.  I dusted off my very first loom, a 4 shaft table loom purchased well used when the guild moved premises in 1985, and did the workshop. 

I confess the warp is still on the loom and I still haven’t finished it.

Do I sense a New Year’s resolution here?

Happy New Year, Happy Looms Day - may your weaving this year be everything you expected

Helen

Christmas tea towels 2014

It’s New Year’s Eve already and even though I’ve had a few days off work, I haven’t managed to restore any sort of order at home as I had planned.  I have started shredding the excess meeting papers and now have several large bags of shredded paper, a large pile still to be shredded and small shreds all over the house.  I might as well just keep at it and clean up properly when I’m finished.

I’ve done a little new weaving during the break but wanted to write about this year’s Christmas tea towels first.  A few years ago I started making a run of tea towels for gifts and they seem to be a success because my friends now ask hopefully ‘will there be tea towels this year?’  

This year I started with a summer and winter design from Handwoven May/June 2013, used yarns from the stash, dyed some in solid colours for wefts and randomly for stripes in the warp, put 14 metres on the loom and away I went.

I ended up with 14 towels, all a bit different, some with squares, some with rectangles and almost all with different colour combinations for the tabby and pattern weft. 

When I looked at them on the loom there seemed to be a lot happening, maybe too much, so I decided to stay with the same tie up and treadling.  After the first 6, I inserted a couple of sticks, cut the tea towels off  because I needed them for early presents, tied them back on and kept going.  As a result there isn't a glamour shot of them all posing together, and I think a couple might have missed the camera entirely.

Here's one hanging on the work towel rail showing the back side and the matching ribbon I found in the stash

Overall I was pretty pleased with the results as were the recipients.  Some of the colour combinations worked better than others and 2 towels had obvious faults.  It was one of those patterns where the mistakes didn’t show up that much on the front, 

but were very obvious on the back 

so there are a couple destined for my tea towel pile.  There’s no effect on the drying qualities, it’s just annoying, not easily fixable and simply not worth it for a tea towel.

And look what I found hanging over my fence

It’s from my neighbour’s passion fruit vine so maybe there will be some free fruit to follow and if not, the flowers are amazing and I love to see them appearing over the fence

Helen

Merry Christmas

Christmas is almost over her in Australia, far too much food has been eaten, the last of the Christmas tea towels have been woven and finished (more about that next time),  presents have been exchanged, and a good time enjoyed with friends an family

And here to end the day is the plate of Strawberry Santas I took to lunch with friends, strangely they weren't all eaten.  I think some of the adults felt sorry for them and the children just thought it was a plot to make them eat fruit.

New Projects

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 loom.  Weaving was slow because of the 2 shuttles but it was worth it and I couldn’t resist adding a knob to one of the doors.

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

Inspiration

When I was taking some photos for another post recently, I got out the roll of leatherette I use as a background and I noticed that the cardboard roll where it’s normally stored,

looked just like a large one of these.

Then I went home to set up a kumihimo braid, picked a couple of yarns that I thought would co-ordinate with the pearly square, and away I went.  When it was long enough to examine properly, I realised that I was reproducing the fabric roll – or was it the ice cream wafer? 

Probably the cardboard roll as they are both ‘Z’ twist, the wafer is ‘S’.  It wasn’t a conscious decision but was clearly influenced by thinking about the cardboard roll, and the wafers.  Funny how the mind works.

Here’s a warning for anyone foolish enough to use a tape measure with a paper guillotine

– and no I wasn’t measuring something 7 ½ inches wide, I was measuring something 3¾ inches wide – and managed to do it twice!

Helen