New toy

No, unfortunately not a new loom, but a new phone. A while ago my phone company announced that they were closing down their oldest network.  I wondered who had a phone that old and then I received a letter from them telling me my phone was that old. So now I have a shiny new phone and thought I would try doing a blog post with it.

I finished the scarves for the Geelong Scarf Festival and sent them off in good time, but they are still under wraps for a while. 

I have a very fine - think almost frog hair - warp on the 4 shaft loom. Because it's so slow, it's very easy to find excuses to do anything but work on it, such as playing with the new phone. 

Last weekend I wound a new tea towel warp, thinking it might inspire me to finish the fine warp, progress has not been much faster this week but then I wasn't home much. The warp was mostly left overs. As most cotton weaving yarns are imported, they are expensive here and not to be wasted. In the stash there are the yarns with enough for a serious project, yarns with enough for one or two tea towel wefts and yarns where there is only enough for a random striped warp like this one.

And here is what was left after I wound the warp. There's enough to mend a few mistakes but not much more than that.

One of the outings this week was to the opening of Creation to Collection 2016, an exhibition of handwoven wraps, scarves, bags and garments by Christina Turner, Virginia Harrison and Pat Jones. They are a very talented group and their latest work is inspirational.  If you're in Melbourne, the exhibition is at Steps Gallery, 62 Lygon St Carlton until May 22. Just to prove I was there, here is a picture of my back view,

wearing my jacket from the 2015 Bendigo Sheep Show.  I'm happy with the jacket but think the strap on the bag is far too long

I have of course been playing with the camera on the new phone and thought it did a pretty fair job on tonight's sunset - point and press, with no editing 

I do have a long way to go yet as I gave up with the phone about halfway through this post as I'm much faster typing on the laptop and I still haven't found how to transfer pictures from the phone to the draft blog post.  I'm not sure that emailing them to the laptop is the simplest method but it seems to be working 
Helen

Weavers’ Dilemma

Someone came to see me this week wearing a most interesting top – looked almost as though it had been made from an antique coverlet except that it was in black and white. Isn’t that the dilemma, whether to comment or just try to examine it from afar without touching?  Here's a genuine snowball and pinetree coverlet courtesy of US Archives

I couldn’t stop myself from commenting (and feeling it) and explaining where the design originated.  She was a knitter so understood my textile addiction.  It turned out that it was from a US based company and the fabric had been woven in India in a classic pine tree and snowball design.  The fabric was probably all cotton, and was a double weave, completely reversible, and used with the light side for some parts of the tunic and the darker side for the rest.  Great use of a very traditional design, but despite searching on the internet, unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find anything remotely like it. 

I’ve been busy working on some scarves for the Geelong Scarf Festival, completed entries have to be there by May 6, so there’s still 3 weeks to go.  My entries will have to stay under wraps for a bit longer however, not everything coming off the loom is for Geelong.  I wanted to try one of the drafts which give a fake snakeskin effect.  There are 2 drafts on Handweaving.net, 45548 and 45548 Corrected where someone has decided that there are errors in the first draft.  I just thought the first one was meant to look a bit organic and decided to use it. 

It’s a great draft to weave because the small irregularities in the threading and treadling completely disguise any mistakes.  I know there are no major mistakes and while there may be a few minor skips, it would be almost impossible to find them.

 

I had a painted tencel warp, mostly dark gray with white bands that I’d dyed it a few years ago but my record keeping left a bit to be desired.  It said quite clearly that there were 240 ends – 10 inches by 24 ends per inch and that it was 6 metres long.  When I started to put it on the loom it fitted very nicely in the small raddle, the one with 10 nails and 9 spaces,

I wound it on and started to thread without thinking too much about it.  About two thirds of the way across I realised that I seemed to be short of ends, sure enough there were not 240 but only 216.  Having been taught to ‘weave in the centre of the loom’ I knew that I needed to re-thread or it would annoy me for the whole length of the warp.  Not only was the width out but after I had woven 3 scarves, each 2 meters long, there was still about a meter of warp left, enough for panels for a couple of bags or something else if inspiration strikes. Maybe the warp stretched but I don’t think so, just more bad record keeping.

I’m very happy with the results, they do look like snake skin and feel right too, not that I know what a snake feels like or have any intention of finding out.  They have been washed, pressed, rolled on the stone bench top and tumbled in the dryer without any heat.

The theme for the Geelong Scarf Festival this year is ‘Myths and Legends” and I felt sure that I could find a connection to a snake goddess somewhere – surely any self respecting culture would have a deity for a creature with a poisonous bite.  As I wove and the fabric started to look very snake like, all I could think of were Jeremy Lloyd’s poems for children from the 1980s and the villain ‘Hissing Sid’.  If you missed these at the time here’s the late Keith Michell with something to brighten your day 



and the reason why these scarves are now called ‘Hissing Sid 1 and 2’.  

Helen

A Day at the Market

Last Sunday was the first market for the year for the Hawthorn Craft Market.  I was better organised than usual – the tea towels were all labelled and dry rather than finished so late they were still slightly damp as things are sometimes when I run out of time.

They looked pretty good piled up

I made them using draft from Handwoven, September/October 2014, on an olive drab 8/2 warp. The colour was a bit out of my blue green comfort zone but I was pleased with the results.  I used linen in the warp for 2 of them and despite hearing horror stories about linen, kept the bobbins slightly damp and had no dramas.

I even ‘cold mangled’ them between the stone bench top and the rolling pin.  It certainly made a difference to the ones with linen or cotton-linen blend wefts as this picture shows where the line about a quarter of the way along on the left hand side, is the boundary between the right hand corner which has already been rolled and the unrolled part.  This yarn was a slubby cotton/linen blend.

A customer came past and asked where they were made, clearly thought they were from a sweat shop in a distant land.  ‘Glen iris’, I said naming the adjacent suburb where I live, and occasionally think I have my own personal sweat shop.  I was discussing this exchange with my neighbour on the next stall who was new to the market, it turned out I had been at university with her sister.  Sometimes I think Melbourne is a very small town.

I usually take some hand work for the quiet times, fringing, knitting, whatever needs to be done and is portable.  The only thing I had to take this time was my drop spindle and some very colourful roving.  I thought it would add a bit of colour and movement to the stall but the funny thing was that very few people commented on it at all, to the point where I began to feel it was a bit like an affliction that would be impolite to mention.  As we were packing up, the friends who sell hand spun yarn and knitted articles made from hand spun at the market remarked that I’d got quite a lot done.  I said how strange it was that very few people had mentioned it.  That’s when they said that a lot of people had gone to them to tell them that I was spinning.  Who knows what the passers-by thought but if they thought I was setting up in competition, they obviously hadn’t seen how slowly I spindle spin.  Any yarn made on the spindle will be precious indeed and certainly not for sale.

The unmentionable spindle and roving

It’s been a long weekend and while I had many plans on Friday, not much seems to have been done. I did find time to tidy the studio, remove all the mess from the tea towels and get the yarns back into the boxes where they belong, all ready to start a new warp, I feel something snake skin like happening.

I have finished spinning some yarn from 200 gm of First Editions merino and silk roving I won at the Geelong Show last year.   I thought it would be good if the 2 small bobbins

could be plied on to one of the large bobbins and while it did just fit,

it reminded me of one of those very woolly sheep who emerge from the bush from time to time having escaped from their flock and missed several visits from the shearer.

Helen 

Don't try this at home

I’ve realised that I tend to write when something is finished and there hasn’t been a lot of finishing happening around here recently.  I was busy at work during January, working an extra half day with a staff member on holidays.  It doesn’t seem much but sure eats into the weaving time, especially when there are long, and not very exciting warps on both looms.

Fortunately we had a holiday for Australia Day on the 26^th and I was able to make an extra long weekend of it.  I wanted to do some dyeing and with four days, knew I would have enough time to wind warps, set up, do the dyeing and put it all away again.  I wound some warps for dyeing and painting, got some wool top ready to dye and knitted a blank from some 3 ply I’d found in a bargain bag from Bendigo Woollen Mills.  I’d planned to dye on Monday but all the prep took longer than expected.  It made good sense to get the newspaper and plastic wrap all in place on Monday night and, after attending an Australia Day breakfast, come home and do the dyeing. 

There I was setting up, I had the newspaper down and was getting the dyes out.  I wrote here about finding very good new jars to store my dye solutions to replace the ones with the poorly fitting lids.  You may have guessed by now where this is going.  I picked up one jar by the lid – Rubinole – if you’re interested, and the jar fell from the lid, bounced on the stone bench and dye went everywhere including all over me.  It didn’t taste good but does not seem to have had any serious after effects and believe me, it won’t happen again.  First thing was to put my head under the tap and rinse off as much as I could.  The tee shirt, an old dyeing one, went straight in the bin and then I started the clean up.  Although the dye was a darker red, it looked a bit as though there had been a murder in my kitchen however the clean up went surprisingly well.  The newspapers absorbed a lot, there was probably only about half a cup spilt altogether but it went a long way and it came off the hard surfaces, including the white cupboards easily.  The only real casualties were one of the blinds

and a part of the wooden floor which is due to be refinished.  The blind needs to be taken down, dismantled and soaked and if that doesn’t work, I think there is enough fabric in the cupboard to make another.  If that fails I may have to add a few carefully arranged artificial flowers to cover the stains.   
When you think about it, it’s probably not surprising that it cleaned up so well since soaking in soda ash and heating are what sets the dyes on cellulose fibres and none of those conditions was operating when the dye hit. By the time I cleaned up it was quite late but I had a shower to get rid of any remaining dye as I wanted to be sure it had all gone, and my hair wasn’t pink before I went out next morning.  As I stood under the shower, late at night, little pink trickles kept running down my skin.  

I was much more careful doing the dyeing after that and I won’t forget this lesson.

Here’s the finished result

I liked the blue and green wool top so much I started spinning it before I took any photos.  It’s already been spun and plied with a very fine thread best described as ‘bling’ in a co-ordinating colourway

During January I did manage to knit some socks.  I have knitted them in the past but was not that excited with the result and decided to try again.  I had bought some Tofutsies yarn with the idea of weaving with it but I realised that the very short colour repeats would not work for weaving.  I could hear a little voice saying ‘knit me, knit me’ and of course the obvious thing was to knit some socks.  It was a good blend – 50% wool, 22.5% cotton, 25% soysilk and 2.5% chitin(from shrimp and crab shells) – to knit during the hot weather.  One pair finished and another sock almost finished. 

I even realised that there wasn’t a rule to say that it was compulsory to knit the yarn as it came off the ball if cutting and re-joining would make the stripe pattern work better.  I’m happy with the first one of this pair and there’s been no sign of the yarn or sock police so far.  I just have to make sure the stripes match on the second one of this pair and then it’s on to the dyed blank where everything should match perfectly. 

Think they will be toe up with yellow toes.

I’ve also been working on spindle spinning, I think I’ve got the hang of it and I like the portability but I don’t think I’ll be getting rid of any of my wheels for a while yet.

On the weaving front, the tea towels are still in progress but need to be done for a market on the first Sunday in March.  I’ve done one in natural, one in lemon, one in a textured gold yarn, one in a light salmon cottolin and have just started one in natural linen.

It’s the first time I’ve used linen but seems to be behaving well so far.  I think this is probably number 9 of 13 or 14, I seem to be losing count.

Helen

(Very) Slow Cloth

When I was working on the tapestry project and looking for my one and only tapestry bobbin, which surprisingly, was where I expected it to be, I found a warp.  This was not just any warp but a painted warp from a Guild workshop, possibly a Summer School and I’m fairly sure it was when the Guild was at the Meat Market as I can remember working in an area used for screen printing which had large tables at a very comfortable working height.  

In the 1980s the Government set up the old city meat market as a craft centre.  It was a great venue and I felt a special bond when I discovered that my great grandparents had lived a couple of doors away.  My great grandfather made sausages and where better to do it than close to the back door of the meat market.  The Guild was there from 1985 until 1999 when, with very little warning, funding stopped and the place was shut down.  The Guild has had 2 moves since and despite all this, the warp appeared to be fine and the cone with the rest of the yarn was with it.  It was a white mercerised cotton warp with what I thought were blue splodges on it and I’d seen a scarf on Pinterest recently with a similar warp, woven in twill with the twill lines appearing and disappearing across the dyed parts of the warp.  My warp was very narrow so I added a bit extra on each side.

But what twill pattern to use?  About a month into my weaving certificate, when 4 shaft drafts were still largely a mystery, I had one of the Guild’s 8 shaft looms at home over the Easter break.  What do you do when you’ve got an 8 shaft loom in the house and a few days free, but weave an 8 shaft project, even if it’s way outside your competence level.  I had a look in Carol Strickler’s book and thought that 323-2 on p88 would give me lots of pattern for not too much complexity.  I was too green to realise that there was too much complexity in the illustration for what was involved.   I did what the book said - and got something completely different.

It was a reasonable piece of weaving given my total lack of experience, just not what I had expected.  I had a look in Strickler for the cotton warp and decided that I still liked the 323-2 swatch and that it couldn’t be too hard to get it right with a bit of help from weaving software.  Something made me look at the drafts in Edward Worst‘s Weaving with Foot-Power Looms – just love calling them the Worst twills.  There was a similar draft there as well – the first thing I tried was the Worst draft, tie up and treadling, close, but not quite right, then I changed to the Strickler treadling and it was the one. 

I’ve contacted Interweave press who are re-doing their corrections page, I know I had looked for the correction in the past but had not found it and while they have replied that they are looking into it, I haven’t heard any more

When I first put the warp on the loom I thought the blue areas were just random splodges but as it went over the back beam I realised that they were actually stylised flowers. 

I thought initially that the warp was fine but somewhere in the past 20 years the cross had disappeared.  Fortunately it was quite narrow and still in the raddle so I sorted the warp threads as much as I could.  As it turned out the twill took over and I could probably have woven it off without worrying too much about the precise thread order.  It looks good,

there’s a lot to be said for letting things mature in the cupboard.

Next after the scarf was a run of tea towels for the next market, the last for the year and for Christmas presents.  One of the yarns I used was a fantastic hot magenta of unknown provenance but possibly from a guild sale.  Something, probably Di’s problems, made me test it before I washed it.  I was so glad I did because the dye just ran out of it.  I gave it a couple of hot rinses to get rid of the worst of it and then machine washed them all with a couple of colour catcher sheets.  Fortunately there were no disasters although I won’t be washing it with anything white for a while. 

There’s still enough warp for another 8 or 9 towels so I’ll be able to play with a few more colours.

I have also been playing with solar dyeing and thick and thin spinning, so I put a black warp on to the 4 shaft loom to use up these yarns and some others I had bought.  I’ve produced some nice warm scarves, just the thing for a hot Australian Summer.  One of the yarns was a nice heavy alpaca yarn, various shades of red plyed with black.  As I wove it the scarf looked longer on one side than the other although both sides measured the same. 

I decided that it was just an optical illusion coming from the diagonal lines coming from the twist of the yarn. Despite just being plain weave the final scarf looks as though I have used something far more complicated.   I was happy with the result and went back to buy a skein of the blue,

but couldn’t bring myself to buy the acid green they had as well.

I received my schedule for the 2016 Sheep Show Woolcraft competition today, I suppose it’s not too early to start planning.  I thought the jacket on the back cover looked familiar and then I realised it was my entry from last year.  I guess that’s fame in the Woolcraft world.

Time to plan and play

The Royal GeelongShow is over for another year and while there are still plenty of projects on foot, there are no pressing deadlines at the moment, so it’s a good time to stop, tidy the studio, take stock(of the stash and the ideas) and think about what might be next.

I finished 2 of the 4 entries I had planned for the Geelong Show, so feeling a recurring theme here.  One was my first attempt at weaving with handspun.  I had a braid of wool, silk and angora bunny from Charley, spun finely and plied with some very fine silk.  The contrast was an 85/15 Merino/silk blend, again plied with the fine silk.

The yarns behaved perfectly, better than some store bought ones I have used.  There were no broken ends, shredded warps or other problems.  I used an advancing twill and there was a bit of a conflict between the stripes in the warp and the advancing twill.  In some lights the twill is hardly visible but when there is less light it just pops out. I'm not sure whether I should have spun the weft thicker, used it double or chosen a braid with less contrast in it - maybe a bit of all three.

The handle is great and the judges gave it a second prize and the E Marion Long Memorial Award for the best exhibit using a variety of colours – thanks Charley!

The other entry was a narrow silk scarf in huck lace.  I had a nice hank of mulberry silk, planned the warp and weft using the measurements on the label but at the last moment, just before I wound the warp decided I should do a rough measure – length of hank x number of ends.  Imagine my surprise when instead of the 1200 metres I thought I had, there were only about 550 metres.  It was back to the calculator, fortunately as the yarn was thicker I didn’t need so many ends to the inch and I ended up with some left over as I had made the warp a little on the short side.  Fortunately with the Toika loom there is only about 12 inches of waste at the end, or 12 inches minus the fringe.  

The judges liked this one too and it was awarded to Marjorie Donnan award for the best article using any natural fibre.  So a successful event all round and nice to see the Geelong Guild celebrating their past members

I’ve been making slow progress on my Weavolution Halloweave tapestry but got the colours selected at the weekend in daylight and I’m now 2 rows into the coloured part, but not showing up very well in this picture

I’m in the process of putting a warp for a cotton scarf on to the Toika loom.  The warp has been maturing in the stash since at least 1999 and cross has been mislaid along the way.  Next after restoring the cross, will be a run of tea towels for the next market, the last for the year and for Christmas presents.

I’ve also finished the backpack from leftover fabric, and got it into the mail today, that’s a good feeling.  I was surprised how much work there was getting all the straps, tags and pockets made but once that was done it went together very quickly.

Here’s a picture of the clematis flowering profusely on the back deck

Helen

Many balls in the air

I wonder why I feel I have too many balls in the air, even though Friday was a public holiday – for a football match that was played yesterday, not on the day of the holiday – and I thought I would catch up a little.

The Geelong Show is 2 weeks away, and as yet there are no actual finished articles, though one is close and I still think I have time

I have finished the bulk of the sewing, 2 small shirts and 2 small pairs of pyjamas, just want to turn the left over pieces into a back pack.

The Hawthorn Craft Market was on today, there was a new batch of tea towels finished,

also the chenille cowl which was woven in time for the last market but still too damp to sew. I’m very pleased with it, now it’s finished.  Spring seems to have come early here and even though my model looks pretty cool, it was too hot to model it in person, let alone entice someone to buy it. 

A couple of sales including a tea towel from the last batch but none of the new ones.  There were not huge numbers there, maybe it was the long weekend, maybe they were hungover after the football yesterday or out celebrating the victory – it is the Hawthorn Craft Market after all and Hawthorn won the game – or maybe it was that Daylight Saving started this morning so they missed an hour’s sleep.

I decided to take part in one of the Weavolution Halloweave teams.  For a long time I have admired woven tapestries but decided they were not for me and then I started to take more of an interest.  When Spotlight had small weaving frames on sale recently I bought one and thought I could give tapestry a try, I unearthed some photos from a visit to the Getty Villa in LA which I’d always thought had potential for weaving and when there  was a Tapestry House – Weaving Spells forHalloweave,  it just seemed like the right time. 

So far I’ve put a warp on the loom, unearthed some yarns that should work, found my single tapestry bobbin and a small comb but haven’t put weft to warp yet.

There was an interesting piece in the Halcyon Yarns newsletter this week about Ann Collier, who is an academic psychologist at the Northern Arizona State University in the US, who is also interested in textiles.  She’s been researching why working with textiles or even with hands in general is good for you.  I looked at her academic site and was even tempted to complete her survey but it had already closed.  Seemed like a lot more fun than the traipsing all over town interviewing people with macular degeneration I did years ago when I was studying psychology.

Off to make some more progress on the entries for the Geelong Show, it’s good for me

Helen