sweetgeorgia

Weaving Water

The first warp is off the loom now.

I finally found the watery turquoise blue silk warp that I was looking for and managed to dress the loom (back to front) almost entirely by myself (the DH helped hold the warp while I wound on the back beam)… but not without some hiccups along the way.

The Louet Spring comes with some screw eyes at the back, below the back beam, so that you can tie your lease sticks there and keep them there during the entire weaving process. Well, I tied mine there with crappy lightweight yarn and the lease sticks kept falling off and somehow I ended up pulling the lease sticks out entirely before the warp was threaded, thus losing the ever important “cross”. To add insult to injury, I managed to spread out the warp nicely and cleanly through the lovely built-in raddle on top of the castle … then accidentally pulled a whole pile of warp ends out of the raddle causing silk yarn mayhem. Yarn, yarn everywhere… not in sequential order… oh! the horror!

The silk (20/2 cultivated silk) also pills like crazy when winding on the back beam. So frustrating. That kind of stuff makes me want to switch to cotton or wool, but I can’t get over the beautiful sheen and gloss of silk… the drape… the crunch… I guess it’s worth it.

For the first scarf (twill) I used an entire 50g skein of 20/2 silk for the weft and the final scarf measures 8.25″ x 71″ (not including fringe, before washing). The second scarf was woven in plain weave (tabby) and so it measures slightly wider — 8.5″. I used a half skein of 20/2 slubby silk that was dyed in Procion MX (intense blue) for the weft and ended up with a short (!) scarf at 42″. It’s so short, I’m thinking I might make it into a little pillow for my weaving bench. The lesson here is that I need to figure out a way to keep track of how many inches I’ve woven…

Now, I just need to do all the twisted fringe, wash and press them and they will be ready to wear! Maybe I can wear one to the Sam Roberts/BSS/The Stills outdoor concert next week… 100% silk woven at 30 epi should be dense enough to prevent sunburn, eh?

And thanks to everybody for leaving such fantastic comments for the contest! There’s wisdom in them there internets. The contest is still open until midnight tonight, afterwhich I will be a turquoise-handdyed-and-handwoven-silk-scarf-wearing-grown-up.

The Great Big Green Blanket Project

A couple weeks ago, I dyed a giant skein of brushed adult mohair (980 ypp) in shades of robin’s egg blue, pale turquoise, pale greens and chartreuse. I left it sitting out in the living room, trying to decide what to do with it — my living room is a warm, apple green colour and it wouldn’t match, really. But Michelle was over and really liked it, so I offered to weave her a blanket. Her living room is a cool, pale green colour with super dark chocolate brown furniture, so a big, fluffy green blanket would be perfect for keeping warm while knitting during the fall or winter months.

Now that my fuschia silk scarf is nearly done, I started warping for this blanket. The warp is Briggs & Little Regal, a soft and cushy 2-ply wool from New Brunswick. This is their “Bleached White” colour that I’m going to dye to match the mohair. The colour samples are from a binder I borrowed from Place des Arts. The binder is full of Kiton Acid dye formulas and samples — the closest thing to the WashFast Acid dyes I’ll be using. I don’t expect the results to be dead on, but it’s nice to have a rough guide.

I got to use a warping mill during class last night. Very fun and much faster than a warping board. The warp is approximately 450 ends and 3 yards long. It will go on one of the 45″ Leclerc looms (must be a Nilus?) at the school. I prepared the warp in five groups — 75, 75, 90, 90, and 120 ends each. This way, I can dye each bundle a slightly different shade… some pale green, some pale turquoise, etc.

Hopefully this won’t be overkill — handpainted weft in mohair, solid dyed wide stripes for warp, and plain weave throughout (10 epi). Either way, I’m very excited as this will be my first time using the big floor loom…

I love warping, yes I do.

Mmm, I love me some warping. If you think knitting or spinning is meditative, well, you have to try winding warps.

To speed up counting and re-counting the number of ends, I’m using a little bit of scrap yarn to finger-crochet bundles of 10 ends together. Of course, I’m terrible at math and forgot that for every ten ends that appear on top of the cross, there are another ten that are underneath — so I accidentally wound twice as many warp ends as needed! Yep. That’s how much I love warping.

This new scarf/shawl is going to be all 20/2 bombyx silk that I’ve dyed various shades of turquoise. There are two 50g skeins that were dyed in a stock pot along with about 50g of dark beige tussah silk — with 150g of silk in the pot, I used about 50 mL of a 1% DOS Lanaset Turquoise dye stock… So each skein is about a 0.3% DOS… Light, pale, shimmery. Kind of like the glassy surface of a swimming pool in the summertime.

One half of the 4-yard warps were chained and then dyed a slightly darker solid turquoise. But of course, the chain “links” form their own natural resist sections — so these gave little light/white spots at semi-regular intervals. The other half of the warps were roughly painted with dark and light turquoise and navy — there are much more distinct light and dark sections.

Now, to figure out a way to combine them all together to make a light, fluttery, and watery scarf…

I’ve been listening to Syne Mitchell’s new podcast, WeaveCast — a podcast for hand weavers. So very well done! She’s done interviews with several weavers including Judith MacKenzie (who is also spinner-extraordinaire) and Mollie Freeman (who teaches warp painting with the ever fabulous Sara Lamb). The podcast is very professionally put together, Syne’s voice is lovely and she’s overflowing with enthusiasm. It’s a wonderful listen.

In contrast, visit Sara Lamb’s site for today’s post on “The Future of Weaving” — interesting thoughts about the factors that are contributing to the decline of weaving. Factors like the high cost of weaving equipment, space requirements, mid-week or mid-day guild meetings, and the disconnect between “high art” vs. traditional craft…

It paints a very bleak picture, but I am undaunted.

Maybe because it’s new to me, a novelty to me, but weaving seems full of endless potential and possibilities. Arm yourself with the necessary traditional, technical skills and use that knowledge to create something new. Concerned about the cost of weaving equipment? Take a class at Place des Arts and you can borrow a loom. Join a guild and you can probably rent or borrow some equipment. Maybe get together with friends and pool your equipment / space / resources into a studio? Cost of classes? I’m a big advocate about dedicated self-study… Even this blog, for me, is a form of documentation of what I’m learning and trying to learn in knitting, spinning, dyeing, weaving, and photography. I don’t know. I just want there to be opportunities for people to express and indulge their creativity. It’s essential.

Phew. Well, if you can’t get weaving yourself, you can get yourself down to the Crafthouse Gallery on Granville Island and take a look at the gorgeous silk weaving by Chisako Hisamatsu. Her show, “Kasuri”, is on until May 28 and features superfine silk dyed with natural dyes using ikat technique. Beautiful, ethereal stuff.

Or visit FibreEssence in Dunbar where they have two exhibitions going on until May 14. “Motherhood… A complicated labour” is a show of local artists who interpret motherhood (sometimes happy, oftentime really really depressing) in their weaving. And “Waistcoats - Wastecoats” features Angelika Werth’s incredible felted coats and one felted ballgown!

Getting warped.

I think at one point last year I may have mentioned to Michelle that she should bar the doors and windows and take away my wallet should I ever decide to get into weaving. Ignore what I said earlier, Michelle.

Last night was my very first weaving class… This one is at Place des Arts and also taught by Irene, my spinning instructor. Being the absolute beginner, I started with learning how to wind a 2-yard warp on a Leclerc 1-yard warping board. I would show you the warp, but it’s really just a pile of string right now. Next week, we actually put it on the loom — with all those little holes (heddles?) and slats (dents?!?) it looks like it might cause premature blindness.

And so here’s a question. Where are all the weaving blogs? Here are a few:

• Charleen’s Fiberblog at http://www.fibernut.com/blog/
• Sara Lamb’s Woven Thoughts at http://www.saralamb.blogspot.com/
• Sheepless in Suburbia at http://judelbug.typepad.com/. This one is great — she’s doing the Masterspinner’s Natural Dye program and you can see photos her work here

If you check out the WeaveRing, there are only 20 weaving blogs whereas there are something like 2000 knitting blogs! Why the discrepancy?

Interweave Knits Spring 2006

Ah ha, this preview is official. See it here… Hmm, I might make the Trellis Scarf (by Evelyn Clark) or the Fair Isle Rib Zip Jacket (by Melody Griffiths). Lovely.

White Castle

Notice that Mari is wearing the wristwarmers that she knit out of my Fondant handspun on her trip to DC! And check out the photo of her at White Castle… That’s my smile for today.