sweetgeorgia

Retreat

I need a vacation. Yeah, I know this is technically the end of summer vacation but… but… Astor is hosting a knitting retreat this Fall at Hollyhock on Cortes Island. Hollyhock is an educational retreat centre that hosts programs, camps, and workshops about everything from Tibetan Buddhism to Sea Kayaking to Poetry to Ashtanga Yoga… plus they also offer massages! That would be perfect… do a little knitting and then go for a massage… The retreat is called “A Pull of Wool” and runs from September 29 to October 2.

Unfortunately, I can’t go because I’m taking the three-day Colour Institute workshop with Michele Wipplinger as part of the Maiwa Textile Workshops. Actually, I’m taking dye workshops nearly every weekend in September, starting this Friday… I’ve got “Introduction to Dyes” with Anne Babchuk which will give an overview of all different kinds of dyes — including fibre-reactive (procion), acid (washfast and lanaset), and vat dyes (like indigo). I’m also taking “Natural Dyes” with Charllotte Kwon which should result in a reference book of 80 different natural dye samples. The class I was really hoping to take was “Precision Dyeing” which is all about using Procion MX to create a complete colour wheel… but the class falls on the same weekend as my five-year wedding anniversary… So it was celebrate my wedding anniversary or dye, celebrate or dye…

And there is weaving to do… I finally finished dressing the loom with some leftover silk warp and started this little stole. It’s 20/2 silk in a block twill. I basically threaded groups of twelve ends on shafts 1,2,3,4 or 5,6,7,8 somewhat randomly. This is really a test for a bigger silk shawl I plan to do and I just wanted to see how big the blocks might be and how it would look overall. But I was up until about 1 am last night fixing a couple threading errors and had to fashion my own string heddles to do so… very cool. I feel kind of empowered now. And using all eight shafts and ten treadles? Also very empowering. I like.

Oh, yes. And there is also knitting. In fact, I finished Sizzle. But there are no photos. Taking photos of yourself by yourself is hard work. So instead, I have photos of the Diamond Fantasy Shawl in progress…

Mmm hmm. And deadlines. And work. And more work. I’m tired. I think the very best news that I’ve heard in a long time is that we are returning from Hong Kong a couple days early (the travel agent’s mistake) and we’ll be able to squeeze in a surf trip to Oregon. It’ll be the very last weekend in October. The water will be cold but I can’t wait.

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.

Procion Mysteries

So! The vibrating pink silk scarf is off the table loom and I love it… after having overdyed it (scroll down…)

I’m currently playing with some new Procion MX dyes on silk and well, it’s a bit of a love/hate relationship. The results can be a little unexpected and I think it’s because I’m using soda ash as the dye activator. I’ve read that you can also use citric acid to activate the dye (plus heat) and that you are more likely to get a colour that is the same as the dye bath. See here…

Yeah, the colour COMPLETELY changed when I added the soda ash. It was like the blues disappeared entirely and I was left with magenta again. I love it anyway, but I want to try again for a deep, dark violet. With this yarn, I’m hoping to knit the “Silk Camisole” from Last Minute Knitted Gifts.

This result, however, was so very welcome. I overdyed the super pink scarf with 1/2 tsp of Navy Procion MX in order to “sadden” or desaturate the colours a bit. I got a lovely raspberry colour and will absolutely wear this — I love it! Thanks to June who suggested the overdyeing.

One thing that concerns me is using soda ash on silk — it takes away some of the sheen of the silk and makes the texture a little more “cottony” or rough… So the next thing I need to try is using the citric acid instead and adding heat. But the appeal of dyeing with Procion, for me, is that it can be done easily without much equipment — take your dye powder and table salt (although I used Glauber’s Salt) and dissolve it in warmish/cool water (105F); add your wet fibre/yarn/fabric and mix for 30 minutes; add soda ash and mix for 30 minutes; let it sit some more then wring it out and rinse (a million times) until clear. All you need is a dedicated pot. One pot dyeing.

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!

New Silks

How about some colour to go with that sunshine?

This is three skeins of 20/2 cultivated silk (bottom) and one skein of 70% silk / 30% seacell (top). SeaCell is a new fibre made from seaweed via the lyocell process. Sound familiar? It’s the same process used to make Tencel, Bamboo, Viscose Rayon, and other cellulose fibres. The manufacturers of SeaCell are saying that all the “good health” benefits of seaweed can be enjoyed, that is absorbed, by wearing fabrics made from SeaCell. That’s some fancy transdermal vitamin delivery system.

Healthy yarn or not, the SeaCell silk is gorgeous. It takes dyes nicely, but as you can see from first photo, it gives a warmer end product. I dyed all the skeins above using the same stock solution, but the seacell skein is slightly lighter (acid dyes not reacting with the cellulose portion of the yarn?) and slightly warmer.

Last night’s guild meeting hosted Diana Sanderson and Kate Barber who came and brought skeins and woven samples of these new silks — beautiful drape, luminous, light fabrics. There was also look/fondle/discussion about silk/linen, silk/bamboo, silk/camel and stainless steel yarn(!?!).

While they talked about yarn, I did this:

A couple days ago, I switched from the H&S ebony circs back to my standard Addi circs and knitting is faster and easier now. This weekend, I might just find some time to catch up!