sweetgeorgia

Done.

During a quick visit with Irene last week, I picked up a big ol’ ski shuttle from her and finished off my Boheme Blanket. Just a couple hours of uninterrupted weaving time allowed me to complete the yardage, hemstitch the ends, full and brush the whole blanket. Similar to Michelle’s GBGB, this blanket measured 41.5″ x 84″ before fulling and 36.5″ x 69″ after fulling in the washer.

There was a bunch of warp ends that didn’t make it into this particular blanket and so I’ve tied them onto the loom already, randomly spacing them out. I’ve dyed more Briggs & Little wool in dark brown which will fill in the gaps. I like to think of this next blanket as the sister blanket to the Boheme Blanket. It’ll be brown overall with the mohair and warp in dark brown… the leftover warp from the Boheme blanket will lend a couple flashes of fuschia in the midst of all that brown… Kind of like when you take a chunk of bread dough and save it to incorporate with the next bread baking session. The subsequent loaves have more depth, more flavour, more maturity… Taking a chunk of one warp and distributing it into the next blanket might be a little haphazard, but I like to think of it as growth and learning as subsequent projects unfold.

Starting again.

It’s been months and months… and finally, I feel like I’m getting back to it. I’ve started weaving the blanket now, and it’s pretty slow going since I need a proper shuttle (I need a ski shuttle, asap). I’m using a stick shuttle at the moment and it’s clumsy for this width of fabric to say the least. But any progress is good progress.

Now, if I could just keep from passing out in the late afternoons. Jet lag bites.

Hello Sunshine

OMFG, it’s sunny. I may actually decide to leave the house today. I love living in Vancouver, but the winters here are so utterly depressing and grey. But this morning, it’s gloriously sunny and snowy with a big clear blue sky. In this situation, the only thing to do is to seize the opportunity and take some photos.

Besides, I’ve been invited to give a talk in March to one of the local spinners and weavers guilds about taking good fibre photos and I thought I should practice… so I at least appear to know what I’m talking about

Last January, I started Michelle’s Great Big Green Blanket project. This January, I’m starting my own blanket project. I fell in love with the Boheme colourway — all saturated magentas, chocolate browns and teddy bear browns — and decided that I want a blanket like this to put in the living room, against our dark, dark chocolate brown leather couch. Little does the DH know that I’m going to re-decorate our living room to include copious amounts of fuschia…

Anyhow, the warp yarn is dyed here in four colours and will be wound soon. A mix of mohair and wool, it will still be springy like Michelle’s blanket but maybe a little more drapey too. The weft will be a dark, saturated wine colour in brushed mohair (980 ypp). With this project, I am going to try warping from front to back… designing in the reed as I go. I don’t like having to design on the warping board because it’s so sequential and linear. Designing in the reed seems a bit more flexible at this point.

And that brushed mohair weft… anyone ever use an end-feed shuttle for brushed mohair? Hmmm… nightmare in the making?

Great Not-So-Big Green Blanket

I must have true finishing avoidance disorder. The Great Big Green Blanket that I am making for Michelle, well, I finished weaving it back in July. All I needed to do was finish the hemstiching at the starting edge of the blanket, trim the fringe and wet finish the blanket. It’s November now. So the unfinished blanket has been sitting there, patiently waiting, for four months now.

But last night, in a burst of energy (probably inspired by a yummy dinner at The Foundation) I sewed up my Lucy in the Sky Cardi and blocked it AND finished the blanket!

At first I attempted to wet finish the blanket by hand with a plastic tub full of warm water and lavender-scented woolwash. It was too tiring, so I took the wet blanket and dumped it in the washing machine. We have a front-loader and I’m told that front-loader washing machines are terrible for felting wool. So, I started up a full cycle on the machine with two glugs of Eucalan. Every few minutes, I’d stop the machine and take a look at the blanket… to see if it was fulling or felting too quickly. After about 15 or 20 minutes, I stopped the washing and set the machine to rinse and spin out. After another 15 or 20 minutes, almost all the water had been spun from the blanket. The resulting fabric was more cohesive, nicely fulled… and much smaller!

The blanket is originally 450 ends with a sett of 10 epi — so that would be 45″ on the loom. Then the measurement off the loom was 40″ x 78″. Already, the fabric had pulled in to be narrower… After fulling, the blanket is now 36″ x 62″. So the blanket shrunk 25% of it’s original size! Now, it’s a nice and compact lap blanket perfect for staying cozy on the couch.

The colours are, well, more intense than I had originally planned… because I misplaced a decimal point in my dye calculations… So the colours are basically ten times darker than I had intended… oops. But I’m completely pleased with the result. I took a clean stiff-bristled hairbrush and brushed the whole surface of the blanket (I brushed so hard I gave myself a workout AND a blister!). The delicately-coloured brushed mohair weft creates a beautiful hazy nap that softens the more intensely coloured wool warp. I’m so in love with this blanket, I want to make ten more just like it… in all different colours of course.

Not my loom.

Ok, so the ultimate irony is that on the day that I got my loom I actually drove an hour (each way) to use the other loom at Place des Arts.

Yep. Weaving class is officially over but I missed a couple classes because of my dad’s exhibition and going to Vegas… so I’m a little behind and haven’t finished the Great Big Green Blanket (GBGB). Last night, I spent about two hours in the Fibre Room working on the blanket…

After about two hours, I found myself relatively comfortable with using the massive ski shuttle that I had originally found a little unwieldy. It really was the best solution though. I had tried using a boat shuttle and it just wouldn’t hold very much weft — and winding bobbins is significantly less fun than throwing the shuttle.

I also changed the tie up under the loom so that I could “walk” the loom. Basically all this is is tying the shafts to the treadles in a sequence that allows your feet to alternate (like you are walking). For example, my pattern is 12, 23, 34, 41. If the treadles are tied up in that order, I press treadle 12 with my left foot then treadle 23 with my right foot. Then I need to scoot over or cross over with my left foot so that I can treadle 34. That’s stupid. So, I changed the treadles so that they are ordered like this: 12, 34, 23, 41. That way, I go 12 with the left, 23 with the right, 34 with the left and 41 with the right and I never really need to change my position. You could also order it like this: 12, 34, 41, 23 so that you walk the two outside treadles and then the two inside treadles. Whatever you fancy. It seems to speed things up considerably or at least make treadling less awkward…

All I needed was maybe one more hour to finish weaving off the entire blanket, doing a little hemstitching and then cutting the blanket off the loom. Just one more hour! I’m delighted at how fast it is going. This is instant gratification, people. Instant.