sweetgeorgia

Weave me.

For some time now, I’ve been planning on weaving this mixed warp silk scarf for a friend of mine. The warp that I wound ages ago has been sitting in the living room whispering “weave me… weave me… I’m yummy.” The warp is all bubbly turquoise silk bouclé and aqua silk singles with a few skinny strands of 30/2 silk and tsumugi silk thrown in. Finally, this morning, I took advantage of the gorgeous warm sunlight to dress the loom and start weaving.

I warp from back to front, in this case, because I find there is less wear-and-tear on the somewhat delicate and fussy nature of the mixed warp.

I find myself tying loops at every stage so that I don’t accidentally lose my work. So, after threading the heddles, I tie a group of warp threads together. I undo the slip knots as I need to when I sley the reed… and then again, tie a group of warp threads after sleying the reed. It keeps things organized and… safe.

This is the 20/2 smooth silk I’m using for weft, all wound up on bobbins that fit in an end-feed shuttle. I’m hoping I’ll have enough to finish the whole scarf… fingers crossed.

There’s a header of about five shots of big, fat mop cotton woven at the beginning of the piece… and then a bit of proper weaving. I pause at the beginning so that I can hemstitch a bit…

Now we have fabric… and yes, it is yummy.

If you live in Vancouver and are free on Monday evening, you might want to check out the Memorial lecture hosted by the Greater Vancouver Weavers & Spinners Guild. The speaker is tapestry artist, James Koehler, who will discuss how colour, structure and form focus his approach to design and how the landscape and cultures of New Mexico have influenced his work. The lecture will be held on Monday, May 5 at 7:30 PM in the Floral Hall at Van Dusen Botanical Garden, 5251 Oak Street (at 37th Ave.) in Vancouver. Admission is free to anyone who is interested! Unfortunately, I’ll be at work late on Monday and will miss the lecture… but if you DO go, let me know what you thought!

Swimming in colour.

Dyeing small skeins of silk in natural or chemical dyes over the past few months has resulted in an incredible assortment of colours and textures that seem to complement each other. Leaving them on their own seems unnecessarily limiting, so the mixed warp is the way to go.

This past year at the Maiwa workshops, I took year 2 of Michele Wipplinger’s Colour Institute. The three-day workshop covered how to incorporate “light” into your work. Contrasting textures, lustruous textures, luminous effects, iridescent effects, or even the combination of colours in a certain way. These mixed warps are overall one colour, but have tiny proportions of (relatively) complementary colours to spark the mix. I’m trying to get away from the all monochromatic colour palettes and explore something just a bit more complex. But complex or not, I just like how these look.

Mixed up.

Destash. I’ve set myself a bit of a laughable goal in wanting to use up pretty much every last drop of my yarn stash. The aim is to not acquire any new yarn until I’m done with the current stash. Jen, this does not include the lovely yarns I picked from your stash… you are going to London and it’s just not practical for you to take all your yarns.*

I’m attempting to destash by breaking up bags of yarns that were originally destined for full-on sweaters, because, really… when will I have time to sit and knit two sleeves, two front pieces and a back? Instead, I wanted this big, chunky scarf … I didn’t realize, however, that it was going to weigh about 200 lbs.

Ingredients for the knit scarf:

• 2 x 50g of dark eggplant alpaca from La Droguerie, purchased in Tokyo
• 2 x 50g of Rowanspun 4-ply in Rumtoft
• 2 x 25g of Rowan Lurex Shimmer in Bronze
• 1 x 25g of Rowan Kid Silk Haze in Splendour
• 3 skeins of Habu Tsumugi Silk, purchased in Kichijoji
• 1 x 100g of 5/2 bombyx silk, handdyed in cochineal

I’m looking to make this scarf about 10 feet long if I can manage it…

And this is destashing by handweaving with mixed warps… I used up the Saje and Golden Siam silk yarns that I purchased in San Francisco about two years ago. Plus, I added two strands of 5/2 bombyx silk… one pale lavendar (from cochineal with no mordant) and one pale cool green (from osage overdyed lightly with natural indigo). The dark green warp thread is cashmere and nylon. The weft is 100% silk… slubby and raw… and completely purple. I feel like this scarf might have been fulled a bit too much (my washer and I are still getting acquainted) but it is now wonderfully soft and warm.

Today, the 6-yard silk/wool warp is going on the loom.

*Aww yes, my friend Jen (of South African yarn tourism fame) is moving to London TOMORROW and has started writing about her adventures already … here …

Tangled up.

I’ve been making warps. Many many warps. Mostly because I have a lot of yarn lying around… naturally dyed, undyed, synthetically dyed, commercially dyed… omg, that’s a lot of yarn. Rather than using handpainted yarn throughout the whole warp, I’ve taken to mixing it up with a bunch of other solid coloured yarns.

The six-yard warp will end up as two 2.5 yard scarves or shawls (I haven’t decided… there’s still a lot of handpainted yardage remaining that I want to use up)… each one will be woven with a different coloured weft.

The bamboo was dyed in a pot with a bunch of other fibres and took on so much less dye. The dye pot was a mix of cutch, cochineal and iron in various combinations with silk and bamboo in the pot. I probably wouldn’t wear any of these colours on their own, but optically blended together, they become more interesting. The weft will likely be plain undyed bamboo, and then the whole piece will go back into the dye pot. Maybe more cutch. We’ll see.

Finally, this is the silk yarn that came out of the same pot. Unplied DK-weight silk yarn to be woven with some 2-ply cutch-dyed silk yarn… it might be overwhelmingly cutchy brown. Hmm. But luckily everything can be overdyed and re-worked. In fact, I dropped a small plain weave silk sample that I wove last year into a cochineal dye pot earlier this week… and you know, I LOVE it. Multiple dyes, overdyes, piece dyeing… I want it.