Waaaaay back in June, Irene took this photo of me weaving on my blanket at Place des Arts and I just got a copy of the photo today. Stilettos and floor looms… I can’t imagine it any other way 
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.
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…
Didn’t you know… this blog is 98% knitting and spinning and 2% vampire slaying?
Anybody who adds a little slayage to their singing is ok by me, no matter how corny their video is. But back to being a productive grown-up, here’s the weaving in progress…
This is the handpainted silk/wool warp that was overdyed in cochineal. We had a little adventure deciding on what to use for the weft… weaving short sections with some plain weave with silk noil, some twill with more handpainted silk, twill with black boucle, twill with natural-coloured silk/camel… It seemed like most weft yarns would take over the fabric and obscure the handpainted-ness of the warp yarns. Even the plain, natural coloured silks were taking over with their high shine factor… So I finally decided on using a single strand of natural tussah silk noil (not shiny). It blends right in so that the warp yarn really becomes noticeable. But it also helps to desaturate the whole fabric a bit.
The scarf is actually all cut off the loom and finished now — I did a twisted fringe to finish both sides (after ripping out the test weft sections) and washed the scarf in Eucalan. It’s all ready for close ups this weekend.
That basket is full of carded puffs of Gotland now… and I’m still not done carding! Even with an electric carder, the process is still slow slow slow. I think it took me about 2 hours to card 150g of fibre. Maybe I’m being too fussy about it, but I’m flick carding both ends of the staples and then feeding in “cut” side first. But being fussy allows me to do a single pass rather than splitting the first batt and then re-carding a second time. Garbage in, garbage out, right?
The handspun Gotland project is going to be a big blanket woven on a floor loom at Place des Arts. They have a loom that’s already warped and ready for blankets. All I have to do is tie on each of the “ends”. So that’s 450 ends at 10 ends per inch to make an approximately 45″ wide blanket. I will probably do 3 yards of warp. So I need to spin about 1350 yards of DK to worsted-weight yarn for the warp… And then another 2500-2700 yards for weft. I think that’s enough to keep me busy for now.
Isn’t it wonderful how you can be wicked tired, barely able to drive down Highway 1 without falling asleep, and then perk right up just talking about dyeing. Then actual dyeing causes you to go hyperactive… But who wouldn’t be all excited about this:
Last night in spinning/dyeing class we dyed up some raw Romney — I dropped in about 3/4 tsp of CIBA dye powder and the pot didn’t exhaust. There was about 12 oz of raw fleece and we calculated the dye powder at 1 tsp per pound — I guess we were so excited about putting colour on wool, we forgot a couple things: raw fleece is heavier than clean fleece (hence too much dye powder) and greasy fleece resists the dye (hence too much dye powder). But here it is — a wicked indigo, moody blues kind of colour — washed in Dawn and dried, kind of teased, and ready for carding. I think we are making boucle with this next week.
In other whoa technology kind of news, take a look at what a bunch of local girls have done to their Pat Green Beverly carder… How smart is that?! Maybe I should have called these girls before I went and bought my drum carder!
Driven by an obsessive, passionate and often tumultuous relationship with colour, Felicia Lo is the owner of SweetGeorgia Yarns, a handpainted yarn and design company based in Vancouver. Founded in 2005, SweetGeorgia Yarns is about intense, relentless and unapologetic colour in luxurious natural fibres and textiles. She writes about all things knitting, spinning, dyeing, and weaving here at sweetgeorgia.
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