sweetgeorgia

Woven Shibori on a Rigid Heddle Loom

It’s the end of the work day on a Friday and I’ve been busy winding, packaging and labelling yarn. It’s a never-ending task. I’m kind of beat, but just saw this in my mailbox and got pretty excited… It’s woven shibori on a humble rigid heddle loom. Fantastic, extensive post with complete details and step-by-step instructions. I love love love simple plain weave on a rigid heddle loom but am getting more and more interested in seeing what else is possible with this simple tool.

Here’s the link at Weavezine »

Make your own raddle

A bunch of nails and a stick of wood. A raddle is a very helpful and necessary little device to allow you to warp your loom from back to front. It’s designed with evenly spaced guides so that you can roughly spread apart your warp threads before winding it into the back beam. It shouldn’t cost you $90, but if you buy one new, that’s what it’ll run up to… Sure the store bought ones will be nicely finished and perfectly aligned, and it’s possible that they’ll include a fabulous closing top thing to prevent your threads from accidentally slipping out of the raddle.

But we decided to go the cheap route… a $3 box of 1 1/2″ bright finishing nails and a $3 stick of wood from Home Depot. Carina helped me mark every 1/2″ inch along the stick and pre-drilled tiny little holes at the markings. I had the easy job of hammering the nails into the pre-drilled spots. You probably don’t need to pre-drill, but it makes the process a little easier.

We’ve clamped this raddle on top of the shafts of the Baby Wolf, Leclerc Artisat, and also the little Schacht 15″ table loom and put warps on this way. Super handy and fast. I guess I have no excuse not to warp from back to front now.

Gumdrops and sugar highs

Now that we’re pretty much at the end of March, I think it’s safe to post about the recent Fibre Club installment… Gumdrops dyed up on Corriedale. Corriedale was the very first fibre I ever dyed. Done up with Koolaid dyes, the fibre poofed up in candy colours and I was immediately smitten with the entire process. Sweet smelling, luscious hues, and fluffy fibre. This time, it’s done up in professional acid dyes to be light- and wash-fast. These colours just make me happy.

I’ve taken a bundle of this Corriedale, split the roving vertically into three somewhat equal portions and am now plying it into a 3-ply yarn. We’ll see what comes of it.

And now that we’re looking forward to April, I’ve re-opened the Fibre Club for new subscriptions for May to July. If you would like, you can sign up for the Fibre Club now…. Also, if you’re interested in spinning handpainted rovings, mixing and blending semi-solid fibres and playing with our Patrick Green electric drum carder and wool combs, we still have some space in the “Colour for Spinners” day at the studio! Come spin, come play with colour!

Ever since the weaving workshop that I participated in this past weekend, I’ve been feeling a little bit hyper and unsettled. Partly because I was exposed to how beautiful handwoven linen is… partly because I’m completely taken with the idea of weaving utilitarian kitchen textiles for a bit… and partly because it’s easy to misplace your own creative voice when you are overwhelmed with someone else’s. So I’m trying to decide what to weave next and am actually losing sleep over doubleweave blankets vs. 60/2 silk scarves vs. sock yarn baby blankets vs. linen tea towels vs. 16/2 cotton placemats.

One thing I did glean from Jane’s workshop this weekend was the need to focus on one thing at a time. No hopping around from technique to technique, pattern draft to pattern draft, making whatever Handwoven publishes in this most recent issue. Jack of all trades. Focus. Focus. Focus. Keep calm and carry on.

Honestly, I have been focusing on more and more dyeing… and have added both new colours and yarns to the “dyed to order” set. You can see them on the new “Colourways” page on the shop site. Over the summer, I’ll work on developing a series of new colours for Fall/Winter. My mind is endlessly racing with ideas and thoughts about what to do and what to make… it’s a good and wonderful thing to be motivated and inspired. But I’m also looking forward to Saturday when I can sleep in and just knit what I like.

Warping for plain weave workshop

Last week, I received my warp for the upcoming Jane Stafford workshop and have just started warping the table loom in preparation. I’m going to be using a Schacht 15″ 4-shaft table loom and have started warping from front to back. The warp is destined to be “plain weave with supplementary warp” and came all nicely chained up in a bag with detailed instructions and weft yarns. Looks like most of the yarn is 2/14 linen and 3/30 linen sett at 12 epi. I’ve never worked with linen before, so this is a completely new experience for me. So far, I’ve discovered that linen has a mind of its own.

I’m pretty sure linen likes to be warped from back to front, but I don’t own a raddle and my efforts to make my own raddle from a piece of plywood and spare nails have been delayed… because I need nails, or can’t find my hammer, or some such fuss. Besides, I like sorting out the warp threads and colours first and making sure that it’s all correct before everything gets wound onto the back beam.

I’m also trying to salvage this beautiful cotton warp. It was originally put on the small table loom and then I decided that I wanted to re-sley it for a tighter sett… so I cut it off the loom, maintaining the cross, and now I am just reassembling it on the big Spring loom. It’s now sett at 30 epi for a nice warp-faced look.

It’s finally the weekend, and I have new toe-up socks on the go.

Moving forward on all fronts

I am inching towards completion of many, many things. Yes, indeed, that is five pairs of socks at my desk. Not including the two pairs that are currently in my knitting bag. I don’t think this is the ideal situation, but things are the way they are. I knit two rows on one then two rows on another… two rows is about all my attention span can handle right now. Having finished a little February baby sweater for a friend (she’s due anytime now!), I’m satisfied with just working on simple stockinette socks… that have been in my in-progress bin for the past five years.

There is this handwoven scarf on the loom that is distracting me… the kettle-dyed colours of Malabrigo plus the texture and groundedness of the tsumugi silk weft and making me very happy. I have maybe 10 or 12 inches more to weave and then it will be cut off and washed. It seems silly that after all the expense and space of getting a 44″ wide 8-shaft loom, I end up weaving 9″-wide scarves in plain weave. Nothing makes me happier. Maybe one day, I’ll become one of those pattern-structure weaver types and lust after some computer-driven crazy shaft loom… but not likely.

Actually for three days in March, I’ll be attending Jane Stafford’s weaving workshop, “Pushing the Boundaries of Plain Weave”. It’s hosted by the Greater Vancouver Weavers & Spinners Guild and about 14 or 15 students will be doing a round-robin style workshop where we’ll all weave on each other’s looms and take home a complete set of samples. I’m really looking forward to experimenting freely with my very beloved plain weave.

Yet another plain weave scarf from both handspun warp and weft. It’s hand dyed blue face leicester handspun in the warp, 2-ply and about DK weight, plus very fine merino laceweight weft (the same yarn I used to knit the Lotus Blossom Shawl ages ago). Seeing as how there is about 10 cm of snow in tomorrow’s forecast, this brand new scarf might just come in handy.

Our weaving studio classes just started last Wednesday and we’re getting the first sampler warps on the looms. Plain and simple Quebecoise wool in bright, happy colours. I’m excited to see these samples start to take shape for the students.

This past month, I’ve found myself at the studio nearly full-time. And even though we don’t open the studio to the public on all days, I’m here bright and early every day… winding bobbins, skeining yarn, receiving orders of natural dyes from Earthues, dyeing yarn, weaving, spinning, knitting, doing my accounting and designing. Hours and hours are spent updating the website and entering inventory. Daily, I get calls to advertise in this medium or that. But even though I am constantly, productively doing things, I still feel like completion is always so far away. Bobbins are full and need to be plied. Those few inches could be woven off. That other loom needs to be warped. And I’ve got this pattern here that I need to finish writing out…