Blue

and red, and green, and...

I may be the laziest warper ever. And the most untidy stash-owner. (Actually no, but I never can be bothered to put a sticker with colour and lot number on an opened yarn package, when it goes back into the cupboard.)
However - this results in more interesting cloth... IMO, of course :-)

All pictures in this post can be clicked for bigger versions.



This is a picture of 4 message shawls. (In the picture, the warp goes vertically.)

If I use a warping mill, I rarely use less than 4 ends. If I warp sectionally, for the above quality, I have 30 ends per sedcion - and I collect all yarns that "look good" together, hoping to avoid having to make new spools.
I often also use yarns of different (but similar) grists.
I rarely use an end-per-end cross. This results in a random threading, colourwise.

As I then use different weft yarns for all items woven on the same warp, I can get a collection of truly different (but similar) products. And: I can never reproduce any of them exactly, as I don't know which yarns I used in the warp.

Some more examples:


Three neck warmers - same warp, different wefts. Differential shrinkage.



Four double-weave scarves (warp goes horizontally)


Often, but not always, I use only one weft colour per item. (I'm a lazy weaver, too.)


This scarf was a "plan B" rescue of the warp from h*ll. I had been given lots of black cotton, warped for shawl width: mostly black, with purple stripes. (At lest 3 nuances of purple...) When winding on, I found the black breaking too much. I cut off the the black, but continued winding on the purple - which took it down to scarf width.
Some of the scarves got different purple wefts, some got two or three colours.
My favourite method for "grading" colours is a "tried and true system", described here.

If I want a V-shawl to look (be?) "solid colour", but still have some sort of colour interest, one trick is to use one colour one in one of the warps, colour two in the other. If then woven with "opposite" colours (colour two in warp one, colour one in warp two), the whole shawl has the same look (IS the same) - except the fringes:




Sometimes, if I feel extra patient, I plan where the different colours will fall in the weave:



The waffle structure needs harder work, though: warp AND weft in different colours, with the weft order as meticulous as the warp order. (reverse side at right)

The double V

is now done:



It has six coins at the beginning of the legs, and nine at the actual V.

As it happened, I had problems this time, too. Different problems - and of a nature that, again, the applying of brain (beforehand!) should have avoided them... (Question to self: will I now remember to concentrate on what I am doing?)

To begin with, it was smooth sailing.
Then...
I had attached the warp sections to the beam without first making a knot (in the warp). I have done this several times, and got away with it. (Is what I think now - then I thought "OK, now I see that it works without the extra knot".) So one section slipped out of the lark's head at the beam end...
I managed to fix that.
Wove on. Until... another section came loose. (I should have anticipated that, if I had Applied Brain - and fixed all sections at the same time.)



With much muttering and fiddling I took every section out of its "noose", put in the missing overhand knot, put them back in the nooses. (Yes, I also re-did the one fixed with a pen, in the top left in the picture above) The tension was, much to my surprise, almost ok. Only one of the sections needed special treatment.



But I will remember to put knots at the end of the warp before beaming in the future... (I hope!)

The making of a "design feature"

This time, things did not go as they should...

I knew the draft was correct, 'cos I had already used it. So, when it was time to start the join, I did not apply my brain... and started the join from the wrong side.
At first everything looked ok. When I was to insert the coin in the folded pocket, I noticed... nothing. When I was to insert the second "fold" coin, I did notice: the pocket was not open the whole way! When starting from the wrong side, what happened was that the pocket layers changed place at the fold.

Darn and drat! What to do?
Unpicking was out of the question - as, if for nothing else, nearly 2/3rds of the warps were cut off...

Hmm... How about making a "design feature"?
After the second pocket was done, I cut off.
Twisted fringes - very long fringes - I had a thought they might be useful...
After trying various arrangements, I settled for this one:



I "wove" the missing square with the fringes - and I am quite pleased with the result:

V-shawl, the usual way

In the last post, I wrote about "another" method to weave V-shawls.

Perhaps a short explanation about the "usual" way could be called for :-)

Here goes:
I weave the two legs of the V in double layers. When the legs are the correct length, I cut the warps, one at a time, and let them become wefts. The web will become narrower, and when I am out of warp ends, the V is complete and can then be unfolded.



Unless planning for a design feature, I want the structure to be maintained around the fold - like this (picture not to scale):



... when first I started weaving these shawls, I had a hard time getting the more complicated structures (like twill... or lace weaves, or a goose eye...) correct. I developed a method - and published it. You can buy the book from me or or Vävmagasinet in Swedish or English. For those of you in the Americas, it can be bought from Laura Fry.

Anyway.
The plan here is to weave a scarf with double weave pockets with coins in (some of) them.
At the start of the join:



As the weft does not hold "the other" selvedge (here the left), I tie provisional knots as I weave.


Why provisional? - because the selvedge will probably not be as straight as I would like it. When finishing, I untie the knots and try to straighten the edge, the tie the "real" fringe knot.

After some cutting, a look at the warp beam: