Picture perfect - but I forgot :-(

Meg (over here) called all weavers to publish "beauty shots" of something woven.

I decided to participate, but... I forgot. What can I say? Old age, other things to occupy my mind, or just hopelessly sloppy?

Anyway, too late or too late, here are my contributions:

A "sun screen" with cotton warp (fishing line for accent), horsehair weft, fan reed:

Scarves with differential shrinkage:

More differential shrinkage ('cos it photographs well... or, at least, looks interesting)

Even if I am too late, kudos to Meg, and get over too look at the other contributors! (link at top)

It makes me sad

to learn that the National Guild is going to abandon the Weave of the month after five years. The reason is, I heard, lack of contributions.

This idea was mine to begin with. Or, to make the story somewhat longer: in 2004, my (then) guild decided to compile a calendar. The idea was not mine to begin with, but I ended up doing most of the layout work. The calendar was a success - we (almost) sold out at the Glimåkra days when we first presented it. (It can still be read online - follow the link above, then click on the pictures to see them bigger.)
After that success, we talked about doing it again, but somehow, it never happened. (Ours was a small guild, only about 30 members, of which some were not very active.)

A little later, I suggested that the National guild should add some "weaverly" content to the new website - like, perhaps, a monthly "weave" (could be a recipe, an idea, something inspiring weavers both new and old - and, perhaps, inspire more weavers to become members.) After lots of discussion the idea was turned down, with arguments from "nobody wants to share their secrets" to "but if it is 'open', why should ppl want to become members, as they get the benefit for free". (This last is a valid argument, it is always a thin line to walk: how much do we want to give away to "anybody" as compared to our members, who, after all, pay. Not always easy, to find a balance between "inspiration" and "free learning".)

Anyway, the idea took root, and 2010 the Weave of the Month started. As it was an idea from my guild, we took it rather too seriously - we (still only 30 members) contributed 4 weaves that first year. It was an immediate success, but the willingness to contribute was rather smaller than I had anticipated. With some persuasion and some more contributions from us, 2011 went by. For 2012, we agreed to publish several weaves from a handwritten notebook one of us owned - that saved 2012. (To see all contributions from us, look here.

Since then I have left he guild (for reasons mostly personal). And now I see that W-o-t-M is going to be abandoned. Apparently that first argument ("nobody wants to share their secrets") was so much more valid than I could ever had imagined. (The National Guild has some 1600 members total.)

It makes me sad that so many weavers do not want to share... sharing does not have to mean a complete "recipe", including colour numbers.

Some inspiration:

Wristwarmers, sewn from a piece of differentially shrunk fabric with fringes:

A dräll "flower". As I only have 16 shafts, it is constructed of five blocks of 1/2 twill. Note: the repeat ends at the red line(s).

What it can be used for?
Well - by expanding the blocks, and using fat yarn, it could perhaps be made into a rug?
Or, with fine linen (and several repeats), it could make a tablecloth? Or a towel?
Or...

Seersucker mk II

or, the quill buster.

By mistake I warped one turn of the mill less than I thought, for the Halloweave project, so there wasn’t enough warp to make a second shawl.

I decided to use the thrums to see if there was a difference in the “seersucker-ing” if I used twill for the flat parts (here the brown stripes), and to use up as many left-over quills of cotton 16/2 as I had patience to. This would then also become a colour gamp of sorts.

To begin with, I meant to use a broken twill, but when I sat under the loom I completely forgot – and did not bother changing from the straight twill I had tied up for...

(Yes, I could have treadled it, but then I would have had to concentrate – I’m all for doing things the easy way)

I ended up with 11 weft stripes of different colours, all different lengths. Here it is, true-ish colours but out of focus:

Some of the weft colours used:

So, did the seersuckering differ any? Hard to tell:

The difference, if there is any, isn’t big enough to bother with, in my opinion.

And here is the “original”, draped on a dress form:

My ”Halloweave”

Over at Weavolution there has been a fun event going for the month of October.

I “signed up” for a dare: to try the seersucker method that Cathie posted some time ago.

I had lots of other things to do, but, at the last moment, I managed to get it done!

On the Friday I dressed the loom.

On the Saturday I wove it (and fringed it)

(which, considering what I also did yesterday, was a bit of a feat)

and today, after wet finishing, tumbling and some press it looks like this:

As the method called for the main warp to be tight, the “seering” (or is that the “sucking” ;-) ?) warp(s) to have a lighter tension, I decided to do 3 stripes, and to tension them differently. As I got confused with the math, I ended up with approx the same tension (weight/end) for the green and the taupe stripes, less for the gold stripe.
I cranked up the tension on the brown warp as high as I could.
(All warps are cotton – the brown is 16/2 unmerc, the coloured is 20/2 merc. All are set at 12 ends per centimeter. The weft is an unmerc cotton 16/2, and the whole thing is slightly warp-emphasis - I think I had approx 8 picks/cm)

Just for the threading, I had wound the stripes on the second beam, meaning to take them all off later, to hang freely. Then it dawned on me: I could let them form loops at the back, hang the weights in the loops – it would make advancing the warp easier, too!

To begin with, I had too little weight on the stripes – after several skips I added to all three!

When weaving, the different tension did show up only when I advanced the warp. When cut off, there was just a hint of “something” in the stripes (see picture above).
So: my hope was the wet finishing would take care of the sucking... and it did. Some.

I had hoped the difference would be greater – or, I should say the visual difference. The real difference is there alright:

Try as I might, I can't get a good photo of the shawl (or "not-quite-rebozo") draped, the colours don't want to cooperate. But there are tendencies towards iridescence in both stripes and main part - maybe another day.

But there is some warp left over, maybe I should try with twill in the brown parts...

What determines shrinkage?

Andrew, over at weave4fun describes a curious case of "differential shrinkage".

I told him it has happened to me, too - but as I can't post pictures on his blog, the illustration comes here, instead.

This is a ... lap rug? ruana? - piece of woollen cloth. It has the same yarn in both warp and weft, in several colours/shades.
The yarn comes from an old industrial stash, is woollen-spun and has a grist slightly finer than 6/2 Nm (which is the Swedish "standard" yarn for making blankets).

The longest side is 160 cm, the shortest is 144. The widest end is 47 cm, the narrowest is 42.

- the phenomenon is true for all yarns from this same source, so whenever I want a gradated weave I have to be extremely careful when wet-finishing...

The only explanation I can think of is that the light-coloured yarns have been bleached, and (because of harsher treatment) therefore shrinks less.

I would be very interested to hear other theories!

(It has happened to me with a couple of other yarns, too. And it has always been the dark shades that shrunk most.)

Holiday special

So, now we have opened the doors of this little house:

As it has functioned as a summer-only tourist information for the last 15 years (or so), it isn't exactly full of lamps... "cosy", perhaps?
(And, to say the truth, the electric system has some... quirks, too)

Some of my things for sale are neckwarmers

and the ruffled scarves

 

The "leaves" are also there, and some fringe twisters, and...

A few more pictures at our joint website, which also has links to the other members.

As it happens, I would be happy to ship even these things all over the world ;-)

The rest of the ruffles

The double warp(s) are now done -

It never ceases to surprise me, the very very different results one gets just by using different wefts! The dark warp has 4 different blues (in 3 different grists), a brown wool stripe in two slightly different nuances, and the purple has 3 different nuances in 2 different grists.
The three different wefts I used:

The bobbin is silk noil, the other two are cotton 16/2 (the red looks browner when alone).
The red-brown gave, as can perhaps be seen (click for larger), even some iridescence in the blue part.

I have opened the sett successively over the years. When I went to weaving school the recommended sett for cotton 16/2 was 15-16 ends per cm for tabby - in these ruffled scarves I am down to 8, and get a stable fabric.   (Well - for scarves!)

On the other hand, reading old weaving books, they never wove cotton scarves... They wove things that had to be sturdy, like bedsheets, for example.
For suppler fabrics they instead went to finer yarns - cotton 30/2 is not uncommon for towels, tablecloths, drapes...
Reading for instance Engeström: Praktisk vävbok (first published 1896), we get recommended a cotton 20/2 at 16 ends per cm for twill - she says it will yield a good quality for kitchen towels, if woven with a "coarser linen or tow weft". For a finer weft, she says, one should go slightly closer.
She has a "dress fabric" (mostly tabby) in cotton 40/2, sett at 24 ends/cm.

If only there were such yarns to be had...

I have looked at our biggest yarn companies here in Sweden - one of them does not offer any cotton finer than 16/2, the next has 63 colours of 16/2, 14 colours of 24/2, all of to 25 colours 30/2, while the third offers 74 colours of 16/2, 56 colours of 20/2 but finer only unbleached.

Saturday

I wanted to have the two shawls ready by Saturday, as there was a market in, er, "town".

As I did spend most of Thursday traipsing around Glimåkra for the "weave days" (where I bought this

- what on earth was I thinking... Will I ever even try to weave with a wire that size? It looked thicker when I didn't have a sewing thread to compare with...)

Well. After "wasting" a day on that little purchase, I had Friday to complete the first two shawls. I had woven one meter, but what with the shrinkage they have to be around 2,5 meters on loom. And... with two parallell warps this means 5 meters total.

So, here they are, in the almost-sunshine of the Saturday morning:

When fringed, wet finished, pressed and brought out into daylight, they were a lot more subdued that I had thought...

I also wet finished the weft samples:

I like the pink for the red-orange (bottom), and maybe the reddish brown (fourth from top) for the blue-purple.
But first, the next two: blue-purple crossed with a dark purple (slightly darker that the second-from-top), red-orange crossed with a (nearly) blinding orange (more intense than the second-from-top).

I had more visitors than I usually have on the "market days". Unfortunately no sales, but also not much weaving.

An efficiency experiment

As shawls are too narrow to use the fly-shuttle on, I thought I would try putting two warps side-by-side. Maybe it would prove to be as efficient as doing them one-after-the-other?

Not being sure if the two-warp idea was a good one, I only warped for 3 shawls per warp. As they are to be a "winter" version of these, which depend on shrinkage, this means about 9 meters of warp.

A bad photo, but an overview of the arrangement:

First, I sampled different wefts

One plus with the two-warp arrangement is that I could see all combinations at the same time - some wefts can work in both warps. Weaving the samples was ok, I did not feel very slowed down by the constant shuttle-changing. (Two picks in right warp, two in the left)

So I decided on some silk noil weft(s), and started weaving.
1500 picks later, I know that 1. my beat is acceptable (7,5 picks per cm instead of 8) and 2. it is slower (or, at least, more tiring - which comes down to the same thing).

Oh well - only six-and-a-half meter left!

- the colours look all wrong, it is so dark these days that I have to use all possible lighting, and use the flash... anyway, you might be able to guess that one set will be called "lighten up the winter dark" and the other something like "match the weather" :-)

A tubular selvage for differential shrinkage

After some experimenting, I have constructed a threading for a tubular selvage that works well for differential shrinkage.
Using this:

I now get this:

instead of this:

Here is a longer artcle on how and why. (Swedish version here)

#¤&@¤£# !!!

Why am I doing this??? And twice in a week, too...

I don't particularly like table looms. Then this thingy came my way, had 8 shafts and was cheap.




So I bought it, sight unseen. I mean, a loom is a loom, even if it is a table model, right?
I had very limited experience with metal heddles, but, thought I, a heddle is a heddle.
Then I wanted to test my new-to-me sample loom - and... soon found that I don't like (rather "hate") the heddles on this loom. They won't slide (except if I handle them one at a time), they tangle (how is still a mystery), the eyes are too small for all my heddle hooks...
So I wove one small narrow warp, and put it under a table.

Then came the guild's anniversary exhibitions, and we decided we needed a dog. The dog itself was made of hex mesh, but it also needed a tail. I decided to weave it a tail, on the Lillstina. (It also got vadmal ears, but they came from existing scraps)
I made a 5 cm-or-so warp, with 4 ends of steel wire (to shape the tail) and some rug warp. As the tail was only to be 20 cm-or-so, it was ok (sort of).



Again the loom was put under the table for a couple of years.
Next time it came out was for a "culture day".
This is me, weaving a shawl.



For that shawl, I really had to move some heddles. Couldn't figure out any way to do that in an even moderatlely efficient way, but got them moved.
- The shawl came out allright - a woollen stripe in the middle, wich created nice ruffles after wet finishing/fulling:



One-and-a-half year later, I needed some illustrations for an article. Did not want to try to warp the AVL with a meter-long warp, so out Lillstina came again. That was on Monday last.

But... apparently I have not had my share of, er, punishment? yet, 'cos as soon as that little warp was done, I decided to make another warp...

Dear readers - . How is one supposed to move heddles on a loom like this?!?
Fortunately, there was only one shaft (and fortunately, it was near the back) that needed more heddles. I had to pry the heddle bar out with a plier - and the only way I could figure out how to put on heddles was one-by-one... There is no way (that I can see) that the heddle frames can be taken out, and there is no way (that I can see) to put those new heddles on in a bunch. #¤&@¤£# !!!
Here it is, next-to-last shaft raised, heddle bars pried out of their holders.



(And it was a pain-in-my-thumbs to try to pry them back again... and no pliers big enough to use...)

Autumn leaves, version 2

If it doesn't work...

There is another method to weave V-shawls, one I have heard of, but never tried. As I still thought it would be interesting to make a V in this technique, I decided to try it.
I wound another warp, twice as long. Threaded the same pattern as the "summer skies" shawl, using 10 shafts.
Wove one "leg" of the V.
Measuring out warp long enough to cross the warp and leave some for fringes, I put in a couple of tabby shots, then cut off.
Re-tied, wove the other leg of the V.

Now, the exciting part: trying out a new technique. It sounds easy: put the woven part beside the loom, take one cut end and weave in. Take the next cut end, weave in.



Well - it sounds easy, but is a little more tricky to actually do... I was glad I had made the tabby picks, I can tell you! I also was glad I had my special horsehair shuttle.

Just off the loom:



There was a lot of "massage" required... it was (as I suspected) difficult to join the pieces with the correct distance.
If (big IF) I will ever use this method again, it will probably be with a piece of more "normal" cloth (normal, as in woven all the way to the edge...)

After wet finishing, it looks quite ok - IMO, of course. (Those sharp of eye may notice that, in spite of trying to concentrate, I managed to join the first woven leg with the reverse side up...)