*Now* I know!

While surfing today, I came across this:

Just imagine... so that is why mine didn’t fly???

(Found in the Warp-and-weft publication, nov '54. Difficult link, but here it is: http://www.cs.arizona.edu/patterns/weaving/warpweft.html (scroll down, waaaay down). I do know handweaving.net is supposed to be a mirror of the Arizona site, but I could not find this item by just searching...

A Thursday in Borås

VÄV2011 was held in Borås the weekend past.

As usual there were lots of people, lots of yarns (but why so many knitting yarns?), lots of books... and lots of exhibitions.
As usual I wondered why I had gone, when I was inside in the heat, throng, ready-warped rug warps... (I seldom find anything at these fairs, 'cos I can't concentrate and I don't like to have to use my elbows to "get to see".)
I did meet with many old friends, some of which I haven't seen for years. This meant I had lots of coffee!

But: in Borås, there are several other things to be found. My big finds where about 75 meters of thin worsted fabric and 10 kgs of thin worsted yarn (I think he said it was 2/56, but it doesn't really matter), both from an industrial outlet.

Black is hopeless to photograph, at least to a hopeless amateur like me! The fabric has a nice drape, which may (or not) show in the picture.
The yarn is posing on the table of one of my sewing machines, and lies beside a cotton 22/2.

On the way home, I visited an exhibition (no water spouts in sight, but it rained).
This was labelled as an "area rug", and the pattern is just brushed. The attendant assured me it was not fixated(?) in any way, which means one can't touch it without destroying the images. Not very practical, but impressive to see all the detail the artist had managed to "brush in" (click to enlarge).

10 minutes from home, there were double rainbows pointing at my house, but as I was driving these will have to do:

Frequent flyers... in place

I've found it almost impossible to get good photos of the mobiles... but now they are all in palce. Now we only hope the visitors enjoy the exhibition! (More pictures at the guild site)

A double act

A two-tiered mobile, with passengers:

Not quite in focus, but the top one has two passengers: Ture Sventon and Mr Omar.
Ture Sventon is a children's-fiction detective from the '60-ies (still popular) - he bought a flying carpet from mr Omar. He uses it regularly, and mr Omar sometimes helps him investigate.

I thought it could be appropriate to use them, as the exhibition is in the library...

Oh, and I might add that all three are woven in taqueté, threaded on 16 shafts. (But I don't remember if I utilized all blocks)

In a couple of hours all three mobiles will be in place.

A balancing act

or two?
My flying carpets did not make it for the Friday hanging. They will be there on Monday, though!

Not exactly a "beauty shot", but here is one:

A rainbow (well... artist's freedom?) in corduroy, abow a ... pool of rainwater? (Also corduroy, but it did not come out as I envisioned it. Weft is cellophane.)

The rainbow has a rider, a little hard to see:

Two more to come! And I have all morning to mount them...

Flying

Friday we hung most of the flying carpets:

The actual opening will be Monday. More pics to be added...

Soon to be flying!

Today I have got the first carpets for the guild exhibition.
(BTW - what is the difference between carpets and rugs?) Anyway, they have to be carpets - who has heard of "flying rugs"?

I haven't unpacked/unrolled them. I just ordered them in an arbitrary colour order:

There will be some more (my own magic carpets, for instance ;-), but they will arrive next week. The hanging will be on Friday next. Watch this space!

And here is the only sun I have seen today:

Flying!

The first of the magic carpets has taken off!

Grass carpet

Now the "grass carpet" is woven, too, still in twill coruroy. I used five or maybe six different yarns for the weft, in cotton and linen.
Here it is, hot from the loom:



About the cutting, Collingwood writes that there are two ways: either you cut "straight up" or you follow the "twill line". I may have misunderstood how to cut "straight" - found it very difficult to identify the logical "straight".
Anyway - to the leftit is "twill cut", to the right it is "straight". The right side has pile of different lengths, but it doesn't really show.



Apart from the fact that a table loom is too flimsy/weak to properly beat a structure like corduroy, I also found that I have too long tabby stretches (or perhaps I should have used a different pile weft) - the ground shows too much.
(OTOH - we've had a dry spell here - it almost looks like my real grass-carpet, er, lawn:


As a comparison, here's my only previous experience of corduroy - a proper rug quality, with proper rug yarns. I wove it ages ago, and usd it for my weaving bench. It is double corduroy, and the two parts are cut with different methods, with a bit of un-cut in between. I tried to figure out which part was which, but I couldn't...



Still pondering how to achieve the flight of the cellophane one. Maybe I should try it with fishing line for warp... but that has to be on a "real" loom, if at all.

Flying carpet?

The new theme for our guild is RUGS.
As you may have guessed, rugs is not what I usually weave. So, to make things more interesting, I decided to weave (very small) "different" rugs. Like... a flying carpet?

Literature studies did not yield much on the construction of flying carpets, so I made a few guesses: wings, it will need wings to fly, yes? And wings... fly wings, bug wings, fairy wings, they are all transparent and shiny? So: cellophane for weft.

The first technique that came to mind was rya knots. But I wanted to thread for something more, er, efficient, so I threaded up for what Collingwood calls double corduroy.

Here are the first samples:



The knots were impossible. After two rows the tension was completely off, and my patience was rapidly waning.
Went on to the double corduroy. In the first sample I used the warp yarn (linen 16/2) for the tabby picks, and also extended the tabbies some.
For the second sample I used the cellophane for all wefts. It looked better, but was too stiff for the hazy idea I had about mounting (a flying carpet has to be flying), so I re-threaded to what Collingwood calls twill corduroy.



It is now woven. I meant to do a "woven edge", but (as you can see) I have to practice a lot before I can do one that looks ok. With patience thin again, I decided I could do a plaited fringe at the other end...



This, too, is a bit stiff, but if I re-think the mounting...
In the meantime, I'm weaving off this short warp as a grass carpet (the word "lawn" could work in a textile environment, but hardly about rugs).

The techniqes of rug weavingcan be downloaded from handweaving.net.