AHA - so that's why...!

Once I wanted to weave with paper yarn, and to that end used one of the old wooden reeds.

After a while, I noticed that the dents were not evenly spaced:

Yesterday I came across the doubleweave portion of Zielinski's "Master weaver" where one can get several suggestions as to how to handle the fold when weaving double width.

(Methinks the first idea is the best: "experiment")

Transcription of the marked section (click, and most might be readable):
"Another method is to have special reeds made with dents growing wider towards the fold. Such reeds of rather old vintage can be found in antique shops. The difficulty here is that regardless of the width of the woven fabric the fold must be always at the edge of the reed, which may result in weaving off the center of the loom, unless the reed can be shifted in the batten at will."

I found that an adorable suggestion, which also might have explained my "variable" wooden reed...
Except it doesn't, of course. The open part wasn't even near one end, and wasn't even near to be systematic, whatever that may mean. And no, there weren't dents missing/fallen out, 'cos they usually show...

More museum examples

On request from Meg I continued looking in the museum catalogue.
And I found two more "interesting" descriptions:

Weaving reed

Material: Wood, Textile
Technique: Knotted
Function: Dividing the warp

The [weaving] reed sits near the cloth beams [yes, plural - my note] in a weaving loom, directly in front of the shafts. It's function is to divide the threads.
The rectangular reeds consist of a wooden frame, into which thin blades of wood (in one instance metal) are mounted with a textile band.


Weaving shuttle

Material: wood
Technique: carpentered [my dictionary says "carpenter" is a verb, so it must be correct...?]
Function: weaving

Shuttle. A cloth consists of two thread systems, warp and weft. The warp is tensioned during weaving and is crossed at right angles by the weft. With the help of the shuttle, the weft is inserted from side to side between the warp ends. The weft can go over and under the warp ends. With a treadle loom the lifting and lowering of the warp ends is done by the treadles. The shuttle is [quill-shaped?], with a hole in which a dowel is fixed. The weft is fastened around the dowel. One [of the shuttles] is patterned in two places.


In all fairness: at Murberget, they have elected to transcribe the text in the old paper catalogue. These two artefacts have no pictures, but in many instances they show the handwritten paper entry, often from the 1920-1940ies. Here is one example.
(I have often marvelled at what the museum generalists came up with a hundred years ago... but that is another story.)

So, Murberget uses the original texts/descriptions - most other museums do not. I remember looking in the Nordiska museets paper catalogue, and... let me say I can understand why they do not transcribe indiscriminately.

However, what is interesting about yesterday's post is that it is written after 1991. As I recall, there were several books about spinning and spinning wheels out by then, even written by Swedish authors... And even generalists should be able to read?

Now, to cheer us all up, a picture:

The picture comes from here.

Be sure to click the pic to biggify!

Superstitions and and myths

Ooops – did I really write that "ignorance is bliss"?
I suppose I did.

I didn’t mean it quite like that, of course. What I mean is: words are important. (So why am I writing this blog in English – my English is by necessity a lot less exact than my Swedish is? Well – try g***le translate, and all will be clear... Or rather, don’t try ;-)

Words are important: "it is impossible to use singles linen for warp"; "it is impossible to use handspun for warp"; "if you don’t do [it] THIS way, [it] will not work"; "if your shafts sink when using a CM loom you are a failure"; "if you don’t use a 1/1 lease your warp will not be weaveable" (is that a word?)...

What about this: "it can be difficult to use singles linen for warp"; "when spinning for warp, be careful with the joins"; "this is the method I always use – YMMV"; "when having tied up your CM treadles (or: when you have tied up the treadles, regardless of which type of loom you have), test the sheds before declaring your tie-up a failure – or a success"; "before you have some experience, don’t use too many ends in your threading cross – or: try with a 4/4 lease and see how it works".

Somewhere I have a book about weaving superstitions. A few I remember are:
- if someone comes into the room while you are dressing the loom, s/he has to take a few very high steps, saying (at the same time) SO high shed, SO high shed. (Otherwise you will not get any shed at all, I think. Or?)
- if a pregnant woman sees a (can’t remember – "naked", possibly? ) loom, she will miscarry.
- when you first can see a bit of the warp beam, it is called "happy hole" – but also: you HAVE to weave the warp down in that same sitting. (Otherwise? the cloth will disintegrate?)

What I think I’m really after is: apply brain before "committing". Is it likely that a fat and fluffy woollen yarn will show a lovely lace structure? If I am trying to make a (say) winter coat, will the best choice of fabric be a see-through linen yardage from the drapery section in the fabric store? If I want to dye a light yellow, will the best yarn to start with be black?
And, for that matter: if I have this (new-to-me) threading draft labelled (say) "summer-and-winter", and want to weave plain weave, can it really be done with an odd-even tie-up?

Or, looking at a (new-to-me) tie-up – can I really use drälltrissor when both shaft 1 and 10 go down at the same time?

Success – and exhibition opening

I made another warp, and wove it off (no breaks!) – somewhere I made a mistake, 'cos it was shorter than I had meant. So I wove it as long as possible... using another (more even) wooden reed:



Cut, moistened, mangled, let dry, glued the ends (including a hanging device and something to weight the bottom).
I hung it this morning:





At two o’clock the exhibition opened:



with renaissance music:



More pictures from the exhibition can be found on my other blog.

And, even though there are oodles of water spouts in the mill, I forgot to take a picture...

HA! - and then: plan B

It wasn't very difficult to do the ties, after all.

I planned an (obviously) very open weave, and intended to add some black (still paper yarn) figures here and there.
The plain weave was ok (sort of; didn't dare try opening the sheds "too much"). So I added a sample figure, in black, in a 2/2 twill.

Hm.

Ok, maybe it would look better later. Did something else for a couple of hours.
It did not look any better.

So: plan B: add some threads here and there, to get a "spaced-and-crammed" variant. As I wasn't very keen on doing all the tying again, I added 4 ends at each selvage, and some in the middle.
Wove a hem of sorts.

Wove the first "window":

When I suddenly saw... (click to enlarge)

I'm back to "now what?", I suppose!

My thoughts were:
I have heard, and can easily believe, that if paper yarn is woven wet (moist, I guess), the weft will stick to the warp by itself.
So I chose the most open wooden reed I had (which, incidentally, is the most open reed I have, regardless of meterial - about 20 dents/10 cm) - it was the most open reed, and it would withstand moisture. A typical win-win, I thought.
Did not bother to count/inspect the whole reed, which means I did not see the dents were more widely spaced on the right side than on the left... (I suppose it is all right for tightly woven rag rugs)

Maybe I will think of a plan C, tomorrow. Or maybe it is just "charming"?

Wooden reeds, again

As you may remember, I have been collecting data about old (Swedish) wooden reeds. This has finally resulted in a couple of articles, that now have meanderad onto my website.

Here is the English version, here is the Swedish (which is slightly longer than the one that appeared in Solvögat).

Is there a reader (from anywhere) who has any information about other old systems of measuring reeds/yarn/weaving widths? The more I read, the more fascinated I get... :-)

The too short reed

Laura describes (at Weaving a life) what can happen if you don’t comcentrate, and try to use a reed that is too short for your loom.
When I got my AVL, they had given me another reed tahn what I would have liked (confusion between imperial and metric, no doubt). They would be happy to send me another, but I was eaget to start weaving (well, to start trying to understand this loom, anyway). So I went to the nearest weaving shop to get another, as my old reeds were too narrow to use with a fly-shuttle.
I had seen that the AVL reed was taller than the “normal” (10 cm) reeds, but I did not reflect on tha fact. Home I came, with a “normal” (10 cm) reed in the correct width – proceeded with dressing the loom, threading, sleying the new reed – and could not put the beater top on, as the reed was too short.
What to do? Send for another reed, wait for a week.... ? Or try to fix it?
I bought a piece of aliminum profile, as near to the thickness of the reed sides as possible, and a piece of wood that would slot into the beater top. Glued them together, put the contraption in. It worked, but got a somewhat squishy beat (as the reed could move a bit in the alu profile). So I got some self-adhesive foam (for lining windows to stop draughts) – and I am still using that reed when needed.
(However, when getting new reeds for the AVL I always order 12,5-cm tall, if possible)

Lined with foam:

Slots into beater top:

Some random thoughts

At the beginning of the new year, it is time to study the statistics from the old.

But first a short story:
in the middle of the autumn, I went to a weavers' meeting. There, we were, among other things, introduced to a New Important Project: a national crafts assoc has decided to promote handweaving.
They had several reasons for this - the first mentioned was that there is nothing about weaving to be found on the 'net ("If you search for weaving, you get no hits").
Another reason mentioned was that there are no weavers in Sweden anymore, and, after all, Sweden was once famous for its weaving and weavers.
Also several techniques (among them trensaflossa) were "dead", and needed published instructions.
So, the proposed main goal of this New Project was (among other, smaller, goals) was to create a 'net portal to contain "everything" about handweaving - .

At that very moment I searched (Google) for "vävning", with no qualifications, and got about 63000 hits. Among the first 50 hits about 4 were about other things than loom weaving (weaving intrigues, weaving horses, which probably is called something else in English, and two hits for dictionaries).
"Handvävning" only yielded about 1600 hits, of which about 30 of the first 50 were about weaving, the other 20 were from yarn sellers.
As it happened, my guild had had a program about trensaflossa just a week earlier - and, lo and behold, our page about trensaflossa was already to be found - on 3.rd place among about 850 hits. (Ok - our page wasn't there when she prepared her talk...)

Sigh.

Now I have been looking at 'net statistics from 2010.
I have my own web page, but I am also responsible for my guild's page.
Vi KronobergsVävare has had web presence since late 2003. We have accumulated about 100 different pages, of which maybe 10 has a content other than weaving (a few annual meetings and so on), but I really try to make sure that there is some weaving content on every page. We have an index page (in English - for Swedish, go "home" and choose "register") which lists content sorted into weave techniques, material, dyeing, ergonomics, theory, ideas, guild projects and exhibitions, curiosities. (Granted, some of the pages/meetings fall under more than one category.)
We also have a fairly large links page, linking to many "foreign" organisations.
A number of our pages are also translated to English.

So, what did I find in the statistics?
We had 2300 Swedish visitors, 470 from the US, 380 from the rest of the world, making up a total of about 3150 visitors. That makes an average of between 8 and 9 visitors per day. Those visitors viewed a total of 13150 pages, which gives an average of 4 pages per visit.
We had a total of 100 (clicked) outgoing links (I have no idea of how many links there are on the whole site), of which only 35 had more than 10 clicks. 35 had less than 5 clicks - of which 18 were to foreign organisations/resources (such as Weavolution, Complex Weavers, HGA, GCW, Atasda, Italian and French sites... AND handweaving.net). (No, no links here. You are all invited to use our links page, to better the statistics for next year... ;-)

The pages in English (about 20) all have more than 15 hits. Of the 8 outgoing links (from pages in English), 6 have more than 10 clicks.

What can I conclude from that?

Combining the "information" from the Project Person above with the fact that only 1/3 of our links have been popular, perhaps I can say that Swedish weavers don't care about a) information available on the 'net and b) weaving in other countries.
(Yes, I know: English is a foreign language to us, and the study of English hasn't been mandatory in Swedish schools for more than about 50 years...)


Combining the above with the fact that my own site has had 3600 Swedish visitors and almost the same number from the "rest of the world" - well... that was the reason why I decided to write my blog in English. And, in fact - this blog has had more than twice the numbers of visits from the US (only) than from Sweden (1550 and 650, respectively).

So, again: who is interested? And of what?
... looking at keyword statistics for the guild site, the vast majority is after free weaving patterns/instructions.
Most just search for vävmönster, vävnotor (patterns, drafts) but several add "gratis" (free of charge).


There has been several discussions here in Sweden over the last couple of years about the "fact" that there is no handweaving information to be had on the 'net. And that that is especially unfortunate, as all "youngsters" are supposed to search facts on the 'net only (supposedly they can't read books?). Said youngsters have complained that us "oldsters" (if it isn't a word, then it ought to be!) do hoard our information/knowledge, and besides, we only weave boring things like tablecloths.
What I'm wondering is: HOW can us oldsters "share" - if a) books are "out" and b) the 'net is "out", too?

To add some weaving to this (over)long post, here is a boring old thing (sunscreen?), woven on a boring old countermarche, using 4 shafts (but could have been only two...):

Mercerized cotton 50/3 and fishing line for warp, white horeshair for weft; tabby, but woven with a fan reed (sorry, I won't disclose the sett :-) - there is a limit to what I want to share...)
And: no, on account of the fishing line, it could never be used as a tablecloth.

Reed marks...

The words "reed mark" take a different meaning:



This is a "score" reed - marked XI, has 218 dents (OK, they should be 220, but...). It has 30 dents/10 cm (7,5 dpi), which is the most common rag rug sett found in most Swedish books.

At both ends, the dents have distinct wear marks for about 5-7 centimeters. There are no marks on the dents in the middle.

I suppose it shows what can happen to your reed if you weave rugs without a temple...

old wooden reeds

As a nice holiday occupation I am examining the old reeds I have collected over many years.
One thing that immediately strikes me is that they are so short - most of them are between 5 and 6,5 cms (2 resp 2,6 inches). (Common height in Sweden today is 10 cm, or 4".)
The next thing is that they are so fine - the finest (yet - below) has 12,5 dents per cm (slightly over 31 dents/inch). The majority has between 8,5 and 10 dpcm.



New Swedish reeds are marked with number of dents per 10 cm, plus length. The fine reed above would be stamped with 125/10, 104. These old reeds are marked in different fashions, where the most notable is that the marking does not give number of dents per a certain lenght - instead it often gives the number of dents in the whole reed. However, it is given in different systems... the fine reed is marked as iiii iiii iiii iiii iiii iiii iii (27 small notches) in one of the endpieces.
The weaver has also marked off the 27 "partitions", each of them 48 dents long. (Why 48? Because in some parts of the country one, er, lea? hank? was supposed to hold 96 threads, and each dent usually held two ends - that's why!)



Others are marked with roman numerals, sometimes backwards - IIIV, for instance, means 8. Some of the "romans" tell the number of "score" (or is that "scoreS"? - score as in 20, anyway). Thus, the reed marked XIII has 260 dents total. All the "score" reeds I have identified yet are fairly open, between 29 and 35 dents per 10 cm (ca 7 to 9 dpi).
Then there are many with romal numerals that count the number of 30-dent partitions. (Why 30? Because in other parts of the country one, er, lea? hank? was supposed to hold 60 threads...) Thus, one reed marked XXVI has 780 dents total (26 x 30 = 780), which, re-calculated to dents per cm is 9,4, or 23,5 dents per inch.

To make things more confusing, I also have several that I can't see the system for... Take the VII-marked one that has 879 dents, has thread markings in each 30ieth dent and is 75,5 cms long. It has 11 dpcm (27,5 dpi) - but I can't figure out any relation between VII (which should mean 7, right?), 30 and the total of 879...

There are two different styles to them - either the separating strings are just wound one (or, in some cases, two) turns between the splines, or the string are knotted between turns.



Some of them also has pieces of fabric sewn on. The fabric could be protection against wear - or perhaps it is padding? We all know that it can be very irritating to weave with a reed that doesn't fit snugly in the beater.



The most good-looking one has both knots and decoratively carved end pieces:

Playing with the fan reed, part II

Some time later, I decided to try the fan reed on a Morse shawl warp.

I had a white cotton warp, on which I had woven some pastel-coloured shawls using linen singles for weft. So I re-sleyed to the fan reed, decided to stay with the linen weft.

As usual, I started with the bottom layer. All was ok.

Started the top layer. All was ok. Or...? I realized I could not see the left selvedge of the bottom layer. Of course, I can never see the left selvedge of the bottom layer - but for a straight selvedge this is not a problem. However, with the fan reed - when the selvedge begins to widen, you have to allow for that by leaving the weft slightly slacker...
Oh well, it was an experiment, after all.

Soon the web reached the breast beam. As usual with the fan reed, the cloth makes small folds where the wider parts (where the "fan" makes the web wider due to the more open dentage) have to be accomodated to the narrower parts.
Would that become a problem?


To make the message connected to the experiment, I had chosen "wriggling". And wriggle it did! To get the best wriggles, I found I had to move the reed every 10 picks (10 per layer, that is). I also found I had to advance the web at the same rate. So I wove 10 picks, advanced the web one or two "clicks", moved the reed, wove 10 picks...

The tension problems I had anticipated did not occur (or maybe I did not notice them - the fell looked all wriggly, too)



When it came off the loom it looked... like this. The bottom left selvedge wasn't a total disaster, but not very good either. Many folds, and sharp. Well, it was good enough to finish, anyway.



Fringes done, wet-finishing not.



Done - fringed, washed, pressed.



A detail of the bottom left selvedge (that was bottom left on the loom, that is!) - it could be better!



But... all of a sudden this occurred to me: it is always said, about knitted pieces in museums, that they have "evened out" by time. All knitted pieces look more than perfect - but "don't despair - they probably knitted with uneven tensio, too - it has evened out by time". And I have always been reassured by this - maybe my knitting will look perfect in a hundred years time, too.
And, as if this is not enough, myself, I have always said that minor unevenness in woven pieces will come out with successive launderings.
So what happens if I combine these thoughts with a fan-woven shawl in plain weave?
Will the wriggles still be there, in a hundred years? Or should it have been woven in a gauze structure, to better lock the warp/weft intersections?
Hmmm...
Does this mean I have to put this shawl in every wash I ever do for the next, what?, year, 5 years, 10 years to find out?

And - even more important: is it interesting enough to bother with? I can't decide...

Playing with the fan reed, part I

I bought my fan reed after having seen some very interesting upholstery fabric.



To get "waves" from the fan reed you have to change the height of the reed in certain intervals, forcing the warp to change postion. As I have a traditional Swedish countermarche loom with a traditional hanging beater, that was not very difficult to achieve. The swords already had a number of holes with which to adjust the height of the beater. I drilled a few more holes, with a hazy idea that I'd be able to "fine tune" the changes.



Below are pictures of the reed in its highest and lowest positions.




After some not very successful samples I decided to try a combination of cotton and horsehair, making a couple of sun screens.
First, I had the idea that it would be "interesting" if I shifted the reed in some irregular fashion, making irregular waves, so to speak.



Apart from not liking the irregularity very much, once the piece was off the loom, I also found I had beat it very loosely.

So, for the next piece, I a) counted the picks between each moving of the reed, and b) concentrated of the beat. I found that the fan reed needs a lot harder beat than what feels "natural" - not very strange, if you think about it: the sett is an average of 10 ends per cm, but in reality it varies from more than double to less than half. And of course you have to beat according to "more than double".

I also had to find some system to remember if the reed was on its way up or down. It was not as easy to see as I had thought... And it soon became apparent that the "sweet spot" was very short. I ended up making 20 picks, change the reed position AND moving the warp forward 2 "clicks", 20 more picks AND 2 clicks and so on.
AND concentrating on the beat, all the time.



The two sunscreens side by side - I sure know which one I like!
- oh, and the clear stripes are fishing line.