Super pi day

The drawer is scoured, now drying (and airing) in the garage.
Still lots of stinky heddles to sort/clean, but the loom is now threaded.

As I decided, based on this sample , I should sley 3/dent. (I also modified the warp some - warped with 4 ends: one bleached 16/2, two bleached thinner, probably 22/2 and, to give a somewhat warmer hue, one unbleached 16/2.)

Sleying 3/dent is something I always find difficult, unless it is a 3-end compatible threading. As the threading is a kind of decreasing point, adding 2 ends to each point, this turned out to be...difficult.

Sleying a fan reed is difficult to begin with, and this is by far the widest "fan" warp I have tried, so I thought up a trick: let the end of each sleying unit hang at the wide end, to make it easier to find the next dent:

After tying on... it turned out I had several errors, all of them where the narrow dents face the shafts - I guess my trick wasn't good enough.

Then the next problem arose - I have lost my favourite texsolv treadle cord hook, so I had to unvent some kind of substitute. After some not-quite-working ideas, this is now my new tool:

The reason for the different legs of this "tool" is that it gets easier to separate the fishing-line strands if they are different lengths from the knot, which is needed to make the loop go through the holes in the lamm.


Coda: as it is a super-pi day, and I haven't found any connexion to pi (but as the real pi-nerds say: *everything* can be found in pi), instead here is a picture of a blanket I saw today:

(When I brought out pen-and-paper to analyse it, my company suggested I ought to be able to do that from the photo. I should have known better, but... no matter how I fiddle with contrast, sharpening etc, I just can't make it out. Suggestions welcome!)

Also a piece of Very Happy News: today the newest incarnation of our local glassworks started the "pre-melting" needed to be done to a new ladle - pics here.

Rats!

I needed some more heddles on the loom, so I went to the heddle drawer.
This is what I found:

(Probably it was mice rather than rats, but... And it smelled!)

Well. No heddles, no threading. No threading, no weaving. And I don't have to do them all, not immediately, anyway.

Some hours (and a trip in the washing machine) later:

But I guess I know what to do in spare moments for some time to come... at least on sunny days, so I can sit outside!

A Very Small Sample

Remember this?

I have been pondering possible changes, to make it into a clothing quality. Could I use a thicker yarn, or two ends per heddle (would perhaps give a little more flexibility/"drape")? Or could I just sley denser? But would the binding (structure) work at the extremely high sett?

The closest parts have some 12 dents/cm - round that to 10/cm - would mean a cotton 16/2 with 30 or 40 ends per cm... The open parts have about 3 - 3,5 dents per cm; would make about 10 - 14 epcm, which is quite acceptable. Nominal sett would be 15/cm or 20/cm with three and four ends/dent respectively.

There was still lots of narrow white warp left, threaded to an 8-shaft point. I re-threaded about half to have two ends/heddle, then sleyed the 2/heddle as 2 working ends/dent; sleyed the other half with some with 3 ends/dent, some with 4/dent (which, nominally, is the same as the 2/heddle part).

The result was a very narrow warp, which I wove with a couple of left-over quills: a soft cotton 16/2, a harder 16/2 and some linen 16/1.

The result? I think that the 1/heddle, 3/dent and linen weft may be a good place to start. There will have to be a bigger sample woven and properly finished before a final yardage is woven, though.

Handed in

Daff completed, and handed in. (There is to be a big jubilee exhibition for Hemslöjden Kronoberg 100 years)

Hung as a curtain, to show how much light it lets trough (left), and as a room divider:

(The size? "It" (ie whatever one wanted to make) could not be more than max 160 cm. I suppose it can be called a "sample")

Here are some construction details. First, if there has to be a hem at the bottom, the layers have to be woven separately. I also chose to weave them simultaneously, to make them even at the bottom. Thus, the start sequence:

It could be done with only one pick at a time, but it is so much faster to weave two picks in each colour.

When the hems were long enough, I switched to the "body plan" (here shortened; I had 24 ends/picks per layer). I put in three "empties" between colours. The turquoise pick in the middle is to remind me to (and facilitate) pass the light green shuttle from top to bottom, to match the unwoven warp.

When I got to the upper end, I wanted to make a sleeve for the mounting dowel (provided by the organizers). Decided to end the middle, white, layer with a hem in the middle of the sleeve. This meant a white-hem-but-outer-layers-going-on (still shortened):

Which then gave way to the two just-green-with-empty-distances part:

Yes, I did not need to use 12 shafts, but from the beginning I had planned for a different enlacement of the "layers".
(I did weave the whole shebang "backwards", according to the software: "reverse direction)

The parting shot: daffodil with trimmed petals

(And nobody has commented on the hems... yet)

- maybe I should also add: 100% cotton, 24 ends/"column", also per inch, same in weft. Yarns used were mostly 16/2, but there were several both fatter and thinner, total of maybe 12 colours/nuances.

A moment of suspense

Done: hemmed (but not showed to the hemming police, so it might still be rejected), put in mesh bag, put in washing machine.
Out of the machine.

Dare I open the bag? Deep breath, shake fingers to loosen them up, get the pins at the ready...

I pinned it from the bottom, for as far as I could get on the ironing board, pressing (but not really hard). Folded gently, pinned next section...
Got to the top, where there is (will be) a sleeve of sorts, for the mounting dowel.

There are two snowdrops and one daffodil, but I haven't yet tried to untangle the "petals".

Now it is hanging over a shower rod to dry.

The un-trimmed "daff"

As there is more warp on the loom, and as one never can know what happens with the weather (and thus with the outdoor daffs):

I guess it will be trimmed some, before the whole thing can be called finished :-)

The first snowdrop, the first daffodil and a mystery solved

The first snowdrop is outside the front porch:

On my other blog I have a label for the first snowdrop. I haven't had that label for more than 4 years, but it sure seems as if they start earlier and earlier...


"The first daffodil" (which may come to be the title of what is on the loom):

(but I plan to have one complete with petals a little higher up)


And the mystery:
I have noticed that hand-throwing shuttles on the AVL makes me tired much faster than on weaving on the old CM.
Today it dawned on me: the shuttle race is in the way!
On the CM I can hold the beater away with the thumb of the catch-hand, and put the hand with the palm under the shed opening. This way the shuttle flows right into the hand - but with a shuttle race, I have to catch the shuttle as it comes along the "shelf".
Also, the AVL beater is heavier than the other, so the thumb has to stay in its "holding-away" position a tad longer. So to catch the shuttle, I have to do the actual catch with the fore-finger on top, which in the next instant means I have to shift the grip on the shuttle to be able to throw it into the next shed...

(I tried to get a pic of this, but would have needed an extra hand for the camera)