All done!

I am finally done with all the weaving I committed myself to. Now, no one twisted my arm and no one is expecting presents. But I thought it would be nice to take home-made gifts to family in India. I've always been a bit leery of taking knitted things as most of them live in warm weather places. I've given my SILs and aunt a couple of knitted shawls for use when they travel to colder places.

But now I am weaving and a woven shawl is much lighter and more useful than a knitted one. Besides, knitting with the fine yarns that one can use in weaving is time consuming. Weaving with them is easy.

I showed you the yarns I was planning to use in my last post. My plan was to warp for 2 scarves at a time and weave different designs by varying the sequence in which I depress the treadles as well as the possibly the weft. I would have warped for more scarves but I didn't have enough yarn. I would have had to use 3 colors in the warp and then a fourth in the weft. I thought that might be too much. So two it was.

I used the same basic color plan for warping. Even stripes, but I didn't want it to be half and half. I decided to put one repeat on each side in the color from the other half of the scarf. It worked really well.

This is the first warp for example. The warp is half maroon and half teal. But there is a narrow stripe of maroon on the teal side and a corresponding stripe of teal on the maroon side.

Here is the first scarf which I showed in process above. It has an indigo weft.

The same warp with a ruby weft and a different pattern.

Details of the two patterns. The colors are accurate in the big pictures. In the close-ups, the camera gets a bit confused color wise.

I also finished the socks I was knitting two-at-a-time. I worked on them a little bit at a time in the evenings and finished them up on a drive we had to do for some business.

These 3 photos are the close-ups of the second pair of scarves and a sample I did with the bit of warp left over. All three use the same threading through the heddles but a different sequence of treadling. All of these patterns are basic twills where I am raising two shafts on the loom at a time and moving fairly rhythmically across the shafts.

These two scarves were done with stripes of tartan (green) and chestnut (brown) in the warp and a weft of old gold.

I also finished up two scarves with the Shetland I was using up. Now I have only a little bit of the yarn left.  These and the cotton/linen one that follows are plain weave woven on the rigid heddle loom, I am now at the point with that loom that I can warp it in a little over an hour and finish a scarf in 2-3 days.

First of the two scarves. The second is still drying so I'll post a pic next time. I'd rather wait for daylight to take the photo.

Lastly, one of my SILs doesn't wear silk so I made her this cotton/linen scarf from the same yarn I used for the towels. To break up the monotony for me, I inserted some hand-manipulated laces at various points. I had used one of these in my doubleweave workshop but had never done it otherwise.

These two are called Leno. The bottom is on an open shed (with the two layers of warp separated) and the top is on a closed shed. I like it better on the closed shed.

Then I did another called Brooks Bouquet which I like better overall. I find Leno a pain to do but I like working Brooks Bouquet. I saw this for the first time at the Ashford shop in New Zealand. The top is a closed shed and the one below is on an open shed. Here I prefer the open shed version.

And that is it for now. 10 scarves and 3 towels since Sept. Of those, 6 scarves since Thanksgiving.

Tomorrow I am going to finish sewing the hems on the towels and then will wet finish them. I also got little labels to put on the scarves that say 'Handmade with love by Jaya' and will sew those in too.

More photos to come of all that and my next knitting project. I may also take the opportunity next week of it being a bit quieter to do the travel write-up from one of the two trips.

Merry Christmas to all those who celebrate!

Weaving up a storm

I have been weaving and weaving and weaving. I had this pile of Harris Tweed Textiles Shetland jumperweight that I had bought on Elann.com years ago. They were getting out of the yarn business and it was cheap. Lovely yarn. I have no regrets about buying it. I used it to make the color gamp scarf in the summer and fell in love with the handle of the fabric that it created.

This was the color gamp scarf, in case you missed it then.

So I decided to use the rest of the yarn to make scarves for the men in my family. Unfortunately, I only see my son at Thanksgiving and I knew I was going to see my brother then. Christmas can be iffy due to the weather. I wove two more scarves with the yarn. One using clasped weft and the other was just stripes.

That yarn is just beautiful. It blooms and creates a gorgeous fabric. So all those three have gone to their new homes.

I love weaving on the floor loom. I warped up some towels following a pattern blindly. My only deviations from the instructions in the book had to do with color and fiber content. I used my own color combination and a cotton-linen yarn instead of a cotton yarn.

The process was a learning experience. First, I had never woven with such thin yarn. I had lots of warp threads to wind. That process went very smoothly. Then I had to warp the loom. Part way through winding the warp threads on the back beam, the right hand side jumped out of the spacers (raddle) than they were threaded through and ended up in a big bunch on the back beam. Oy veh! I thought about it overnight and decided to try and fix it because that bunching would mean the threads would go through the metal heddles at a sharp angle, causing a lot of abrasion and maybe breaking threads. So my husband and I slowly wound the warp off the loom, I redistributed the threads on the back beam as best as I could and we wound it back on. It wasn't ideal because there were a lot of crossed threads, but it was the best I could do. Fortunately, while there was a bit of abrasion (I have rust dust bunnies under the loom), the threads held together and I didn't see any wear on them.  I have to be a lot more careful next time.

They are off the loom but not finished. I need to hem them before finishing. But I have more weaving to do so I am holding off finishing them now.

The mystery in this project is that I ended up with 3 towels in stead of two. I ran out of the rust colored yarn after the first two towels (the project called for 8 oz of that color and I had exactly 8 oz). I wove the third towel with the mauve contrast yarn. This project was from Anne Field's Learn to Weave book.

I heard about a selvedge treatment described in Anne Dixon's Handweaver's Pattern Directory. It was on a Ravelry forum and I thought I'd try it. I really love the way this selvedge looks. It is really solid and like a commercially woven selvedge.

Anyway, while I was weaving these towels. I decided to weave silk scarves for family in India. We are going there in Jan. That is why I am not hemming and finishing the towels yet. They probably won't be going to India and I want to get those gifts completed first.

First I wove another Shetland scarf. I finished that today. I need to wet finish it tomorrow. I put stripes into the warp and used a solid for the weft.

Better photos after it is finished.

I spent some time today planning the silk scarves. These are the colors of silk that I bought from Colourmart over the summer.

The idea behind buying them was to use them to learn various weave structures. I've decided that my first structure is twill. The scarf I made was in a 2/2 twill and the towels also were in a twill called M&O. For these scarves, I've picked a twill called M&W because the threading on the loom is like an M and a W.

My plan is to warp for two scarves in stripes and weave with a third color. The two scarves will have the same warp threading but I will treadle the weaving in a different pattern and that will create a completely different design in the fabric. This way I save on warping time and still end up with unique though fraternal scarves.

I start winding the warp for the first 2 scarves tomorrow.

In between all this, I did get some knitting done. I knitted a wrap when I was traveling in New Mexico at the beginning of Sept.

The pattern is I want that Wrap from Ravelry. I found the perfect buttons at the LYS. The yarn is handspun from a door prize I won at a fiber retreat in 2012. It has a bit of sparkle in it so I wanted dressy buttons.

I also made progress on the two at a time socks. No photos of the progress but I am half way up the leg now.

More on weaving next time. After these scarves are done, I hope to get back to spinning. I haven't spun since the Tour de Fleece in July!

Rhinebeck 2017

Updated to add two more photos of the dyeing class.

It has been really busy around here and that is why there hasn't been any blogging. We were out in Europe for 2 weeks and I came back right before Rhinebeck. This year Rhinebeck expanded out into 4.5 days because I helped with workshop setup also. Usually I just help pack up on Sunday.

It ended up being quite tiring because I was there to help with class check-in at 7:30 (Thurs/Fri) and 8:30 (Sat/Sun). I thought I'd get home early on Thurs after class but class ran late. On Friday, I volunteered at the fleece judging as a scribe so it was late. I usually try to leave either early or late on Sat and Sun to avoid the traffic. So most days were long. It is a 45 min drive for me one-way. But it is so much fun that I don't care.

I took 3 classes this year. On Thursday I took 'Dyeing Cotton Naturally' with Jane Woodhouse. Jane is a great teacher. It was a long day as we made many, many samples. First we dyed natural colored cotton which had been mordanted with alum acetate. Then we dyed cotton that had been mordanted with alum and a tannin. Lastly we made stock solutions and did color blends.

Each of the first two sets twas done 3 ways: the dye as is, with an iron modifier and with an indigo over-dye.

The challenging part was labeling and dividing up the skeins so we each had a sample of each yarn. I finally got around to organizing my samples! I now need a big envelope to store them.

On Friday, I took a Navajo Rug Weaving class. We got small pre-warped looms and 8 oz of yarn to weave with. It took a while for her to explain the basics. She taught us how to weave vertical and horizontal stripes. Diagonals were not included in the curriculum for this one day class. It was fun and I need to get back to it. The teacher was Marilou Schultz who is a member of the Navajo Nation.

The last class I took was on Sunday. It was a 1 hour 'Made in the Moment' with Leslie Wind. That was a lot of fun! I made a pin and 2 cable needles. Plus, because we were the last class of the weekend, we each got some samples from her.

The top pin is the one I made. The other two are her samples.

The cable needles I made. The left one is called 'Hurrah!' and the right one is 'Angel'. 

Someone gave me 2 bags of unlabeled undyed fiber and another person gave me a bag of Into the Whirled fiber. The only fiber I bought was odds and ends that Briar Rose had dyed. She is getting out of the fiber business and just dyed these to use up the ends. I bought a featherweight Bosworth spindle. I haven't photographed any of my acquisitions yet so that will be in the next post.

Right after Rhinebeck, I had to focus on an educational forum I was helping organize and canvassing for the election. So the fiber content has been minimal BUT, I was able to warp and weave a scarf on my Baby Wolf loom. That was exciting. I am already planning the next project on it as well as what I'm going to do on my rigid heddle loom.

Scarf on the loom above and finally finished below. It is a variegated weft with an almost solid gray warp. Both yarns are cheap 'sock' yarns I bought in China. They are quite soft but not very durable for socks.

I also started a pair of Two-At-A-Time (TAAT) socks while I was traveling. I have finished them up to the heels. They are for a guild demo so I am going to stop there till the guild meeting. This way I can show back and forth knitting on the two socks as well as how to knit on them in-the-round.

I finished the wrap I worked on when I was on the first trip and also a little infinity scarf/cowl from a skein of the most luscious yarn I have ever touched. It is called Road to China. I don't seem to have a photo of the wrap. I'll take it and post next time.

Rhinebeck was very warm this year. But it was cold in the am so I wore a sweater or shawl every day and then ended up taking them off around 10 am. They went back on right before I left at 6 or 7 pm.  I did get a chance to finally wear my Grapevine sweater.

In order to catch up and write about both the travel and the fiber activity, I am hoping to do 2 posts a week for the rest of the year. 

Collapse weave - finally!

I am sure you remember all my collapse weave experiments from the spring and the spinning of the singles during the Tour de Fleece. Well, I finally got around to warping and weaving the scarf and it turned out exactly as I had hoped. The challenge with collapse weave is that it is unpredictable so getting results that are sort of what you wanted is wonderful.

 This is the warp. 2 sets: one S-spun and one Z-spun. These were sized with xanthan gum.

This is the weft. I had 2 skeins of roughly the same size. I chose to use the larger skein but I should have gone with the smaller one. Oh well.

The warping process was very easy. The sized singles were a bit stiff and smooth. I ran out of the Z-spun singles so the warp was not as wide as I had planned. I still have a bunch of the S-spun ones. I warped the S-spun with 2 strands in a slot and hole for 1/2" and then the Z-spun for 1" with 1 strand in each slot and hole. So the S-spun was more tightly sett than the Z-spun. I used a 10 dent heddle which is pretty wide for this fine of a yarn. But one needs to leave a lot of room in between the strands to allow them room to collapse. This is similar to what we have to do with felting in knitting.

You can't see the difference in the sett in this photo that I took as I started weaving. 

The gradient goes from a magenta to a grey through blue and violet. I wanted to make sure I had the warmer end of the gradient so I started weaving from the magenta end. You can see the range on the right hand side of this photo.

I did 6 picks packed tightly and then 8 picks at a balanced weave. The 6 picks came out to be about 1/2" and the 8 picks came out to be about 1" to mimic the warp.

The weft was not sized so I was afraid to wind it into a center-pull ball. I wanted to keep the yarn under tension. So I wound it onto a tennis ball. Then I had to rewind it so that I was starting with the correct end. The singles had broken in one spot when I was winding them onto the niddy-noddy. So I wound off till I hit the knot, undid it, and then rewound it onto the shuttle so the undone knot was on the inside of the shuttle and the magenta was on the outside. Then it was time to start weaving.

The weaving went fast. Since there are no color changes, it was a matter of just paying attention to the denser and looser weaves. 

 Once it was off the loom, it looked like this. It is easy to see the thicker and thinner parts in this photo, both on the warp and the weft.

Before washing, I had to finish the fringe. I couldn't separate the S-spun and the Z-spun into separate fringe elements so I ended up braiding them to make sure they stayed OK. They got a bit distorted after washing but they still look nice.

 The magic happens in the water. I soaked the scarf in a few baths to get rid of the sizing. Each bath was about 10-20 mins long. Then I hung it up to dry.

 Here's the finished scarf after drying. I hadn't trimmed the fringe yet but otherwise it is complete.

This photo shows the texture. I was looking for that crinkly square-ish effect and that is what I got. It didn't curl up into a spiral which is what I was afraid of.

So I declare this project a success!