Just got this on the loom — it's Louet's Cottolin, a 60% cotton, 40% linen weaving yarn. I sell it in the shop, and it's on sale now. This is my first project using it. The sale is to celebrate the launch of Weavolution, the social networking site for weavers.
I'm playing around with randomly varying a few individual strands of the blue-greens in the warp. It might be nice to throw in some warm reds and oranges; I'm still debating it. Opinions?
Here they are off the loom, hemmed and finished.
Nina's Towels
Yarn — mercerized cotton flake, blue-gray and cream. Hems done with 5/2 cream cotton.
Pattern — Pinwheel twill on 8 harnesses, 12 epi (ends per inch), 12 ppi (picks per inch).
Size — on loom 18" wide x 26" long + 1.5" hems, finished 14.5" wide x 22" long.
Start — waaaay back in February
Finish — May 8
I had to take these off the loom before the entire project of 8 towels was completed (four were a commissioned gift due for Mother's Day). This was actually pretty easy, just cranking out a few extra inches of warp and tying overhand knots in front of the reed to hold them in place for tying onto the apron rod again.
This yarn looks really different on the loom. The weave seems way too loose, but when they are washed the thick/thin nature of the yarn settles itself into place and blooms beautifully, making a dense, absorbent fabric.
Here's a quick photo of the "simple temple" setup on the loom. It's weighted to keep the selvedges even. That's exactly a pound of two inch washers per side. I tried using machine knitting claw weights at the cloth attachment point, but they damaged the fabric and were hard to move; sometime the simplest thing works best — two bent paperclips in this case.
And it's about time some of that tablet weaving served a purpose!
That section of plain weave on the bottom right is done in a lighter weight yarn, so that the hems will be easier to turn and sew.
The basic simplified steps to a weaving project:
1. design — the most important part of any project; issues of functionality, color, fiber, hand (drape) of the fabric and pattern are all considerations
2. calculations — project length, width and density (sett), yardage requirements for warp and weft
3. measuring the warp — winding the yarn on a warping board or pegs for conventional loom setup
4. dressing the loom — putting the warp on the loom, through the reed and heddles, tying it to the beams, and winding it up
5. winding bobbins or shuttles — for the weft, or crosswise threads
6. weaving the pattern — more theraputic than Prozac, the rhythmic throwing of the shuttle and beating the weft can produce the little-documented "weaver's high" (okay, that's little-documented cause I just made it up, but it's true)
7. on-loom finishing — hemstitching, if desired (for fringed ends)
8. wet-finishing — just as in knitting, the project isn't complete until it's been wet-finished (washed, steamed, pressed, etc.)
It sounds like a lot, but in reality, weaving projects can go pretty quickly. The loom preparation can be quite enjoyable, though some people dislike this part and just want to get to the actual weaving. I'm a textile geek, I love it all.
Look what I made today—beautiful multigrain crusty, rustic bread—in an electric oven. I didn't use a recipe, but more of a method from an article in last month's Mother Earth News. The article is an excerpt from the book Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. I used a mixture of whole wheat, rye and bread flour for this; there was no kneading involved, and it tastes as good as it looks.
On another front, this is why kittens should be illegal. The sectional beam is not a good place to play, as far as I'm concerned. Cassidy has different ideas.
I've gotten about a yard done on this; the noise of weaving of course makes the dog bark like he's insane, so it can be a bit distracting. Nothing I do can get him to calm down and shut up, so right now I just try to ignore it; I'd put him outside, but there's snow on the ground.
The warp is bamboo, weft, space dyed rayon.
Look at the sheen on this bamboo. Finally, a piece on the loom. This first sampler piece will be a test of the electronics and solenoid system, which selects the shafts raised to create the patterns on the Weavebird.
I've been playing around with a demo of Weavemaker, and I can't even begin to describe my delight with this. The window above is the design space. Below is the fabric simulation.
It's a tiny bit buggy on my mac, but it is mac native, which is amazing to begin with. As usual, I know I'm going to be spending much more time playing on the computer than actually working with fiber.
The Kid is here this week, and we are finally putting together my loom. It's been sitting in boxes for about a year. I'm totally intimidated by this piece of equipment. It's a 16-harness, 36" loom with a computer interface, which means it will do very complex patterns without my little brain having to remember long treadling sequences.
We are short a part or two, and the wrong heddles were sent with it, so we'll have a couple weeks of downtime before getting things going, dang it. I can't wait to get a project on this loom!
