A little rant and some updates

New scarf on the loom.   There was a yarn sale a few weeks back and they had some yarns by Caron, which while acrylic, is super soft.  There were some odd colour ways, but several really nice ones.   I liked the purple painted colour way in the ball, but it made for a rather dark and heavy looking scarf.  A couple of the colour ways were white with short lengths of colour which have made really nice scarves.   This is a blue which is weaving up with lovely patches of green and purple.   I'd gotten a teal to use as the weft, but it was too dark. I unwove it, restarted weaving with the same yarn as the warp and really like the colours and the way it's weaving up.   It sort of feels like a night sky with the northern lights, which is making it fun to weave up.

I meant to wash fleece over the weekend but had a very quiet read a novel, knit a bunch and warp the loom weekend.   I still have 3 1/2 sheep fleeces left to process.  I'll have enough Orvus to wash them, but will likely need more degreaser and Dawn.  Also I have some absolutely lovely, although full of VM cria (baby alpaca) fleece to play with.  Yay me!

My baby got married to an absolutely lovely and wonderful young lady who my whole family adores.  She is friendly, warm, funny and caring.  She makes friends everywhere, remembers people that she met at conferences and places in previous years and just made everyone she was with feel welcomed and befriended.   It was the most amazing thing to be a part of.   While we already considered her family, it's now official.   The only downside is that she's very allergic to cats, and my cats leave enough cat hair and dander around to make another 2 of themselves, so we go to visit them, rather than have them visit us.   It's not worth risking her health for that.  She is however extremely worthy of getting hand made items.   It's so easy to love her and the way she fits into the family.

The Alliums just keep on giving.  Even after their flowers are spent and they've gone to seed, they are an interesting architectural element in the garden.

Weaving update

 The double weave project is off the loom!   Yay.   I thought it would take me much longer than it did to finish it.   I played around with how much I could weave without hurting my healing hip and straining my muscles, and then kept to that schedule most days.   As I was more comfortable with the process, it became faster and easier.

I wove it to 74 inches long and it lost almost 4 inches when I took it off the loom.    It was 24 inches wide single and opened up to and 46 inches wide. I fixed about 3 errors on the top layer and a good few more than that on the bottom layer.   This included 2 skipped warp threads which were easily repaired by threading an extra warp thread between them. Because it was fairly loosely woven, it was the easiest fix.   There were some other skipped threads from my not picking up the 1st shed on the bottom layer.   

It didn't take long to fix the skips though.   My biggest issue was a big, furry kitty butt that parked itself on top of the new blanket and tried to claim it.   So after the repairs were made, and I'd double checked the machine stitching on the ends to secure the threads, I tossed it in the washer to slightly full the blanket.   This was before hemming, because I really wanted it safe from kitties and the loose thread ends would have created all kinds of interest for the kitties. 

   I tossed it in the top loader washer and set it on a light load wash cycle, made a cup of tea and promptly forgot to check it.  I pulled it out of the washer and it was well fulled, although not horribly felted.  The looseness of the weave allowed for a lot of loss though and it ended up at 40 inches wide and 60 inches long.  However, that size was in the ballpark of what I was aiming for so I'm not sad.   It's soft and cozy and the perfect size for a lap blanket.  It needs a bit of a press and steam as the cats dragged it down while it was drying and slept on it.

I took a couple of days off from weaving and tossed on this simple scarf.  It's Ferris Wheel by Lion Brand.  It's a bit loosely spun to make it a really easy weave.   I had to cut a scarf off earlier because it was so sticky, it made for miserable weaving.  However the scarf I'd woven  before it, with the same yarn was okay to weave, although a bit delicate.   This is the same as the first one.  It requires a bit of care as the yarn is subject to a bit of abrasion  and  drifting apart when the spinning loosens.   Both of these are easy to deal with as long as you watch for them.    Advance the warp every few inches of weaving, which is reasonably good advice anyway and if the yarn is drifting apart, mainly while hem stitching  or winding on the shuttle, then manually add the twist back in. 

 I do like the greys though.   It's a soft, easy care acrylic and works nicely enough on the rigid heddle loom.  I wouldn't use that yarn on my floor loom though. 

Double Weave on the Rigid Heddle update

The start of the rigid heddle double weave project was slow.   Figuring out the heddle and pick up stick sequence required thought.  I have a little book which I wrote the sequence in, to make sure I had it correct.  It's the same order as any other double weave joined at one side, but it just feels a bit different not using treadles.  I started from the right, as my left selvedge is my better one.  This puts the join on the left side, so theoretically it should be neater and more invisible.

The order was bottom layer A, which was the bottom pick up stick, top layer A, front heddle up, top layer B, top pick up stick , bottom layer B, back heddle down.  The 4th  pick with the back heddle down was slow as it made a very small shed, which didn't always separate, depending on where the fell line was.   The two top threads were no problem, but the second thread on the bottom, didn't separate enough to get the shuttle through.   Pick 4 became a hand picked shed, where I slipped my fingers under the cranky layer of threads and slipped a third pick up stick through them in front of the heddle, to make a shed where I was least likely to miss threads.   This worked really well.   It made a slow process even slower.   However, once I got used to the whole process, picking up that last pick of the sequence became quite fast.

I put in a small burgundy stripe near the beginning, but am not sure I'm going to put another at the end.   It looks nice, although maybe I should have put 2 or 3 stripes in.   The yarn isn't packing quite as nicely with the two heddles as it would do otherwise.  I don't know if this is do to my technique or the yarn sett.   It's a little looser sett than if I'd used the floor loom.  I would have used a sett of 9 on the floor loom and I had a 7.5 or a 10 dent reed to choose from for the rigid heddle.   I went with the 7.5, because the yarn is definitely too thick for a sett of 10.   (Sett is warp threads per inch).   

Anyway, because of this bit of looseness to the weave, I may weave a few extra inches, which means  I'm not sure of where to put in the last end stripe to balance the shawl.   The stripe is 2 inches wide and 8 inches from the end.    I warped a width of 25 inches (doubled).  Figuring out the drawn in and some shrinkage, I wanted it to be 45 inches x 60 inches long.    But it's weaving up at 23inches wide x 2, is 46 inches before wet finishing, so it will be a little bit narrower when washed.  Warp shrinkage though has varied with this yarn, depending on which loom it was woven on.   So it might be easier to just put a single stripe on one end that fuss with the second stripe.

The double weave is working well though.   One crossed thread, which will need to be snipped and fixed as it's holding the two pieces together in that one tiny spot.   Otherwise, the layers are working well and properly separated.  The left join looks very even and so far I'm happy with it.  I'll know for sure when it's wet finished though.   There are a few skipped threads here and there.  They're mainly at the beginning when I was figuring the process out.  I've fixed some of them, bu others looked to be easier to just spend a few minutes with a repair thread and fixing them manually, after the fact.   

I've woven 58 inches so far, so another  8 - 10 inches to weave.   I guess if I'm putting that second stripe in, it should go in soon. I'm still trying to decide if that 8 - 10 inches is enough to wet finish to 60 inches finished length.   That is the stripe dilemma.

Finally able to do things again!

 Finally!  Off the crutches and able to put full weight on my leg.   When you can't put your weight on your leg, you can hardly do anything.   Plus, the other restrictions like not bending the leg more than 90 degrees, no twisting etc, are gone, so I can slowly return to normal activities.  Just before they were lifted though, I was unable to weave, and spin.  Cooking was difficult and I couldn't even practice the banjo unless someone brought it to me.   However, I got a somewhat harebrained idea to warp up the rigid heddle loom.   I figured I could do it slowly, with a simple project and weaving, would be no issue.

Hubby moved the loom so it was accessible.   Then, after fishing through my Rigid Heddle Project yarn bin, I realized that I didn't really have any yarn for a project, that didn't need dyeing.   So here's the harebrained part.   I had some of the yarn I use for blankets that was accessible.  That really means I hadn't put it away before the surgery.   It's a lovely pink colour, like a Madder exhaust dye.   I decided to make a blanket.   I'd been planning on trying double weave on the rigid heddle loom and had the second reed for the correct set.  Instead of making a blanket in two parts and sewing it together (which would have been fast, efficient and smart!), I warped the rigid heddle loom for double weave.

Setting up the loom for double weave isn't difficult, just a bit fussy.  With a rigid heddle reed, you have holes and slots.  The threads in the slots are static, while the threads in the holes do all the work, moving up and down.  With two reeds, you thread the first one normally, starting with a thread in a hole, plus you run the two threads for the second reed through the slots.   The the second reed, you thread with the two extra threads, starting with the slot and run the two threads from the first reed through the slot.  Much less complicated to just do it than try to explain.  I had this crazy idea to make it a plaid as I have some lovely burgundy wool, which looked great with the pink.   I vetoed this idea, because I was direct warping using my cane ( not fully transitioned from crutches, but desperate) and still couldn't bend to pick up the inevitable dropped threads.  So, single colour warp it was, just to show that I had some common sense.

Because I kind of overdid it by winding the warp in one day, I took two days to wind the warp on, thread the reeds, tension and tie it off.  That was the easy part.  Then I had to run two pick up sticks to create two sheds that can't be done with the reeds.   However, I didn't have any pick up sticks the right size.  The project in the reed is 25 inches wide and I have a single pick up stick that is 15 inches long.  Sigh...   I used a 30 inch stick shuttle for one pick up stick and then had to wait almost a week before I could get  to the big box store to pick up a piece of 1/4 in oak 1 3/8 wide to make another pick up stick.  It's still not a pick up stick, but it's working admirably for creating the extra shed.   

There are specific steps you need to take to set up double weave on the rigid heddle, like on any loom.  You need to get two threads set for the top layer and two for the bottom.   I mixed up the labelling on both the pick up sticks and reeds, which made for some experimenting until I figured that out.  Then my instructions worked perfectly.   The first three steps and sheds work well.  The fourth is a bit tricky as the yarn is a bit sticky and the last step/shed is on the bottom.   So it's a small shed and I have to run through and separate it with my fingers before I can run the shuttle through.

I've woven the header and it's two separate layers.   My procedure works perfectly, now that I know that both pick up stick A and pick up stick B, and reed 1 and reed 2 are both the opposite of what I thought they were.

It's going to take longer than I planned to weave it off.  I had this crazy idea that it would be only a little bit slower than on my floor loom.   Nope, it's going to be much slower as the rigid heddle loom isn't really designed for this.  The sheds are smaller and you can't clear the shed as well with the beater - ha! - since there isn't a beater, just the reed.   Still, even if I can get a few inches a day woven off, it shouldn't take too many months.

For those of you who aren't really interested in weaving and stuck through the post, here is a photo of the
ginger kitties synchronized sleeping.  They were in my spot on the couch and refused to move :)