Endings and Beginnings

 

The towels with the painted warp off the loom.  They were hemmed and hung to take a photo.  I like them a lot.  The black one shows off the colours really well, however it looks out of place with the rest of the towels.  The other ones are a bit less dramatic but they look really nice.  Even the green one which I wasn't sure about.  

Folded up they look nice too.  I think the purple is my favourite, but the teal is close.  They are all boxed up and ready to be put on sale this weekend.

I thought that I didn't have very much to put in the sale.  Because of the hip replacement, I haven't spent any real time on the floor loom.  What I hadn't realized was how much I've actually woven on the rigid heddle loom.  In this case, my big bin that I thought was too large, was actually full to the top!  That doesn't mean anything will sell though because buyers are fickle, money is tight for most people and lots of folks just come out for an interesting day out.  If things do sell though, it does help with buying yarn for next year.

Len's Mill Store sent out digital coupons and the yellow tag items were 80% off.  This is a pile of yarn which would have been $80 before tax.  With tax, I paid $17 and change.    Most of these are for the rigid heddle loom.  One is a ball of Hygge, a very thin fluffy yarn which has come to the notice of sock machine knitters as you can use it to line socks to make slippers.   The horrible yellow is sock yarn.  It's ugly and bright and was $1.88 after discount.  There is enough other yarn there for 3 shawls or maybe 4 or 5 scarves.   When I'm able to get yarn on deep discount, or at least on sale, it means I can sell my non- wool or silk scarves at attractive prices.  I like that because it means that handwoven items are available to those people who may not be able to afford them otherwise.  It's nice to let people have a choice.

I warped up the Inkle loom.  I used 4/8 cotton that I'd purchased years ago when I had this idea to make guitar straps for my family.  I'd already made 2 for myself - a banjo strap and a ukelele strap.  However there were still 3 kids plus 1 spouse who played, so I thought it was a good idea.   It took so long to make mine, that I ran out of time.  Plus, I'd thought that I'd be able to dye all the white to customize them and that really didn't happen either.

   I need to make a new Birka bag and my old strap is wearing where it attaches to the handles, so I put this project on for that purpose.   But, the tele was on and I was dressing the loom while I was watching some very compelling crime drama on Britbox.   I should never do things like this.  The stripes are different sizes and I missed a peg on 2 different threads so had to cut the strap off early because I could no longer pull the strap forward to weave.   It's about 12 inches too short! 

So sometime this week I need to find table space to paint my Xmas cards.  I still need to make a couple of pairs of csm socks.  I also want to put a new scarf on the rigid heddle loom to have something alternate to play with.  This all sounds doable except for the fact that hubby has a week off and who knows what will happen then.

Don't Do What I Did!

Way before my hip replacement, I planned a project to put on the loom for my recovery. I'd totally forgotten that it would be weeks before I'd be cleared to weave again, so it was kind of a useless idea.  In the end though, it meant I had the warp almost ready to go when I needed it months later.

  It was 2/8 cotton and I did stripes, navy with painted warp stripes in between.   The painting of the warp was very successful.  It was a beautiful warp.  I started winding the navy stripes but only got halfway done before climbing up and down to the basement to my warping board  became difficult.   The project was left, semi-forgotten in a bag on the back of my desk chair.   Eventually though, time passed and I realized that I had 3 1/2 weeks left before the guild sale.    Discussion at the last meeting suggested that our stock of tea towels was low, so I decided to get this project on the loom.   It's an easy to weave project, the ubiquitous "friendship towels", from Schacht.  It's a delightful project, fun and fast, and also easy to change up the colour for each towel.  They've also provided the draft free, which was really nice of them.

See the twisting!  The navy was so much worse!

So step one -  When I dye warps I put tight figure 8 ties in the cross and also one at each end, to keep the yarns from slipping.   However all the rest of the figure 8 ties are tied loosely in a bow, so that a) it will be easy to dye the whole length without those white marks from a tight choke tie and b) using a bow so that when the warp is dry, I can tighten up the figure 8 ties to keep the warp contained and straight.  

  First mistake was not retying the figure 8 ties to make firm choke ties.   This allowed the painted warp to twist around itself, making for not so fun warping.   Secondly, I know that I painted the warp in a particular order.  I neither marked each of the painted warp chains with the order number, nor did I take proper notes.  I have a basic explanation of the project, a quick diagram with numbers etc, but absolutely none of the details which tell me what I was truly planning at the time.  My third mistake when starting this project, is that while I wound each stripe in the painted warp separately, I didn't do that for the navy stripes.  I wound about half of it in one bunch, and then because I neglected to note how many warp threads I'd wound, when I went to finish winding the warp 3 weeks ago, I figured it was easier to wind the second half of the navy stripes in one bunch too.   I'd counted my navy warp 3 times, and had 3 different numbers, so took the average and wound the rest of the stripes together as one warp.  This wouldn't have been such an issue if the navy cotton yarn hadn't been really over twisted, so it wound around itself something fierce and was so difficult to work with.   

painted warp and navy stripes, black weft.

After much fussing, winding, a few crossed threads and some broken threads from the over spun yarns twisting in the heddles, the warp was on the loom.  This was not a fun process and if I didn't absolutely love that warp, if it wasn't maybe 7 feet long, so 6 tea towels, so a lot of thread to waste, I might have cut it off.  Once it was on the loom though, it was very pretty.  I wove off two in a teal colour, one in a lighter green which was nice but not spectacular, two in purple which were awesome and one in black which is stunning.   I hadn't realized that I had any 2/8 black cotton in my stash or their would have been more of them.  I used all the purple I had.  My initial thoughts were to use the navy for the weft, thinking the navy on navy would give a sold stripe against the painted stripes.  However to my eye, because the navy is a broken twill, it just looked a bit messy to me.

1- take lots of notes, even if you don't think you'll need them.   If you put that project aside for a bit, you'll really want to know those details that don't jump out at you, including warp length, that the yarn is over twisted or delicate or just fine etc.

2- document numbers - how many are in each stripe, how long, did you add extra threads for use in breakage etc.

3 - don't wait until last minute and have to rush.  Give yourself time to enjoy the process. 

4- sometimes it's best to wind your stripes in the right number of threads to facilitate that enjoying the process bit :)

The towels have been washed and dried.  They are waiting for me to hem them.    I'm happy with the outcome.

Painted warp and hand card catastrophe

 The past few days have been busy.  I've played in the garden.  I was so excited that the pumpkins had germinated that apparently when I was on the phone with my daughter, I yelled.   Since nothing grew in that area last summer, mainly weather issues, it was great to see the pumpkins growing this year.  I had to put a lot of sticks in the area to keep the chickens from sunbathing in the pumpkin patch.

I have finally started putting the multi coloured dyed rug warp on the loom.  I know it was a rescued warp -  a whole lot of threads removed from a guild project that wasn't working out as planned.   The threads were removed, a cross put in them and it was chained.  The cross wasn't actually a true cross.   The cross keeps the threads in order.  Without it, there are a lot of randomly bunched and messed up areas.   I did finally undo the chain and add choke ties.  What is messing me up right now is that not all of the threads were caught up in the cross, so there are loose threads periodically.   Those just get tangled up.  There was a large handful of really short bits that I found by accident and luckily didn't try to thread those, plus I caught them before I started winding on the warp.    I'm having to comb out parts of the rest as I wind it on to ease out the tangles.  It's not my favourite way to put on a warp, but it's a rescue warp, so I'm happy to get it used.  Plus, look at those awesome colours!   Pain in the patootie to dress the loom aside, the colours are fun to work with.

I did a lot of hours volunteering this week.   I went into a grade 4 classroom and answered a lot of questions about the Middle Ages.   The teacher sent me a list of questions.   I dug around and found Illuminations which illustrated the answers and did the research for the rest.  In all, the questions were really interesting and thought out.   The follow up questions from the kids in class, were also thoughtful and good.  The kids were amazingly well behaved and I enjoyed it very much.


In the grade 3 class, I did some fibre activities for the pioneer theme.  Sadly, my hand cards were damaged by the rougher kids.    I really like my handcards.  These ones have a gentle curve and the carding cloth works with a lot of different fibres.   I'm hoping they can be glued and clamped back together.  It isn't in the budget right now to replace them.  

Garden update:   The birds ate all my bean plant seedlings.... talk about unhappy!  Well the birds are happy.   I have little leafless stems sticking up from the ground, which doesn't make me happy.   They ate every single one of them!

Painted Rug Warp

This is the 11 1/2 yard white rug warp which I ended up with when last month when we were clearing out the guild room.   It was stark white and while it would have made perfectly fine rugs.  With the denim and solids I have on hand for the weft, they would have been plain, serviceable rugs.  My imagination started working, so I dug out the Procion MX dyes and mixed up a set of primary colours at 2%.  I used 2% strength, only because that was what I'd previously mixed up and the storage jars were already labelled that way.   It ended up being a better idea as I needed less dye volume, and was easier to work with.

I started taking a series of photos, but conditions weren't conducive to good pictures.  It was a grey, really cool day, threatening rain.   It was also very windy.   Every time I grabbed the camera, something tried to blow away.   Since I was working on the deck due to the size of this project, in the ended up just playing.  

I used Procion MX Fibre Reactive dyes, which give lovely colours and are relatively safe to use.   The one downside is there is a bit of rinsing since the dyes bond both with the water and the fibre.  The upside is you don't need any heat to set the dyes.  

I draped plastic wrap on the patio table to both protect the table and to use to wrap the warp chain in afterwards to keep it damp and protected.   It would have been smarter to use a sheet of plastic like a cheap table cloth, vapour barrier or an old shower curtain to protect the table.  The syringes were a gift from Carol who has Alpaca ( and a brand new cria which was born yesterday)  Yay!   They are perfect for measuring out dye for painting the warp.   I like that I can dilute the dyes as well, but filling half the syringe with water and then just adding the dye.  This makes it easier to adjust shades.  The plastic wrap wasn't enough to actually seal the dyes in the chain, so there was a bit of seepage and some of my oranges and bright yellows are more burgandy and brown.   I let the warp sit and cure for 48 hours because it never really got warm.  Cooler temperatures equal longer curing times for good colours.  The warp is still damp, so it won't be quite as bright as this when it's dry.

I wasn't really going for any particular colour range. I didn't measure rug lengths and change colours for each rug, or even plan anything ahead of time.   In my mind I saw rugs with bright splashes of colour to add interest.   I'm pretty sure I've accomplished that with this warp. Now I just hope  the finished product looks as exciting as the pictures in my imagination.

The sad thing is that I will most likely not be selling these rugs or any of my handcrafted items at the guild shows this fall.   My guild is spectacularly unsupportive of hand spinners, which is mainly due to the attitude of a small number of members.  I've been told that no items will be allowed which are made with hand spun yarn as all hand spun items are only suitable for church bazaar items (meant in a derogatory manner).   Most other guilds who have spinners, don't seem to have an issue with this but apparently ours does and I'm only allowed to put in skeins of hand spun yarn.   So rather than change what I do, I'll just change the venue where I sell items.   It makes me unhappy in a way, as I do a lot to support the guild, and the commission would help the guild bring in speakers and pay for a new site when we find one.  The upside is that I'll likely have less commission to pay and may be able to put a wider variety of items for sale, especially if I go the Etsy or FB page sales route.   I just need to figure out how to set those things up.

Painted warp scarf progression

The second scarf was a red, orange and black warp.  While the black looked quite black while still chained and in choke ties, when it was spread out on the loom, it definitely showed as various shades of grey.   I used a dark grey weft, which really showed the colour transitions nicely.

The next scarf however, was a lighter pink and black.  I tried the dark grey again and after a few picks, I took it out.  It made the scarf heavy looking and totally drowned out the pink.  The lighter grey looked awful as well because neither the pink or the black showed up with it.   After several more tries, I realized that I didn't have anything which would look good.  So I did the math (incorrectly so it seems, but it worked out okay anyway), wound off a couple of skeins.  I decided to do a pink for the pink /black warp and a blue for the next scarf which would be blue/green.

I actually did the math for the required colours and immediately forgot that the blue was a 2% solution.  The dye struck almost immediately, so I was rushing around madly, winding off an extra skein of yarn, squishing water through it to wet it and tossing it in the dye vat to take up the last bit of blue.  I ended up adding a few more mls of blue dye, just to deepen it a bit and both colours work with the blue/green scarf - phew.

The pink really was a lovely accident though.  The solution for a medium pastel, was darker than I'd anticipated, so had to do the same frantic skein winding as I'd done with the blue.   However the shade of pink I got from the second skein was exactly spot on the pink in the scarf warp.  Yay!

The math - I calculated the number of inches I'd need - then added about 25% and still came up just a tad short.   Luckily there are ways of using 2 different colours in one warp, so I managed.

The black warp sections show up better in real life than in my photo.

This scarf is gorgeous.  The green sections show nicely and the blues fit well with the warp blue.   Boy, will I have a lot of fringe twisting to do once these are off the loom.