Twisp of Fate

Well, my first collapse weave experiment totally worked!  I wove the scarf with 16 strands of 16/2 unmercerized cotton and 4 strands of superfine merino wool per inch, using a 2/2 twill structure (see pictures in previous post).

I soaked and then agitated it in the washing machine in very hot water and some Dawn detergent.  I think I agitated it for about 25 minutes – might do a little less next time.  Rinsed it in cold water twice, spun out, laid over a rack to dry.  Yesterday morning I trimmed the ends and gave it a steam press and it was done!

Waffle Scarf number 1

I’m winding and tieing on a warp for two more of these as we speak….

Spring is really coming to the valley this week.  The serviceberry bushes just popped into full bloom, and the arrowleaf balsamroot (our signature flower) is coming on strong as well.  It’s lovely!

Read Full Post »

First of all, I did finish two more of the polychrome scarves, for a total of 6 so far.  I had them photographed last week in a studio setting so I would have good photos for the advertising and poster of the show I have coming up with 2 other women (early June, Winthrop Gallery).

photo by Teri Pieper

While working on these, I was getting increasingly frustrated by trying to use my little loom (a “Baby Mac”, Macomber model CP folding portable) for serious work.  It is great for taking to workshops, fits in the back of my Honda CR-V, and it actually works great.  But the treadles are small and spaced close together, it does have a tendency to have the tie-up hooks pop off on a regular basis, and this time around one of the folding struts folded up on me and I didn’t figure out why the tension was so far off on one side until it was too late.  I thought I had just done a poor job putting the warp on.

So  I was thinking to myself, what I need is a 32″ Macomber to devote to narrower projects like scarves, towels, etc.  But I know they are hard to find, or if you do find one it is way across the country and the seller is unwilling to ship.  Nonetheless, I looked on Craig’s List that afternoon and one had been listed in Kingston, WA the day before!  And we were leaving for a trip to Seattle in just a few days.  Contacted the seller, talked to Rick who was amenable and so we took the truck instead of the Honda.  Last Sunday we took the ferry over to Kingston and I came back with a new loom.  It is in wonderful shape, just needed some dusting and lubricating.  The woman’s parents were the weavers – they bought it used in the 1980’s.  Her Dad had passed away and her mom is 92 and suffering dementia, so couldn’t really tell her anything about it.

When we got home early last week, I contacted Sarah of the Macomber Looms and Me blog.  She lives in York, Maine and is a rep for Macomber.  I gave her the serial number and she went by the company and found out this loom was built in May 1961.  When I can afford it, I will order 4 more ad-a-harness units to bring it up to an 8-harness loom.

Do I “need” this loom?  No.  But it was a great deal and just had that “meant to be” feel.  I like to set up for a particular kind of project and then just keep tieing on new warps, avoiding having to re-sley the reed and re-thread the heddles every time.  This way I can have multiple projects going!

So on Kingston the new loom, I am setting up to do a series of “collapse weave” scarves – they will be very colorful.  The thin stripes in warp and weft are fine merino wool, the rest cotton.  When I wash them vigorously the wool should shrink and felt more than the cotton, to get a textured surface.  The first one is an experiment… in a day or two I should know how it turns out before moving on to the next ones.

Kingston from the front

Kingston from the back, with collapse weave warp

The beginning of the collapse weave scarf

Read Full Post »

I finally got back to the loom last week after what seemed like ages – many things seemed to interfere: trips to the coast, catching up at work now that my boss is back from Argentina, gallery activities, just life in general.

I put a second warp on my little loom for more “summer & winter polychrome” scarves.  This time I used shades of purple in the warp, then got out Deb Menz’s Colorworks book to come up with ideas for weft colors.

The first scarf was based on a “double split complement” color scheme.  Of course, I am somewhat limited by the colors I have on hand in the Zephyr silk/wool.  When sampling before actually starting the scarf, I wasn’t at all sure I was going to like the green, which is called “Basil”.  But amazingly, it works!  For the plain weave portion, I used a dark purple.

For the second scarf I used Lilac for the plain weave sections, and an “analogous” color scheme for the polychrome work at each end.  In some of the patterns, there are as many as three or even four shots of different colors in different sheds, before the tabby tie-down that holds the whole thing together.  This builds up a lot of color on the surface, both solid areas and color mixes, that gives it so much richness.

Doing the finishing work on these scarves seems to take almost as much time as weaving them!  It seemed like I was twisting fringes all day long yesterday….  But they did soften up nicely after washing and pressing.

Here are pictures I took this morning of the 4 scarves finished so far.  Today I will wind a new warp for 2 more, then after that I think I will work on something else for a while.

Read Full Post »

I have had an almost finished small rug sitting on my Baby Mac loom since September, when I took the rug weaving workshop out in Forks, WA.  Last week I finished that rug, in which I was playing with clasped wefts and some pick-and-pick patterns.

I still had warp left on the loom, so I got out Peter Collingwood’s book, The Techniques of Rug Weaving, and found some ideas based on a broken twill tie-up and 4-shot sequence of pattern wefts.  I had some miscellaneous knitting yarn (discontinued Rowanspun Tweed) in decent colors, so although not rug wool, I thought it would work for something meant to become a cushion top.

I like it OK and learned something new, which is always a good thing!  Neither of these is very big, about 16″ x 20″, and I hope to use them as throw pillow tops.

So now the small loom is free and ready for something new.  I have been meaning to start an exploration of surface color based on a summer-and-winter threading, ever since taking a workshop from Margaret Roach Wheeler in Seattle over a year ago.  Our guild challenge project this year is “Summer and Winter” and I need to have something done by mid-April, so that dovetailed nicely with some ideas I have been meaning to pursue anyway.

So I put a warp on for about a 10″ wide scarf, 6 yds long so I have room for some sampling and hopefully 2 scarves.  I am using a 50/50 wool silk blend (18/2 Zephyr from Jaggerspun) and used 5 colors of bluegreen graduated across the width of the warp.  Also using Zephyr for the pattern wefts and tabby tie-downs.

Here is some color sampling I did before starting the first scarf.  I was just exploring what looked good against the blue-green warp.

Here’s the start of the patterns for the first scarf:

then I wanted it to go into more muted colors, blending into the background, before starting the plain weave section in the middle:

I’m working on the plain weave section now, and then will work the above patterns in reverse at the other end.  This is so much fun and I am quite excited about the possibilities!

Read Full Post »