Twisp of Fate

The Okanogan County Fair was postponed this year because of the fires over in the Okanogan Valley to the east of our Methow Valley.  It is usually the weekend after Labor Day but there was a big fire camp set up there, and so the fair committee decided to postpone by 2 weeks rather than cancel.  It was last weekend (Sept 24-27).

This was a problem for kids back in school, and especially those raising livestock, as they aim to have optimal weight and condition by the usual projected date.  But it’s still better than cancellation!

Our guild (Methow Valley Spinners & Weavers Guild) put together our usual display, which features items woven for our current year’s challenge project.  This year the challenge theme was “Twill” and we had a wide variety of items, which made it kind of hard to display – but the women who put it together did a great job.  We got a “Special Award” for the display.  I am sorry I do not have a picture – I didn’t make it over to the Fair and seem to have deleted the picture that was sent to me by email.

I submitted 4 items for the spinning and weaving departments.  I got blue ribbons on all and some other ribbons on 3 of them.  The purple ones are Grand Champion and the yellow and green one is what they call a Special Award.

“Handknit from handspun cowl” and one of the crackle weave towels I just finished:

Extended manifold twill shawl in fine cotton and tencel:

I wrote a blog post back in April which shows and explains the shawl and the cowl.  You can find it here.

Down at the weaving guild room, I put on a third and final warp for the crackle weave towels and have been weaving away.  Took it off the loom today.

This may be my favorite of the 3 colorways.  I will post pictures once they are finished!

I had to clear off my loom there because we have a workshop coming up in about a week and half and I will need my loom for one of the projects.  This has been my other major activity – I am the chief organizer and it has been a lot of work.  We are having Mary Berent from Eagle, Idaho (just outside Boise) come to do her “Combining Common Cottons” workshop and also give a slide talk for our guild and the general public down at TwispWorks.  It is a round-robin style workshop and we have 10 people signed up.  Each person has to set up one of the projects, so I had to make sure we had the right number of looms with the right attributes in the room – some of them are there now, some have to be brought in.  Also needed to make sure we have the right materials, and order what we didn’t have, etc.  This has been going on for a month and I am so ready to have it finally happen and be over with!

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Last week I finished the next 3 towels after fixing the warp on my loom at the weaving guild room.  There are 3 different treadlings given with the pattern instructions so this represents all of them.

Here is a closer look at the one that was offset by one thread (on the left) compared to the correct version (on the right).I have been down at the guild room a lot this past week, weaving more of these and using different color combinations for the wefts – so all of them will be a little different.  Should be able to finish up today and then, of course, there is the hemming and washing and pressing to do – but I should have more pictures coming up.

Last night there was a really fun event down at TwispWorks.  Bluebird Grain Farms had its 10th anniversary celebration and organized a Farm to Table Paella Feast featuring paella made with their emmer farro as the main dish.  There were about 300 people in attendance!

The paella dinner was designed by Cameron Green (she is a local chef and caterer).  John Sundstrom of Lark restaurant in Seattle, one of Bluebird Grain Farms’ earliest customers,  came over for the event and prepared his signature seafood paella dish.  There were three huge paella pans going over wood fired outdoor cookers, plus several salads, bread, desserts, and a no-host bar featuring local beer and wine.  Almost all of the food was sourced from local farmers, bakeries, coffee roasters, etc.  and some of the proceeds went to support the Methow Made program (in 2013, TwispWorks started Methow Made as a collaborative marketing program to help Methow Valley food and beverage producers reach new customers).

Here are some pictures from last night’s event:

seafood prep

John Sundstrom from Lark restaurant

one of the wood-fired paella pans

Cameron Green, chef & caterer extraordinaire

a beautiful evening among friends at TwispWorks campus

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Before I go into the weaving saga, let me just say that things have calmed down considerably here at our home since my last post.  There was an article on regional fire activity yesterday (Saturday August 29) on Methow Valley News Online if you want more information.  There is still some bad stuff going on in the lower Methow Valley, over in the Okanogan Valley, and around Lake Chelan.  It was terribly smoky here this past week and we had to stay inside as much as possible and not leave any windows open.  But our area is back to level 1 “be alert” and we have moved back in and brought the Airstream home. We had some rain and wind yesterday and the air this morning is lovely and clear.  They are hoping to open the North Cascades Highway today, although there may be occasional closures due to mud and rock slides, continuing fire fighting efforts, etc.

This past week I have been down at our weaving guild room putting a towel warp on the loom I keep there.  It is a project from a 1994 Handwoven magazine called Country Rustic Towels.  This was re-published by Interweave Press in “Best of Handwoven – A Dozen Projects in 8/2 Cotton” which I purchased as an eBook (PDF download) back in 2012.  So that was the source I was using to set up my project.  It is a Crackle Weave structure, which is something I have not done before.  There are 4 blocks or units and each color stripe is a different block, with what is called an “incidental” or transition warp end between blocks.

I brought my AVL warping wheel down there and wound a 12-yard warp onto the sectional beam.

Country Rustic warp on the loom

Threaded it, sleyed the reed, tied it up and started weaving the first towel yesterday morning.

What’s wrong with this picture?

The pattern is shifted by one thread!  I went over and over what I had done, and yes, it matched the published instructions perfectly.  Then I went to our guild library shelves and got out the original Jan/Feb 1994 Handwoven magazine.  It turns out they edited the original pattern and did indeed add some useful information.  But they got one thing backwards – the warp color order chart!  Actually it is just a little thing – it should start with 13 blue threads on the right, and end with 12 blue threads on the left, not the other way around.  It is correct in the original instructions, but not in the Dozen Projects in 8/2 Cotton book.

I consulted with another guild member, and we agreed it is most obvious in the light gray stripes.  She suggested that I finish the first towel, then selectively replace some of the warp threads on either side of the gray stripes to at least improve the appearance (I have 10 towels to go, mind you).  That would mean having extra weighted threads hanging off the back for the rest of the weaving.  When I left last night, that was my plan.

But at 3:30 this morning, during an awake period, I decided to bite the bullet and re-thread the darn thing.  That will fix all of the blocks, not just make the gray ones look better.  And it won’t be as hard as the original threading, as I already know it is threaded correctly.  I will have to remove the left-most blue thread, then go through from left to right moving all the rest of the threads over one heddle.  Then add one new blue thread on the right.

If only I knew more about crackle weave, I would have realized when I started threading the heddles that the transition threads were the wrong color.  That would have been the chance to remove the left-most thread and add one at the right, before I started threading.  But no, I was being a “blind follower”.  Live and learn!

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