Twisp of Fate

It was quite inspiring to see so much excellent work at the Seattle Weavers’ Guild sale.  My head is swimming with new ideas – and, I came home with a few of my fellow weavers’ items as well.

In the “Home” department – towels, placemats and table runners, cloth napkins, etc:

Hundreds of beautiful scarves:

Hand-spun and/or hand-dyed yarn and spinning fiber:

Shawls, blankets and throws:

Basketry (on my “try some day” list):

I sold four of my “peerie blankets” and two of the plaited twill scarves, and am quite pleased.  Not sure yet exactly which items sold, because we left for home on Saturday before the sale was over.  A friend picked up my work on Saturday evening and is bringing it to me this week when we meet up in Port Townsend.

Speaking of which, I need to go pack…..

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I’m back from the rug weaving workshop with Judith MacKenzie at the Rainforest Art Center in Forks, WA.  I brought my little workshop loom, a 20″ Macomber “Baby Mac” (model CP).  I wasn’t sure it was sturdy enough for the tight tension and strong beating for rugs, but it did OK, especially as we were just making samples.

The first thing we tried was flokati, a technique for making a rug that looks like a fleece without having to kill the sheep/goat to get it!  You weave distinct locks from a longwool breed with curl (not crimp), or locks of mohair from a goat, into a background web.  So we put the locks in every 4th shed, then wove 3 shots of plain weave between, with a warp and weft that were soft enough wool to felt (in this case, some of Judith’s 70% Rambouilet/30% mohair yarn).  Then you full (partially felt) the piece to make sure the locks of wool/mohair can’t pull out.

Here’s my sample underway on the loom:

We had three fleeces to choose from:  a Wensleydale sheep, a Lincoln sheep, and a mohair goat.  I wound up using all three, randomly mixed in on each row.

You can see what a beautiful, light-filled room we had to work in.  It was upstairs in what had originally been an Odd Fellows Hall.  We had help (strong men) carrying the looms and all of our other stuff upstairs the first day, and back down when we left.

Here are some of the flokati samples laid out on the floor:

The next day we put on a 1-yard warp of Judith’s bison yarn.  This is 50% bison hair (not the soft downy expensive undercoat) blended with wool.  It is kind of rough feeling but very tough for a rug.  The bison weft yarns had been dyed by Judith so we had a number of colors to work with.  The technique was pick-and-pick, which means you come up with pattern bands that form by alternating colors in the 2 sheds of plain weave.  The goal was to make a limited selection of colors (6-8) look complex by the way they were combined (optical blending) and the various patterns used.

Judith had 2 sample bison rugs, a small one hanging on the wall:

and a larger one she had on the floor at her house for several years.  This one was a lot softer and she said that was just from being walked on, not from washing!

I had some trouble maintaining even tension on my sampler.  I decided this was because my “shoestring method” of tieing on to the front apron rod just wasn’t holding under the tight tension and heavy beating needed to pack the weft down so it completely covers the warp.  So my sample was all wonky towards the end – curved and angled.  This can’t be fixed after the fact.  But at least I got to try the pick-and-pick technique.

Here is a shot of everyone’s bison samplers laid out on the floor (mine is bottom right):

The last warp we put on was 2 yards of a white 4-ply wool warp. This time I tied on to the front apron rod the conventional way (no shoestrings), with a surgeon’s knot that could be tightened until the tension was even across, then a second square-knot type tie.  It worked a lot better!

The idea was to try a number of techniques.  The first one was clasped wefts, a way to get 2 colors in one shed by “clasping” one around the other and then pulling that point through to where you want the colors to meet in the piece.  So you are beating a double shot of each color in each shed.

clasped wefts in a random pattern

Oh, we were weaving with the softer and less bulky Rambouillet/mohair blend yarn that Judith had dyed for us.  Still pretty sturdy but softer feeling on the surface.  I was enjoying this so much that I continued with some pick-and-pick patterns and will repeat the clasped weft pattern at the other end, making a square piece for a pillow top.

This is about as far as I got before we had to pack up and leave on Monday.  I’ll finish it at home.  Judith did demonstrate soumak and some knotted and pile techniques, and I may try them on the rest of this warp, but we’ll see.

On the way home I spent 2 nights with my friends at Lake Quinault (Lochaerie Resort, see sidebar).  The weather was gorgeous and Chris and I went for a hike in the rainforest on the South Shore on Tuesday.  On Wednesday I met Rick in Seattle and we spent the afternoon and evening with our dear friends who are currently living in Redlands.  Then home again after 8 days and 1000 miles on Thursday, back to the Methow!

We were supposed to go camping up in British Columbia with my Dad, but his Rialta RV developed an engine problem when he took it into Anacortes to have the tires checked.  So he had to have it towed to an RV service place and things were up in the air.  But now he is coming over here tomorrow (in his Prius with the cat) and we will just have some good times in the Methow Valley and surrounding areas.  So that’s my story for now!

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I’ve been reading a series of mystery novels by Ann Cleeves which are set in the Shetland Islands,  a place we visited 11 years ago.  They have reminded me of the use of the word “peerie” which means little, or small.  I am used to hearing it in association with the small filler-type patterns in Fair Isle sweaters, but it has more general use, as “when I was a peerie boy…”.

So here are the peerie blankets or lap robes I have been weaving during July and August.  I finally got around to the finish work last week (braiding the fringes, then fulling them in the washing machine).  For the most part I am still working my way through my vast stash of 2-ply Shetland knitting yarn – I have it down to a science how much I need of 8 colors for the 3-yard warps!  Sometimes I have supplemented with Harrisville Shetland on cones, or other wool knitting yarns.

This one is different, though.  I was given 2 skeins of hand-dyed, hand-spun Romney yarn in shades of purple at knitting retreat last year.  Not the softest yarn for knitting, but she thought maybe I could “do something with it” weaving.  Indeed!  I used the hand-spun for the warp but did not have enough for the full width of the blanket/throw, so I supplemented it with Satakieli (a wool yarn from Finland) and also some Harrisville Shetland in the center section.

#6 with hand-dyed, handspun Romney yarn

This one was done with 2-ply Shetland left over from a kit I bought many years ago from Tomato Factory Yarn Co.  It was for the Alice Starmore design called Luskentyre, which is also found in the pattern book called The Scottish Collection (long out of print).  They must have given me a lot of yarn in the kit, because I had a lot left over.  I did supplement it with other similar colors I had in the stash.

# 7 Luskentyre

Here it is with the sweater.  The blanket was woven with a purple weft so it isn’t nearly as light in color as the sweater, which also included a lot of cream colored wool.

Here are two more. One was done in shades of black to mid gray with a light gray weft, and the other in shades of brown with a cream weft.

#8 grays

#9 browns

And finally, another blue one:

#10 shades of blue with teal weft

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As promised, here are pictures of the latest plaited twill scarves in the warp colorway “Sea Scallop”.  For those of you who are not weavers, the warp is seen as the threads that run lengthwise through the scarf, and which you see in the twisted fringes at each end.  The weft is the thread or yarn that is woven back and forth across the width of the scarf, forming the pattern.  All of these were woven using the same tie-up (how the treadles are attached to the harnesses on the loom) but I used two different treadling patterns (the order in which the harnesses are lifted for each shot or pass of the weft) so that’s why you see two different patterns.

SeaScallop with soft pink chenille weft

Sea Scallop with chocolate brown chenille weft

Sea Scallop with eggplant tencel weft

Sea Scallop with Pompeii (rust) tencel weft

Sea Scallop with taupe tencel weft

I’m taking two of these to each gallery tomorrow (see sidebar) and setting one aside for the holiday sales.  Which one do you think I will set aside?  I haven’t actually decided yet!

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