Twisp of Fate

I finished the “Handspun Wrap” project last week, and have taken that set-up off the loom.  I’ll be moving on to rug weaving when we get back from our trip to Oregon.

Below is the 7th one, spun from a roving from Taylored Fibers in Quilcene again – a wool and alpaca blend that was white, brown and black.  I knew I didn’t have enough of it so I once again had to spin up some more yarn!  Last year I combined a fine, very crimpy black wool fleece (that I had gotten from Island Fibers on Lopez Island at a spinning camp on Orcas several years back) with some beautiful cinnamon colored alpaca fleece I bought at the ANWG conference in Bellingham last June.  The black wool was from a sheep named “Burt” who I think was a bit of a mongrel.  The alpaca’s name was Potsdam – I just love knowing the names of the animals whose fleece I am spinning.

I sent them off to Morro Fleece Works, a custom carding business that I have been using on occasion.  I knew they would do a good job with these finer fibers, and it came back as a lovely roving, about 30% alpaca and 70% fine wool.  Overall it is a dark cinnamon bark color and I have a lot of it – spun up some for this shawl, and have plenty more for a sweater and maybe something else as well.

Suede warp with tweed and cinnamon alpaca/wool

For the 8th and supposedly final one I used some yarn I spun years ago – 30% qiviut (musk ox down), the rest unspecified wool – a light warm gray color, and very soft and springy.  It was not as heavy/thick as the other yarns I have been using for these shawls, so once again I wasn’t sure I had enough, and I thought it would be nice to have a slightly contrasting border.  So I spun up some baby camel & silk roving to use for that.  I am pretty happy with this shawl, which I am hoping to keep, except the camel/silk yarn had a lot less elasticity than the qiviut yarn, so the borders are somewhat wider than the body of the shawl.

Black warp with 30% qiviut and baby camel/silk yarns

Then just as I was getting ready to take the last warp off the loom, I realized this was the perfect time to do something with a warp I have had for a couple of years.  Our guild does a fiber exchange each April, by drawing numbers and opening “mystery packages” (you can also take something away from someone else).  One year I got a prepared hand-spun wool warp in my package from one of our members who spins most of the yarn she uses for blankets.  I mean it was all wound, with a cross and everything!  It had slightly fewer ends than the warps I have been using, but I only had to take off 8 on each side and the pattern was still balanced.  So I tied it on in front and pulled it back onto the sectional beam through the reed and heddles.  Then I pulled out some handpaint mohair boucle from New Zealand that I used to get from Fiber Trends, to use for the weft.

And here is the result!  Shawl/wrap #9 and now I am truly done with these.

Lucy’s hand-spun warp with handpaint mohair boucle

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As mentioned in a previous post, I have been working on a series of warm shawls using my handspun yarn.  The warps and fringes are Jaggerspun Zephyr 4/8 (50% silk and 50%wool, but the DK weight version) – I ordered 8 cones last fall and pretty much use one full cone for each shawl.  I debated about what to call these weavings, as they are shawl shaped but come out more of a lap robe weight.  So I am calling them “wraps”!

The first three were for the show at the Winthrop Gallery and are there now.

Black warp & fringe with handspun lambswool & alpaca blend from Taylored Fibers in Quilcene:

Mushroom warp & fringe with gold handspun merino/bamboo/silk from Taylored Fibers:

Plum warp & fringe with handspun merino/alpaca/BFL/silk noil from Taylored Fibers (BFL = blue faced leicester wool)

The next three were finished more recently, and I took them down to the Confluence Gallery in Twisp yesterday.  They are setting up a new show this week:  Our River – ” A Natural and Cultural Perspective on Our River through Art”.  So the pieces needed titles and to be “river-ish”.

Indigo warp & fringe; handspun 3-ply from different fiber sources (1) 100% black alpaca from Ashland Bay, (2) 50% alpaca 50% BFL in a tan color, (3) a variety of dyed merino tops spun in color sequence.  The result was roughly half alpaca and wool with subtle color changes running through it.

Side Channel – shimmering stones under a slow moving current

Peacock warp & fringe; handspun from a beautiful handpaint BFL top I bought at the first Sock Summit in Portland, OR a number of years ago.  Very soft and subtly colored.

Like a Trout Moves Through a Pool

Sable warp & fringe; the yarn left from the first shawl above, plus some charcoal lambswool/alpaca from Taylored Fibers:

Log Jams – providing habitat for the river creatures

The opening reception for the “Our River” show at Confluence Gallery is this coming Saturday June 7th, from 4-8 pm, along with the Twisp Art Walk.

I have 2 more of these wraps in the pipeline.  One is warped and ready to weave, but I had to spin some more yarn to augment what I had!   Fortunately I had some nice roving of the right color and quality and should finish it today.

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Here’s a little weaving progress report.  I will be in a 3-person “Featured Artist” show at the Winthrop Gallery – it hangs on May 27 and the opening reception is May 31.  The other 2 artists are a photographer who is planning a series of black & white images, and a woodturner.

I finished seven of the 12 towels in the doubleweave check pattern which have 8/2 Shale and Madder Brown doubleweave, and a khaki 16/2 for the plain weave.  I tried several permutations and it was really fun!  I did several as true doubleweave, i.e. same color weft as the warp in the top layer, and ditto for the bottom layer, so they come out distinctly different colors on each side.  Then I did one with all Madder Brown (solid brown on one side, brown interlacing gray on the other side), one with all Shale (solid gray on one side, gray interlacing brown on the other side).  Then one with alternating weft stripes of brown then gray (mix of solid and interlaced on each side, but with brown predominating on one side, and gray on the other).

Last week I put on the first warp for a series of shawls I have planned using some of my handspun yarn.  I am using Jaggerspun Zephyr 4/8 (DK weight) for the warp.  This is 50% wool and 50% silk, so lustrous and strong.

handspun alpaca & lambswool with black Zephyr 4/8

The pattern is an 8-harness 2-line manifold twill.  I chose it for the strong diagonals but there are other effects I can get by treadling the current tie-up differently, and by changing the tie-up (i.e. different effects, but all on the same threading).  I finished weaving it the night before we left for Seattle, and worked on the fringes over the long weekend.  I washed it when we got home on Monday, and today trimmed it up and got it photographed:

The handspun was bulky and also has the extra weight from the alpaca, so this is a heavy, warm wrap.  What I can’t show you is how it feels – so soft and cushy, it is really heavenly!

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I am up to my 4th warp for the doubleweave check towels, and the current one will be the last for now.  Each one has come out quite differently, and it hasn’t been boring!  I just need to move on to a new project on Kingston.

So, to recap, the weave structure is a mixture of plain weave and doubleweave, the latter creating little thick checks throughout the fabric.  The warp alternates 16/2 cotton for the plain weave stripes, and 8/2 cotton for the doubleweave stripes.  When I am weaving plain weave, the weft is 16/2.  When I am weaving doubleweave, the weft is 8/2 and it weaves as plain weave in the 16/2 warp stripes.  Clear as mud?  You have to be a weaver…..

The first set used a natural 8/2 cotton and a periwinkle 16/2 cotton for the warp.  I played around with changing the colors of the 16/2 cotton for the weft, but only used the natural 8/2 for doubleweave weft.  These are all 6 towels from this warp:

Set 1 – doubleweave check towels

The second set used a light gray marled 8/2 cotton and and black/green marled 16/2 cotton for the warp.  Again I used the same 8/2 cotton throughout for weft, but played around with different colors of 16/2 cotton for the wefts.  I put on 9 yards this time, and got 9 towels (some colors were duplicated, so the picture shows the 5 variations).

Set 2 – doubleweave check towels

closeup of towel with red 16/2 weft

For the third set, I decided to try stripes of four different colors of 8/2 for the warp, with a single color of 16/2, which was a nice gray/blue/green variegated cotton that served as a basis for the other color choices.

It wasn’t until I started winding and beaming a 12-yard warp that I realized these are kind of “Seattle Seahawks” colors!

Seahawks warp all beamed on

This time I played around with changing the colors in the weft for both yarns, the 4 colors of the 8/2 cotton and some other colors of 16/2 that seemed to work with the overall color scheme.

green 16/2 with gray 8/2

I finished up 12 of these last week, and only a few were duplicates.  Here are four of the variations:

Four of the color variations

Because all of the above towels had single colors of 8/2 cotton in the doubleweave areas of the warp, they look the same on both sides.  That is, both the top and bottom layers of the doubleweave checks are the same when woven.

Yesterday I finished putting on the 4th warp.  This time I alternated 2 colors in the doubleweave areas of the warp so I can weave towels that look different on each side.  Those colors are “Madder Brown” and “Shale” 8/2 from WEBS.  The 16/2 is a khaki color.  I wove the first towel last night, using Madder Brown when weaving the top layer, and Shale when weaving the bottom layer.  I also need a third shuttle for the 16/2 cotton, so it is a little slow going managing 3 shuttles, and figuring out how to run the yarns up the selvage neatly.

But as you can see, it is working.   Doubleweave is truly magical!

Two-color doubleweave underway

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I put a new warp on for more scarves this week.  It is black with jewel tones, lots of sparkle and color.  This being March, I decided to call it “Mardi Gras”.  I have 4 groups of 16 threads across the warp (rearranging colors so it doesn’t get too stripey).  In each group of 16, for this warp, 25% or 4 threads are Classic Elite “Applause” that I bought from a friend’s stash reduction.  9 skeins of what must have been an expensive handknitting yarn for a whopping $7.00 (total, not each!).  It is a double strand – one black mohair and the other strand a rayon/wool/silk slub that is jewel toned and changes color along the length of the yarn.  The other yarns I chose to pick up the colors in that one yarn.

the Mardi Gras warp yarns

on the sectional beam and ready to go

first scarf being woven with black alpaca

I am up to scarf #7 of 10 by today, each a different color weft.  It is so intriguing to see how different the warp colors play against each weft color.  Pictures sometime next week, maybe….

Meanwhile we are off to the real rain forest on the Olympic Peninsula for several days.

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