Twisp of Fate

I haven’t posted in about a month and now we are leaving this morning for a week in Seattle – but I will try to make a quick update!  Since we returned to the valley at Thanksgiving, I have been a busy busy weaver, making the final push for the galleries and a holiday gift show in Twisp.  I already had warps set up on my two looms at home, so the first order of business was to weave those projects and do all the finishing work.

On Kingston (40″ Macomber) I had 12 yds of warp for a final run of the Lace Bronson placemats.    I used the same warp colors as in one of the first versions of these mats, since I had a potential buyer for up to 12 of them.  Found some fabric at JoAnn’s in similar colors, so here was the basic colorway:

warp colors and “bird fabric” to match the older mat pictured

I wound up making 12 of these:

“bird fabric” placemats

4 of these:

blue floral placemats

and only 3 of these because I ran out of warp:

lavender floral placemats

Moving back to the 48″ Macomber, I had a warp for 5 more plaited twill scarves in what I am calling the Pomegranate colorway.  I used 8/2 Tencel from WEBS for all of these:  black, shale, taupe, eggplant and navy.  They all turned out great!  It takes me as long or longer to twist the doubled-back fringes on these, as it does to weave them, so that gets a little tedious.

Taupe tencel woven on the Pomegranate warp

Navy tencel woven on the Pomegranate warp

Black tencel woven on the Pomegranate warp

Eggplant tencel woven on the Pomegranate warp

Shale tencel woven on the Pomegranate warp

These pictures were taken rather hurriedly down at Local 98856 in Twisp, where I was setting up for the “Handmade for the Holidays” gift show which runs Dec 14-24.  I have a nice spot in a corner window, and there are a lot of really nice handmade items plus garden-oriented items (Local 98856 is normally a gardening business).

So by the second week of December I had finished placemats and plaited twill scarves, and was ready to move on to some of my “mixed warp” scarves.  I decided to make them a little wider than the ones I did last year – 8 inches on the loom, finishing out between 7-8″ after weaving and washing.

I also had Rick install the sectional warp beam on Kingston so I could use my AVL warping wheel in the way it is really intended – to make a 2″ section of warp at a time, then wind it directly onto the sectional beam under tension.  I had been a little apprehensive about trying this, but it turned out to be ridiculously easy and I was able to put on a 21-yard warp in a matter of hours!  It is 21 yards because the warping wheel has a maximum 3-yard circumference, and with 7 winds I get the 21 yards.  I would never attempt to make a warp this long for conventional beaming, especially with the sticky yarns I was using.

The first warp I called “Blackberry” and I got 9 scarves, each 72″ long plus a 4″ fringe at each end – and one more shorter one.

16 yarns used for Blackberry mixed-warp

Blackberry warp on the loom

finished Blackberry scarves

more finished Blackberry scarves!

This past week I decided to go for one more set of mixed-warp scarves, to be sure I have plenty of inventory out there before we leave for the week.  I started winding the warp on Sunday night:

16 yarns used for the Bright Autumn mixed warp

winding one 2″ section onto the beam from the AVL warping wheel

the Bright Autumn warp ready to go

finished Bright Autumn scarves #1

finished Bright Autumn scarves #2

finished Bright Autumn scarves #3

I had these woven, off the loom and washed by Wednesday night (as a result of long days…) and yesterday had them trimmed, pressed, labeled and out to where they needed to go.

Somewhere in there I also made about 20 lavender eye pillows, using samples and leftover bits of handwoven fabric from past scarf projects for one side, and with silk fabric on the other side.  Didn’t get any pictures, though.  I am using a mixture of brown flax seeds and lovely organic lavender for the filling – the flax gives them a little heft and drape so they lie across the eyes nicely.

So now my work is done and I can relax, enjoy time with family and friends, and let my body recover.  See you in the New Year!

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I had a weaving marathon going on down at the guild room this week.  I had previously wound an 18-yard warp for my undulating twill towels, and last Sunday (a week ago) I went down there and starting tying on to the previous warp.  I got it about 80% done, but had to wait until Tuesday to resume, since Monday was my day this month to staff the Winthrop Gallery.  So Tuesday I finished tying on, and beamed the warp, and wove the first 2 towels.

Yesterday (Saturday) I finished the weaving – ending up with 20 in all!  Each one about 32″ long before washing, excluding hems.  Here they are, laid out on the floor at the guild room, as one long length of cloth:

with my trusty 40″ Macomber loom in the background

I brought them home, stay-stitched and cut between every fifth towel (so I could break up the long run of cloth somewhat), and got them through the washer and dryer last night.  Today I am finishing the stay-stitching, cutting them apart, hemming and pressing, and getting ready to put labels on them for the annual guild sale coming up this week.

I don’t know if I would always want to work at this pace, but it is kind of interesting to know I can do it.

I think I forgot to post pictures of the placemats I finished a couple of weeks ago:

10 like these

and another 8 like these

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At the Chamber Music Festival last July, I ran into a woman who was interested in some of my undulating twill towels in “black and red” to go with her kitchen colors at their second home north of Winthrop.  I discovered I already had a cone of black 8/2 cotton, about 2 lbs so enough to put on a 12-yard warp.  So, even though I thought I was done with those towels, I tied on a new warp a couple of weeks ago, and on Monday of this week, finished them off.

I don’t remember where I got that black cotton, but it turned out to be a pain in the neck.  Quite “tender” so I had a lot of breakage problems.  I finally figured out how to coax it along – just the right amount of tension, don’t advance it too far so the fell line (where the beater hits the cloth) remains in a narrow area where the reed is vertical, etc.  But it was worth it!  I really like how these turned out – so much so that I have ordered more black 8/2 cotton from WEBS and it is on its way to me now.  It is their own line, Valley Yarns “Eight-Two”.   Good stuff, and a decent price if you order enough to get the 25% discount.

Here are two of the black and red ones:

undulating twill towels, black warp and red weft

I did 4 other colors:  banana yellow, turquoise green, elm green and madder brown.

Also this week I was trying to respond to the final call from Confluence Gallery for submission to a show they will open the first part of November.  It is titled “Visions of Verse”.  They have 33 works from local poets and ask visual artists to respond to the written works.  I was really drawing a blank, and also couldn’t see how I could get anything significant and new, done in time, as I will be gone on and off for most of October.  But then it came to me – these new towels are perfect for a poem by Danica Kaufman titled Prayer Flags of Daily Life !  So there you have it.

Also working on some placemats at home:

new placemats underway

using this fabric!

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I decided that this past weekend was the time to finish off the warp on my portable “Baby Mac” loom.  This was what was left from the 3-day “Warp-Faced Weaves” workshop I took in June from Kay Faulkner at the ANWG Conference in Bellingham.  I had previously done a sampler and hoped I had enough warp left for 4 placemats.

I had also worked out various motifs for pick-up in the sotis areas, using Excel for a charting tool.  The plan was to do all the mats the same, except put a different pick-up motif in the 4 corners of each one.

Here’s the first one underway:

first pick-up pattern in sotis cloth areas

I also used, as a guide, Kay Faulkner’s article Sotis Cloth from West Timor in the March/April 2013 issue of Handwoven magazine.  At each end, I wove 1-1/2″ with a single weft in plain weave, to reduce bulk.  These were later turned under twice and sewn down for the final hems.  The body of the mat is woven with a doubled weft.

I only had enough warp to finish 3 mats of the same size, plus another small piece about half their size.  But that is OK, since these are a little wide for a typical placemat (I was stuck with the warp width I had put on, long story).

Will I do this again?  Actually, yes!  But next time, I will use mercerized cotton (for placemats).  For this workshop project, I used Valley Yarns 8/2 Cotton from WEBS, and it is lovely stuff – soft, smooth, strong, great colors.  But on washing, it didn’t so much shrink as “bloom”, especially in the sotis areas where 3 ends go through one heddle (alabaster, in this case) and a single end goes through the other heddle (brown, in this case).  The 3 ends that go together, kind of fluffed up and wound up obscuring the pattern in the wider stripes.  The brown “dots” in these wide stripes are much more visible in the first picture above, on the loom and before washing.

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Finally came to the end of the current rug warp – 30 rugs completed, of various sizes, in the last 2 months.  I have more Pendleton selvage material to use up, and things I want to try, but for now I am tired of weaving rugs and ready to do something else on that loom!  I actually started this late last December and have worked my way through two 50-yard warps, weaving 57 rugs and “ruglets” total.

At least they are selling reasonably well – five so far at the Confluence Gallery show, and six so far up at the Lost River Winery tasting room – plus a couple through Winthrop Gallery in the last 2 months.

These two were done in mid-July:

R163 – fiesta orange – sold at winery

R164 – smooth red wool selvages – sold at winery

Then, with the Confluence Gallery show coming up, I got into what I call “mixed selvages” rugs.  I like to combine a variety of Pendleton blanket selvages, combining both colors and textures (smooth “worms” and the more fringe-like selvages).

R165 – for Confluence show, and sold

R166 – for Confluence show, and sold

I liked the above one so much, I made another for us to keep (always a slight variation as I use up materials, though):

R167 – kept this one!

R168 was a little “ruglet” and I didn’t get a picture.  These are a great way to use up small amounts of material from a bigger rug.

The rest of these were done in mid-August:

R169 – a new colorway of mixed selvages

R170 – slight variant of R169 – I kept this one, too

R171 – royal blue fringe alternating with colored worms

R172 – another one for Confluence Gallery, and sold

R173 – a third one of this type – for Confluence

R174 – and END OF WARP!!

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