No stews for a while

Despite being advised not to use a very fine linen warp, I went ahead and threaded two sections of very fine linen warp.  The green section gave no problems but the beige section broke and had to be replaced.

I wound a silk replacement warp and it had to be tensioned up with something heavy ....

This is very difficult to weave now because the weighted warp and the normal wound-on warp end up being at different tensions and make it all uneven.

It will hopefully be a silk scarf.  I'm nearly at an end of it now.  I've just got to weave a sampler so I can see how it will be when it is fulled to various degrees, and what would happen if I iron it.  I had hoped for some pleat-related texture, you see.

I will tell you how it turned out, and give you a few details about the weaving, another day.

Krokbragd cushions

These are the last pieces of weaving from my old Cyrus Oxabacks loom. They have a warp of blue carpet wool and the weft is blue, brown and cream carpet wool. Originally I turned the fabric into a bag, with a hessian lining, but then I decided I didn't like the bag, so I put a cushion inside and sewed up the top!
I had a piece of split-ply braiding which was acting as a handle, so I sewed it along the top to hide the join and I think it looks quite good.

Actually only the right hand image is Krokbragd, the other side of the cushion is in plain weave.

The ply-split braid is from Julie Hedges' book An Introduction to Designs in Single Course Twining and is the Basket Weave 1 pattern. I don't do ply-split much; it is very slow to do and I really wanted to try making ply-split baskets and I haven't managed to get hold of Linda Hendrickson's book on this yet.

Woven shibori

This is the second piece of weaving from my David loom. And I am so pleased with it, especially as it was partly enabled by some happy coincidences.

I had wound the warp and weft a few months ago and then dyed them using Procion MX dyes. I have only dyed a warp once before, on a course run by Janet Phillips.

This warp is bargain-price silk noil. I sett it at 20 epi. I dyed it in a gutter on the patio. It was supposed to be a mixture of turquoise and blue bands, applied with a sponge. I had added what I thought was a tiny amount of yellow, but evidently that was too much and the warp came out a rather bilious-looking green. I was happier with the weft colour, which I dyed in a glass bowl using all the dyes for the warp muddled together. That produced quite a nice moss green.

On the loom I threaded up for a honeycomb weave, using some lovely Noro silk-mix yarn as the overshot. Unfortunately the result was horrible and I took off the short sample I had woven in disgust.

Then a new book I'd ordered arrived, Catherine Ellis' "Woven Shibori". It suggested starting with a Monk's Belt threading, which was exactly the same as the threading for honeycomb. So I just carried on with the weaving, only having to change the treadle tie-up, which is really easy on my David loom. Once it was woven I could over-dye the scary green colour of the fringe and of course the non-resist parts of the actual weaving. Again, I thought I was dyeing with blue, but because I put a teeny tiny bit of red in, it came out a browny-purple that I think goes, serendipitously, pretty well.

By the way, I think it took me longer to remove the knotted shibori threads than it did to tie them up in the first place. The shibori weft was some mercerised crochet cotton I found.

After washing, using fabric conditioner and ironing, the scarf has a lovely feel and drape. I wove it at 24 ppi. I am very proud of it and shall sew one of my labels on to prove that. I might even add some beads to the fringe. I am currently at a loose end (so to speak) while I await a consignment of 60s silk yarn - I'll tell you about that another day.

I'm back in the building and I've got a new friend - he's called David.

Perhaps some excuses are called for. I notice that I haven't contributed to this blog for almost eighteen months.

Our old computer wouldn't let me upload photos onto my blog. Then we got a new computer but by then I had got out of the blogging habit. Then I got out of the weaving habit.

I sold my very big Cyrus Oxabacks loom because I no longer wanted to weave rugs as much as I wanted a sofa and two armchairs. (I couldn't have both, there isn't enough room).

Then there was a hiatus while I decided what to replace the big loom with.
It had to be quite small.
It had to be easy to tie-up, so not another countermarche.
It had to make good sheds with eight shafts.

For a while I thought of the Leclerc jack looms with back-hinged treadles; but they are so expensive new and I've never seen then offered second hand. Then I hit upon the Louet David loom, which has the easy tie-up of a jack loom but an easier-to-treadle shed with eight shafts. It uses a system of springs and a sinking shed to mimic the shed of a countermarche. Of course it has its drawbacks - it is not as strong as some other looms, but I chose the narrowest width (70cm) to maximise its strength.

Despite an advert on the Loom Exchange for a used Louet David, I failed to find this loom second hand, so I bought my loom new from Don Porritt. He is very helpful and efficient and his prices are competitive.

I must say I've been very pleased with this loom. It is small and manageable - with a really useful raddle on the top which I find very convenient when putting on a warp. The first thing I put on my new loom was the gamp blanket in Janet Phillips' book "Designing Woven Fabrics". Of course I'd forgotten my habit of always making a mistake in every project. This time I put the warp on upside down, ie the left side was on the right, and I had to follow all the threading diagrams in reverse order which was quite confusing. I also left out the final undulating twill section for lack of loom width and yarn, and stopped before the end of the project as I thought the fabric could be used as a shawl and I didn't want it getting unreasonably long. But still it came out well and I was pleased with the result.

I will tell you what I wove next another time.

Krokbragd bag

One of the reasons for my recent lack of motivation for weaving was that I had put an immensely long warp on my loom and woven only about a foot of very fiddly pattern without having a clear idea of what I was going to do with the finished fabric.

I knew the result would involve sewing, and that's not really my forte. But eventually I decided on a .... cushion cover. I cut the fabric off the loom, which is wasteful of warp, I know; but I wanted to get going. And then I decided it should be a bag. Which it now is, as you see, with my daughter Kodakina modelling it for me.

I had intended on inkle-woven handles, using some weaving Kodakina (not her real name, of course, but then I'm not really called Hamble either) had started and abandoned about a year ago, in the same yarn. However, I lacked the patience for that and put on these bamboo ones instead.

Putting in the lining was a nightmare, but I think it is acceptable, not being too fussy. The bag is quite substantial, with a warp and weft of Axminster rug yarn, sett at 5 epi, weft-faced. Loads of picks per inch.

I think the break-through for finishing this project was, for me, realising that I didn't have to have the pattern going horizontal, and that vertical stripes of pattern would require only one seam, plus a plain-weave rectangular strip for the base.

Now I'm tying on a boucle wool warp, sufficient for two scarves, and I will carry on with the rug wool warp when I have completed the scarves. I wonder if that will work? The sett may be too wide, though I am using the boucle wool threaded double in the reed. It's another experiment, you see.

Two home-made Christmas cards.

These are my rather unimpressive attempts at lino cut. Still they were done with enthusiasm and festive cheer. I used some scrap tissue paper glued on to the card and then printed on with black lino-printing ink. And then lots of glitter.

Tell them I did my best.

Excuses

Alas, I have lost, temporarily I hope, my passion for weaving.

Reporting my weaving exploits was my main reason for blogging, so that dried up too.

However, I thought I would transmit to you my recent cogitations on my un-motivated state.

I had read a review of the children's short stories about the Moomins. I had not read these stories as a child, but a couple of years ago I read Tove Jansson's "Summer Book" for adults, and thence went on to some of her lovely stories for children.

The review mentioned a story about a creature who was an expert on postage stamps. He had spent his life building up his collection. One day the collection was complete. He had every stamp there was in Moomin Land and there were no more left to collect. This achievement meant that the stamp expert had no more collecting to do, and he had to be helped over his resultant grief by the kindly Moomins.

That is how I feel with my weaving. I had got my loom in a perfect state for rug weaving, and had woven a rug on it of which I was most mightily proud. But from thereon I would simply be producing more rugs, without the steep learning curve I'd been so ardently following. The fire, for me, had gone out with the attainment of a good woven rug produced on a loom I had coaxed into perfection.

I must find Jansson's story and read the Moomin's advice. In the meantime I'm trying to get on with Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall (215/650 and I am enjoying it), and master "The Cascades" by Scott Joplin on the piano. (The latter ambition highly unlikely to succeed' but in view of the above, perhaps that's a good thing).