Portrait of an Unhappy Warp

The leaves are out so goodbye decent lighting!

I've worked a lot in merino. I definitely know the properties of merino a lot better then I know the Homestead Strike of 1892, and I wrote my thesis on that strike. So it's rather shameful that this little etude into my familiar medium is going so badly.

A few of the errors.

This warp does not want to be happening. I'm not sure why. Or rather I have about twenty theories and it's probably about 5% each one of those theories. Suffice to say, something, or maybe everything, is just a little bit off in this warp. So everything is breaking. I'm two feet in and I've replaced half a dozen threads.

Le Sigh.

Cotton, unfortunately.

Painted Warps.

I get tongue tied when I try to describe why I love wool. The technical terms like elasticity, resilence, staple length and crimp don't really make sense even to me. It's more like when a song comes on the radio, and it doesn't really matter what song it is, just that it is the perfect song for right now. For me, wool is always that perfect song, and that little buzz between the ears is in my hands every time I work with wool. 

Finnish Birds Eye, painted weft.

So I've been working with cotton lately and its off putting. Sometimes dangerous, I got rug burn on a finger when winding a bobbin. And apparently if there's a catch and you're not paying attention and holding the yarn tight, a cotton yarn will try to just wind your finger onto the bobbin, instead of breaking itself like any noble and kind wool yarn will do. Then there's the weird tension that starts happening with every change of humidity...

The colors remind me of Parrots.

It was worth it. 5/2 Unmercerized cotton produces an absolutely lovely fabric. It's a coarse netting on the loom but after a wash and tumble dry it's soft, drapy, and surprisingly cozy. Shawls are substantial, cushy, and keep back just enough heat to combat air-conditioning, and are airy enough to wear outside in the sun. They're perfect nursing shawls. Comfy, cozy, won't suffocate the babe, and can be washed with all manner of soaps and stain removers. 

The pink set.

I wove the pink set on a very, very, long warp. It was about twelve yards long. I cut off after every shawl, all 4.5 of them, due to tension problems. The two yellow/green/orange shawls were woven together and only cut apart once off the loom. 

Yeah, definitely going through a pink phase. It's not over. 

On all shawls I finished with an inch of free fringe, and a row of stabilizing stitching that encapsulating the last three picks. The stitch is one of the decorative ones on my machine, but it's incredibly sturdy, as I found out when unpicking a few mistakes! Since I hate hemstitching and have never been too keen on hand twisted fringe, this is like the holy grail of finishing techniques. It gives an edge that isn't a statement so much as a gentle ending. No abruptness, no fuss, just an edge. The inch and a half of loose fringe isn't enough to get into trouble, but still enough to flit with nervously with your fingers. 

Shawls will be up in the shop sometime tomorrow-ish. 

Gone Away, Gone Ahead

Marybeth

Spent the weekend spreading my cold germs at the lovely BYM Women's Retreat. A hundred-ish lovely Quaker ladies in the lovely mountains. I brought my stuff to sell and boy did it sell.

Tolly

Quakers are a seriously adorable faith. There wasn't a cash register or shopkeepers or any sort of organization to the craft show part. Just a bunch of tables around the perimeter of the big meeting room covered in stuff. We put out our stuff along with a receipt book, a pen, and a box. That was it! It worked beautifully, although I did have to track down a few people who had written checks with the "to" part blank.  Studies do show that people are more honest if you expect it of them...

Citrus Scarf

All of the these items are now sold. I also sold a bunch that I had never properly photographed. Of course, the weather was helping wool sales conciderably. It was warm for January, but that's a pretty harsh set to begin with. 34º with 50mph winds isn't exactly warm!

This had been going to be a fish. Yay failed class assignments!

I actually sold that shawl twice. Somebody bought it, then decided it was too short, and then almost immediately someone else bought it.

This now belongs to a banjo-playing stand-up comedian.

Of my total sales, I've made .09% of them on Etsy and that accounts for .02% of revenue.  Given the tactile nature of fiber arts it's really no surprise that they sell so much better when potential customers can feel them. At the same time, my Etsy store has paid  for itself - which really isn't hard, they're delightfully cheap - and it does represent a sort of commercial anchor. The shop is always up, whereas festivals are few and far between this time of year.

And at this rate, if there was another craft show tomorrow, I'm not completely sure I could fill a table! Back to the loom for me!

Rags to Riches: II

Its January and I'm taking sunny pictures outside. WTH?

The weaving part of rag rugs is relatively easy. Well, I said "relatively."

4 epi, straight twill. 

Tip #1 Set it wide. Yes, wider even then you think. 4 ends per inch you say? Only for a twill. Three per inch is a safer bet. I've even used 2 epi for plain weave.

A slightly fancy edge.

Tip #2 Stay away from rug warp. Yes, it's super strong, but it's also thin. Rag rugs aren't woven at very high tension, in fact the washcloth on the loom right now is far tighter then I ever pulled my rug warps.  A thick cotton, I use coned kitchen cotton, is far easier on your fingers when tensioning and produces a far nicer finished edge and fringe. Thin rug warp at 3 ends per inch is almost impossible to pull into a neat finish.  Bonus: 2 or 3 passes with your warp yarn in the weft makes a sweet weft protector during finishing.

None of these "in progress" pictures are off the rug up top. 

Tip #3. Be prepared to place your weft by hand. Sure there are rag shuttles that will hold tons of rag at a time. But let's be honest, none of your strips are more then 6 feet long. Any piece shorter then 3 feet will just fall off your shuttle, so at most you can use the shuttle once, and then hand place the rest. Really, it's not so bad.

Tip #4 Random striping is harder then it looks, but worth the pay off. Trying to make sure it's balanced while still being random will drive you bonkers. A quick solution is to divide all of your colors in half. Use half of each before you get to the middle, use the other half after the middle. Beyond that, let randomness take hold. It'll be fine, I promise.

Its electric

Dyeing records act as inspirations

The problem with planning ahead of time is I get all excited about what will be happening next and bored with what's happening now. I have a rug on my loom but all I'm thinking about is napkins. Well, I say napkins. I'm actually thinking some 9x9 waffle weave face cloths. But then I could do napkins...

Drawdown for Waffle Weave.

This is one draft I'm considering. It's waffle weave, that eternally wonderful fabric relegated almost entirely to towels. The cells in this draft wouldn't be square, but the asymmetry would allow more depth then normal in a 4 shaft waffle. To heck with that though! If I want the trouble of setting up 8 treadles, I'll do an 8 harness pattern! For the record, I have no idea what "C 1hr, H 5min" means. I mean, I assume it's related to the dying records on the opposite page, but it's still greek to me.

Hemstitching: You have been Upgraded.

Any way, the reason for all the excitement about making washclothes/towels/napkins/placemats and everything else exciting in the universe is that Santa brought me a Brother 104D Serger. Hemstitching (above) is now a thing of the past! I can now weave 9 yards of fabric, run it through the serger a few times, and suddenly have 27 perfectly finished washclothes/towels/napkins - You know what? They're just rectangles of cloth, you figure out what to do with them.

In my excitement to tell everyone in the world about how utterly exciting this gift is, a lot of people have expected some sort of agonizing over whether these yet-to-be-rectangles would still be handmade, like I needed some justification for mechanizing part of the process.

Bullshit. Machines planted the flax/cotton, harvested, washed, spun, washed again and wound the yarn before I even get it. Plenty of mechanization has already happened.

Moreover, I weave because I love weaving. I hate hemstitching. This serger means more time doing what I love, and less doing what I hate. Perfect!

Oh, and I have an electric ball-winder now too.  I'm basically a cyborg already

On the Beam

The Proudz, I has it. 

Ochre scarf is finished. The canvas structure really pops in Pony II. I'm very much in love. Ok, so I finished it weeks ago, Holidays are hard!

Random striping is harder then it looks. 

I was determined to use up all my blue/purple rag, and I almost succeeded. This rug is over 70" long. I used a 100 inch warp, the same as I do for a 72 inch scarf, and I had no loom waste. Didn't even have room for a dummy warp!

Nailpolish marks the center of the beater.

Current project: pointe twill rag rug. Color choices are slightly unfortunate but in a fun way. I'm aiming for a 2'x3', which will leave enough warp for a craazzzy stripe number.

At Least the Scarf is Done

Today Didn't Go Well for Anyone.

So today sort of sucked. Various little things went wrong all day, but at least I had gotten my Luskofte! scarf knitted and fringed and washed and outside to dry. So what if my camera deleted the photo tutorial I was going to post on how to put a fringe on a knitted scarf? At least the scarf was done.

And a Damn Fine Fringe it Was Too. 

So as usual, I completely forget about this thing called a dew point until after the sun is done and everything outside is covered in dew. With a sigh, I go and collect my knitting from the outdoors.

It crunches.

Because, you know, it's winter. There isn't a dew point. There's a frost point.

I may have knitted a Companion Cube or three. 

So on top of everything else that went wrong, I froze my knitting. Great.

On a related note, ironing a scarf after midnight is the sort of thing that causes existential crises.

The pin marks 40 inches.

Weaving continues apace. This ochre really is a lovely color and I'm ridiculously proud of it.