Thrums Runner

Day 102: The "seed" of this project was a handful of 6-foot long thrums in light blue and lime green, enough to use (doubled) as warp for slightly more than half the width of the piece. I supplemented the warp with shuttle leftovers and end-of-cone/dye lot remains in lavender and white, and then threw in some darker blue for accents. In the end, I had enough to make either two placemats or one runner using shorter thrums for the weft, zanshiori-style. I opted for a runner or, if push comes to shove, a piece of fabric which could be used to make a shopping bag. The finished dimensions are 34.5" x 12" raw, which will shrink to roughly 30" x 11" after being brutalized in the washer and dryer. The zanshiori style really appeals to my thrifty nature, and while I was working on this piece, I finished up the warp on my floor loom, so now I have another batch of thrums to put on the rigid heddle. I call it "half-lifing," working with leftovers until they're too short to use for anything else.

Aurora Borealis

Day 101: It finally happened, that rare coincidence of a celestial event and clear skies in the Pacific Northwest! The aurorae did not appear Tuesday night as anything more than a faint red glow which my current camera could not capture on any available setting, and Tuesday's display was supposed to be the strongest. Consequently, I almost didn't bother to check Wednesday night, but then I said to myself, "Well, ya never know." And this was what I saw. I had had the foresight to drag out my older camera (the one which no longer talks directly to the computer by a cable, necessitating use of an SD card reader), and charged up a battery. After checking the EXIF information on a previous batch of aurora photos, I set the exposure ISO 200, f2.7, and 15 seconds (the maximum the camera will allow). Any higher ISO produces a very grainy image with that particular camera. The show lasted about half an hour, gradually fading to pale green. A subsequent check in the wee hours showed nothing but stars, and I crawled back under the electric blanket, snuggled up to the nice, warm cat and caught another hour's sleep.

Try, Try Again

Day 100: "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again." Those seem to be the words to live by when warping a Leksand loom. The bag clips rescued my last band in the end, but what I really need to figure out is how to put a warp on with even tension which can be maintained through the weaving process. I decided to experiment with bag clips in place of choke ties, and as I wound on, I used them to move any slack in the warp toward the cloth roller. This is not a long warp by any means, but neither is it the minimum the loom can accommodate. I butted the loom up against a card table with a peg on the far side, effectively doubling the length to give myself roughly 9-10 feet of workable warp using seven pattern threads for the design. The pattern threads are where the slack comes in, so we'll see how it goes.

Not a Kitty Place!

Day 99: I heard the creaking of a cupboard door, indicating that Somebody was looking for food in all the usual locations. Food? He's been known to drag out crackers (a favourite), but he'll settle for a stale granola bar if that's all he can find. I laid my work aside and went to retrieve the Cat. The cupboard above the counter was undisturbed, but then I noticed that the righthand door above the washing machine was slightly ajar. I hadn't heard him jump down, and that was suspicious in and of itself. I peered into the dark space and was met with a returning stare. He knew he was in trouble. "Oh, that is NOT a kitty place!" I said. How he gets in there is nothing short of a contortionist's best performance. The washer only gives him three or four inches to stand on because the cupboard is deep, but somehow, he manages to get the door open, and then in a remarkable display of thigh strength, launches himself upward and over bread pans, a recipe box, a flour sifter, a butter dish and other various cookware without knocking anything off. Getting him out is another story entirely. He doesn't want to jump all the way to the floor, and knows better than to try to lower himself down onto the slick washer, so I have to offer him my shoulder, and then pull his hindquarters out. I guess I'll just have to keep performing cat extractions for now, because the wood is too hard for me to drill. At least there was nothing in there he could eat.

Crewelwork

Day 98: It recently occurred to me that there was one type of needlework I had not discussed in my posts other than a casual mention of it being among the various crafts I do. There's a reason for that, namely that I don't do it any more, not because I didn't enjoy it, but because the particular type of yarn it requires is no longer produced (or not by any recognizable manufacturer). This is crewelwork, a type of embroidery which uses 3-ply wool in the same manner you'd use regular embroidery floss. Like floss, it could be divided so that one or two strands could be used at the stitcher's discretion to create finer lines, smaller embellishments and more intricate blending. The wool disappeared from the market 25-30 years ago, and at the time, I thought it just wasn't being carried by any of the shops I visited (this was well before the internet, mind you). Needlepoint yarn (an entirely different product) is available even today, but the three-strand crewel wool simply vanished. Today, you can pick it up second-hand on websites such as Etsy and eBay, but you're taking a chance with respect to moth-chewed strands or worse, moth eggs. Strangely, these two pieces (the only ones I still own) have never been bothered by bugs. Truly, the loss of the wool was a crewel twist of fate for those of us who enjoyed the art.

Checked Off

Day 97: This band was another one of those interminable projects. I wove it on my Leksand loom, and struggled with warp tension almost from the start. I've tried several different warping systems, have changed the loom's rollers and brakes around to achieve a different angle on the warp, have tried using the equivalent of "angel wings"...in short, I've tried everything I know to try, and I still have warp tension issues nine times out of ten when I'm weaving more than two yards, three at the very most if the band is narrow. I've analyzed every aspect, and have been unable to figure out why the issue occurs, but in any event, end-of-the-year meant I was going to dedicate myself to finishing "hanging" projects, and this was one of them. It measures 150 inches in length and about 1 1/4" wide. I used 16/2 cotton for the ground, 10/2 for the pattern and coloured threads. More to the point, it's done, and I don't have to think about it any more.

Record Keeping

Day 96: As a young weaver...that would have been shortly after the mass extinction event which wiped dinosaurs off the face of the planet...as a young weaver, I didn't see the value of keeping a record of what I wove. Indeed, I didn't think about it at all. Later, I began keeping samples of things I'd woven with new patterns or new threads, but even so, I was not keeping track of everything I wove. If I used a rigid heddle loom, I didn't bother at all. Consequently, I do not have a full record of 50+ years of weaving, but I'm a bit more diligent now than before, and I try to make a card for each weaving, even if it doesn't include a sample. There have been many times when I knew my files didn't include notes for a project telling me how many ends I'd threaded, what sett I'd used, what shrinkage had occurred when the piece was wet-finished, and I'd have to start from scratch, calculating for width and length of a warp. Hindsight, they say, is clearer than foresight, and had I known then what I know now, I would have kept better records. It just takes a minute to weave that little extra bit, maybe not even the full width of a warp, and to put all the pertinent information on a 3 x 5 card with notes like, "Boring pattern!" or "Should have used a wider sett." We learn from experience, to be sure, but when possible, I strongly suggest backing it up with a hard copy.