As Goes The Loaf

Day 81: You have only one chance to get this right: "As goes the loaf, so goes the year." Although I was unable to document the saying, I believe it is of Scottish or British origin, and asserts that the first loaf of bread baked after New Year's Day predicts the course the year will follow. Will it be lumpy? Crusty and hard? Will it fail to rise entirely? I wasn't willing to take any chances, and fell back on my tried-and-true sourdough, changed up a bit with half a cup of whole-wheat flour to replace an equivalent measure of white, along with an appreciable handful of golden flaxseed to add character. I don't want 2021 to be plain or boring, and neither do I want it to be ponderously heavy or tasteless. The whole wheat offers a mild piquancy, gives it a hint of down-home, neighbourly goodness and the seeds provide small and tasty surprises. No one wants peppercorns and pea gravel in their breakfast toast, and that was certainly the fare offered up by 2020. I was pleased when the loaf emerged from the oven without cracks, rifts or fissures, perfectly golden-brown and raised to a perfect crown.

Tablecloth In Two Parts

Day 196: I have never had a problem keeping myself amused when alone. I've spent a large portion of my life alone, if perhaps not in quite the isolated state I find myself in lately, but alone nevertheless and sometimes for protracted periods of time. After several days of planning, on April 2, I measured out the warp for a tablecloth to be woven in two panels to be joined side-by-side. The next couple of days were spent dressing the loom, i.e., hanging the warp according to a strict draft and preparing to weave. On April 5, I began the actual weaving.

One of the things I've learned about myself over the years is that I tend to attack a project with great vigour at the beginning, a practice which usually results in burn-out and having to force myself to finish. To combat that, I decided to ration myself to one colour sequence each day. I found myself getting up every morning looking forward to my stint at the loom, and was often tempted to work into the next day's ration in the evening. I only allowed myself that luxury twice when I was particularly furious at some piece of public covidiocy and wanted to work off my frustrations. Of course, this meant that my following day's allotment was cut short, so I busied myself with planning for my next weaving. I finished the panels on April 24, and yesterday wove one final sequence as a sample before removing the tablecloth from the loom. All that remains to finish the piece is to hand-weave the panels together (a tedious process at best, but not one I will postpone for any great length of time).

The fiber I chose for the tablecoth was an 8/2 cotton with a soft finish. Fortunately, I had all the colours on hand. In the upper photo, you can see the unwoven space between the panels at the center of the piece. In order to achieve perfect squares, I had to exercise some restraint in beating the threads into place, stopping to measure every half inch so that I could compensate, or to pick back if absolutely necessary. The squares are 1", in a sequence of seven colours repeating five times across the width. The sample on the left shows the raw fabric, the one on the right shows it after "fulling," i.e., washing it to expand the fibers and then shrinking it by drying. Fulling also resolves any minor gaps left by uneven beating (something even the best weavers can't fully prevent).

As I mentioned a little earlier in this post, I devoted some time between bouts of weaving in planning my next project, a shawl in knitting worsted using the sett for my ancestral tartan, MacLeod of Lewis, also known as "the loud MacLeod." I had the colours on hand, having used them to make bee and ladybug hats: rich yellow, black and red. Before I went to bed last night, I had warped the loom for the shawl and had woven one yellow and one black sequence, and this piece will progress much more rapidly even with careful rationing.

The Weaver At The Loom

Day 178: I know. I said there weren't going to be any more weaving posts for a while, but I forgot the most important one: the weaver at the loom. I was done with the daily goal of another full colour sequence on the tablecloth by early afternoon yesterday, and thus was faced with a dilemma. I am really enjoying this project because it takes a fair bit of concentration to repeat four treadling steps over fifteen throws. In other words, I'm counting 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4 at the same time I'm counting 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3...and so on. You get a step off if you're not paying attention. And paying attention is good right now because it keeps my mind off people dying and bastards lying. That said, because I am enjoying the weaving of this particular project so much, I am debating whether to ration myself to one sequence per day, working on any of my other dozen projects to fill the remaining hours, or to sit at the loom, happily weaving away. I'm inclined to go with rationing because that's the kind of person I am, half-lifing the chocolate or cookie supply as the days wear on. Should the weaving compulsion be with me, I also have a project on the rigid heddle currently, a rather boring tabby in Lily's "Sugar & Cream," far from my favourite fiber in any event. It needs to be done; therefore, I should be working on it. Likewise, it's become painfully obvious that my sisters-of-the-heart are not going to be visiting any time soon to work on Mousie's grandmother's quilt, so I wish to devote a portion of the day to completing as much of it as I can (and it's coming along famously). Still, there is something about the music (and I use the term quite loosely) of the floor loom's operation and the demand upon my brain which makes weaving the tablecloth ever so much more appealing. My next project might not call to me in the same way. "Choices, choices!" thinks the weaver at the loom as her shuttle passes back and forth through the rainbow web.

Rainbow Tablecloth - Sneak Peek

Day 176: The vision is coming to life! Yesterday, I wove one full colour sequence, fifteen throws of each of seven colours shading from red to purple. This sequence will repeat ten times for each half of the tablecloth, i.e., I will weave a total of twenty repeats broken into two panels of ten each. In other words, this will be the last weaving post you see from me for a while because there won't be anything different going on. For now, though, I'd like to explain a couple tricks of the trade I'm using during the process.

First of all, you may notice a white section in the photo on the left (it's less apparent in the photo on the right). This is the header. It will be turned under when the tablecloth is ready to hem. It helps space out the warp threads uniformly. A similar band will be added at the end of each panel. Second, that short white thread isn't something I dropped there accidentally. It gives me a handy reference point for measuring the colour band currently in progress. Because I am striving for a 50/50 weave, each weft stripe needs to be made with fifteen throws of the shuttle and to measure exactly one inch to match the warp measurements. At the end of each colour, I pull the white thread from the beginning of the stripe and reinsert it at the end. If I've beaten the weft irregularly, I may need to pick back several throws and re-do them, although minor spacing deviations will be unnoticeable once the fabric is fulled.

When weaving a twill, special care must be taken with the selvedges (the outer edges of the fabric web). It is all too easy to wind up with a "floating" warp thread which never gets caught into the weft. At the selvedges, the weaver must be sure that the weft goes under or over the outer thread in the manner of a tabby (plain) weave. As I have learned to do over the years, I've added an extra thread of black cotton carpet warp on each side to minimize draw-in, spaced one dent apart from the actual fabric. These threads pass through heddles numbered identically with the first and last threads of the cloth. To identify these two strands of carpet warp and their adjacent coloured threads, I've tied a small, loose loop of string around them. By taking up the loop with one hand, I can easily raise or lower the two selvedge threads together in a tabby pattern while throwing the shuttle with my opposite hand. The carpet warp thread will be carefully drawn out of the fabric when the weaving is completed. It all sounds very complicated, but in practice, it is fairly simple and not overly "fiddly." A rhythmic pattern emerges as the weaver works which, accompanied by the soft clatter of heddles and repetitive footwork on the treadles, is almost meditational. Weaving is an enormously satisfying craft.

Dressing The Loom 2

Day 175: With the hardest part behind me, yesterday I settled in to finish dressing the loom. Because my 15-dent reed was too short to accommodate a 36-inch width, I used a longer 10-dent, drawing two threads through every other slot. While in a plain tabby weave (over-and-under), this might create a "tracking" pattern in the fabric, weaving a twill will make it less obvious. It will be even less apparent when the fabric is fulled, i.e., washed to expand the fibers of the soft 8/2 cotton. Once the ends were through the reed, I tied them to the front apron, keeping the tension even. The photo on the right illustrates a "shed," the space between threads when the harnesses are raised or lowered. The diagonal twill pattern consists of four sheds, created by raising harnesses 1/4, 1/2, 2/3 and 3/4 in strict sequence. This is where any mistakes in threading the heddles will make themselves known. If one should be found, the weaver has no choice but to unthread the reed and heddles if s/he wants to weave a flawless piece. Today, the weaving begins.

Dressing The Loom 1

Day 174: At a time when I'm desperately short of natural-history materials for my daily posts, I am pleased that several friends have expressed interest in the step-by-step process of weaving. Because this is a large project made with relatively fine thread, one or two phases are all I can hope to achieve in a single day.

Having wound the warp onto the back beam using my (jokingly) patented "Gatorade Method," I was ready to proceed with drawing the threads through their individual heddles yesterday morning. The heddles on this loom are held in four harnesses (i.e., it is a "four-shaft loom"). To weave a twill pattern, the heddles must be threaded in precise order, 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4. There's no room for mistakes here, so of course that meant I committed one: I miscounted heddles on the #3 harness, shorting the pattern by 20. I was not so far into the threading when I discovered the error, but even so, fixing it was a major undertaking because the heddles WERE partly threaded and I didn't want to pull out two hours' work. The alternative solution was to figure out how to add additional heddles to the harness, if indeed that was even possible. By raising the #3 harness and supporting it with a spacer, I was able to access the screw securing the lower heddle rod. By lowering the #3 harness, raising #1, #2 and #4 and supporting them with a spacer, I was able to get at the screw for the upper heddle rod somewhat more easily. This part wasn't as hard as I'd expected it to be, and I thought I was home, free and easy. However, when I threaded new heddles onto the lower rod, I discovered they were an inch too short to mount on the upper rod. Bugger! Apparently I'd bought them for a different loom (probably the table loom I never use). Now the heddle-exchange project had taken on a much larger dimension. I had plenty of spare heddles on other harnesses, so by means of a lot of fiddling and diddling, I removed them from #2 and placed them on #3. In the process, I knocked a plant off the shelf and spread dirt all over the craft room floor. Needless to say, by this point, I had used up my daily allotment of profanity and was taking out a loan for more. By bedtime, I was still 75 threads short of done, but my nerves and back were shrieking. This morning, I finished up the threading of the heddles and am now ready for the next phase: threading the reed. Then let the weaving commence!

Gatorade Warping Method

Day 173: When one lives alone as I do (and have done for over thirty years), the old saying "necessity is the mother of invention" chimes at least weekly, if not daily. Warping a floor loom is a project which normally takes two people, one to crank the warp onto the beam, the other to stretch and manipulate the threads to maintain uniform tension and prevent tangling. I developed the "solitaire" Gatorade Method after much experimentation with fishing weights, canned goods, rubber bands and assorted other household items until at last I came up with a workable system. Each water-filled bottle has a yarn tie around the neck, knotted in such a fashion that there is a loop through which I can insert my index finger and thumb to grasp a bundle of warp threads and draw them through. The bundle is then secured with an easy-to-remove spring clothespin and the bottle is suspended at a height just clearing the floor. Bundles of threads are kept relatively small as another means of maintaining even tension; here, ten bottles hold a total of 527 ends across a 36" width. Once the full width has been weighted, I move to the rear of the loom and start cranking the warp onto the back beam. When the lids of the Gatorade bottles reach the bottom of the front breast beam, I then return to the front to rehang the weights. Progress is slow. At best, I can wind about two feet of warp before having to change the weights, carefully adjusting the leash sticks (those rods which temporarily hold the warp crossings until the threads are pulled through the heddles), cranking slowly to prevent any thread breakage. Once the full warp is wound onto the back beam (yesterday's goal), I can then thread the heddles and the reed. The heddles govern the texture of the weave. In this case, I will be using a four-shaft twill, a simple, mindless pattern to keep me occupied during the next month of lockdown.

Warping

Day 172: Any weaving project begins with visualization. Then comes the actual planning, based on the width and length of fabric required to complete it. Many things must be taken into account when weaving turns to math: the weight of thread governs the number of threads per inch, as do repeats of a colour pattern and/or type of weave. Once these things have been determined, the weaver then sets to measuring the warp, winding it over a series of pegs set into a rectangular frame, i.e., the "warping board" to the length desired. Wastage must be allowed for in measuring the warp. In this case, the rainbow check tablecloth in my imagination requires two 36"-wide lengths of 72" since I cannot weave the full two-yard width in twill on a 48" loom. At least five more feet of warp will be considered waste (a figure I know from experience), so I have measured out 525 ends plus two selvedge threads at six yards each which gives me five repeats of 7 colours, 15 warp threads per colour for the half-width warp, to be put on the loom at 15 dents per inch and woven at 15 throws per inch ("balanced weave").  While I would have preferred a brighter orange than the rust which follows red in the repeat, desperate times call for desperate measures. It took a stay-at-home order to inspire me to warp the big loom for this project, so I think I can make a few minor allowances.