Going for Gingham

Now that the tartan ruana is off the loom (I'm not quite finished with hemming it yet), I wanted to take a break from complicated patterns for a while, so I decided to make some plainweave towels in a gingham pattern. Gingham is traditionally woven tabby. If I changed it up and wove it as a twill on the same threading, it would be called "check" instead. "Buffalo check" is a larger version and is woven as a twill. Since my squares here are only six threads wide (roughly 1/4" at 20 epi), I am carrying the unused colour up the side, white on one side and blue on the other (and yes, they will be square once the piece is washed and fulled). For some strange reason, I keep singing "We're off the see the Wizard" as I weave this.

Warped Weavers Tartan

I'm back in the saddle again! Since discovering that I didn't have enough of the dark purple thread for the weft of this project, I've been waiting, first for my supplier to restock it, and then for the shipper to deliver it (a process which took much longer than it should have). It arrived yesterday, and almost immediately, I wound a bobbin and picked up where I'd left off, weaving several inches before bedtime. This is the "Warped Weavers" tartan, designed and officially registered by a member of a weaving group I belong to. As a Scot, I find myself in two minds about this. "Tartan" to me identifies a person as a member of a specific clan, linked by genetics. However, in recent years, the rules have been relaxed, and businesses and groups are creating their own tartans and can submit them to the Scottish Registry of Tartans for approval. If a new tartan does not conflict with an existing one and follows basic rules of design, it can be registered and becomes "official." In one way, that ruffles my feathers, but on the other hand, it speaks of an allegiance not unlike what clans were in the dim beginnings. The tipping point for me in this case was the appeal of the colours. I love every shade in this design! I deliberated for some time as to whether or not I'd actually weave something using it, and finally decided in favour of a ruana. Don't worry. If I go to any Highland Games, I'll be wrapped in my family McLeod.

Lab vs. Field

As any scientist will tell you, something which works perfectly in the lab still may not play out properly in the field. That was the case here. I did a careful "twill test" to determine that a sett of 26 ends per inch would give me a 45-degree angle (a balanced weave, same number of throws per inch as warp threads per inch). I even washed and dried the blankety-blank thing. Then I warped the loom accordingly, spacing out 26 threads in 12 slots, 2-2-2-2-2-3. My purple weft thread hasn't arrived yet, so I decided to do one more test. I put in a "slicky cord" header which was obviously not cooperating to give 26 throws per inch, but that was slicky cord. Even allowing for its slightly different behaviour, I thought it was prudent to do weave a bit with the real stuff, i.e., 8/2 cotton. If someone told you there'd been an explosion near Mount Rainier this morning, that would have been me. Sigh. I am now re-threading the reed at 24 epi. At least I didn't have to re-thread the heddles.

Silly String

The skein is 88 yards, the bobbin 107 yards (I wound it off after I took the photo). That's almost enough Silly String to make a rag rug. And lemme tell ya, this is a lot of work for a "scraps" project! The yarn is made from weaving thrums, leftovers of warp and bobbin extras tied together, then spun into two bobbins-worth of 4-ply, and then spun again to make an 8-ply strand. Hard work or no, the resultant product satisfies two criteria in my book: one, it utilizes something which most people would discard and two, it's colourful, light-hearted and soon to be useful. Hey, that's a win-win as far as I'm concerned. Okay, so I get really tired of tying all those ends together, but I love seeing the combinations come together on the spinning wheel. I figure I need 200-250 yards to make a rug, but now I'm out of thrums!

Weekly Weaving

Since cutting back on my internet time, I've been doing a lot more weaving. With Daisy in the living room, I find that sitting down to weave a motif on the overshot (green) is more like taking a break than being a job in and of itself, even if I've been weaving on the rigid heddle. As for the rigid heddle, the natural-coloured extra-long thrums coupled with pastels turned into an adorable fingertip towel and matching washcloth woven as a 2/1 twill, and I so enjoyed the process that I warped another longer 2/1 twill in autumn shades. I also finished up the most trouble-free band I've ever woven on my Leksand loom, thanks to making some revisions to the way I warped and threaded it. I had no issues with slack in the pattern threads, having run them through the slots in the heddle (rather than through the holes, which was the way I had been instructed to do it). It's been a productive and educational week!

Silly String

Thrums are a normal by-product of weaving. They are the bits and bobs of thread which cannot be woven due to having to pass through the heddles and reed, and are otherwise known as "loom waste." Their length depends on the individual loom. On Daisy, I allow three feet at the back (loom waste at the front of the loom where they are tied on is minimal). That was about the same for Max, but my old loom wanted an allowance of five feet. When you're talking about 250-500 threads, that's a lot of yardage to rest on your conscience as you throw them in the trash (which, I hate to say, a lot of people do). My Scottish soul can't abide that much wastage, so I usually "half-life" my thrums by moving them to the next smaller loom to use as warp, or I allow extra on a project to be sure I have enough to warp a smaller loom. Even so, I still wind up with thrums, and I flatly refuse to put them in the garbage until they've served as many purposes as possible. I've been weaving zanshiori-style towels and runners by tying the thrums together and using them as weft. The knots give a "down home" feel to the finished pieces, but some people don't appreciate the obvious "leftovers" look. I like it, but that's me. As my thrums jar filled up again, I had another thought for utilizing them. Okay, it was going to be a lot of work, but in the end, I'd have something functional. To that end, I have tied them all together and am now engaged in spinning them by the fours, which will later be re-spun into a thick 8-ply yarn to use as weft in rag rugs. I call the end product "Silly String!" And Merry is way more help than I need, grabbing the wiggly strings as they come up from the cones protecting the balls of wound thread from inquiring paws.

Minimizing Loom Waste

When starting a piece of weaving, most people use spacers of cardboard, yarn, even toilet paper to spread out the warp threads. This takes up several inches of the warp. I don't like having that much wastage, so I use "slicky cord" (my name for it) instead. Simply put, slicky cord is nylon cord of a size close to matching that of the warp. In this case, I used 0.5mm yellow cord because I couldn't find the length of green 1mm I'd ordinarily have paired with 8/2 cotton, but as they say, it was "close enough for gov'mint work." There are numerous advantages to using slicky cord, the first being that it can be pulled to adjust the width. The second is that it is easy to withdraw, so after I have woven the first few inches of my piece, I pull out a few rows and do the hemstitching, then remove the slicky cord entirely. The third advantage is that it allows you to use inches of warp you'd otherwise have consigned to loom waste. I usually weave 6-10 throws of slicky cord before beginning the actual weaving, but as I mentioned, I couldn't find the longer green bit I usually use, so had to make do with three throws with the thinner yellow. Predictably, when I went to put the yellow back in the box, I discovered the green had been right there in front of me the whole time.

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.

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.

Bob-bob-bobbin Along

Day 95: This was the part about weaving with boat shuttles which I thought was going to drive me crazy: changing bobbins. I had stick shuttles down to a fine science. Given the width of my project, I could calculate the number of wraps it would take to complete it, and in the case of hand towels and placemats, I could usually wind enough for a whole one onto a single shuttle. Bobbins don't hold nearly as much, and of course there's no way to know how much you've wound onto one unless you're very good with a gram scale and mathematics. Also, having to change them out often seemed to me that it was going to be an enormous pain in the neck, but as it turns out, it goes quite neatly. Fortunately, I have a bobbin winder for loading them with thread, and I can do a pretty fair imitation of a level-winder if I pay attention to what I'm doing. You still need a lot of them, but with a dozen, I'm like the red-red robin, just bob-bob-bobbin along.

Max Goes Home

Day 93: For all of having enjoyed the quiet, smooth operation of a countermarch loom, the time has come for Max to end his stay here, and go home to daddy. When Daisy arrived, I discovered why weaving on Max had been harder for me. Daisy's breast beam is a full two inches lower, and although I've enjoyed having more space in which to work, Max is significantly deeper between the breast beam and the shafts. I am a small person. No, that's an understatement. I am a very small person, and consequently, when I sat at Max, I had to keep my elbows raised to pass the shuttle. Likewise, I found myself stretching too far forward as I tried to squeeze one more motif in before advancing the warp, and that action taxed my back. While I had originally intended to keep Max, working with Daisy convinced me that he needed to be returned to my weaving partner Ed who, at 6' 4" has no problems with either height or reach. I finished the eighth placemat last night (wait...I thought I'd warped for six?), and today worked the little sample for my weaving files. That said, I'll miss you, Max. We had some good weaves in your short tenure here.

Zanshiori

Day 92: Anyone who weaves a lot eventually winds up with a collection of thrums, i.e., those long bits of thread referred to as "loom waste." Since I am thrifty and can't bear to throw them away, they go through various stages as I put them to best use. If they're long enough, they go on a rigid heddle loom or an inkle loom as a short warp, or they can be card-woven. If they're short, they get tied together and rolled up in balls until I've accumulated a sufficient amount for a zanshiori project. What's zanshiori? Literally translated, it means "a weaving made from waste thread." That's pretty definitive! Similar in philopsophy to other Japanese "waste not, want not" methods like boro, the idea is to use what you have to make something useful or to extend its usable life. The flaws and imperfections in the resulting pieces add to their character.

I've been using a lot of blues and greens lately, and my thrums jar was getting full. Since Daisy has a bowed midsection in her warp beam, I have to leave the raddle in place after winding on. This means her "loom waste" is about a foot longer than usual. After taking my last project off, I was left with a handful of thrums two yards in length, ideal for making the center section of a runner. I doubled them for visual interest, and flanked them on either side with leftover end-of-cone, end-of-dye-lot bits for stripes, using shorter thrums knotted together as weft. The sticky-uppy knots will fuzz out over repeated washings to become cute, random textural nubbins of personality in the finished piece.

Daisy's Primroses

Day 87: I recently discovered an under-appreciated and somewhat obscure collection of miniature overshot patterns in a book called "Weaving Designs" by Bertha Gray Hayes. It is absolutely marvelous! And while the designs may be miniature, they are surprisingly complex. This one is called "Primroses," and the pattern repeats over 34 threads. Likewise, the treadling is a repeat of 34, 68 if you count the green tabby throws between each thread of the purple design. I selected the colours in keeping with the idea of primroses, and if you look very carefully, you will see yellow warp threads interspersed at strategic locations, i.e., at the centers of the design elements. That said, this is the back side of the overshot as it is shown in the book. I don't always read the instructions as carefully as I should, and consequently, I'm treadling it upside-down, having read the tie-up "inside out" (black squares vs. white squares). Nevertheless, it's pretty any way you look at it.

Daisy's First Project

Day 86: Daisy's first project is off the loom! All three towels were made on the same Finnish Twill threading. The two-tone blue towel repeats the pattern throughout. The second has tabby weft stripes separated by white pattern repeats. For the third, I thought I'd experiment with weaving the twill as an overshot, doubling each pattern throw. It's my favourite! And because she performed so nicely on her trial run, Daisy received a reward: brand-new inserted-eye heddles, 174 on each of four shafts. Next up is another overshot, and if you've been following along for any length of time, you may recall that overshot and summer-and-winter are my preferred weave structures. Managing two boat shuttles turned out to be easier than I'd thought.

Solving the Tension Issue

Day 85: A Leksand loom is not the easiest thing to warp with even tension due to the fact that the threads go from the roller, wrap around the posts, pass through a rigid heddle, go over a separator or through string heddles before being attached to the cloth roller. I've tried several different methods, but even using the best of them, I still wind up with major tension issues. We're talking random threads sagging by inches, not just a few which aren't tight enough. Well, I finally hit on a solution. Every time I advance the warp, I loosen the warp roller and work the slack back toward it until I have even tension all the way across, then snap on a couple of bag clips...yep, the kind you use to close the potato chip sack...before winding the warp back on with a few twists in it to hold the threads securely against the roller. I use two clips for added security, and it's working perfectly.

Two Shuttle Adventure

Day 77: A couple of days ago, I told Ed, "It feels like I've known Daisy all my life, and we've just got back together again." I think this is due in part to the fact that she's smaller...a "me-sized" loom...not just in width but in height. And although she seems dainty in ways, she's strong and reliable when it comes down to it. I am comfortable with her in the manner shared by old friends, and I found myself weaving on her without a thought of this being our introduction to one another. I finished up the first towel yesterday, 30 inches of a fairly simple twill pattern, and as I put in the last throws and finished the hemstitching, it seemed to me that we...or rather, I was ready for a new challenge. To that end, I decided to work with two boat shuttles to get the hang of changing colours before leaping into an overshot project. This means carrying the idle colour up the selvedge, a process which has always required much arm-waving and shoulder stress when working with stick shuttles. I wasn't sure how much of a learning curve there might be when using boat shuttles instead, but as it worked out, it's a lot easier, as well as being kinder to a rebuilt shoulder. Overshot should be the proverbial "piece of cake."

Boat-Shuttle Capable

Day 75: While it is theoretically possible to use a boat shuttle on a loom without a race on the front of the beater bar, my experience with trying it did not end on a positive note. I've owned five (?) large looms in my life, and Daisy is the first one to have that "ledge." The threads in the lower portion of the shed should rest on it so that the shuttle can glide smoothly over them when thrown along the race. It takes a bit of practice, and as I learned quickly, Daisy is a very sensitive lady. If I rest a foot on the next treadle to be used as I have gotten in the habit of doing over the years, it may bring threads from a different shed into play. I'm developing a technique of sliding my inactive foot back as the active foot depresses the desired treadle, but sometimes my timing gets a little off and I throw the shuttle before the shed is "clean." Picking out an erroneous throw is not as easy with a boat shuttle as it is with a stick shuttle, believe me! That said, a boat shuttle is faster. I already have a foot woven on the first towel in this trial run. Like people, every loom has its own character which may be why so many of us name them. I'm learning Daisy's peculiarities and personality quickly, and I expect to spend many happy years with her.

Dressing Daisy for Christmas

Day 73: Daisy is almost dressed for Christmas! For this first trial run, I'll be weaving a Finnish twill (p. 37, Handweaver's Pattern Book, green version), and will only be making two towels roughly 30" in length before shrinking. Because I have to leave the raddle in place to compensate for a bow in the back beam (it will be replaced soon), I had to allow a little extra yardage as loom waste, so I measured the warp at 12'. That should give me plenty of space to weave a sample or perhaps even a placemat, and any thrums will be used either on a rigid heddle loom if they're long enough, or to make bands. Daisy was an absolute dream to warp, but for one small "operator error." I've become so used to winding warp on Max's overhead beam that I got the stick on the wrong side of the back beam, and when I started to wind on, it took me a minute to realize why it wouldn't work. D'uh! The warp goes OVER the back beam, not under it! See? Fifty-plus years of weaving and I can still make beginner mistakes with the best of 'em. In any event, threading is next, and I'll be weaving on Christmas unless the storm carries me away.

A Latvian Design

Day 72: I don't recall where I found this design, but I copied it down in my own weaver's shorthand on a sticky note, and taped it inside the front cover of an inkle-weaving book. I've made several iterations of it in different colours (this is my favourite combination) and using a variety of techniques including inkle and backstrap. Despite looking rather complex, it is a very easy pickup pattern. The threading is 2 red, 2 green, 2 yellow, 2 blue, 2 yellow, 1 green, 1 yellow, 1 green, 2 yellow, 2 blue, 2 yellow, 2 green, 2 red (a total of 23 threads), and is threaded in the normal fashion (hole/slot/hole/slot, etc.). The two single green threads near the center are manipulated every third pass, either pushing them down out of the way when they're in the upper layer of the shed (leaving the red to appear as a dash), or lifting them up from underneath when they appear in the lower layer of the shed. The band is functionally identical front and back. I was uncertain how pickup weaving would behave on the tape loom given that one changes hands with each pick, but actually, it's the same as weaving it with a backstrap loom, and not at all difficult or awkward.