Avalanche

Day 138: Last night, I dreamt I was caught in an avalanche. Is it any wonder? There is one in my front flower bed, emerging from the recent showers of snow and hail as a drift of nodding bells. If not as colourful as the crocuses, they are left alone by the deer and raccoons whose ravages taught me not to replant their snack bar, although it took several years for the lesson to sink in. Suffice to say that I was happy when I found "volunteer" snowdrops in a corner of the forest where they had been discarded by some land owner, and relocated a trowel's-worth to my garden. I have since divided them, placing another grouping in the shady niche where Skunk, my old kitty, is laid to rest. She has violets, grape hyacinth and a smattering of daffodils as well. In the spring, I travel with a shovel/trowel, bucket or box or plastic bags as asked by the specific journey. You never know what cast-off treasure you might find, begging to be lifted from ignominy and given a nurturing home.

Snow Cats

Day 137: Spring in the Pacific Northwest means weather. What kind of weather? You name it. In our history, we have had 80-degree days in February and we have had temperatures below zero (that's 26 and -18 to you Celsius types). We have had three feet of snow on the ground. We have had flood-producing rain. I've never suntanned in February, but then, this is the Pacific Northwest. "We don't tan; we rust," or so the saying goes. And conversely, we have had snow and killing frosts in June. Was I surprised to see snow on my pussywillows a few days ago? Not particularly. Was I surprised yesterday by the pea-sized hail which chattered so loudly on the metal awning over my back porch that it sounded like Animal playing the drums? Nope. I just shrugged and said, "Eh, February." Now that said, February weather is a little more consistent as you move up in altitude, and sometimes the snow accumulation on the Mountain is pretty impressive. Record snowfall at Paradise was 1,122 inches in the year 1971-72. Go on, divide that by 12. That's ninety-three and a half feet of snow (no typo there...93.5 feet)! Of course, that fell over a 12-month period. Currently, Paradise has 212 inches on the ground according to the Snotel weather station. Seventeen feet may not be as impressive as ninety-three, but you can't really dismiss its significance.

In Memoriam

Day 136: "Planned obsolescence." That's what we used to call it when companies deliberately manufactured items to a lower standard so that they would wear out and need to be replaced. Consumerism was only beginning the meteoric phase of its rise when I purchased this mixer in the late 70s, and most people expected products to last them a lifetime (or at least close). In fact, many of us were using tools and equipment which had been handed down to us from our parents or in some cases, grandparents. However, the philosophy of consumerism was viewed as being "good for the economy," and products became less dependable.

Little Presto LN01-A lived a long and active life. His 50-year service was not diminished by his quirky, funky handle and, although his rich avocado hue had faded somewhat with the years, he could beat an eggwhite with the best of them up until two weeks ago. Perhaps affected by a yet-unidentified strain of mixer virus, he began to cough. His memory for speed settings faltered, but he struggled on valiantly when asked to assist with tapioca-making. It struck me that he was probably in the terminal phase, so I set about finding a replacement, and the decision was timely. Today, he spoke his last words while bringing eggwhites to stiff peaks, and died without meeting his successor.

Boxing The Compass

Day 135: Quite a few of my friends admit to being (as they put it themselves) "directionally challenged," a concept which both baffles me and causes me great consternation. Should I ask for instructions to get to their library, for example, they'll tell me to "turn left" off the main drag without asking which way I'll be heading. "Left" depends on the direction of travel in order to be interpreted correctly. If I'm travelling eastbound, "left" will take me north; if westbound, a left turn would route me south. Kinda makes it hard to find the destination, y'know?

Now I don't expect miracles here, but if you know the cardinal points of a compass (North, South, East and West), you should be able to figure out where NE, SE, SW and NW are. Being able to recite them in order clockwise/anticlockwise is called "boxing the compass," and mariners were once required to be able to recite not just the eight points I've listed, but the full 32 (in some cases, 128!) "winds": cardinal, intercardinal/ordinal, half-winds and quarter winds. Examples: NNE is a half-wind, halfway between N and NE, NbE ("North by East") is a quarter-wind E of N. I've 'shopped a 32-point windrose into the compass mirror for illustrative purposes. While you won't need to commit them all to memory for basic land navigation, your well-oriented friends will appreciate directions which cannot be misinterpreted to mean the opposite of what you intended.

Star Trek

Day 134: "Captain, I am detecting several objects of indeterminate nature off the port bow. They are keeping pace with our speed of warp five." Data's fingers danced across the console as he spoke, running a sequence of analyses as he attempted to identify the phenomenon. Picard's crisp order for the viewscreen cut across the other background voices on the bridge. "Sensors indicate an electrostatically charged field between the objects and the Enterprise, sir. It is interfering with obtaining a visual lock. They appear to be composed of hydrogen, oxygen and trace elements. One moment...the sensors show...no, that cannot possibly be correct...small amounts of the oil commonly found in Helianthus...Earth sunflowers, sir...and urates consistent with nitrogenous waste. With all due respect, sir, I believe humans would call that substance 'bird poop.'"

We picked up a light dusting of snow last night, with clouds dissipating by morning. The rising sun cast handsful of sparkling diamonds on the ground and, as usual, I tried to capture the glint and glimmer with the camera with no particular success. I retreated to the house to try again through the dirty glass of my east window, but the camera wanted to focus on the dust motes. As I panned in an attempt to find a cleaner gap, these objects hove into view; water droplets hanging from one of the shepherd's-hooks holding my bird feeders. Suddenly, I was transported into the world of Star Trek and a photographic adventure. Microcosm, macroscosm...who is to say in which we live?

Design-A-Crow

Day 133: I'm quite taken with South America pebble weave. Not only is it fun to do on the inkle loom, I like the highly stylized designs. Birds are a common motif, but none of the patterns I've found thus far resemble a crow. The only logical course of action was to make my own, keeping within the strictures of the style. The "stitches" are long and narrow, so as a general rule, the traditional designs also appear somewhat elongated. Creating a shorter, stouter outline for my namesake bird was the primary goal in order to make it recognizable as a corvid. Several experiments with beak position had to be picked back and rejected, and although I was satisfied with the design on the left, I thought the beak looked like it belonged on a parrot rather than a crow or raven. Out of necessity, I reverted to the typical representation shown on the right: upturned, cawing to the sky. I also wanted to keep within the limits of 21 pattern threads, another factor which tends to stretch designs lengthwise. While my final draft might only be recognizable as a crow to someone who could make the association between the motif and my name, at least it doesn't look like a hummingbird. Now comes the second part of the challenge: reading the pattern the opposite direction to make the birds face right and left alternately. When I'm done, I'll have a custom strap for my ukulele/blues box guitar.

Give Me A Fulcrum

Day 132: "Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it and I shall move the world" (or as I learned it as a child, "Give me a fulcrum and I will move the Earth"). Archimedes was speaking in reference to the simplest of mechanical devices, a beam of some sort which pivots on a fixed point. And that is all you need to know about the operation of a loom.

Okay, maybe that's a slight exaggeration. The mechanics of loom construction actually involves compound levers, i.e., those which operate other levers which may in turn operate yet another set of levers. In a rising-shed loom, a treadle (foot pedal) is depressed, pulling down on one end of a jack (B), causing the opposite end (C, raised) to lift. The jack raises a frame (harness) holding a series of heddles (E). The tops of the metal bars on which the heddles are mounted in the harness is shown in (D). This creates a triangular gap between two layers of threads (the shed). The shuttle bearing the weft thread passes through the shed, the treadle is released to lower the jack, and the harness resumes its resting position. More than one harness can be raised at once or, depending on the tie-up (the way the treadles are attached to the jacks), a single treadle may operate a pair of harnesses. Unwoven warp is supplied from the back beam (A), and the finished fabric is wound onto the cloth beam (F), both of which are operated by yet another type of lever, the ratchet. Leverage. Pretty simple when you think about it.

Horticulture In Action

Day 131: Emboldened by my success at producing one rooted slip of contorted filbert in my entire horticultural history with the tree using multiple methods over a period of five or six years, I set out this morning to determine whether the experiment was repeatable or only a fluke. Since soil layering had been the only means with which I'd had any luck, I made eight "staples" out of aluminum wire, tied flagger tape to them (it won't fade like the cloth strips did), and headed out into light drizzle with a trowel, a sharp knife, rooting hormone and assorted other pieces of gardening gear to tackle the project. I was able to find eight conveniently contorted bends in branches close to the ground, scraped wounds on the bottoms of each twig and dosed it with Rootone, then buried each one two to three inches deep, mounding dirt donated by the resident mole around each staple before packing it down. Now the project is in Ma Nature's hands. The timing is right. The sap is running. New growth has begun. Will I have to wait five years again to get results? If that's what it takes, I have the patience for the task.

Layered At Last!

Day 130: If western Washington records an 8.5 earthquake this afternoon, that was me upon discovering that my horticultural labours have finally been rewarded. Yes, that is a rooted slip of Harry Lauder's Walking Stick, Corylus avellana "Contorta," the fruit of a soil-layering attempt begun in 2016! It is the only one of ten to take root. Two years ago, I thought it felt like it was attached to the ground, but I didn't want to disturb it until it had had a chance to establish. I still wasn't completely convinced last year. Today when I checked on it, there was no doubt: it had formed a good root system and was ready to move to Phase Two, i.e., being transplanted to a sunken pot where it will remain for another year before being put in its permanent location. I believe this was one of the slips I treated with rooting hormone although the colour had faded entirely from the cloth strips I'd used as indicators of "treated" vs. "untreated." Given the difficulty I've had propagating Harry using every method known to man but grafting, I think it's safe to assume that this must have been one of the treated twigs. Soil layering, for those of you unfamiliar with the procedure, is done by burying a living twig in soil, leaving it attached to the parent plant until a root system forms. It is sometimes helpful to create a wound on the lower portion of the buried piece as I did in this instance. The wound stimulates a healing response. I am ecstatic! Now let's see if I can do it again.

My Yellow Bloomers

Day 129: Wanna see my yellow bloomers? Here they are: Huernia zebrina and (where did we leave off with those damn taxonomists on the Latin?) an encore from the Christmas cactus. My crafts room/loom room faces south and offers one small window for a cactus shelf. It's cooler back there in the wintertime, which is exactly what many cacti need to come into flower. If not engaged in a weaving project, I have been known to miss flowering until withered blooms had fallen to the floor, but as a general rule, when the shelf's occupants decide they want to put on a show, they are moved to the fireplace mantel where I can admire them until they fade. For those of you who may remember the horticultural experiment involving two varieties of Christmas cactus begun over two years ago, Yellow is still holding on to one of the seed pods, and I am patiently waiting for it to mature. The second seed pod dropped without forming seed. I have greater hope for the second, although whether the seed will be viable remains to be seen. Even if it is, I cannot guarantee that the hybrid will even bloom.

Quilting Bee

Day 128: As close friends will tell you, my mind works in strange ways. Oftentimes when I make a joke, it goes undetected for weeks (sometimes forever) before the person to whom it was directed says, "Oh, NOW I get it! That's what you meant." As a general rule, my humour involves word-play in some form or another, even when it translates to the visual in my quilts. Nearly all of my quilts have contained some private chuckle which, if you don't think like a Crow will probably never be recognized. For example, the quilt I'm currently piecing contains several nursery rhymes, including the Owl (obvious) and the Pussycat (also obvious) who went to sea (a nautical motif) in a beautiful pea-green boat (fabric colour but no boat, alas), all pieces within the same block. I don't plan it that way; it just seems to occur as I'm selecting fabrics for assembly. Sometimes the "joke" appears in the stitching, as above. It came to me as an afterthought one day as I was stitching the hexagon quilt. Flipped over to the plain white back, the honeycomb design was too obvious to let go unremarked. I decided it needed a bee...you know, a "quilting bee"...somewhere. Shown with a needle for scale, how long do you think it will take before the recipient of this quilt finds it?

South American Pebble Weave

Day 127: A pebbled or speckled pattern in the background is characteristic of a number of different regional styles of weaving historically practiced in South America, and you will find it variously called "Guatemalan," "Bolivian," Peruvian" depending on the reference and usually with either adjective ("pebbled" or "speckled") preceding it. The geographic distinction seems to lie at least partly in the type and weight of the threads used to create the motifs, i.e., doubled threads of the same weight as used here, single threads of a heavier weight or ply and so on. In any case, the background, border and weft threads are functionally finer to allow the pattern (motif) threads to dominate the weaving. Typically, these motifs are highly stylized and elongated. The design on the left is "corn" (growing in a flower pot?) and the bird on the right appears to be a roadrunner or one of its kin. Both designs appear in "The Weaver's Inkle Pattern Directory" by Anne Dixon, a marvelous resource covering many different styles of inkle weaving.

Pebble is a heavily manipulated weave. On almost every row, the weaver must drop or lift pattern threads from one layer of the shed to the other. Warp floats in the motifs generally cross three weft passes, sometimes four or five (longer floats tend to snag, and are therefore not practical). The "pebbles" are picked up in the background on every other pass of the shuttle, staggered so that they do not occur one above the other in this particular style. Although this is rather time-consuming and requires the weaver's strict attention, I find it a very enjoyable process.

Inspired By Valentine's Day

Day 126: The advantage to hanging a long, plain warp (in this case, a natural 8/2 cotton) on a bird's-eye draft is that you can change up both the pattern and the colours if you plan to make more than one item. In this case, I strung 15' to yield six hand-towels, allowing for hems and loom waste. I finished the second one on the weekend (my "loom room" gets kinda chilly at this time of year) and had not yet decided what pattern or colour to use for the third. Perhaps thoughts of Valentine's Day gave me a nudge, but as I stood with the fiber cupboard door open and the cones ranked on their shelves, an idea began to form in the back of my mind. After fiddling with several options, picking them back when they didn't suit, I settled on a rather simple treadling sequence interspersed with tabby bands, alternating colours every two throws. What might have been a rather boring exercise in shuttle-passing and selvedge-monitoring as well as a less-than-interesting overall design for the towel came to life as a weaver's valentine.

Snowflakes

Day 125: After I published the draft for my maple leaf design to illustrate the disproportion between squares on paper and elongated warp threads in the actual weaving, a friend said he'd like to see the snowflake I had only described. I counselled him to patience, knowing what was coming. And come it did, a blanket roughly 8-9 inches thick, demanding a shovelling exercise in order to reach the bird feeders. Most of it is still out there, although it's turned soggy and is busily compacting into a layer of ice. Meanwhile, I'm staying warm indoors, weaving merrily away at three different types of loom, checking my supply cupboard occasionally as I wonder what will give out first, COVID or my supply of fibers. I'm amazed at how large a dent I've put in the stockpile of 8/2 cotton. So for you, Rob, the snowflakes. See how the design stretches lengthwise when translated into thread when tablet-woven? I could weave 1:1 on the floor loom, but because tablet-weaving is warp-faced, it has to be thought out in something closer to 3:1 proportions (the squared-up snowflake is actually 14 x 5 in the draft).

Krokbragd On An Inkle Loom

Day 124: Eight inches of snow is a wonderful motivator. I polished off both my inkle loom project and the tablet-weaving piece hung over the small rigid heddle, leaving my schedule open for a new challenge: krokbragd on an inkle loom. Like the Monk's Belt, krokbragd is a weft-faced weave when created on a standard loom, but when you translate it to inkle-speak, it has to be turned so that it becomes warp-faced. In other words, the pattern appears as a result of the warp threads riding over the weft rather than vice versa. I've done krokbragd on both my floor loom and the rigid heddle, and although the results were satisfactory, the technique and more specifically, remembering where I'd left off frequently occasioned blue language. However, on the inkle loom, this Scandinavian style of weaving is dead-easy once you've set up the auxiliary heddles.

The quirk to inkling krokbragd is that you need three sheds. An inkle loom normally only provides two: up and down. Patterns like Monk's Belt and South American Pebble Weave can be made by lifting threads up from the lower half of the shed or pushing them down from the upper half, but in krokbragd, this would be too time-consuming and confusing. It is far easier to set up "artificial" sheds beforehand so that the warp can be manipulated with a quick, single hand-motion. In addition to the heddled threads the weaver sets up during warping, two additional sheds need to be created. The first is done by placing additional heddles on the desired threads, drawing them up through the warp in sequence and fastening them all together on a safety pin, stitch holder or short dowel (you might drop threads off a dowel, so be careful while weaving). The second shed is made by picking up alternate threads from those you just heddled, dropping the heddled threads under the pickup stick, while at the same time raising them above the remainder of the warp. Sounds complicated, doesn't it? Believe me, I made quite a few mistakes on the first pass. In the photo above, this shed (#2) is held on a carabiner. Shed #3 consists of the threads held by the blue nylon heddles on the safety pin. Note that both of these sheds are held behind the front top peg on my Ashford inkle loom. If you have a different style inkle loom, you may have a slightly different setup. Now, assuming you have all your ducks (heddles) in a row, you can begin weaving. You'll only need one colour, one shuttle and a cup of coffee or tea. Raise shed #2, make a throw. Lower shed #1, make a throw. Raise shed #3, make a throw. Raise shed #1 again, make a throw. Repeat this sequence of sheds to your heart's content: 2-1-3-1, 2-1-3-1, 2-1-3-1 and you're weaving krokbragd. I've used a cheap knitting worsted for both warp and weft to create the cute little "daisies" in the inset.

Birbs In Snow

Day 123: Whether or not Varied Thrush (Ixoreus naevius) qualifies as a "birb" might be a matter of some conjecture, but I will argue that the definition of "cute round little bird" can be extended to include the pair (male and female) which have come to my yard with the snow. The size of an American Robin, they might not fall within the scope of "little," but stood up next to an eagle or an ostrich, the logic of using the term would be inarguable. "Round" is unassailable; the fluffed-out feathers define as globose an object as you are likely to find in nature if you omit the tail, beak and feet. "Pudgy" would be unkind. In any event, Thrush are something of an oddity at my feeders, their customary habitat being the surrounding forests where their melodious single-note call will chime in the months of spring; not yet, although this male seems to have already selected his mate. The female wears somewhat drabber garb, her colours not so bright so that she can better conceal herself in flecked light and shadow. That said, these two images show the male's mottled orange and grey flanks, his vivid wing-bars and dark breast band which even an amateur birder could not attribute to a robin. I couldn't choose which birb pose I preferred.

'Shroom-Sicle

Day 122: Had it not been for a little ray of sunshine, I might have missed this. In fact, I did miss it on the first pass, although the fact that I chose to walk around the right side of the tree instead of the left when the trail gave me both options might have been responsible for the oversight. On my way back from Big Bridge, a fine needle of sunlight angled through the quilted overstory of hemlock and Douglas-fir to center like a searchlight's beam directly on this ice-encrusted specimen of Pseudohydnum gelatinosum (commonly known as Cat's-tongue). My camera battery was almost dead and I knew I had less than a minute to capture its frosty beauty before the fragment of sunlight disappeared, so I dropped to my knees in the mud even as I was changing settings. How I had managed to be in the forest with both camera batteries in terminal condition is another matter: a banana peel on the path of my attention to small details like recharging, and the unavoidability of Murphy's Law. In any event, I got half a dozen snaps before losing the light, and figured wet, dirty pantlegs were worth the sacrifice if even one of the shots turned out. As I stepped around the tree in the middle of the trail, I found another older, browner specimen also encased in ice, and a question rose in the back of my mind when I noticed that the shelf fungus adjacent to it was not icy, nor was the moss or any of the other vegetation in the area. What conditions prevailed that only Pseudohydnum gelatinosum turned into a popsicle? Why?

Frozen Fungus-Pops

Day 121: It was a cold and frosty morning when I hiked out to Big Bridge, and I was not expecting to find fungi in the heart of winter, but within a few yards of the trailhead, I noticed a grouping of small greyish-brown 'shrooms with white dots on their caps. I may not be an expert mycologist, but their size and shape immediately ruled out the possibility that they were Amanitas (the genus known for its white-spotted caps), so I bent over to take a closer look. The spots were ice: fine, hair-like tendrils of ice, sometimes clustered together, sometimes fanning apart so that individual threads could be seen (note the grouping on the left shoulder of the mushroom on the right). There is a phenomenon known as "hair-ice" which is caused by a fungus, but it occurs on wood, not on mushrooms. I was puzzled by the ice on these 'shrooms and spent much of my hike wondering why it had taken this form. I came up with a theory: that it occurred when guttation droplets froze. Some researchers believe that guttation occurs in fungi as a means to rid themselves of excess moisure. It was a stretch, but perhaps it is possible that a drop in temperature coincided with a guttation event. Unfortunately, I have no way to prove or disprove the hypothesis. I guess I'll just have to enjoy them for what they are: frozen fungus-pops (consumption not advised).

Big Bridge On A Frosty Morning

Day 120: Let's step away from the loom for a bit to take a walk up to Big Bridge. It spans Sahara Creek where the Lower Elk Spur Trail crosses it and then begins to climb into Elbe Hills to connect with Upper Elk Spur and a maze of logging roads. It might not be the most pleasant hike in the world because this trail system was designed for people who enjoy the backcountry from horseback, but if I can break away from watching where I step to look at the surroundings, it'll do in a pinch for a brief moment of "forest bathing." It's fairly close to home, so close that I decided to walk to the trailhead (a distance of three miles one way), conserving gas for more important outings and giving myself a little more exercise in the process. Perhaps I bit off slightly more than I could conveniently chew after months of inactivity. Perhaps I should have turned around short of my goal, but such is not my nature. I pushed on to Big Bridge even when I knew the bottoms of my feet were beginning to blister. Upon returning to pavement an hour later, I began to regret my decision despite the magnificent ice-encrusted mushrooms I'd discovered along the path. As I hobbled back home on three miles of unforgiving asphalt, I told myself I should have known better. This is what happens when you stretch "halfway" to "three-fifths."

Overshot Weaving

Day 119: Overshot weaving is a technique in which floats of pattern thread ride above a contrasting background of plain (tabby) weave. It has a number of variations, each with their own name, but the principle is the same when weaving on a standard loom: one throw of a heavier weft is followed by a tabby throw of the lighter thread to lock the pattern thread in place. However, when adapting overshot to a warp-faced weaving method such as inkle weaving, the process has to be "stood on its head" so that the warps create the floats rather than the weft. I had not done any overshot on the inkle loom, so I decided to go all-out and picked up the challenge of weaving Celtic knots in the style known as "Monk's Belt." It took the better part of the morning and a lot of picking back before I'd gained confidence in the technique, but as you can see, it is now progressing nicely. The pattern thread is less than optimal, knitting worsted being rather "grabby" and requiring a lot of coaxing when trying to open a shed, but it was what I had on hand and it wouldn't have busted the piggy bank if I'd decided to cut it off and throw it away. My next piece of Monk's Belt will use a smoother thread for the floats, but the same 8/2 cotton for the background.

Take The Shuttle

Day 118: A weaver has a wide assortment of options when they want to take the shuttle, and each one has its points both pro and con. Personally, I prefer stick shuttles (center) because I'm a cheapskate. They're relatively inexpensive when compared to boat shuttles (not shown because I don't own any). Boat shuttles, as you might infer from the name, look something like a boat, specifically a canoe or kayak (often without a bottom). They feed the thread out more evenly than other types of shuttle by means of a bobbin which fits lengthwise in the hollow space. The walls of the shuttle protect the thread from excessive abrasion against the warp. However, boat shuttles are pricey and a pain in the neck to wind unless you own a winder (an additional expense), so no, I won't be shuttling by boat any time soon.

Stick shuttles are usually made of wood. I've never seen plastic ones, but I see no reason plastic wouldn't work. In a pinch...let's say all your shuttles are wound with thread already and you don't really want to unwind it in order to free one up (a common problem among weavers)...in a pinch, an old yardstick or a piece of cardboard can be used instead. Closely related to stick shuttles are belt-weaving shuttles. The difference is that a belt-weaving shuttle has one or both edges pared down to a narrow edge. This allows the shuttle to be used as a beater when backstrap weaving, tablet-weaving or inkle weaving. My favourite style is the one wound with green thread in the photo on the right and also second from the left in the same image. Both edges are thin, and the shuttle is flat on one side and gently curved on the other. Nevertheless, the disadvantage to stick shuttles is that they like to dispense either too much or too little thread with each throw, often leaving the weaver in a tangle reminiscent of a cat with a ball of yarn.

Sometimes the selected weft is too heavy to wind onto a stick shuttle in any quantity. If you're using bulky yarn or strips of fabric, you'll want to wind them onto a rag shuttle (left), so named because they are widely employed when weaving rag rugs. Mine are vintage, a gift from one of my sisters-of-the-heart. For the record, let me say that no weaver ever has enough shuttles. Not ever.

Beat It!

Day 117: While I'm working on setting up a couple of new projects to replace the tablet-weaving and inkle I've just completed, we can step into my crafts room and have a look at the process of weaving on a floor or table loom. I've mentioned beating the fibers into place and how the reed keeps them spaced as a certain sett of threads per inch (the latter more commonly referred to as "ends per inch" or "dents per inch," "epi" and "dpi" respectively). The weaver determines which reed to use based on suggestions from the fiber manufacturer or from experience. In this case, I am using a 15-dent reed and 8/2 cotton to make a series of dish towels. It's a combination I use frequently. The photo shows my last throw (also known as a "pick") only partways into being beaten against the fell line (the previous row). I passed the shuttle bearing the blue thread from right to left and will bring the wooden frame holding the metal reed (the beater bar) against it firmly to pack it into place. Then I will change the shed by depressing another pair of treadles so that I can make a throw from left to right in pattern.

You might notice that I've left a slight arc in the thread as it crosses the warps. This helps keep the selvedges of the cloth from drawing in and becoming more narrow as the weaving progresses. I have to brag a little: I got top marks for my selvedges in the judging at the Washington State Fair. It's a skill I've worked hard to master. Now as for "beating," the word is slightly misleading, although in this particular instance, the 8/2 cotton demands a pretty strong hand at this sett. Other fibers may ask to be gently pressed into place in order to prevent breakage or undue abrasion. Many fibers will "full" with washing as well, swelling to fill up the gaps between threads which are obvious when the fabric is raw. Whenever using a fiber for the first time, it is always advisable to weave a test swatch or at least treat a bundle of the threads in the manner they can expect in their new life as whole cloth. This will prevent any unpleasant surprises like shrinkage or colour-bleed.

Drafted!

Day 116: I've been throwing the word "draft" around quite a bit without going into detail as to its meaning in the context of weaving other than to call it the "pattern" the weaver follows. Depending on the type of loom being used, a draft can be relatively simple like those used in tablet-weaving, or it may contain several layers of information when applied to weaving on a standard loom. Let's talk about tablet-weaving drafts first, because they're the easiest to explain.

On the left, you can see where I've drawn Xs on a piece of graph paper and have made a few marginal notes. The marginal notes are not included in a draft ordinarily; they are only there for my reference, telling me how many threads I need to rotate to begin the pattern, and which direction the first card is turned. You may also have noticed that there is a substantial difference between the short, wide, inked design and the weaving itself. That is due to the fact that the actual lengthwise span of the threads is tall and thin rather than being square like the spaces on the graph paper. Many weavers choose to use two squares to represent a single thread rather than one, but even that is usually less than proportional. I've taught myself to make the mental adjustment, although I will say that I picked back my first trial maple leaves at least half a dozen times before settling on this final design. That said, another piece of information is missing from my draft, something I've done so many times that I don't need to note it: the layout for drawing the variously-coloured threads through the cards. Because of the way I am weaving, I have holes A and B threaded with yellow and holes C and D threaded with rust throughout. Other card-weaving designs require different threadings, and their drafts will note that. Card-weaving drafts also include the direction each card is threaded, and whether it is to be turned backward or forward.

When weaving on a standard loom, other notations must be included as well. The draft tells the weaver which heddles to thread with each warp, how many repeats there are in the pattern, what the treadling sequence is, and most importantly, what the tie-up sequence is. Each treadle is connected to a harness (remember, the harnesses hold the heddles), and when the treadle is depressed, the harness is raised to form the shed. The standard tie-up is 1-2-3-4, i.e., treadle 1 is connected to harness 1 and so on. In a tabby (plain) weave, the treadling sequence is 1-3, 2-4. This raises alternate threads with each change. But let's say you attached treadle 2 to harness 3 and vice versa. If you depressed the treadle, a different set of threads would be raised, and the weave would no longer be tabby. Many four-shaft looms actually have six treadles. Treadles 5 and 6 can be tied to harnesses 1-3 and 2-4 respectively as a shortcut (two harnesses to a treadle). Likewise, one treadle might even be attached to three harnesses if the weaver was going to have a recurrent pattern of long floats.

Oftentimes, multiple patterns can be woven using a single threading sequence and tie-up. The secret is in the order of treadling. This allows the weaver to change horses in mid-stream as it were, weaving a diamond, following it with a tabby section, throwing in a line of dots, all within the scope of the same draft. Some very interesting patterns have emerged in the history of weaving when a weaver forgot to change the tie-up or treadled out of order.

Weave Structure

Day 115: Now that you have some idea how a loom works, let's examine some of the weave structures you can create. Then I want you to look at the fabrics in your home. I think you'll gain a greater appreciation of what can be done simply by laying one set of threads acoss another.

The upper left photo shows plain weave, also known as tabby. It's your basic over-and-under weave, one over one, similar to weaving a basket. However, the term "basket weave" is usually used by weavers to signify multiple threads in the same ratio, i.e., two over two, three over three and so on. Did you make potholders on a Looper Loom when you were in grade school? That was tabby weave. The piece in the upper right corner is also tabby weave, although if you zoom in, you will see slight gaps separating groups of three threads. The threads came through the heddles as "one up, one down," but because the linen asked for a finer sett (45 ends per inch) and my smallest reed is 15 dents per inch, I had to pull them through in groups. This separation would be less obvious once the piece was washed and "fulled" to plump up the fibers. The sample came from my weaving files; the finished pieces were given as a gift to some fortunate soul whose name I did not record (bad me).

Center top is a piece of krokbragd woven on a rigid heddle. As mentioned in an earlier post, this is a weft-faced weave. The warp used in this piece was 8/4 cotton, aka "rug warp." The 8 denotes the weight of each strand and the 4 indicates that four strands were plied together to make the final product. You will see numbers like this on any yarn designed for weaving. Most of my weaving is done with 8/2 cotton with a softer twist. The tablecloth (center left) is an example of 8/2. Note the diagonal structure of the weave. This is known as a four-shaft twill.

The center image showcases a bedspread woven in overshot. To many weavers, overshot is the ultimate test of a weaver's skill. The heavier fiber (here, a green wool) floats above a background of cotton tabby. The weaver makes one pass with the background material, then one with the pattern thread, then another background pass to bind the pattern thread in place, then another pattern thread throw. Meticulous attention must be paid to the sequence, and also to the firmness with which each thread is beaten into place. The goal is to achieve perfectly square repeats. Below it (center bottom, blue on white) is a related structure, called simply "A German Pattern" of block weave in the Handweaver's Pattern Book (the bible of weaving). Again, the pattern should form a perfect square.

Right center is "Summer and Winter," woven in heavy cotton. Summer and Winter weaves are reversible, the back showing the exact opposite of the front.

The curious weave in the lower left corner was executed by my mother on a rigid-heddle loom. It was something of a puzzle to me until recently when I discovered one of her books in my library, a book I didn't realize I had. There, to my surprise, was the draft for what she called "little guys." I haven't woven it yet, but it's on my agenda. As a sidebar here, I should mention that my mother did not teach me to weave. We each took it up at roughly the same time. She elected to work on rigid-heddle, and I bought my four-shaft Schacht table loom. Her preference was for heavier fibers and quick results, while I usually settled in for the long term with longer warps and finer threads.

The image in the lower right shows an unusual boundweave technique in which two layers of cloth are woven together to form a double-thick fabric, reversible with the pattern being exactly opposite on the back. It is tedious to weave, to say the least, and not particularly interesting in the end.

Manipulation

Day 114: Warp threads have a trait in common with many of our spouses and friends: they can generally be manipulated into doing things they wouldn't ordinarily consider doing, given a little gentle coercion. When weavers talk about "manipulated weaves," they are referring to a technique where warp threads are brought to the surface or drawn down from it by hand to allow the weft thread to dominate that space. Certainly, surface patterns can be set up with heddles alone, but let's say you wanted to put cute little trees along the bottom edge of a scarf while working the remainder of the cloth in a different pattern. How would you go about it? On a standard loom or rigid heddle, you could "collect" some threads from the upper or lower layer using a pickup stick to bring them into the opposite layer for one pass of the shuttle. When the stick was removed, they would return to their normal position and weaving could continue in the normal fashion. The photo on the right shows this principle in action. I have lifted threads from the bottom layer so that when the stick is turned on edge, they become part of the "roof" of the shed. When the shuttle passes through the shed, they are captured on the surface of the cloth as floats. The photo on the left shows the same principle being employed on the inkle loom. My fingers dive down to pick up threads from the lower layer because I want them to float on top. In subsequent passes, I will pick up different threads from below in order to form a diamond pattern on the face of the band. It's not the job those warps were originally assigned, but they are willing to do it if I ask them nicely.

Floats And Faces

Day 113: Now that you understand the difference between warp (lengthwise threads) and weft (those which run across the cloth), let's explore the ways they can interact with one another. The number of patterns which can be created by raising some threads and lowering others is almost limitess, and by changing the type of thread or the number of threads per inch either horizonally or vertically opens out an even wider field of possibilities.

In the upper left, the photo shows a pattern woven on a traditional bird's-eye draft. What does that mean? In tabby (plain) weave, the threads cross each other in a very simple 1:1 pattern. The heddles are set up to raise every other thread in alternation, i.e., to form sheds of threads 1 and 3, then threads 2 and 4. The shuttle is passed at each change and a simple over-and-under weave emerges. But what if the weaver raised threads 1 and 2 on the first pick, then 2 and 3, then 3 and 4, and finally 4 and 1? If you took a piece of graph paper and coloured in the appropriate squares, you'd see that a diagonal line results. This is how a "four-shaft twill" is woven. That said, this assumes that you have run your warp threads through the heddles held in harnesses 1, 2, 3 and 4 in a repeating sequence. What if you used a different sequence to accommodate a multiple of six threads, e.g, running them through heddles 1, 2, 3, 4, 3 and finally 2 before starting the sequence at 1 again? You could still weave a plain weave by raising 1 and 3 alternately with 2 and 4 (the cream-coloured stripe in the photo), or you could create any of a number of different surface patterns by raising different combinations (the red and lavender bands are just one example). When the weft passes over more than one warp thread, it is referred to as a "float" because it floats above the background. Setting up the heddles is the most critical part of any weaving. A mistake in following the draft (pattern) will show up throughout the whole cloth. Once you're past that point, it's easy sailing.

Can you have warp floats instead of weft floats? Certainly! They are common in inkle weaving because it is warp-faced, i.e., the warp threads dominate the weaving, as opposed to a balanced weave where warp and weft share the spotlight. When creating an inkle band, warp threads are brought to the surface on throws where they would not occur in the natural shed, thus being forced to lay above the weft thread (diamonds, upper right). Tablet-weaving is also warp-faced (lower left), but the pattern is determined by the manner in which the colours are threaded through the cards and then turned into position. In both inkle and tablet, the weft threads are almost entirely concealed.

In contrast to balanced or warp-faced weaves, krokbragd (lower right, a Scandinavian development) is weft-faced. It can be made on a standard loom or rigid heddle, and employs three different sheds. The weft is beaten into place very firmly and covers the warp threads completely. The end product is a very dense and durable cloth suitabe for wall hangings, rugs, bags, etc.

Loom Types

Day 112: Gosh, here I am, rambling on about heddles and sheds, and I haven't shown you the most important part: the looms themselves! And forgive me, I had finished assembling the collage before realizing that I'd left out backstrap, so you'll just have to imagine a simple warp attached to a hook on one end and my waist on the other.

When I'm ready to engage in a serious weaving project which requires a long warp and a time commitment of several weeks or even months, I set it up on my four-foot floor loom (top left). This beast occupies the better part of my crafts room which, despite the name, is not a room where I do crafts, but rather the space in which all my supplies are kept. A floor loom needs a home of its own. It's not the type of thing you put in your living room for several reasons. One, it won't leave much room for guests and two, the act of weaving generates an uncommon amount of lint as the fibers rub against each other and against the parts of the loom. If you are thinking about getting a floor loom, you might want to ask yourself what it would be like to have a St. Bernard in the house. Right. Moving on, then.

A far more reasonable consideration for the casual hobbyist weaver would be a table loom. The distinction between it and a floor loom is somewhat loosely defined because many table looms can be mounted on floor stands, and kits are available for some to convert from jack operation (hand levers) to treadles, essentially turning the "table" model into a floor loom. Better to think of it as a matter of size. A table loom fits on a table. A floor loom does not. My table loom is shown center bottom, currently unwarped because I have a project on the floor loom. You can see the jack levers at the center top, two up and two down.

Rigid heddle looms (left and right bottom) are very portable and a good place for a novice weaver to begin. They are built to be used on a table-top, but can also be mounted in a floor stand. Table space being at something of a premium around here, both of mine are on stands. Although the one on the left is being used in the customary fashion while I weave a scarf, the one on the right holds a tablet-weaving project, its warps weighted with water-filled Gatorade bottles (the same warp-stretching method I use to warp my floor and table looms by myself). A major difference between standard weaving looms and rigid-heddle looms is in the heddles. Metal straps, wires or strings are used to hold the warp threads in sequence on a standard loom. These heddles slide along bars in the harness frame, permitting the weaver to use almost any size thread which will pass through the eye. On the other hand, a rigid heddle is exactly that: rigid, i.e., a piece of plastic with a set number of eyes and slots per inch. To change the number of threads per inch, the weaver has to swap out one rigid heddle for another of a different size. However, when using a floor/table loom, the number of threads per inch is determined by the reed, a slotted metal guide which is held in the beater bar. Weaver argot for this is "dents per inch," i.e., the number of slots in an inch of reed. It is important to note here that sometimes more than one warp thread is drawn through each dent. For example, I once wove a linen piece at 45 threads per inch, but since my finest reed was a 15-dent reed, each dent carried three warp threads.

Last in the collage is the inkle loom (upper right). Inkle looms are designed to make narrow bands for use as trims, straps or belts. The resulting product is similar to that produced by tablet-weaving, although generally not as thick. The warp threads are manipulated by hand on an inkle loom to form the shed through which the shuttle passes.

Making A Shed

Day 111: Today, we're going to make a shed. You won't need hammer and nails, nope, because when a weaver makes a shed, it means that they are using some type of device (dare I say "contraption?") to separate warp threads into two layers, one above the other. When using a standard loom, this is effected by means of foot-operated treadles or hand-operated jacks which in turn raise or lower sets of heddles mounted in harnesses or frames. For the sake of clarity, I will shorten this to "raise" from here on out, and if you have a sinking-shed loom, you can just mentally substitute "lower" where it applies.

So...I heard somebody in the back say, "You're getting ahead of us here. What are these 'heddles' of which you speak?" Heddles come in a variety of forms and materials, but all perform the same function: each one carries a warp thread in sequence so that it can be raised or left idle as the weaver desires. The thread may pass through an eyelet as it does in the metal heddles on my floor loom (upper left), or eyelets and slots in alternation on a rigid-heddle loom (lower left), or the threads may be controlled by strings (shown upper right on an inkle loom). String heddles may also be used on other types of looms including floor looms, but lack the durability required for sustained weaving. In the case of tablet-weaving, rotating cards (lower right) are used to open the sheds. One way or another, raising heddled threads above unheddled threads form the shed through which the shuttle will be passed.

Commercially-produced heddles can be made of metal, wire, plastic or cord, and although cards aren't generally referred to as "heddles," they serve the same purpose. The meticulous threading of the heddles in a specified sequence is the true "work" of the weaver. Once that is done, most other actions are purely mechanical unless, of course, the pattern requires the weaver to manually pick up some threads to form a shed impossible to create with heddles alone. I'll discuss "manipulated weaves" in a future post.