Honeycomb On Rigid Heddle

Day 188: For once I wasn't tied up with other projects when it came time for the April Weave-Along. My shafted looms were full, yes, but honeycomb is easily woven on a rigid heddle loom using either two heddles or a single heddle with a pickup stick and a heddle rod. Although this loom can use two heddles, I decided to go with the last option for no particular reason. The honeycomb structure is also known as waffle-weave, the first term being used more often in the UK and the last in the US. There's really no difference, although I tend to think of "waffle" as having fewer warp floats between the cells. Theoretically, this was to be a runner, but after I had wet-finished it and the fibers softened, it seems to want to be a spring scarf instead. Sometimes weavings have a mind of their own.

Weaving Honeycomb

Day 172: With both shafted looms currently loaded with projects, I decided to do the April Weave-Along on my 16-inch rigid heddle. I suppose I could have set it up with two heddles, one functioning as one of the pickup sticks, but it was too much to think about, so I opted for using a heddle rod instead. To weave this particular pattern (cells of five up, five down), the pickup stick or the heddle rod are used with the main heddle in the up position, one row of cell sbeing formed with the pickup stick, and the staggered row of cells with the heddle rod. Each sequence is eight throws of the main colour, followed by a simple up/down made with the heavier dark blue thread. The sequence is as follows: *heddle in the up position with the pickup stick, heddle down* repeated four times; heddle up with heavy thread, heddle down with heavy thread; *heddle in the up position with the heddle rod lifted, heddle down* repeated four times; heddle up with heavy thread, heddle down with heavy thread. Honeycomb does not come into its own right until the tension is let down, and preferably, the piece has been given a good wash. Then the cells will be in greater relief. If desired, cells can be made narrower, wider, taller, shorter or in combination depending on the texture desired. It's a fun little weave!

Ready, Sett...Weave!

Day 166: Ready, sett...weave! I've missed the last several Weave-Alongs because my looms were all occupied with projects. Currently, both Max and Schacht are tied up (oops...accidental word-play there) with Friend Evelyn and Norse Kitchen respectively, but my 16" rigid heddle just happened to be empty. I'll be making a runner five feet long on 215 threads plus two floating selvedges using 8/2 cotton supplemented with 3/2 with a 15-dent reed. The draft is from Betty Linn Davenport's "Textures and Patterns for Rigid Heddle Looms." I dithered back and forth with the colour scheme, and right up to the last minute, I still wasn't settled. I picked up the nautical blue I had out and said, "Nope, that's just not what I want to do with this green." I had to choose between two aquas and went for the brighter one. I'm a little ahead of the game because we start on April 1, but since this is a fill-in project while I work on the overshots and finish binding a quilt I want to ship in the next two weeks, I decided to get warping out of the way. I won't start weaving the honeycomb until April. Promise!

Honeycomb And Flowers

Day 103: The Hexagon quilt was a joy to assemble and now that I'm well into the hand quilting of it, I have yet another reason to add it to my favourite patterns. It is proving to be much quicker to stitch than I'd anticipated, and I am roughly a quarter of the way done with it already. The measure of a quilter's skill can be better appreciated when the back side is presented to view. It is there that the design is shown to best advantage, as well as the regularity of the stitching. In this instance, I am only putting "daisies" in the gold center of each motif; the surrounding prints and white pieces are shadow-quilted, following the seams of the hexagons. On the back, the "beehive effect" is showcased by the cells, some of which contain precious "pollen" in the character of the flowers. I'm debating whether or not to add one strategically-placed bee just to see if the intended recipients notice.

Reinventing The Honeycomb

Day 60: Every winter, there comes a point when I say, "What in the world am I going to do for a blog post today?" As much as I'd like your daily feed to be one which educates and informs and is related to nature, it's not always possible for me to find subject matter when the weather dictates staying inside. In fact, it's sometimes even difficult to find things to keep myself entertained, let alone my demanding (~cough~) readership. But desperation is often a good motivator, and at least insofar as keeping my hands employed, I've found a project. Not content with making a boring old granny-square afghan to use up tag ends of yarn, I decided to create my own "honeycomb" pattern.

Bees are masters of architecture. The six-sided cells of a honeybee's comb make efficient use of space even while providing structural integrity many other shapes lack. Geometrically speaking, the honeycomb pattern requires less material to create a lattice within a given space. A similar structure occurs when soap bubbles intersect, if not as uniformly laid out. Drawing on our precious pollinators' lesson in efficiency, it took me half an hour to develop a pattern I liked. Maybe I was inspired by my grandmother's repetition of Isaac Watts' poem during my childhood:

How doth the little busy bee   
  Improve each shining hour,   
And gather honey all the day   
  From every opening flower.   

How skilfully she builds her cell;           
  How neat she spreads her wax,   
And labors hard to store it well   
  With the sweet food she makes.   

In works of labor or of skill,   
  I would be busy too;           
For Satan finds some mischief still   
  For idle hands to do.   

In books, or work, or healthful play,   
  Let my first years be passed;   
That I may give for every day           
  Some good account at last.