Norse Kitchen

Day 356: For all of Norse Kitchen having been a "bucket list" project for me (the one draft from "A Handweaver's Pattern Book" I most wanted to weave), I got distracted from it by quilting and other fiberarts. My weaving friend Ed said he'd like to come up from Oregon for a visit, and I thought, "Damn, I really wish I had that thing off the loom!" I've spent the last three days finishing up the runner. Done! The two towels (lavender and dark blue) measure in the raw at 31.5" x 20", and the runner (teal) is 51" x 20". I am expecting the towels to shrink to roughly 27" x 17", and the runner to 46" x 17" after a thorough wash-and-dry. It's hard to believe that this is a four-shaft design, and trust me, the draft was difficult to decipher. As Marguerite Davison had written the repeats, it was hard to tell what went where. I eventually wrote out all 495 threads in Fiberworks and taped a printout together so I could check off each section as I threaded it. Yes, this one requires very meticulous attention while threading! The treadling is less confusing, but this is not a pattern you can work on while your mind is on anything else. I wove it on my table loom which meant that I was working standing up at the desk which serves as my workbench. Merry nearly always occupied the chair which was tucked into the knee-hole, and every now and then, a little soft, grey hand would reach up from underneath to let me know I'd been weaving long enough for one session. If I failed to respond appropriately, a light nip on my leg would remind me where the true Center of the Universe is situated. I probably won't reload the table loom until I'm closer to the end of the warp on the floor loom. I need to get that piece done because I need the extra width to weave a winter ruana.

Update: Got a little more shrinkage in the length than I anticipated. Towels are 24", runner 41". Width came in exactly at 17" as predicted. Fibers were 10/2 cotton for warp and tabby, 8/2 for overshot thread. 

Norse Kitchen In Blue

Day 167: One of the most enjoyable aspects of warping for several iterations of a project (for example, towels) is that you can change up the colour every time. As much as I liked the lavender version of Norse Kitchen, I did want to create something more traditionally Scandinavian. I'm not particularly fond of red, so although it's arguably found more often, blue at least runs a close second. I've warped for three large towels, and haven't quite decided on what the last one will be.

My table loom sits on a makeshift platform on top of an old desk, the drawers of which are handy for holding shuttles and other assorted tools of the trade out of reach of inquiring kitty hands. I weave on it standing up, partly because the desk was too high even without the addition of the plywood, but more because I want something to do which doesn't involve sitting in a chair. Shifting my weight from foot to foot isn't exactly aerobic exercise, but with the weather we've been having lately, walking or hiking has been out of the question. That said, some day, I hope to replace Schacht with a 25-30" floor loom, although the likelihood of that happening is fairly small.

Halvdräll, Round Two

Day 156: The second set of halvdräll towels is off the loom, and I am quite pleased with how they turned out. Now that I have a better understanding of the structure, I was able to select colours which worked the way I envisioned them, the long floats being a medium shade of green, and the two tabby threads dark green and banana yellow. Ages ago, I had a kitchen painted in similar colours, and these towels would have fit right in. My current kitchen is green and white, and the yellow will be a nice accent if I decide to keep them. More likely, they'll be gifted to friends since my linen cupboard is already full of handwoven items. Another halvdräll project is on the agenda, but first, I want to work a test swatch of the 16/2 Scottish wool I'll be using for a tartan shawl to determine the correct sett. I can do that on the table loom, although the shawl will be woven on Max once I get "Friend Evelyn" done. Next up on the table loom is..."Norse Kitchen!" It's a draft I've always wanted to weave, but the way Davison laid it out in "A Handweaver's Pattern Book" (green version), it was confusing. By using Fiberworks' weaving software, I was able to sort out the various sections to get them in the right order. The warp for "Norse Kitchen" is already measured and waiting its turn.

Changing Up The Halvdräll

Day 90: When I got to the third and last Halvdräll towel, I decided to change it up a bit, swapping out the dark aqua bouclé for 8/2 cotton. I had dark green on a shuttle, but it didn't seem to work well despite sounding good in principle. The pattern used light blue, white and a dark grey, but I wasn't happy with the appearance of grey with aqua. I dragged several more cones of thread out of my stash, keeping with cool tones at first, but then moving on to warm shades. Bright red came close to the look I wanted, but still wasn't quite there. A darker red solved the problem, although it was not something I would have ever thought to use if I had been planning the project out. That said, I am quite taken with the Halvdräll weave structure, and have two greens and a light yellow picked out for another round. I will be changing the width of each of the three white stripes ( by one pattern repeat of 10 threads in order to make the towels a little less wide. They will be dark green in the next iteration, with light yellow in the wider stripes and light green as the pattern thread throughout.

Making Accommodations

Day 79: I have had the table loom set up on a card table in the living room for the last seven or eight months. It was not the most satisfactory arrangement since I often have other uses for a card table, but there was not enough space for this desk in the Loom Room, and it had migrated out to the garage. I wasn't really happy about that either, so I decided to solve two problems at once: move the desk inside and put the loom on top of it. I had already cut a piece of plywood for an extension to keep the legs from walking off the edge and in fact, had been using it on the card table (ugly, but functional). Repurposing the desk as a loom table also gave me storage space for weaving tools in seven of the drawers. The eighth drawer...the double-deep one...had a claim staked on it before I'd completed the set-up. Certain accommodations need to be made if you are going to have a Weaver's Cat supervising your work.

Undressed For Christmas

Day 72: Most people put on finery (or at least an ugly sweater) for Christmas. Max got undressed instead. I have been diligently plugging away in the hopes of finishing the "weftovers" (i.e., the remaining warp) following three tablecloth panels, a length of roughly five feet. I wasn't sure I'd make my goal, but with Merry's cooperation, I got it done. I had also thought I might finish up the towels on the table loom in the living room, but discovered I had more warp left than I'd thought. Even so, I will probably be done with that in time to have a "New Year's Weave" on both looms. It's funny how those little personal goals can motivate. The idea is to set them just far enough out that you have to push yourself to achieve them, but not so far that you defeat yourself with something which is impossible to attain (or nearly so). Max already has a new warp in waiting: "Friend Evelyn" (an overshot) in "A Handweaver's Pattern Book" in two shades of green. Schacht (the table loom) is earmarked for an experiment with halvdräll, a Swedish technique which is sometimes described as a simplified overshot. Halvdräll only requires four shafts, two for the pattern and two for plain weave/tabby. I have yet to decide if I just want to weave a sample the first time around, or if I want to warp for a complete project. I'm not really fond of weaving on Schacht because the jacks are operated manually, placing too much strain on my repaired shoulder. That said, Max will be tied up for some time because again, I'll be weaving a coverlet in three panels. In any event, I'm excited by the prospect of new projects, as always.

Raggin' It

Day 112: After completing a second rag rug from t-shirt strips, I weighed what was remaining in the bucket and decided that it would be better to save what was left rather than making a 6" shorter rug. I had a pretty good stash of denim strips as well, and am almost done with a third, heavier rug. I'm nearing the end of my usable warp, so after this one is complete, I'll be retiring the table loom temporarily to make way for...sit down, hold onto something...a "new" floor loom! My weaving buddy Ed is handing down his newly refurbished Bergman four-shaft countermarch, and will be delivering it tonight. Once the "Scandinavian Favourite" is off my present loom, it will be moving to a new home, simply because there is not enough room in my house for two floor looms. The Bergman may need more heddles, and I'm not sure my reeds will fit it, so it may be a while before I have it up and running. Of course, it will also be a while before I'm done with the "Scandinavian Favourite" because I'm only halfway on the first of three panels. Slowly but surely, this will all come together.

Spillway - The Teaser

Day 330: It's a dam spillway! This is the teaser. I recently found instructions for a weaving structure I had always thought was impossible to create on a four-shaft loom, i.e., that it had to be woven on a minimum of eight shafts or on a drawloom. I won't give it away just yet, but having done a small experiment with the leftover warp on the floor loom, I am reasonably certain that I understand the technique. In any event, I decided it was prudent to warp it onto my table loom so that there would be less wastage in case everything goes pear-shaped on me, and that's how I've spent the morning. I chose the metaphor of a spillway for good reason: although the threads are each drawn through individual heddles, they pass through "penstocks," four in a bunch in each dent, separated from one another by an empty dent. It makes for quite a cascade! I need to settle on a design before I can begin, but let me assure you, this is the most excited I've been about a weaving technique since I discovered the joys of overshot some fifty years ago.

Where Do Jeans Go When They Die?

Day 134: A week or two ago, I took a sorting fit and after cleaning out my t-shirt drawer of all the shirts with frayed necklines and small holes, I cut the usable fabric into 1" strips for rag rugs. However, when I opened the box labelled "rug strips," I discovered it was almost full. A full box is unforgiveable. It was time to recycle some of the material into rugs.

Now I like a heavy, stay-in-place rug in front of my kitchen sink or as a bath mat. Handwoven rag rugs are ideal for the purpose (the store-bought ones are limp and wrinkle up under foot). The rug strip box contained several gallon Zip-locs of prepared strips, including two bags of denim bits, more than enough for a couple of rugs. There was only one problem: nowhere to set up the table loom, which is my preferred loom for rug weaving. After serious consideration of the options, I moved my sewing machine back out to the kitchen where it can live under the table until called upon, and set up the table loom on the desk in the Loom Room, which now truly lives up to its name, occupied as it is by the floor loom, the table loom and two rigid heddle looms currently not in service. I threw all the denim strips into a big heap, mixed them up good, and now I'm drawing them out one by one to weave into rugs. I warped for three, two of which will be denim. The third will probably use up some of those cut-up t-shirts. This is where old jeans and t-shirts go when they die, folks!

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.

When Projects Go Awry

Day 186: I've decided to call this episode "When Projects Go Awry," although it could easily be titled, "Making The Best Of A Bad Thing." Y'see, a year or so ago, I decided to make a braided rag rug out of strips of old t-shirt fabric. I kept at it for a couple of weeks until my little rug was approximately bath-mat sized, trying to convince myself that I could keep going despite the excruciating pain in my repaired shoulder. I'd push through an hour per day...a half-hour...fifteen minutes...six inches...let me just get around the corner...but regardless of when I laid it aside or how many days I let elapse between stints of working on it, the agony in the damaged tendons and atrophied muscles would keep me awake at night, on the verge of tears from pain. It takes a bit to put me off a project once I've begun it, but I finally realized that I was not going to be able to complete the rug without further injuring myself. Bottom line: time to throw in the towel.

Still, I put the mat away in the form I'd last worked on it, and it hounded me every time I saw it in my crafts room. A few days ago, a friend mentioned that she wanted to weave some rag rugs, you might have seen a flash of light come on over my head. It seemed entirely reasonable that I could undo all my hard work and use the t-shirt strips for a woven rug. Not only that, it would give me an excuse to bring my tabletop loom out of garage storage. As my readers may recall, I've been rationing my stints at the floor loom to one colour sequence per day, drawing out the pleasurable work of creating a tablecloth, so setting up the table loom to weave rag rugs seemed like a justifiable deviation from my general rule of "only one of any fiber-art at a time" on the basis of scale (yeah, I know...that's stretching it).  It also gave me a chance to put to good use the two antique rag shuttles handed down to me from a friend's friend's grandmother. As projects go, this is a quick one. After spending a day unstitching and another unbraiding, I had half a rug done by bedtime yesterday even with the other weaving I had done as a matter of course. Now I need to sew more strips together so I can finish the job.