Weaving – lovestoswatch

Year Of Projects: week 35

Weaving and tatting some more this week, and again I’ve neglected my knitting, but there you go.

This week I have unwittingly embarked on a more complex tatting project that would suit a beginner – but hey, I did not know that! So, slow going, but going nonetheless, and after a troubled start in which I frayed some yarn and decided I’d better restart, here is where I am at: 25% of a motif that will form the base of a scarf or shawl – basically think granny squares, only these will be tatting squares, which are known as “blocks”! And with beads (though not sure whether all blocks will have beads, or only the external ones).

The first six out of 24 rings for this Fandango Motif by Jane Eborall

I should have put something in there to give an idea of scale, but that thing is small, the shuttles are probably 5-6cm/2″. The full motif should look something like this:

The tatting pattern is here.

While researching tatting I have also come across a social media crafting platform called Craftree: it has some Ravelry-like features, like the possibility to add a stash, record projects and discuss in forums, though it is not nearly as well developed. However it covers tatting, as well as other related needle crafts like embroidery, bobbin lace, needle lace and macrame'(and knitting and crochet too).

Weaving has been on the sampler for the Understand Doubleweave Workshop with Cally Booker. I am having a really fantastic time, the workshop is incredibly intellectually stimulating, and there is then enormous fan to be had at the loom! And there are some principles that can be transferred to double weave on a rigid heddle loom, I wish I had known earlier – but once I am done with the course, I think I’ll have a go at the rigid heddle loom.

The possibilities on the 8 shaft table loom I have however are pretty impressive – in spite of shaft envy, it is amazing how playing around with structure (two blocks in plain weave) and colour allows you to achieve.

Here is a window pane design, which I quite like, and I think would make for a nice, thick bathmat:

Window pane design – the weft yarn is gold in the bottom row, mid blue in the middle row, Royal blue in the top row

I have also met a bunch of very lovely weavers, in addition of course to Cally herself – I will miss them all terribly once the workshop is over, but for the moment I am having a wonderful time

Happy crafting!

This is a year of projects (YOP) update. YOP is a Ravelry Group, and an idea – make a plan for the year ahead for all your fibre activities, then update your blog every week if you manage. The objective is to keep track of progress on any fiber crafts with maximum flexibility: post, don’t post, follow your list, change it – so really it is just an opportunity to get to know of more blogs and activities of those who share a passion for anything fibre crafts.

Year Of Projects: week 34

A week of more weaving and more tatting, though no knitting.

I have started and finished my very first tatting project – it will be a coaster, and I am planning to add more to have a set (where a set may even mean just one more).

Far from perfect, but I am pretty pleased with it!

This was finished as my shiny new wooden shuttles from popabobbin arrived – they are just exquisite, and do note the care in packing them, each coming with its own tatted butterfly!

The Pop-a-bobbin wooden shuttles – I photographs the three “stages” of their unboxing!

They are just adorable, and functional too! Generally wooden shuttles do not have a hook, and are “post” type shuttles, that is the top and bottom are joined together, so you have to finish the thread before you can move on to something else.

The pop-a-bobbin shuttles instead have a removable bobbin (the wooden thingy on the side is a “shuttle popper”), and a perfectly snug plug that will keep it in place – can’t wait to give them a tat!

Here is a closeup of each of them, as I can’t have enough!

In other news, I had a warping misadventure with a happy ending, while getting ready to start weaving in Cally Booker’s I-can’t-begin-to-tell-you-how-amazing-it-is Understand Double weave workshop – but all is looking good now, and I am ready to get weaving, so excuse me as my loom is calling me 😜.

Happy crafting!

Unbeaming and rebeaming on a table loom – a better way!

I have blogged previously about fixing tension issues in a warp already wound onto the back beam – that experience was scarring, and since I’ve just come across and tested a much simpler method, at least for the Table loom, I thought I’d report it here.

The problem: I wound a gradient warp involving three colours, so the order of the thread is very important. While the threading looked fine at the cross, somehow the threads had got twisted between the back beam and the cross. I knew it had to be something that would untwist itself, but I did worry that it might create tension problems as I weaved. This is what the back of my look looked like:

What to do?

As it happens, the warp was for a sampler in the wonderful course Understand Double Weave on 8 shafts run by the fantastic Cally Booker. It is impossible for me to convey how mind blowing I am finding this course, but it is pretty amazing, and the clue is in the first word of the title, “understand”: it is not a “recipe” course, but one where every lesson ends with at least one design challenge, where students are asked to put into practice the teaching of the lessons. The emphasis is on block design in double weave, and the possibilities are endless… but I digress.

The short of it is that I asked Cally, and she suggested to finish dressing the loom (so thread the heddles, sley the reed, tie at the front), then bring the whole warp forward onto the cloth beam (packing it with paper to avoid messing up the tension at the front) so as to clear the back beam.

Then sort any problems there, checking that everything is aligned, then rewind back onto the warp beam.

And this is precisely what I did: in an hour it was all done, and my warp looks so very even and pretty!

I will just note here all the steps, just in case I need to to this again:

dress your loom as usual;
once the loom is threaded, if they are still there, remove the lease sticks (the heddles will already do the job of keeping the warp threads under tension)
release the tension on the back beam, and start rolling the warp onto the cloth beam, using a warp separator (heavy lining paper in my case). If there are crossed threads at the back, inevitably they will pull at the heddles as you advance the warp – just give it a shake. It did help to open a few sheds every so often to keep the threads separate and prevent tangles and bunching at the heddles. This pulling is not a bad thing though, as it means that the warp at the front is under tension.
once the warp has been rolled onto the front beam, if the threads on the back apron rod do not look even, just cut the loops and tie on (as you would for front-to-back warping), checking for even tension.
Open the two plain weave sheds and insert lease sticks to create a cross – this will keep the winding thension even.
start beaming the warp on the back beam again, obviously adding warp separators.
once finished, correct the tension at the front knots
enjoy how pretty and even your warp is looking!

and you are ready to go!

Just for the sake of completeness, here is the warp viewed from the front, ready to weave, with the gradient layer up:

Year Of Projects: week 33

What a very lovely crafty week I’ve had! Not much to show for it, but very satisfying.

I am getting on with my tatting – I have now some tatting specific cotton thread, which I guess could also go for crochet. The “ultimate” tatting thread consists of 6 plies in total, made of two threads of three plies each: this makes for a strong, smooth thread, as the amount of friction that tatting thread gets is quite substantial.

Lizbeth tatting thread size 20 by Handy Hands

These are all solid colours, apart from the yellow which is variegated. My practice pieces so far do not warrant using storage space: however now that I’ve got the basics I can try patters, starting of course from the ones that our tatting instructor has made available for this week. I cannot share them for copyright reasons, but to give you some eye candy for what is possible, here are some free ones from Japanese (I think) designer MC Hatsu, which look very pretty to me, and I’d like to try my hand at this turtle

A turtle by MC Hatsu – patter for personal use only

I am also having endless fun with the excellently designed online course on Understanding Double Weave with Cally Booker. Cally herself is as lovely a person as an accomplished weaver, and is so available to us students that I feel bad. The course runs on an online platform, and in addition to her lectures, downloadable material, worksheets and exercises, we have plenty of zoom meetings each week, not to mention the community forum.

On top of that, the content of the course is amazing: it is not a “here is a sampler, off you go weaving it” kind of course: she gives you the fishing rod, then you do the fishing. And with all the other students on the course there are so many ideas and results, and it is just beyond exciting. The topic of the course really is designing double weave with blocks, so once the principles are explained, you have to come up with your own design (though of course nothing stops you from following strictly one of Cally’s examples).

So last night I started warping a gradient with blues – I agonised between the purples and the blues, but after looking at the mockup I decided to go for the blues, and maybe after experimenting I can use the purples for an actual project – these are the mockups:

And here is how my warp is looking – this corresponds to the right half of the top picture above. The weave is going to consists of two layers, one in silver grey, one in the gold-to-blue gradient, and the warping is done so that the threads for the two sides are clearly separated, as in the photo below:

The blue looks much darker than in real life

The colours in the photograph look much more saturated than in real life, but give an idea of the gradient.

I have also wound up the skeins for Nathan Taylor/Sockmatician‘s Battenbonkers hat, a triple knitting hat which I am planning to cast on this week. The recipient decided this was the colour combo he wanted:

It is Kinross 4 Ply, a very delicious 100% superfine lambswool yarn from Clare Hutchison at Wee County Yarns, spun in Scotland – it is their own yarn, and it comes in 21 shades one lovelier than the other. As a colour work fan and designer, Clare is also pretty amazing in that she will send you picture of colour combos if you want to check them before you buy.

No spindling this week, and very sadly no taking part in Eah‘s test knit either, as I have too much going on already, and designers are small businesses, so would’t want to delay her in any way. I will get the pattern as soon as it is published – in case you are interested, the test knit opened today here (links to Ravelry).

Happy crafting!

Year Of Projects: week 32

It is surely possible to have too many fibre craft interests, by which I mean enough of them that you cannot keep up – and while it is most definitely the case for me already with knitting, weaving (a true addiction!) and spinning, why stop?

And so it was that I added tatting to the mix this week, of the shuttle type. The word “shuttle” is important here, as there are so many and so pretty, from cheap and not so cheap plastic to metal and wood, that collecting shuttles can easily become a new addiction. As can getting lost in tatting threads, which are (of course!) different from crochet threads, which in turn are (of course!) different from weaving threads. Ah, a full maze of rabbit holes!

Mind you, I am not the doily type, but there are many less “frilly” and more “square” patterns, and of course my ultimate goal once I get a bit of practice is garments – at lest I can think of light scarves and shawls, in practice anything you can do with conventional granny squares you can do with tatted blocks, with the advantage that with tatting you are most definitely not confined to squares. True, you aren’t confined to squares with knitting and crochet either, but with tatting shapes are very very easy to change. It is addictive, and once I get a bit more into it I will compile some resources. For the moment Jane Eborall’s website might not be the most sophisticated looking in terms of web design, but it is a goldmine of tatting knowledge and patterns. She also has a companion site, Tat It And See (TIAS) which is a sort of mystery tat along, which I am hoping to join soon (need a bit more techniques, but it easy enough to learn, it just need patience).

It is as slow as you can imagine (in essence it is a collection of knots, so to make even very lacy fabric you need a heck of a lot of them), but it is very very portable, and can be picked up and put down very easily to fill any spare minute. I am taking a course organised by the UK Online Guild of weavers, Dyers and Spinners and is run by Katy Barret.

I also took my spindle up this week, and got almost a second bout of singles done, but not enough progress to warrant a picture!

No knitting at all, though my mouse keeps wandering back to Linda Marveng’s beautiful Eah, test knitting starting the week after the next on Ravelry- a lot of stocking stitch in a worsted-like gauge (two strands held together of sports and lace), but can I commit? Here it is:

I do find it absolutely gorgeous, and the test knit is also to improve the depth of the hood, really very tempted (by the way, open to anyone who wishes to join, the list to sign up for Linda’s test knits is here, and she has no limits on the number of test knitters she accepts – she is also very generous, so on top of the pattern for the test knit, she also gifts her test knitters a pattern of their choice from her many designs).

The design being tested next is also very very tempting, a stylish overrides hooded poncho, here is a sneak peek:

In fact I like all the patterns coming up for testing, and I’ve tested quite a bit for her, as well as knitting her patterns at my own pace – in fact she also has a KAL with prizes running until the end of June, you can sign up here. As you can tell, I am a fan 😍

If you like cables and you do not know Linda, you must definitely check her out!

This week I have also started a most wonderful online weaving course by Cally Booker, Understand Double Weave. Not only Cally is an experienced wonderful weaver, she has the gift of clarity! The course is organised in pre-recorded instructions, downloadable instruction materials and exercises, and live zoom sessions, and a community forum. Cally is extremely generous with her time (I had 2 and a half hours with her yesterday!), and it is a lot of fun. Above all, what I like enormously is that this is not a “project” course, but one where participants have to use the principles taught in order to design their own double weave sampler. I had come across Cally’s blog many times before when searching for information on weaving in general and double weave in particular, and when I saw the opportunity to take a remote class with her, I jumped on it – the course sold out in half an hour, but she will have more. If you have the chance, do take it. It will develop over six weeks, and here is a bit of playing around with colour palettes.

I extracted colours from a picture from the times when I could still hike in the Alps from Canva, and just in case I find Paletton another useful software to play around with colours – here is the original picture, the palette, and some yarn wraps:

A lovely crafty week to you all!

Year Of Projects: week 30

Apart from discovering that I cannot count (the last two YoP posts should have been weeks 28 and 29, not 26 and 27 as I had incorrectly written – now fixed), this week has been an exercise in will power in getting the sleeves on my Second Squall done, but alas I am not there yet, though I am determined to post the finished sweater next week. I am inching my way to the armhole shaping, and it should be all downhill to the finishing line from there.

The problem is that my mind wanders continuously to weaving – I spent quite a bit of time drafting a sample where flat areas alternate with double layered ones, with the idea of stuffing the woven layers. I will have to see what comes out in the sample, but if it works, it could make for baby mats for toddlers to play on, or seat cushions, we’ll have to see.

To create the two layers, you have to decouple some of the threads – this make it possible to play around with colours, and I am playing around with two ideas. One is to show the pattern clearly: so the warp (i.e. vertical) threads are arranged so that the double layered area pulls up the threads of one colour, which should come up 3D because of the stuffing, as in this picture:

The second idea instead is to pull up a smaller scale version of the same pattern – this should be more of a trick to the eye, though not quite an optical illusion: but while on the flat part the pattern repeat will be larger (4 vertical and 4 horizontal threads), the stuffed part will be pulling up smaller pattern repeats (2 vertical and 2 horizontal threads). So the draft below is entirely identical to the previous one, apart from changing the yarn colours.

I am curious to see what comes out from this experiment! And I don’t have pink in my cotton stash, so it will have to be in different colour combinations, I am looking at some strong contrast involving purples and oranges…

Finally I thought I’d mention a really interesting free series of (short) videos on Kimonos by the Victoria and Albert Museum. So I learned that the seven pieces of fabric needed for each kimono were first cut and assembled and then decorated (through paint and embroidery). Additional pictures can be seen here, and there is a ticketed full day online event on Friday 12th February.

Wishing everyone a very crafty week ahead!

Year Of Projects: week 29

This week has been a bit of an all rounder: I managed to knit, spin and weave!

On knitting, I’ve done some more progress on the sleeves of my second version of Michele Wang’s Squall, though not enough to warrant an update on the pictures posted in a previous update – and it struck me that I started knitting this sweater in April last year! This is unconscionable! It generally takes me 6 weeks to knit a cabled sweater, so you see what weaving does to you!

Talking of which, I took the twill Gamp from Janet Phillips‘ ” Designing Woven Fabric” off the loom – it will go in the wash today, and then it will be a matter of studying it! I ended up with 3.15m/3’4″ of sample, 46cm/18″ wide, though no doubt dimensions will change after washing, and I am contemplating using it as a light “comfort blanket” when working from home, so that in idle times my eye can wander over the 500 patterns!

Twill gamp off the loom – before wet finishing and pressing

Indeed, I will have to inspect them very closely, as I have now yarn for yardage for a summer dress! The current plan is for a cotton warp and a linen singles weft. The yarn will be very fine (the 16/2 cotton, which is about cobweb weight yarn, it has 1,300m per 100g weight, and similarly the linen), and I hope to turn it into a flowing dress, though it will be quite a while before I’ll be able to travel to somewhere where I can wear it, but hey, we could always get a scorching summer in Scotland! These are the beauties, beautifully packaged and arrived quickly from My Fine Weaving Yarn, aka my favourite yarn pusher!

16/2 organic mercerised cotton by Garnhuset I Kinna and and 16/1 linen by Växbo Lin

The yarns are really lovely, both by Swedish companies – and they are quite a bit cheaper than knitting yarns, so something for lovers of fine yarn to consider.

I’ve also progressed with my spinning – here is the first single off the spindle and ready to ply, and the spindle filling up again:

From my absolute beginner position, I have found the two videos by Anita Osterhaug (former Handwoven Magazine editor), Drop Spinning 101 and Drop Spinning 102 really very very good, I’ve watched both three times already, and I think I am not finished yet! I am sure there are other excellent resources out there, but these come with an “all access subscription” to Handwoven magazine, which I have. Incidentally, Handwoven offers a free trial month (you have to start a subscription and then cancel it I think), and they have countless videos on weaving, spinning, dying.

One final point to note: I want to warmly recommend the free series of Handweavers’s Guild of America interviews to fibre artists, taking place every Tuesday that I mentioned last week – really interesting. If you can’t get into the live event on Zoom, you can follow from Facebook (and do not need a Facebook account).

Hope you have a very crafty week!

Year Of Projects: week 28

I have to admit I have really a hard time keeping the blog up, but let’s see if the new year keeps me on my toes!

I “blame” Highlandheffalump‘s and Jamie‘s (Liz is an artist very accomplished in anything fibre related, while James is curious of all sorts of crafts, and has an infectious enthusiasm), for the fact that while December 2019 brought with it the decision to start weaving, December 2020 ushered spinning into my life, and so it was that January opened for me with these beauties, courtesy of the lovely Angela and Simon at Adelaide Walker.

I tried to read as much as possible before ordering, but of course any new endeavour is a shot in the dark! Still, since at this stage my goal is spinning to weave thin yarn, I made a leap of faith and went for lace weight spindles (the weight of the spindle related to the fineness of the yarn to spin on, at least for beginners).

From top to bottom: 20g Turkish spindle, 29g bottom whorl spindle, 20g top whorl spindle

So from top to bottom the three spindles I got: a Turkish (the cross arms are removable, and create a centre pull yarn ball), a bottom whorl spindle (the whorl being the fatter bit of a spindle) and a top whorl spindle.

I can easily see how spindles become a collector’s item, they are so pretty! These are hand turned here in the UK, and British is also most of the fibre I got: some undied white Jacob’s fibre to get the hang of spinning (and use in some project), some Shetland fibre (white and moor it) that I hope to turn into a scarf, and some dyed merino which being short is supposedly more difficult to spin, but still it should give me some kind of gradient, or at least that is the plan.

So the past four days have been spent trying my hand at spinning – I am still in the “park and draft” stage (which separates the three phases of spinning – drafting the fiber, adding twist to it, and storing the resulting yarn), but I have completed my first single, and now the plan is to try and spin the other single that will complete my 2 ply Jacob skein as suspended spindling, so wish me luck!

First session as “before”, four session with first single complete as “after”

Really enjoying it, but it is too early to say whether I’ll manage to be reasonable at it!

I have also kept myself busy with weaving – I am more than half way through the weaving of a twill Gamp from Janet Phillips‘ “Designing woven fabric” – such a great book, and it will work well for Rigid Heddle Loom weavers (you will need three heddles) as well as weavers on shaft looms, as it is based on 4 shaft twills.

Janet is a very experienced British weaver and fibre artist – I’ve listened to a lovely interview in Haptic and Hue podcast, and she is also giving a talk at the Handweavers’s Guild of America. The talk is free to everyone, but you have to register, see here – there are other talks with fibre artists, all taking place on Tuesdays at 9pm UK time, so quite convenient for me, as that is the start of my “unwind time”. Haptic and Hue is a very well done, and very interesting podcast, if you haven’t tried and like anything fibre, I do really recommend it.

I had a few issues threading the warp (I managed to miscount a session, and threaded 10 warp ends switching their shafts), but now I am in a rhythm, and I love seeing the fabric forming – when done, this will be me a reference library of 500 different twill patterns, which I can then use to choose the design of yardage for a couple of dresses, here is a flavour for it:

Year Of Projects: week 24

Gosh, what a terrible yopper I am! I’ve managed to miss seven weeks – where have they gone? Not that I haven’t tried to keep myself busy with crafting (though not nearly as much as I would like), but “real life” is very busy, meaning the blog is neglected!

These past few weeks have been mostly about weaving, though I had promised to myself I’d take up the sleeves for the in December – i am still hoping to get this finished before the year is out though.

The wonderful workshop by Marian Stubenitsky is now over – apart from the sampler, I’ve woven a cotton scarf out of that same warp, although I did not have the right colours, and to be sure I wove two more in a beautiful silk/merino yarn, Juniper Moon Farm Findley Lace, that is soft and strong and works great both as weft and warp, and here are the results, two beautiful “sharves”, as they are wider than a scarf, but narrower than a shawl (33cm/14″ in width). They are very drapey and very light, so I do think they work well as luxury scarves, as they won’t be bulky under a coat.

I know iridescence isn’t for everyone, but I am very pleased with how these two turned out – and here is the cotton scarf with the “wrong” colours I referred to earlier.

Maybe worth noting that the cotton scarf was in balanced weave (24 epi and 24 ppi), while the two silk/wool scarves are slightly warped faced (24epi and 25.5 ppi), which makes them drape much better (plus there is silk in there).

I’ve also took the scissors to some denim to make a toile for the casual summer jacket with previously woven yardage.

Hope I’ll manage to keep it up better from now on, that could be my new year resolution!

Year Of Projects: week 16

This week has been all weaving a sampler for the Echo and Iris workshop I am taking, led by Marian Stubenitsky, that I already talked about in last week’s (very long) YOP update.

I put on two more metres than the course requirements as the plan was to make a scarf using the pattern I liked best. As I’ve been carried away with sampling though, it remains to be seen whether I will have enough – perhaps I could make a cowl, we’ll see.

I will make more extensive posts on this technique once I “get it”, but to really get to understand it I realise I need a lot of knowledge on weaving structures that I sorely lack at this point – but I am building a library to address that, as ever the problem is finding the time to indulge in my hobbies!

Anyhow, below pictures (in bad light) of my samples so far – I only have to weave the last one, and then I will use the last week of the workshop to weave off the remaining warp – either still sampling, or weaving a scarf or cowl.

Since I am not too happy with the colour choice in the warp (I think the purple warp with the red and the blue already there make it really dark), so I may end up continuing to experiment with this technique.

Samples 3, 5 and 6 are woven with a merino weft in pumpkin colour – washing should result in differential shrinkage, I’ll have to see.

I would LOVE to hear your genuine, honest (brutal if necessary) opinion on which colour combinations samples you’d turn into a finished object, if any!

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this: