I started off the evening pondering if I could claim an hour or two of rhymically flexing my right calf as exercise. But Ilya says no, and I had to admit it was a wee bit flimsy even if I included some arm movements too. Spinning just isn't very aerobically demanding, alas.
Instead, I visited the Big Loom for the first time in months. Turns out, the situation wasn't as dire as I remembered. I decided to leave the dropped left selvage, and it actually ended up looking better or at least less fuzzy than the right one. Less fuzzy is good when you're working with tencel, which is supposed to be very smooth. And something was clearly up with the tie up, but I liked the results, so I just went with it. And it turns out that even in an air conditioned house, working the Big Loom is completely unexaggerated exercise (unlike spinning). Every shot requires stomping and throwing and beating, so I ended up with a bit of a sweat. As I told the lady at the weaver's guild who said that every time her doctor tells her to exercise she just weaves faster, I truly believe that weaving is exercise. You just happen to get pretty textiles at the end of it too.
Unfortunately, in the middle of set I discovered that the number three treadle had gone down to only one shaft, which was clearly wrong, since they're all supposed to have four tied on (this also contributes to the work factor - must take up weaving satin so I can make sateen and only have to lift one at a time...
Aside for non-weavers - the idea with satin is to make as smooth a fabric as possible while still having structural integrity, so you weave with as few interlacements as possible, by lifting 7 shafts and lowering 1, say. With satin, you're mostly seeing warp. When handweavers want to weave satin, they usually do it "upside down", and lift one shaft as opposed to 7 because it is vastly less work. However machine woven satins are crammed in so hard that the backsides of commercial satin don't produce sateen, so don't look for it at the fabric store.)
Where was I? Oh right, fixing the tie up. Turns out, a number of the ties had fallen off, so the pattern was ...not the one planned. But it was really cool. However, I wasn't sure how to recreate it, so I went back to the actual official tie up, which I'd been doing earlier, until the tie up had fallen apart. So, so far the whole thing is kind of a sampler of this particular threading with a whole collection of different tie ups.
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Monday, July 26, 2010
Spinning update
I tried a small sample of cabled yarn and decided that combining four plies made the yarn muddy, or at least a lot more blended than I really want, and the rather rough finishing approach I took (wet under running water, wring out) made the yarn awfully fuzzy. All of which might be just fine, except it wasn't the effect I wanted.
So instead I chain plied the rest of the bobbin, and I'm much happier with the results. Chain plying means creating a really large loop, results in 3 plies yarn, and makes the colors stay more or less distinct. It's interesting how very different the two skeins are, but I like them both, so I think I have a plan for the rest of it.
As seems inevitable with spinning, it feels like I've been spinning forever, but I can hardly tell that I made a dent in the original fiber stash.
So instead I chain plied the rest of the bobbin, and I'm much happier with the results. Chain plying means creating a really large loop, results in 3 plies yarn, and makes the colors stay more or less distinct. It's interesting how very different the two skeins are, but I like them both, so I think I have a plan for the rest of it.
As seems inevitable with spinning, it feels like I've been spinning forever, but I can hardly tell that I made a dent in the original fiber stash.
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Corrections
...and of course for my second post, I feel the need to amend the first one. While browsing pattern books I was reminded that shadow weaving was invented in the 1940s by Mary Miegs Atwater. So that's going to be an exception to the broad statement that anything that we do with the same equipment, they probably did, at least until I find examples to the contrary.
My current fiber projects are mostly modern. I'm working on the Atlantis socks from The Enchanted Sole book, and spinning 4 oz or so of purple/blue/yellow wool that I got at the Midwest Sheep and Wool Festival back in June. I'm still undecided whether I want to try go with 2 ply, 3 ply or cabled 4 ply. I'm interested in the other options, but 2 ply seems least likely to produce muddy colors. Time to sample, I guess!
And here's a factoid that I just sent off to our local newsletter.
"Saraidh offers this bit of medieval mythbusting – many people assume that asbestos isn’t period. It is. The name comes from the Greek word for “unquenchable” due to its flameproof nature. Obviously, I don’t recommend using it as a textile, but asbestos IS a naturally occurring mineral that can be spun and woven into clothing that was known as early as the 5th century in Persia and Arabia. There are records in Chinese annals of a 20 ft long piece being used as a mantle for a statue of Buddha, and I’ve heard reports that it was sometimes used as slave clothing due to its extremely durable nature."
Other than that, I'm still trying to decide what to do with the silk trim plan. I've found an 8 shaft pattern I'm really pleased with, which is a really complex 8 shaft twill. At first, I was thinking that I could salvage the blue tencel that's currently on the big loom, but that I realized that that entire book of patterns assumes light warp/dark weft, and besides which, rethreading is the thing that's most impeding the progress of George II (the huck lace linen towels currently on the table loom). So I continue to ponder. But it's been months since I touched either of the looms, so I need to either get back in and get moving or pull the whole lot off and put something new on. I love the theory of long warps, but my magpie nature means I'm not necessarily getting a whole lot of really long weaving actually done.
My current fiber projects are mostly modern. I'm working on the Atlantis socks from The Enchanted Sole book, and spinning 4 oz or so of purple/blue/yellow wool that I got at the Midwest Sheep and Wool Festival back in June. I'm still undecided whether I want to try go with 2 ply, 3 ply or cabled 4 ply. I'm interested in the other options, but 2 ply seems least likely to produce muddy colors. Time to sample, I guess!
And here's a factoid that I just sent off to our local newsletter.
"Saraidh offers this bit of medieval mythbusting – many people assume that asbestos isn’t period. It is. The name comes from the Greek word for “unquenchable” due to its flameproof nature. Obviously, I don’t recommend using it as a textile, but asbestos IS a naturally occurring mineral that can be spun and woven into clothing that was known as early as the 5th century in Persia and Arabia. There are records in Chinese annals of a 20 ft long piece being used as a mantle for a statue of Buddha, and I’ve heard reports that it was sometimes used as slave clothing due to its extremely durable nature."
Other than that, I'm still trying to decide what to do with the silk trim plan. I've found an 8 shaft pattern I'm really pleased with, which is a really complex 8 shaft twill. At first, I was thinking that I could salvage the blue tencel that's currently on the big loom, but that I realized that that entire book of patterns assumes light warp/dark weft, and besides which, rethreading is the thing that's most impeding the progress of George II (the huck lace linen towels currently on the table loom). So I continue to ponder. But it's been months since I touched either of the looms, so I need to either get back in and get moving or pull the whole lot off and put something new on. I love the theory of long warps, but my magpie nature means I'm not necessarily getting a whole lot of really long weaving actually done.
Friday, July 16, 2010
Down the rabbit hole
I've been threatening to make a blog or website to document my adventures with fiber for years, and now that I've finally started one, I discover that all the white space rather robs me of anything to say.
So, introductions. Hi, I'm Saraidh. My major hobby is the Society for Creative Anachronism (the SCA), and within that, I'm interested in all things textile. Well, mostly. I have yet to get into tablet weaving, no matter how period it is for me, and I'm sure there are a couple more fibery things out there that I shun, if only I could remember which. But the range of things I do do, or at least have dabbled in enough to get the concept, is pretty large. Things I consider my primary textile activities: weaving, spinning, knitting, fiber prep, hand sewing, costuming, embroidery, reseaching historical textiles. Things I've at least tried: silk reeling, making silk hankies, dyeing, bobbin lace, nalbinding, wet felting, needle felting. I'm sure there are more, but that'll do for a start. It may not look like all that much, but there are a whole lot of sub-disciplines under there. I have minimal interest in crochet and tatting because I don't like the look of the results, but they're mostly post period for me so I don't worry about it. I continue to find tablet weaving fussy, so it's still not a technique I'm dying to pick up, though I probably will one day. Otherwise? I'll give just about any textile technique a try.
At heart, I consider myself primarily a weaver, and I'm a major aficionado of structures. Mastering Weave Structures has often been my bedtime reading - I've been known to fall asleep to tales of fabrics I could make. The related passion is coming up with examples of all the sorts of weaves that people tend to assume didn't exist during the Middle Ages. "They" are almost always wrong. The textiles weren't necessarily for clothing, which is the sort of cloth the SCA is interested in almost exclusively, but I'm coming to the opinion that anything we can do with a floor loom, they at least tried.
For example - most weavers think of overshot as primarily a colonial American weave, but I can document it in period in Scandinavia. (I [heart] Agnes Geijer.) I don't think it's coincidental that in both cases it was mainly practiced in remote areas - it's a weave that allows for complex looking results with pretty simple equipment. The general rule of thumb is that you can do complex things relatively easily with complex equipment, or extremely laboriously with simple equipment. The deal with overshot is that the warp and alternating weft are made of fine yarns, which create the ground fabric, with bigger yarns making a pattern overtop, and since it's pattern weft, it doesn't need a complex loom - just a 4 harness loom makes very interesting looking things.
(Side note: I found this while looking for an overshot link - This is a totally, totally geeky brush with a deeply obscure sort of fame, but I know her! I took a class on how to weave velvet with Peggy Ostercamp! I SO need that book. Not that I'm a beginner, but the reviewer is not kidding when she says Peggy's other books are dense, so I'm completely confident that it will have information I would find new and useful.)
So that's me. In the future, I'm likely to talk more about my projects, past, present and planned, likely including my recent day of silk reeling, and how to weave velvet "on the frontier".
So, introductions. Hi, I'm Saraidh. My major hobby is the Society for Creative Anachronism (the SCA), and within that, I'm interested in all things textile. Well, mostly. I have yet to get into tablet weaving, no matter how period it is for me, and I'm sure there are a couple more fibery things out there that I shun, if only I could remember which. But the range of things I do do, or at least have dabbled in enough to get the concept, is pretty large. Things I consider my primary textile activities: weaving, spinning, knitting, fiber prep, hand sewing, costuming, embroidery, reseaching historical textiles. Things I've at least tried: silk reeling, making silk hankies, dyeing, bobbin lace, nalbinding, wet felting, needle felting. I'm sure there are more, but that'll do for a start. It may not look like all that much, but there are a whole lot of sub-disciplines under there. I have minimal interest in crochet and tatting because I don't like the look of the results, but they're mostly post period for me so I don't worry about it. I continue to find tablet weaving fussy, so it's still not a technique I'm dying to pick up, though I probably will one day. Otherwise? I'll give just about any textile technique a try.
At heart, I consider myself primarily a weaver, and I'm a major aficionado of structures. Mastering Weave Structures has often been my bedtime reading - I've been known to fall asleep to tales of fabrics I could make. The related passion is coming up with examples of all the sorts of weaves that people tend to assume didn't exist during the Middle Ages. "They" are almost always wrong. The textiles weren't necessarily for clothing, which is the sort of cloth the SCA is interested in almost exclusively, but I'm coming to the opinion that anything we can do with a floor loom, they at least tried.
For example - most weavers think of overshot as primarily a colonial American weave, but I can document it in period in Scandinavia. (I [heart] Agnes Geijer.) I don't think it's coincidental that in both cases it was mainly practiced in remote areas - it's a weave that allows for complex looking results with pretty simple equipment. The general rule of thumb is that you can do complex things relatively easily with complex equipment, or extremely laboriously with simple equipment. The deal with overshot is that the warp and alternating weft are made of fine yarns, which create the ground fabric, with bigger yarns making a pattern overtop, and since it's pattern weft, it doesn't need a complex loom - just a 4 harness loom makes very interesting looking things.
(Side note: I found this while looking for an overshot link - This is a totally, totally geeky brush with a deeply obscure sort of fame, but I know her! I took a class on how to weave velvet with Peggy Ostercamp! I SO need that book. Not that I'm a beginner, but the reviewer is not kidding when she says Peggy's other books are dense, so I'm completely confident that it will have information I would find new and useful.)
So that's me. In the future, I'm likely to talk more about my projects, past, present and planned, likely including my recent day of silk reeling, and how to weave velvet "on the frontier".
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