January 8, 2003

Talk about learning experiences -- well, duh, I guess when you forget to
factor in loom waste you're going to get a rather short blanket! Luckily I
had planned on a rather LONG blanket, so I ended up with one measuring 52"
x 52". I thought I'd just put it in my car, but my son says it's just
the right size for when he watches a movie sitting up <g>

I was happy with the way my fold line ended up. When I first took it off
the loom and opened
it up, you could see that it was rather loose from having fishing
lines running along with the last two threads. (that was a change from
my last double weaving where the But after washing and pressing it looks great.
HOWEVER there's another problem I hadn't thought of. The plaid
reverses when it gets to the center. (see
finished blanket here)I knew the bottom layer had to reverse for threading,
but it never occurred to me that I had to reverse the stripes in the warp
so that it would follow the same pattern as the top. Oh well, it's warm -
if slightly short. Now on to the next one.

January 1, 2003

The blanket is starting to pull together. At
6-7 ppi it is weaving up quickly (even for doubleweave). I hope the fishing
line going through the last two heddles will do the trick on the fold. I
like that I don't have to worry about going over on the way out, etc.

I found a threading error after about 5". I was going to try and fix it
after it came off the loom, but decided to bite the bullet and unweave. The
wool was really sticking together, but I gave it another spray of starch before
I started again, and it's been smooth sailing.

Doubleweave Blanket

Happy New Years! And Happy Anniversary to us! DH and I just celebrated our
30th anniversary. Sometimes it seems like just yesterday, but then I look at
our four kids, 27, 26, 24, 20 and I can easily see where the time went :-)

This is what I'm working on now.I
finished threading it and tieing up and gave it a good spray of starch. Someone
at spinning recommended spray starch for sticky doubleweave warps. She said
that all the starch will wash out, and that it really slicks up the yarn and
allows it to gide past each other.

I was a little worried about the fold, but I really didn't want to use a fishing
line floating selvedge as I was afraid I would mess up the over/under thing.
One of the hints in the Handwoven Doubleweave Issue (J/F 2002) was to thread
the last two ends on the fold with 25# fishing line and tie it to a 2# weight.
I just happened to have the foam covered weights that you can strap over your
hands (haven't used them for working out in ages) so I put them right to work.
Then I suppose I just slip the line out when I'm finished. I'm hoping that will
keep the fold even.

After some help from the Weaving List, I've got my Idiots Twill doubleweave
worked out, so with any luck I'll get to that next week. Pretty high goals considering
I'm back to school on Thursday, huh?

December 26, 2002

We had the first White Christmas since my freshman year in college. It was
beautiful, even if it was messy driving into Mom's. We had a wonderful morning
- grown children mean that you can open presents at 11:00! I made baked French
toast and a breakfast casserole the night before so when everyone woke/arrived
I popped them in the oven and they were ready for brunch when we were finished.

SPINNING

I love the BEAST!! I ordered 3 pounds from John
and I'm having so much fun spinning it up. I was thinking of a blanket with
Lambs Pride as a warp, but both of my sons have fallen in love with it. They
want a big bulky sweater. It is incredibly soft, despite looking like it would
be coarse and scratchy. (close up picture)

I
spun a bobbin on Christmas Eve and another one last night. I spent less than
2 hours spinning and about an hour to ply it all. I think they call it Tiger
Cat too. It has streaks of brown and black, along with gray and white wool and
mohair. It's great for immediate gratification!

WEAVING

I've brough down bins of yarn from the attic and I'm sorting through them today.
I know I have enough for a few blankets, so I'll get them divided and in bags
according to projects. Tomorrow I'll start winding the warps so they will be
ready to go.

I've done one doubleweave, but
I didn't use a floating selvedge on the fold. It was a little tight, so I pulled
out two warp threads and it looked pretty good. (I also forgot that I needed
to put another stripe right on the fold so it looks a little funny spread out
- however, it is usually bunched up on the sofa so that's not a problem) This
time I think I'll try fishing line, but I'm worried that I will have to pay
too much attention to going over and under it. I guess it's worth a try.

This afternoon we do another Christmas celebration at my sister's. If I eat
much more I won't be able to get in my loom to thread!

December 26, 2002

We had the first White Christmas since my freshman year in college. It was
beautiful, even if it was messy driving into Mom's. We had a wonderful morning
- grown children mean that you can open presents at 11:00! I made baked French
toast and a breakfast casserole the night before so when everyone woke/arrived
I popped them in the oven and they were ready for brunch when we were finished.

SPINNING

I love the BEAST!! I ordered 3 pounds from John
and I'm having so much fun spinning it up. I was thinking of a blanket with
Lambs Pride as a warp, but both of my sons have fallen in love with it. They
want a big bulky sweater. It is incredibly soft, despite looking like it would
be coarse and scratchy. (close up picture)

I
spun a bobbin on Christmas Eve and another one last night. I spent less than
2 hours spinning and about an hour to ply it all. I think they call it Tiger
Cat too. It has streaks of brown and black, along with gray and white wool and
mohair. It's great for immediate gratification!

WEAVING

I've brough down bins of yarn from the attic and I'm sorting through them today.
I know I have enough for a few blankets, so I'll get them divided and in bags
according to projects. Tomorrow I'll start winding the warps so they will be
ready to go.

I've done one doubleweave, but
I didn't use a floating selvedge on the fold. It was a little tight, so I pulled
out two warp threads and it looked pretty good. (I also forgot that I needed
to put another stripe right on the fold so it looks a little funny spread out
- however, it is usually bunched up on the sofa so that's not a problem) This
time I think I'll try fishing line, but I'm worried that I will have to pay
too much attention to going over and under it. I guess it's worth a try.

This afternoon we do another Christmas celebration at my sister's. If I eat
much more I won't be able to get in my loom to thread!

False Damask

I finally got a chance to play with my weaving. I'm still having some warp
problems, but I don't know if it's my loom or me! This is the first time I've
had all 10 treadles tied up, most with 4 harnesses tied to it, and I'm noticing
that when I press the treadle on the far left the heddle doesn't raise evenly.
The right side doesn't raise as much. Since I usually only had the four treadles
tied I didn't notice it. I think I'll also layer up some newspapers and spray
WD-40 on all the moving joints. After my misguided attempt to move heddles,
rsulting in them all landing on the floor, I steel wooled all the metal strips
that hold the heddles on all 8 of the harnesses, so they now just glide across.
Maybe that will help.

I have only a little warp left on the false damask tie up, so I thought I'd
try out some contrasting colors, rather that the white/off-white that was suggested.
Treadling with no repeats, treadling 4 times 1-4, then 4 times 5-8. Then I did
all 1-4 which gives the stripe. I like the look of the colors, although the white/off-white is cool too. If you
have WinWeave,
you can download the file.

Here's another problem that I have been encountering - maybe someone has a
suggestion. I've started using vinyl slats from some old blinds to separate
the towels. I keep getting the thread from the shuttle stuck on it. In the picture
on the right you can see the slats almost reading to wind on. Before that point
both the tie on rods and the slats catch my thread and my smooth rhythm is violently
stopped. There's got to be a way to keep that from happening.

Spin Your Stash

I got LOTS of ideas from the Stash Reduction Weekend I spend at Claudia's.
Claudia is a great teacher/facilitator, and I sat at the feet of some wonderful
fiber people and soaked in even more. It's sort of hard to say exactly what
I learned, but it's safe to say that I have expanded my way of thinking about
blending and color.

Once I saw what everyone else was doing, I really wanted to buy more colorful
fibers to blend. Except for the autumn cardigan
I'm working on now, I've shyed away from the brighter colors, mostly because
I was never successful in spinning into anything but garish or muddy colors.
But the easy way doesn't always teach you as much, so I went with what I had
(mostly).

The first thing I wanted to do was to use the mohair
combed top that I found to be way too slippery for me to handle. I also
had close to a pound of Ashford Bay top that I
wanted to blend with it. Since I have about 8 pounds of a grey roving (I sent
out a bunch of washed romney from various sources to Ohio Valley and had them
blend it all together) I thought it might work with that.

Here are some of the working ideas we came up with:

	The variations in this green Ashland Bay top weren't showing up in the brown, I tried it with the grey and like it better, but now I'm thinking I might try it with white. Yes, I do have POUNDS of white also. I have a small amount of an angora, silk, merino blend in an off white, so I may add that too.
	This is brown roving, mostly romney, that I had blended and carded at Ohio Valley I bought a little of the pumpkin Ashland Bay to spice it up and used a tannish variegated top I had. I also used the mohair top in this blend, but I still think the brown is taking over. I had planned on plying this with a single brown, but unless I change the proportions, I might get a better yarn double plying.
	Here I just finger teased up some romney locks that had been washed, but nothing else done to it. Then I VERY quickly spun it up and plyed it with a some of the grey roving I had previously spun. This was hard for me to do because I wanted to control it more, but I think I like the rustic quality of the yarn. It's little too fuzzy in places, but I think I'll flick the tips and cut end before I finger tease it and that should even it out a bit.