In pursuit of fibre

I have vowed not to write much today, or at least not this morning, 'cause I really need to get to the looms. I was worried when I started blogging again that I'd wind up spending more time on the computer than weaving and so it has come to pass. Best head that action off at the pass, else I'll have to do some choosing. I want to have my cake and eat it too - high fibre cake, of course! - so today, just a few tiny tidbits.

1) I got mail from one of my favourite customers who, in addition to picking out some colours for a new wool blanket, has sent me some pictures of her babies, Bogie and Bailey, enjoying a blanket she's had for a few years now:


Aren't they cute little darlin's? I love to see cats on my blankeys - mosty 'cause I just love cats but also because it means they're really being used and not just folded up and put away. The blankets, that is, not the cats.

I have heard back from Aunt Janet re: her blanket as well, so now I've got two blankets waiting for the big loom. Really must get that rosepath stuff off so the blankets can go on!

2) I found a link to this very, very cute o w l s sweater by needled by reading the craftzine blog today. I am tempted and I have loads of chunky yarn to use but a sweater is an awfully big project and I'm trying to keep knitting projects small, both for sanity and for the sake of my wrists. Incidentally, in the context of her o w l s sweater, Wazzuki also has some very good things to say about the collaboration on and originality of designs and remuneration for design work, etc. Things I wrestle with myself on an ongoing basis. If you're interested, you'll find them here, near the bottom of the post.

3) I ran across Bonnie Tarses' Weaving Spirit blog on which, among other things, she has kits for sale. The idea for kits has been on my mind for some time, since even before the Yarn Barn asked for permission to kit the project I had in the ND07 issue of Handwoven magazine. I need to do a lot more research but I'm thinking about selling pre-wound warps for several of my placemat colour palettes and possibly some of the scarves as well. Will have to investigate how to put them on the blog, the shop website, and in the shop this summer as well.

4) Am still toying with my 'scarf a day' project idea. Whether I go ahead with it will depend largely on how much weaving I can get done in the next two weeks. More info on this to follow!

Oops, better post and get off the comp as it's 11:59 aye em and I want to at least get downstairs this morning! Must fly!

Q: How smug am I?

Lawks! I cannot tell you how excited and smug I am feeling about what I'm up to today, but I am going to try!

Here's the thing: I made a sectional warp beam for Mabel (my 60" DIYmakra) a few years ago and have been using it almost exclusively for the past couple, but I've never been all that thrilled with it. For one thing, it's slow to wind on the warp. Probably less time over all than winding the warp on the mill and then beaming the warp chains, especially when you consider Ron's time when he helps me beam, but it still seems frustratingly slow. I am all about instant gratification, after all. For another thing, it's been really blinkin' uncomfortable to crouch down under the threads as they come from the spool rack behind me and then slide back and forth on my toosh between the bout I'm winding on and the wheel that turns the warp beam around. For a third thing, the spool rack is kinda big and awkward and gets jammed up underneath the stairs that the loom backs on. Ekcetera, ekcetera. So... although I have firmly believed all this time that the sectional system was preferable to The Old Way, I've been dragging my feet whenever it comes time to put a new warp on the loom 'cause it's been frustrating and tedious.

All of this is behind me now! Or rather, most of it is in front of me now, which is TONS and TONS better. Let me explain: it finally occurred to me that I could put the spool rack inside the loom and put the tension box on the back beam in the other direction. This means both that I don't have to crouch down under the threads (oh, happy happy day!) and also that the rack doesn't get jammed up under the stairs. And the non-crouching and extra space behind the loom means that I can sit in a rolly chair and sail back and forth between bout and wheel, which not only increases speed and comfort, it increases the fun factor exponentially. Who doesn't love zooming back and forth in a rolly chair, I ask you? I've also got enough room for my little rolly drawers to follow me along, so that I have a surface on which to put all the stuff that used to fall off the warp beam as I was working and to which I can stick all the little bits of tape I use to secure the cut bouts - no more sticking tape to poor ol' Mabel. She's never complained about it, but I've felt a bit guilty nevertheless. AND it's all at a much more comfortable height - no more bending over to mess about with knots and things. I cannot tell you how much better this is than the old way! WAIT - I just did!


Note the rolly chair! Please try not to also note that the rolly chair is covered in cat fur. This chair belongs to Brown, No.3/4ths cat.

I should perhaps mention here that I figured out the whole sectional business on my own - I've never seen anyone else put on a sectional warp, in the flesh or by vid, so I'm just figuring out what works as I go along. Undoubtedly these are not revelations to anyone who really knows what they're doing around a sectional beam, or perhaps those folks know even better ways of doing things, but this is pretty darn exciting in my world.

But wait! There's more!



Since putting the sectional rakes on the loom, I've been doing a lot of cotton blankets (like the baby blankets in previous posts) but far fewer of the wool blankets that used to be one of my staple products, since they don't really lend themselves to (my version of) sectional warping. My wool blankets don't (or didn't use to) have stripes that were full inches, nor have the same inches repeated ... er, repeatedly, and so on. I've figured it out and made it work, but have had that nagging dissatisfaction with the process and the results and that dragging of feet re: planning warps, only compounded for the wool blankets. Blah.

So anyway, this morning I decided I wanted to 1) use up some of the singles wool that I'd bought last year, 2) try a striped rosepath twill style of threading that I think will make great blankets, pillows and garments, and 3) try reversing my sectional arrangement as described above. The catch is that the threading I wanted to use has the same five colours across the warp, but every single inch is different from every other - not something I've ever attempted to do on my sectional before.¹ Still, I decided to give it a whirl, in a short warp so that the wailing and gnashing of teeth would be kept to a minimum and be over as quickly as possible.

I examined my threading's colour arrangement and determined that there are at most six white ends in each inch, four blue ends, four pink ends, three purple ends and three green ends², so then I wound all those bobbins. That's 20 bobbins even though I'm only using 10 epi. I bunged 'em all on the spool rack, threaded them all through the first and second combs of the tension box (and the tension rods in between the combs) but not through the comb on the extender. Then I pick out the 10 threads that I need for the an inch, secure the others out of the way, and wind the first bout with just those 10 threads. This made a big mess until I figured out the best way to secure the unused threads so they didn't get tangled up, but has worked a treat since then. At the next inch, I whip all the threads out of the extender's comb, pick out the next set of 10 threads and pop them into the comb, and then start winding. And so on!

Here is how I figured out how to secure the unused ends out of the way:


NB: it's important to keep them raised up above the ones you are using, which are pulled tight against the bar at the bottom, so that the ones that are moving past don't snag on the loose ones and carry them along with. I have one purple thread in particular that's been a bit fiddly but every once in a while I stop and have a few (only slightly swear-y!) words with that one and pull it tight again and other than that it's all worked like a charm.

So I spent a very relaxed couple hours before lunch messing about, winding bobbins, figuring out how to get my spool rack at the right height inside the loom (it's up on a bench that goes across the treadles) and then winding on half my warp, whilst having a rolly good time (yeargh - sorry!) zipping back and forth on my rolly chair and feeling...

A: Very, Very Smug Indeed.

1. When I've put on this type of warp in the past, I've wound each colour as its own chain and then dressed the loom from front to back. Although I learned F2B first, this is just about the only thing I still put on the loom that way. Sectional is EVEN BETTER.

2. It turns out that I really needed four purples and four greens but I didn't have them, so I'm changing the colour patterns as I go along. NB: this is operator error, i.e. I Screwed Up, and not a problem with the system, which works GRATE!

Best laid plans...

So I didn't get to my fibre lunch group today, nor did I get to the flannel fabric place. In fact, I stayed home in my jammies, reading a new (to me) webcomic and eating the cookies I baked to take this afternoon. Ahem. Guess that falls into the "balance of slack" category.

The aforementioned cookies and comics were balanced by weaving off the baby blanket warp just now. I decided to go with the nice, creamy yellow that's in the warp for the last one. Now I just have to deal with the knots that went by whilst winding on the warp and then I can serge my babies apart, wash them up and take them to the store to pick out some lovely flannel to go with. Soon there will be pics!

Oh, and I finished my sock but for the grafting on the toe, which I shall attempt to do neatly tonight.

I want to get the second sock well under way before my new needles arrive, lest my First Sock EVAR¹ remain mateless. I know I'll want to use the new needles immediately and then I may never go back to the rather swear-y ones I'm using now and since the new ones aren't the same size... you get the idea. Oh, and guess what? The sock I finished actually fits.


Scampy, No.2 Cat, likes the new sock, especially the end I left for teh graftings...

Yes, it's a bit loose so it may be relegated to jammy socks but, considering how much time I spend in my jammies (not just while eating cookies and reading webcomics!), this is not a bad life for a sock of mine. It just needs a mate to spend that life with.

1. Okay, so I made a pair of socks about 20 years ago² but they were so saggy and baggy that I only wore them once or twice and even that was enough to put a hole in them thanks to the el cheapo, thick cotton yarn I used, so we just won't mention them, hmm?

2. Omg, omg, how can I possibly be old enough to have done something like knit a pair of socks 20 YEARS AGO!?!??

WebCam 20.04.07

First, I should introduce my looms. I have two: Mabel, a 60" Glimakra-clone 4 shaft counter balance with brand spankin' new DIY sectional beam, and Maybe Joey, a LeClerc Minerva 22" 8 shaft double back beam jack. Mabel was so named because I thought at the time that she was made of maple. Good job I didn't know then that she's actually made of birch! Maybe Joey was so named because I wasn't really sure what to call him. Seven years later I'm still not.



At the moment, Mabel is wearing a lovely 100% cotton warp threaded in the unplain weave I use for quite a bit of my production. I've got two blankets done so far - the first in vieux bleu and the second (at left, and in the pillow pic in previous post) in orange pale. There's enough left on for some pillow fabric or maybe a baby blanket. This is an experimental warp in many ways: it's my first full sized (i.e. 50" wide) heavy cotton production blanket warp, it's a new colour palette and, apart from a short 16"x 3 yd tester warp, it's the first time I've used my DIY sectional beam. (More on this later.) I am happy to report that the experiment is a success! I love the colour palette (which Mom has dubbed "Seaside"), nothing that might've gone wrong with the sectional system has, and the fabric weight promises to be quite lovely for blankets once it's wet finished - which will happen just as soon as the delivery guys bring my new washing machine tomorrow!




Joey, on the other hand, is sporting a more au naturel look - I wove off his last warp a few days ago (the fabric in my Very First Pillow, in fact!) and haven't put anything new on him yet. He's not completely bereft of company, however, which is very au naturel for both looms in a house with four cats, I assure you.