It's All Learning

I finished the fiddly 12 shaft yardage! So, here's another tote. After doing 36 epi (a little to loose, although not flimsy) and here at 42 epi (odd striping in the warp with this reed), I've decided that the perfect sett for totes with 10/2 cotton, is 40.   

 Looking to the future, I asked Joanne at Glimakra USA what I need to know to be ready for a drawloom. She sent me some patterns. This is one of them from her website. It's an 8 shaft drall.

From start to finish, with life in between, I got these done in four days!

Yes, I know I'll never be a stylist.

Stop and Go

It's been kind of stop and go around here. I've finished some things and struggled on others. I finished spinning and plying the fiber I bought at Imperial Yarn in Oregon.

It's three ply, done Navajo ply method.

And I've started spinning up this luscious 50/50 yak/silk blend from RedFish.

Another completed project is this lace scarf/shawl I've been knitting from my standby, Victorian Lace Today. It was supposed to be a stash buster. Sigh. There's probably enough yarn left to make a second one. Maybe I'll donate it.

 

 

 

And also, compliments of RedFish, I bought three sock yarns. They're 75% super wash merino wool and 25% silk. I've started on the green skein.

Interesting. I just noticed that the one in back is very similar in color to the fiber shown above. (And fyi, in the photo, the colors do not show as rich as they truly are.)

 Now, as to my weaving, it's been a struggle. As I've said before, I learn best by seeing and then doing. Book learning and no feedback is hard for me. So, I got stumped for a while on the 12 treadle/12 shaft tie up. I got it all done, but too many of the sheds were iffy. Thanks to some generous feedback from Karen at Warped for Good, I took all the ties off and started, again. I marked them as described by Becky at Vavstuga.

I did all 120 of them. And then, put them back on.

Most of the sheds were better, but the shafts still dropped. The shafts and lamms should be parallel to the ground. Because I kept stopping out of frustration, it took a while to get to the point where I could just weave. The sheds are not all good, but they're usable. I just have to push the shafts down, before stepping on some of the treadles. 

Luckily, this is yardage, so the selvedges (which are effected most) don't matter. This is another pattern I got from handweaving.net.

 

First project off of the new loom. (I used a 4 shaft draft from Weaver's Craft, Issue 17, p.8.) I'm trying to shrink my stash, so I chose the aqua yarn. Warp for five towels and weft for two used it up! Then I picked the purple, because it's the only other 8/2 cotton yarn I had that was as coarse as the aqua. All the rest of my non-mercerized 8/2 is So soft, that I don't think it would absorb anything.

I knew that it would make more sense to go from a 4 shaft first project to maybe an 8 shaft, but I don't do 'easy'. I have 12 shafts now, I'm going to use them! So, setting up.

Yeah. This could take a while.

And it did. But here she is (and I think she likes the name Sophia, or Sophie) ready to test the sheds...all 12 of them!