Knitting Block (Still Weaving Though!)

Weaving a pie crust recipe

So I haven't actually knit anything for what seems to be a very long time. I've been working on the burgundy cardigan (top-down, raglan, v-neck, pockets) for a while and just passed the armholes, but I'm really just not feeling it, so it's going to be frogged. I just ripped out my red dress (third time is decidedly not the charm) that had been on the needles for a very long time indeed. I haven't been working on that black brioche dress either, for which I'm in the process of deciding whether to rip out and start over as a regular ribbed turtleneck tank dress or to simply continue onward as is.

Difficult colours to capture on a cloudy, cloudy day

At the very least, though, I've still been crafting away! In reality, this was something I was supposed to be working on all summer, but which in fact I've only started some couple of weeks ago and finished the first part of a couple of days ago (it's a series). So I'm counting that as a little victory.

Is it a scarf? Is it a table runner? The possibilities are endless!

I was supposed to have had this done months ago, and by this point to have had the entire series just about complete. Sadly, I didn't realize how tuckered out I was going to be after complete liberation from the educational system that is university, so I wasn't able to follow the proposed (admittedly probably a little herculean) schedule I had submitted for my grant. I got right on purchasing the right colours of yarn from colourmart more or less immediately after I got the grant, so that I could start weaving anytime, but then lost all momentum once I settled into my new job/position. It didn't help that the yellow I had ordered for the butter colour turned out to be more like a turmeric yellow (I ended up using it in my mokoshi).

I think I finally sat myself down and figured out ingredient weight ratios for some recipes (all pies, since those were what had started the series) on excel sometime around halfway through summer? And then my original plan was thwarted because Sandy, my floor loom, was too large to be set up in my room - or anywhere else in the house for that matter, apart from the basement, and there were a couple of logistics as to why not the basement. So I had all my materials, but couldn't do the twill that I had originally planned on doing, because twill! And thus completely fell out of it again.

One pick of the subtlest of all clasped wefts probably ever woven

In the end, I set up the table in my room again (since I had put it away for a good chunk of the summer months to free up some walking space) and set up Coraline, the AKL. I completely scrapped the twill idea after very briefly considering, then immediately discarding, the idea of doing a 3-shaft twill on the AKL. I figured I'd get pretty much the perfect sett if I simply used two 12.5dpi heddles to double the epi and didn't want to risk having a sparsely populated warp just so I could end up with a weft-faced twill. I'm very happy to say that I'm incredibly pleased with the way this wrap turned out! The yarn is incredibly soft, which helps a bunch, but the subtle hues and surprising amount of water content that goes into a pie crust, even if the majority of it evaporates, came out to be a pleasant surprise. I somehow expected much starker delineations between the ingredients (probably because I had originally intended them to be completely separate, one colour chunk after the other), but I quite like how randomly dispersing the ingredients turned out, both visually and as a parallel to the process of making the crust.

Well-proportioned scarf.

I'm thinking of putting the entire series into my etsy store once I complete it. For the time being though, work on that grant update in the hopes of being able to receive financial backing to complete it.

Jane & co.

Hand-dyed, hand-woven, hand-sewn

Unfortunately not the best photo, but as I don't have access currently to a lighting studio, this will have to do. This is the project I had been working on all of last semester: a hand-dyed, hand-woven, and hand-sewn quilt! It was my first time quilting anything at all, so of course I had to go all out and do it as much from scratch as I could, right? Stitching together all the layers of the quilt sandwich took me a good 3 nights of hand-sewing, stitch by painful stitch (I didn't have a thimble the first night and drew blood after using my finger to redirect the needle upwards enough times), as I found out that quite unexpectedly - although I should have foreseen it - the quilt sandwich was too thick to go through the sewing machine, for one, and, when I tried, it got stuck and threatened to destroy the quilt blocks!

I'm not sure exactly how much yarn I used for this, but I'd hazard a rough estimate at approximately 7000 yds of laceweight & 2000 yds of fingering weight for all the fabric I wove up. Granted, there was a small pile of scraps at the end that were either too small to use, or that I didn't have to use since the block was already large enough. The centre of each block was woven in BFL using my Coccodrillo, and the surrounding strips were woven on Sandy using superwash merino. All the yarn save the undyed parts were dyed using Greener Shades dyes. All the structures required only 2 shafts, and there are 3 blocks of each weave structure in the quilt. It took me a good month or two to finish this in its entirety.

I made the quilt to accompany a book - The Plainest Weave - I made for the same project. I had had the idea since the start of the term, but just writing and rewriting the draft took a while, and I was making changes even as I was printing the first side of the pages.

Once I get better pictures of everything (probably closer to March, when we have our department's Open House and there's better lighting), I will be updating my website. And in the meantime, if anyone is interested in purchasing this & the accompanying book, feel free to send me a message, the only caveat being that I still need everything until March at least.

Loom (Fairy) Dust

Lots and lots

 I found these pictures in my folders. Taken very recently, right after I took my Nilec off the table to take pictures using the table. I'm not sure if it's just me, but I get an incredible amount of dust under the loom no matter what I'm weaving with. Even the really smooth cone yarns shed to create this dust-footprint under both my looms whenever I weave for a while. And this isn't just my Nilec, it's also my AKL and Sandy (the floor loom). I didn't realize weaving generated so much detritus.

It kind of forms a pattern, doesn't it?

I wonder, if I collected all the remains and carded and spun them back into yarn, how much I would get back?

And just in case the dust in the above two photos is a little difficult to discern, here's one that's been auto-contrast adjusted on Photoshop:

Somewhat disturbing higher contrast version of the loom dus

Spooky.

(Because I forgot)

Just Sandy. On her pedestal.

The one thing I wanted to say in the last post but forgot right after I started detailing stuff, was a huge thank you to Travis Meinolf for releasing his loom plans onto the interwebs! Despite all my grumbling, I really appreciate that it was available for me to use - and for free! - or I might not have even tried to build my own loom and thus make my first foray into woodworking!

First Woodworking Project Looming Over Me

Yes, I am sitting on a table with my loom in the printmaking studio.

Or rather, it was looming over me up until I got it to work just yesterday! I ran into so many issues because I've never set up a floor loom before, and as you might be able to see, the lams and pedals don't all hang at the same height, so I'm obviously still no expert.

I followed Travis Meinolf's Loom Plans (as I discussed here), which I must stress is in beta mode; what I'm trying to get at, more specifically, is that if you follow the materials list to the T, you will not be able to build a loom as per the instructions. Make sure to read through everything two or three times and make sure you know why he's telling you to drill a hole somewhere, or when to affix things to the frame, because you'll have the lam pivot in the frame before putting the lams on, as well as have 6 lams for a 4-harness counterbalance loom. Oh, and you'll be missing 4 pieces of 75cm long wood. You'll also run out of 4mm screws. This is definitely not to try to discourage anyone from building their own loom using his plans - it's actually pretty easy, all things considered! - but just a cautionary note so you don't end up having 6 lams and missing a couple of wood pieces. If I can make this as my first ever woodworking project, I can assure anyone that they can most likely do it too. Probably better.

I got all of the wood cut down to size at Home Depot, which is where I purchased all the lumber. I went to Home Hardware for the nuts/bolts, etc. and got the threaded rod cut at school. I cannot stress enough that you should get threaded rod for the front and back beams! Or at least the front one, because that's where I sat to thread my heddles. It's a bit awkward sitting from the front and leaning over, as well as being very damaging for the back, so when I finally gave in and sat inside the loom on the front beam, I was surprised to find that it held my weight quite well. I'm not sure if that's the design feature or if it just happened that way, but there's a good reason for using threaded rod and not a dowel or something weaker.

Her name's Sandy. Not that she's been sanded.

My loom wobbles a bit from side to side because I didn't follow one of the instructions (drilling two holes/side into the front and back beams instead of one/side, in order to make the frame not sway from side to side - not a huge issue, but something to do differently). I had so. much. trouble. trying to get the pedals to actually bring the harnesses down using lobster claw clips (of the jewellery variety, so it's not like the instructions were the issue) that I ended up just taking them all out and tying string to connect the lams and the pedals. Works like a dream. Did I also mention that while I was trying to test out pedals, the s-hooks popped out twice? Let me explain that a bit: the s-hooks hold up the top two dowels. If they pop out, all the harnesses drop down. Somehow my warp made it through more or less fine though, so I guess all is well!

A look from below

As you can see, my tension is pretty all over the place, in part because I lashed on and couldn't figure out for the life of me how to get even tension by adjusting the string all around, and in part because after I introduced the clasped-weft at the red part, one side became thicker than the other. That being said: it weaves!

From above

I swear it doesn't look quite this bad in real life, the tension issues! Also, I think they reflect more on the poor quality of my ability to lash on to the front rod than on the loom, so. I would recommend making this if you're thinking about it and sitting on the fence a bit. I have never built anything like this before - like I said, it's my first woodworking project - so the fact that my loom can weave at all is a miracle. I'm sure anyone else can do a whole lot better. Even still, I'm incredibly happy with my new loom! I've named her Sandy.

Summer Roundup (pt.1)

Moon cactus flowering!

I feel as though I haven't really posted much at all over the summer - I haven't posted any in-progress updates of my WIPs (of which there seems to be a never-ending perpetuity), for one - so I decided to round up a couple of those things that had gone on thus far without making it onto the blog. To be honest, though, I haven't done much this summer. Certainly nowhere near as much as I had originally planned on accomplishing. Not that I felt I would, from the beginning, to be fair: I burned out last September-December (most likely from being a little too ambitious in all my printmaking adventures) and have basically been trying to recover motivation for doing anything since. I think I'm ready for the new semester now. (Well it's going to start either way, so thank goodness for that.)

One of our two moon cacti flowered this summer, which was a pleasant surprise. I didn't even know they flowered! They also don't seem to perish even if you don't water them for half a year, so they're pretty low maintenance. (Nobody really knew who was watering them when, so nobody watered them for that time for fear they would drown, thinking someone else was taking care of them, until Mom finally took them under her wing - they blossomed soon after.) That being said, one of them hasn't moved or otherwise changed in appearance even after the watering resumed, so perhaps they do. Or maybe this one just doesn't flower? I really don't know.

Treasure hunting at the thrift store

In textile-related (not-so-new) news, I found a wooden umbrella swift at the thrift store for 7.99! Apart from the missing bottom peg, it was in perfectly serviceable condition, so I got it, went to Home Depot to get a nut and bolt to replace the peg, and now it sits merrily atop surfaces while I wind in my room. The verdict? I actually like winding from my knees over using the swift! I could totally understand using it for slippery yarn - silk, maybe? - but for regular ol' wool, knees are the bees' knees, so to speak.

On the subject of yarn, I tried out dyeing over the summer months, very enthusiastically at the beginning (although I have no photo evidence of all the little mini skeins I've dyed with food colouring), and producing some success, even going as far as to purchase Greener Shades dyes from Knit Picks when it went on sale a couple months ago because I realized that food colouring was incredibly inexact and presented numerous difficulties when trying to reproduce the same colour in the mini skein in a full skein, but I have nothing to show for it at this moment, still. I used the Greener Shades dyes to dye up 3 mini skeins a beautiful deep red-purple colour at 5% dos, but I have yet to take the plunge and dye up a full skein of anything. As dyed fibre is one of my proposed goals for the fall/winter semester, that will have to change. Sooner rather than later.

Pile of woven pieces, waiting to be cut & sewn.

There's a pile of woven fabric that's starting to look as though it has the potential to loom over me in the future unless I actually go about using it up or otherwise getting it out of the house (takers, anyone? I would gladly sell the red-and-white one! It's a lovely check pattern, but I haven't a clue what to make with it.). The mouse and champagne were supposed to become a simple a-line dress, but now that mouse has been finished and washed, I'm just not feeling it. Maybe a top? I'm thinking maybe striping them together or something to make it a bit more interesting. The red-and-white check? I can't imagine it as anything other than a flat piece of fabric! Besides, how many patterns do I wear on the regular? I can count them with one hand. Two fingers, really.

The black one I have no excuse. The pattern has been drafted (although it needs to be pieced together) and I know how to lay them out on the fabric to use the most fabric possible and finish the least possible seams. I wove it specifically for this purpose, and it has been languishing beneath those other pieces. In other words: I've just been procrastinating.

In other weaving news though:

New project on the Nilec - sampling.

I'm using my Nilec as a sampling loom! Just like I said it was perfect for! And guess what yarn I'm using for it? It's some undyed BFL I purchased for the dyeing venture! Just knowing my dyeing experiment fizzled out (died, perhaps?) over the summer despite all my forced enthusiasm gets to me. After some reflection, I've realized more or less that I actually really like the look of undyed yarn. I also like the dye jobs other people do. Apart from wanting to have tried it out, I don't see much reason to continue doing it. Maybe that will change when I have more solid plans in terms of dyeing.

Despite everything though, like I said, I'll have to produce some sort of dyed yarn to use in my weaving this coming semester. Perhaps this more directed approach will be more enjoyable? I was rather aimless in my attempt to dye, my goal simply being to learn how to dye yarn and fibre.

New notebooks, and my favourite pen.

Ending on a completely unrelated note: I got two new notebooks! My brother gave me a moleskine for my birthday last year, and much to my own surprise, I've already filled up half of it or so! So I figured maybe I would benefit from having some thinner notebooks to do more focused studies or notes and scribbles of things. Instead of doodling possible knitting designs and ideas, loom building plans, thoughts, school stuff, etc. all in one notebook, in other words, I would separate those all out to make some more sense of everything. This works in theory. Well, there might also have been a back-to-school sale at Aboveground, and you can never have enough notebooks, right? These Fabriano Ecoqua notebooks have blank pages (yay!) that are slightly thicker than those in the moleskine, and have a bit more tooth to them as well (boo!). They feel pretty nice though, so I'll probably get used to them.

Part 2 will be a roundup of my knitting. There's the Orne Cardigan and two linen cardigans that have somehow not been finished over the summer, and the pair of finished linen stitch/linen weave blankets, which have been finished for a while but have remained unblocked for no good reason really, as well as possibly additions to my stash that have happened? (I know, I know.) Also, I've been doing a lot of reading, to get me back to actually doing. It worked, I think. So, note to self: even if you can't get yourself to do anything else, read. A list might be forthcoming.

On the Hunt

For a loom. This is going to be a long, word-heavy post, so beware.

I want to be able to weave twill. Without having to fiddle around with two heddles, having a very limited upper limit for the sett (which is kind of something I don't appreciate too much about the rigid heddle loom: with my Nilec, I can add as many heddles as I want, limited only by the physical inability to put more heddles into the harness), and also the much smaller shed created by the use of two heddles.

Beloved Nilec, I am not hoping to replace you, per se...

In hindsight (although also, to be honest, in retrospect), I probably should have waited around for a 4-shaft loom to pop up in the used loom market instead of hastily calling dibs on the 2-shaft Nilec. Which is not to say I don't love the Nilec, because I do, and I enjoy weaving on it, but it does have its drawbacks:

• It only has 15" of weaving width. Not including shrinkage, of course. Which means around 12" or so of finished fabric?
• 2 shafts. While there are plenty of combinations I can do using just 2 shafts, and while I have not yet exhausted them by any means (in fact I haven't really gotten started on them with the Nilec, having only woven champagne on it! I have warped on a sampler though, for a bunch of different 2-shaft drafts), I'm really hankering after twill.
• The beater doesn't line up straight. When pushed back against the castle, the left side touches the wood, but the right side doesn't. I haven't noticed any detrimental effect this might have had on weaving, but it bothers me. I'm thinking of taking everything apart once and putting it back together.
• I also have some trouble moving the lever from left to right - there's resistance on the right side preventing smooth transitions. Not all the time, but I haven't quite figured out the magic trick to make it go smoothly.
• It's a lot louder and squeakier than I thought it would be. This was my own fault for neglecting to read reviews on the Dorothy (or any other Leclerc loom, really). It's not actually an issue, but something to keep in mind.

Despite all the above though, the Nilec does fill one of the spheres of my weaving needs: it's a great little sampler loom, as well as being quick and easy to use. It's also light, and it's small enough to fit on both of the tables I have set up for weaving. No worrying about tie-ups, and if I make a mistake threading, at least there's only so many threads I have to undo to get to the error, given that the entire loom is only 15" across! (I'm speaking from experience.)

And so this time, I think I've narrowed down some of my criteria:

• It has to fold up. Or be otherwise compact.
• 4 or more shafts. 8 would be optimal, I think, but I would definitely consider a 12 or 16 (although it would probably violate the first condition: space).
• Anywhere between 20-36", although I'm starting to think 36" might be too big to fit anywhere. 24-30" is most likely what I'm looking for.
• Floor loom if possible, but I will of course consider table looms.
• Consider texsolv or string heddles: quieter.
• Under 100 lbs. Preferably under 60 lbs.

I've seen two Harrisville 22/4s for sale that fit the bill. A 24" Dorset popped up in my feed, but by the time I got to it, it had already disappeared.

And then I dug up the research I had been doing on building my own loom. The most favourable contender was Travis Meinolf's 4-shaft counterbalance collapsible floor loom. It looks very promising, and I had even made some calculations as to how much everything would cost from Home Depot. Under $100 if I use the cheapest wood (and assuming I can get all the cuts for free), but no more than $350 even if I get maple. It fits all my criteria.

Then I did some more research and happened upon this free pdf on how to build a 2 harness table loom. The photo is misleading, but it does list out all the parts you need. But here's the goldmine right here: Weaving with Small Appliances. While it doesn't lay out step by step how to build a table loom, it describes all of the parts and the mechanisms I need to know in order to build one (in theory). The University of Arizona actually has a bunch of resources on looms, including loom plans with teeny tiny diagrams, so I would recommend a visit. The only thing that would make the potential future 24" 8-shaft table loom (of the Small Appliances) better is if it could collapse as well, with warp in place. I can probably figure something out. Maybe just use wingnuts to secure the castle, so I can loosen them and push the castle down for storage.

Bring Out the Champagne!

Beautiful new (to me) Leclerc Nilec!

Sometime last week, a lovely package arrived on my doorstep: a Leclerc Nilec. It's a beautiful little table loom with 2 shafts (plenty enough for me, as I do mostly plain weave anyway) with a 15" weaving width. The lady who sold it to me also generously included in the package a collapsible warping board, two boat shuttles, and an extra 8dpi reed so I could get started right away.

30/2 cone yarn in colour "champagne"

I knew I wanted to weave at finer setts than I could get with the 250 heddles it came with, so I cleared out the 400 wire heddles from Romni's at a highly discounted price ($6/100) since that was the last of their stock. The new heddles are significantly easier to work with and get caught on each other much less, so I'm really tempted to just replace all of them, but that would require me to make another purchase of 100 heddles (at a higher price + shipping, most likely), so I'll just use what I've got for now. I wanted to weave 15" using the champagne cone at 30epi, so I needed 450 heddles, which meant 225 per harness. That came out to 2 threads per slot in the 15dpi reed.

3 warp chains, cut before their time. The three musketeers, if you will.

Warping on the board went fine, more or less, though it did end up taking me a couple of days to get around to actually doing it. Beaming, on the other hand, did not have me beaming, but rather wanting to sob in a corner. I had no raddle, and didn't want to have to pull all the threads through the reed to beam the warp on, then have to sley the reed again, so I kind of just went at it. A couple of issues came up:

1. The warp wasn't spaced properly. Duh. I really should have waited a bit to go to Home Depot and just make myself a raddle, which I ended up doing... two days ago. I was already threading the heddles at that time.
2. For some reason, the first warp chain got very very tangled. That might be because I warped it up over the course of several days? The other two warp chains were more or less problem-free, and I had done those both in one day.
3. The cross wouldn't let the lease sticks slide along the warp! I had to keep tugging at the warp chains to straighten everything out so that the lease sticks would be able to slide along the chain. I'm not sure if I just did something wrong or what. I tied two t-shirt strips from the front to the back of the loom and made the cross using them to hold the lease sticks in place. I think I'll try tying them to the front of the loom next time? I really don't know what I did wrong here. It might have had to do with issue#2 though, since the bulk of the tangles that interfered with the lease sticks at the cross occurred at the first chain.
4. Due to tangles and threads starting to stick to each other making a mess of the cross that I could not brave with the lease sticks, I cut the warp before I reached the end. I'm guessing I only got half the warp on. Oops.

I think that was it for the beaming process.

What's happening with this harnesses over yonder? Also, see that broken warp thread? Fixed.

A couple of other things though:

• The paper covering the top and bottom of the 15dpi reed is coming off more and more with every beat of the beater. Maybe I can just rip it all off and tape it over?
• The harnesses don't lie completely evenly with one another. I don't think that's too much of an issue though. I've also had to put a magnet on top of both sides so the lever would stay up in position. I'm not sure if that is more due to issues with tension in my warp or if that's just the loom. Again, not a big issue.
• I feel like the shed isn't actually big enough for the boat shuttles. If the loom was any wider, the shuttles might just get stuck halfway, but it works since it's only 15" across. Actually the shed is plenty big for the boat shuttle, as long as I don't weave too close to the reed. The shed shrinks with each pass of the shuttle, the closer the woven cloth gets to the reed, so I have to advance the warp pretty often.

That's all so far? They're all pretty inconsequential, I think, and I'm really enjoying weaving on the Nilec despite those issues (plus a couple of snapped warp threads)! It's so much quicker than weaving on the AKL (especially since I'm doing mostly double sett with two rigid heddles on my AKL). And besides, now I know what not to do next time! I think this quote sums it up really nicely*:

"Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better." (Samuel Beckett)

*I have a confession to make: I've never actually read any Beckett. I have seen this quote everywhere though. And for good reason, I think!

Mouse

Lovelier colour than I had imagined when on the cone: stone.

Not an actual mouse (thank goodness? sadly?), but this lovely silvery grey that came from an old cone I had purchased years ago warped up a lot lighter than it appeared on the cone and reminded me of a mouse. It's really quite a lovely colour, if a bit boring at first glance. The top and bottom of the cone have probably been exposed to sunlight for long periods of time before, and so have become more of a pinkish colour as compared to the rest of the cone (the colourway is officially "stone", I believe, though the label has long been lost), resulting in short pink slivers popping out occasionally on both the warp and the weft. Like mice.

Or spiders. Speaking of which, a spider rested itself upon my wall right above the loom and stayed there for a good part of the day as I wove: a good omen, I think. I mean, spiders are master weavers, aren't they?

Look how relatively evenly tensioned that warp is! And those little pink flecks! Charming.

I think I'm starting to get the hang of winding on the warp on my own! I might have to shove something into the back beam on the right edge later on (odd; it's usually the left side that's loose), but for the most part, the tug-and-wind method is working beautifully for me. For the first couple of warps it was a bit difficult simply because the plastic warp ties bounced back into shape, but they have since curved much more and go quietly into the back beam without too much hassle.

The check pattern cloth has been finished for a number of days now, and I just have to take some pictures of it and figure out what to make with it. I'm pretty happy with it, though I can't imagine myself wearing it... perhaps it will simply remain a wrap and end up in the store?

Weaving Through Checks

Check check.

I've started weaving a 2-shaft draft using my AKL, and while the reed marks are distorting the pattern a bit (a lot), I can see it coming out if I try to shift my focus on a point beyond the actual weave! Exciting times. Hopefully the reed marks will lighten up, or better yet disappear, once it's off the loom and I put it through the wash.

More of the check pattern. And the reed marks.

So. While it's pretty obvious in hindsight - and I'm not too sure why I thought it would be the case - I thought that the checks would be larger. I envisioned them larger. (Which, if they were, would have made the cloth pretty unstable in the middle of the checks if I were ever to cut into the cloth to make something of it.) Even though I knew, just by looking at the draft, that the checks would each have 3 strands making up their width. Oh well. At least I know how to translate weaving drafts onto my rigid heddle loom.

That being said though, I'm not completely satisfied with the sett that I can achieve once I move onto doing anything beyond plain weave, especially once I get to 3-shaft drafts: because the threading sequences don't necessarily use every hole and slot, I can't double my sett even using the two heddles (because each hole/eye acts as a different shaft, and then the slots act as the third one). Even with this draft, which was made for 2 harnesses, my sett was far from doubled, even though I used two heddles. As it is, it's not too light, but I really like the idea of working fine, so perhaps a floor or table loom would better suit my purposes? Something to think about for the future.

You can see the two heddles here in rest position.

Will it Twill? (For Sale.)

Just added this scarf to my etsy shop.

It's 100% superwash merino, handwoven in a chevron pattern, and the dimensions are as follows: 12.5 x 64" (not including 7.5" fringe on either end). You can get this lovely scarf for yourself for just $110 + shipping! Click on the link above or visit my store here.

Will it twill? Will it twill?

What's this? Something other than plain weave? You mean you can do that?

Of course it'will. Of course it'will. It did. But it's a chevron. And I was aiming more for a herringbone pattern... it probably didn't help matters that I had chosen a chevron draft, but I was really hoping.

It's 134g of madtosh tosh lace, handwoven on my Ashford Knitter's Loom using two 12dpi rigid heddles.

You can see it a little better in this photo.

That being said, I am quite happy with the fact that I have now figured out how to read weaving drafts (kind of, I think, more or less?) and also that I've woven something other than plain weave (finally), so all's well. Now I'm really just more worried about how I'm going to do herringbone on my AKL. All the drafts I could find of it required 4 shafts, and I'm pretty sure that my rigid heddle loom can only do up to 3 shafts before requiring pick up sticks, which I'm really not looking forward to using. I'm wondering whether I can just do a 3-shaft herringbone pattern instead. It works in my head, but actually doing it is another issue altogether.

Either way, now that I've figured out how to kind of work out 3-shaft drafts on my AKL, that opens up a world of possibilities, which should keep me plenty busy over the summer. There's also a not-so-little side project that I'll be doing, which might surface (or not) depending on its success.

Cotton

It's a ghost!

Here's the cream/white cotton blanket. It didn't turn out to be as much of a chore as I had expected it to be (which is almost disappointing, seeing as that was a huge part of the reason I avoided it for so long... I could've been finished that much sooner!), and I'm really pleased with the result! Now I just need to hemstitch at 30", cut off 3" extra after that for fringe, then hemstitch the other side and possibly print on the remaining yardage. It's the perfect size for a large scarf! I really want to whip up a couple of these and print all over them, or maybe try dyeing with them or painting over them. Really soft and quite lovely.

Photo Evidence

Oops. Didn't quite make it.

That's what my photo sessions typically consist of. I don't post the behind-the-scenes stuff, so you don't see it, but that's what happens when you do self-portraits with a haphazardly angled camera sitting precariously on two stacks of books to aim it at the right level.
Here's some photo evidence that I actually did finish some stuff!

 

Drunken stupor blanket for Dad.

My first large project.

  

Swathed in brick!

And all of this was with newly acquired yarn, so I think you can safely say that there's no way I can possibly fulfil one of my new year's resolutions already. Ha! As if there was any chance to begin with. But well, at least I did get to tick one of them off with my published pattern! So all's well.

Shedding Don't Get You No Shed.

Don't let its innocent façade fool you.

Feeling totally empowered (read: cocky) from the success of my first successful woven fabric, I decided to weave something a little more challenging: a clasped-weft plaid blanket. Sounded challenging enough to keep me interested, but not too hard (no colour changes in the same row or anything like that, no lace... just simple plain-ish weave).

The warping process went... well, I got all the threads on the back beam in any case. A couple of them - I actually mean practically all of the wine threads - were lost along the way and I had to fix them (fixing warp threads. Before I even started weaving. I can't believe I didn't notice the signs, honestly) but I got all the threads in order enough to thread the eyes. Tied all of them onto the front, and went for the up shed. A couple of loose threads, but that's fine, I said. I'd manage. Went for the down shed. Uhhh....

That's narrow. Already weighted and all, too.

 So I cleared it and forged on ahead. After a couple inches of inching the shuttle across hoping it didn't catch stray threads, I decided to start weighting some of the threads. It started with one little glass jam jar. One of those sample sizes. Put a thread around the offending warp thread or two, shoved the thread into the jar, and shut them in, dangling the jar off the back beam. So alright, I'm learning something new: weighting warp threads. Hurrah for problem solving!

Then I ran into some other troubles. Both of my warp threads are singles. One of which (the grey one) is a soft, stretchy singles (note: don't use stretchy threads as a warp!) while the other is a rather tightly spun singles that is relatively tough in comparison. Now I'm pretty sure there's something somewhere saying that if you're going to use two rather different yarns in your warp, you should use two back beams, but I've just got my humble AKL, so I went ahead with it. You don't know if you don't try, right? (And to be honest, differences in tension has been the least of my problems.) So what I'm trying to say is this: the constant friction against the yarns by the rigid heddle (beating, changing sheds) caused a not very modest amount of shedding fibers: it was pilling. And fast.

I know you're all buddies, but give each other some space!

I shrugged it off, though. Pilling? No worries. I'll just advance the warp every couple of inches so the place of friction changes often enough for that to not be a problem. It kind of worked? But I'm really not sure if it's because of that, or because I clear the shed in the back and front of the reed with my hand after changing sheds before passing my shuttle through, or maybe because of all the miscellaneous items curiously dangling off the back of my table:

Wrenches, jewellery, film canisters, mini jam jars, you name it.

There are actually more issues (I had a lot of trouble keeping the selvedge even at first with clasped-weft, since both yarns were crazy sticky and resulted in a lot of pulling in when I just tried to pull everything into place; breaking warp threads did not stop at the beaming on stage: there are currently 6 broken warp threads in the section I'm working on right now, and that's not counting the thread that somehow got lost from the very start (I found that I had somehow missed a thread while threading the holes), or all the threads I've had to fix before this point, as well as the ones I will most likely have to fix from now on till the end), but it's a bit painful, so I'm going to stop. No amount of shedding (tears at this point, really) is going to get me a proper shed, after all.

Learning Curve

Disaster falls.

That's the first full width warp I tried to wind onto my new 28" Ashford Knitter's Loom. Let me just say that there is absolutely nothing - nothing - wrong with the AKL itself. It's very easy to set up and learn, and the mechanism for how it works is even easier to understand. I absolutely adore it now that I have been able to weave on it, and I think it has found a forever home with me. There are a couple of little things I'm a bit iffy about (the clamps seem kind of... eh. Even when the knobs are as tight as I can make them, I can still sort of move the pieces with a bit of a pull or push, but if I'm not trying to test it, it stays in place just fine. And the down position of the reed is difficult to "get", but once you actually have the warp on, it clicks into place. That's all.), but I would definitely recommend this to a friend! As a bonus: it comes with its own bag! A very sturdy bag, might I add.

That being said, I still screwed up for my first full project.

You mean I can't wind it back and forth?

The problems from what I understand were relatively numerous:

• I chose for my warp a loose 2-ply cotton/acrylic slub. It stuck to itself, it shed EVERYWHERE, it broke apart at the slightest provocation; it wasn't the best choice of warp thread.
• I was winding the warp on solo, and following the Ashford pdf instructions on how to do that. It looked like the person had twisted the bunch of warp threads to keep it tight, so I did that, even as I wondered whether that would create some problems (one side would definitely be tighter than the other, right?). And I had no idea how hard I had to pull, so I yanked it so hard the clamp went free and I had to Mulan it with one foot keeping the loom from falling onto the floor as I pulled the threads back. It didn't work very well.
• Wrong knot. I used the entire bunch of threads (in bouts of 8) to tie a knot, which made it uneven.
• To remedy the problem, I tried to wind it all onto the front and rewind the whole thing - it didn't work.

So I ended up just cutting and tossing, which saved me a bunch of time, effort, and tears. Look below at the close up of what I was dealing with. A snarled bunch of sticky threads that were shedding everywhere. Everywhere.

A close up. And you haven't even seen the detritus.

And then I put on a new one several days later using a much less stickier yarn (also cotton/acrylic, I think) that also happened to be much smoother. And I tried not pulling as though my life depended on it and just enough to keep the threads from going slack. From the front instead of the back (which killed my back, so maybe I'll have to try the yank & crank method next time). I still had some trouble keeping even tension while winding on, since the middle was looser than the sides; I ended up pushing my thumb down on the middle portion to increase the pressure on it and that worked fine for me.

Then something miraculous happened: the sheds actually opened! I could finally weave!

Even (enough) tension across to actually weave!

 To be honest, I've finished this scarf already - it's a bit rough, but that's just the yarn. I will have to take pictures of it later, but it only took me 4 days! Whoa. If I were knitting a piece that big, in stockinette, it'd probably take me at least a couple of weeks if not a month or so! I'm pretty excited about all the possibilities!