Off the Loom

I finished weaving my camp project a while ago. I got it off the loom and went to soak it and--blech!--the stench that came off of that thing. A mix between gasoline and mothballs. Horrid. I washed it over and over and over again. It still stinks when wet. It's fine when it's dry. I'm planning on overdyeing it because it currently looks like this.

It's 20" wide and about 4.5 yards long! I have no idea what I'll do with it once it's dyed.

Weaving Camp Recap

I'm back from Weaving Camp. It's not a real camp. It's a small gathering of weavers that get together with Judith Mackenzie every summer for some dedicated weaving time. I was lucky enough to be invited to join them this summer.

To refresh your memory, I am a failed weaver. I've tried my hand at here and there and other than a few nice scarves off my Cricket rigid heddle loom I've never had success. I brought a big bag of yarn with me, my Rasmussen table loom and a shred of hope.

First attempt: I wanted to make a simple scarf with this Kauni. I discussed it with Judith. We tested the yarn to see if it was strong enough for warp. I measured my warp and got it on the loom with lots of guidance. A warp thread broke before I started weaving. I learned to fix it. Another broke. Then two more. At this point I still haven't done any weaving! We look again at the yarn and see that it has many bad joins in it that are too weak to stand the pressure of the tightened loom. I cut it off my loom and throw it in the trash.

Second attempt: I have two skeins of lace-weight alpaca in two colors that have been in my stash for about ten years. I wound them for a striped warp. Then I didn't like the way they looked. They were blah. So I overdyed the whole warp. (Photo from yesterday's post.) I love the new color but I couldn't weave it at the retreat because it had to dry. I also don't know what I want to use for the weft now.

Third attempt: I try my hand at a "miracle warp." The idea is you throw a bunch of yarns together into a warp that is twice as long and half as wide as you want your finished piece to be. Then you thread both ends making a mirrored warp. I missed the part of the instructions that said the warp should have a cross at both ends. I made my warp with one cross like one would normally. When I was ready to take it off the warping board someone said, "You have to tie your second cross." I stood and blinked. Second cross? What second cross? A great deal of time was then spent trying to fake our way through a second cross. This made the warp a tangled mess. I got it sorted out and through the reed and heddles but not before realizing that I had miscounted and it was too wide for my reed. I pulled threads out. Then I broke a few threads. Fixed those. Then my edge threads started fraying and breaking. Pulled those out. Tension problems came up. Basically every problem a warp could have came up at least twice.

Then I started weaving. Judith wanted me to try a boat shuttle but it would not work with the mixed warp. It kept falling through when it would hit the stretchier yarns. So I'm using a stick shuttle and it's very slow going.

It's not really my colors, is it? No, it's definitely not. I'm planning on overdyeing the whole piece with black to make murky, autumn-y greens when I'm done. But who knows how long that will take.

I also did a lot of dyeing. I dyed some old handspun, some newer handspun, commercial yarns I never liked the look of.

So I learned a ton, dyed a ton and got not weaving completed at all. But it was great and I hope I'm invited back next year.

Another Weekend, Another Scarf

A long time ago I swapped a skein of yarn with the owner of Mountain Colors. She sent me a huge pile of Bearfoot mill ends. At the time I was knitting a Baby Surprise Jacket in mill ends and thought I'd use the yarn for more baby sweaters. But she sent me so much I thought I'd make an Adult Surprise instead. But the colors...well, they just weren't me and there were a lot of them. So the yarn sat in my stash. I've toyed with knitting a blanket too but this weekend I just knew I wanted to weave with it.

I tried to snap a few photos along the way with my phone as I started my project. I pulled out four mini skeins. 

I alternated two color for the warp. First putting one in every other slot.

Then going through adding the second color.

I also alternated skeins for the weft. Using one that was more blue for two picks then one that was more red. I added in new skeins as I ran out without fussing too much about the shifting colors.

Altogether I used 150 grams or 1.5 skeins of Bearfoot. The finished size before washing and without the fringe is 7.5" x 80". And I still have enough yarn for three more scarves!

A Scarf Nearly Ten Years in the Making

Exactly nine and a half years ago I bought enough Jamieson's Shetland DK to knit Nicky Epstein's Floral Felted Tote. Years later the project got started then languished. Eventually I threw out the small bit of intarsia knitting I had done. There was no way to salvage the yarn because it was all in short lengths. The yarn sat. A little over a year ago I decided to use the yarn to knit charity hats. I discovered that once lightly felted it made a great fabric. I was looking at my bags of yarn and thought it would make a great plaid. It was time, I decided, to finally conquer weaving.

Well, that didn't turn out well. 

Now, another year later, I took another run at weaving, this time using a 10" Cricket Rigid Heddle loom instead of my 4-harness table loom. After initial success I felt ready for my plaid. I was also inspired by this great new book, Woven Scarves: 26 Inspired Designs for the Rigid Heddle Loom.

On Saturday afternoon I felt a bit of weaving inspiration and dropped everything I was doing and got started. I forced myself to go to bed with the scarf just a few inches from completion and finished it first thing Sunday morning. It's just what I imagined.



It's about 9" x 84" not including the fringe, which still needs to be trimmed. It's been washed but needs to be fulled more to soften it.

And it only took nine and a half years to make.

Cricket Weaving

Here are some much better photos of my woven scarf from last weekend.





I got so excited to full the scarf that I threw it in the washing machine without twisting the fringes. They felted and matted up like dreadlocks.



I'm going to cut them off and hope for the best. It should hold just fine.

I Wove!

I have been making a slow, rocky approach to weaving for...oh, I don't know...five years? I took a class. I took an online class. Today I took another class. We had our rigid heddle weaving class at the Fiber Gallery and I decided to sit in. I brought in the two shades of Cascade 220 I used for my now abandoned Circular Stranded Surprise Jacket. I didn't have quite enough so I supplemented with some Kauni leftovers from the shop.


You know what they say. 73,000,000th times the charm. I warped the loom and wove a scarf in five hours. Boom.



I won't get cocky and pretend that I'll have the same level of success weaving by myself at home but I might give it a go again. Time to full this baby and deal with the fringe.

Weaving FAIL

If you've been reading this blog a long time you may remember (you probably won't) that I took a weaving class in 2008. I made a few little samples in class and didn't warp the loom again until 2010. I started that sampler and never finished it. I finally cut it off the loom a week or so ago because I signed up for the Floor Loom Weaving class on Craftsy because I wanted to try weaving again. I had visions of making a big wrap from the rest of my Shetland DK but wanted to make the class sample projects first. I thought I'd use old yarn that's been in my stash the longest, this Donegal Homespun from Tahki that I got from a friend in 2003. I can't find this version on Ravelry. It's old. The price on the tag is $1.99. I used some Cascade 220 from my stash to go with it. Then I had to buy more because I somehow failed at simple addition and number sense (350 yards is more than 220). I borrowed a raddle from my co-worker, Cathy. I slowly and carefully wound my warp and warped my loom.

I knew I was in trouble immediately. The Donegal was super-stretchy but also brittle and tender. After correcting threading errors, reed sleying errors and any other error a new weaver could make I could still not get the tension right. If I pulled hard enough to take the slack out of the warp the Donegal would snap. I also made a rookie error when winding on the warp of not using paper wide enough to separate the warp threads. The edges of my warp ended up shorter than the center of the warp and there was no amount of adjusting in the world to set it all right. I tried using weights off the back to tighten the slack areas but that lead to more snapping of threads. I despaired and gave up.

This sad little sample is all I have to show for my few weeks of effort.



And this is what happened to the rest of the Donegal.



It's in the yard waste bin.

*Sigh.*

Drill Baby Drill and Twill Baby Twill

I'm a week behind on my weaving class work. I bought a beautiful hand-crafted boat shuttle at my retreat (sorry, no photo right now) and was told that the end of the bobbin would fit in an electric drill to wind.



Then I started weaving my scarf. This is a warp-faced twill.



My beating is *ahem* a tad uneven. I blame the partly textured warp for some of that. The rest is my fault.

I'm off to work. Go vote is you haven't yet.

The Start of Startitis

After finishing the baby sweater I started thinking about what else I could knit from my giant bin of handspun. I originally thought I would use this yarn for socks but it occurred to me that it would make a pretty cool Argosy scarf. I tried a few different needle sizes and finally settled on one that I fear might end up being too big. Not sure yet.



I'm also sampling for a weaving project. This is some mystery skein of Blue Moon Fiber Arts something-or-other and perle cotton. I don't have a lot of the mystery yarn so I warped in stripes with the cotton and will only use the cotton for weft. I wanted to do an easy pattern. I started with plain weave. Okay, but boring. I tried twill. Okay, but you can't see the warp. So now I'm doing a warp-faced twill. I like it.

What Happens When I Dig Into the Stash

Yesterday I went into my office to pull out some yarn for my weaving class. We will be starting a new project on Friday and I am hoping to use stash yarn--maybe handspun--for my class projects. The same thing happened as every other time I start rummaging through my stash. I started pulling out dozens of yarns, thinking about all kinds of projects which got me thinking about other yarn and other projects. Long story short, I started a new sweater.



A February Baby Sweater by Elizabeth Zimmermann in some handspun wool/mohair mystery blend. I cast on just before picking the kids up from school. I could not put it down all night. What a delightful knit. I love a nice simple lace pattern. I was also really glad to knit with wool again. I knit yet another baby hat with my leftover Mission Falls cotton over the weekend.


(No pattern. Just cast on and knit stripes kind of like last week's sweater. Did double decreases for the crown in 4 spots like a raglan.)

I'm sick of cotton. Give me some yarn with a little give please.

Anyway, back to the weaving. We had to do four small samples in Shetland this week and finish them in four different ways.



I had a good chuckle over this photo. Look at all those mistakes! Hilarious. I don't know how weavers keep track of their patterns. Clearly. One sample was steamed, one gently washed by hand, one was thrown in the wash and one was beaten up in boiling and ice cold water for a while. So far I'm enjoying learning about weaving.

I have a bag of yarn to take to class with me on Friday and two bags of handspun sitting on the table. Need to figure out what to knit with it...

Oh Dear

One of these is in the middle of my living room. I'm renting it for a beginning weaving class. I know. I know. When will I ever have time for that? Believe me, I know. But I wanted to learn more about it anyway. I nearly have the thing warped. This is the part of weaving I always suspected would keep me from becoming a weaver. I only have 60 warp threads and already feel it's more warping than I care to do.