Persistent Knitter

For some reason my knitterly friends and I have been going through a huge case of startitis lately.  My friend Di has started a bunch of small stuff, but has actually finished a beautiful pair of two color fair isle mittens (of which my cold hands are extrememly jealous).  My mom just visited recently, and she weaves. While she was here I taught her to spin. Actually it was more like I gave her a wheel and some fiber and said, "Make Yarn!".  She did really well :)  While she was here we had to go visit the LYS.   While there, we were browsing and looking at various items. I started talking about how I haven’t woven anything in forever, and we’re thinking of using my loom for the 2006 sheep to shawl contest, because it has 8 harnesses.  This talk made us look at books (which both of us already own some of) and I decided to weave some towels.

Just like that.

Yup, I’m gonna weave some towels!

No problem. Find pattern (I’m an adventurous knitter, but not so much an adventurous weaver. there’s so much setup in weaving that for now I’m more comfortable following well written patterns. It’s really really hard to ‘rip out’ weaving and redo it).  Found a pattern. I already owned the book. Excellent! We’ll just use the store’s copy to determine yardage requirements.

Go look at the yarn.  The pattern calls for 10/2 cotton.  For those of you who don’t weave and don’t understand those wierd numbers, it basically means "really really skinny tiny yarn". :)  The first number means something about the size of yarn (the bigger the number the _smaller_ the yarn) and the 2nd number is the number of plies in the yarn. I think.

The pattern I chose is a shadow weave pattern. You basically take two colors and depending on how you thread up the loom & treadle it (read: "Magic happens here"),  you end up with a pattern that looks like one color is sort of laying on top of the other one.  That’s the theory anyway.

It takes us a while to look through all the yarn, and find colors that I like. I found two gorgeous colors in the 3/2 cotton (that’s bigger than 10/2. By alot).  Finally I came up with some colors that I liked in the 10/2. I went ahead and purchased the full cones. It saves time with them winding off what you need, it’s cheaper and you can return what you don’t use to the store (as long as it’s within a year of buying it, and it’s still in good condition. No dog drool please).

Here’s my thought porcess on the name:

"Shadow Weave"
"Only the Shadow Knows"
"Secrets and Shadows!"
"Secret Agents"

I didn’t say it would make sense, but that’s what went through my brain!

Here are various photos of my progress. (click on pictures to get the real size version. these look all icky. wierd)

It’s recommended that you tension your thread a little bit as you measure out the warp. I don’t have a real tensioning device;so I made one up. The cones of yarn are on the floor, in the posts of my Lendrum lazy kate (which works much better as a cone holder than it does a Lazy Kate). Fed through the holes of my needle gauge, which was taped to a spatula. I had this idea I’d use the spatula as a paddle, but with only two colors, just holding the spatula on the counter with a book was perfect. (I can hear Debbie, our resident Sheep to Shawl weaver snickering now)

A picture of the warping board, the false lease on the left (where it makes a cross, but also has surrounding threads), and the real lease on the right:

You can also see the lovely holders that I made to keep my warping board up on the door. I thought being able to stand and warp would make it easier. In a way it did, as I wasn’t hunched over.But my fabric holders didn’t look very sturdy, and they held it up a bit too high.  (Dianne, I used my zillion-dollar fancy-schmancy sewing machine to make actual button holes and sew buttons to make these ugly things)

Looking for a better solution, my mom suggested Leather shoestrings. Not having any of those, I did have some silver nylon-y ones:

I tied an overhand knot in each end, did a lark’s head slip type knot around the warping board, and then looped the top over the door hangar thingies (same ones as in previous picture).  I had to do the funny angle because I didn’t want the thickness of the shoe strings to interfere with where I was winding my warp on.  It worked ok, but it wasn’t totally solid against the wall, so as I moved things around or pushed threads down on the pegs it would bang about a bit.

So, you’d like to see the colors of yarn eh??? well, feast your eyes:

I wanted a ‘neutral’ and one color that popped. It’s a navy blue and a bright green. (My mom calls it shit-apple green for those of you familiar with the term).  I really really like it so far.

Following Peggy Osterkamp’s book #1, I wound my warp onto kite sticks to keep it under tension and hopefully avoid tangles.  Two of the kite sticks are paint stirrers from home depot. Those work well (and are free) but might not be the best choice for really expensive fibers like silk.  For my 10/2 cotton they worked fine. One of them is an end off a piece of molding I had hanging around in the workshop.   Moving down in the picture, you see a wooden dowel (used as my raddle cap), my lease sticks, the raddle, with newly hammered in nails to make 1/2" sections instead of 1" sections the Raddle is homemade out of a piece of super hard oak, big wire-organizing staple type things, and nails.  Once you have your warp spaced out in each section, you slide the down underneath the top of the staples, secure the ends with rubberbands, and your warp isn’t going anywhere.

The last stick in the picture is the apron rod for the back warp beam.

Last picture. are you still with me?

The loom. I’ve wound on the warp to the back beam, I’ve aleady removed the raddle. My lease sticks are holding the threading cross, and suspended from the castle.  From here,I have to thread the heddles, sley the reed (on the far right in the picture) and attach the whole thing to the front apron rod.