Monday, March 18, 2024

Hold-ups on Starting Weaving & A Change of Plan

Argh! Sloppy mistakes are the hold-up. Firstly, I discovered warp thread counting errors. Of the purple warp section, I only had 86 of the required 96 ends. Of the green I had 10 extra ends, and of the navy, 4 extra. And these were even with marking off my warp in bundles of ten as I measured it on the warping board. I blame cats for this. I have two that are very nagging demanding when it comes to their personal needs. Fortunately, the shortage was in the first section, so I could just added 10 more ends at the edge of the warp. Unfortunately, it meant re-threading the heddles for the entire section. Where I had extra warp ends, I could just set them aside. But I had to re-sley to fill in the gaps. 

Next, I discovered sleying errors as I threaded the heddles. One was a skipped dent, the second was a doubled dent. For these, I'm blaming my glasses. Bifocals are good for some things, but for others they are a nuisance. Better lighting and a different chair helped here.

Then I found a threading error. I was surprised at this because I thread in sections and check the threading before moving on the the next section. It was because of those extra navy warp threads that I discovered this error. I re-checked my threading as I counted ends and discovered the error. This one must have been due to a distraction, although what that was, I can't recall. Either cats or husband, but it was caught and fixed before I started weaving!

All of these were frustrating because they were avoidable, but I managed them anyway. Finally, I'm ready to tie and tension the warp.

Of course, as I work I think. I had to decide about what to use for my tabby weft, and settled on using the warp colors for the tabby too, rotating the color with each motif section. In thinking about how it would look, I tried to conquer the math. I have five warp colors and three pattern weft colors. So five tabby colors would add some interesting color play. When I diagrammed it, it looked like this . . . 

click to enlarge

The nutshell version is that by rotating through my pattern and tabby weft colors, I could get 15 rows of my window motif before the color combinations would repeat. And this got me thinking about weaving dishtowels. I could weave two dishtowels, each with its own color variations. Or, I could weave something else. 

I decided I want to weave through the entire 15 color sections, which means I'll probably start calling this a table runner instead of dishtowels. I have enough warp measured out to do this, and I find this idea much more fascinating that my original plan.

In the end, this project is as much about color exploration as it is trying out crackle on opposites. But then, all my projects boil down to that. Color is always the factor that fascinates me and keeps my interest. How it blends and how it can be manipulated presents the most interesting experimentation. 

Hopefully, there will be no more delays, and I'll have some weaving to show you soon.

Thursday, March 14, 2024

The Winning Color Combination Is . . .

Of the seven possible color combinations I showed you in my I'm Stuck in a Color Rut post, the winner is . . . . . . . . . . . . . None of the above! 

Warp: burgundy, royal blue, purple, forest green, navy blue
Weft: light turquoise, marigold, and warm pink

I finally settled on five warp colors because when I worked on warp color arrangement in my notebook, I calculated five warp sections for the desired width and decided I wanted each one a different color. The is mostly because whenever I think of color sections, I think of color sequences. Three colors for five warp sections meant two colors would be repeated and one used only once. Rather than try to figure out which is which, I decided on a separate color for each. In keeping with my idea to use darker colors for the warp, what you see in the photo were my best options. 

The three lighter colors will be for pattern weft, and I like the way these rotate. The blocks for the windows alternate, so my exact color repeat for the weft will be every six sections. I know that doesn't make sense, so I'm going to toss this screenshot up, which I doubt will help. 

Click to enlarge. For some reason, screenshots of WeaveDesign
screens are always pale. Darkening them just changes the colors.

That's basically one color repeat. Every repeat of a new weft color alternates the colors of the windows and background. 

Okay. Enough nonsensical rambling. Hopefully, I'll have some weaving to show you soon. I'm slow getting the loom warped because the days are so lovely and there are so many seasonal chores to do. I always get in some time at the loom after dinner though. 

Sunday, March 10, 2024

I'm Stuck in a Color Rut

I ended my last blog post by mentioning that yarn and color selection for my crackle on-opposites dishtowels was the next step. Yesterday was rainy, so I spent it arranging and rearranging cones of yarn in search of an appealing color combination. For yarn size, I'm thinking 10/2 for warp and tabby, and 10/2 doubled for pattern weft. I'm working with this motif . . .

Details for this pattern can be found here.

I'm thinking I can best achieve a consistent contrast by using darker colors for the warp and lighter colors for the pattern weft. The challenge is that I don't have a large selection of 10/2 cotton yarns, so I'm having trouble trying to figure out a good color scheme with what I've got.

The first colors I grabbed were these . . .

navy, dark green, and dark gray for warp
 royal, light turquoise and light blue for weft

As I arranged them on the table I realized that these are always the first colors I go for. I realized that they are almost always my preference. I realized I'm stuck in a color rut. 

So I selected another combination.

warp: purple and royal blue
weft: light blue and pink

Meh. I'd really like to go for three dark and three light, but I don't have much other selection than these for darker blues and purple.

Maybe this . . .

Purple plus royal and navy blue for warp
Two pinks and light blue for weft
Or . . .
Navy and wine for warp, taupe, light, and medium pink for weft

Maybe something a little bolder?

Burgundy, navy and green for warp colors.
Light blue, goldenrod, and gold for weft.

Hmm. Different for me, but I kinda like it. What about swapping out the orangey-gold for taupe?

Burgundy, navy and green for warp
Light blue, goldenrod, and taupe for weft.

Another swap . . .

Burgundy, green, and navy for warp
Light turquoise, marigold, and orange-gold for weft

That's pretty much the extent of my 10/2s stash, and I'm still undecided. I guess the question is, how daring do I want to be?


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Friday, March 08, 2024

Crackle On Opposites

While I'm working on collecting more t-shirts for my bathroom rag rug, I've been thinking about something to work on in the meantime. I found this idea in Harriet Tidball's The Weaver's Book . . .


. . . and was inspired to try to work out a draft in my weaving software. I couldn't make it work for beans. I started looking through my other crackle weave resources, and eventually found a PDF I'd previously downloaded of Practical Weaving Suggestions, Vol. V, No. 2, "Notes on 'Crackle Weave'" by Mary M. Atwater. (Available here.) It's a variation on her well-known "Cottage Windows" draft. 

Click to enlarge

It is woven "on opposites," which refers to the treadling. The pattern uses opposite sets of treadles for the different blocks. In the above example, the first section is woven with treadles 2 - 3 and 1 - 2. The next section is treadled 1 - 4 (the opposite of 2 - 3) and 3 - 4 (the opposite of 1 - 2). I haven't woven crackle on opposites yet, so I'm looking forward to getting this going. It will be another one to add to my "Crackle Weave: Manners of Weaving" page.

This one I was able to create on WeaveDreamer

Click to enlarge

It looks squatty, doesn't it? That's because I made it showing pattern weft only, i.e without tabby wefts. It will be woven with tabby shots, so the motif will look taller and more square on the fabric. 

My plan is to make several dishtowels; yarns and colors to be decided on next. 

Crackle On Opposites © March 2024

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Wednesday, March 06, 2024

Bathroom Rag Rug: How Many T-shirts Will I Need?

Spring has sprung and although we're a good six weeks away from frost-free days, there have been many beautiful days to enjoy and lots to do outdoors. At last, we have a rainy day, so that I can get down to some of the calculations I need to make for my t-shirt yarn bathroom rug project.

I started by taking a look at my t-shirt inventory, which turned out to be not very many. 

Pattern weft colors, taken from our bathroom stained glass window.

Warp yarn at the top, and potential tabby weft

For some reason, I thought I'd collected more t-shirts that this, which obviously won't be enough. 

The next thing I needed, was idea of where the colors would go. By envisioning the pattern as quilt squares, I came up with this rough sketch.

I'm thinking the black would actually be brown.

According to the pattern instructions, each block is treadled for 16 shots and this sequence repeated 5 times. If I use my 10-dent reed, I'll have a weaving width of approximately 23.25 inches.

Based on this information and my above color diagram, I calculate that I'll need:
  • Yellow: 96 shots x 23.25" = 2232" or 62 yards
  • Orange: 128 shots x 23.25" = 2976" or 82.66 yards
  • Red: 96 shots x 23.25" = 2232" or 62 yards
  • Brown (pattern only): 320 shots x 23.25" = 7440" or 206.66 yards
  • Brown for borders (still undecided here): another 20.66 yards
That's assuming I make my borders one block width. So the total for the brown would be 228 yards.

Tabby weft will be 228 yards. 

My next step was to determine about how much yarn I can get from one t-shirt. 

There is some waste because the top above the sleeves and hem must be cut off.

A good video tutorial to make t-shirt yarn can be found here.

Cutting the tube into strips like this is what makes it continuous.

Cutting the strips on the diagonal

Grasping the strip in both hands and tugging causes the edges to curl in on themselves.

My ball of finished t-shirt yarn. No fraying edges!

One extra-large t-shirt gave me a tad over 24.5 yards. A larger shirt would yield more, a smaller shirt less. If I'm able to find all extra-large t-shirts, I'm looking at needing the following:
  • Yellow, total 3
  • Orange, total 4
  • Red, total 3
  • Brown, total 10
  • Tabby weft (if I use t-shirt yarn), total 10
So! I have a ways to go to get enough t-shirts. In the meantime, I'm going to look at getting another project on the loom. More on that soon. 


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