Sunday, August 04, 2024

Lap Robe: Weaving at Last

Between canning tomato sauce, mozzarella making, and my pokeberry dye experiments, time at the loom has been pretty slim. But at last I got the lap robe warp tied on, wound on, tensioned, and hemstitched.  Then weaving commenced. 

The first thing I noticed was how the softness of the yarn affected the beat. The sett is 8 ends per inch and for the throw rug, I ended up with 16 picks per inch. The weft for the lap robe is softer and a bit finer, so it flattened the angle of the herringbone pattern even more. This is pretty arbitrary, actually, but as I looked at it I saw it would be easy to treadle a diamond pattern instead of the herringbone. 


The treadling sequence is straightforward. 
1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - repeat

If I treadle that twice and then reverse,
7 - 6 - 5 - 4 - 3 - 2 - 1 - 8 - repeat

then I get an easy diamond pattern.


I like it.

The color stripes weren't planned, this is just the way the warp measured out. 


Having sections of 2, 3, or 4 warp ends the same color combination makes for a definite stripey look. If each was different, it would be less stripey and more . . . hodge-podge? Blended? Chaotic? Indistinct? Maybe even muddy.

What's fascinating to me is how two simple changes—yarn color and simple treadling changes—can create two different looks. The throw rug makes me think of the African Savanna. The lap robe makes me think of the American Southwest. 

Weaving will be a matter of plodding away as I have time, usually a half-hour here and a half-hour there. Finished length will probably be longer than a lap robe and more like an afghan, but that's okay too. It's all okay, really. 

4 comments:

Meg said...

Very nice warp, love the description of "American Southwest" - spot on!

Leigh said...

Meg, thanks! The glorious influence of culture, right? :)

Toirdhealbheach Beucail said...

How interesting such relatively small things have such an outcome. We have lost the appreciation not only of localized arts, but of the variability within those arts.

Leigh said...

TB, that's why it's so much fun. :)