Weaving at Last

At last I have conquered this warp and am finally having fun!

The particulars:

~ Warp & weft: 20/2 mercerized cotton

~ Warp length: 3 yards
~ Sett: 105 epi
~ Reed: 15 dents/inch (7 ends/dent)
~ Total ends: 292
~ Width in reed: 2.75 inches
~ PPI: 24
~ Weave structure: Warp-faced plain weave
~ Stripes: painted & ikat

~ Woven length: 8.5 inches per bookmark

Since this is plain weave, weaving is super fast! The bookmarks will be fringed, and you can see in the photo on the left that I'm using card stock in between each bookmark to allow for that.

For the weft, I'm using the same black that I used at the edges. This way the weft thread isn't noticeable at the selvedges.

Also, I'm using a stick shuttle, which has come in very handy. Since the warp is packed so closely together, the threads tend to stick together when I treadle. I'm finding that this shuttle is a great way to open up the shed . . .

. . . before throwing the next shot .

I did have one "duh" however. The horizontal stripes at the edges are created by threading the heddles with black and white alternately. But notice in the photo below . . .

. . . that on the left, the white warp is on the top, while on the right, it's the black. This doesn't effect the horizontal stripes any, but it would be distracting at the fringe. This happened because I didn't pay attention to thread the odd and even shafts with the same color on both sides! I ended up unweaving this bit and rethreading the black and white warp on the left side. Once all the blacks were on odd shafts and the white on even, the two sides looked the same.

I don't anticipate that finishing up this warp will take very long. I should be on to the next project after the weekend.

[UPDATE 12/02/08: To see the finished bookmarks, click here.]

© 29 Nov. 2008 at http://leighsfiberjournal.blogspot.com

Related Posts:

Experiments In Warp Painting

Good Ol' Plain Weave

Learning Ikat Technique

Ikat/Painted Warp Bookmarks Done

A Frustrating Warp

By Leigh

I had hoped to show you some weaving progress by now, but I can't. And this time I can't blame it on the cat! The problem is the warp itself, or rather, what the warp is doing.

I'm using UKI 20/2s mercerized cottons, which I ordered from WEBS. I've never used this as warp before, in fact I ordered it especially for this workshop.

The problem, which you can see in the photo on the left, is that the bouts want to twist back on themselves. This has created several frustrating problems, including creating a few twist jams at the lease sticks.....

So I've been having to untwist in order to wind on ....

.... and while threading the heddles.

*Sigh* At least I can blog about when I take a break. :)

Before wishing all of my American readers a Happy Thanksgiving, I would like to share something that I am thankful for. If you've been following Rascal's medical saga, you'll be interested as well. You can check out his news on his blog.

Posted 26 Nov. 2008 at http://leighsfiberjournal.blogspot.com

Related Posts:
Preparing to Warp (With Help)
Weaving At Last - project details
Ikat/Painted Warp Bookmarks Done - how it turned out

Preparing to Warp (With Help)

By Leigh

I've been a little slow with my Online Guild workshop project, but I do have some progress to report.

The top is my black and white ikat warp, and the next three are the my painted warps. Actually, the 3rd and 4th ones are the same warp. The 4th sample shows how the colors ran together too much. On the bottom is a blue one that I dyed in a dyebath. For this project I'm going to use all the but red one.

The first step was to put them on the lease sticks and get them to the loom. However, since I had dyed these three yard warps unchained, I decided it would be better to chain the bouts, lest I end up with a tangled mess.

However, moving yarn on the floor never fails to attract attention at my house:

Rascal wasted no time in volunteering to "help." Any yarn movement was quickly pounced upon!

Figuring that he would get bored with this pretty quickly, I went off to do something else. When I came back....

.... he had patiently parked himself right on top of the unchained bouts.

By the way, the dowel rod running through the top of the warp chains is how I keep the bouts from unchaining themselves when I carry them to the loom. That part I do without "help." :)

Posted 23 Nov. 2008 at http://leighsfiberjournal.blogspot.com

Related Posts:
Experiments in Warp Painting
Learning Ikat Technique
Ikat/Painted Warp Bookmarks Done

Wound Neck Steek

By Leigh

Now that chilly weather has arrived, I have resumed knitting on my Shetland Sampler Cardigan.

You may recall that I put it down for the summer after completing the Siamese Sleeves. Besides the sleeves, the body of the sweater was largely done. Since it is being knit in the round, it was just too hot to work with in my lap. Now it's pleasant to have such a project on my lap (with or without cat).

I first contemplated knitting this project with steeks when it was still in the planning stages. With the help of a little book called Essential Techniques For Serious Knitters by Peg Arnoldussen (click here for more info on that), I've been able to muddle my way through checkerboard steeks for the front and sleeve openings. Those were fairly easy to master but now that I'm to the neck, a different type of steek is in order; a wound one.

Here's a first look at my somewhat sloppy wound steek.......

At first I thought I'd have to wind yarn the length of the neck opening, but it occurred to me, no I don't. The wound yarn ends up as waste anyway, so only a couple of winds around the needle are actually required. Because of that it doesn't lie flat for a photo, but that's okay too.

Since I'm not following a written down pattern, I'm pretty much having to wing it with just a written description of such a steek. I bound off the top of the front checkerboard steek, and also for the front neck shaping.

Now that I've gotten over the mental effort that the figuring out of this took, it's coming along fairly quickly. Before I know it I'll be ready graft the shoulders. I decided to go ahead and graft them, in keeping with Fair Isle knitting tradition (which this project is technically not.) After that comes the dreaded cutting of the fabric! (Or should I cut first and then do the shoulders? More decisions!)

I believe that this is the fastest I've ever knit any sort of sweater. If all goes well with the cutting, sewing, and band knitting, I may actually be able to wear it this winter!

© 20 Nov. 2008 at http://leighsfiberjournal.blogspot.com

Related Posts:
Sewing & Cutting The Steeks
Steeking So Far
Shetland Sleeve Update - a look at checkerboard steeks
Siamese Sleeves Done!
Technically Not Fair Isle
Shetland Sampler Cardigan Complete!

Experiments in Warp Painting

Warp painting was the next step in the Easy Ikat and Warp Painting Workshop, and this is what I was busy with over the weekend. Other participants had already reported surprise at some of the results they had gotten. So I shouldn't have been surprised that I was surprised with my results as well.

The procedure was basically the same as I used for painting roving (see this post for more on that), except that I this time I was painting cotton yarn instead of wool roving, which meant that I had to use fiber reactive instead of acid dyes.

In the workshop notes, Kaz recommended Hands On Dyeing for amounts of the ingredients needed for fiber reactive dyeing, so I'm going to pass on that recommendation to you. The yarns were presoaked in a warm water, salt, washing soda solution, according to the weight of the yarns. The dyestocks were made up of a 1% solution of dye powder (I used Procion MX) dissolved in water.

I painted them on with those little sponge dabber thingies.

Excess dye was mopped up and the yarn folded carefully in the plastic wrap it was lying on.

These were rolled up and allowed to sit for 24 hours. No steaming required. I did find a warm place to let them batch though. The next day, I thoroughly washed and rinsed them.

The surprise? Well,...

...... one thing that surprised me was the yellow. I used Procion Yellow MX-3RA, a warm yellow, which looks more orange to me than yellow. I do like these, but not to go with these ......

It definitely has some zing, doesn't it? However I wish I'd used a cooler yellow, because this is not a green I like very well. Besides the color itself, I think that either my warp bouts were still too wet when I started painting, or I got too much dye on them. For example, there are some way too long sections of green in the second set of warps. I'd anticipated shorter sections of color, suitable for a short project like a bookmark.

This has been interesting but it leaves me with a dilemma. There is no way I'm going to use those two colorways together. So I have to decide which one to use. Then I'll try to match that with a second round of warp painting. Actually this has been a lot of fun, so I may just keep on painting until I finish off the cone!

© 17 Nov. 2008 at http://leighsfiberjournal.blogspot.com

Related Posts:

Learning Ikat Technique
A Day For Painting Roving - using acid dyes on wool
Weaving At Last - project details
Ikat/Painted Warp Bookmarks Done - how it turned out