Leigh's Fiber Journal

Friday, April 13, 2007

My 1st Blogiversary

Today is my first blogiversary . I started my blog and made my first post exactly one year ago today. Not being a particularly sentimental sort of person, I would ordinarily let this event pass without mention, but since I started my blog with a specific goal in mind, it seems a good time to stop and evaluate how well I'm meeting it.

My original plan was to work my way through the lessons in Deb Chandler's Learning to Weave, focusing on weave structures that I hadn't tried before. The idea was to use my blog as a journal to record my progress. I started with the first weave I hadn't explored yet, log cabin.

Looking back, I see that I did not follow the book very closely. Rather, I have followed both inspiration and opportunity. Inspiration to try shadow weave flowed naturally from log cabin. Problems with warp tension led to learning a new warping technique. Opportunity enabled me to take advantage of Online Guild workshops to learn loom controlled lace weaves, and summer & winter with its variations. Not only have I woven lots of samplers this past year, but also dozens of scarves, dishtowels, yardage, and recently two small rugs.

Of course, being a spinner and knitter with a wide range of fiber and textile interests, I wanted to record those things too. This past year these have included exploring various forms of silk, a variety of other new-to-me spinning fibers, knitting several pairs of socks, knitting progress on my Samoyed lace scarf, and dabbling with modular knitting and woven crochet. Plus I've begun the journey of designing and knitting my Rare Breed Sweater.

Over the past year I've also done a little dyeing, made a number of greeting cards from my handwoven scraps, felted soaps, led a Computer Design Workshop for the Online Guild, attended SAFF, participated in a silent auction fund raiser for the Blue Ridge Handweaving Show, and re-joined the Western North Carolina Fibers/Handweavers Guild.

In starting my blog there were several things I needed to consider. One thing was to decide how I wanted to blog. How personal did I want to get? How far off topic did I want to stray? Did I want to include recipes and family photos? Did I want to include my other interests? From the beginning I determined that my blog would be exactly what its name said it was: a journal of my fiber and textile explorations.

One thing I realized early on was that blogging made me feel accountable to do what I said I was going to do. Even if no one ever read what I wrote, it was still out there for the world to see and hold me to! Many times I have been motivated to finish a project simply because I blogged about it.

Since I am a learner myself, I knew I couldn't consider this a teaching blog, yet I found that I tended to record what I look for when I'm searching the Internet: information. The reward of this has been receiving excellent feedback and suggestions from those more experienced than I, as well as sometimes helping and encouraging others who are learning as well. The exchange of ideas is stimulating! Questions from readers have made me think carefully about what I say and how I communicate. In trying to explain something in my own words, I realize how well I truly understand it.

During the year I found that I enjoyed blogging so much, that I started another one to show off my Dan's pyrographics, and later two cat blogs, one for Rascal and one for Catzee.

In evaluating my original goal, I can say that I have made progress, though I didn't specifically follow the lesson plan in Learning to Weave. Mostly I used this book as a resource, incorporating as many other resources into my studies as I could get my hands on. In looking over the Learning to Weave table of contents now, I see that the only lessons I have left to look at are the ones on double weave and honeycomb. So perhaps I've made better progress that I first thought!

To celebrate my first blogiversary, I've done a little tidying up and given my blog a new look. I haven't decided if I like the new template yet; it's not as reserved as I usually like to present myself. I will have to wait and see if I get used to it. Also, I'm including a little Leigh's Fiber Journal trivia:

* This is my 160th post.
* My first comment was from M.
* As of my last post I've received 738 comments.
* As of this posting I've had 18,978 visitors who have looked at 29,362 pages.

All in all, I have to say that I think it's been a fairly productive year. Even so, blogging does take a lot of time and I have to admit that I've sometimes wondered if it was worth it. Now, as I pause to reflect back over my first year of blogging, I can honestly say that I feel I've grown as a weaver, a writer, a computer user, and a fiber artist in general. And in humility. Not only are my successes out there for all the world to see, but my mistakes as well!

As a tool, blogging has been very helpful to me. I now have a written and pictorial record of what I've done and how I've done it. It has given me not only a sense of accomplishment, but of accountability as well. Best of all, I've made lots of new friends.

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Summer & Winter: Polychrome Rug 1

I finished this little rug over the weekend. Annie Ham of The Netherlands, who led the Online Guild's Summer & Winter Weaving Workshop closed the month out with a handout of various treadling possibilities for summer & winter. The first was polychrome. After my polychrome sample dishtowel, I wanted to explore this a little further.

The idea to do a small rug came because April's meeting of the Western North Carolina Fibers/Handweavers Guild will feature a rug themed show-and-tell, since April's program is on rug hooking.

Here are my rug's particulars:

Warp - 10/4 cotton rug warp
Sett - 12 epi
Pattern weft - 4 ply crochet/rug filler cotton, alternating 3 colors.
Tabby weft - 6/2 cotton
Threading - 2 block S&W with repeating 1, 2, 3, 5, 8 Fib stripes
Treadling - as drawn in
Finished size - 20 by 32 inches plus 3 inch fringe

Ordinarily I wouldn't choose to use these colors; I just used what I found in my stash. I had to experiment a little, but am happy with the result!

What makes polychrome a little different from traditional summer and winter treadling is rather than alternating pattern and tabby shots, two weft picks (of different colors) are thrown and then the tabby shot. The resulting effect is a lot of fun to weave. One's mind goes on and on with endless possibilities!

Friday, April 06, 2007

Summer & Winter: 1st Dishtowels

By Leigh

After I completed my summer & winter sampler from the Online Guild weaving workshop, I decided that I needed to go back to the beginning and work more slowly through the workshop notes. Samplers are fun to weave and an excellent way to explore ideas and to test yarns, colors, setts, shrinkage, etc., but I find that if I really want understand a weave structure, then I need to spend some time working with it. It is not only my head which needs to understand it, but my hands and feet need to understand it as well. So I went back to my idea of weaving dishtowels as samplers.

I warped my loom in 8/2 lime green cotton, set at 16 ends per inch; enough for 6 dishtowels. My tabby weft was the same as the warp, and my pattern weft was a navy 5/2 cotton. I threaded a simple repeating Fibonacci sequence (1, 2, 3, 5, 8) and treadled it the same way, aka "as drawn in." I previously shared the threading for two block summer and winter with you in this post.

The tie-up I used is on the left. I believe that it is pretty standard for a four shaft, six treadle loom. The first two treadles on the left alternate to create the tabby weave. A tabby shot is thrown between each pattern shot.

With this tie-up, I wove through the four basic summer and winter treadling ways, and then tried two more for the last two towels.

First is the traditional way of treadling which close-up, makes the weft look something like bricks in a wall. (Can't see it from this photo I'm afraid.)

The pattern is treadled by alternating the pattern shafts, 1-2-1-2. So one block is woven on treadles 3 and 4, the other on 5 and 6, each time with a tabby shot thrown between.

Next is the X's treadling, which requires paired pattern shafts, 2-1-1-2. So one block is woven on treadles 3 and 4 (4-3-3-4), the other on 5 and 6 (6-5-5-6), each time with a tabby shot thrown between.

You can see the X's in that pattern above. I liked the look of that one.

Then I wove a towel in the O's treadling, which is also a paired treadling, except that it starts on the other pattern shaft. So it is treadled 1-2-2-1.

One block in treadled 3-4-4-3, and the other, 5-6-6-5, with the tabby shots in between. You can see the O's in the above photo.

The thing about the X's and O's is that since summer and winter is a reversible weave, then no matter which of them one weaves, the other appears on the back side. While I like the X's pattern better, I found that the O's was easier to keep count of while I was weaving.

The one I really like, however, is the dukagång treadling, which weaves columns.

It can be woven two ways (on a four shaft loom) by choosing either the first pattern shaft or the second. Mine was woven by simply alternating the 3rd treadle with tabby, or the 5th treadle with tabby, depending upon which block I wanted to weave. I could have used the 4th and 6th treadles if I'd preferred. But I didn't.

The next towel I tried in polychrome, which is a variation of summer and winter which requires two pattern weft colors in addition to the tabby. Each color is shot, and then the tabby, so that the tabby shuttle is thrown every third pick.

At this point I hadn't figured out how to alternate for the blocks, so I wove stripes, but I really liked the effect and immediately started the mental planning for a polychrome project. In addition to the lime green tabby and navy blue weft, I added a dark gray 5/2 cotton for my second pattern weft and got the above result.

After this I had enough warp for one more dishtowel, so I switched the tabby and pattern wefts, using the lime green for the pattern shots, and the navy for the tabby. This resulted in a muted effect, below.

These barely scratch the surface of what can be done with summer and winter, and I have the feeling that I may be spending a long time exploring the possibilities.

Tuesday, April 03, 2007

Rare Breed Sweater - Sheep Faces

I've finished both sleeves for my Rare Breed Sweater. So all that's left is to sew the pieces together, knit the front and neck band, and add buttons.

First however, I decided to add a little detail to the sheep faces.

Not sure they all look like actual, for real sheep faces, but to quote a favorite line from a favorite movie, "That'll do Pig."

Sunday, April 01, 2007

B2F vs F2B: Why I Switched

By Leigh

Sharon made a comment in my last post about something I've observed too; that many weavers are staunchly defensive about their warping method! This is akin to another "controversy" which exists amongst spinners: Scotch tension versus double drive. It is oddly amusing that flame wars develop over these things, especially considering that when one examines a length of handwoven cloth, or a skein of handspun yarn, it is impossible to determine through observation alone what method of warping or type of wheel was used.

Well, I'm not going to go there. But I have truly appreciated the comments and questions I've received on the subject of looms and warping. As Peggy Osterkamp said in her introduction to Warping Your Own Loom & Tying On New Warps,

"I want to weave as well and efficiently as possible. I want to weave without the anxiety that a disaster can occur at any time. If problems occur, I want to know how to fix them."

That's me too. And that's why the discussion through blog comments is so helpful to me. I like to receive feedback and hear what others do in a similar situation. Questions make me think things through carefully. This is what helps me grow as a weaver. While I can't offer any definitive answers to all the world's weaving problems, I can tell you about my own journey, and why I switched from front to back, to back to front warping.

When I learned to weave 7 years ago, I learned to warp front to back. At that time I didn't really care whether or not there were other ways to do things. It wasn't until I was given a copy of Peggy Osterkamp's 2nd book that I began to consider doing things differently. I read through it, and when I got to chapter 3 I read this.....

"In the first book in this series, I wrote that 98 percent of a person's time is spent actually realizing and enjoying the goal. It has always made sense to me to learn to enjoy the 98 percent -- in weaving and in life."

This gave me pause, as I realized that while I loved weaving, I didn't enjoying warping. So when I next dressed my loom, I started at the front of Peggy's book and worked my way step by step through to a big mess. Literally. I'm not sure whether it was the kitestick or the raddle that ultimately did me in, but I finally reached a point where I threw up my hands and said "forget it." Without another thought I went back to f2b warping.

I did keep one thing from that experience however, lashing on. Tying all those knots onto the front apron rod always seemed like too much work to me, especially as adjusting the individual knots to even out the tension was particularly frustrating. Lashing on made it easier for me to adjust the tension, even after I'd started weaving the header!

That was about 5 years ago. That experience however, did make me more curious about why some weavers preferred the b2f method, so I started to ask them about it. It seemed that the top two reasons I heard was either because that was the method they first learned, or because it gave that particular weaver excellent tension. Now, we all know that a perfectly tensioned warp can also be achieved warping front to back too, but considering that tension continued to be a big problem for me, I decided to let this argument sway me and give b2f another go.

This time I researched the topic with all the resources I could get my hands on. I finally chose to try Deb Chandler's method from Learning To Weave. I think one of the reasons for my previous failure, was that I was trying too many new things at once. Deb's b2f method was more similar to how I was already warping.

That b2f warp, done last May, was a success. I've been working on fine tuning my process ever since. I have to admit however, that while better tension is the mark of it's ultimate success for me and increases my enjoyment of warping, another reason ultimately sold me on the process. I found that because the way my Schacht Mighty Wolf is constructed, I could see both warp and heddles better and thread the heddles more easily with my bifocals! Neither a very romantic nor powerful argument for most of you, but for me it meant no more cranking my neck to get that thread through the heddle eye!

Many of my tweaks are still in the experimental stage. I try new things for awhile, continue with them if they help, drop them if they don't:

The s-hook works better than either shoe laces or the metal rings.

* Rings to hold lease sticks - yes, a keeper. Initially, these replaced shoe laces when I first used them to attach my warp to my milk jug weights. I have since replaced the rings as milk jug holders with s-hooks, an idea I got from your comments and visiting your blogs.

* Lease sticks left in warp - yes, this is a keeper. It's value is seen when a warp end breaks or when it's time to tie on a new warp. I don't always use my large clunky lease sticks; it depends upon the warp. I do like the holes in the ends of them however, especially in using the rings to hold them together.

* Leaving the raddle in while weaving - maybe. I'm still undecided about this. Marie's and Sara's comments about jack looms were very helpful to me and I want to research this more in the future.

* ~~Bias~~ Twill measuring tape - yes, another keeper. Actually getting bias tape instead of twill is pretty much par for my course, i.e. if I don't write it down, then I don't remember! (At least I remembered "tape" ;)

So, there you have it for the moment. As it is, I'm now very happy with back to front warping. Not only is it more comfortable for me with my particular loom, but I like that the warp only travels through the heddles and reed once. Not sure if this actually preserves the warp any better, but it is a factor. If any of you have other reasons why you prefer your warping method, I'd love to hear them.

f2b Versus b2f - Beginning of a series
Evaluating My b2f Warp
B2F Warping - Still Tweaking
How To Lash On A Warp

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