Comment from my Dad

My dad sent me an e-mail about yesterday's and last November's post, which fills in some missing pieces:

The top piece in the 11/07 posting was taken in their basement (I think). I doubt that he would have taken his stool to a show. But you could be right. He certainly did do demonstrations at shows. That piece is my favorite piece of his and it was meant to become a carrying bag. The slide of it laying on the lawn (08/2008 posting) is a better representation of the colors.

The gold and brown piece (in the 11/2007 post) is another one of Dad's. It is with one of the sisters/aunts. This may be the double sided rug. That is, there is a completely different pattern on the back. Very cool. I can ask one of the sisters. If not maybe they could provide a picture of the double sided rug.

The bottom piece in the 08/2008 posting is the last piece he worked on and almost finished. He worked on it the day before he died. The picture is upside down. You start weaving from the bottom and weave to an inch or two from the top, then you work down from the top. He would use umbrella stays for the last several rows. It is amazing to me how people doing this kind of weaving can make patterns match where the last few rows of weft go in. I have never been able to see the seam in any of his pieces.

Additional comment from Penny:

I think very little of Mom's work was photographed. It's too bad too as she did some outstanding pieces. Dad's work was so different for the time that it was given a lot more attention. They both were good weavers, but Dad's eye for color and design was outstanding.

I have one of the double-faced rugs. He started it on the back patio of the little house on Fillmore* and I have a few pictures of him working on it there. When it was time for them to head north to Montana, like a good Navajo-style weaver, he rolled it up, wrapped it in plastic and tied it to the top of the jeep. I also have that last piece -- still unfinished and yet the most treasured.

*In Scottsdale, AZ, where Penny lived for many years.

Weaving and History

My aunt Penny has a letter in the most recent issue of Handwoven about her memories of the Henry Ford supplied looms in her two room schoolhouse (the children in the picture are not my aunts, or my father). I had written in November about a set of slides I had scanned. Here are a couple more images of my grandpa's weaving from that set:



I don't have any more pictures of my grandmother's weaving, although I do have a few things: a belt she wove on the inkle loom, a shawl she wove for her sister (my great aunt Jeannette) and an afghan. All of us grandkids received an afghan, I remember that my afghan was the only one she wove. My dad says my brother Ken's was woven as well, and that Aaron and Krista's were knitted. He's most likely right, even if I'd like to think he is wrong (although, now that I know how to do both, the knitted afghans took a lot more tenacity. I, myself, would rather weave a blanket than knit one!)

Knitting! Weaving! Sewing! Oh My!

Finished in very short order:

The Walkaway Dress. Very, very easy, but the bias tape was annoying. I found 6 yards of the green and blue paisley fabric in a local antique (junk?) shop. At 36" wide, it worked fine for the skirt and back pieces, but the front (the white piece in the above picture) was too wide. I was afraid the paisley would be overwhelming, anyway, so wasn't disappointed to use a contrasting fabric.

Shoes, you ask?

Fluevog! Please don't look at the price, I'm embarrassed. My only excuse is a nice sized tax return.

Pleats continue to drift. The red continues to be impossible to capture. The color is about right, but the picture fails to capture the depth of the color (Blue Sky Alpaca).

A Koolhaas for my step-mother, Linda, in Rowan Calmer.

It doesn't look like much (and probably won't for a couple of years at the rate I knit), but eventually it will be Frost Flowers and Leaves. The blue is a lifeline, which I've not found reason to do before, but that row gave me a great deal of trouble. A lifeline hint: when you are threading it in, make sure you don't go through the markers. Learn from my idiocy.

It looks a bit like a hairy cloud, don't you think? This is alpaca from Henry's Attic, I may dye it when I am done. Then again, I may not.

A toe-up ribbed sock for Len, guaranteed to drive me to drink -- I hate ribbing, but this is the only way to get a little pattern into his life. Um. I don't know what this yarn is.

And. Finally. Weaving. Yup. We've been keeping Judy locked up in the weaving room, and to keep myself occupied while visiting her, I warped up the inkle loom. The selvages are pretty bad. I re-tied the warp so I think it will be better now. This will be a camera strap for my dad.

Whew!

I'm going to put up hints to the remaining quotes in a couple of minutes, so check back.

100 Years Old

My Aunt Penny sent an article about a member of her weaving guild:

I thought you might enjoy reading this article about a weaving friend of mine from the Salem guild. She's a gold mine of knowledge and positive attitude. We often sit together at the meetings and I've picked up a lot of good hints from her.

I Just Happen to be 100 Years Old, That’s All

Sunday Weaving

Once I've finished a few other projects I will have more time to devote to weaving. For now I only managed to get the treadles tied up, a bunch of bobbins wound and one stripe woven.

The nice thing about these pictures is that you can't see how crummy my edges are (however, you can see the distortion that is inherent in a point & shoot camera at the bottom of the two closeups, my weaving is not that bad!). Hopefully, I will be able to figure out what is going on with them before I go further with the weaving.

How I Spent My Thanksgiving Vacation

Knitting baby pants. I am So. Sick. of lime green, purple, lavender and blue. I am almost finished with the first leg. I held it up to Len last night and asked what he thought the chances are of a one legged baby. He thought slim to none and that I had best NOT ask the sure-to-be-insane-with-hormones mother. She has a sense of humor, but some things you just don't joke about. I could just quit, but I'm much too close.

Beading a birthday present for my step-mother (whose birthday was last week). It turns out, beading pinecones with brass wire is not so obvious.

Making Christmas cards. Don't ask.

A little bit of weaving. I got close to the end of threading the heddles and discovered that some idiot had checked to make sure there were enough on the first harness, but didn't check the second harness (these two use about double the number of heddles that 3 and 4 use). I had to make about 20 temporary ones, I hate that. So now, I just need to tie up the harnesses and I'm ready to go.

And taking a lot of pictures. I was rather amazed to discover I'd taken 179, many of which are the same shot with different settings (I think I took about 6 or 7 of the above picture). Very good practice. Here is one of my favorites:

Some Weaving Family History

I don't have much to say. I've started the finishing process on the baby sweater, which is to say, I've laid into the poor thing with scissors. Totally planned, but still. I am not taking pictures of the process because. Well, I'll just say it: I'm terrified and I don't want pictures to remind me, in case it all falls apart. I've done this before, on a much bigger sweater, but I can't help but feel that was beginner's luck and sticky yarn.*

While I was at my parent's house on Saturday, my dad gave me some slides to scan. I'm not sure if I've said this before, but when my grandparents retired, they moved back to Stevensville, Montana (where grandpa was born) and took up weaving. My grandpa wove Navajo-style (it was an important distinction to him that since he was not Navajo, he did not weave Navajo rugs, but Navajo style rugs). When I was at their house on Saturday, my dad received a box of my grandparents' stuff from one of his sisters, in it was a set of slides mostly of my grandpa's weaving.
The quality of the slides isn't great, they're from 1982 and who knows where they've been stored, but you get the idea. This seems to have been for some kind of show: the orange bit at the top left corner has his name and town on it. The clip board on the bottom left has his pattern notes, which is only a little more visible when the picture is larger.
I love this piece. I'm having trouble deciding which of my grandparents wove this. It looks like something my grandma could have done on her loom, but there is one tiny clue that it may have been done on the tapestry loom. In the upper left corner there is a little bit of thread, which looks like the way my grandpa's rugs were tied off. I don't know.
And here is my grandma, looking none too excited to have her picture taken. I've said this before, but I wish very much I could convey to them how grateful I am for this legacy they have left me. My grandma, especially, didn't believe in an afterlife, so I really don't think she's looking down and watching me. If there is an afterlife, I hope she has better things to do. Pinochle, maybe.

*Update: Since writing the above, I have both sleeves sewn in and the collar started. Nothing has fallen apart. Yet.

Weaving Happened

If by weaving you mean the entire process, rather than the simple act of throwing a shuttle back and forth, I got a little weaving done. Not a lot, but even a little is progress:

Before

After about one and half hours. Well. It's something.

In other news: I finished 2 hats and 2 scarves for the Euchre tournament, and I failed to take pictures (which is really too bad, the hat that went with the RYC scarf turned out nicely). I have also finished the second sleeve for the baby sweater. I will block tonight and begin the finishing as soon as it is dry. I've started the little pants to go with the sweater -- I'm thinking that, since I'm adding a fourth color, that I'm going to work the legs out so the stripes don't quite match.

Weaving Goals

But first, my sister reminds me that our niece, Lauren, is turning 10, not 11 (which is true of Len's niece as well). I decided to get her 3 Ramona books and Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great (I loved all of these when I was her age, and older).

Weaving. I've had a warp sitting on my loom waiting to be threaded for close to a year. I'm kind of surprised the cats haven't taken care of it (by "taken care of", I mean "ruined"). I don't know what the issue is, it isn't that I dislike weaving, I just don't seem to make time for it. Part of the issue is that I'm not that good at it, which is a dumb excuse, because I didn't used to be good at knitting but I kept at it until I got good at it, or at least not afraid to screw up.

So. Now that the garden and canning are pretty much done, I've decided to make the time. Not everyday mind you, just on weekend mornings while listening to the radio, which bores Len to tears. This will serve two completely different purposes (or it should): give me much needed regular practice on the loom and give me some much needed time to myself. I love Len dearly, but we do spend a little too much time together. Plus my job (which I also love) involves being with people most of the day. I need time alone*.

My other weaving goal. You know those Indian bedspreads/wall coverings every hippy-dippy college student since 1967 has? That's my summer bedspread (magenta with elephants), which I've had since I was, you guessed it, a college student. We need something a little more...grown up. I considered knitting one, but I don't even like knitting baby blankets, so a queen size bedspread would probably put me in the loony bin. I also considered crocheting one. But then I remembered something. I have a loom and a boatload of 20/2 unmercerized cotton, just waiting to be dyed and made into something pretty and useful. If I'm smart, I will stick with a simple Summer and Winter, if I am less so, Lee's Surrender (I am kind of an idiot, so I wouldn't put it past me).

*One of the things I find funny, and kind of sweet, is that to Len, being "alone" means being with me. To me, being alone means no other humans. I am, maybe, not so sweet.

Wire Weaving Continued

I had another go at weaving on the wire warp a few days ago and managed to get pictures last night. Bad pictures.

This time I tried pick-up. First, I have to say I have never done this type of pick-up on the inkle loom (or any other loom, for that matter) -- I've done the brocade, which involves warp floats, but not this technique which uses the warp for the pattern -- so if it looks really bad, that's one reason (I actually don't think it looks that bad). Second, the picture is showing more of a contrast between the brass and silver than actually exists. I think the subtle patterning would look fine using fiber (wool or cotton), but the wire really needs more contrast. I don't think this will end up being anything more than a reference piece, since it is more interesting than pretty.

I'm planning to cut this warp off tonight and will hopefully come up with some brilliant plan to finish off the beaded bracelet.

More Fun with Wire

I have to admit that the inkle loom, with it's wire warp, has been neglected since the last time I posted about it. Oh, I have excuses: the shawl needed to be finished quickly, then I wanted to knit a quick baby sweater (more on that in a future post).

But let's be honest. When have I ever let a deadline (especially a self-imposed deadline) get in the way? Once the excitement of warping and figuring out how to weave with the wire had faded, so did my interest. Meh. Wire. Yawn.

So. I've been thinking about beads and I've thinking about ways to make the weaving more interesting. I started trying to figure out how to put the two together, which isn't altogether obvious. The main problem is the weaving on the Inkle loom is warp faced and the beads would need to be added with the weft (on this warp anyway, since it already exists). In a perfect world, you don't see the weft, but this isn't a perfect world, and the weft is quite visible on the wire weaving. It occurred to me that could work to my advantage, so I went to the bead store (otherwise known as, to me anyway, House of Sin) and found some flat beads which seemed likely to work. I threaded them onto the weft and, after some fiddling to get the spacing to work, this is what I came up with:

It still isn't hugely exciting, but I think there is a lot of potential here. This is only 8 inches long, which isn't quite long enough to make a cuff, so now I'm trying to figure out how to lengthen it in the finishing (I have plenty of unwoven warp on both sides).

Wire Weaving

An update, for Barb! Well, to be honest, I've been planning to do a post about the wire weaving and my (abject lack of) progress. I've been focusing on getting a shawl done -- it is now off the needles and waiting to be blocked -- so I haven't been as attentive to the weaving as I should be.

To recap, the warp is 28 gauge silver and brass. There are 24 silver ends and 22 brass ends. I didn't have any kind of plan when I started, because I didn't really know how to plan, so I just warped until it looked wide enough for a bracelet. Even that is hard to see, since the wire doesn't lay as neatly as cotton. It turns out be about 1/2 inch wide.

This is my first attempt at weaving, using some of the brass wire left over from the warp. It got a little easier, and better looking, as I figured out how to make the wire behave. I didn't want to stick with the brass for the weft, since I have silver warp on either side.

I happened to have some 24 gauge wire hanging around and tried using that for weft. It doesn't work, at least not with something this narrow and warp-faced, it is too thick to bend into the necessary sharp turns.

Silver, 28 gauge warp. This is still plain weave, I'm planning to try some pick up in the next bit that I do, but I wanted to get a feel for the wire before trying anything else.

And this is how the wire looks when the tension is loosened. Yeesh.

What does not show up in the pictures is that the weft is clearly visible through the warp. It is still warp dominant (rather than balanced the way a mesh would be), but the weft does show up. I don't know how to fix it (maybe a finer gauge weft?) or if I care very much, at least for this project.

Warped with Wire

I finally got to warp my inkle loom with wire. Once I put the brass wire on a shuttle, the process went very smoothly.

However, as it turns out, wire does not behave the way cotton yarn does. I know. That came as a complete surprise to me, too! Warping with wire, easy. Weaving with it. Not so much.

Weaving on the Inkle Loom

I finally figured out how to weave the brocade pick up on the inkle loom (or least the method I'm using seems to produce the most reasonable effect). Essentially, the main weft (teal) and the pattern weft (white) go through the same shed:

See? A cute little flower! My hope is that once the piece is cut off and washed, it will not be so elongated. My plan now is to weave a whole lot of bookmarks. There is a bunch of Procion MX dye on the way to my house, so the bookmarks will not be all teal and white; they will be teal and Something Else. I'm planning for the weaving to go quickly (hahahaha!!) because I have wire. And a plan.

Also, it seems that I have extended myself rather far into Knitting for Other People. My sister, Sarah seems to be expecting that bath mat rather sooner than later, especially now that I have the yarn. Len's father is expecting a hat. Len's sister is expecting/hoping for hats for her twins. My other sister, Krista, is hoping very much for a new scarf (and as much as I hate knitting those things, I really don't like the first one I knit for her). Who else? My intention has been to be a selfish knitter. It isn't working!

Pick Up Attempts

No no. Not men (I never was any good at that), weaving pick-up. And, it turns out, I'm not much good at that either.

I dragged out my inkle loom again, after many, many months of languishing. I put the warp on during last year's Oscars, so it hasn't been quite a year. Almost immediately, I discovered a warping mishap: I think one warp thread followed the wrong path (here is a picture of a correct warp), it wasn't obvious until I started having a hard time advancing. So I had to cut it off. Darn. So I decided to start playing around with the brocade pick-up technique.

I'm working with cotton yarns, the teal is a 10/2 mill end. It gets fuzzy and sticks to itself. The white in the warp is another mill end labeled 12/3 and it's a little thicker than the teal. In my first pick-up attempt, I used a single strand of the white. It looks stupid. I re-read Bress' instructions; she says to use a thicker, "fluffier" yarn for the pattern weft. So the top bit is some other, unlabeled cotton. It looks a little better, but still not what I'm after. Experiments will continue tonight.

I'm dealing with other deficiencies as well (aside from deficiency of experience or knowledge). I have only one shuttle and someone chewed on it.

A few days ago I listened to the Inklings episode of WeaveCast. Robyn Spady mentioned weaving with 30 gauge wire. Now I want to rip this warp off and put wire on. My head is spinning: what about beads? what about pick-up? maybe I could take a soldering iron to the thing after weaving and create other textures. Maybe I should actually learn how to use my inkle loom before I start putting strange new warps on?

Judy's New Bed

It turns out, I'm not a complete moron just about knitting. I've managed to save some of my dork brain cells for weaving, too. I don't know how I should feel about that.

My stepmother's mother, Jan, found some yarn at Goodwill As Is. It's an odd, acrylic boucle in pink, blue and purple. After many strange machinations (involving a kitchen scale, a warping board and a lot of tangles. Don't ask.), I decided there is about 2600 yards/18 ozs. of this stuff. It isn't the sort of thing I would knit with -- the yarn is pretty fine and loopy -- but it seemed like weaving a shawl with it wouldn't be too hard. And it isn't. My brain, though, is not on. Also the math universe is broken.

I decided I wanted the piece to be 30 inches wide in the loom, which would allow for some draw-in, and 8 warp ends per inch. How many ends? 240 you say? Um. No. I measured that many, but ended up with way too many warp ends. Like 100 too many. In what universe does 8 x 30 = 140? My weaving room, apparently.

Luckily, the extra warp was easily separated while I wound onto the loom. Winding on, I'm happy to say, was a breeze. Which is a very good thing, because:

Oops

Yes, I had tied onto the front by this time. So I untied, pulled out the warp, untied from the back end, fixed the problem, tied back on, rewound and tied back onto the front.

This works a little better. The fabric looks nice, too. I kind of wish I had gone with a 10-dent reed, rather than the 8, but I am so not re-doing this warp. Instead I'm just beating the weft a little harder.

Finished Towels

I've been feeling a touch of writer's block lately, so I'm going to just do a quick post. I finally pulled the Cat Track and Snail Tail towels off of the loom (much to Judy's chagrin) and got them washed and dried. The colors are not coming out in these pictures: the towels are dark purple (not black) and off white.

I'm pretty sure I wound enough warp for 4 towels, plus a little extra, but it was so long ago, who can remember. I have 3 towels, plus a little extra. Not exactly a set.

I love that the Buttonhole Stitch held up. It was a wee bit tedious to do it (who wants to do buttonhole when you could be weaving, after all), but it got a lot faster as I got better at it, and then at the end, no knots to tie, or hem sewing. Just rip the things off of the loom, cut 'em apart and throw 'em in the washing machine. Nice.

I also started Icarus. The yarn is Alpaca with a Twist Fino (alpaca and silk) and this picture doesn't begin to do justice to the color. It is a deep, rich blood red.

Weaving!

Well, the pictures aren't very exciting, but I really have been weaving. Overshot reminds me knitting fair isle. It isn't really difficult, but I really have to be paying attention so that the shuttle with the right yarn is going through (I have two shuttles going, one with doubled yarn, which makes up the pattern, and one with a single strand for the tabby) and that I have the right treadle depressed (pattern and tabby). And don't forget the floating selvages.

The pink yarn is the new waste I'm using. It's nice and smooth, so my needle isn't getting caught in it while doing the buttonhole stitch. Speaking of which. Is that really going to work? I'll be able to cut these apart, remove the waste yarn and have nice fringe without having to do anything more?

See the mistake? So easy to make. So don't care.

One more angle, just for fun:

Back to Weaving

I finally sat down for a rousing bout of weaving on Sunday evening. This included discovering that one should perhaps not use fuzzy wool as waste weft if one is intending to do something like buttonhole stitch. Better I realize this now, rather than once all the towels are off the loom and I can't get the $#%@ wool out of the *&(&$% cotton. I might not be the brightest bulb, but I'm learning.

At the end my Sunday of weaving fun, I looked down and essentially saw this:

I really saw a longer strip of this, but this shot sums up the lack of pattern I was seeing.

Monday morning I went into the weaving room and saw this:

which bears a striking resemblance to what it is supposed to look like. I need to beat on the weft much harder, but it looks like something!

Judy thinks she has a new bed.

I don't find this particularly helpful. Amusing, yes. Helpful? Not so much.

What's on My Loom?

We last saw this sad, unappreciated warp in August. I measured the warp in {gasp} March. I suck. But I have some bobbins wound, I have momentum. I. Will. Have. Towels.

Someday.