Star Warps

Almost immediately after finishing the last project (that I still have to blog about!), which were a set of rugs for our apartment, we moved. Making curtains feels like a great way to not only learn a new weave structure or two since it's essentially weaving yardage, but it also feels like a great way of making this space truly our own. I'm planning on starting with curtains for the living room/office area because we spend a lot of time in this room, and while I absolutely love looking out my windows and into those of my neighbors (in a curious way, not a creepy way - I'm not Rear Windowing this at all ), I would also really like to feel like there's a smidgen more of a barrier between me and my neighbors. This is what the space those curtains are going to go into looks like. This space gets a lot of natural light and I want that light to come through the curtains so I was looking for something sort of gauzy and ran into a picture on Instagram from tesiapark that ...

NAME: Lunatic Fringe 10/2 cotton 27 color gamp DATES: 1/15/2023 to 6/26/2023 SOUNDTRACK: 90s Alternative and Stevie Nicks YARNS USED: Lunatic Fringe 10/2 cotton PATTERN: Lunatic Fringe 10/2 cottong 27 color gamp shawl SOURCE: Lunatic Fringe Yarns LENGTH OF WARP: 5 yards WIDTH OF WARP: 36" SETT (ENDS PER INCH): 24 epi DIMENSIONS BEFORE WASHING: 33" x 51.5" DIMENSIONS AFTER WASHING: 30.5" x 44.5" % SHRINKAGE: 8% LENGTH OF WASTE WARP: 24" GOAL OF PROJECT: a rainbow shawl WAS GOAL MET? not really... DISCOVERIES: Well, I wrote a lot about the warping process last time, so I'll skip that part now. The result of this gorgeous warp is a delightful fabric. There were a lot more lessons learned from the rest of this project aside from the warp. I was confused as to why there was so much warp left over after I finshed mirroring the color stripes for the shawl. I realized only after I'd cut it off the loom that I wove the mirrored stripes u...

A friend recently asked me if I could take a video of myself weaving. Since the Lunatic Fringe 10/2 cotton 27 color gamp is finally up and running, I took the time to record myself making a pattern repeat for her. I explain a few of the things I'm doing so she could understand. Since the point of the blog is to remember what I've learned, I thought it might be a good idea to post it here. Enjoy!

I got cocky. The last project went so well I thought I remembered what I did. I did not. And this warp is substantially longer and wider than that of the last project, so... There were two pitfalls that caused this to be painful. One was an actual pitfall, the other was just imagined and then taken seriously. It's safe to say, however, that I've learned a lot from this warp. The real pitfall is that I put the counting thread on the end of the warp without the cross. While the counting thread helped me count how many ends were in a color (with mostly success - two colors ended up having too many ends and one color was missing an end) the actual purposes of the counting thread is really to figure out how many ends are in an inch so the warp can be spread out appropriately. I know this. But I was worried about being able to keep track of both numbers at the same time so instead of counting inches I counted ends in each color. That might have worked out if each color was an ...