Star Warps

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 ...

The above image is of the sample for my next project. I'd woven with this yarn as a warp at 10 EPI for a sampler last year during the MAFA Weaving 101 workshop. While great to learn with, the resulting fabric felt a little to stiff for a cowl I was planning so I thought i'd try to see what this draft (#59 from A Weaver's Book of 8-Shaft Patterns ) would look and feel like at 8 EPI instead. Y'all, it's gross to weave. I hate it. I need to beat it so softly that it feels super unnatural to me. I was convinced while on the loom that I would need to change the sett to 10 EPI after I blocked it. But then I blocked it. And it's just about exactly what I wanted in a fabric. It has drape and you can see the pattern! I'm a little annoyed it worked out this way because it does feel so gross to weave, but I'm hoping I'm as much of a product weaver as I am a product knitter . ONWARDS!

I hate knitting gauge swatches, but I always knit one because I've been burned making sweaters and shirts that don't fit. My favorite "ugh" was a beautiful black shirt I had knit out of some bamboo silk yarn. I got gauge, but I probably didn't wash the swatch the same way I'd wash the final garment. I had a great time knitting it, and the day after I finished I wore it to work. The hem in the morning was at my waist. The hem at the end of the day was closer to my knees. Since then, I've always washed the swatch the same way I want to wash the finished garment. So why, then, did I decide to wash the swatch for the placemats by hand and air dry instead of tossing it in the machine like I knew the placemats would be laundered? Even my gut was telling me that I was rushing and I should have stuck them in a machine. I don't have a washing machine in Brooklyn, so I washed the sample by hand. HUGE MISTAKE! I was intending to hem these, but if I do, they...

As I was weaving, I found the my post-it note I was using to keep my place in the pattern wasn't sticking too long. So I got an iPad mount for Rey so I could see where I was at all times. It clamps to the castle and holds the iPad really securely as well. I have an app I use for kniting called Goodreader that allows me to draw a line on a pattern, especially a lace or cabled pattern so I can keep track of where I am in the knitting pattern. I turned the image of the zig zags into a pdf and brought it into the app to do the same. I can also make notes on a pdf in this app, so I'm able to keep track of how many repeats of the pattern I've done so I can make sure the placemats are all the same length. (please excuse the mess, since we haven't had any guests due to COVID this bed has become a bit of a weaving catch all) Most of the rest of the weaving of the placemats went rather smoothly once I'd internalized the repeats of the pattern. I didn't think I'd hav...

DO YOU WANT TO SEE A TOTAL WARPING FAILURE? If you said "Warp, yeah!" read on! To continue learning about weaving I decided to make a scarf on a table loom at my parents'. I measured out an 8 yard warp of 140 ends figuring a sett of 10 epi with this unknown dusty pink wool from Grandma's stash. Things were going well. Then I took the warp off the warping board, adn things started to go not well. While I had tied knots around every 10 warps, the ties seemed a little too far away from the end of the warp to keep them together. I also realized, once I put the warp on an apron rod, that I had no idea which warp ends were the edge of the warp. I did my best, and then thought I'd try to beam teh warp (this process of warping is new to me. The last time I warped front to back, not back to front, so I didn't realize that I had to keep all the ends in sequential order at the end of the warp as well as on the cross). When I started beaming, I realized that t...