A Bumpy Beginning
Warning to non-weavers: the first three paragraphs are pretty weaving lingo intensive!
I have finally started to weave this fourth iteration of bumberet tea towels. After doing some stash diving, I decided that a repeat of the purple-heavy towels was the most likely to get finished without running out of yarns on hand. Winding went well, as did threading. Well, that is, until I found that I had wound two ends too short in the first section. I quickly added two longer lengths to them so I could thread and sley them, figuring I would do the actual fix when I started to weave.
A couple of days went by, days filled with obligations and unusual activity. This morning I finally sat at the loom to start weaving, happily throwing the shuttle back and forth for the plain weave hem. Well past the start, I noticed two long floats on the right-hand side, about an inch in from the edge. Hmmm. That's strange, since I already checked the shed and all of the threads moved like they were supposed to. I laboriously unwove back to the mistakes, making a note that I should pay closer attention. I began to weave again, and, yep! Several threads stayed down when they should have been up. Upon closer inspection, the half-knots that I had hastily tied to extend the shorter threads were catching on other threads, causing them to bind up. Of course, I should have remembered that that was a temporary fix, but I had completely forgotten about them. Out came the scissors, pins, threading hook, extra yarn, and weights for hanging the new yarn off the back. After a bit of fiddling, I was back to weaving!
I finished that first hem, then started the body of the towel, which is easy to weave but produces a lovely textured cloth. After more than an inch, during which I swear I was looking, I noticed the right-most thread wasn't getting caught at all. It just went straight from the hem to the reed and heddles. Sigh. Unwove again, then tried to figure out what the heck was going on. Maybe I should be calling "the home," to make my reservation?? In my previous project with this draft, I made note that it did not need a floating selvedge. Well, guess what? On one side it does! I debated cutting and adding a new warp end, threaded for plain weave so it would get caught by the weft, but I was so discouraged at that point that I just pinned a piece of thread for the floating selvedge, and will needle weave it into the hem when the project is off the loom. After that, the weaving was smooth sailing, but I was totally uninterested after all of the hullabaloo. I kept at it and finished the first towel, but boy, you'd think that after doing this successfully three other times, the dumb mistakes would be eliminated.
Anyhoo, here's a shot of the towel in progress;
Only 7 more to go!
In spinning news, I managed to ply up the silk that I've been spinning for awhile now. Even though I tried to divide the fiber evenly, it became apparent during plying that I was unsuccessful. I don't mind some mixing (or barber-poling) of colors, but there was so much more of the dominant color that I knew it would throw off any hope of matching any other colors, so I wound some off onto a tennis ball, where it now sits, ignored for now.
Here's how the finished skein looks;
What looks like gray is a bit more green, but not a lot. I'm hoping for a symmetrical-ish scarf.
I've been dealing with my very persistent auto-immune disorder, for which I'd completed two multi-month rounds of steroids, which stopped the symptoms quickly. My problem is that the symptoms keep coming back shortly after stopping the meds which is not the norm. So now I'm on the steroids again, and hopefully third time's a charm???
Other than that, my family continues to be well, for which I am grateful. We are getting a lot of rain today, which is most needed in this, our very hot dry summer. My thoughts go out to those affected by Hurricane Laura, and I continue to be hopeful that problems that have been long overdue in this country will start to change, given the amazing amount of time and energy being put out by so many people. The fear that nothing will change is ever-present because of the "leaders" and their total lack of empathy, but perhaps, if enough of us speak up and show up, things may change for the better.
I have finally started to weave this fourth iteration of bumberet tea towels. After doing some stash diving, I decided that a repeat of the purple-heavy towels was the most likely to get finished without running out of yarns on hand. Winding went well, as did threading. Well, that is, until I found that I had wound two ends too short in the first section. I quickly added two longer lengths to them so I could thread and sley them, figuring I would do the actual fix when I started to weave.
A couple of days went by, days filled with obligations and unusual activity. This morning I finally sat at the loom to start weaving, happily throwing the shuttle back and forth for the plain weave hem. Well past the start, I noticed two long floats on the right-hand side, about an inch in from the edge. Hmmm. That's strange, since I already checked the shed and all of the threads moved like they were supposed to. I laboriously unwove back to the mistakes, making a note that I should pay closer attention. I began to weave again, and, yep! Several threads stayed down when they should have been up. Upon closer inspection, the half-knots that I had hastily tied to extend the shorter threads were catching on other threads, causing them to bind up. Of course, I should have remembered that that was a temporary fix, but I had completely forgotten about them. Out came the scissors, pins, threading hook, extra yarn, and weights for hanging the new yarn off the back. After a bit of fiddling, I was back to weaving!
I finished that first hem, then started the body of the towel, which is easy to weave but produces a lovely textured cloth. After more than an inch, during which I swear I was looking, I noticed the right-most thread wasn't getting caught at all. It just went straight from the hem to the reed and heddles. Sigh. Unwove again, then tried to figure out what the heck was going on. Maybe I should be calling "the home," to make my reservation?? In my previous project with this draft, I made note that it did not need a floating selvedge. Well, guess what? On one side it does! I debated cutting and adding a new warp end, threaded for plain weave so it would get caught by the weft, but I was so discouraged at that point that I just pinned a piece of thread for the floating selvedge, and will needle weave it into the hem when the project is off the loom. After that, the weaving was smooth sailing, but I was totally uninterested after all of the hullabaloo. I kept at it and finished the first towel, but boy, you'd think that after doing this successfully three other times, the dumb mistakes would be eliminated.
Anyhoo, here's a shot of the towel in progress;
Only 7 more to go!
In spinning news, I managed to ply up the silk that I've been spinning for awhile now. Even though I tried to divide the fiber evenly, it became apparent during plying that I was unsuccessful. I don't mind some mixing (or barber-poling) of colors, but there was so much more of the dominant color that I knew it would throw off any hope of matching any other colors, so I wound some off onto a tennis ball, where it now sits, ignored for now.
Here's how the finished skein looks;
What looks like gray is a bit more green, but not a lot. I'm hoping for a symmetrical-ish scarf.
I've been dealing with my very persistent auto-immune disorder, for which I'd completed two multi-month rounds of steroids, which stopped the symptoms quickly. My problem is that the symptoms keep coming back shortly after stopping the meds which is not the norm. So now I'm on the steroids again, and hopefully third time's a charm???
Other than that, my family continues to be well, for which I am grateful. We are getting a lot of rain today, which is most needed in this, our very hot dry summer. My thoughts go out to those affected by Hurricane Laura, and I continue to be hopeful that problems that have been long overdue in this country will start to change, given the amazing amount of time and energy being put out by so many people. The fear that nothing will change is ever-present because of the "leaders" and their total lack of empathy, but perhaps, if enough of us speak up and show up, things may change for the better.
Comments
Post a Comment