String is addictive. It is just lucky for me that it is a positive rather than a destructive force in my life. I do go weeks, sometimes months without string, but it always dangles before my eyes again and tempts me back. I've been doing a number of smaller projects lately. A third attempt at a knitted hat. Continued slow work naalbinding a pouch. Tablet weaving a pattern I made based on the Anglo-Saxon diamonds pattern--I altered the inner diamond to be more leaf-shaped. Some quick inkle projects--a chain pattern in linen-cotton blend and a widened version in cotton. I'm hustling through the inkle because I'm donating them at an event next week.
Dreams of complex tablet weaving, going back to double face weave, wrapping my head around twill, actually weaving with silk, trying out brocading all dance through my head as do thoughts of trying out a warp-weighted loom of my own. Of course, I'd have to get the loom first.
I don't have access to a camera right now, which makes this blog a little harder. I tablet wove another of the wave patterns in purples and blues and sent it to its new home without a picture. It was funny wrapping my head back around it--it had been quite a while since I'd done any tablet-weaving. But I got it worked out and even fixed a color issue I'd had with my first try at that pattern. If you get a dot of the wrong color in that pattern (well, two mirror image dots), try doing one set of three forward, three back before returning to four forward, four back (that's only for one of the two packs of course). It shifted where the colors were perfectly and off I went. I cut off the portion with the mistakes and the fix, so if I ever do get access to a camera again, I can show you what I'm talking about.
I also messed up my modified Anglo-Saxon diamonds at one point when I fell into the turning pattern from the wave pattern! Oops. Took a little doing to undo that one and get it on track again. Plus, I had warped up one of the cards wrong, with three white and one purple instead of three purple and one white. I tried simply suppressing the white when it shouldn't be showing, which helped some. Then I added an extra purple to the weft for a few picks to get it anchored, then brought it out in it's new place in the warp, threaded it through the hole it would be replacing in the mis-threaded card, and warped it all up. Then I cut the old thread. Viola, purple instead of white.
I need to do the last one now. I just cut that one to get the white out of the mix. The pattern appears fine with one thread missing, but the card has a tendency to pull out of place, and I have to be very careful to ensure it doesn't turn itself when I don't want it to. I've had to go back and correct for that too a couple times. Just when I'd fixed that the last time, the pattern did something else odd. Frustrated with all the backtracking on what should have been a simple fast pattern, I took up inkle for the moment so I could power through before next week's deadline. But after that I'll have to get back on the horse. If I don't have the patience for this pattern, after all, then I'm not going to do well with more complex things.
I've also been doing a lot of spinning again of late. And I tried out pre-dyed roving for the first time. I got some beautiful green roving over the holidays and have now spun it all up. I tried not to go quite as thread-thin as I'd been doing with the oatmeal colored yarn, but still kept it fairly thin. I think I'm going to try two-ply with it. I wonder if I have the courage to try to weave with it and I wonder if it's strong enough to hold up under tension. If not, I might be better off making it a higher ply and knitting something with it. It took a little getting used to--I think I've been weaving with the same big batch of roving so long that it was a little strange transitioning to any other wool--but once I got going it was good. The green is gorgeous all spun up, so it hasn't stopped it's temptation to do more with it. On the other hand, I'm tempted to go choose a new color. If I'm going to weave or knit with it, it will need friends.
Also, I've been helping teach the toddler (my niece, of sorts) how to weave. I'm actually kind of jealous of her loom. It spreads the threads more than I'd like with no way to adjust that, but the transition of the shed is effortless as was stringing it up. She's weaving a fuzzy blanket for her doll! It's precious.
Showing posts with label inkle weaving. Show all posts
Showing posts with label inkle weaving. Show all posts
Friday, March 2, 2012
Monday, September 6, 2010
From Tablet to Inkle
Saturday, 4 September 2010 - last repostYet more weaving. Yay, weaving. This one was in record time too. I warped it up at Thursday fighter practice (also talked to one of the marshals about learning to marshal next time). Then I stayed up late weaving the first bit. Then Friday I was having a bad day. I've had headaches and wonkiness more often than not the last week after months of being relatively headache free. Anyway, I was feeling irritable and obsessive. Any attempts to accomplish things on the computer just resulted in me wasting an hour or so on nothing. So finally I just decided to weave and pretty much wove up the whole 3+ yards that day.
Today Knights Errant came to Santa Cruz and we had a fantastic afternoon. Ron got in lots of great fighting and I warped up my loom for my second ever inkle project. I had to go back and fix things about a half dozen times (forgot where the "open" vs "heddle" threads went and
reversed them, missed out some blue threads and had to add them belatedly, and so on). Nevertheless, even with mistakes, I think I had it fully warped in well less than 2 hours, in stark contrast to warping a tablet weaving project.I wove the first few feet of the inkle project and I'm fairly happy with it. It doesn't look quite like I pictured, but it's a fun simple pattern. The nice thing about inkle weaving is that the pattern also shows up on the reverse side. Since this piece is destined to be a hair ribbon rather than sewn down as trim, I though that might be a good feature.
I learned a bit more about how to do complex stuff with inkle weaving recently and it sounds agonizingly slow. Nevertheless, I may try some at some point.
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Weaving and Twining and String, oh my!
Ok, I'm going to copy over my string-related posts of the last couple weeks from my other blog. Here goes: 23 August, 2010
Recently I have taken up again with fiber arts, learning twining (which I'd never heard of) and inkle weaving (which I've wanted to know how to do for years). And, having acquired an inkle loom at long last, I also tried out card weaving on the inkle loom (a common practice).
I have to say I have mixed reports about my inkle loom. At first I was quite happy with it. It wasn't perfectly balanced to weave in my lap but I could make it happen, and it worked great sitting at a table. And it was in fact quite a bit easier to warp a card weaving project on the loom as opposed to the various and sundry ways I'd tried over the years to warp up a backstrap project. The most finicky part of any inkle loom is inevitably the tension bar. The need for a good tension bar is, in fact, why I didn't attempt to get one of my more hardware-inclined friends (or husband) to simply make me an inkle loom. The rest of the design is straightforward enough. But the tension bar is tricky.
My tension bar broke yesterday.
I was about a 1/3 of the way into my second full project on the loom, having also finished a very short inkle project on it. My first full project, a belt for a friend, came out beautifully. I need to get a better picture than the one here, but all I had handy was my cell phone before I gave it away. It's a pattern of diamonds based on an Anglo-Saxon archaeological find. I used 100% wool due to a desire for authenticity and temporary insanity...but despite getting bogged down for weeks when I had to back-trace a mistake which is painfully difficult and slow and tedious when working with wool, it wasn't as bad as I remembered and I think I'd do it again with enough incentive. At the very least I think I want one for myself before I give up on wool for another eight years.
That turned out well enough that I got ambitious. The next pattern I tried is easily the hardest I've ever tried. It is closely related in concept to the next hardest pattern I'd ever attempted. That previous one is still half-finished in my mother's attic. I despaired of ever getting it going again after such a long gap--I'd already been working at it for over a year off and on when it got relegated to storage. But after the project I just did, I think I could pick up the other one.
This pattern, known as the ram's horn pattern, was a real pain. I didn't start with the best directions--I used a blurry printout of a blurry scan of one page of what I think was a longer set of instructions. I recopied it once in pencil to get a better look at it and then later on the computer with color to help with my threading. The biggest problem was that I misread the S/Z threading instructions for nearly half the cards, five on one half and five on the other of the 22 card pattern.
I entered what I had threaded into Guntram's Tablet Weaving Thingy (GTT) and then played with it until it made the pattern I had expected to get. If only I'd thought to do that before threading, it could have saved me a lot of grief. Realizing that it was the S/Z threading rather than a mis-aligning of cards was bad news. I had three options at that point: painstakingly untie and unthread the mis-threaded cards, and possibly some of their neighbors given that I'd done a semi-continuous warp, and then rethread them correctly; cut the knots off to rethread, reducing the time by about half but reducing the final length of the project by several inches; or see what I could do with the threading I had.
I chose the latter option, determining that the core of the design could be salvaged by flipping some of the cards and turning them so that the outline color--white--was still where it was supposed to be. My inside and outside colors became somewhat muddied, but still came out in fairly pleasing places. This was, thankfully, a test project in cotton since I was well aware there might be difficulties with so complex a pattern with such minimal instructions to go on, so I was willing to be slightly cavalier about the whole thing.
An acceptable compromise pattern determined, I began weaving. The right half of the pattern immediately looked just as expected, but the left was off. After tweaking it about, comparing it to the pattern and the opposite half, weaving and unweaving about 5 times, I finally got it all aligned properly and I was off.
During the first 1/3 of the project I still encountered problems frequently where I would get off the pattern one way or another. The turning pattern was a lot to hold in one's head. But I got the hang of it, in both directions, and then I was off.
And that was about when the tension bar broke. I don't really understand what's wrong with it, but the cap on one end has come off and the bar itself won't loosen. It'll turn, but it seems to tighten no matter which direction it's turned and is actually marking up the wood, it's so tight. Very frustrating.
At last I decided to treat the tension bar like one more fixed bar, removed the project from one and then two of the other pegs, using other objects--a bobbin of thread, a flat package, a ball of twine with a hole big enough to fit over one of the pegs--to increase the tension again, removing them as needed to ease the tension. It was very jury-rigged, but it worked, and I finished the project.
It's a fantastic size and weight for trim, in lovely rich colors, but I may keep it as a belt until I make a more belt-like belt for myself. That might be dangerous though. The longer I think of it as all of a piece, the harder it will be to cut it for trim.
Anyway, my success with multiple projects has inspired me weave more, yet the problems with the tension bar make me hesitate to start new projects until it's fixed or replaced. In any case, it's very good to be playing with string again.
Recently I have taken up again with fiber arts, learning twining (which I'd never heard of) and inkle weaving (which I've wanted to know how to do for years). And, having acquired an inkle loom at long last, I also tried out card weaving on the inkle loom (a common practice).
I have to say I have mixed reports about my inkle loom. At first I was quite happy with it. It wasn't perfectly balanced to weave in my lap but I could make it happen, and it worked great sitting at a table. And it was in fact quite a bit easier to warp a card weaving project on the loom as opposed to the various and sundry ways I'd tried over the years to warp up a backstrap project. The most finicky part of any inkle loom is inevitably the tension bar. The need for a good tension bar is, in fact, why I didn't attempt to get one of my more hardware-inclined friends (or husband) to simply make me an inkle loom. The rest of the design is straightforward enough. But the tension bar is tricky.
My tension bar broke yesterday.
I was about a 1/3 of the way into my second full project on the loom, having also finished a very short inkle project on it. My first full project, a belt for a friend, came out beautifully. I need to get a better picture than the one here, but all I had handy was my cell phone before I gave it away. It's a pattern of diamonds based on an Anglo-Saxon archaeological find. I used 100% wool due to a desire for authenticity and temporary insanity...but despite getting bogged down for weeks when I had to back-trace a mistake which is painfully difficult and slow and tedious when working with wool, it wasn't as bad as I remembered and I think I'd do it again with enough incentive. At the very least I think I want one for myself before I give up on wool for another eight years.
That turned out well enough that I got ambitious. The next pattern I tried is easily the hardest I've ever tried. It is closely related in concept to the next hardest pattern I'd ever attempted. That previous one is still half-finished in my mother's attic. I despaired of ever getting it going again after such a long gap--I'd already been working at it for over a year off and on when it got relegated to storage. But after the project I just did, I think I could pick up the other one.
This pattern, known as the ram's horn pattern, was a real pain. I didn't start with the best directions--I used a blurry printout of a blurry scan of one page of what I think was a longer set of instructions. I recopied it once in pencil to get a better look at it and then later on the computer with color to help with my threading. The biggest problem was that I misread the S/Z threading instructions for nearly half the cards, five on one half and five on the other of the 22 card pattern.
I entered what I had threaded into Guntram's Tablet Weaving Thingy (GTT) and then played with it until it made the pattern I had expected to get. If only I'd thought to do that before threading, it could have saved me a lot of grief. Realizing that it was the S/Z threading rather than a mis-aligning of cards was bad news. I had three options at that point: painstakingly untie and unthread the mis-threaded cards, and possibly some of their neighbors given that I'd done a semi-continuous warp, and then rethread them correctly; cut the knots off to rethread, reducing the time by about half but reducing the final length of the project by several inches; or see what I could do with the threading I had.
I chose the latter option, determining that the core of the design could be salvaged by flipping some of the cards and turning them so that the outline color--white--was still where it was supposed to be. My inside and outside colors became somewhat muddied, but still came out in fairly pleasing places. This was, thankfully, a test project in cotton since I was well aware there might be difficulties with so complex a pattern with such minimal instructions to go on, so I was willing to be slightly cavalier about the whole thing.
An acceptable compromise pattern determined, I began weaving. The right half of the pattern immediately looked just as expected, but the left was off. After tweaking it about, comparing it to the pattern and the opposite half, weaving and unweaving about 5 times, I finally got it all aligned properly and I was off.
During the first 1/3 of the project I still encountered problems frequently where I would get off the pattern one way or another. The turning pattern was a lot to hold in one's head. But I got the hang of it, in both directions, and then I was off.
And that was about when the tension bar broke. I don't really understand what's wrong with it, but the cap on one end has come off and the bar itself won't loosen. It'll turn, but it seems to tighten no matter which direction it's turned and is actually marking up the wood, it's so tight. Very frustrating.
At last I decided to treat the tension bar like one more fixed bar, removed the project from one and then two of the other pegs, using other objects--a bobbin of thread, a flat package, a ball of twine with a hole big enough to fit over one of the pegs--to increase the tension again, removing them as needed to ease the tension. It was very jury-rigged, but it worked, and I finished the project.
It's a fantastic size and weight for trim, in lovely rich colors, but I may keep it as a belt until I make a more belt-like belt for myself. That might be dangerous though. The longer I think of it as all of a piece, the harder it will be to cut it for trim.
Anyway, my success with multiple projects has inspired me weave more, yet the problems with the tension bar make me hesitate to start new projects until it's fixed or replaced. In any case, it's very good to be playing with string again.
String, Yay!
Why I'm starting this blog: I noticed that my blog about life, targeted at my friends, was getting increasingly taken over by string. I also noticed that other people's weaving blogs, fiber arts blogs, archaeology blogs etc that I was reading were typically more focused. So I decided it was time to have a blog of my own about the tablet weaving, inkle weaving, twining, wire weaving, luceting, and so on that gets me so excited. I'll probably throw in related stuff like my ongoing quest to research early medieval textiles and material culture from the region later to be known as Scotland.
As you may have guessed, I do reenactment and SCA. I also happen to be a scholar of medieval and Renaissance literature. As fiber arts do not in fact fall under literary studies, I don't consider myself an expert in this field. However, I do know something about what does and doesn't constitute good research, so when I'm guessing or when I'm doing something that there's no evidence for or scant evidence for, I'll say so.
If you have any questions, send me a message. I'm friendly, I promise.
As you may have guessed, I do reenactment and SCA. I also happen to be a scholar of medieval and Renaissance literature. As fiber arts do not in fact fall under literary studies, I don't consider myself an expert in this field. However, I do know something about what does and doesn't constitute good research, so when I'm guessing or when I'm doing something that there's no evidence for or scant evidence for, I'll say so.
If you have any questions, send me a message. I'm friendly, I promise.
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