Project Update: Goose Eye Twill Towels

In support of our gallery showing (details in a separate post), I have been weaving my beloved goose-eye twill tea towels in that gorgeous Swedish (Egyptian) cotton on a virtually industrial scale.  After the initial rainbow and blue series, I worked up a second set of rainbow towels, as well as a second set of blue/purple tea towels and a lovely green series. 

The only variations are in the background colour - - natural versus white, depending on the batch (overall I prefer how the bleached white makes the accent colours pop), and length - - recent sets have finished up around 24" versus about 19"-20" for earlier sets woven to the pattern. 

So here for your viewing pleasure are some photos from these recent towel sets.  Enjoy!

 

 

Project: Goose-eye twill tea towel series (blue variation)

Having finished the goose-eye twill pattern in the cheerful rainbow range I wanted to work up a set of tea towels in a single colour range - in this case, blues and violets. 

The setup and pattern were exactly the same as for the rainbow towels.  I measured out 4 yards of warp in the 6 chosen accent colours and a bleached white background.  The colours went from light to dark across the reed and reflected back from dark to light at the midline. 

The weaving was quick and easy once again.  Well, as "quick" and "easy" as handweaving on a table loom can ever be.  Which is not all that quick or easy in the global scheme of things, but pretty quick and easy as far as handweaving is concerned.

I was able to measure out my warp using the built in warping board on my trusty Kromski Harp loom (as is my custom) and then transfered my chains of measured warp to my apron rod by myself with no difficulty.  Arranging the warp threads in the raddle and rolling the warp onto the back beam was similarly quick and easy.  It tool only a single (full!) day to measure my warp from cones to set up the loom and get everything ready to weave, which is pretty quick as these things go.

 

After completing weaving four tea towels each in the goose-eye twill I cut the towels apart and then ironed the hems in preparation for machine hemming.  After hemming it was simplicity itself to throw the hemmed towels into the washer and dryer to finish them prior to trimming off all the loose threads. 

I really really love the classic simplicity of this pattern as well as the wonderful softness of the finished towels.  The colours in this "blue period" series will be perfect for a certain Nerd's mother (these are her favourite colours) but I can see many people liking this colour selection.

I have a real desire to work a similar set of goose-eye twill in a lovely green range, and have ordered the yarn for this next project.  For now I may measure out another rainbow towel, but this one using the natural cotton and a herringbone twill for a change of pace.  We shall see. 

Project: Houndstooth Shawl in Merino Wool

It is no secret that I love houndstooth - - it's a beautiful pattern that is deceptively simple to make.  And if there's anything that I love more than the deceptively simple, I don't know what it is. 

For this project I chose Kollage Happiness fingering weight 100% superwash merino wool in black and lilac.  Each skein is 100g / 450 yards.  I estimated that I would require about 1050 yards of each colour, so for safety I picked up 3 skeins of each colour intending to try for a finished work that was 28" wide x 70+" long (I wasn't too fussy about the length so long as it was more than 70") using a 12-dent heddle. 

My challenges on this project came early.  My first 12-dent heddle was broken adjacent to one of the holes, something I discovered only as I was about to begin threading the holes in my heddle.  This required me to manually transfer the entire width of my warp to my second 12-dent heddle.  Many profanities were heard that afternoon, I will tell you.  Thank you weaving gods for my double-heddle setup, so that I had a backup heddle ready to go while the Nerd repaired the defective heddle. 

My next challenge was in threading the holes in my heddle.  I think that the 12-dent heddle was actually the right call for this particular wool, however it is very challenging threading my 12-dent heddle with the hook provided with my loom.  Because the hook itself barely fits through the heddle, let alone with wool, threading each hole was a challenge of wills requiring much to-ing and fro-ing, and I had more than half a dozen ends simply disintegrate as I was pulling them through a hole.  This left me with several extremely short ends amidst many longer ends, and I probably lost more than 2-3" of warp in evening everything out.

I also had 1 end come through the hole only 2/3 of the way, leaving a twist of fiber on the back end of the heddle, something I did not notice until I had been weaving for a few inches.  More cursing.  At the end of the day, however, this did not pose an insurmountable problem as I simply worked the tag end of the wool towards the back of the loom as I advanced the warp to prevent it from ratcheting up the tension on the one warp thread as it got caught on the heddle.  I can't even tell where it was in the finished piece, which is nice. 

Although I think the 12-dent heddle was the right call for this fingering weight wool it was a close thing, and I found the wool had a real tendency to stick together making it difficult to get a clean shed.  This was remedied by the judicious use of pick up sticks to help me manually force sticky warp threads apart, ensuring that my weaving errors were kept, if not to a minimum, to a dull roar. 

I didn't do anything too fancy with this shawl, just a plain hemstitch at each end with a moderate fringe, but the simplicity works for this pattern, I think.  I did add a little ceramic "M" at one corner as a signature (just in case the usual errors I included in the piece weren't enough to identify me!).

Right off the loom the finished piece was 26" x 74", and after washing and hanging to dry the shawl ended up being 24 1/2" x 72".  I was pretty happy with the length (although I do prefer longer shawls as a rule and would probably go even longer next time) and even though I had more draw-in and shrinkage than I expected on the width, I think I could happily have gone a little narrower on the width, so this was not a bad result. 

Like the baby llama, merino is another wool that sheds like a mother, but feels so soft in the hand that all is quickly forgiven.  So long as there is a lint roller close at hand, anyways!

I love how this piece turned out and am keeping it for myself.  I have rationalized that it's OK to be selfish some of the time.  Besides, my next project is a return to industrial scale tea towel fabrication as preparation for Christmas.  Those will all be given away, so everything balances out. 

I love me some houndstooth table runner action

After a supremely frustrating experiment in Log Cabin weaving I went back to my roots with another houndstooth table runner, this time using the 5/2 mercerized cotton yarn in Bermuda Blue and Purple on a 12-dent heddle.

I set up the warping board on my floor stand and it worked great!  The way I set up my warp for houndstooth is very time consuming as I knot the individual colours, but it really helps keep my warp threads nice and clean when I am weaving - - there is minimal crossing behind the heddle.

I planned this project out ahead of time in an attempt to better know what my finished project should look like, using a worksheet downloaded from <craftsy.com>.  I wanted to get 90" of length including fringe, and factored in 15% take up and shrinkage for a total length of 120", which is what I attempted to set up on my warping board.  As for the width I wanted 12" finished width, so I initially warped across 168 ends, or 12 dpi x 14".

Ready to weave

Cleaning the warp threads as I wound them on the back beam took the longest time, because there was about 10' of distance in a slick yarn that just loved to tangle.  I ended up losing some of my warp length by having to trim my yarn ends, which were excessively prone to tangling.

It took me most of a day to set up my warp.  On the plus side, I got an extra hour of work time around 2 am because I was still hard at it when we set our clocks 1 hour back.  So productive!

Once I began weaving, the piece took shape very quickly.  In less than a full day I finished weaving the runner.

 

When I took the work off the loom I discovered that the woven piece measured 78.5" x 12.75", which is interesting.  I see now how much warp length I lost by having to trim out the knots at the bottom of my threads, because although the width was much closer to my planned width (all measurements prior to washing) the length was much shorter than planned.  

As for the pattern itself, I was very happy with how it turned out:

The colours are nice and rich, and although this is still a very airy weave (even using the 12-dent heddle), I love the look of it.  We will see how it washes up.

I will update this post once I wash the piece and will know how much it shrinks. 

EDITED TO ADD:

After washing the runner came down to 75.5" x 12" (from 78.5" x 12.75").  The finished runner looks great!  It is going in someone's stocking for the holidays for sure!

I have seen the enemy and it is Log Cabin weaving

I have to admit to my complete and utter failure to weave an adequate Log Cabin pattern on my rigid heddle loom.  Well perhaps I exaggerate for effect.  If it was not a complete and utter failure at the very least it did not go as planned. 

With the arrival of my new 12-dent heddle I could now warp my loom with a higher contrast 5/2 mercerized cotton yarn in Bermuda Blue and Purple.  The colours were lovely and rich looking in the light, and I had high hopes for sufficient contrast to permit the Log Cabin loveliness to shine through.

Things fell off the rails when it came time to begin weaving.  I didn't know if I should be running a pick of the light colour AND a pick of the dark colour with the heddle in each position, or if I should be simply alternating the colours.  A Craftsy instructional video by Deborah Jarchow seemed to suggest that one should run both colours through the shed when the heddle is in each position, but all the charts I found on the internet suggest that one simply alternates colours.  In the end, I tried both ways, and I think that the alternating picks of colour with the heddle moving up and down is the way to go.

I threaded by heddle using the skipping slot technique I saw on Bon Tricot's blog, and was really pleased with the result - - I had many fewer crossed warp threads than in my first attempt (in the usual style).  That part worked well.

Detail showing the skipped slots and holes

What didn't work?  I kept losing track of my counts and lost my pattern over and over again.  The same thing happens to me when I golf - - am I lying 3 or hitting 3 - - I can never remember.  Have I just raised the heddle so now it's time for a light pick, or should I be lowering my heddle and doing a dark pick?  I could usually muddle along and figure out the colour, but I can see from my result that I kept forgetting whether I should be working on an up shed or a down shed. 

I tried both methods of Log Cabin weaving, both the 2 colours through 1 shed technique and alternating colours and sheds, and the latter came closest to replicating the pattern for me.  If I hadn't kept losing count, it might have been the way to go.  You can see from the example below that my various sections looked more and less Log Cabin-y, depending on my technique and accuracy.

So much for consistency...

So this was largely a frustrating exercise.  Some positive strides in threading my heddle and setting up my warp, but many many small frustrations in trying to make the pattern. 

So many mistakes...!  Don't weave while distracted, kids!

I am sure I am just having a minor block, and that one day all will be clear to me with more practice.  For now I will go back to a nice houndstooth pattern in the same blue and purple yarn just so I have the positive reinforcement of completing a project.

The new loom arrived! Step by step assembly

I ordered my new Kromski Harp loom from Paradise Fibers in Oregon, and I have to say that I was extremely pleased with their selection and service.  I ordered the loom and some extra accessories on October 12 and 13 and the loom arrived by October 17, even with delays in customs. 

The full loom kit includes all the parts of the loom plus accessories like a 8 dent heddle, a pick up stick, heddle hook, a couple of stick shuttles, warping pegs and clamps. 

The down side is that the loom arrives unassembled.  The good side is that the loom is actually quite easy to assemble, with one minor hiccup around the direction of the gears (that was readily fixed). 

Step 1 was to attach the little tooth gripper things that fit into the gears on the loom that keep the beams from spinning uncontrollably.  I am sure those things have a technical name, but I sure as hell don't know it.  Ah well. 

Step 2 is to lay out the loom parts in position, then attach the bottom braces and beams. 

 

Then comes the time to attach the handles onto the ends of the front and back beams.

Once the handles were attached, it was time to attach the heddle holder. 
 

Save for attaching the front and back warp assists, the loom was complete and ready to start weaving.  From start to finish it took only about an hour to assemble the loom, which is less time than I expected. 

The base loom comes with stick shuttles, and I picked up a couple of Leclerc boat shuttles (size slim and size small to fit through the shed in a rigid heddle loom).  The boat shuttles are made of Canadian Maple and are beautiful and they feel lovely in the hand.  Having spent the weekend weaving with these shuttles, I have to say that they are a wonderful addition to my tool kit.

Because I am inherently lazy I also picked up a Leclerc bobbin winder and extra bobbins so that I could quickly load up several bobbins in each working colour, which was a tip I picked up from a video on the Paradise Fibers youtube channel.  This definitely made weaving quick and easy, with little time wasted when changing bobbins and/or colours, and I really recommend these.

After watching one of Tim Horchler's very informative videos on warping the loom using warp sticks to keep the warp threads separated I also made sure to order a set of warp sticks.  I used these when weaving my first and second sample projects and they really help keep the tension even.

The Kromski Rigid Heddle loom comes with an 8-dent heddle, and I ordered a second, 10-dent heddle for finer wools.  Having played with both heddles on my sample cotton yarn last weekend, I have just ordered a 12-dent heddle.  The new heddle is not just because my sample projects turned out spacier than I anticipated, but also because a 12-dent heddle is called for by some of my pattern kits.

Anticipating bringing the loom with my on the road to family visits, I also picked up a loom bag.  The nice thing about the Kromski Harp loom is that it can fold up with the work on it and be tucked away into the loom bag.  I have tried folding the loom without work on it, and it works perfectly.

Because I have impulse control issues, I have already tried a couple of test swatches.  My next post will describe my trials and tribulations playing with my new loom.