weave4fun

Christmas, and all that. Season's greetings, and so on That's that out of the way. Now, here's my prospectus. At the risk of sounding cocky, i should say that they sent me a letter saying they're giving me an offer. but it hasn't turned up in UCAS yet, and till it's there it's not official. So here's hoping for the efficient functioning of the higher education application process in the new year. The back is made of rag rug, the pages are made of a plainweave check. i had to work very hard to get it full up in time and i was sitting in my room on the night before the interview sewing. but i got it done, and they seemed to like it. so here you go, i apologise for my poor photography. I am to the digital camera what Al Quaeda is to the middle-east peace process

is what i've been doing for the last two weeks. that's just a wee preview, cos they're sitting in my bag waiting to get cut up and sewn into my fat-ass fabric book. i've taken the next two days off college, cos i'm not getting much done there, and i need to fill up the book, which means weaving between 6 and 10 samples in about two days. quite impossible if i'm just working at night, but perfectly achievable now i think. the deadline is friday, as i'm travelling down on saturday. i could probably do a bit of sewing and cataloguing in aberdeen on sunday, but i'd rather not. as the little people say hiho, hiho, it's off to work we go after a cup of tea, of course -hb

trapunto suggested i join in the photo meme thing. 6th photo of 6th folder. so i had to create 6 randomly named folders and randomly shovel all the pictures in my college drive into them. it's funny, when i used the photo uploader on blogger, i get ghandi, but when i use windows explorer, i get this charming fellow: arbritary things these computers, aren't they? i surmise from this brief exercise that blogger is a force for good in the world, whereas windows explorer, and the system it's based on is Pure Evil. maybe blogger.com's servers run on linux. must be Anyhow, i'm well knackered the now, i've been weaving one sample and warping another most nights for the last week, in a mad rush to fill up the rest of my portfolio fabric book. i have about 8 sheets to fill, maybe 7. i'm not sure. and i now have 4 days left. i was up till 2 last night weaving, which was kinda aggravating because i sat through a dreadful American-Men-With-Guns-And-A-Strong-Love-Of-Free

I put a rug warp on the frontroomloom the other week. but i didn't get round to doing anything with it for ages cause the wool took ages to arrive. Then the wool arrived and i wove an inch or so, before getting called down to edinburgh and dundee to go on a massively expensive and altogether regrettable orgy of drinking and, believe it or not, mediation and conflict resolution (that's NewSpeak for "keeping my mates from getting kicked out of pubs"). Now i'm back, sober and feeling reasonably optimistic. So i'm getting back to work It's a relief. Anyhows, i think it'll end up about 5 or 6ft long. the loose weft ends are getting darned into the body of the fabric btw, in case you're wondering. it's nice to get a good rythm going, and i'm learning to really fling that shuttle with some force, because i still haven't managed to get a really decent shed. Before i put the next warp on, i'm going to have to have some serious time readjusti

I went to galashiels' open day on friday. Galashiels is apparently one of the premier textile institutions in the country. and i want to do a degree with them they've got loadsa cool equpment, for dying, spinning, and garment making. best of all though, is the weave room. here is one quarter of it i was almost jumping up and down with glee when i walked through the door. and the weaving technician was very helpful and explained a few things to do with warping procedures to me. however, as i have a very poor visual imagination, i failed to take most of it in. anyway, that's where i is going if i can. so i'm spending the rest of this year putting a portfolio together hooray!

I might as well start at the beginning... When i bought my large floor loom, i was informed that it could be tied up for either counterbalance or countermarch treadling. not knowing what on earth that meant (having only used a jack loom), i went "oh, alright then" and that was that. Now, when in plain weave, my counerbalance setup was working alright, but then i tried to set up a 2/2 twill and it all went wrong, as detailed in an earlier post. since then i haven't been able to get an even shed, even in plain weave. nightmare. so, thought i'd try countermarch, cos at least it lifts the shafts evenly. so i downloaded the instructions trapunto directed me to and used them. or, rather, attempted to. because, it turns out the countermarch tie-up needs to sets of lamms. and i have only one. vexing is not the word. so am i going to have to go back to finikity counterbalance tie-ups then? am i ever going to be able to use that horizontal countermarch castle without learning t

Yesterday I decided to attempt to recreate a spiral twill i saw on stephanie's blog . And, hooray! it's just a simple pointed twill, with warp and weft threads alternating one by one. ain't that simple. What is slightly vexing however is that, having (as it turned out) threaded the heddles without error (through constantly rechecking everything throughout the whole process), i then proceeded, as you do, to Sley The Reed. Which is, i must admit, my single favourite part of the entire warping procedure. the rest of it being frankly tedious and footery as anything. Never mind that anyway So, i finished sleying the reed, and stood up and had a cup of tea. Sitting down again, i decided to finally tie on the the front stick and begin, upon which i discovered that I'd sleyed the bloody thing back to front. and i never take the reed out of the beater bar because then i'd end up wearing the thread out of the wee holes the screws go into, cos it's all screwed down, not de

why didn't i think of doing this before? Gives me something weaving-related to do while i'm in college and probably ends up helping me get into the next college. hooray! The top one is the sheperd's check, except the bit i've done already is a plain weave, and the draft there is a twill. i've got another couple of metres sitting on the loom waiting to be woven, and i want to do that in twill, but i can't figure out the tie-up to do it properly long live checked paper -hb

I got the warp wound on the medium sized loom last week, and threaded and sleyed it this weekend Now. The back beam is held by a ratchet. and the ratchet-stop is a plate of metal which is pulled up from the ratchet-wheel with a handle attached to the main upright. It seems that somewhere along the line of the last couple of weeks i must have bent the plate back a little cos it no longer holds tight against the wheel. i've tried holding it down with a piece of cord wrapped round the beam, but it's not having it and i've had the whole thing come loose while swinging the batten twice already. I've tried to remove the plate but one of the screws is held tight. I'm going to have to take it outside and hammer it flat on the doorstep. This is aggravating On another aggravating note, the shuttle keeps flying out of the race and hitting the wall when i beat from the left hand side on the larger loom and i can't figure out why, cos i haven't changed anything from the

Teacher told us to post to our blogs. I am actually doing a class in college on blogging. It's almost unbelievable isn't it? I think i saw a music video for some bog-standard american pop-metal band where they're all sitting in Blogging 101 taking pictures of themselves. As it goes, I finally cleared the table loom at the weekend and put a wee silk sample on it. 200 ends, and 56epi on a 14dent reed. it's going a lot better than the last one. and i got the rug loom almost beamed. should finish it tonite, but probably won't get much more done on it till the weekend. Ho hum. More pictures when i'm finished -a

finally got the 2/2 plain weave check finished. Reasonably chuffed with it. I'll cut off the hanging weft trails and darn the remains back in 2nite then give it a soapy foot pressing in the bath before gently steam ironing it. Must remember this time to keep a copy of it in loom-state for future comparison Having cut it off halway along the warp for the sake of starting off afresh with new tensioning, i have another 2 metres left to weave. I have decided to do this in straight twill. However, it occurs to me that it looks different on one side to the other. I am assuming that i threaded to loom with the draft pointing in the middle and that's why things are the way they are. Anyway, i like the effect and will probably try to create large blocks of colour alternating on each side. However, before i do that, i have to sort out the hideous treadling problems with which this tie-up is being afflicted. This is the first time i've tried to do a twill tie-up on a counterbalance s

This is the first serious warp on the scary floor loom. Nothing complicated. Took me 4 days to dress the loom in my time after work. It's good getting a rythm going on the loom finally, it fairly clatters off when you get going. there's going to be about 4 metres. Is nice. See that blue line on the right hand side? I thought that was a tension error. Turned out there was 6 ends in the dent instead of 3. So i cut 3 out, and there you go. It's ok now though, so who's to worry eh? I still can't figure out exactly how to put the pictures where i want them, it doesn't make any sense how the program arranges them. Very confusing. I think the left-hand selvedge is at low tension, it's all knackered. oh well, never mind, life goes on.

Getting ready to put as large a warp as possible on my 4-shaft bigloom, it occured to me that since buying the thing, i've never counted the heddles. So i did, and it turned out they were unevenly distributed across the shafts, which isn't much good is it? So, i took the frames apart, recounted all the heddles along with the spares and find i have about 1000 metal heddles. Which is nice. Making a warp of 30epi, as i tend to do (based on 2 ends per dent on a 14 dent reed on my table loom), that should give me a warp of a width of, ooh, let's see 1000 % 30 = 33.33' So, about 2 and 1/3rd feet or so. which i suppose ain't bad. but if i want to ever consider weaving silk i'm gonna need a lot more heddles like. Now, as i'm in the mood, i might as well calculate the metreage of a 4m warp of 1000ends which isn't difficult, that's 4 KM of yarn. not bad. Am i wittering? Maybe Anyhow, I'm making a warp with blue and grey yarn running concurrently, to make a

I recently finished weaving my first finished pieces, a pair of matching scarves for my mother and a friend of hers. They're made with what I believe to be wool, at least i'm pretty sure the white is wool. what the purple bit is i have no idea, but it's lovely anyway, and it seems to work well. So there you have it. It's a 2/2 straight twill, nothing fancy. I'm still in the land of twill variations, they are a lot of fun, but i tend to progress very slowly and spend more time experimenting with colour than pattern, and almost never with texture. I'm just not a very adventurous boy really. Watch this space, however, for more. I shall doubtlessly put up a slideshow or some such thing, if it's possible, of my tablet-woven loveliness, and all the other experiments and fun i've been having with the looms in my house. Anyhow, my first ever finished product. Actually, i tell a lie, this was my first finished product. Well, not a fully finished product, as i lef