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Knotted pile

Hey

i always thought knotted pile would be really time-consuming.
and it isn't really at all. i set up a wee test warp on one of my toy looms the other day, and i made a wee thing with strip[es that wasn't that good. so then i made a 40 end warp on my table loom, and got these

aren't they nice. and it works up quite quickly as well. that's just me making diagonal stripes into a couple of wee flags. i think i've found my new Fun Thing. hooray! As it goes, Knotted pile is tied for 1st place with Pick Your Nose, and i'm doing that as well, on an occasional basis, so all is well.

i think i'll make a wider rug on the floor loom next, and see if i can make circles and curves and that. on second thoughts i should try making curves and circles on the little loom first, before i get all ambitious and buy rakes of wool.

on another note, i finished the big warp. made about 33 metres. took about 36 hours, not counting warping. which i didn't count cos it was a farce. i've now got a tent made of fabric in the corner of my front room with my bed and the heater inside it. very cosy.

now if only i had a couple hundred quid spare and a much larger house i could warp directly from cones. that would be so nice.

ho hum

-a

Comments

Meg said…
Ahhhhh, not ho-hum!! It sounds good.
Anonymous said…
Explain your 33m warp, I can't cope with 3 m one without getting in a tangle. Curious about rugs. I havn't thought beyond thin stuff. I will need a much larger dent reed before I can play with heavy warp, but would like to try a rag rug. I like the poterntisl for recycling.
Andrew Kieran said…
about the long warp. this was warped sectionally (refer to previous post) onto a drum with a 2 metre circumfurence. i originally warped 40 metres. this makes 20 revolutions of the drum.

as shown in the aforementioned post, which i don't know how to link to from a comment, the warp comes from spools arranged on a home made spool rack. it isn't made on a warping frame.

as goes rugs, they're well worth getting into. i just love that knotted pile. i am so gonna make a big piece, it really doesn't take as long as you'd think. if you want to buy a book, buy Collingwood's book. i haven't read another, but i doubt i need to.

what i'd like to figure out next is how warp pile is formed, as in towels. notice how a towel tends to have lots of wee loops of warp rising from the surface, and you can pull them out. are they formed by closing certain sheds over a dowel? will i need an extra warp beam or can i have an extra, weighted, warp hangin off a raised bar to create the pile. i don't have and can't afford an extra warp beam, so the first question's merely academic.

i've made quite a few rag rugs, and as good as they are for recycling, they don't seem to weave up much quicker than a pure wool rug. also, i found myself getting quite wheezy after weaving for a while with weft made of bedsheets, and i've put this down to loads of tiny wee very short fibres infesting the air when you rip the rags into strips. for this reason i'm not going to make another one, because i don't want to develop asthma

i see that you reside in the south of england. have you used Texere yarns in bradford before?

www.texere.co.uk

i highly recommend them. some of their lines of rug wool are about £10/kilo, and if you look a couple of posts back you might see a nice checked fabric hanging off a chair. that's made from Enigma Silk, which is a silk/wool blend. it's about £10/kilo as well. i warp the at about 30 epi to create quite a nice fabric, though i have yet to achieve a balanced sett.

coincidentally, the knotting yarn is New Fez Rug Yarn. it comes in bags of pre-cut lengths. they also sell Axminster rug yarn at reasonable prices as well, though i haven't tried that yet. next on my list though.
Anonymous said…
They are nice! I was thinking "navy signal flag" even before you said flag. Infinite possibility and deep color.

That's some awfully fast weaving. Just about a meter an hour. Can we see your tent?
Andrew Kieran said…
nah, my tent is not for public consumption. it's a mess to be honest. i've kinda settled down into the lazy life for a wee bit as i'm having income problems and it's winter, so it's cold so i can't be bothered doing much.

my dwelling reflects this. i am in touch with the Natural Rythm of the Earth, man.

thyat's a nice way pof saying i sleep a lot in winter.

whoever correctly tells me which political movements are represented by those two flags wins a prize.

an actual material prize, i'm not kidding

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