weave4fun

Well, it's been a little while. this is only a narrow warp really. have to do sums to figure out how many ends there are. damn, i've forgotten long multiplication. 16 x 24 = 384 ends i am a slave to the calculator on my phone. in much the same way i am a slave to my lighter. through intellectual and physical laziness i'm using some of the stuff i got from those folks down south. i just thought to make stripes of blue and green seperated by fine lines of yellow, and i got this when i wove with even picks-to-ends pretty chuffed i reckon. this is a good long warp though, and i really have very little of the blue left. maybe not even enough to make one full scarf length in this style. i'm not really sure if i have that much green either to be honest. the only of those colours i have a lot of is the yellow and using yellow as a dominant weft in this fabric would be a bloody awful idea i reckon. i probably have some other yarns that are "close enough" so never mind.

i'm having a bit of fun, making samples for curtains. i figure it's nice for the sun to shine through, as these aren't insulation curtains, but decorative curtains. the sett here is 8, 16 and 32 epi. the weave looks most even in the 16 epi sections, with the 32 epi sections having quite a steep diagonal twill line. the thing is, na dmany of you will no doubt have come across this, that if one gives it a firm beat, it tends to beat the whole weft right down to the fell, causing a waving fell, with the close-sett sections pushing themselves forward. quite a hideous effect in my opinion. so one needs to keep a very light beat, that only press the weft down the fell on the close sett without putting any pressure on the loose-sett sections. it's not easy is it? the changing of beat isn't particularly noticeable in 32 and 16 epi stripes, but in the middle it's very noticeable. with groups of weft threads bunching together, giving quite a variation. i don't think i

before i start . . i've got internet at home! yay! i finally bit the bullet and paid BT £122 to connect my line. anyway, back to the point this is related to the 100-scarf a week project. yes! that's right! i have not given up! i am just slow as all funk! so, yeaah. here's the thing. say each scarf is 1.25 metres long. then if i want to weave 100 scarves at 2 wide i need to make a warp, say 70 metres long. a little bit more maybe to be on the safe side. as you can see, if i weave at 2 wide, then i can't really reasonably expect to make 100 scarves in a week. cos weaving the count of yarn i like to use at 1 metre an hour is reaonably hard work. and 70 hours reasonably hard work in a week quickly becomes extremely hard hard work. so i need to weave 3 wide, which would leave me at about 40 metres or so. i need to do more sums. but that's about right. and that's doable. i reckon. but i don't have enough heddles. yet anyway, that's another story. the main thr

so, i've suffered a great deal of disruption this month, what with fate snatching me away from my cosy bed and taking me to bolton via inverness, lanark and edinburgh. so i haven't actually got very much done in terms of physical productivity or sampling. i did do a day lesson for joan the other saturday, which was nice, and she's now got the table loom i've been using for the last three years. it's a community loom like i say, so it's there for people to use. and i'm arranging for castletown heritage centre, which is trying to develop itself as a traditional crafts place, to take on my smaller (Dryad) floor loom. i have also arranged for me to be doing a knotted pile weaving class there in july. which isn't that far away, really. and no doubt the idle (with any luck) summer will just speed on by like a fast thing, say a train. or a car on the motorway. anyway, i have spent the week tidying the house. i spent about half a day doing the dishes and the rec