weave4fun

Time to abandon this warp

2012-01-31T10:29:00.001Z

It's getting silly. Oh well, guess I can't weave fine threads yet. The last few warped have taught me that. That's the conductive yarn in the purple sections. Sadly this yarn works much better when knitted. It's frankly useless in a woven structure. At least for potentiometers, the contacts are too haphazard and unreliable and the resistance value fluctuates wildly. Nae use.

4-step sequencer

2012-01-23T20:06:00.001Z

not really textile related exactly, but I do intend to plug whatever fabric I happen to make on the loom this week into this code and use it to generate sound.

this is the code

i'm really just putting this up here so I have it in another place in case I lose it because I'll no doubt forget how i did this and have to figure out from scratch how i did it if i lose the file.

the main thing about this is that it doesn't matter that much really what resistive range I can get on any particular textile sensor that I create now because I'm not using the actual value of the resistor resistance (ugh, whatever) to enter values into the program. what i'm doing is mapping the range of the whole resistor to a different variable. so whether the range of the resistor is 0-10000ohm or 0-200000ohm it doesn't matter, I can just map those values to the range of 0-1000

With any luck the cloth will work out and I can make a little sequencer control panel out of cloth.

Arduino is so much fun.

Wish my dog would relax though.

//variable pitch square wave generator
//reads value from potentiometer
//maps said value to provide Microsecond delay
//23.01.12
//Andrew Kieran

int potOne = 0; // timer pot
int potTwo = 0; // step one pot
int potThree = 0; // step two pot
int potFour = 0; // step threepot
int potFive = 0; // step four pot
int potOneOut = 0; // mapped value from pot one, timer repeat
int potTwoOut = 0; // mapped value from pot two, step two frequency
int potThreeOut = 0; //mapped value from pot three, step three freq
int potFourOut = 0;
int potFiveOut = 0;
const int potOnePin = A0;
const int potTwoPin = A1;
const int potThreePin = A2;
const int potFourPin = A3;
const int potFivePin = A4;
const int outPin = 9;
unsigned long Timer; // hmmmmmm

void setup() {
pinMode (potOne, INPUT);
pinMode (potTwo, INPUT);
pinMode (potThree, INPUT);
pinMode (potFour, INPUT);
pinMode (potFive, INPUT);
pinMode (outPin, OUTPUT);
}

void loop () {
potOne = analogRead(potOnePin);
potOneOut = map(potOne, 0, 1000, 0, 1000);
Timer = millis();
stepOne();
Timer = millis();
stepTwo();
Timer = millis();
stepThree();
Timer = millis();
stepFour();
}

void stepOne(){
while (millis()-Timer<=potOneOut){
    potTwo = analogRead(potTwoPin);
    potTwoOut = map(potTwo, 0, 1000, 0, 5000);
    digitalWrite(outPin, HIGH);
    delayMicroseconds(potTwoOut);
    digitalWrite(outPin, LOW);
    delayMicroseconds(potTwoOut);
}
}

void stepTwo(){
while (millis()-Timer<=potOneOut){
    potThree = analogRead(potThreePin);
    potThreeOut = map(potThree, 0, 1000, 0, 5000);
    digitalWrite(outPin, HIGH);
    delayMicroseconds(potThreeOut);
    digitalWrite(outPin, LOW);
    delayMicroseconds(potThreeOut);
}
}
void stepThree(){
while (millis()-Timer<=potOneOut){
    potFour = analogRead(potFourPin);
    potFourOut = map(potFour, 0, 1000, 0, 5000);
    digitalWrite(outPin, HIGH);
    delayMicroseconds(potFourOut);
    digitalWrite(outPin, LOW);
    delayMicroseconds(potFourOut);
}
}
void stepFour(){
while (millis()-Timer<=potOneOut){
    potFive = analogRead(potFivePin);
    potFiveOut = map(potFive, 0, 1000, 0, 5000);
    digitalWrite(outPin, HIGH);
    delayMicroseconds(potFiveOut);
    digitalWrite(outPin, LOW);
    delayMicroseconds(potFiveOut);
}
}

another noise test, two printed failures (damn shame) and the state of my desk right now

2012-01-17T21:45:00.000Z

This is a foot long piece of fabric with a line of stitching running up and down it, I used the conductive thread in the bottom spool as the sewing technician reckoned it wouldn't be strong enough to go in the top because if too much tension. It has a greater resistive range than the knitted strips from the last post. between, errrr, 1 and 10K, or 200K or something. I think it's between 1 and 10 or 12Kohm, but the resistance varies wildly because it's difficult to get a good contact. or something. God knows.

These were supposed to be conductive. The powder form of this pigment was wildly and unpredictably conductive, but obviously when the binder-glue-type-stuff is added it doesn't conduct anymore. Shame, because they're so pretty.

And this is my desk at home. I'm making a larger bit of fabric with the uppy-downy thing going on in it to see if I can get a greater resistance range out of it. This is a 30cm-or-so square piece of fabric.

When I was a kid I had a friend whose dad was an engineer-sorta-guy and he had this huge shed and 3/4's of it was full of engines and greasy stuff and the other quarter was full of computers and soldering irons and electronic stuff. It was so cool. I aspire to be messy on a large scale like that.

I have a meeting with my tutor tomorrow. Damn shame I can't get power at my desk (grumble)

Noise Tests

2012-01-15T19:47:00.001Z

Using the conductive fabric demonstrated in the previous post, I have now hooked them up to a number of square wave generators I made last summer, using them in the place of the 470Kohm potentiometers I was originally using to
vary the frequency of the wave.

They have a relatively low resistance, being made partially, as they are, of steel. In the range of 2-7Kohms, which is a great deal less than the POT's I was originally using. This means that I am somewhat stuck with the squeaky/screechy end of the waveform and can't get any of those deep rumbles or farting sounds I love so much.

It's fun anyway. Like I say, I'm not sure for what, but it gives me a much more tangible way of measuring the variable resistance of various fabrics and so on

Tomorrow if I get time I'll be in the Print Room at college trying out some conductive dyes and foils to see what I can potentially achieve by printing traces onto fabric.

Beginning in E-Textiles

2012-01-12T23:07:00.000Z

Very auspicious isn't it?

I apologise for the video being on it's side. I haven't used this camera to take video properly before, that's my excuse.

Anyway, that's an 8 needle, 200 course strip of knitted fabric, the yarn is six ends of really-rather-fine 2 ply silk/steel (1 ply silk, 1 ply steel) run together. when it's scrunched up together it's resistance changes and the little LED gets brighter as it's being fed more of that juicy current it loves so much (I = V/R, innit)

I have also used these to create press pads by seperating bits of this conductive fabric with non conductive loosely knitted wool fabric. when pressed the two layers puch through the intervening layer and make a contact. it's pretty cool.

Tonight I connected some of these sensors up to some square wave generators I made last year. Now I can make an array of hideous squealing sounds by squeezing these things. If I want to make any deeper sound I'm going to need much longer chains and make much bigger sensors, either that or find an alternative conductor, as my noise boxes were meant for taking 470K potentiometers and these are at best 5 or 6K.

State of the Loom 2012

2012-01-02T00:33:00.001Z

This is the condition of my loom on new year's day 2011. Sorry, I mean 2012. That's just been pointed out to me by an observant and alert individual sat beside me. Cheers for that :-)

Currently I'm weaving a woollen rug with a cotton string warp. 200 ends at like 6epi i think. Yes, it is, I remember. It's not difficult to remember.

There's the back of the loom, it's all got old tablet-woven bands hanging off it and random bits of fabric.

And that's the front, I'm nearly at the end of the current rug. I've already woven one rag rug out of old jeans (took a while to turn them into strips). As it goes actually, the aforementioned individual on the couch here has reminded me that she thinks that rug that I wove from jeans is just like one she saw on Anthropolgie's website, which I assume she was studying prior to attempting to get a job there. Apparently they started in Pennsylvania, big now. Shops all over the place. I'm not actually sure what exactly they sell, but I don't get out much.

Anyway, the one I'm weaving just now is wool. Just wool, yarn from Texere. Nice stuff, but slightly unpredictable.

See that at along the top (not the christmas lights, the other thing) is kind of a raddle. See I tried warping it up without a raddle, because I've got used to beaming warps without a raddle, but it turns out you just can't beam a rug warp without a raddle. So I rebeamed after banging a nail into the top bar once every half-inch.

The heartbreaking thing about this is that I'm a proponent of the metric system, but I still find it stupidly difficult to wrench myself away from feet and inches. Yards of course, are completely foreign to me. I understand it's American for "driveway"

And that's the cloth beam. Looks satisfyingly thick because it's got a big chunky ragrug on it. Makes me cheerful. hurrah!

So that's the state of my loom at the start of the new year. Huzzah!

Andrew

Samples for December 2011

2011-12-21T18:14:00.001Z

Warp Pile suppositions, and what I did, not on my holidays but when I was working like a driven thing and not getting much rest

2011-12-14T00:40:00.002Z

I spent a long time trying to figure out in my head how warp pile cloth was constructed. I knew that there were two warps, one for the ground fabric, and the second for the pile. This can be seen by pulling on a single loop in a towel. Eventually I came to a kind of idea of how this kind of fabric was woven.

It turns out I was correct. I couldn't think of any other way it could be done.

"To produce the pile a wire is inserted across the width of the warp into a shed formed only by the pile ends. When the pile ends are subsequently dropped into the bottom shed and interlaced with the weft they remain draped over the wires as shown at ..... (snip) ... Thus, the cross-sectional dimensions of the wire determine the height of the pile. After the insertion of a number of picks (and wires) the wire furthest away from the cloth fell is withdrawn leaving the loops which were formed over its shank as a surface feature in the cloth..."
- Watson, "Advanced Textile Design: Compound Woven Structures" 4th Ed, p 287

Well, that's one way of making a warp pile anyway. One which I have the technology available to make use of. I'm sure I can find a few reasonably straight bits of wire in a scrapheap somewhere.

In other news, I am 17 hours away from my deadline for this semester and completely relaxed, having just watched Amir Khan lose a fight to Lamont Peterson with something of a lack of dignity. Nothing like losing a fight and blaming the referee. Classy.

I have yet to do:

Put my sketchbook together
Put my journal together (it's all over the place, and here as well)
Put my research file together, including retroactively making copies of many of the pages in the books I have been reading to inform me on classical men's style. The blogs I'll give up on, they're too transitory.
Complete some small writing tasks
Label everything for the colour through practice project

Which consists of

6 pages of development samples (about 48 colour samples and 3 silk samples)
14 Final samples (all doublecloth in varying colour combinations and twill combinations)
6 Experimental samples (resleyed the doublecloth warp for single cloth and wove with both double and single-cloth in the same fabric)
3 books of collage colour combinations
1 sketchbook culled from 3 locations
1 journal culled from my main journal I used during the summer, my notebook in which I write down my random notes and do all my sums and this here blog
1 research file which is almost nonexistent right now
1 customer profile which is completely nonexistent

And for the Techniques module, which doesn't have as much. It consisted of a series of tests in which we were given a description of a fabric, ie

tight-warp stitched doublecloth with both faces in 2/2 twill and the front face in 2/30's cotton and the back face in 2/12's cotton

Then you figure out the weave plan, sleying, draft and peg plan

Also we had one test to do on calculating setts using various setting theorists. All of which seem to base their calculations on a number which is simply given to you without telling you how this number is calculated. For instance in Ashenhurst, to work out the Yarn value, you need the value for K. What is K? in the instance of cotton, K = 0.92 (if i remember correctly)

How is this derived? If i do not know how a variable in an equation is derived I cannot have any faith in the equation. This is a number that could have been (and probably was, knowing this bloody industry) derived at over 100 years ago, in which time manufacturing techniques, production standards and fabric qualities have all changed (not a lot, but somewhat). So is that the correct value? Who knows? Not I. At the end of the day half of my mind still runs along the method of "look at the yarn, screw your eyes up, say 'ooooh, 32? 36? call it 34epi'"

Hardly scientific. And they all have these problem it seems. One variable which is a mystery number whose origin is unknown.

There may be an answer to this question. I intend to find out. This is an industry that seems bereft of simple standardisation. I see no benefit to using multiple counting systems for different fibres. I see no benefit to using imperial units (yes, I still think in inches and feet, I'm trying to train myself out of it)

Anyway, where was I before I started frothing at the mouth?

Ah yes

Aside from that I have to produce two double cloths (not an issue, I just took the 2 worst looking samples from the Final warp that happened to be technically sound) and two figuring cloths (which were both crap)

And then I have to label everything.

Agh.

After this I have about 10 glorious days of doing whatever I like. My options are

1: Weaving rugs on my brand new but rather old Dryad Upright Loom. I have a whole rake of Axminster Rug Wool I foolishly purchased when I thought I was rich
2: Weave Cashmere scarves, taking the oppurtunity to learn about the use of doup-wires to weave multiple scarves on a width seperated while keeping the edges tight
3: Attempt to weave warp pile through the wire technique outlined above, as I happen to have a rather substantial warp just sitting there due to my not having the time to weave it (deep, deep shame) and it's very colourful and pretty too and it's make a lovely thing
4: Spend time with the nice people I like to spend time with, who make me happy
5: Do bugger all

I reckon I can easily find time for the last 2, but I can only do one of those weaving tasks, because I'm not completely bloody mental

Oh, and I have to tidy up around my loom.

Y'all can vote on which weaving task I do. I may very well ignore you. I'm already inclined toward warp pile as I have an idea in my head of how gorgeous it'll be (viscose feels niiiiiice) but I could be swayed towards cashmere or woollen rugs.

Andrew

Process: Scotweave Sampling

2011-11-22T13:49:00.001Z

It took me a little while to wrap my head around this program, but now that I have it's certainly saving me a lot of time. I can throw idea out on the screen so quickly, and play about with bracketing and weft variations with the greatest of ease and not spend all that time at the pegging table cursing and weeping as I hammer out peg-plans for the Dobby.

This is especially important methinx as I am attempting to combine colour and weave effects together into double weave. I am trying to go for either dots or stripes but am kinda playing with wavy patterns as well. If I use plain weave for the different faces then I can have 4 different interchanging blacks but not so much variation in shade, but if I use 4-shaft twills I can only get two interchanging blocks but get a lot more variation in shades to play with. It's a trade off really

Here's some of what I've come up with so far, all on the same warp of 1 pink, 1 blue

Straightway I'm noticing that the last two (which I did today) are different from the rest (which I did yesterday on a different computer). I'm guessing that's something to do with the settings of the image export dialog box or the preferences in the setup program on this computer. At the end of the day when I print them out though it makes no odds because All these yarns are associated with carefully selected printer colour codes so I know exactly what I'm getting when I print. And to be fair it's close to what I've got in the last two there

process: sample selection

2011-11-20T22:03:00.001Z

Ugh, the light in here is terrible.

Poor photography, once again. A combination of poor light and the camera on my relatively cheap phone.

Anyway, you still get an idea.

These are the colour combinations I'm going with from the pink and blue warp.

So yeah. I'm using doubleweave. Planning to use doubleweave, I should say (I'm not doing doubleweave yet. I'm sitting at the computer typing. And I don't have doubleweave on the loom at college. What I have at college is a silk warp that's probably going to get turned into a brightly coloured cord or something because I can't afford to waste any more time on it (woe betide me!))

Brackets inside brackets, now my writing is going down the drain.

Ho hum, fairly happy with the combinations. I figure I can get a lot of different combinations from which to choose finals from a 2 section warp with only 2 colours in each. hmm.

To do tomorrow: Lots of stuff not on the loom

I'm a little behind with my CAD work, so I have to import a bunch of black and white designs into Scotweave Jacquard software. Then I have to carefully pick exactly the right colours I need for my yarns and enter them into the yarn program, then use these yarns to make 3 or 4 different colourways of the 5 or 6 (god, i don't know how many) different designs I'm presenting for Jacquard cloth.

Also, I have to come up with the outlines of an essay for tuesday.

Hand-in is in 3 weeks. Well, for the main colour project anyway. I think hand in for everything else is a week earlier.

My new toy

2011-11-18T14:39:00.001Z

2 shaft Dryad Rug/Tapestry loom. Bought in the 70's, never used, stored in a garage for 30-odd years then sold to me today with the demonstration warp still on. Cleaned up and ready to go. The bearer doesn't slide, but I doubt it ever did. Anyone got any experience with these? I'm going to put up a post on weavolution later, see if anyone knows how to get this bearer moving smoothly

It's not really working out

2011-11-17T23:27:00.001Z

Lots of broken ends. Like, more than 40 in the first 5" of weaving. And mostly clustered in particular places, indicating that this is due to rough heddles or reed. I've not given up on 60's silk, but I won't spend any more college time on it as these looms aren't up to it.

Finally tied on.

2011-11-16T18:43:00.001Z

1600 ends of 60nm silk at 90epi.

Been at this all week. Couple of little errors, but nothing that can't be fixed once weaving is started. Just have to pay more attention and take greater care in my checking is all. Also, threading through yarn this fine is not easy.

The next warp will be knotted on. Blatantly. Because the technician found a wee machine for the job, about which you will hear more later.

Some selections

2011-11-14T20:50:00.001Z

From the first colour sample warp.

Under the weather

2011-11-13T23:10:00.001Z

But only a little bit.

It's been mad busy over here the last few weeks, been in late every day and on saturdays too. I've finished weaving the first viscose colour sampler and got it cut up into samples. Think there must be something like over 100 samples from that warp, they're only little. Really pleased with the amount of different shades I can get from one warp colour simply by changing the structures and colours about. Going to choose my favourite shades and combinations then try mixing them together in double weave on the next viscose warp, from the previous post. While I'm thinking about that I will be continuing to work on a warp of silk as detailed below

Silk 60's, 16 shafts in eight shaft blocks of about 1.5" each.

1600 ends at 90epi, sleyed 4 ends in a 42 reed (scottish system)

I've been at the threading for a little while now and it's starting to do my brain in, but I'm nearly through. Should get it finished tomorrow afternoon, then I can take some pictures and send them off with a request for more yarn because It's just gorgeous and I really think this fabric's going to be truly beautiful.

Bag of skittles

2011-11-05T00:11:00.001Z

So delicious and sugary. Sadly this warp was rather slack down the side. Rubbish.

Dead wasps on my warp

2011-11-02T13:12:00.001Z

You know It's winter when this falls onto your warp. That was clue #1, clue #2 was the fact that it was f****g freezing last night when I was walking the dog

Process #3 - listen and learn

2011-10-27T00:18:00.001+01:00

I've been obsessively weaving these big massive samples when I don't need to do so. It's been pointed out to me by my tutor (for the second or third time, but I'm too stubborn to listen to anything the first time because I always think I'm the first person that was ever correct) that I should be concentrating more on variety in colour and weaving more smaller samples on one warp than what I am doing now. Basically I'm making work for myself and it isn't necessarily going to be that helpful at the end of the day.
This is probably the most important part of the design process, taking feedback and allowing others to challenge your preconceived notions. It's probably the only way anyone ever moves forward artistically or philosophically.
If we don't allow ourselves to be changed by others then we stagnate and drop out of creative life or else become an obstacle in the way of those who wish to change things for the better.
So I've changed my approach to this project as of today. I think my work will be better for it.

Using a temple

2011-10-26T00:59:00.001+01:00

And though my selvedges aren't much better, I haven't had to retie a single selvedge thread in 2 full days of weaving that included much cursing as the shuttle kept attempting to break orbit. This I think is being caused by the fact that the upper shed is pulling the lower up just a wee bit on the right hand side. It wasn't an issue with the last pegging plan I was using, but it is now. I'd spend more time adjusting the levels but it's impossible to get anything just so as the shafts are held up by ancient cotton string that's all ragged and every shaft is different. I'm considering requesting that the uni invest in Texsolv to tie up the shafts on the George wood looms. What do y'all think?

Statistical anomalies

2011-10-19T23:54:00.002+01:00

Here's an interesting thing.

So those of you who use blogger.com to throw portions of your brain at the internet may have noticed that they've changed their layout and suchlike for the account settings page.

I hadn't of course because I'm a bit slow and I've also posted all my recent blog posts (the ones that are basically a photo and caption) from my phone, which is a very convenient way of throwing images at the web but not much use for writing long screeds of text because of it's tiny little keyboard. I plan to buy a bluetooth keyboard for the thing sometime in the future when I have some money, but don't hold your breath, that day may never come.

Anyhoo, that's enough rambling introduction. Here's the thing I noticed. They have statistics on the main page. And mine are fairly expected, it's hardly a high-traffic blog, I don't promote it anywhere and I rarely comment on other people's blogs (and that's where most of my visitors and commenters come from). So we're talking like 10 visits one day, 20 another. maybe as much as 30 in a day when I put up a halfway readable post. Nothing exciting, I'm certainly not going to install AdSense and live off that.

But I looked at the all-time stats, and in November 2010 I (apparently) got 5681 pageviews after a slow and steady climb to 580 the preceding month and then reasonably steeply declined to a normal level after that. What I'm wondering is what on earth happened in November 2010? Did some high-profile blogger or popular forum poster link to my site? Was my usual rambling and out of focus picture post hitting some kind of zen spot in the internets somewhere, or was I simply visited by the Internet Fairy, showering me with good gifts of visitors and Karma and so on?

Bloody weird anyway. That one month accounts for about a quarter of all page-views EVER, in something like 4 years. Can it be that long? Please, Infinite Universe, tell me it hasn't been that long.

I feel old now.

I turned 30 the other week as it goes. I didn't feel old then. But I hadn't just spent 10 straight hours threading through while sitting on a wooden board then. My rear end felt like a lump of dead meat by the time I left college today

Process #2a - first colour warp

2011-10-18T22:37:00.001+01:00

After building up a selection of colours I'm happy with, I then decide to myself it's a lovely idea to test these colours in various warp and weft combinations and weave structures.
This warp is the pinks and the blues which together make up my first colourway. I am threading them in a block draft on 12 shafts, in 3 4-shaft blocks. Primarily I intend to combine various 4 shaft twills, but will also experiment with other combinations of 4 shaft weaves, such as hopsack or honeycomb, bearing in mind that I have no intention of resleying as I am being economical with my time.
Which brings me to the other thing. Depending on time factors this will be the first of either 3, 6 or 9 identical warps, the next being tied onto the last in much the same manner as Blossom (The Weaving Monk) does in production. I expect this to save me about 8 hours of labour for each warp. Spread that out over 6 warps and its an entire working week.

Strawberries and Cream

2011-10-14T17:07:00.001+01:00

And again, after a press

2011-10-11T23:18:00.001+01:00

Yes, definitely worth the effort.

Luscious pink scarf

2011-10-11T22:27:00.001+01:00

It's finished now, see what you think. It has just the.most wonderful handle and drape. I can't believe I've never woven with fine silk before. All the extra work is absolutely worth it.

Wavy multi-twill

2011-10-07T20:11:00.001+01:00

Ok, so I drafted the pink silk in blocks of 4 shafts each on a total of 8, and I set the lift plan to have the first 4 shafts doing 3/1 twill and the others 1/3, so sect and warp face, and then alternating. And I wove that for q while to get a sample, then it occurred to me there was a bit of q curve where the blocks meet, so I've been weaving a whole scarf length in solid stripes (it's taking ages) and I've got this very interesting wavy effect when I remove the tension. I'll have to make an extra wee sample to see what happens when I steam press it.

Pink Silk

2011-10-05T18:59:00.001+01:00

672 ends of 33 Tex silk. To weave 1 sample and 4 yards at 56 epi. Varying twills, to hopefully create an interesting shimmer. Weave plans to follow this evening when I get back from the CAD lab.

Process: Collage

2011-10-02T16:29:00.001+01:00

This is the first post in a series, in which I'll be illustrating my design process, now that I'm taking it properly seriously. As I can't the now find the images to illustrate my inspiration source, the first list shall instead show you some collaging.
I have made 3 books of collage for this semester, 50 tpages each. The first two are explorations of colour and basic proportion, and in the third book I take my favourite colour combinations and experiment more with placement and angle, sometimes creating a subtle effect, sometimes a lively and even violent one.
in the next post I shall illustrate what I have been doing to attempt to get a feel for illustrating fold and (the all important) drapes in my sketchbook.

The lovely shawl V1.1

2011-09-10T12:41:00.000+01:00

Hey there

I've taken some pictures of that shawl I was going on about last week. I'm just being a little impatient. I should probably have waited to get a model or use a tailor's dummy or something. Sod it, I'll do it on monday.

Anyway, the sun's almost out today, so I took these pictures on the dining table and hanging off the end of the mop handle

What ya think? My photoing skills gettin better? I think so. More of this thing next week, when I get back to college

Andrew

3 Damn Days

2011-08-17T22:39:00.000+01:00

To thread a 1440 end warp. 440 heddles I had to make myself, and they're a little too tight so don't move very easily.

That's 3 whole days. Not counting the half day it took to build and wind the warp.

I swear I'm getting slower, It only took me two days to do the last warp. To be fair, it only had 576 ends, but still.

I had to resley almost the entire reed. Twice. Once when it was still attached to the shafts, and then again while I was halfway through tieing on. a 48" warp at 30 epi in a ten dent reed. Next time I make this cloth I'll just up the epi to 32 and sleigh it in an 8 dent reed instead, probably save me a lot of hassle.

Nevertheless, this still promises to be the best cloth so far. I've used this yarn a lot before and I know exactly what I'll be getting in terms of drape and handle. It's lovely stuff and it weaves up easy enough without too many broken ends (during the last warp I was having to get up and retie and end every few inches, it wasn't a happy warp at all.

Anyway, it's a clear signal to me. Warping up can take ages. Of course, I already knew that didn't I? Well, that's reminded me. The next warp is going to be made up sectionally. I'm gonna make a super long warp, like 100 metres or something. The warp beam can handle it, it's got a circumference of 2 metres, so 100 metres would only wrap round it just under 50 times.

However, I need to get one of those doo-dahs you use to measure exactly what length of yarn is going onto each cone. Or I suppose I could act like the educated individual I am and measure by weight. That'd be more clever, cos then I could figure out exactly how much I need. And figure out picks per inch as well. Something to think about while I'm weaving this warp up I suppose

Andrew

Things I've made this week

2011-08-14T15:13:00.000+01:00

So I finished weaving the last warp 2.5 weeks ago or so. And I made a throw for my mother out of it, and there was a bit left over.

So I started on the next warp, which isn't threaded yet because I didn't have enough heddles, so I had to make 500 string heddles which took me all day, there must be a better way of making string heddles.

Anyway, I went on a wee break, got a bit of work at a festival and skanked to the Amphetameanies for an hour or two, which was nice, but very tiring, which was OK cause when I got back the family was on holiday so i couldn't get a lift up to the loom anyway and I was too tired to go. So I've spent the week alternately playing computer games and sewing. So far I've made 3 large throws, a couple of very bulky experimental scarves, my first shaped bag with lining and one very dodgy hat which was, frankly, a disaster. Well, not a disaster, as no-one was killed and there was very little in the way of property damage, but it didn't work out anyway. I need more practice, and better fabric too.

Yaah, well I've added the photos now, and as usual they've just gone wherever they like and I really need to find a better interface for writing posts to my blog.

Oh guess what, the planned for overhaul and marketing campaign isn't materialising. I've decided I'm better off just making things and taking it from there. Besides, I find web-design depressing as all hell. So this is what I'm going to keep doing for now, posting here and throwing stuff at Folksy and hoping it gets noticed

-Andrew

some samples finished off, and a curious case of variable shrinkage

2011-07-22T19:15:00.000+01:00

so I made a warp up of 1/15 worsted. And I did it in plain weave and 4-shaft honeycomb in both 24 and 32epi. The plain weave was better in 24 (more balanced and less sticking, which reminds me I really should learn to make and apply warp sizing to stop that from happening, it makes weaving plain weave in wool a real pain in the backside) but the honeycomb was better in 32, cos it's more weft-faced, innit

anyway, here's a pic of the 2. Both quite nice, I'll have to give it a go in the cashmere next week sometime, see how that goes.

And this ugly duckling on the right is the cashmere, after going through the wash (big mistake). See, I've been hoping to be able to weave multiple scarves in a single width, but due to a lack of proper finishing equipment, this is proving somewhat unlikely. Also, for some reason, the blue weft yarn in this scarf is shrinking and felting more (much more) than the white. Which doesn't make a lot of sense because they're from the same mill and brand. I can only assume that the blue yarn is subjected to a greater degree of wet finishing than the white, but it doesn't seem right to me. I'll have to go back and check the labels. I guess it could be that at some point someone's wound a yarn onto a cone that isn't what it says it is. Now, I can tell that it's cashmere, and it appears identical in count and quality to the white stuff, but that's no saying anything.

You can't tell yourself from the photo, but in the bordering regions between the body of the scarf and the false selvedge, the weft yarns have felted up. Now, you can still extract some of the white yarns, but the blue yarns are felted completely. Also, the blue weft sections are a great deal (well, a little bit) thicker than the white sections, and more inflexible.

It's a curious thing. I have a great deal to learn about cloth finishing evidently before I can hope to weave multiple scarves in a width and finish them properly without resorting to using overlocking or rolled hems or any of that unpleasantness which seriously detracts from the drape and softness of the item, in my opinion.

One of these days I guess I'll have to build a fulling machine, when I also own the old millhouse and pigs fly to spain on a daily basis

-Andrew

Creating Space, texture and soft handle

2011-07-19T15:20:00.000+01:00

As you may be aware I am in the process of sampling for cashmere scarves.

It has been suggested to me that I should attempt to move away from the tight-heavy-beat steady flat fabric I tend to weave, twills, plain weave and all that. This in order to create a more sort of soft fluffy fabric which would be a more pleasing kind of scarf for someone to wear.

One possibility which was suggested to me was Honeycomb or, as our friends in the colonies call it, Waffle Weave. I'll be making a warp of this stuff later on today, after I get a lift over to the church (it's raining so I'm not walking and waiting around for a lift and using the time to do warp-planning and writing my blog and doing colour plans and arguing with people on facebook forums).

Anyway, this should create a sort of texturey feel, and add some thickness as well. I still haven't figured out how to finish the selvedges or the fringes. I think I'm just going to have to be old fashioned and walk the fabric in the bath. Do samples in the sink by hand, and all that. There isn't a finishing plant in this part of the country, and even if there was I couldn't afford it. Anyway, I have to felt the fringes just enough to keep the thing from unravelling. I don't want to mill it heavily. Does anyone have experience of hand-milling hair fibres like wool or cashmere, the only stuff I've really done myself had silk in it, which kept it from felting to itself.

Oh, I'm using a draft from Leigh's Fibre Journal

And secondly, the other thing I've been trying to do over the past week is to create a sort of spaced-out gauzy fabric with a really light beat. I tried doing this in plain weave, but it didn't really work out, because it wasn't dimensionally stable in any way at all, and you can't felt it just enough to hold it together without felting it so much that it shrinks so much that it isn't gauzy anymore. So that's no use. A bit of thought probably would've told me that would be the case. Here's it on the loom anyway, doesn't it look lovely?

Shame it shrinks so much when I wash it. Oh well, I've never tried finishing wool or cashmere before so now I know what not to do. Heyho.

Anyway, I'm not giving up, and someone had mentioned Leno to me, which I remember reading about some time ago. So I asked The Oracle about Four Shaft Leno, and The Oracle sent me to A Weavezine Article about Doup Leno. So yay! I can do it! Even though it's obviously a bit of a hassle, but I think it'll be worth it, if it does indeed turn out to be possible to create a dimensionally stable gauzy fabric.

So I'll be making those warps this evening, and after that I'll be going out on the hill with my dad and herringboning the peats. I can't believe this spellchecker recognises the word "herringboning" but not the word "spellchecker". That's brilliant

Andrew

Attempting to improve my photography

2011-07-10T23:48:00.000+01:00

Blue and brown scarf

Chaos Cloth

Cloth samples (that I forgot to subit as part of my assessment, doh!)

Yeah, could do better, eh?

yeah, white background, natural lighting and a steady hand might help a little bit

Add another to the list of skills necessary to become a successful weaver: photography

Not there yet

-Andrew

A little request for suggestions

2011-07-07T00:43:00.000+01:00

So yeah, it has been suggested to me that what your average person (not me, but most people, apparently) likes in a scarf is a feeling of bulk and airiness (not airiness, but fluffiness, maybe?) which is obviously something you get a lot of in a knitted scarf, because of the inherently loose structure of a knitted fabric (it's full of air, that's why it's so warm, but it's full of air which is why it doesn't provide a great wind barrier, but that's what your coat's for)

So the lady (who is worth listening to, 'cos she knows what she's on about) suggests that i should use a nice loose weave, like hopsack or something like that.

But for some reason I'm really at a loss.

I'm only working on 4 shafts and 6 pedals you see, as opposed to the 24 shaft dobby loom to which I've become accustomed. And instinct tells me to make twills, because I really like twills, and I'm very visually orientated, so I tend to work with colour a lot more than texture. but it seems that a tight pattern like that could tend to deaden the natural bounce of the yarn (it's knitting yarn, so a bit more airy than yer worsted)

Aaagh! I've spent all day with checked paper here and i can't wrap my head round it! I have a lot of silly patterns, but they don't help me at all. Because they'll obviously end up being so small that you'll barely be able to see them.

But yeah, never mind all that pish. The only thing that matters is that I need a loose weave I can make on a 4 shaft loom. If I was using a dobby, I'd intersperse hopsack with lines of plain weave to stabilise it, but I don't think that's an option

Am I being thick?

-Andrew

The beginning of the new thing

2011-06-20T18:52:00.000+01:00

I got a whole huge pile of yarn from work. Mainly Cashmere, wool with a bit of cotton and occasional random bits like lurex/cashmere mix and others

I've been sorting it today, as I've been feeling under the weather and organising things makes me feel better.

Also, I have to do this in preperation for going up north. I have been offered the use of an old church as a weaving workshop back home, so once my current dose of knitting work is done with I'll be going up to the church for a couple of months and produce a reasonably varied range of scarves and shawls.

Right now I've sorted the yarn into "definitely cashmere", "definitely wool" and "everything else". I suspect the bulk of the third category is Wool, but I'll have to ask because it's mostly Italian and Chinese, and i don't speak either. Actually, i expect most of the chinese yarn is cashmere.

Anyway, yes.

Expect this blog to be a little bit busier from July onwards. I shall also be putting together a much more professional looking website in a month or so once I've figured out my market and the name I'd like to trade under, which is a long-term endeavour and something I've been thinking about for over a year and which is now beginning to take shape.

Any input is welcomed, and feedback on the following buzzwords which i intend to be building the image around

Comfort
Warmth
Safety
Constancy
Stability
Sustainability
Honesty
Community
Luxury
Care
Individual
Heirloom

and so on

-Andrew

yaaa! 2nd year's finished!

2011-05-06T22:58:00.000+01:00

here be pictures

i swear to god, i've rotated these pictures before i uploaded them, but ooooh no! blogspot knows better! curses! just tilt your head to the right, it won't hurt much

detailing of the collar. you can't really see, but that's 1x1 cabling on the yellow bit. A lot of work for a very subtle effect, but I like it

This is made with an intarsia carriage, it knits multiple colours in one course without floats. It's all hand manipulation, and you lay in each colour manually. Takes a while, but worth it. You can choose whether or not to link the colours at the edges, as you can see i've taken advantage of that to make wee slits in the fabric

This is impossible to explain from a photo, and it doesn't look like much in a photo, but it took me the best part of a day to make, and consists of about 35 individual pieces of fabric joined together

This is all just lifts. Again, take a long time, and sort of build up on itself. is quite nice

Quilting

2011-04-07T23:07:00.000+01:00

I got new feet for my dewing machine today. Which previously had no feet at all. I got a regular foot, a walking foot and a buttonhole foot. I've been wanting to do some quilting for ages. These are my first three attempts. They don't look as good on the back, there's a bit of fold-over. I guess it'll take a bit of practice and experimentation to get it right.

I also made a cushion cover. I have about 40 metres of this fabric, I made it years ago, if anyone remembers my post about sectional warping when I was trying to use up all the yarn in my cupboard before I moved house or something. It's a bit too rough for pillow-cases, but I've also got rakes of fabric for making pillow cases with as well.

Also, I was asked for a model shoot of the cape-thing. So there you are. JK, it's still not finished, but the dog's taken to it nonetheless

-Andrew

Endless Knitting

2011-04-03T21:54:00.000+01:00

I've been doing a lot of knitting recently. This being the second semester, we've been tasked with making a fully-fashioned knitted top, to go with a cut-and-sewn jersey dress.

I'm not showing you my dress because it's crap. Very little thought went into it, I had limited access to the sewing room, and my skills in that arena are very poor anyway.

But that's not what this post is about, it's about the knitted top. And all the other knitting. I bloody well dream about knitting recently. Well, that and colonel Gaddaffi (no shit, I dreamt I took him to a riot, thought it would help him connect with his people)

This is the top, as seen when laid out upon my fine and glorious carpet. The funny thing about this top is that it's completely mutated beyond all recognition between initial conception and the putting together of component pieces. What you see here is what has become of "the rib", which was supposed to be a sort of fluffy collar/cuff kind of thing that would go round the back of the neck and down the inside front of a kind of waistcoat garment. It changed from that in my notebook to being a sort of huge circle that would completely enclose the wearer when in use. Oh, it was going to be quilted too. But as mentioned above, my sewing skills are less than L55T, if you know what i mean.

However, due to practical issues, not the least being the fact that I've forgotten all my high school maths, I decided to instead make the thing out of triangles. Initially I wanted to make a sort of rough circle out of triangles, but my dodgy grasp of maths told me that I'd need 40 pieces 10 stitches wide on the inside just to make one side of the circle. Which sounded like bollocks to me, so I just winged it.

What you see here is a centre piece that begins at 10 stitches wide and increases by 1 stitch on each side until it reaches 180 stitches wide, and then 2 panels on either side, decreasing by 20 stitches at the outside until it ends with two pieces that are only 20 stitches wide on the outside.

This is a little more difficult to explain. The layers are joined by 50 courses of knitting. I kinda just hooked two pieces onto the needles in a sorta bodgy and messy kinda way and then just started knitting, then hooked on two pieces of the opposing panel and did a little bit more knitting then casted off.

This isn't really a great way of doing it, it makes a sort of loose join, which is a shame, maybe if i did the initial courses at a higher tension it'd sort that out. Or if i used a linker instead of just doing it this bodgy way. But i don't have a linker at home, and I have been relying a lot on working at home to get my work done as I seem to be incapable of waking up in the morning at the moment but can, however, manage to work till 3 or 4 am, no problem.

Anyway, yaah, i'm thinking of putting like inflatable sacs between the layers, but i don't know what i could use exactly. I suspect anything i can get my hands on commercially in my price bracket wouldn't created the effect I desire, and I doubt i have the time to collect the materials and skills I require to make my won inflatable sacs to shape, so I think I'll just have to get by with them being uninflated.

Mince

And this is my worktable, in Knitting Mode. All modes include computer mode BTW. The folder in the middle is my technical development file for this year. I plan to make a knitted book using the aforementioned techniques in which to keep the technical samples contained therein. Such a thing would be, by necessity, big, bulky and time-consuming to construct, but would probably bump my grade up a notch. Considering that this project was supposed to be done with a particular high-fashion brand in mind, and considering that aspect of the project has completely slipped my mind for the entire duration, and that this garment and the fabrics from which it is constructed don't appear to fit into anyone's idea of current fashion trends (bollocks anyway, fashion is a stumbling corpse) I might need that.

So yeah.

An insight into how my design process currently works. Chaotic and unpredictable are both good descriptors for it.

Cheers

-Andrew

Home made speakers

2011-03-21T01:35:00.000Z

I recently found out how to make wee speakers at the following site:

Kit of No Parts

It so happens that one of the technicians recently made some conductive yarn for me, stuff that he's been working on recently. So I've been playing about with it. Apparently it could be used for heating in a garment, but i thought I'd use it to make a speaker coil instead. Here's the yarn.

See, that's copper wire in it. Very fine, but it weighs up as something like 300 tex, because of it's density in comparison to a normal yarn. This is the magnet i used:

On the left here is the second, larger and neater, speaker coil i made. It wasn't any louder than the first one, which you see on the right.

I have attached the first speaker to a wee bit of quilty-bit, and have got the magnet sewn in. It just so happens that the first, messy speaker I made is about the same size as the magnet. I figure it makes no odds making it bigger as the magnet can only be adjacent to so much of it at any time. Yaaaaah.

Anyway, I then attach those two wee bitties to an Arduino, which is a kind of DIY microcontroller. And load up a program that plays tunes, wee bleepy kinda tunes. Such as the theme from the A-Team.

And it works. It's not very loud, but could be maybe if i could put more voltage through it. I'm not sure, I don't have a very good grasp of the principles here. I guess i could try putting it in series with a potentiometer, but it's late.

Anyway, I've made a wee quilted earphone. And very heavy it is too. It's a start

Following months of indecision

2011-02-14T13:36:00.000Z

And one completely off-topic post.

But hey, I'm allowed, they overthrew a dictator. Good for them, I'm totally in support of that, it's brilliant. Go Egypt, woohoo, and so on.

But back to topic anyway.

So, the indecision part of this last few months has been due to having to decide at some point before may whether I'm picking knit or weave next year. Easy decision, surely? Well, not as easy as you'd think. After all, there is a healthy living to be made in machine knitting apparently, in this country even (imagine that! making a decent living without selling my soul or moving to the other side of the world to oversee hundreds of slave-labourers!). And I was starting to get bored and frustrated with the limits placed upon me in the weave department regarding what i was doing.

So I have been seriously considering knit, simply for the reason that I'd be able to make a proper living when I came out of I'm honest. But at the end of the day, that isn't a sensible reason for me to do anything. Putting all that effort into getting a well-paid job in an economy that has been contracting and dying off all my adult life? Madness surely. Add to that it's an economy that's supported by a state that has systematically declared war on and destroyed large sectors of the economy in the not too distant past, just for the sake of destroying it's political opponents. And I don't care what colour tie the rubbery faced public-school-boy that's running the country's wearing. They're all capitalists, they're all from the priviledged classes, and there's not one of them that gives a damn about people that actually work for a living.

So that's done away with the Alleigance-to-mainstream-society-in-the-form-of-getting-a-proper-career-with-a-salary-and-everything argument that was in favour of knitting.

So what about the creative side of things? Well, I've pissed about on the knitting machines and I've done plating, and fancy cabling and combined 2x2 ribs with full cardigan and all this, and none of it really inspires me. Really knitwear should be simple, and I just don't have any ideas for doing anything different on a knitting machine that hasn't been done a million times before by a robot in Asia.

So bugger it, my weave is actually half-decent and i have ideas for it, so I'm doing weave, even if it does take a whole day to set the machine up. So that's that

Speaking of which, I can't remember if i mentioned the outcome of the concrete project. Well, i wove with core-spun elastane, otherwise known as knicker elastic, in both the warp and the weft, which totally wasn't as big a deal as people said it would be. I just think noone's done it before because it sound like a nightmare, but it really isn't such a big deal. it's a right pain to thread up mind you, but that's kinda expected isn't it?

But anyway, we never got to cast the pieces, because 2 inches of snow in this country apparently spells the end of the world as we know it. We're pathetic. So the entire thing was a bit of a waste of time. It's almost as if they didn't think this whole thing through at all and just bolted it onto the module at the last minute because it sounded like a good idea and someone had a head full of inspirational buzzwords from the marketing imps at Ted.com

Once again, i should have ignored the module brief and done my own thing. If I had I might have had conducting fabric by now. Damn them all!

Oh well, decisions made. Now I've got nothing better to do with the bulk of the week but lie on my back and do research on the internet for the knitwear module on bloody high-fashion because i went and bruised my hip and can barely walk now. How i hate researching fashion and writing about it in my journal. Such a load of consumerist bullshit, it really is.

Ugh, better hobble outside so the dog can take a leak. This is what i get for playing tarzan. Damn fool

-andrew

24 shaft patterns - all the fun

2010-11-08T22:39:00.000Z

Yo-Yo-Yo!

24-shaft weavin in the house yo!

i think that's enough pretend hip-hop talk for now, eh?

so yeah, here are three of the more successful results of my cotton warp on 24 shafts. i am really beginning to envy the 3rd and 4th years working on compu-dobby systems now. you spend 2 hours weaving and 2 hours making a peg plan, and it hurt my back putting little pegs into little holes. and of course all the little pegs and the little holes are almost imperceptibly different sizes, so not all pegs fit all holes, and sometimes you have to stuff wee bits of yarn in as well to get them to stay. and then sometimes they're not far in enough and they jam the dobby mechanism, and sometimes they're too far in and they jame the dobby mechanism. and sometimes a link breaks and the whole mechanism jams. and sometimes all the shafts lift at once and you can't figure out why. and sometimes shafts just bounce off their strings and you can't figure out why, and then after a week's weaving Drew says you're weaving too fast and they're bouncing and you think to yourself maybe it'd be a good idea to tie them in a little bits so they don't fall off their strings, but you've already nearly finished this warp now, so maybe leave it for another time, but there's no way that you're going to let that stop you weaving quickly because dammit you enjoy weaving as quickly as you can, isn't that what it's all about? and besides what other exercise do you get besides walking to college and back, it's not like you can afford a subscription at the gym is it?

so yeah, problems, but that's just the way isn't it? these are the clearest patterns, the others are either basics like plain weave and twill or too busy to come out properly on the screen and probably aren't worth repeating. i'm coming to realise that in dobby weaving simplicity is key and maybe it's best leaving the celtic knotwork till we get to make jacquard designs.

also, i should spend more time in the drafting stage and try to start wrapping my head around using non-straight drafts in order to get more variety in pattern. though i also realise good handle, drape and simplicity of pattern are much more important in most commercial household textiles, because complicated and busy patterns have a tendency to do your brain in if you look at them too much, and people generally want calming simple textiles for curtains and upholstery and the like

but i really would like to get into undulating, large-repeat twills and such, cause i think they're pretty.

here be following close ups of the previously photied fabrics.

this be a combination of 3/1 left facing and 1/3 right facing twills, in sections of 4 x 4

the second is a single element from a celtic knotwork repeat. the only one i can get to work. i had aspirations to make celtic knotwork. As the best i can do is a single pattern block and that takes all the shafts i've got access to i think i might leave it for a better day and a newer machine with a more sophisticated shedding mechanism ;-)

For our next project we're to be weaving/printing textiles for casting concrete with. researchers at edinburgh uni are researching the use of textile formers for casting concrete and are interested in the different textures that the textile applies to the concrete. porosity and elasticity of the fabric are both greatly important (porosity definitely, and elasticity probably, i reckon)

i have lots of ideas, i think i'm going to enjoy this project so much that i'm going to put my private projects on the back burner until this is finished.

-andrew

treble-cloth construction

2010-10-30T16:55:00.000+01:00

I am currently in the process of designing a triple layered fabric. One layer shall carry conductive warp threads (one out of every three), another layer shall carry conductive weft threads (again, one out of every three) and a third layer shall lay between them and act as an insulator, keeping them apart and preventing unwanted contact between the two conductive layers.

Constructing a treble cloth is a compicated process. The way that a treble cloth is woven is that first the face cloth is woven, then the centre cloth is woven, then the back cloth is woven.
This is a draft for a treble cloth. The crosses indicate weaving marks for the cloth currently being woven, the dashes are lifts and are used to indicate shafts that are being lifted in the case of layers that are above the layer currently being woven.

Blue is back, Red is front, Green is centre

(All three layers are plain weave btw)

The cloth is constructed like so

1: Back cloth is woven. All red and green marks are lifted up
2: Middle Cloth is woven. All red marks are lifted, blue marks are all left down
3: Front cloth is woven. All blue and green marks are left down.
and repeat.

I now make the plan for the other section, where the back and front faces interchange. The only difference here is that the lifting marks are swapped around so that the colour that was once on the face is now on the back and vice versa

I want to be creating a checkerboard effect here, so i combine these two weaves together like so:

There is my finished draft, which i shall have to run past my lecturer on monday to make double sure i haven't bolloxed anything up.

In order to create the checked effect, i have to alternate the shafts which i'm threading up. So section is threaded on the front 6 shafts, and the other section, where the front and back faces are reversed, is threaded on the other 6 shafts.

I'd love to say i was anywhere near finished working this out, but i'm not. heyho

having lots of fun with grid paper

2010-10-23T01:32:00.000+01:00

i've been having fun today, weaving away and making up new drafts.

This is a selection of the drafts i've been making up as I idly whittle my time away, avoiding doing what i'm supposed to be doing in my timetabled class time. Also what I've been doing at home when i should be studying for a test on colour chemistry, which isn't going to be easy. We're also going to get tested on weave structures and processes, but I know most of that and besides it tends to conform to logical rules. Colour chemistry and dyeing and all that though you just have to know. I guess there probably is some logical consistency to it, but probably only if you already happen to be shit-hot at molecular chemistry and physics and biology. Which I'm not

I've also been weaving away (as I say) and have just finished my first sample of a pattern repeat i took from the knotwork book i mentioned before. It's working out rather well, although you can blatantly see the reed lines in the warp, it's a pain. With any luck it'll even itself out in finishing.

These pictures were taken with my new USB microscope. I got it for my birthday from my parents along with a beginner's Arduino kit, for which to be playing with textile electronics. i want to make an array of switches. It's difficult to explain. But now i have a microcontroller. Here is a picture close-up of a fucked-up bit of my bag where the fabric has been stretched and distorted due to rakes of stuff being stuffed into a small bag:

Is a little bit fuzzy, i forgot to take the lenscap off. Is good for examining fine fabrics close up and that. You can see how the fabric there's been damaged, is pretty good eh?

Anyhow, I've got a 24 shaft warp of 2/19's cotton to play with and more ideas than i know what to do with. considering that it takes me about an hour and a half to hammer in a 24 lag peg plan, it's probably worth taking care in what exactly i'm going to be weaving, as I can't spend all year making this one warp. I also have my special project to be working on, as well as a christmas present for my mum, which is a linen table runner and matching placemats. It's a surprise, but it's ok because she's allergic to the internet so she'll never know as long as noone tells her.

Having looked at some of these drafts a bit more closely it occurs they're occassionally flawed and wouldn't work actually. The above weave is a classic example of what happens when my love of symettry isn't working with commonsense and such.

-andrew

thought i should explain the long absence

2010-10-15T00:03:00.000+01:00

it's been a very long time since i made a post before that last one i made just last week there.

This is what i based my last project on (the orange and black one).

It is not what i have been doing all summer.

Shame

i should explain that i've been away all summer and been back at college for 5 weeks now. i've finished my first official college weaving project, the results of which i showed you in my last post. the double-woven piece with interchanging stripes in it, which was alternately black and fire-tartan (i guess)

now that i've finished my first official project i've got 4 weeks of sketchbook classes in which we shall be buggering about with pencils and paint and shit and eventually doing bookbinding, the purpose or rationale for which completely escapes me. i personally intend to spend the bulk of the time upstairs in the weaveshed working in my "sketchbook", which is a big wooden sketchbook you might recognise as a loom. When i turn on my arty-bullshit tap i can flow like a river, let me tell you.

The main thing i will currently be working on is celtic knotwork from "celtic art: the methods of construction" by George Bain, which is the definitive work on the subject, from which everyone copies. One or two people don't know what celtic knotwork is, but you've almost certainly seen it, it's terribly popular, often the inspiration for those "tribal" tattoos everyone seems to have (well, that and the maori tattoos)

Anyhow, this is just the beginning of a long-winded campaign of weaving as many different fibres and structures as i possibly can as it's dawned on me that i really don't have a very long time at college and i'd best make the most of the facilities. My current warp is a 2/19's cotton warp set at 40epi.

This might be a good time to tell you about the bloody odd reeds we've got here. you know how modern reeds work by inches, cause everyone seems to work by ends-per-inch? well, our reeds work by 7/8ths of an inch

no shit.

a number 20 reed has 20 dents in 7/8ths of an inch (or thereabout)

the upshot of this is that i had to do the following calculation to figure out my reed number:

40 (ends per inch) x 1.875
----------------------------------    = 18.75 (your reed number)
   4 (ends per split)

which means i'm not actually weaving at 40 epi, i'm going to be weaving at:

19 x 4
----------   = 40.533333
1.875

so i should say i'm weaving a 2/19's cotton warp at 40.533333 epi

this annoys me, but there's fuck-all i can do about it

-andrew

week 4 of 2nd year

2010-10-06T22:41:00.000+01:00

and we're spending pretty much all of our time in the weave shed.

pretty much everybody has ended up doing double weave, which means that pretty much everybody is behind. i'm doing an interchanging double weave with 2/2 twill on both shafts, meaning i'm using 16 shafts. my lecturer tried to talk me out of it, but i wasnae listening.

i hadn't thought of this before i started, but it turns out that areas of the fabric where the two faces interhange often tighten up a lot quicker than those areas of the warp where the faces don't interchange. as you can see in the second one the interchanging is occuring every 8 picks, by the time i'd finished i had to cut the fabric off and retie onto the front stick 'cause the warp was slack on the sides and in the middle and it was becoming impossible to weave properly.

that's why you're seeing these before i've finished the 3rd sample. we have 3 samples to do. it was supposed to be finished by the end of the week, but as some people have only just started weaving we've got an extension.

the weave department is understaffed, the college administration have no understanding of it whatsoever

in other news, i've just ordered a 400X magnification USB microscope (for examining textile fibres) and an Arduino Microcontroller newbie's kit, for to play with electronic. for my next project i want to create a fabric with conductive warps and wefts that can act as a touchpad by connecting one warp with one weft via the conductivity of the finger and all that. but i need to get the electronic part sorted out.

i need at least two layers of fabric (one with weft and one with warp) so the two sets of conductors are seperated from each other. i also possibly need an insulating layer in between, but i'm not sure about that yet.

it would be kinda groovy to make triple layered interchanging fabric though, a proper challenge for the old brainbox and that. would make me feel dead clever that would

voluntary obligations

2010-07-31T02:45:00.000+01:00

i have to meet prince charlie. only for a minute or so, but still. i might end up with my picture in the paper. and i hate having my picture anyway.

cos i set the loom up at castlehill heritage centre, and that's what that's for. i wasn't sure originally, but when i got an invitation letter in a fancy envelope i kinda knew.

so that's that. i think the other people that'll be there are more important from a social point of view. Charlie ain't a decision maker, he ain't a politician or a businessman or a charity organiser. but there'll probably be a lot of them there. so it's probably worth me going. and i might as well shave, mightn't i?

i mean, i don't think i'll be coming back to live in caithness permanently in the future, so in the long run it might just be a waste of time, but on the other hand there's always that chance that i might have to fall down the route of being an anachronistic backward-looking kind of a guy that's just stuck making boring tourist crap that doesn't challenge his intellect at all because he's scottish and that defines his identity. but i'd rather not. a living's a living i know, but jeez, i'd rather not sacrifice myself like that. and, you never know, maybe the heritage people can be convinced to look to the future and not just view our society as a horrific moral abberation that needs to be wiped from the slate (the prominent view these days, it seems)

the thing is, there's a chain of events here:

1: i get offered this loom, cos it's been takin up space in this woman's shed for ages
2: i use the loom. that's all good, and you've seen the results
3: i move out and give away the loom. the only place i can think that'll take it is the heritage centre
4: i am now bound to be the heritage centre's weaver since i gave them the loom, and isn't giving someone a loom a dickish thing to do if you then charge them for your time?
5: Answer: it is, so here i am

i just make work for myself, i really do.

and as far as the anachronistic thing goes, i only mention that because i hear a lot of talk about natural-this and fairtrade-that and don't use any non-natural materials. and to people that want to tell me what materials i should and shouldn't weave* with i say: FUCK YOU! if you want to stand by those standards, then rip off that polyester shirt! throw your shoes in the bin! remove that warp knitted t-shirt and those industrially dyed socks! you say i can't be industrially relevant? that just because i choose to be a weaver i have to live in some fairy-taqle vision of the-way-things-were? NO WAY! i'll embrace industrialisation if it becomes available and economical to me. i'll expand into every market i ethically can do. and i'll use every technology i can responsibly use to make my designs and my fabrics stand out from the crowd.

i am not a romantic

i look to the future

and NOBODY shall tell me what i can and can't weave with.

NOBODY

-andrew

* i do get people sometimes going on about how i should only use natural pish. to push a philosophical point - everything that exists is natural. suck on that

500 heddles

2010-07-12T20:11:00.000+01:00

It's finally done.

I've made all the heddles i think i really need for the castletown loom, and i'm going to go in and warp it up on saturday. or maybe friday. friday might be better now i come to think of it.

anyway, i got some yarn for to put on the loom. a navy blue plain yarn, probably something like 28 worsted count i guess, and also a brown and white sorta flecky nep yarn. i think that's the right term, i really should know these things by heart now.

anyway, i'm going to warp it up at 20epi or so with blue predominating in a sort of tartan check. so, my rough calculations go like this:

500/20 = (5/2=2.5x10=25) 25"

or just over 2 feet. allowing for draw-in it could end up being exactly 2 feet wide, which is quite a nice width for a scarf. so i guess i'll make a 5 metre warp with that and get 4 scarves out of it if all goes well

anyway, that's that. making 500 heddles is no joke.

-andrew

end of year exhibition

2010-06-02T20:20:00.001+01:00

i got bored when i was in the country. this is what i did for the 3D sculpture part of visual studies

the front piece is a warp of plastic fishing line, which is tough enough to handle a weft of bramble and gorse stalks. for those not familiar with gorse, it's prickly as hell and almost impossible to weave with. you really need a shed about 20 cm deep to expect to not be snagging warp threads while using it. the warp was a chaotic mess by the time i'd finished using the gorse, the brambles were very little trouble on the other hand

and this is a flower, think i had a picture up of this in unpainted state a while back. as you can see it's made out of gardening wire and masking tape

the tutors thought the straw hanging all over it was intentional, something to do with the interface between nature and artifice. the truth is i ripped the wire out of a tangle of weeds.

the suit is sort of an idea i had for aggressive textiles. textiles that harm rather than heal, y'know. the next thing i'm wanting to work with is razor wire, but it's quite expensive (about £44 for a 10 metre roll, and i think you might need a special license), so i might settle for barbed wire for the time being. it's completely frivolous of course, and has no practical applications. it occured to me you could wear sharp stuff to demonstrations and the police wouldn't be able to grab a hold of you, but then you'd hurt innocent passers-by and fellow protestors, rather self-defeating. fetish-wierdos might go for it, but i don't want to get into that market

just a bit of fun really. surprisingly enough you can actually run in that suit.

no more posts for a wee while

2010-05-12T17:45:00.000+01:00

cos i'll be out of computer range and besides, my camera's broken

first year's finished anyhow. don't know if i've passed CAD or Art History yet, but have everything else.

away out west tomorrow to help build up a ruined house over the summer. took my copy of collingwood's tablet-weaving book to see if i can't get into some more complicated pattern.

doubleface i could do with getting the knack of. i wish i hadn't misplaced that linen, i guess it's around in gala somewhere, but that's no use.

need to buy a shitload more acrylic as well. always easy to get hold of. tablet weaving with wool pisses me off, it's too damn hairy, felts up awful as well. linen is lovely to TW with, i imagine silk is too, but i've never been able to afford any.

anyone got any more suggestions for fibre for tablet weaving?

final samples

2010-04-08T16:23:00.000+01:00

That's my favourite one (above), it's a plain satin. I like the one below as well, which is sateen stripe

That's a double faced interchanging plain weave
I went somewhat overboard on the fancy yarns there. slub, gimp, and hairy. don't like it that much

That's a honeycomb. you probably can't see there, but the texture changes as it goes up cos i gradually changed it to a plain weave on the way up. the lecturers idea.
That's weft figuring. not a big fan of weft figuring, it is kinda pretty, but i reckon the floats would catch on things. don't think it's too practical

the pictures aren't too great. i don't have access to a scanner. i tried taking pictures of the draft sheets but they came out pretty incomprehensible, so i'll leave them for now. i'm wanting to make an interchanging double weave tartan next year, and am going to try getting the draft sorted out in scotweave (that's the weave drafting program we use, it's kinda cool and fancy) when i get back from easter. if i succeed (if i have the time), i'll post pictures of that. maybe i'll be over busy with photoshop bollocks (don't like photoshop) and other tasks like getting this lot mounted up for assessment and getting my portfolio board ready for the lecturers and that. we have a wee interview thing to help us choose what we want to do next year. seems most everyone's made up their minds already. it's constructed or print i think, constructed includes knit, which is fine with me. apparently you get to do different things though, so print students can weave or knit fabrics to print, and construction students can use the knit room. there's the sewing room as well, which has embroidery stuff.

all done

2010-03-29T19:39:00.000+01:00

almost

just finished my last final woven bit on the looms at college. that's 8 technical samples and 5 final samples (usin colours from pictures i pulled off the web, cos i use the web to do pretty much all my research and imagery scavenging)

all the samples are based on natural stuff that happens in nature. in order - 1 dying star, 1 lake with hills in front, 1 bunch of trees in summer, 1 largest/coldest large-sun-sized-but-really-cold object as seen through hubble telescope (discovered the other month), 1 rocky/heathery hillside somewhere up north presumably with the purple heather and all that jazz and 1 big green nebula thing with all bits of orange and some pale blue in it

i particularly like the hubble stuff. gas nebulas rock

the fabrics should be getting cut off the looms tomorrow evening, and i'll have to do yarn wraps and weft plans. of course, not having written the weft plans down while i was weaving, i now have to painstakingly look at the fabrics to figure out exactly what weft i used when. luckily, i'm a stickler for regularity and symmetry in stripes, so it shouldn't be too difficult, and i only have to do the weft plan for the 6 final samples, not the technicals. still, a bit of foresight and i could've had the whole thing finished by tomorrow lunchtime.

i'll post up some piccies (actually, probably a whole rake of piccies, or i could just post the finals, cos the technicals really aren't that interesting)

drafts will be posted only on demand, cos they're A4 sheets and i really can't be bothered pissing about in OpenOffice (subtle plug for open source software there) for hours remaking them. you might find them a little confusing, cos they use a slightly different notation system from what most of you will be used to, being dobby and all. i still ain't 100% sure i understand them perfectly well.

still, i'm working on it

paper leaves

2010-03-20T01:24:00.000Z

i love it when a plan comes together

doing things in the correct manner

2010-03-02T00:41:00.000Z

hey! guess what!

pretty much everything i've been doing so far as weaving goes is grossly inefficient!

hooray!

i kinda figured that would be the case

so far i've learned better ways of making the warp, better ways of putting lease rods into the warp while it's on the board, better ways of stretching the warp, better ways of packaging the warp for transport, better ways of winding the warp, better ways of threading the heddles, better ways of sleying the reed

at some point in the future i'll probably attempt to illustrate these methods in a comprehensible manner, though i find it difficult to imagine i could reasonably expect to show anyone how to use a warping rack consisting of two levels of yarn alternating 1,2 in an up, down manner in order to make a cross between thumb and forefinger for ease of quickly putting onto a warping frame. not without standing there and making sure. it looks like magic when an experienced weaver does it, until you figure out how it's done and then it's just a simple movement of the hand combined with a certain physical standing in relation to the warping board

christ, the dog's farting, bring on summer and i can open the windows :P

oh yes, away with the warping paddle, it is not necessary! but keep hold of yours till you figure out how to do without. and this new method of warping makes things a great deal quicker. like, it used to take me an hour or two to make a 200 end warp, and if i wanted to do it with multiple threads at a time i had to do it a silly finickity way and even then i'd often end up with twisted bunches and a generally unusable warp that'd have to get chucked in the bin. and now i know how to blatantly make a simple 1000-end warp in an hour or so in a reliable manner that doesn't make me look like some kiddy that disnae ken what on earth he's doing and is just makin it up as he goes along

also, i've spent a bit of time staring at the mechanical dobbies here (which are at least 100 years old) and i'm totally convinced they could be built by any competent metalworker and carpenter. it may even be possible to replace some of the metal parts with plastic and fabricate them in 3D printers

on the other hand, computerised shaft selection may be a lot simpler, in terms of readily available technological resources. like, i'm surrounded by computers and software geeks all over the place, but i've only ever met one blacksmith

anyway, hooray for learnin things from a man that's been working in the industry for 40-odd years!

very good.

-andrew

CompTex - Twitter Dress

2010-02-03T22:38:00.000Z

this from

Imogen Heaps Twitter Dress Tweets From The Grammys

"Around Heap's neck: a kind of sculptural cuff with blinking light. And her purse was a small television.

The necklace had a live Twitter feed with a wireless router. And a television with videos her fans were sending to her account. She brought her followers down the red carpet."

Wow, that's kinda cool and was actually something i was thinking about recently, about incorporating IM, facebook, twitter and other such info-feeds into clothing via a visual display or an earpiece (with text-to-voice software necessary of course to translate all that "omigod! c wot wez doon 2moz d00dz!" txt/hack speak stuff which is so unnecessary these days when everyone under the age of 25 types at the speed of light anyway

It's maybe not a viable application the now, but surely will be an inevitable and highly desirable one in the coming age of Ubiquitous Computing and Full Connectivity. It might not be feasible perhaps to build computers into your coat* (at least not for the time being) but a good start could be wireless transcievers built into your coat you could plug your PDA into, or whatever it is.

OK, maybe PDA's already have these things. i dunno, i guess they probably do. I just like the idea of being able to wash my mobile phone in the machine with my socks and shirts

never mind that, that's silly. but what isn't silly is video fabric, which i've probably rambled on about before. i mean, why not? i'm convinced the technology's there. all it needs is hooked up to a, oh, what is it, BLUETOOTH! that's it, one of those thingy's, and BAM, you can get texts on your sleeve! how cool would that be?

ok, still kinda kitschy, and perhaps a rather complicated way of solving a problem that's already been solved 20 years ago or so.

anyway, yeah, programmable fabric displays. well cool. react to ambient temperature, or light. maybe yer coat could go red when your blood pressure rises to tell the people about you you're gettin stressed and about to blow your top. that's not a bad idea, like the ultimate PC extrapolation of those gieger tags the workers at nuke plants wear that tell them when they've had too many rads and it's time to go home. "your coat's gone red, time to go lie down and listen to soothing music in the break room"

of course, one thing i've overlooked about the twitter display coat is it gives the likes of 4chan the ability to display lewd messages and icons on the clothing of celebritys at the Grammy's. where's anonymous when you need them?

-andrew

* wee PS about that whole thing of fabric based computing substrates that has all been kinda boiling about in my head for a while now. i just thought it would be a kinda mad dystopian/utopian/mundane thing if connectable computing substrate was built into all textiles, even wallpaper and landscaper fabric. i mean, say, you've got a 1m square patch of comptex, and you connect it to another piece, and it doubles it's computing power. or maybe it's all connected wirelessley and working as a distributed computing network like how you can use many computers on the internet to complete parts of a program that you'd otherwise need a supercomputer for (SETI have a web interface for hooking your computer up to help scan the stars for radio signals). i mean, imagine, you don't have a computer, your HOUSE (like, your carpets, your wallpaper, your bedsheets, the insulation in the walls) is a computer, and so is your coat, and maybe it loses some of it's power when you're out of your house, but it's still a phone/PDA at least, right? And, the more of this stuff about there is, the less need there is for individual connections to an ISP, cos eventually you won't be able to walk the streets without picking up a WiFi signal (it's getting that way already in the city centres).

All it needs (i make it sound so simple) is flexible, washable logic circuits that don't degrade any faster than the fabric substrate they're woven into. i reckon anyway, i'm no expert on computer architecture, at all. not even slightly. but it makes sense that if the components had those qualities and you could find suitable textile based I/O media then there's no reason that your coat couldn't be a computer. or your bag maybe, or perhaps rather a special, valuable piece of fabric that you paid a lot of money for and wouldn't be particularly happy to expose to the rough and tumble of everyday life.

on the other hand, if the individual computing units of a distributed computing architecture could be made small enough, and assuming there wouldn't be some kind of electronic data loss effect over distance, then it wouldn't matter if one piece of it got torn cos the rest would just work around it, the way the internet does. i mean, think of the net as one big machine, which it is in a manner of speaking. it doesn't matter if a node, or a town or even a country gets blasted out of the net, the net keeps working, cos it just routs around the dead zones.

super-micro-distributed-textile-computing-substrate.

that's what i'm talking about

i did something i liked

2010-01-26T23:26:00.000Z

i made a pile fabric out of ripped up strips of an old t-shirt

and guess what, it's part of visual studies. not that sam said "make a pile fabric out of pieces of an old t-shirt"

but she did say "take last weeks 3D sculpture stuff and express it in cloth in a 2D format with 3D elements coming off the surface"

and i had this old t-shirt sitting there. so i cut it up into strips and made warp, weft and pile out of strips of warp-knitted fabric. i tied the warp around my A2 sketchbook

it's all 1 colour and kinda ugly, and i couldn't keep the selvedges from pulling in progressively as it went on and i'm sure you can understand how crap that feels, cos once the selvedge is pulled in on there's no way of pushing it out if you're not using a reed which i obviously wasn't. it's a common problem i've found with tapestry and knotted pile on square-frame looms. not easily avoided unless you're going to go to the trouble of building little bows in the weft line before you bat it down with a fork, which i didn't have the time to do

if you want to know what i mean by that i can photocopy pages from Peter Collingwood's "Techniques of Rug Weavng" in which he describes how to lay the weft so as to give it space to go up and over the warp ends to avoid draw in when the batten is pulled back. i also find keeping an open shed and holding the weft lightly (so as to allow it to run through your hand freely) with one hand and beating it down from entry point towards exit point also works, but is necessarily more time consuming

i apologise for the lack of pictures, this was the one day in the last two weeks i'd emptied my bag and only taken in what i actually felt i actually need. which didn't include my camera, unfortunately. it is unfortunate, cos i paid a lot of money for that camera, and i really should use it more often

totalitarian art

2010-01-16T22:35:00.000Z

North Korean propoganda poster, presumably the bad guys are US soldiers

Monument to the Third International, communist

More North Korean propoganda

anyway

so here's the question. i have been asked to, at great length it seems to me, define Art. and the question occured to me, can totalitarian art be considered truly Art, or is it merely propoganda? in the same vein you could ask if adverts have artistic value.

the other issue that popped up when i was discussing this with a friend earlier that there were several schools of art, with their own distinctive styles that grew up in the USSR, so yes it is. but then, this begs the question doesn't it, that are all products of a totalitarian society necessarily totalitarian in themselves. certainly, state controlled propoganda artists certainly produce totalitarian work, but does that discredit every artist in the school of Socialist Realism, for instance, a state sanctioned artistic ideaology though it was?

we don't call all art that derives from capitalist cultures "capitalist art", is this fair? no, i don't think it is. we can judge others very well, but we rarely look at ourselves. are not the endless barrage of adverts simply capitalist propoganda? could capitalism itself be considered a political and economic philosophy like communism, which with it's stranglehold on all aspects of life could itself be labelled totalitarian? much capitalist architecture is in my opinion blatantly totalitarian. many housing estates are clearly designed for the use of the riot police, and most of these new office blocks and housing units going up are clearly designed to make people feel small and powerless as far as i'm concerned.

think of that diamond skull. isn't that nothing more than a worship icon for senseless consumption, and how many of those diamonds came from the killing fields of Africa, mined by slave labour? This is true capitalist art, in my opinion, and i consider it a work of evil.

but to get back to the main point, can art, propoganda art in particular, really be called art. North Korea is an instructive country, as there is NO independent artwork coming out of there. look for pictures and videos of Arirang, the mass games, a stunning spectacle of ant-like cooperation. if you can call it cooperation

-andrew

Depressing git

2010-01-12T03:04:00.000Z

That's me

As you might have noticed, i am suffering from Winter Blues, or Man-Flu (wherein a man convinces himself he has the flu in order to get time off work and make someone else do the dishes)

I am also terribly frustrated, due partially to the lack of weaving and the fact that all the classes i am doing right now are crap and pointless. But mainly, i reckon, because of The Other Thing. What that is, i shall leave it up to you to decide.

anyway, i finally got round to chipping off the 3 inch layer of solid ice on the steps up to the house, so there's now less chance of finding a dead postman at the bottom of the stairs when i come back from college. But the pavements are still solid brown slushy filth, and walking to college is a horrible, tedious and tiring experience. God i hate winter. It might be picturesque, but i'll swap it for that wonderful feeling you get in spring when you suddenly realize you can go outside in a t-shirt and not die.

anyway, the funny thing is, is i'm talking to people on my course today, and this lassy's going on about a module the other group are doing (which i'll be doing in six weeks) which is all about CAD, and they're using some software that designs yarns or makes weave drafts or something. and everyone is totally goin on about how crap it is. personally i find it fascinating. i thought that module was going to be all about bloody photoshop or something. and these are the same people that love the whole drawing thing and don't consider it a big fat waste of time and life-energy.

also, everyone seemed to hate Textiles 1, which was all lectures, but i liked it, if that makes me a Nerd, then so be it. But it was very interesting.

fact is, i'm a technician, not an artist. if you've been reading my blog for a while, and you probably have cos as far as i can tell my readership consists of about ten people and the closest i've ever come to advertising is goin on other people's blogs and going "ooh, that's nice, here, look at my blog" and i've not had the time or energy to do that recently. And what i've been reading a lot of in blogs recently is concerned with ethics and morality and economics (www.overcomingbias.com, for instance) and despite being way out there and kinda wacky, isn't really relevant anyway.

but i digress, as usual.

Other people make individual works of art, and spend a lot of time at them and don't concern themselves with the time or that or whatever. me, i am probably shackled by an unhealthy combination of Protestant Work Ethic and Western Materialism. For me it's all about efficient technique and doing things quickly.

I principally want to learn how to do things. like building a sectional warp. And i have actually done that, and if you've got decent equipment it turns out to be a great deal easier to make a long sectional warp than it is to make it in one piece on a warping board. of course, i don't have decent equipment, but that's never stopped me doing anything. my warping board used to consist of nails hammered into the chest of drawers.

so you can understand my frustration at having to spend six solid weeks doing pretty much nothing but Visual Studies. The lecturer today explained that one of the main purposes of the module is to help people decide what they want to do in second year. Well, that's just great if you're in the 18-year-old who-am-i/what-am-i/where-am-i majority. but i'm not. i know EXACTLY what i want out of this college, and the damn place still steadfastly refuses to give it to me.

grr, rant rant rant.

i know, this is supposed to be a weaving blog eh? but i guess if i can't blog about weaving, then i can at least bitch and moan about how i'm not getting to do any weaving, and other things besides, like how my room is tiny, and the TV doesn't pick up any channels, and the oven doesn't work so i can't make roast potatoes or my special brownies or anything.

but bitching makes me feel a little better, so please just bear with me a wee while and i will at least get some tablet weaving done in the next couple of weeks. which i actually have to do cos i have to make a bracelet material thing for Emma, who is in Sweden and our mutual friend is visiting soon, so wow like, i've got pure motivation again. hooray!

happy new year

2010-01-04T02:51:00.000Z

hey there

i know, i hardly ever put anything on this thing anymore. see, it's like this, it's actually hugely frustrating, i haven't done any weaving worth speaking of AT ALL since i started college. and yeah, i ken like that there's more to life than intersecting two sets of threads at right angles to each other, but i like it you know? and i'm supposed to be down here to be doing that. and the knitting is really quite interesting, and actually i guess a potentially productive money-spinner in terms of actually producing sale goods, and it's handy to know how to actually cut patterns and sew properly, with a machine, and print is fun and is so something i quite enjoy and want to do more of, but the thing is i feel like it's gonna take forever before i get to do any weaving

and here's the other thing right, well one of them, there's a whole rake of things doin my brain in right now, but here's the other thing like i say. see, in first semester we had two whole days a week of either knit or print right, and that's all good. lots of time in the workshop standing on your feet actually DOING THINGS (not like all just drawing and trawling the internet for pictures of bleeding dresses to put in research files. i mean, i have an appreciation for fashion like, but only insofar as i like what's actually wrapped up, i mean, i could care less whether a hot girl's wearing a gucci dress or a bleeding sackcloth). but next semester we do weave (finally). but only one day a week. and yeah, cool, it's all semester rather than just half of it, but we're gonna be doin CAD as well, and for all that i spend a lot of time on the internet, i just HATE HATE HATE working with computers, especially on creative stuff, it's just so bloody soulless and life-crushing. i mean, what is the point, really?

so i guess that's just one day standing up moving my limbs and the rest is going to be spent on my rear-end, slowing down my metabolism and withering away what little muscle mass i have left since i stopped actually working physically, and i'm like so unfit and that's all there is to it. i so have to take up farming or landscaping again, but christ, who's gonna give an unskilled manual labourer (and a skinny one at that who doesn't know anybody down here) a job in this economic climate?

people look at me and assume i don't know one end of a spade from the other, it annoys me.

i am pure ranting like, and i apologise, i'm just having one of those "what on earth am i doing with my life?" moments, well it's not a moment, i've been deeply troubled about my social condition for a number of years now but one just tends to ignore these things and muddle on through.

but the period between now and christmas has so far been totally bat-shit bonkers insane, what with the drinking and the partying and getting dangerously drunk with exes and going out with an old crush (like, for years kind of a crush) and her new boyfriend (who's totally sound by the way, and at least i care about her enough to realise that). which is all good i guess, cos he seems good for her and there was no wierdness, although the craic was blatantly like "hey, i ken you're into me and have been for ages so here's my manny, just so you know like, and we're all still friends like and it's all good, so yeah"

or something along those lines.

but yeah, emotionally turbulent. and also, coming to a realisation of what seriously good friends two people in my life who i haven't spent enough time with in the last few years are and how they know better about what i need and what i want than i do, cos i never think about these things seein as i'm a bleedin Stoic. which brings back home in all it's full amazing glory the unavoidable fact that i've had no-one to actually talk to about girl/life stuff for so long and still don't (without coming into edinburgh, which is a hassle) and it's total pish like.

and that's just the thing, i am totally not clicking in Gala. everyone is lassies like, and my only mates i don't have anything in common like. i mean, they're great people and all that, but can you imagine trying to explain to a fashion-and-boys-and-shops lassy what it means to live in a tree and why you did it? or even bring the subject up without everyone thinking you're a total freak?

though i did meet a nice spanish couple the other week, so i guess i've got a fighting chance of building a mad "let's all get hammered and find random people" drinking culture there. it's worth a try. if things still aren't working by the end of this semester i'll seriously have to think about switching to a different institution

so i guess when the stream of conciousness has been written down i guess the lack of weaving in my life is not the problem at all, and of course it's other things. so obvious really

weaving again

2009-11-19T00:25:00.000Z

i'm making a scarf for my friend cherie's birthday (which was on monday, better late than never). not having access to a loom was driving me mental, so i borrowed this off Drew the WeaveTech at college.

it's the spit of my old table loom isn't it? except it doesn't have turning wheels at the left-hand side, so the let-off is a bit more difficult, and the ratchet n pauls are wooden, not metal. it might be a little wider as well, and this scarf is a little narrower than usual

yeah i know, another bog-standard 2/2 twill. i must admit after 2 years of making 2/2 twills it is starting to get a little boring, but next semester i get access to dobby looms, so lucky me eh? about time too, i've been getting right impatient doing all this other stuff that isn't weaving. though using a domestic knitting machine is kinda fun, i must admit, i should try making a jumper. don't really have time just now, i'm overloadd with work and i've been ill, having caught the zombie plague on halloween (i dressed up as a zombie because i'm lazy and all you need is black, white and red and a torn t-shirt, at least i didn't go as yet-another-batman-joker) however i then proceeded to get stuck out in edinburgh for 2 hours at night without my coat and a t-shirt full of holes and caught some kind of horrible cold which i still haven't fully recovered from.

heyho, it's always a good reason to take time off work. talking of which i really should quit my job and get a cheaper flat. maybe i could get a rat-infested doss-house full of fleas and dodgy electrics, it'd be just like the old days, except i'd be paying rent this time.

anyway, enough of that. so there it is anyway, another weavemaster table loom, definitely the singer of british table looms, i think they were manufactured in the 40's and 50's, for that whole handicraft revival thing that never really managed to hold on over here. nobody manufactures handlooms in this country anymore. i believe the company that used to make these now sells industrial loom control software, but they might just be using the same name.

* * * WARNING * * *
* * * LONG WINDED POLITICAL RANT AHEAD * * *
* * * RADICAL CONSERVATIVES PLEASE CHANGE CHANNEL NOW * * *

you can still buy reeds from a place down in england, and a guy on ebay as well, made to your exact specifications as well, reasonable prices i thought. when i get a place to use my floor loom i'm getting a 48" 14dpi reed. hopefully they'll still be in business by then. knowing the way things go in this country, the last of Thatcher's minions will get them in their eternal quest to destroy british manufacturing.

it's crazy ain't it? the Luftwaffe spent years bombing the shit out of our heavy industry trying to destroy our manufacturing base and then Thatcher came along and did their job for them 50 years late and with practically no violence whatsoever. Aaah, there's nothing for maintaining proletarian pride like working in a call-centre is there?

we're gonna be so screwed when peak oil comes around. Well, at least we've still got a decent railway system and some local food production, unlike certain continental superpowers i could mention

anyway, i guess what i'm saying (in my had anyway, it probably isn't too clear here) is that we're going to need to build up a network of decentralised production co-operatives independent of centralised state control is our society is going to survive the end of the oil era without descending into fascist barbarism. it won't happen though, at least not on the kind of scale that'll prevent us from being economically dominated by a certain Asian superpower i could mention (god i'm so subtle)

anyway, go communism! that's the original vision of communism, as in independently federated networks of workers and peasant co-operative using consensus decision making and localised production, not the hideous parody that emerged in the soviet union. whether it's even possible is a good question, maybe we're doomed to be slave to our own creations, forever feeding an inhuman machine we have no control over whose goals are completely at odds with human survival and happiness.

looking on the bright side, global capitalism appears to be completely unsustainable, so i guess the worst that could happen is a thousand year global dark age in a world completely stripped of all easily attainable metals and fossil fuels and littered with the junk and poisons of 300 years of selfish and poorly co-ordinated production.

as George Carlin famously said "the planet wil be fine . . . the PEOPLE are fucked"

so i guess that's something to be cheerful about

-andrew

ps. see how i did that? used my perfectly harmless weaving blog to rant on and on about peak oil and anarchist communism. see, fascist do this sort of thing as well by appealing to people's natural concerns about the unfair distribution of economic and political power in capitalist society and then turn the whole thing on it's head and just blame it on the muslims and the blacks. the difference between that and what i'm doing is i'm a nice boy and don't want to round up all the muslims, blacks, homosexuals, jews, communists, catholics and so on and put them in camps. all i want to do is live in a nicely organised urban commune growing veg and weaving clever fabric

i'm in college now :)

2009-10-08T14:40:00.001+01:00

have been for 4 weeks

oh, it's terribly overwhelming actually, i haven't been in proper education for years and years and i'm getting so much howework to do.

we have 2 full days of knitting machining on monday and tuesday, which is pretty greuling like, and i spend a lot of time swearing at the machines cos they're awfully finickity things and they drop stitches at the slightest provocation, at least they do for me anyway.

and then on wednesday i've been having to paint, and i can't paint to save my life. never mind. we're onto pattern cutting and sewing now and that's much better.

we don't have weave for another few months yet though, so i've got the lend of a table loom off the weave techinician and gonna make a scarf for my friend's birthday.

hooray!

anyway, sorry for the extended absence, which reminds me of a joke

man goes to the doctor

man: i've got a problem doctor, it's a bit embarassing to tell truth

doctor: well, there's no need to be embarassed in front of me, anything said here won't leave this room

man: well, it's like this, for the past week or so everytime i've farted it's sounded awfully strange

doctor: well, maybe you could demonstrate for me?

man screws his face up with effort, assumes wrestlers stance

man: eeeeh, urrgh (strain, struggle, etc) . . . HONDA!

doctor: well, that is curious, does this happen everytime you fart?

man: yes, i'm the laughing stock of the office

doctor: has there been any change in your lifestyle or diet recently?

man: well, my wife left me last week and she always did the cooking so i've mainly been living off ready meals and pot noodles, i don't know how to cook for myself

doctor: hmmm, well i have a theory, if you could just drop your trousers so i can examine you?

man: ok then (drops keks)

doctor: hmm (shuffle, peer, probe and so on), well, i think i my have found the issue here, there's an absess on your left buttock, if you put your trousers back on i'll give you a cream that'll clear it up, i think you'll find you'll be farting normally in a matter of days

man: what? (shuffles back into keks) but that's ridiculous, what on earth could an abcess have to do with the sound of my farts?

doctor: well, it's like the old saying goes . .
.
.
"Abcess makes the fart go HONDA!"

good eh?

oh come on now, it's not that bad.

really, some people don't know when they're in the precense of a comedic genius

-andrew

The Knotted Pile Course at Castlehill

2009-08-06T11:39:00.000+01:00

Well, i still don't have my camera lead, and i still don't have internet access at home, but it's been almost a month since i did the course, which was fairly significant and i might as well post something or i'll never get round to it.

unfortunately, no pictures. heyho

but like i say, i taught a Knotted Pile Weaving course at Castlehill Heritage Centre in Castletown, about 2 days before i moved down here to gala. It was a great success i thought. basically, everyone got a square frame with a warp of rug wool already on it, because i figured we could lose two hours putting warps on frames because it's terribly fiddly and takes a while to get right, and anyway it's something that anyone can figure out how to do themselves in their own free time, so i did it myself the night before.

Really, it's quite a simple technique and once people have done a line or two of pile, it becomes quite automatic and folks can start messing about with their patterns and experimenting and stuff. one person had a good idea of the picture she wanted to make already, so she got on with that, most people just chose 4 or 5 colours and made stripes and squares and stuff, there was a bit of good colour blending going on, using various hues of the same colour to make a sort of mottled effect, very nice. one person even figured out that she could have areas without pile on the pile line without having to ask how it was done, which was pretty cool.

there were 7 people in all, and a good time was had by all. at the end of the day i showed them all a wee bit of tablet weaving, and actually managed to show one woman how to warp up during lunch break, which was nice. so, 7 wee mats made and two tablet weaving warps given away.

i enjoyed myself, and i think everyone else did as well. it was fun.

anyway, that's that, no pics, cos i don't have the technology just now. never mind, maybe next week.

also, in other news, after 3 weeks of applying to every damn place within 20 miles of my house i finally have work. it's a relief i can tell you. but i can't relax yet, cos the council are threatening to cut off my goolies cos i haven't yet IMMEDIATELY supplied them with a piece of paper they didn't ask for and which i have never before needed to supply to any council anywhere else in britain.

don't you just love it when you recieve a letter on the 10th that's dated the 5th telling you that you MUST supply them information within 5 days of the date of the letter or they'll do terrible things to your financial well-being? what's even better is that when you take this letter to the office to moan about it they then say "oh, ignore that, it's just a computer generated form". so i'm being bombarded with empty threats by the council mainframe? hooray for beaureacracy!

wow, i think i spelled that right, it looks right anyway.

anyhoodle, it's roasting and i don't start work till saturday, so i'm off to lie about in the park and die of heatstroke

just so you know

2009-07-30T12:32:00.001+01:00

i haven't been posting recently because i left the USB lead for my camera up north in a box within a box. silly of me

i'll get pictures of the workshop as Castlehill up on monday when i get all my tat back down here.

in other news, there's lots of lovely forests down here, and the job market is absolutely dire.

-andrew

TAT! JUNK! FLOWERS! RAIN!

2009-07-09T03:15:00.000+01:00

sorry for the caps

that's me rationalising my tat in my parents' front room, they're away on holiday in Foreign the now.

I just salvaged the wool from an unfinished rug that went wrong half a year ago. hooray!

i'm getting on the train in 5 days, yikes. and doing the workshop in castlehill on saturday, jings, crivens, and so on.

That's the garden there, descending into chaos through a process of entropy whereby all systems gradually collapse when they're not constantly maintained.

i apologise for the sideways pics making your eyes bleed

i include these two pics cos about 30 minutes later (it was dead sunny when i took them) a storm broke over holborn head and it was all thunder and lightning, fork lightning and everything, i've literally never seen anything like it. i was round the corner at my neighbour's house drinking tea and i ran back to get my camera and shut the door and the storm broke over me and i got soaked up to the waist running through sudden puddles.

a house got demolished by the lightning over at scrabster, a few telephone poles got set on fire, and i've been told people actually saw ball lightning in the air near scrabster. i was going to put my bike back in the house, but i was too scared to hold anything metal. least i wasn't my mate, who was walking back from scrabster with a bunch of fishing poles.

it was proper scary, and cool as fuck like.

i like it when nature scares the crap out of us all, so secure in our apparent domination of the globe and all it's forces. being put in your place, and realising we're really no different from all the other animals scurrying about eating and burning stuff up with no thought for our long term survival.

all hail Earth, she'll outlive us, won't hardly break her stride when we've blown ourselves all up cos we think we're gods

hooray for millenarianism! :)

-andrew

back to basics

2009-06-20T19:48:00.000+01:00

my house is almost empty now.

i have no looms. so i'm weaving on a frame.

you could say i've got piles. knotted piles. sounds painful doesn't it?

i'm practicing on the little frame before i make something on the big frame. i want to make a big square piece out of two length sewn together, for sitting around on the ground on.

i haven't done any weaving for a while and it's nice to do something simple, with equipment that anybody can get hold of. i won't be able to keep a loom in my new house cos it's tiny, so i have to learn how to weave this way. i think one could make quite substantial rugs by sewing strips together. we'll see.

-andrew

on the rocks

2009-05-30T23:27:00.000+01:00

Two Pile mats finished

2009-05-30T13:46:00.000+01:00

The one with the green is going for £50

The one with the lamp thing is going for £30 cos the end-finishing is cruder and i don't know what the design's all about

These have a lovely feel to them, as the base fabric is 100% wool. They're very soft and pliable.

I'll have some larger mats ready for next month. then i'm going to get on with making a few hammocks.

I'm bored of making scarves just now

oh, as it goes, does anyone here have any suggestions/examples of a good way to roll a blog and a shop up together into one package? I don't really have time to learn to do a load of new programming, so it has to be fairly simple. I'm sure i could create paypal, ebay, folksey (what's that american one called, i can't remember) accounts and so on and link to them from one central place, but it seems somewhat inelegant. It makes more sense to try to encourage people to buy in one place rather than having myself scattered over 10 different auctions.

i could be wrong though

-andrew

postscript

i've put a couple of items up on folksy.com

you can view my shop at

Humble Woven Products

not quite alladins lamp

2009-05-20T23:55:00.000+01:00

but that's what it makes me think of. the little bit at the top is supposed to be a candle flame or something, but it looks more like a little upside down cross.

it was going to be a boring experiment in circles, but then i got bored. then it was going to be a question mark containing the eye of horus. then i decided i couldn't be bothered thinking that hard. so there you go

this is 5epi, which gives me 2.5 knots per inch. the knots are slightly wider than they are tall. i think if i cram the warp a little bit more, say 8epi, then it might get close to square, which is my goal, so i can plan pictures on a square grid and work from that.

the red stuff is New Fez rug wool from texere. the brown and the white stuff are both berber rug wool from the same company. i'm interested in where it's sourced from (north africa maybe, being berber wool, bit obvious really). it's not the most consistent yarn i've ever used, but i like it nevertheless. it's rug yarn obviously, and apparently not that easy for them to get hold of.

i intend to use the axminster carpet yarn i've got leftover for my next pile project, where i'll probably be trying to get 5-10 knots per inch. i'm working towards finesse. i hope to be able to set any picture to a square grid and weave it without having to think, only referring to the graph. according to collingwood, if done this way, knotted pile can become a technicians task, rather than a full on artistic undertaking.

sourcing wool is once again proving a problem though. i need a healthy quantity of undyed medium weight yarn, but i don't know where to get it.

in other news, my friend showed me his new hammock the other day, and it's just a cotton sheet with a pole and ropes on either end. i could make those. piece of piss.

oh, and there's this. i think i deserve a prize for making those colours co-operate
that's actually a very poor representation of it. i'll take a better pic when it's off the loom and i can get it out of that darkened room it's in

anyway, knotted pile is fun, but do wear a dustmask

Knotted Pile Weaving

2009-05-15T23:01:00.000+01:00

Is very time consuming, but i do enjoy it. you get a very satisfying, tactile, squeezy thing.

this all happening in my new decluttered front bedroom which is now a combination loom, art, computer and tea-drinking room.on the left there you may notice a fuzzy thing on a red box. it's not a 2 dimensional caterpillar, but just a wee initial mucking about with the pile thing.

this box isn't perfect for the task given, as you may notice that, apart from the picture being 90 degrees of rotation from true, the sides of the box aren't straight at the bottom. and there's no elegant way around that. i could also use the recycling box from the council, but then i wouldn't have anything to leave my recycling to gather dust and spiders for months on end in. and wouldn't that be awful.

the other thought that this gave me was that if you treated the rectangular plastic box as the basic unit of tat storage when travelling, then you've always got a loom handy, cos you carry all your tat about in it. there's no reason why you couldn't lash a frame around that and call it the top of a backpack.

if one was to use one of the recycling bins that can be found in many counties these days, all over the place, then you could weave a good-sized doormat or portrait-sized hanging, or pillow cover, or anything. you can even sew strips together, like the african way, and make a bigger rug out of many different pieces. there's also no reason that you can't package a warp in such a way that it can be taken off the box while being woven, and anchor it against a tree or a streetlight or some such thing if you're going to be sitting for a few days. then you can use the box to carry water in, for washing up or whatever.

i wonder if i can find a small box i can stuff my tent into

hmm

accidental tartan

2009-04-27T23:43:00.000+01:00

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. this was never going to be a product-line development warp anyway. i'm just making stuff to sell at festivals, it doesn't need to be repeatable.

anyhow, i'll measure the ppi and epi properly when it's off the loom and fulled, but i reckon i might've accidentaly hit the right sett. with unrepeatable yarn i'll never see again. hey ho

varied sett

2009-04-23T15:42:00.000+01:00

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 it's an unpleasant effect though, and combining slightly chaotic central sections with a consistent boundary fabric could be nice in the end. it's more interesting to look at. anyhow, i'll finish this square off, cut it off the loom and try a third setting. might get a fourth out of it, but i'm not sure. you can't really tell how this has come out till you hold it up to the window.

long-warping

2009-04-20T23:23:00.000+01:00

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 thrust of this post is how i intend to make a long warp. this is how:

outside.

there's no other way really. my house is too little to sectionally warp in, and there's no way i'm spending any more money on warping equipment. so i have to do it outside. the great problem with doing this outside is that it's windy as anything up here and doing anything remotely delicate is a near impossiblity unless you have shelter, of which there is little as trees this far north are the exclusive preserve of toffs and plantation-farmers.

anyway, i live by the sea. which is nice, cos i like to swim. and i was walking on the beach, which is made of rocks, the other week, thinking away about how i was gonna warp outside using the natural environment as my warping frame, when i ran across an unusually shaped hunk of wood. having been so far bereft of inspiration i arbitrarily decided that this was a Sign (despite having been a confirmed Atheist since the age of 14, i am unable to rid myself of superstition) that i should sit about on the rocks and have a think.

And there i saw it: a sea barrier!

see, up here there's sea barriers in bits along the coast, which are basically wire boxes filled with rocks, which are all slabs up here, thing being the way they are. and these ones were arranged in three steps, each almost the height of a man. so i decided to have a look at these, and it occured to me that if i were to jame sticks in between the rocks, they'd stick out at 90 degrees and make a warping frame. and blow me down, there right on a rock right there was a small collection of sticks, of the kind they use to seperate planks at the builder's yard. you know, the kind that's really easy to break and nice and rectangular.

so i jammed them in, and lo and behold, a warping frame! made out of sticks shoved into a storm barrier.

so, just so you know and for my own self-motivation, i'm going to make a 30 metre warp (for experiment sake) 2 scarves wide (that's 900 ends) anbd weave it up and see how it comes out.

if i haven't posted the results within two weeks i whole-heartedly encourage you to pull me up about it, with the aid of capital letters, which as we all know is the internet equivalent of SHOUTING!

thanks for listening

-hb

disruption, tidyness, and JC Rennies

2009-04-18T20:10:00.000+01:00

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 recycling, another day doing the front room and hallway, and i finally got the loom room sparkling last night, for the first time in months. the thing is i can't make and beam a warp properly when my brain's battered, and my brain's always battered when the house is a mess. which isn't a problem when i want to sit on my arse playing Monkey Island 2 (classic) and drinking beer. but, like i say, i can't do anything complicated while my brain's battered.

so anyhow, i spent the last of last night drinking crap cider and making a new warp. this be an experimental warp. see, my mum wan'ts curtains for the kitchen, and they have to be so wide, and i can't make them so wide with the normal way i'm used to doing, co i only have so many heddles, see, which i have moaned abouit before. so i'm doing this thing where i have bands of 32epi seperating larger spacings of 16 epi. this on a 8 dent reed. so with any luck this should make nice sorta gauzy effect for the sun to shine through. we'll see. the shame is that i can't create a truly checked pattern, because of the way it is, which i can't explain properly, but it makes sense in my head. anyway, this just a sample to see how it goes. and i'm running out of clean clothes cos i don't want to go to the laundrette till i've got some weaving to wash, and at this rate i'll need to do two loads.

ho hum

and i got shade cards from JC Rennies. but silly me i forgot to specify shade cards for weaving yarn (like, singles) so i got a bunch of knitting swatches. still, the colours are the same, so i'm going to go ahead and get some samples of their yarns and make up some sample scarves. i'm not sure if they do cotton, but if they do i might do some tea towels as well.

we'll see.

anyway,l that's that. i'm stranded in reay just now, supervising my brother to make sure he doesn't go on accidental hunger strike while my parents are on holiday, so i have every good reason for doing bugger all

hooray!

loom in danger

2009-03-29T05:04:00.000+01:00

there is a loom in the lake district that is in danger of being chopped into firewood.

for reasons that are too long-winded to go into on a wee 15-minute net sesh, i find myself in the central belt of scotland about to take a trip to greater manchester and back.

there was a dobby loom in the same location, and i was considering running over to rescue the box and reeds, but somebody has bought the loom as a One.

there's still another loom though, a 4 shaft counterbalance by the look of things, tho was unsure from my phone conversation. but it has a beater bar, with fly shuttle. and i'm starting to think that it might be worth my time doing it on foot, just to rescue the beater bar, shafts, back and cloth beams, pullets, ratchets and all that. i would feel awful taking a saw to a loom to cut off the useful parts, but i guess it's no different from taking the good components form a messed up old car that's gonna be scrapped

i don't want to break it into bits, but if it's that or kindling, i'd rather the expensive bits got saved.

-a

a long overdue post

2009-03-23T00:19:00.000Z

hey ho

i thought to myself, i'd best get this out of the way just now, as i have my camera, scarves, mp3 player with all the files and computer with internet access all in the same place for once.

even though it's past midnight.

so, yay, i finished a warp of 12 scarves, dark blue and dark brown. all round dark. identical 50end by 50 pick checks all the way through

not having access to a graphics program i already know how to use, this is a big photo, encompassing a big chair. on the left you will see a scarf (one of seven) from the best selvedges ever post. on the right is the latest selvedge-less effort, as i say, from a 12 scarf warp. should have been 14, but i spent a long time buggering about with different methods of bordering, and eventually decided to cut off the outside squares instead as itsaved me a lot of trouble. although it is wasteful of wool. but time is more expensive than wool. so yeah

it's nice, i like them. but i'm not convinced i've eliminated the danger of fraying warp ways like. i may consider running a zigzag stitch up the length of it with my sewing machine, but that's more time in the finishing process. or maybe leave much wider gaps in the warp between scarves. like gaps of an inch even. i leave inch gaps between scarves when weaving between final and first picks (not explaining well) and the fibres felt up sufficiently to prevent fraying, but yeah.

hmm, we'll see.

oh, and this is a stupidly large shuttle i bought on ebay. it's really rather heavy. it;s sitting on the finished bolt of cloth from aforementioned warp

this is a weaving error from aforementioned warp, like i say. or like i don't say because i haven't already said it. i get a point for catching myself in the act of making a nonsensical gramattical error while typing in stream-of-conciousness mode. hooray!

the warp threads there weren't seperating cos 1 of their number had broke and was tangled up between reed and shafts, thus preventing happy shedding. i didn't notice for a little but, cos my eyes flick from selvedge to selvedge while weaving quickly without taking a good look at the body of the fabric, which is without any problems 99% of the time. so yeah. annoying, but hey ho, selvedge threads break a lot more. i'd replace them with polyester for bordering, except i guess that wouldn't work at all for a whole host of reasons. stupid idea , forget i said it.

and that's an ickle-wickle shuttle i also bought on ebay. like aforementioned big shuttle i wasn';t fully aware exactly how big this thing was when i bought it. isn't it cute? i think i might make a little toy loom so my he-man figure with the amusing arm motion can weave with it. and if i put him in a poorly lit corner he can say that's why he's going blind, and not the other reason
and, just for scale, that's the big shuttle next to my leg. i'm a normal height kind of a person. considering that the scottish are no longer known for being stunted and malnourished and have now moved onto alcoholism and chronic drug use, which doesn't hugely affect our height, that's just under 6ft.

bad grammar eh? makes my sentences difficult to read eh? well, i'm trying to read a book on post-freudian psycho-analytic theory just now, and am about to make a serious attempt at reading Marx, so consider yourselves lucky.

my dutch friend used to say that the scottish were a race of "bowlegged dwarves", but he came from a family of giants who had to be given growth suppression hormones to prevent gigantism. really tall people. as yet i haven't met many other dutch people, so am unaware of whether being incredibly tall is a national trait or not.

oh, and another thing. this is calling for a big HOORAY!

i got a whole bunch of free wool, like 130 cones or so! hooray! yay! i can now seriously consider a really long warp, without having to invest several hundred pounds in buying wool :)

some of it's a bit mouldy, but most of it's useable, hooray! i can set up warping posts in the garden maybe, or do it on a fence perhaps, maybe that'd work. i should do an experimental warp with something cheap and rugged on a wide sett, maybe i could make a whole shitload of rugs. that's be nice. rugs are big in investment as far as wool goes, being really rather heavy, but they don't take very long to weave at all like

and if i can make and weave a really long warp, then i might be able to consider weaving those scarves i was asked to think about weaving for an organisation and event that will remain a secret until i decide/get the committee's approval. cos i'm only in this house until august, and then i have to go live in halls with a bunch of people 10 years younger than me and probably won't be able to get a WASP studio until i'm a bit more established. but they are cheap studios those.

oh wow wow wow, my brain is brimming with ideas and that. hooray! i can make a warp on dowels attached to fence posts down in front of the beach. maybe by doing something interesting in public i can skank free beer off the surfers, it tends to work in edinburgh. so why not here? because surfers are penniless vagabonds, that's why. obviously

summer's coming :)

yay!

-hb

ps. this post illustrates exactly my thoughts on how people present themselves on the internet as someone who is completely different form who they are in the "real world". in the "real world" (everything's real if anything's real, and nothing's unnatural) i'm actually a remarkably dour person, very reluctant to express delight and such and actually moaning about something or other most of the time. and i have no social life, because i'm boring. i don't mind though, i have philosophy

lovely pink yarn

2009-03-15T18:15:00.001Z

i'm going to weave it in a 2/2 basket weave twill on the table loom. i can't figure out how to turn the picture round on this computer. i really hsould prepare these posts at home before i go out.

Teaching weaving

2009-03-09T03:37:00.000Z

hooray!

I taught my first person to weave on a loom today!

It's the lady who taught me to spin, Anne, and she's got this wee Kromski Rigid Heddle loom, with a stand and all that she got at woolfest.

it's quite a pretty wee loom, very nicely made, and it's got a warping frame built into it with the removable pegs and all that. the ratchet mechanism is not very good though. never mind. anyway, i managed to make a right hipse of the warping demonstration, doing everything back to front and that. but we eventually got a wee warp onto it with some disposable machine-knitting cotton and started getting some checks woven up.

it doesn't seem to work too well with the stand as it goes, i don't think it's that stable. but it's cool, cos you can just lean it against the edge of a table. used to do that with my table loom actually, but it's uncomfortable cos it's heavy.

anyhow, yeah, wow. i am so incredibly bad at explaining things, it's completely unreal. i mean, maybe teaching's something you have to learn perhaps, but i just do not have that gift like. i don't think i could explain eggs to a chicken, even with the use of a slide projector.

never mind, we got there in the end. and she's got a copy of "learning to weave" which, though i've only flicked through it looks like a very very good book to me. though it does do this funny thing of a warping method where it has you threading and sleying before the warp's on the beam and that's never worked for me. it seems to raise a lot of possibilities for buggering the warp right up in the beaming process as well, so never mind that. i know i'd make a hipse of it anyway, my warp handling is pish

oh oh oh, i've just remembered something

oh great, now i can't copy and paste embed tags from youtube. just brilliant. you know, this is absolutely typical, abitrary, computer behaviour. you know the one time my mother came round to my house to have a cup of tea and sit for a bit and do some weaving, i go to put a dvd on the computer and, guess what, it wasn't working. for the first time ever. and after she left i went to put the same dvd on and it was fine. i mean, it's just silly. so why can't i copy and paste the embed tags?

damn damn damn

that's buggered that right up. oh well.

on a lighter note, i'm lying on the couch, and my dog is asleep against my legs. but there's very little space between me and the back of the couch. so her face is on my legs, and her arse is halfway up the couch stickin in the air. it's kinda amusing. she has no decorum

-a

The 100 scarf project

2009-03-04T23:54:00.000Z

Hi there.

I know i haven't had much of substance to say recently, but i haven't been idle. Oh no.

You've seen the green and white scarves from a previous post maybe, and perhaps you've also seen in my last post a tri-colour scarf shot on the loom from a curious angle. I was originally going to call that series of scarves "Accidentally Irish" because i didn't realise till the warp was on the raddle that it was basically an irish tri-colour, and thus something you can't wear or sell in certain parts of Northern Ireland or the Central Belt if you're an excessively careful sort like me.

Now, I am developing with this a scarf that can be woven inexpensively. In the first warp i left 5 inches between scarves for twisted fringes. And that's all well and good, and terribly nice, but it took me ages to twist the fringes up for finishing. So i scrapped twisted fringes in the name of efficiency. In the second, Accidentally Irish, warp I decided to leave half an inch between scarves, separating them with a warp stick from the table loom. I then washed the entire warp together, and then cut them apart, as the finishing process (60 degree wash and 30 minute tumble dry in the laundrette with the rest of my washing) binds the fibres together so well that they'll never unravel. This worked very well

This way i got an extra scarf out of the warp. 7 instead of 6. Nice. It takes me the best part of a day to make and beam the warp, although i'm pretty sure i'm doing something wrong in the beaming process, and although i am currently incapable of vocalizing my thoughts on this issue, i think i know what it is, and i think i'll get it nailed next time. It doesn't take much longer to actually weave the warp up.

This is the longest warp i can get out of my warping board when it's put together. Obviously, the next thing is to make a longer warp. Presumably, by taking the warping board apart and nailing each end to the wall at a greater distance from one another. Another method may be sectional warping, but that's just fraught with difficulties.

Now, that's great, and all fairly obvious if the aim is to make very nice scarves with very good selvedges that show off my skill as a weaver. But that's not the aim at all. The aim is to make very nice scarves with nice, reasonable prices that show off my skill as a sensible weaver for a mass market. Thus, the idea is to make wider warps. Each scarf is 400 ends wide. I have 1000 heddles. Therefore i can only make 2 scarf width warps. my loom is wide enough to take a 1200 end warp at least, but i don't have enough heddles. curse. I have been in touch with Lunds of Bingley, and they don't make heddles anymore (it's them that made the frames for my loom, back in the 70's)

Even so, it shouldn't take much longer to warp an 850 end warp than a 400 end warp, and so i can weave twice as many scarves in only a little longer time. So, call that 14 scarves in 3 days, to be generous with time. That's not a bad rate really, as far as i'm concerned. Working on the basis that whatever i make, i'll eventually sell, then spending all this money on wool (at £10 a kilo, each scarf costs £1.10 in wool, with loom wastage taken into account) and all this time on weaving is probably the best investment i could concievably make these days. And i have so far managed to sell almost everything i've made. It just comes in fits and spurts.

Here's the math

3 days work = £150 (i used to work for £25 a day as a labourer, so i'm being generous here)
14 scarves worth of wool = £15 (1 scarf worth of wool is accounted for as loom wastage)
Laundrette fees = £8

Total price of manufacture = £173

Minimum price for each scarf = £12.35

Getting there, getting there. My aim is to develop a range of scarves, and associated working practices, that allow me to sell them for £10-15 to the public and £5 to shops and suchlike.

With a 3-scarf warp of that length i can make 21 scarves in just under 4 days. It's not bad, but it's not good enough.

The aim now is to develop the ability to produce 100 scarves in 6 days. To do this i will need much longer warps. I believe this is possible, at least with the loom i'm using now, which is a very nice loom and makes me happy.

Here is the math

100 scarves of wool = £102
50 hours work @ £6/hr = £300
Total Price of manufacture = £402

minimum price for each scarf = £4.02

I could concievably sell for £3 or less and still make it worth my while. This being based upon that fact that one can live quite comfortably on £80 a week without recourse to benefits.

Mind you, everything that's made has to be sold. And that's something i don't know anything about: selling.

I have no illusions however, and i shall persevere. I will make a living out of this.

-A

best selvedges ever

2009-02-28T12:33:00.000Z

i opened the sett on the outside of the latest batch of scarves.

it occured to me while in a state of mild inebriation last week that the reason i was getting smiles at the selvedges of my scarves was because the draw-in was causing the selvedges to have a higher end-count than the body of the fabric, and as we know this causes the fabric to smile, as i observed when i made fabrics with varying setts. so with two ends in each dent in the body i put 1 end in each dent on the outside 2 dents.

and vast improvements, although not, as you can see, to my photography. or my grammar, for that matter.

now i'm in a rush, checking my email in the chippy, but i couldn't get on at the library today or yesterday as they're down. ho hum. i've anyway finsihed the second line of scarves, and am testing out a new finishing technique on monday when the laundrette opens, i'll tell you all about it. if it works out it'll remove all the time i spend twisting ends. lovely

-a

wailey, wailey wailey!

2009-02-25T16:28:00.000Z

curses, curses and so on.

so, hey, guess what. this is great right. i've spent the last six months getting used to this one particular brand of yarn, right, and learning to know how to use it just right to make really nice scarfs and that, and i've just ordered a whole rake of the stuff to make 100 or so scarfs with, and guess what? it's the end of the line. texere yarns will no longer stock engima silk.

i am well pissed off. it's just typical. on the same day, i recieve a letter from HM Revenue telling me they overpaid me almost 2 YEARS AGO and now they want £200 from me.

it's absurd.

anyway, these are some of my scarves, shot in my particular, idiosyncratic style, which suggests that i can't take photos to save my life

That's not blue, it's pine green. honest.

So, there will be more of these, maybe as many as 200, but it's looking increasingly like i will be unable to get a continuous supply and will have to find a new favourite yarn.

it's globalisation i tell you. i was destined to be a weaver, but i was born in a country that's being turned into a tourist resort and i'm expected to wash dishes and smile and be a nice rustic wee scottish laddy doing what he's told for the british economy.

ok, so that's a wee bit on the bitter side. I'm a child of Thatcher, what can i do?

-andrew

Shuttles

2009-02-22T23:57:00.000Z

So, this is the picture from ebay. i bought this shuttle, and i won't tell you how much i paid for it. it's described as "vintage", which i doubt greatly, and has a "diamond wood" mark on the bottom of it as well as the letters "USA", which gives a clue to it's origin. which is funny, because i bought it from someone in lancashire, which was one of the main areas where the textile industry of britain was concentrated, back in Ye Olde Times.

I've looked up Diamond Wood on the internet, and apparently it comes from China and is really rather dense, thus earning it's name. this shuttle however apears to be made of two types of wood, making it a compound shuttle. Genghis Khan conquered half of Eurasia with the compound bow, what can i do with a compound shuttle i wonder?

Now, as you may notice, there is no pin for putting the pirn on, which you'd think would be essential. these things usually pivot on a hinge or something and are fixed in place. not here. no, it jams in at the end, there's a wax mould fitted in the end with the slot for jamming the butt of the pin into. Now, i'll have to make one. hmm, woodworking skills? i don't have many. oh well.

also, i also got a little stainless steel shuttle. after i bid for it, it occurred to me that a stainless steel shuttle might be a little too heavy, but i didn't bother thinking about it too much. anyway, i got it, and it's 3 inches long. it is soo cute. i'm going to hang it on a cord and wear it round my neck like a christian would a cross.

i don't have my camera with me today, so i can't show you.

this is also a good time to point out that i have been buying up used shuttles, mostly end-feed shuttles from old mills. I shall be restoring these and selling them. I have been developing also a line of scarves that i can sell at a reasonable price to the masses. Watch this space. Watch, indeed, for the launch of Humble Woven Products, your solution for reasonably priced handwoven scarves and restored vintage end-feed shuttles.

No, really, I've bought the labels and everything. Exciting eh?

Knotted pile

2009-02-04T21:12:00.000Z

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

I'm in

2009-01-14T10:33:00.000Z

That's it. I got an unconditional offer today.

hooray!

[ trumpets, sirens sound, crowds cheer with wild abandon ]

well, that's me all cheered up, despite my sprained neck which has had me in a bad mood all morning.

so now i've got 5 months of college left to find something to do with. I could just go and sign on the dole, but that would inevitably lead to waking up in the evening and not getting any weaving done. it's funny isn't it, that when you have all the time in the world it's impossible to get anything done. I guess if the vehicles already moving it doesn't cost much to do an extra 20 miles at the end of the day, or something.

I have a table frame in the class room that i can use as a frame loom if i want, so i can either make a tapestry, a knotted pile rug or just work on tablet-woven brocade and double-face effects. If i wanted to be really ambitious i could buy the late Mr Collingwood's Ply-Split book, or the one on Sprang (whatever that is) and do a bit of that.

What would you do in my situation? I am leaving a poll on this page. I'm going to stick it on the right hand side so it'll outlive this post

-hb exits to wild applause

ps. the sectional warping is getting easier, now that i've added thread guides. I've also pulled the spool rack more towards the back of the loom, so i can get in behind it to change spools. I got 3 sections done last night, and i expect to finish beaming the warp tonight. If all goes well i shall thread and sley the reed on thursday. I then have to make a warp for friday because i'm going over to Wick High School to show an art teacher how to warp his Weavemaster table loom, which is a bigger version of the one i've got at home. That should be fun, i've never taught loomy before

One big rug, two woolen fabrics and a host of warping issues

2009-01-12T09:46:00.000Z

So, I said i was going to try out sectional warping didn't i?

Well, we'll get to that.

First though, I'd like to show off my pretty new things i made over the new year break.

First off is the 6'x3' rug i made for my mother, which she has put on the back of the sofa, this is it sitting in front of a dead fire not being singed by flying cinders.

Right, now i'm actually almost furious. That's the third time i've attempted to transfer that rug picture to my mp3 player for upload to blog at college, and the third time i've plugged the thing in to find it mysteriously missing, despite the fact all the other pictures i need are there. It's very aggravating, are the gods of the internet, in their infinite wisdom, preventing me from showing off what is possibly my finest work to date, in case pride comes before a fall? I will prevail, next time, i swear, next time.

Never mind, i have also made two pieces on the big loom, warping problems of which have already been documented somewhat in the comment thread of the last-but-one post, the one before the dogs.

Hope you liked the dogs btw, a bit off topic i know. But i do like dogs, a lot.

So, the first piece was supposed to be a spiral twill, i call it a spiral twill, it's not really a spiral, but it is kinda interesting. it doesn't really work very well with such fine detailed yarn. just too fine detail for the eye to cope with reasonably. works better with chunkier yarn. the warp is alternately blue and grey, as is the weft. the treadling sequence is a 12-up, 12-down pointed twill, as is the threading sequence

As this was less than pleasant to look at, and was also giving me a headache trying to keep track of my place in the treadling sequence, i tried a few other things, notably 2 plain weaves, using wefts in different combinations or something. i should keep better records (correction, i should keep records, period), because i can't remember which is what. i know one of them is 2 and 2, and the other one is just one, but i'd really have to have a good long think about it, and i'm not in the mood

I'm not at all convinced those show up well on the monitor. They don't show up much better to the naked eye i'm afraid. That's one chalked down to experience anyway. never mind.

The next is much nicer. This is obviously just a simple checked tartan pattern. nothing fancy, but it is terribly effective, and i do enjoy doing them, cos you can just clatter away quick as you like without having to think hardly at all. This can be seen firstly draped upon a chair, cos the lighting's good, secondly pleated, because this is me working towards kilt fabric and kilts are pleated, and thirdly i've got a close up which, if we're lucky will show the discrepancy in the twill line. This is cause by a chunky reed. unfortunately, the finest reed i have for the monster loom is 12 dent, and i was weaving this at 30 epi in a 10 dent reed. the dent seperators are quite chunky, which meant the ends were crammed into the dent, effectively causing the warp to be woven at a higher epi than intended, leaving very noticeable reed lines in the loom-state fabric. these warp-ways lines are no longer noticeable, now that's it's been through the wash with my laundry, but the twill line does have a step effect if you look closely.

Still, i continue in my eternal quest for a perfectly consistent 45' angle. i will, as i've said before, prevail

Now, sectional warping.

I said i was going to do this, as i need to clear my cupboards of the oodles of awful and hideous knitter's yarn i've got. getting job lots from charity shops and car boot sales means you end up with a lot of baby pink and baby blue, along with a lot of other hideous greens and creamy whites that would never get used in the normal run of things. luckily, i live in an old-fashioned house with very draughty interior doors, and am currently sleeping, eating and working in the same room to cut down on heating costs. with 3 or 4 months of crap weather left, i thought i might as well make insulation curtains for the doors and windows.

Now, you might have guessed that i am working towards the goal of large-scale fabric production, as opposed to individual small pieces. so, with this in mind, i have begun making a 40 metre warp. I have enough yarn to do this, i am glad to say. I also have a warp wheel (as opposed to a warp beam) with a 2 metre diameter, meaning each warp section recieves 20 revolutions of the wheel before being tied off and taped down

The weaver i bought the loom from had a long shed, and he would arrange his cones in long lines on the floor, below rows of hooks, which ordered the yarn before feeding it into the tensioning box. This is a very sensible way of doing things. i do not have a large shed though, i have a small room, with only enough space for the loom and me in it. So i need a spool rack. I do not have a spool rack. So i made one, out of two cross sticks and a lot of string.

Luckily, i have a lot of cardboard bobbins i inherited from the presious owner.

Now, the spool rack orders the yarn as best as possible to avoid tangle at the mouth of the mini-reed, which is located at the front of the tension box.

That is the tension box. If you thread it up the other, as the set of instruction i found on the internet told me to do, then a primitive spool rack such as this will cause you to have horrific snarls and traffic jams and such when it finally does meet the reed, due to the yarns getting mixed up as they feed over the tensioning bars. trust me, you don't want that. it's enough to make a grown man cry

And this all, eventually, after much pain, heartache, and mistakes which you don't need to repeat, leads onto the warp wheel, pictured above. the warp sections are 4 inches wide each, and are held in place by these metal angle brackets, which are arranged in such a way that there will be enough of them for said porpoise. Sorry, i mean purpose. As these do have sharp edges rather than curved edges as can be found on commercially available sectional beams the warp has to be guided on by hand, with the right hand turning the wheel, and the left occasionally pinching the warp to prevent the outermost threads from finding themselves in enemy territory, on the wrong side of the tracks, as it were. Or, even worse, uncomfortably straddling the middle line, creating a potential tension problem for the future, which is the last thing any of us wants, obviously.

Now, stress and trouble free as this may seem, it was anything but. I shall now proceed to list the many problems i encountered along the way, and the possible solution which, over the course of the coming week, i shall attempt to put in place in hope of alleviating said problems

1. If the thread falls of the side of the bobbin, it can become wrapped around the string holding it, thus getting itself caught, or even pulling a whole bunch of yarn of the bobbin. in this case you need to cut it out with a little knife and discard it, to rewind all that yarn more carefully back onto another bobbin later. This problem can be usually avoided by leaving a good 1/2 inch clearance or so between the end of the bobbin and the edge of the wound yarn. Also, when winding at the ends of the cone, keep your hand going in a left-right motion, never let it remain still, as this causes a tight section to build itself up, sometimes pushing yarn off to the side which will later inevitably tangle itself up and make you weep into your coffee

2. The threads must remain in order as they feed into the tension box. This might seem obvious, but when a bobbin runs out and you tie a new one onto the old thread, it's very easy to accidentally cross it over an adjoining thread. this causes tangle and warp breakages at the reed, and is also a potential source of tragic grief and infinite sorrow.

3. Smashing your skull of the loom. There is no solution for this, aside from being a bit less clumsy and not working past midnight

There is a potential solution for the first two problems. The first one is aggravated by the fact the the threads pull away off to the side of the bobbins in some cases, and the second one os aggravated by the fact that it's really not that easy to get all the threads in the right order all the time. Both these problems can be solved by a thread guide, which is a line of little holes for the thread to go through that keep the yarn coming off the bobbin right in the centre, before getting pulled off to the tension box. I will make one of these out of string, again, and see how it goes. At this point though i can fully recommend buying a spooling rack with a thread guide if you are going to buy a spool rack. It should save a lot of grief.

As you can see i am only three sections into this warp. I have 7 or so to go before i'm finished i'm afraid. This should take all week. When i'm done i'll tell you whether i have the courage to attempt doing this again without investing in some proper warping equipment for this loom.

Cheers now

happy new year

2009-01-01T03:31:00.000Z

As i haven't remembered to take the pictures of my new rug what i made for in front of my folks's fireplace, and it's new year, and i haven't posted since christmas, and this whole internet thing is rather addictive when you get into it, here are some pictures of cute dogs. i think to myself, in the following manner:

"if i know my readership, i'm sure they'll like pictures of cute dogs"

well, you didn't ask, but you got anyway

on we go.

This is Blot, the elegant and handsome prince of Doggy-Kind, he is a gentle, acrobatic and not even remotely clumsy animal without even the slightest hint of youthful enthusiasm. He wants a biscuit, and is probably going to get one
This is my little Eris, who i have had for 2 years since she was an ickle-wickle puppy. this is her when she was an ickle puppy, all wrapped up in a shawl on the living room sofa. she's still the only dog in the house that can get away with crawling into bed with my mum. She thinks she's the queen of england. But she's wrong, cause i don't like the queen of england half as much as i like Eris, and would certainly never let her into my bed

This is Old Man Ginger, slowly melting into a puddle in front of the fire. He is now a Grotty Old Sod and makes alarming throat clearing sounds occasionally while yawning. When Eris is on heat he tries to catch her but he's too slow. Luckily, the other two dogs don't know what their equipment is for, so she's safe as houses

Blot and Ginger again. Definitely one of the best photos ever taken, in my opinion

This is little Blot, when he still was little Blot, before he became large, cumbersome and over-enthusiastic Blot that scares children with his friendliness. He has this game he plays on the beach where he runs directly at you until you dodge and then veers away. I think it's a bit like doggy chicken. Eris tries to play it, but she isn't big and cumbersome, so it doesn't work

I'm not sure how this got in here. It's a picture of the first warp I wove on my old backstrap loom, which is now missing presumed dead in a possibly abandoned house in bristol. I wove rugs on that on middle meadow walk and next to the museum during the edinburgh festival. Someone told me a year or so later that the last time they saw me i was selling rugs in the park and i thought they said i was selling drugs and got a little flustered. much hilarity was had by all. as it goes i've been trying for years to figure out how to turn that "(D)rug dealer" pun into a decent joke, of the kind that makes your audience groan and weep as tumble-weed rolls across the high streetm but i just can't get it. shame

And, of course, Eris, again. This time with the tongue hanging out sideways. it's a good look.

And with the seaweed. She likes the seaweed. She also likes rotting fish carcasses. I wish she could in her mind connect "rolling-in-a-rotting-fish-carcass-to-impress-her-doggy-mates" to "getting-hosed-down-and-shampooed-outside-the-garage" and "being-shunned-by-everyone-in-the-house-because-nothing-can-get-rid-of-that-smell"

Well, that's that i guess. Hope you liked the doggies and hope you don't all have awful hangovers. I don't, I'm sober as a judge is supposed to be

-hb

Post-Script

Oh my god, i just ran across this video for my all-time number one favourite live band. As far as i'm concerned dancing to Ska is the best thing in the world

Bombskare ruule y'all

Ye Olde Portfolio

2008-12-25T15:23:00.000Z

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

a wee bit of this

2008-12-10T12:50:00.000Z

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

the photo meme, amongst other things

2008-12-09T10:06:00.000Z

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-Freedom film and an extremely confusing romance while working and by the time i was ready to go to bed they were ready to show Grave of the Fireflies, which i've been wanting to watch for ages.

I don't know if it's realistically possible to weave 7 samples by saturday morning, i'd probably get very little sleep, so i don't think it's going to happen, but i do have plenty as it goes the now anyway, so i probably shouldn't run myself into the ground and spend all saturday standing behind the till yawning before falling asleep on the train, getting no sleep in aberdeen and turning up on tuesday morning at Gala all strung out and wild-eyed.

i'm having fun with texture the now, using this sort of bubbly yarn, you know the 2-ply type with one bit of the ply being straight and smooth, and the other pushing loops out at regular intervals. it doesn't look very nice on the cone, but it makes and awfy nice sorta fuzzy feeling. i'm setting it against regular yarn, particularly that silk/wool stuff i bought fae the texere yarns people, which is definitely the best and most consistent yarn i've ever used and has very very few knots and breaks in it. also, all the cones i've got in the line are the same weight, which really is something, cause i've bought selections of different colours from the same line before and they've not been the same weight, and that really Annoys Me.

I also did a wee bit of fun with putting thick-sett lines of 56 epi at regular intervals in a warp of 14 epi, on the theory that this would make it so that there were less picks to inch and create a lighter, sort of gauzy see-through fabric. it probably would've worked better with a different yarn, but it was an interesting experiment anyway. What i really want to make is that sort of sari fabric the fashionable muslim women use as headscarves. i used to live on the south side of glasgow in an irish/pakistani/gypsy (in that order, chronologically) area, and there were loads of fabric stores. asians really appreciate good fabric, in a way that westerners just don't

i've forgotten to take my camera into college with me again, i'm not too together in the morning, but i'll probably manage to take photos on thursday evening and post on friday, we'll see

-hb

back to work, finally

2008-11-10T10:24:00.000Z

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 readjusting things and fine-tuning the tie-up. Great. Definitely my Favourite Thing. Not

I still have to re-tie the entire counterbalance mechanism on the backroomloom as well and clear the current warp from it, cos i want to make a big, fat, stupidly long piece on it for my portfolio. As it goes, i've built the book for holding my samples. It's backing is made of rag-rug and the pages are made out of that houndstooth check or whatever it was i made the other month. i've got all the fringes stitched up and i've started carting all my tat up to college so i can work on it up there, cos i never get any sewing done at home, and me and the tutor are both agreed that i could quite happily fail every module on this course as long as i can put together a folio good enough to get into galashiels. After all, that is the ONLY thing that matters just now, everything else is just trimmings.

Also, i fretted and fussed for ages over how to do the notes, cos i didn't want to just staple bits of paper into a nice portfolio, and i've settled on the time-consuming practice of embroidery. so i bought a wee embroidery frame and a suitable piece of fabric and i'm going to embroider my notes and stich them into the thing. It's going to be extremely labour intensive, but it'll probably be 3 or 4 months before i get an interview at least, so i've got plenty of time. And it gives me more time to weave more samples, which is nice.

Anyhoodle, that's that for now

-HB

YES

2008-11-05T22:38:00.000Z

WE CAN

The World Is A Safer Place

No More Wars

PostScript
I feel, as a child of thatcher, major and blair, and having been decieved and lied to again and again by one uninspiring papershuffling slug of a conservative politician after the other, that i am due a bit of genuine hope, at least once in my life. And if that hope comes from across the ocean and only relies on the actions of the world's most powerful state, then that's just the way it is. Britain is nothing but a vassal state for america, and if america does good, then we will follow. I hope for a more peaceful future, where small nations are allowed to go their own way without getting bombed into the stone age for the sake of their trade routes and oil resources. And though i doubt that having a black liberal in the white house is going to turn the rules of Capitalism on their head, he does at last stand a chance of keeping at bay and perhaps breaking the insane neo-conservatives who felt that the dream of america is Full Spectrum Dominance, or world domination by force

Today i have hope, tomorrow i may be betrayed, but today i have hope

And that's what life's all about

Don't let us down

-Andrew Kieran, 27, Scotland

Galashiels Textile School

2008-10-05T17:39:00.000+01:00

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!

help, anyone? (countermarch treadling)

2008-09-26T22:23:00.000+01:00

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 the brutish art of carpentry?

this is one of those moments at which i wish i wasn't a self-taught weaver and had someone else to turn to whose been through it all before and knows exactly what to do.

so, should i persevere, or is it impossible and should i just go and use counterbalance? and if so, do you know of any decent web resources for counterbalance tie-ups, specifically 4 shaft twills? i've got the stuff from glimakra, but it's nice to have as much as possible

thanks in advance for ANY advice you can give me, i wait with baited breath (and if you know what the root of that saying is i'd love to know, cos it makes no sense to me)

-hb

for crying out loud

2008-09-22T14:28:00.000+01:00

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 designed for the reed to be changed on a regular basis. So i had to take the whole bloody lot out and start again

But as i say, i like sleying the reed, because it's simple, and repetitive and there's not much that can go wrong, you just need to make sure you get the hook in the right dent, and that's simple as simon. So i got it tied on

Int at pretty? I hope you like my happy little weaving manny i've drawn on the castle, cos that's the closest any of youse in internet land r gonna get to seeing a picture of my face. See how happy i am with my shuttle? That's me that is. Anyway, happy little weaving manny finally got down to weaving with his happy little end-feed shuttles, alternating the colours in the weft as in the warp in a one-den-de-uvver pattern and a 12-forward, 12-back diamond twill treadling pattern. I don't know if i explained that properly, but the Result(!) speaks for itselfMaybe that doesn't come out too well on your monitor. It doesn't look very good in this wee editor window anyway. Needless to say, i am very chuffed with the result, and as i have a reasonable amount of that nice straw coloured yarn, i'm going to make a range of scarves based on this pattern and colouring, though i could change the blue for dark green, and will no doubt have to when the blue inevitably runs out long before the yellow does.

These are the considerations one has to make when one gets one's yarn from the town's charity shops.

Anyway, that's the way. I shall leave you with the Corries' rendition of Green Fields of France

pattern drafting

2008-09-16T17:00:00.001+01:00

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

The curse of the faulty rachet-stop + The contractual obligation video post

2008-09-15T14:29:00.000+01:00

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 other day, when it was working fine. grr

Also, if anyone know any free guide to countermarch tie-up i'd really really really appreciate hearing about it cos i'm just having no luck making a twill tie up at all with counterbalance

Finally, teacher says we have to post a video to our blog today, so in the spirit of co-operation with the forces of law, order and authority i give you "Timewaster" by 4-piece London punk outfit The Restarts

Enjoy, unless you don't like punk music, in which case, just ignore please

-Humblebumble (handweaving to the sound of heavy anarcho-punk and hard techno)

The Contractual Obligation Post

2008-09-08T14:32:00.000+01:00

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

Check off the loom

2008-09-01T14:28:00.000+01:00

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 set up, i've only done it on my jack loom before, and there's no tie-up on that at all. You may guess from the following picture that i am not getting an absolutely perfect shed. And the lamms are clattering off the shafts. And one of the main pulley strings snapped towards the end of the last piece and the whole bloody lot came clattering down on the left-hand side, undoubtedly putting considerable strain on the warp. I am tie in rescue cords in future to prevent such an occurence from occuring

And here's two pictures of handsome animals, cos they're nice, and terribly noble creatures. The great white thing is Blot, my brother's dog, and the wippet with the fluttering eyelashes is Eris, my little girl. Aren't they pretty?

That's all for now. I'll post more on this when i get the treadling sorted out and all that

The Sheperds Check

2008-08-21T20:11:00.000+01:00

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.

Re-organising Heddles

2008-08-02T18:24:00.000+01:00

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 warp of blue, blue, grey, grey. Doing the same with the weft, i will create a fabric of tiny little squares. Which will, presumably, be nice.

I can't decide whether to do it in plain weave, straight 2/2 twill or back n forth diamond twill. So i think i will maybe just warp it as a normal 1,2,3,4,1,2,3,4 so i can do plain weave or a straight 2/2 twill at my leisure. see what works. I have high hopes. Maybe i'll at least get the shafts tied up tonight, and hopefully be able to work up the motivation to warp the thing up tomorrow.

Once that's done it's done, and i can batter away at it in my time off and maybe get it done by the end of the week with any luck. In the meantime i still have maybe 3 metres of a minor disaster to weave up on the table loom. I mixed up far too many colours and bolloxed up the threading of a varied diamond twill and have thus created a fabric that i find singularly unappealling. Oh well, lesson learned i suppose. It's difficult to use more than 3 or 4 colours together without ballsing it up completely, as i have done. But, i can't waste it, so i must finish it, cos it represents about £10 worth of wool and it'd be a shame to waste it. Maybe i could try a plain weave with a thin weft to maybe create a warp faced fabric, that might work i suppose. I guess i have nothing to lose and might as well just try whatever i can think of. I mean, it couldn't really get any worse.

Actually, it occurs to me that i should maybe be using a thicker weft for warp face. is that right? i'm not sure. See, this is what happens when you batter away at weaving experimentally with no tuition. Sometimes, you achieve excellent results, sometimes you create something ok, and occasionally you balls it up completely. Whilst, in the meantime, you just get confused and fail to take proper notes and forget what your lessons learnt were.

So, like i say, once I've got that mess out of the way, i'm going to attempt to recreate this which is a really lovely spiral twill doo-da thing. it looks to me like both warp and weft are running orange,black,orange,black alternately in a 12 and 12 pointed twill, maybe. It's bloody hard on the brain trying to analyse fabric from a Jpeg on a wee laptop screen. i think i might print it out and take it home and pore over it with a magnifying glass. Anyhow, that's just a tiny sample of that lady's nice work. She is well talented, really nice stuff and worth checking out

Cheers for now

-a

Tablet weaving gallery

2008-08-02T13:19:00.001+01:00

My Loom Products

2008-07-27T14:09:00.001+01:00