weave4fun

Happy New Year Y'all! So I've been back at college for, oooooh, what, two weeks now, and things are going just fine. I have been doing lots of visual research and development and I have also in dribs and drabs been dressing the loom with an 1800 end warp of cotton, worsted and wool/lycra mix. The wool/lycra mix is the star of the show. This is a core spun lycra wrapped with 97%worsted wool. The brilliant thing about this stuff, in contrast to other elastic yarns I've used is that at the lycra is held at extension in the normal tension of the worsted yarn. This means it's reasonably easy to weave with, as it basically behaves like a normal worsted yarn when it's under tension, which is FANTASTIC. The really interesting thing as well of course, is that the lycra doesn't properly relax until it's been washed in a relaxed state, at which point it obeys it's true desires and pulls itself right in all scrunchy like. The idea is I'm making cloth ...

So, the looms at college are not generally as clean as I'd like them to be. This is to be expected as I'm a little bit odd when it comes to looms. My loom at home is tenderly cared for and loved whenever I see it. Which isn't often, sadly. But heyho. Anyway, I was unhappy using shafts that had all sorts of random, bent, different sized heddles, many on the wrong way round and some crossing each other. So I found a couple of rounds of barely-used heddles in a cupboard and decided to take the old ones off and put the new ones on. Also, I wanted to clean the loom anyway, as I am unhappy with the idea of weaving on an unclean loom, it seems like it'll make the cloth dirty. And I don't want dirty cloth. So, for the first time in this establishment I have orderly heddles. And a clean loom. I don't know if I mentioned that I managed to get texsolv put on all the looms instead of the manky old cotton string, so now we get better shedding. Hurrah! I love...