weave4fun

I had the priviledge this week of paying host to Laura Fry and Kerstin Froberg. Sadly, they arrived the day before the bank holiday and had to leave the following afternoon so were unable to receive the tour of the School of Textile And Design they were hoping for. Never mind though, as weavers are weavers and we love to talk about weaving. Over dinner and a pint or two we discussed many subjects including Vadmal, the pros and cons of AVL looms and the routes by which each of us came to weaving. It was a very nice evening and a real delight to meet other weavers with such a depth of passion and knowledge. Why I didn't take any pictures I'll never know, I guess I was just too busy chatting away about looms and yarn and going on about how I learned to weave upside down and back to front and made myself do everything the hard way (which stands me in good stead when I have to rescue other people's warping errors). Interestingly, I'd had it in my head the Laura wa...

I've just found my new favourite author. Cixin Liu (or is that Liu Cixin, I don't know) is an SF write from China, I have just read a free offering of his from Amazon which you can download for free as an E-book. It's a novella describing humanity's travails in escaping the death of the sun with the earth as our spaceship. To say this this book is epic, majestic and terrifying in it's magnificient concept is a remarkable understatement. But to fail to acknowledge the hope gleaned from finding an author who is willing to conceive of humanity facing up to huge and terrible challenges with stoicism and resourcefulness would be a mistake. The Wandering Earth It's simply unlike anything I have ever read. But what is more remarkable is that it hits the very note that I have been attempting to hit with my last warp Can you see what I'm trying to do? It's supposed to be like a representation of the galaxy as viewed in transit at high spe...

I love Jacquard weaving. It's official. You'll probably notice an interesting wee effect there in the black areas of this cloth. The reason for this is that this cloth has 2 layers but 4 different wefts, meaning there's always 2 wefts floating in the middle of the cloth at any time. This is what allows me to weave 4 seperate colours across the width of the cloth. Which is pretty neat. Jacquard weaving is pretty neat, but it's difficult to wrap your head around it unless you start off simple. Luckily, I have a love of geometric patterns.    That's a wee taster of one of my coming final samples. I'm not shouting this stuff to the rooftops.  This is something I find pleasing. My sister's new puppy, Lenny. Thinks he's a draught excluder, currently here trying to get a rise out of my Eris

Did I mention I was making yarn? Probably, I know I've been wittering on about the twisting machine and the twist measuring machine lately. Well, here are my first proper results. The one on the right is called Stretch Starlight and is made with 97/3 merino/lycra with small pieces of English 56 thrown in and the one on the right is called Nebula, which has a greater amount of a longer staple woollen fibre of unknown origin attached to a regular worsted yarn. These yarns are not yet perfect, but I think I'm getting closer. I still have problems with the fibres not binding into the twist perfectly. Of course, the Boyd isn't actually designed in any way to bind fibre into a twist, but it's a wee hack I guess. How are these made? Well, these are what's called Siro yarns. What this means is they're folded yarns made of singles which are practically unspun. In effect this means that when you remove the folded twist what you're left with is roving. ...

Not much else to say. Sometimes you run out of heddles, or perhaps you have to add one after you're started warping due to a threading error, so here's how I do it.

I have been attempting to add flecks of colour to yarns by untwisting and then retwisting them. Here is a wee video of the machine I've been using. There is a good reason why what I'm trying to do isn't working, which I shall go into tomorrow. I'll have to make a video for that too. It involves the mechanical nature of the actual machine. I had it in my head that you could do both S and Z twist on it at the same time, but that is clearly impossible as all spinners spin in the same direction due to being driven by the same drive belt. I hope it's maybe possible to reverse the direction of the belt, but I doubt it, I think this is just an S-twister.

Hold onto your seatbelts, this episode is action packed.  There's Yarn! There's twist! There's measurement! Precision! Science! And Good Old-Fashioned Textile Testing! What more could you ask for? What's that I hear you say? An explanatory video of the Boyd yarn twisting machine? Well of course good people, that you shall also have! Right after this commercial, for science, precision and textile testing! This is the twist measurement machine This is where the twist is measured. You can widen the gap, but currently it is set at one inch. The twist comes up on this readout. First place one end of your yarn in this little pointed clamp, and fasten tightly. Then take the yarn through the other, open, clamp, over the little guide wheel and through the little eyelet. Now, to keep it taut, you attach a little weight. Bigger weights for heavier yarn, but this is a very light yarn, so we use a litt...