Backstrap with Laverne: Warps #3-6

I was privileged over the last two days to take a beginning backstrap weaving class with Laverne Waddington at the delightful and well-stocked Sheep and Shawl in South Deerfield, Massachusetts.  It was wonderful! My brain is so full, I can't be terribly articulate, but I'll say this:  Take a class from Laverne. Just do it.

Over the two days, we worked on four warps:

From left to right: The first warp was already prepared for us by Laverne. The photo shows both ends of the warp.  This warp was just to get us used to working the loom and to accustom our fingers to the process.  The left-hand side is my first end; the right-hand end is after we turned the warp to the other end.  I improved!

We wound the second warp, the brown and orange one, in class and used it to practice simple, 6-end pickup patterns. The photo shows the back of the band; can you see where I wrapped the warp from side to side?  Oops.

At the end of day one, we practiced making a warp again and too the warp home to work on.  I only got a little ways along, just playing with pickup patterns, but I will finish this off.  I plan to finish all of these warps, just for the practice.

On day 2, we wound a wider warp and learned to make heddles over a stick.  Then we practiced two supplementary weft techniques.  For the first one, the extra weft goes all the way from one side of the band to other.  I did the blue and (incomplete) red motifs that way; you can see how I didn't crowd the white warps closely enough to really hide the colored weft.  The second weft technique just inlays the weft from side to side of the motif, with the turning of the weft forming a narrow line up the sides of the motif. Mine were in copper and just a little wonky.

I am so pleased with everything I learned! I'm going to practice a lot more, just to cement all these techniques in my brain, so expect to see lots of little bands in the months to come.  Someday, I aspire to weave something like this, one of Laverne's many, many samples she brought to show us:

Fantastic, isn't it? I might turn out to be a bag lady after all.

Outside Me

I've been thinking about why I'm often dissatisfied with my weaving projects.  I don't mean dissatisfied with the resulting product, although that's sometimes true, but rather that I'm uninspired or uninterested in what I've made.  It doesn't lead to further work in that vein, or not often, at any rate.

Why is that?  Well, among many contributing factors is this: Often what I weave is driven by something outside of me.  I take a class and I have homework or I want to finish up something started in class.  I want to weave a present for someone, a present designed to fit their preferences, not mine.  I want to use up my capacious stash, rather than buy more.

Now, all of these are perfectly good reasons to weave something, and in fact may push me outside my comfort zone.  But where are the projects I weave because I want to explore something?  They don't come along often, but I think I need to make more time for them, even if it does mean my niece doesn't get a handwoven linen tablecloth as a wedding present.  (She may not even want one, for all I know.)

So, here's a project that I'm making just for me.

Let's call it Warp Number Zero, because it's off the loom, but quite recently.  Handspun wools, blended with silk, mohair, alpaca, Angelina, and who knows what. I forget how many different fibers - perhaps 6 commercial batts, plus 2 yarns that I spun some time ago, plus 4 or 5 batts I blended just for this.  The mixture of yarns and fibers yielded a slight seersuckering, but overall I adore this. Plainweave, warp-faced, weft is commercial 16/2 blue-violet cotton.  Thoroughly machine-washed and mostly dried, then pressed through a damp press cloth and dried flat the rest of the way.  About 15 inches wide in the reed, sett 40 epi, warp was 8 yards long.  Destined for, and inspired by, clearly, a Sara Lamb-type kimono.  I still need to spin and weave a band for the front opening.  That will be warp #3 or 4 or so, depending on when I finish the spinning.

What I like and don't like, so far: This fabric has a lovely hand - light and drapy, yet with substance. I like very much the wash and contrasts of colors across the width, which is not conveyed well by my lousy photography. There is one spot where I'd prefer a better blending effect, but it barely bothers me. I can live with the seersuckering, but I'm already spinning for an all-BFL fabric, which probably won't seersucker as much (but who knows). I like the complexity of colors within even just one of the yarns I spun for this, complexity resulting from hand-painted or hand-carded fiber (and not carded particularly evenly). I am interested in spinning and weaving more complex yarns like these, and I need to learn more about how a particular pattern of painting will spin up.  Ditto for the many different ways to spin a single hand-painted braid.

I'll have more to say about this fabric when it's sewn up and has been worn for a while.  I'm hoping to finish the kimono by New Year's or thereabouts.

Reset

There's something about a vacation that makes me think about changing up my life.  I'm old enough now that I've given up on the get more exercise/eat better/go to museums/lose weight/travel more sorts of changes, because changing habits is hard and I'm lazy, but this time I thought it might amuse you to know I'm planning to track my weaving progress over the next 100 warps.

It's all Devin's and Sara's fault. Well, Devin's fault, really, as he has just been able to move the floor loom he bought when he was 13(!) into his new house and, in the resulting fog of weaving fumes, has committed to weaving 100 warps using a certain twill he loves.  All in handspun wool, if I remember correctly.

Now, as should be apparent, I am ever so much more sane than Devin and so I am not committing to weaving 100 warps of any one thing, unless you count "what interests me" as one thing.  I'm firmly into the beginning-intermediate stage of weaving (emphasis on beginning), so I have heaps and heaps of weaving things to learn and try and be seduced by.

If I'm committing to anything right now, it's to learning these two skills:  discipline and patience.  See where I wrote changing habits is hard and I'm lazy up there in the first paragraph?  Yep, I need to work on discipline.  Discipline to stick to a worthwhile project for the months, perhaps a year or two, that it takes to accomplish something I'm satisfied with.  And then, of course, enough patience to have that kind of discipline.

Enough words.  Time for pretty pictures.  Here's warp #1: warp-dominant plainweave in odds and ends of wool around Harrisville Shetland weight, woven off with wicked skinny purple wool (oh, look, I'm too lazy to go look at the cone for the actual size).

Eight yards of warp, about 34 inches wide. Perhaps three yards are woven, so far? I put this on the 4-shaft Purrington late last winter, when my brain was fried by trying to understand everything Laurie Autio is teaching us in Year One of her Explorations in Advanced Weaving class. I needed simplicity. No particular finished project in mind, although it would make a nice jacket or skirt, if it ever gets woven off.

There are other looms with warps on them, but this is enough for now.

Days 121-122

Mindless knitting.  Ordered indigo.  Procrastinated on weaving homework, but realized I have just about a month left to weave 2.8 projects and wash/press/hem/finish all 6.  Oopsie.

I'm also getting a little bored with this format.  I shall think about that.

Day 120

Started Runner #4 and finally got back to spinning the Enchanted Knoll batts.

Oh, and bought a fox, because everyone needs a fox in their yard.

Day 119

Did I do anything fibery today?  Hmm...Oh!  I washed the first two runners.  They came out great.  They still need pressing and hemming, though.  In other news, a four-hour stroll through the Oxbow National Wildlife Refuge with a bunch of friends was fantastic - lots of dragonflies and butterflies, birds and turtles.  Ice cream after, of course, and then a three-hour nap to cover from the effects of sun and that much walking.  Life may shift from the fiber focus of winter to the garden and walking focus of summer, and that's OK by me.

Day 118

Wove off runner #3, and a little mindless knitting.

Day 117

A little mindless knitting.  Did I work on runner #2 this morning?  I don't know; this morning was a long time ago.

Day 116

Working on runner #2.

Day 115

Not in the mood.  Too much grown-up-ing today.

Day 114

I finished-finished Stopover today.  Blocked and everything.

No weaving this weekend.  I should have, but there was lots of gardening and a bit of hiking and I'm pooped, plus the tendon on the back of my right hand is protesting, so I'm resting it.  I think it was all the compost I moved.  Which isn't all the compost I need to move.  Ah, spring - the days are longer and the to-do list lengthens even faster.

Day 113

I had to make a run to Webs today.  I'm running out of the cranberry weft for the deflected doubleweave warp, and this is the last Saturday I have free till mid-June, which is just a little too late.  So, now I have more cranberry and more gold, too, for good measure, just in case, and, oh, six other colors of 5/2 cotton to play with on this warp.  I better dream up some more projects with 5/2 cotton.

Tonight, I finished knitting Stopover.  I still have all the ends to weave in, and the damned grafting in the armpits, but DONE.  It fits, too.

Day 112

Took yesterday off.  So to speak.

Tonight, I worked up the design for the second DDW runner and started knitting the yoke on Stopover.

Day 110

A little mindless knitting.  Both too tired and too wired to weave - too many ideas floating around in my head.

Day 109

Finished weaving the first of six DDW projects on the red/gold/silver warp.  That's good.

Day 108

Weaving the first runner on the deflected doubleweave warp.  It's nice enough, but I'm both anxious and bored by it.

And then to Pat's in the afternoon for lamb-watching.

Day 107

Not a thing.  No knitting, no spinning, no weaving.

Unless you count re-reading Twyla Tharp's The Creative Habit. Or all the looking at patterns in the woods and a lovely brook as I took a walk with friends today.

That was enough.

Day 106

Iceland comes to the rescue!  I ran out of the main color for my Stopover pullover (long story).  I ordered a skein from Webs; they sent the wrong color (close, but not).  So I ordered a skein from Iceland, but enough for yet another Lettlopi sweater in a different design.  The skein (in the right dyelot!) arrived today, so I knit with it tonight.

Plus getting organized for the first runner on the deflected doubleweave warp and a little truly mindless knitting on Lichen.

Day 105

More mindless knitting.

Day 104

Oof.  One conference call and three intense meetings at work today, and I have no brain left.  So, tonight there was mindless knitting.  Shortly, there may be mindless sleeping.