Ecstatic practice

[vaneramos]

I have been weaving samples, a practice Deborah Chandler advocates in Learning to Weave. I haven't necessarily been following her exercises though.

Last week I found free software called WeaveDesign for creating weaving drafts. This allows me to design patterns along with the complicated charts for threading the heddles, tying up the harnesses and treadling the loom in order to weave those patterns. The mathematical part of my mind kicks in here. I love playing with this software. I came up with a design that looked like fun.

More than a year ago I bought some yarn to weave a scarf: a nice colourway of Noro Silk Garden with a complementary colour of Mission Falls Merino Superwash to use as the warp setting off the long colour gradations in the variegated Noro. I thought the newly invented pattern might work well for this. So I made a sample (the narrow one at the bottom) using other coloured leftover scraps of Noro and Mission Falls.

The exercise taught me a couple things. First, Mission Falls won't work for this project. Superwash merino has had most of the barbs removed from the fibre. It isn't grabby enough, so the weft packs very tightly. The fabric is almost too dense and stiff for a scarf, not what I had in mind. Second, my design was cool but also not suitable for this project. There is simply too much colour interest going on with the Noro so the pattern seems fussy. It would work much better with two solid contrasting colours in a denser fabric, perhaps a table runner.

I decided to switch to Cascade 220 for the warp, which is not superwash so the barbs will help keep the weave looser but it still feels nice against the skin. I also wanted to try reducing the warp ends per inch from 10 to 8. I only have a 10-dent reed and was afraid the irregular threading would produce an irregular fabric.

So I had to make another sample (top). The results were more satisfactory. The Cascade worked much better and I was able to weave a less dense fabric. The 8 EPI threading did not cause any apparent flaws. It's still very easy to beat it too hard, so I'll have to go carefully. I experimented with the same pattern (golden-brown shades in the middle) but found a much simpler diamond pattern (top middle royal blue) I can make with the same tie-up and simpler treadling. It will work much more nicely for this project.

I enjoy all this practice and experimentation. It's great experience to take an idea, weave something and see how it compares with what I expected. It takes relatively little time and material, and each time I warp the loom it seems less of a hurdle to pass. If I had just woven the scarf out of my head it would have been disappointing and less informative.

Last night at All Strung Out I picked a much different colour of Cascade to use for the warp, with help from Danny and the women at knit night. The weft will be Silk Garden #289 and the warp Cascade 220 9442, a little more daring than I originally had in mind. If I had the luxury of more yarn I'd do another sample to compare this with a more conservative colour for the warp, but what I have is what I've got. Time to stop happily obsessing and joyously dive in.

Here is another sample I made a few days ago. It's straight from Chandler's book, experimenting with variations on plain weave.