Arithmetic as an art form!

I was given a lovely weaving book for my birthday, Designing woven fabrics by Janet Phillips and couldn't wait to get started. The designs in the book are based on  2/2 twill variations, of which there are many and are mostly  to be woven on a four shaft loom. Happening to have such a thing about me, what better I thought than to start to plan to weave Janet's multi section sample blanket in which the 2/2 twill weave structure is developed and explored.

This is where the arithmetic comes in. You can't plan a woven item with artistic ability alone because no matter how artistic you are or how much colour sense you have, you can't do it without a lot of arithmetic and I mean A LOT of arithmetic!

Janet's instructions for planning the warp for her sample blanket are very detailed and show all the threading plans, the sett, the  total number of threads and really she has done all the arithmetic. How simple it should have been. Just get the yarn, wind the warp and get it on the loom! Janet's done all the arithmetic, so I don't have to!

Well of course, like life, weaving isn't that simple! For a start, Janet's warp is 27 inches wide and my loom will only weave a width of 24 inches. Not to worry, I'll leave out one of the sections so my blanket will fit my loom. So now, the width is fine, but oh dear there are still 420 threads and I only have 400 heddles! Then, I can't find a yarn that is the right thickness and my yarn is a lot thinner than the one Janet uses, so I can't use her sett and will have to recalculate that as well!

So, I spent a merry (sic) afternoon with a pencil and a piece of paper designing my own sample blanket and doing my own arithmetic. My blanket has a sett of 32 ends per inch, has eight different threading patterns across the warp and still only uses 380 heddles! Feeling very proud of my efforts, I wound my warp carefully counting that I had the correct number of threads in each group. Double and triple checked them and got the warp ready to get onto the loom.

How is it then that threading my very last group through the heddles I find I'm four threads short! One sleepless night later, and deciding not to unwind the warp and add the additional threads in, I found another threading plan that used the number of threads available! Now to sley the reed, but again, getting 32 threads evenly through a 10 dent per inch reed defeated me as I got the division wrong. Now I have to sley the reed again!

Another book I was given for my birthday is called "Women's Work" by Elizabeth Wayland-Barber. This author is a very academic lady who has done a lot of research into the origins of textile crafts, particularly spinning and weaving and these are described in great detail. It's so humbling to think that even with all my modern equipment, I can't get my loom warped up in one go as so called "primitive" weavers could!

Anyway, I'ff off back to the loom to get the tying up done. Who knows what other mistakes will come to light! Exciting isn't it! Perhaps photos next post!

A New Shawl for a New Year

And so what have I been up to over Christmas while we have been holed up with the bad snow and with running noses and hacking coughs! Well, I decided that it would be a good idea to knit a silk shawl for Karen's 40 th birthday  which is not until 2012, but I wanted to give myself time! Having started this shawl though, I found I simply couldn't put it down and it has been finished in record time!      


Thanks go to my dear SIL for introducing me to the lifeline, without which there would have been a lot more frogging and frustration. This is so simple that I can't think why I didn't think of it myself. all you do is to thread a piece of waste yarn through the stitches after a pearl row. This means that if you drop a stitch, it can't go any further than the lifeline and is easy to pick up.

 These photos show the edging before and after blocking and now that it is blocked, I am quite pleased with it. Unfortunately, the nupps were not all as tidy as they might be. Silk yarn has no stretch and it was difficult to make the loops a consistent size and also get them large enough to ensure all the loops were caught on the peral row. In fact there were one or two which hadn't quite caught correctly and needed a bit of remedial stitching when blocking.

The question now is, do I fold it up and put it away for a year and a half, or do I claim it for myself and start wearing it and make another one for the special burthday present. Decisions so early in the new year!