Rainy Day Warps

Well, I spent most of this afternoon, either oiling the loom and smashing my watch in the process.  *Note to self, do not wear a badly fitting loose watch while crawling around the floor under peddles, you may slip and smash the watch face.  Since I never really like that five euro watch anyway, it was only a problem in that it also stopped running.  So I may have to retrieve one of the missing alarm clocks from the guys, until I can find another cheap one.  I'm very hard on watches so buying a good one is hardly to the point.

Anyway, todays weather was terrible, I mean even by Irish standards.  Lashing, cold rain making it a good day to be inside the weaving room.  I turned on the heat for the first time this Summer to keep the place dry and it was the other reason I oiled the loom down with olive oil.  Doing so every few weeks is a good idea anyway, but in this climate mold can form even on wood, so I wanted to keep it oiled if I can't keep it totally dry.

Meanwhile, I rushed through the Oseberg shawl because the couple I have had a year to make shawls for is getting married in two weeks!  Time flies when your doing other projects, I don't have to have them done by the wedding but I would like to try.  At the very least a picture of the work in progress if the family jewelry business gets too heavy a work load for perfection.

I have the nice royal blue yarn that I tried first to knit into a lace Faro style shawl as shown in yesterdays post, only this one was a modern design with a fancy lace border which try as I might, I could not figure out.  I suspect the book and not me after many wasted hours of trying.  Then I when the couple saw  my brown shawl they loved it.  Problem solved save for a few details.

The royal blue yearn is not as heavy as the shawl, but heavier than most of what I have.  I have learned the bride likes darker blues best but is happy with royal blue.  So, I am making the warp out of my usual weaving size yarn in dark black and going to do a "weft faced" weave which will mostly show the blue and the black as a highlight in the back.  Once again, I can only do the wide shawls in plain weave, so the shawl will be very loose.  To make it a bit tighter I changed to a 15 per inch dent reed, which when used as double cloth will give about 7 warps to the inch.  Pretty loose but hopefully lovely in a shawl.

The uncertainty factor is one reason I did not do what most weavers would probably have done, which was to combine both shawls on one warp.  Instead, I'm doing them one at a time which means more time wasted warping, but also less wastage if the results just don't work out or are too loose.  I think they will be fine, but I want to be careful just in case.  The groom is happy with blue, black or gray so if I run out of the blue yarn (of which I am pretty sure there is enough for one shawl) so I'm covered there.  I can always do his as a mix of black and gray plain weave.  Meanwhile, one item at a time...

So, despite being very careful I still ended up with a few more warp threads than I wanted, I doubled the edges to make them stronger and then chained up the last ones, I'll just have to pull them out while I warp the loom which will hopefully be tomorrow.

Tonight I managed to get everything through the reed, for weavers who know what I'm talking about, I warp front to back.  That's backwards from the more usual way but is easier if you are warping by yourself.  In fact, I learned this from the book Warping All by Yourself  by Gay Garrett, now out of print but worth looking for if you want to save your back and that of your friends.

The photo from the front covers shows what I was doing tonight after I counted out the warp.  Tomorrow I'll be sticking the threads through the headdles which thankfully for this project is an easy pattern of 4,3,2,1.  There are lots of complicated ones, but plain weave is pretty easy.

Anyway, that was enough accomplished for one day, I'll leave everyone with a photo not of what I'm working on now but on previous experiments.  This is an example of such a more complicated pattern woven for a 1480's table runner.  By the high middle ages, people were just starting to decorate their tables with more than white linen in Northern Europe.  This is a very old pattern and may even go back to the Roman period but can be documented to the High Middle Ages.  It looks like tiny flowers done this way and the use of metallic threads make it look very posh, which was the idea since the person it was a gift for has a "persona" of very high status.

Until next time, may your threads not tangle, at least not unless you want them too!