Feline approved

What you don't see in the picture is what they were doing just a few seconds before this photo was snapped. The camera never seems to be available when you need it, huh? Just seconds before they were acting as if the brown rug had catnip woven into it! They were rolling and stretching and rubbing their faces all over the nubby brown texture.

These are two more rugs for Christmas presents. I feel fairly safe posting these as the recipients are too little to be reading blogs. LOL

Recycle Weaving

A few months ago I was cleaning out closets with the intent to donate to Goodwill. A lot did go to Goodwill but some of the t-shirts and jeans were not Goodwill quality (rips, stains, spilled paint, etc) so I set them aside. I knew I could use them to make throw rugs. Around the same time I was creating my dye samples. I put aside the leftover dye for an upcoming guild dye day. When that day came, I grabbed a bunch of t-shirts and put the leftover dye to good use.



The beauty of this was the lack of precision. A drip here, a dribble there, a splash of this color, a squeeze of that color. I used up all of the excess dyes. The above photo shows all of the dyed t-shirts stacked up ready to go home. I forgot to get in-process photos. Oops. Took them home, tossed them in the washer and dryer and they're ready to be prepared for weaving.

I cut off the sleeves and the bottom hem. Then I cut the shirts into strips parallel to the bottom hem. I cut these strips 2" wide. You get some pretty long strips until you get to the chest section where the sleeves were but even those strips are useable. When I joined the strips to make my weft, I alternated a long and short strip so that the knots were fairly evenly spaced apart.

For the jeans, I used the fabric from the legs. I could have saved the pockets and waistbands for another project but really, I have enough stuff in my house and need to start purging. Jeans are always getting worn out so if I ever do desire to make a project using jean pockets, I'll just start saving then. The jean fabric, because it's considerably thicker, was cut at 1" widths.

For the warp, I used a Pepto Bismal pink 8/4 carpet warp. It coordinates perfectly with the t-shirts and even looks nice on the jean side. The design is reversible by using a double-weave technique. I made some other rugs last year and really like how thick they come out. This rug is coming out even thicker - must be the jeans. It's going to be so cushy under tiny tootsies. This one is a gift for one of my nieces.

How big is your stash?

In recent posts by Laura Fry, she talks about finishing projects that are using up her stash. If I was as prolific as she is, my stash would be gone after a few projects! Here's every piece of yarn I have:

What does your weaving stash look like?

Trouble in Mac-land

Weaving of the towels is nearly done. But I've run into a glitch with the shafts. It's not a new problem - I've experienced this on every warp with this loom. I'm hoping someone out there can help. To recap - this loom was previously owned by a local weaver who passed on. I suspect the loom was either never used or rarely used. I was given the original invoice - it was manufactured in 1990. If it was sitting idle - that's a lot of years of deferred maintenance.

The problem is that sometimes when a treadle is pushed, one of the shafts (it varies which specific one) that ISN'T supposed to lift will partially lift. I can hand push the offender down to where it belongs - it feels "tight" like it was squeezed by the surrounding shafts into lifting. In other words, it's definitely not a case of something catching and lifting it. It's probably best to show you.

This is what I should see.


The black bar in the background is the top of the shaft that's partially lifting.


When there's a sticky shaft, the shed looks like this. You can see strings from the stuck shaft hanging out there in the middle.


I suspect the loom needs some lubrication. When I first got this loom I asked about that. Some suggested WD40; others suggested actual oil; and one suggested paraffin. Since my loom sits over carpet, I went with paraffin. I suspect it didn't work so well. It's the metal parts that I suspect need some help; I'm not sure wax was the right choice. Or maybe I just didn't do it right.

I have both WD40 and oil. In fact, I have some spinning wheel oil in one of those long needle bottles. Which do I use? And where do I put it?

Wide Warp

The current project on the Macomber is a 40" wide warp of 5/2 cotton that will use UKI Bamboo (roughly 5/4) in the weft. They're intended to be beach towels for dh's co-worker. The pattern is a modified 5 shaft huck lace. I say modified because I had to put some of the threads from shaft 4 onto a spare shaft (in this case, shaft 6) because I knew I'd run out of heddles. I also put a plain weave selvage onto shafts 7 and 8.

One fear I had with this project was possibly having trouble with throwing a shuttle on such a wide warp. Luckily, I had treated myself to a Bluster Bay end feed shuttle at the recent CNCH conference. Before going to the conference, dh had given me $100 to treat myself. Oh boy, what a treat this pretty thing is!

The shuttle feels so incredibly soft - the craftsmanship is impeccable! And look at these selvages - they're perfect. Another benefit is that weaving goes uber-fast! I'm able to weave up a bobbin's worth in the same time it takes to wind both of the empty pirns I have for this shuttle.

Long Lost Bamboo Towels

This morning someone on the weaving at yahoogroups email list asked about weaving with bamboo as warp. Last Fall I did a series of huck towels in bamboo on my counterbalance. It was the last thing I wove on that loom before moving it to the garage for storage. (As much as I'd love to have two working floor looms available to use, there are three other people in this house and they deserve room to live too.) But a search for my post on these towels came up empty handed. I guess it was one of those things "I should write about" that never made it to "Publish Post". I'll have to fix that!

Here is a picture of 2 of the towels. The one on the left has been wet finished but not ironed. It does 'grow' a bit once it's ironed. The one to the right (and half of it is under the one on the left) has been turned sideways and is not yet wet finished.

I used UKI Bamboo (aka Bamboodle) from Village Spinning and Weaving as warp and weft. It's quite thick - listed as a 5.24/4 yarn. I sleyed 16 inches set it at 12 epi. My notes say the warp was 3 yards long but it's likely a bit longer than that - rounding up is a good thing to do with warps so that I have enough room to do some samples. My plan was for 4 towels at 22" per towel plus loom waste. Turns out I got 5 towels out of the warp.

The pattern is a traditional huck lace from Davison's "A Handweaver's Pattern Book" on page 94. I played with the pattern and found I could get a plain weave selvage. I also discovered I could change up the huck pattern by changing the treadling. This was a welcome discovery because it meant I could make every towel a bit different.

So, for the final stats:
on loom: 16" wide by about 22" long (depends on the pattern I used)
off loom: 13" wide by 20" long (for one specifically)
wet finished and ironed: 11.5" wide by 14.5" to 15.5" long

The concerned individual wrote to the group worried about abrasion - would commercially spun bamboo hold up as a warp. My counterbalance loom has wire heddles and in the past has shredded novelty, handspun yarns. Thankfully the commercially spun bamboo was completely unfazed. So yes, bamboo works very well as a warp.

Honeycomb fabric

Over the holidays, I found a design in Laura Fry's "Magic in the Water" book that I want to do. Project 5 - cotton chenille jacket. I will use fine bamboo yarn and cotton chenille. However, there's been a lot of buzz on the weaving at yahoogroups list about how difficult chenille can be so I was hesitant. Also, it's a structure I haven't worked with before, so I thought it might be a good idea to use a shorter warp as a test. Then I ran across a honeycomb fabric project in "The Best of Weavers: Fabrics that Go Bump" and realized the structures are the same, just implemented a bit differently. One uses cotton chenille yarn and the other uses fabric strips. So gave it a try.

From this....

To this...

The fabric hasn't been wet finished yet. It'll probably pull up even more afterwards.

Likes: I love the texture this fabric has as a result of the draft. I like how it tones down the brightness of the fabric but still is quite colorful.

Dislikes: I feel like I wasted my precious bamboo yarn. This project would have been just as nice with a cotton yarn. I should have gone with the chenille instead of the fabric strips for this warp.

I'm not sure how I'll use the fabric. It's almost too heavy to be used in a garment. If the white yarn were cotton, I'd jump at turning it into a bag but the fact that it's bamboo is leaving me hesitant. Not that I don't think it'll hold up - just that it feels like I'm wasting it.

We learn by doing. I did. And I learned.

Macomber loom tool shelf or....

cat perch?




This is Luke. He's my shadow. Where ever I go, he follows. And now, if I'm working at the loom, he's up in the tool shelf. It used to be that he'd jump into the tool shelf, sit for a few minutes, and then move to the back of the nearby couch. Given that it's a bit colder these days, I wondered if putting a pillow in there would encourage him to stay and keep me company. It worked!



The painted warp is coming along nicely. I really like the sage green weft in there. The pattern is a 3/1 twill and lifting 3 shafts at a time. Lifting 3 Macomber shafts isn't so bad. Although, I can see how lifting 8 (once I put more shafts in) might result in a true workout. Frankly, I'd rather workout on my loom than some gym's common-use stairmaster or treadmill. Not that I work out, but if I did....

Holiday Humor

As many of you do, I also read quite a few other blogs. I use Technorati to keep track of my favorites. For the most part, it sorts them by most recently posted.

Today I found this very funny rendition of The Twelve Days of Christmas by way of Sara Lamb's blog. It's done by Bonnie Tarsus, a well-known weaver in Seattle.

I could *so* relate.

Painted Warp

I bought this painted warp from Margaret at Heritage Yarns. The colorway is called Tallahatchee Bridge in 80%/20% rayon silk. I've mixed in stripes of unmercerized cotton in beige and sage green. Under tension, the rayon is a thinner yarn than the cotton but hopefully it will fill back out after wet finishing. I've used another of these painted warps for a shawl and the yarn did do that afterwards. For the warp, I used two turns of the skein starting with the pink. I wish now the ends were either the grey or the olive green as I really like the pink and it's going to end up being thrums. This yardage is going to be part of a jacket for me.

But before I can get started, I have to sample the weft colors. The first (closest to the bottom but not the white - that's toilet paper to spread the warp) is the sage green cotton I used in the warp stripes. It's plain weave. The next is the beige cotton from the stripes in a 3/1 twill. It's okay but I think the colors in the painted warp get lost. Next is the sage green cotton again but in the same twill. I do like that. The last one is a thin white bamboo. I don't recall the size but it's 4000 ypp (yes, quite thin). And again, I think the painted warp gets lost. I could dye the bamboo but that takes time and I really would like to get this going. Besides, the bamboo would make a thinner fabric than the cotton so I'm sticking with the sage green cotton.

You may have noticed the weft isn't perfectly straight from left to right. That's because the tension in the painted rayon/silk is ever-so-slightly different from the tension in the cotton. The rayon/silk stretches more than the cotton. When I beamed it, I tensioned the rayon/silk on it's own weight in hopes it would stretch to its own maximum. This warp may have been a candidate for double-beaming but I don't have a second beam on this loom. Frankly, even if I did, I doubt that I would have been able to get the two tensions any closer than this - they really do feel very much the same. I'm crossing fingers that the wonkiness will disappear in the wet finishing. And since the weft won't be striped, the waves should disappear into the cloth.

Two-sided Rag Rug

Progress on the rag rug found in the November/December 2007 Handweaving Magazine is slow-going. I think winding pirns is so much faster than cutting fabric strips, tapering the ends, and winding onto ski shuttles. And the weaving itself is also slower. I'm under the impression that the strips shouldn't have a twist in them as they lie in the shed. However today, I'm going to experiment with not worrying about it and seeing if it makes a significant difference in the finished weaving. If not, maybe ignoring twists will help speed up the process.

I do like this results of this project. Reversible things always appeal to me. Although in this case, the rug is going to be given to some friends of ours as a thank you gift.

Macomber Update

Thanks to Melodi Hackett of Maine and everyone on the yahoogroups weaving email list who answered my questions in the previous post!

The large silver thing in the first photo indeed is used with the black handle. It's used to push down a lamm while you are setting the tie-up. The smaller of the pins (in the photo with the silver bar) is used to hook the black handle in the down position so that you can use both hands for the tie-up process. Here's what it looks like:

I'm told the same shorter pins are also used in the old lamms for tie-up. My loom must be the newer version because there are no holes in them to insert the shorter pins.

The spring-string-chain found at the back of the loom near the warp beam is to act as a brake when the ratchet system is released for advancing the warp. Without it, the warp beam will spin like the dickens once tension is released. I'm really glad I found out about this before starting my first project.

The first project is in progress! I measured out the warp and have it sleyed in the reed. I spent time last night moving the heddles and will finish dressing the loom today. I'm going to take a stab at that reversible rag rug in the latest Handwoven magazine. It only requires 4 harnesses in a straight draw but the simplicity will allow me to become familiar with this new loom. I can tackle an 8 harness project next time!

Macomber Mysteries

A week ago I bought my dream loom. It's a 45" Macomber 16 harness frame with 8 harnesses. The perfect width (not too big, not too narrow). The perfect number of harnesses. And room to expand should I outgrow 8.

Unfortunately, Macomber doesn't have much in the way of documentation. I have the catalogs the original owner received. And lovely catalogs they are! Someone spent a lot of time and energy creating such beautiful marketing literature. I, and probably many other Macomber owners, wish they had put the same energy into providing supporting documentation. So far, I haven't even found someone with a mechanical assembly drawing.

So I come to the community of Macomber owners with some questions. I am fairly mechanically inclined and can figure out most things on my own. I also have some experience with looms (I own 5 not counting the Mac - 2 tables, a floor, and 2 rigid heddles). Sometimes, stuff just plain stumps you.

First, what are these parts?

The middle piece is used to connect the treadle to a shaft. I figured that one out because the previous owner left one still attached. I have lots of those which I assume you need to be able to set up complicated tie-ups. But I haven't a clue about the smaller wire-like piece. There are exactly 10 of those. Coincidentally, the loom has 10 treadles.

Next, what does this lever do?

The photos were taken from the back of loom. I think the black lever is used in conjuction with the big silver hunk of metal in the first picture. Threading the black handle into the slot and lining it up over part of the jack mechanism makes it possible to push down on a single shaft from the front of the loom. Is that how this is to be used? Why would you use something like that?

Last question: what is this for? And where should it be attached?

It hangs off the back beam near the warp beam. It consists of a small spring, some thin rope, and a chain at the end. I know it's not the warp beam brake because there's a ratchet contraption on the other end of the warp beam.

I hope someone can help!

Thrums

There's always warp waste in weaving. The only way to use nearly 100% is to use a dummy warp for tieing on to the warping beam. In September, I wove a shawl using a painted warp and solid-color rayon for weft. It came out beautiful largely in part to the painted warp. So when I had to cut off the ends of the beautiful painted warp, I simply had to save them.

Today after seeing an innovative idea of rug weaving, I tied them together end to end, wound it on a bobbin, and started weaving.



I've used three components in this fabric: the thrums, medium brown rayon yarn, and half-inch strips of fabric. Each component gets a few shuttle passes and then I move to the next one.

What will I do with the fabric? I don't know. It hasn't told me yet.

Finished Projects

In an effort to start the new year off right, I've finished two projects I started last year. The first are the felted slippers I mentioned in a previous post. For the felting process, I washed them in our washing machine with a load of clothes using hot water. Because we have a front loading washing machine, things don't usually felt well so I took them out and hand felted them some more in the sink. Then they were popped into the dryer for the final step. I'm quite pleased with the felting and fit results, although admit they'd work better on someone's feet who lives in a fully carpetted home. I find they're a bit too slippery for our linoleum and wood floors. These were made using handspun Lincoln wool.


My second completed project is one I'm quite proud of. It is a dressy jacket made using dupioni silk and my hand-spun, handwoven yardage. The story of the woven yardage: I bought some black alpaca roving while at our very first alpaca show in Southern California around Fall 2003. We weren't showing - we were just interested in alpacas. I took home the roving and spun it but wanting to make it go as far as possible, I plied it with an Ashland Bay wool roving in fall colors. Beautiful yarn! In April 2004, I entered that yarn into a fiber arts competition at the Monterey Pronk, an alpaca show in Monterey California. It won a blue ribbon! The yarn then sat in my stash for a while as I tried to figure out what I wanted to do with it. Every spinner out there knows what I'm talking about - we have many yarns that sit until they "call to us". Well this one spoke to me when I had a black cotton yarn I had put on the loom to "play" with. That warp's purpose was specifically so I could experiment with different treadling and different tie-ups. But after I was "played" out, I found I had lots of warp left over. In a simple twill, I wove the 48" of fabric.

Back to "let it sit until it calls to me". In September 2005, I pulled out my pattern stash. I wanted to use the fabric to make a vest but didn't find any patterns I liked. Instead this dress jacket called to me. I made a "muslin" using the pattern pieces, adjusted it to fit me, cut the pieces apart to accomodate the handwoven fabric width and made my jacket. It helps that I've got a lot of pattern drafting experience (see the link for Kings and Sages Apparel, my line of boy's clothing) but it really was quite easy. My next project is a black corduory winter (well, California winter) jacket using some of my other handwoven stash.

Close-up of woven fabric:

Major Update

Life has been quite demanding these past 6+ months. Here's a quick synopsis:

North Fork House and Land
Right around my last post we started having trouble with the tenants/former owners of the North Fork house. They stopped paying rent and by mid-March, I had to start eviction proceedings. We finally got possession of the house in late May. But oh my, what a mess! Nine trips to the dump later (the trailer we used was 10' by 5' by 6' and we piled it higher than the 6' walls) and we have a house we can start remodeling. Anyone know of a way to clean 30 years of smoker's soot from a pine tongue-in-grove 21 foot high vaulted ceiling?

On the herd front...
We were expecting two crias this summer - one from our own female Melody, and one from a female we don't own but chose the stud for breeding. Melody graced us with a beautiful white female cria on June 26th. We named her Aria to start us off with our alphabetical naming tradition. Sadly, Aria only lived 28 days. The necropsy showed her intestines were just not working and any hay she ingested sat in C1 (the first stomach) fermenting to the point it released toxins which shut her system down. So $2908.00 later we are back to square one. The second female, Halley, slipped her pregnancy at some point because a blood test taken a month before her due date came back negative (she's now months beyond her due date). The stud we chose to use with Halley died about 2 weeks ago so we can't try that match again.

After all that's happened this summer, if I was in this business for breeding, I'd have thrown in the towel. As much as I love the animals, this was just a heartbreaking summer. Thankfully, I also love alpaca fiber and thoroughly enjoy spinning, weaving, and felting. Running a fiber ranch of males is looking more and more appealing. But we're not quitters, so it's off to Derwydd Alpacas to breed Melody and get ready for Round 2 next summer.

Fiber Arts Competitions
My daughter and I both entered things in competitions the last few months and Dana even competed on several Sheep to Shawl teams.

The first judged event was in April at Monterey Pronk. My woven suri scarf won a first place! Every yarn I entered also got a ribbon. Dana entered a knitted pencil holder necklace and got first place. Hers was the only entry in the kids category and she said she wishes more kids would enter so it would feel like a real win. Her lace weight suri yarn competed with the adults and she got second, only because she didn't set the twist. (DH chided me for not doing it for her.) The judge was very impressed that a 10 year old spun such fine yarn.

The second competition was the Alameda County Fair. The same woven suri scarf got third - and when I saw what got first and second, I understood why. First and second were very complicated weaves that must have been woven on 16+ heddle looms. They were very pretty and very well done. Dana's pencil holder necklace got second - we never did find first place (They display entries by themes, not by category.) Her yarn got third - again competing against adults. Pretty awesome!

The Alameda County Fair is where one of the sheep to shawl competitions Dana participated in was held. She was on a kid's team against four adult teams. They placed third!! Dana will get to keep the shawl they made - for now all of the shawls are making the rounds of the guilds.

Dixon Lambtown (July 30th) was Dana's second sheep to shawl competition this summer. The same kids from Alameda participated along with two adult teams. This time they came in second!! The organizers of this event solicit prize donations from the vendors. All of the kids were awed with the prize table and took home oodles of goodies.

Weaving: making something from nothing

A few weeks ago I drove to Southern California to pick up a LeClerc floor loom I bought through eBay. Thankfully, we have friends who live in Porterville, a town about halfway between where we live and where the loom was located. Our friends kindly offered to be a waypoint for me and the kids on this excursion. Here's my new treasure! I've even got a bit of my own weaving showing on it.



Here's a close-up of the weaving. I unrolled it off the front beam so that you could see more of it than is pictured above.



Now, lest you think I've been rather industrious since the arrival of the loom, let me say that the loom came warped with some-once-white cotton string. The previous owner had started a project but never finished it. I rolled the old project onto the front beam and started my own project using some of my icky* handwoven yarn. For yarn I considered garbage, it worked up quite nicely. Maybe if I full it (felt the fibers with soap and gentle agitation) the remaining paint flecks will come out and it'll make a nice placemat.

*"icky" because I dyed a wool roving using dyes that mostly sat on top of the fiber. It was an experiment gone bad. When I spun the roving, I got tons of paint flakes all over me. But could I throw away the yarn or roving? Of course not. Now I'm glad I didn't.

Location Update
As you know, we don't have a ranch of our own yet. We have been taking time this year to scout out various locations. To make a long story short (and I'll elaborate on it in a later post), we're in escrow on a nice 11 acre property in North Fork, California. We're supposed to close escrow tomorrow. I'm a firm believer in "nothing is yours until the deal is done" and there is one glitch that cropped up on Monday so who knows what will happen in the next 48 hours. Cross your fingers for us. I'll post more as soon as the title is (or isn't) in our hands. For now, I'm going back to weaving - it's been a huge stess reliever for me this week.

Fiber Competitions

My 9 year old daughter, Dana, participated in fiber-related competition this weekend. She was a member of a kids team in a Sheep to Shawl contest. That's where a team of 5-8 people (all kids in her case) take a clean sheep's fleece, card it, spin it, and then weave it on a pre-warped loom. Because their team was so young, they were allowed to weave a narrower piece. So I guess you could say they did a "Sheep To Scarf". The competition was held at the Alameda County Fair on Sunday.

There were a total of 6 teams: 4 womens teams, 1 kids team and 1 mens team.

Here's the scarf they did lying on the edge of a white table.


The warp was a burgundy wool along with a few grey strands of yarn. The weft, which is what was spun during the competition, was a grey Romney fleece.

The Results:
the kid's team tied for 3rd!! They were estatic!!

Welcome!

Humming Hearts Ranch is the our dream for the future. My husband and I are in the planning stages to escape the big city rat race of Silicon Valley to the quiet peace of an alpaca ranch. Perhaps we'll even have chickens (for fresh eggs - yum!) or sheep (to feed my wool habit) or angora goats (again, to feed my fiber needs).

Currently, the only decisions we've made include 1)we will start an alpaca business this year and 2)we would like to own property for said ranch by Summer 2009. We don't know where we'll be doing this ranch so we're spending about one weekend a month scouting out various parts of California. We are planning on selling our (IMO overpriced, thanks to the Silicon Valley real estate market) 4 bedroom / 2.5 bath 2186 sf house after we decide on a locale. In the meantime, we will buy 2 females a year and breed them so that we may grow our herd. All of our animals will be agisted in Hollister, CA at Foothill Llama and Alpaca Ranch. More about Foothill later.


Oh, there has been one additional decision: the name of our ranch! As I mentioned earlier in this post, we are Humming Hearts Ranch. Why that name? Well, you know how sheep "baa" and goats "bleat"? Alpacas "hum." And even your heart will hum when you see our alpacas.

Happy Day to You!
Kimberly