From right to left (click for big):
Class Band: inkle loom; 10 threads; crochet cotton #10
Silk Band: inkle loom; 40 threads; handspun silk, 40 wpi
Card woven band: card/tablet; 20 cards; crochet cotton #10
Category: Weave Page 31 of 34
As you know, I do a lot of spinning for the heck of spinning. Spinning without a project in mind. The only purpose is to slow my brain down and focus on the here and now. It’s great. It’s really helped me through some rough periods in the last few years.
For the most part, I have successfully used my hand spun yarn for knitting projects. But now, I’m playing with my yarns for other applications, and I’m finding the limitations of my hand spun. It may be time to revisit the mindless spinning thing.
Why?
Let’s start with tatting. My small bits of hand spun silk are pretty, but the “links” in the chain ply causes problems when creating the knots. Normal knots aren’t too bad, but it really causes problems when joining at picots or creating a circle. The links catch and it’s difficult to close the loops. I think the best plying method for tatting would be a plain old 2-ply thread.
I can also tell when I got a little lazy and used long draw instead of short forward draw for a true worsted yarn. Why is this point important? The slight halo of the silk also contribute to the problems. The fuzziness causes the yarn to stick to itself, which makes fixing problems difficult. Not unlike trying to frog a mohair project. True worsted yarn would smooth all the fibers down, and reduce the halo effect.
And then there’s this:
I got hooked on inkle loom weaving. This is a mini loom by Palmer Looms. The white band with the red center line is the sample I took in Sara Lamb‘s Inkle Weaving session at SOAR using #10 crochet cotton. The ball of yarn is what is on the inkle loom. It is hand spun silk, 2 ply, about 40 wpi.
Don’t let the pinkness fool you, the full length of the yarn ranges from peach to blue. I was rather disappointed at how long the repeats were when I was warping the inkle loom. I wanted stripes of colors.
But guess what? There were variations in all that pinkness. And it showed up as subtle stripes in the woven ribbon! I’m pretty happy with this. It’s a practice ribbon. And I can see this as a possible gift wrapping ribbon or a hair tie.
But what’s wrong with the yarn? It’s fuzzy. I know it doesn’t look like it, but it was spun using the long draw, and the slight halo makes the yarn stick together when you are trying to open the shed. It’s not too bad, but just takes a little more care and patience then when using mercerized cotton as we did in the Sara’s class.
Again, short forward draw for a true worsted yarn would solve this problem. And since I need so little yarn for this type of projects, attention span and stick-to-it-ness should not be a problem. So I say now. Let’s see how it works out in real life.
I also purchased a mini card/tablet loom from Palmer Looms. I’ll be trying my hand spun on that next.
I was chatting with a couple of girl friends over email about what size looms to buy. Since they both said that my rationale was helpful, I thought I’d post an excerpt here:
As for the 22″ vs. 25″ weaving width. I took a long hard look at the projects that I thought I was going to do. In the near future, I saw myself making mostly “simple” plain weave items, such as scarf/stoles. And because of my size, my ideal stole depth is around 20-22″.
I may want to have the occasional foray into lap blankets, place mats, table runners, or maybe even a small rug. But for lap blankets, 25″ width isn’t all that much anyway. You still have to seam. Or use a double weave to double the width of your loom. So, I didn’t see much of a difference between a 22″ and 25″.
I didn’t think I was going to go as far as making cloth for clothing (yet). I also remembered the kimono class that we took a couple of years ago. She said that the kimono were made in panels because the looms were 11-16″ wide (can’t remember, but it was small). And they were boxy because they maximized what they had without cutting. That created a whole new perspective for me. I started to think about all those sewing patterns. Each individual piece of the pattern is rarely wider 22″ — think about it, the bolt is usually 44″ wide, and you usually fold it in half to cut 2 of everything. Occasionally, you need to put something on the folded edge and create a wider piece. Most of the time, a seam at that location would not make a huge difference to the finished garment. Or, for those pieces, you can use the double weave technique again.
Again, I couldn’t see much of a difference between a 22″ and 25″ width loom.
So, there you have all of my justifications. The real ones are of course: (a) if I get a larger loom, I have to consider myself a “real weaver”, and (b) I don’t have the space for a larger loom, or any other loom, for that matter.
Huge news on this end. Today is my last day of employment. Yup. I quit. I’m going to take the rest of the year off, sail, play with fibers, travel, contemplate my navel. I’ll also spend some time to figure out what’s next for me. I still need to work, but I’m not sure that I want to continue to work in high tech.