Nearly a month gone by

Time seems to fly away. I have finished the warp on the Magic Dobby and the loom is back with its rightful owner. It was a great way to find out how this dobby loom is actually weaving. After the initial doubts I really began to like the loom. You have to compare it really with a table loom that has the advantage of the dobby.

As you can see, it fits neatly in one piece into the boot of the car.

With a width of 70 cm it gives a lot of options for weaving. So, who knows what the future brings  regarding getting my own dobby :-)

I will try and get some photos of the finished warp.

With the last 2 meters of the warp I wove a scarf as I had done enough sampling after 4 meters for that moment. I'm now thinking about my next warp. I have some lovely silk that I dyed last year at Summer School. I also have some Tencel so might combine the 2 for a nice scarf. Having woven lots of samples I need to get a real project going with lots of colour.

I'm getting over a week of having the grandchildren here last week, one after the other. That was a great idea not to have them here at the same time. This way we could give all our attention to the one that was staying.
First it was our 5 year old grandson. I took him to the Natural History Museum.

He enjoyed it very much. We also went to this museum, great fun, specially as they give a very good tour of the museum where you can hear and see the museum pieces in action. He is a very active boy, so it was nice when he went home again after having had 4 lovely days together.
We had a break of 2 nights before our 3 year old granddaughter came to stay. It was her very first time away from home for the night. After the initial shock of realizing that she really was away from home on her own she was fine. I also took her to a museum here.

We had a great time together the days she was here.

I just have to share this with you: Weave!
Do have a look, it is really worth watching. What a great project of 12 weavers.
More on it at Alice Schlein's blog.

Another sample of curves

I'm still playing with my warp. I like to share one sample showing the difference in treadling in the same tie-up.

Here is the draft made in Fiberworks. I've added numbers 1 to 4 in so that I can show the different parts of this sample in photos below. Numbers 1 and 3 are their opposites, number 1 is woven from 1 to 24 (to the right) and number 3 is woven from 24 to 1 (to the left).
Numbers 2 and 4 are woven zigzag.
Number 2 is a zigzag from left to right and back again (24 to 1 to 24 to 1) but in number 4 the zigzags goes halfway, turning at 12.
I hope the drawing makes it easier to understand.
I like how part 4 has come out.

This is the woven sample, number 1 at bottom and 4 at the top. And I've cut them in parts to better show the differences (I hope)

Part 1 and 3:

Part 2 and 4:

The last photo is part 4, where the zigzag went halfway (or broken) like this:

You can see that the figures are different from part 3 where the zigzag went from left to right and back again like this:

The tie-up looks like this:

It is fun to discover that you can have long floats in the weaving and that it is ok! I still have some warp left to go on playing.

Some more weaving.... this time curves

Now, when was it that I last was weaving I wonder.
I still have more of this warp on the loom. Since that post I have woven more samples, one I like is this one:

It was a long pattern to weave and I was short of the peg bars, so I just changed the pegs after 40 wefts. I think I had to change about 7 times to get the above woven. But I wanted to see how this design came out in weaving.

But now I'm weaving curves! Before today I just could not get the design right, far to long the floats were, but today it just went fine. Hurray!

First I used the same weft yarn that I have been using with this warp so far, very much the same thickness as the warp. Next, I used a much thinner yarn, and last a cotton chenille yarn that is much thicker than the warp yarn. Here is the sample with a repeat of 3 for each weft yarn:

And the back looks like this:

This last photo was guess work as I could not see what I was doing. But you can see the difference between front and back. Once the warp is of the loom there should be better pictures but I could not wait to see how the back looks.

Next on the list is play backwards and forward with the weft as I've now woven straight 1-24 times 3.
Something like this:

Blackbird (and cat)

I came across this lovely blackbird made out of inner bicycle tubing.

Scruffy had to have a look too.

Handmade by someone, I really like this bird.

New Designers 2010

Last Friday I went to New Designers in London. I had never been before and it was amazing to see so much young talent in one place. One thing that struck me was that Surface Design was very popular. As a weaver I was looking out for the weaving on show and was not disappointed. I did not have a lot of time to look around and it was very very hot there, so I might have missed part of it but what I saw was good. I saw most weaving at the stands of Farnham University for the Creative Arts, Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design and Loughborough University. Bradford HNC Fashion and Textiles Design students were also able to participate for the first time here, not setting a precedent for next year as there is not going to be a next year!! This very popular 2 year part time course has stopped mainly due to financing. It was nice to meet up with some of the students. At the Bradford BA stand I saw a familiar face. Graham was the technician in the weaving shed at Bradford when I went there for my HNC course, so very surprised to find him there as a BA (hons) Art & Design graduate, specialising in knitting and surface design. What a nice surprise and I really liked what he had made.
There is also a section at the show called "One Year On" and there was this amazing Jewellery Designer Victoria Walker. Do have a look at here work, it is so unusual, I'd love to own a piece. Another non textile designer that I liked was silversmith Niki Byrne. She does not have a website but I found two sites where she is mentioned.
All in all, a few hours well spent.

I was only in London for the weekend, spending 2 out of 3 days travelling with Eurostar. I must say I do prefer this to flying as you do not have all the hassle that flying entails these days.

Spinning Challenge

With having shingles I did not feel like doing much but spinning in the garden was a good way of getting through part of the day. So that is what I did this week. I'm not a great spinner but I had a challenge that lasted 6 years....

The Online Guild has a spinning challenge each year and in 2004 this was North Ronaldsay. 6 years later and I have finished spinning my 500 grams. I have been spinning other fibres over the years, just left part of this 500 grams to be done. It has been a real challenge for me as I found it very short fibre to spin. I left the dark brown to last and half of this was very hairy and the end result is not soft at all like the rest of the spun yarn.

I now have 425 grams (about 1400 meters) of lovely soft yarn in 5 different colours (that is discarding the hairy brown skein at the bottom of the photo). So, my next challenge is to weave something with these yarns. I will not take another 6 years for this next stage ;-)
Luckily I feel a lot better than earlier this week.

Storks

The neighbours of our hostess yesterday (Guild outdoor day) have a stork nest in their garden.

It was great to be able to see that so near by with the camera.

 The beaks of the youngsters are black against the adult birds being red.