Month: September 2015

And now for something completely different!

I had been reading about wool and about felting, and thought that I would like to see if I could make some nice-looking felt.

This experiment was just that – an experiment. I made a pattern with two colors, in the small. My goal was to see how the patterns came out when felted, to see how much shrinkage there was, and to get a feel for the whole thing.

I sort of have a plan to make a sturdy bag, but before I go that far I just want to see about shrinkage, predictability of pattern, etc.

I was careful to choose untreated 100% wool. In this case, a wool and alpaca blend, but it was right for felting. More expensive than my first few experiments due to all natural.

Here’s the yarn:

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The weaving, according to what I had read, needed to be very loose. I only used approximately every other dent in the heddle – you will see that the warp is widely spaced. And, I did not really beat the weft at all, just slid it to attempt to equal the warp spacing in the weft.

Here are a couple of pics of the piece before getting it wet:

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The long gaps were, I thought, to give a gap between 4 sample pieces.

I tried washing the piece in warm water in the sink, being gentle as the weft endings, not really being beat close, were prone to coming loose. In the future I need to do something about that. Washing that gentle way had no visible effect on the piece, so I bit the bullet and put the piece in the washing machine, on a regular cycle, with a few towels so it wouldn’t feel lonely. That did produce a result!

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Felt! But it was all scrunched up, and it took a lot of heavy fingering work to get it remotely smoothed out into something that could be cut. Then I simply used scissors and cut out the 4 squares that were my pattern attempts. What had started as 6″ by 6″ loose pieces turned into 4″ by 4″, maybe 3″ by 3″ pieces, that were not that well-formed. I had to work them into shape.

Anyway, the final result was 4 coasters, 100% wool/alpaca, and some interesting patterns:

I am not sure where I am going with this. It was interesting, it was an experiment, but for me, there seemed to be too many places where I was not in control of the process, and just hopeful. I would like to create things on my loom for which I have a strong prediction of how they are going to turn out.

It is likely that I have much more experimentation to do with felting if I want to become proficient in that craft. But I also have a yen for some other weaving forms. I think I am going to make a nice wool/alpaca scarf (Terry’s idea) with what’s left of the yarn, since it is really nice yarn. And of course warn whoever gets it that it is 100% wool, and so washing it should be done with extreme care.

This one was a piece that I made specifically for my mom. She saw the first scarf I made on my loom, and wanted it. I didn’t want to give her something I thought had too many defects in it, but ultimately I gave it to her.

She already had the original lavender semi-scarf that I made in class, with many flaws, and a size a bit too small to be truly useful.

In the meanwhile, I told her that we could go choose some yarn and I would make a scarf for her. So we went, and chose some yarn. At first she chose the exact same color as the lavender scarf. Odd. We compromised – something at least a little different, and with two colors.

Back home I set to work, copying the work I did for the blue scarf in “Weaving 002”, and trying to make better edges, etc. I basically repeated the patterns I used in the 002, but with only 2 colors this time.

There was nothing really new or unusual in this scarf, just a repeat, and a chance to get more experience and more feel for weaving. I think I did a bit better on this scarf than on 002, but I still have such a long way to go before anything feels natural.

Here are pics of the yarn, some progress, and some of the finished product.

Yarn:

Loom prep:

Drying:

A note: Since this was 100% acrylic, there was no noticeable shrinkage, and also much less forgiving behavior for the edges. The scarf, though, turned out fine, and felt very nice. Lighter than 002, so usable in less chilly situations.

Various attempts to capture the real color:

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All and all, a success. And now my mom has three scarves! Ha.

I have learned a little bit, and now I have some tips to use for color changes, edging, beginnings and endings, and other things. The next scarf will be better. I am not seeking a “next scarf” just yet, as I want to experiment with something else.

And, although I like to please my mom, I did not get as much pleasure out of producing an artifact that was at least partly somebody else’s choice. I realize that weaving something for somebody, especially if you do it well enough (or people are over-kind enough), can lead to more weaving of something for somebody. That’s not what I started weaving to do. Fine for my mom, a bit, but I am going to avoid the “make a gift” craft that this could become. I want to be more free than that.

I put together my new loom – very exciting! I actually botched a part of the assembly, and had to recover by using a power screwdriver and forcing a screw into its spot. My lesson: Haste, even haste due to enthusiasm, does not always result in speed of accomplishment. The loom, however, is none the worse for my error, and nobody except Terry knows about it.

On advice from various internet forums and from the folks at The Fiber Factory, I chose a Kromski Harp 24″ Rigid Heddle Loom. I also bought the stand for it – I don’t have a convenient stable table to use as a lean-to for the loom, and I like the idea of a self-supporting loom.

Here’s a not-great-lighting picture of the assembled loom in my “weaving room”:

I know that my Eames wire chair doesn’t go well with the loom, but both the loom and the chair are beautiful and functional in their own ways, and the chair is now a comfortable old friend. I hope that the loom becomes a comfortable old friend as well.

The loom comes with an 8-dent heddle, so my intent is to use that heddle for a while, and refrain from any loom embellishments until I get some experience and perhaps form a better opinion of what I really want to do. The 8-dent heddle, same as in the loom in the classroom, means that I already know the approximate style of yarn that I will work with for awhile.

My goal for a first project on this loom was simple: I wanted to reproduce the positive experience I had in class, on my own loom. I wanted to make a full-sized scarf, relatively simply, to see that I knew how to do all the activities necessary, and to see how it felt to work at home, mostly alone. And I wanted to do something with more than one color.

My artistic and tactful daughter Emma helped me pick some yarn for this project. The (I think good) results are a testament to her gently guiding me away from some odd choices, towards some cooperating colors.

Here is the yarn I chose: Blue for the bulk of the scarf, with a red stripe, and some yellow and light blue accents. Red and yellow cross-stripes to experiment with some patterns.

There is one yarn sticker missing from that photo – I forget which one.

I took some pictures along the way. I tried to do good clean work, and along the way learned a little bit on how to make the edges (selvedges?) better. So the beginning of this project, edge-wise, is not as good as the ending.

Here are some progress pics:

Warping and winding, preparing for weaving:

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The first set of cross-color weaving, thick areas:

When done, I washed it gently. It is 75% acrylic, 25% wool, so I expected some shrinkage and was hoping that the shrinkage would mask some of my early edging errors. Result? Some masking, and some still-visible errors. But I will learn to not call attention to the errors when showing a piece to somebody, unless that somebody is a weaving instructor. 🙂

Drying:

And a few pics of the finished product. I think it turned out well for my first project on my own loom. As you will read later, this scarf ended up in Florida, in my mom’s “collection”.

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Not the best pictures, but I hope you get the gist of it. It feels good to hold. That’s a bonus to me – I made something that I like to hold and to drape around my neck. Cool!