When the opportunity came up to learn to weave, my first thought was that I could weave cloth from which to make clothing. Very quickly, I decided the first such project would be wool for a coat, but of course, I needed to actually learn to weave first. Which meant cotton, because that’s easy. (We’ll forget the linen experiment for now.) I did try wool once at the very beginning, reading that it was a forgiving fiber, but there was no instruction how how to to treat it, and I hadn’t any experience weaving much of anything else yet, and there was no real advice on what kind of wool to buy, so that didn’t go well. The result was a stiff, brillo pad-like scarf-shaped thing. The next time was more recently – last September maybe? – but I did plainweave with Jaggerspun 8/2, and beat it a bit too aggressively still not understanding how that was supposed to work, so the result was a stiff, though softer cloth. I consulted with my weaver friend who works at Webs (I am SO LUCKY to live 4 miles from Webs!), and upon seeing the stiff, plainweave cloth, she immediately advised, “You can’t beat it like cotton! You have to squeeeeeeze the weft in place. Treat it gently – just kiss the little lamb with the beater!” I take her advice very seriously.

And so, this past Sunday, I decided to take a little break from cotton and wove another sample. This time with wool, in a bird’s eye twill with very careful beating:

The above pictures are from before fulling – this cloth was fresh off the loom. The purple is 100% wool (Jaggerspun 8/2 Heather), the lighter color (pale, dull pink) is 100% baby alpaca (Hatfield from Valley Yarns). The multi colored yarns are just some handspun bits that were kicking around. I quickly knotted some fringe and continued to the fulling process!

This fulled cloth is SO SOFT. You just want to squish it and hold it and squish it again. I wish it were blanket-sized! You can see after the yarns bloomed that the pattern is now a lot more subtle in the purple warp and weft – I’m not sure I like that. In any case, I think more experimentation is required. The end result will be a shawl for me, and perhaps a shawl or two to sell. Or more. I need to make a couple to test.

Last night I went to the local weaver’s guild meeting and became a card carrying member! (Well, I’m a member – I’m not sure if I get a card…) The benefits are many: a pretty extensive library I can borrow from pretty freely, people I can thrust my latest experiment at without signs of flinching away, wisdom from other weavers, and cookies once a month at meetings!

In other news, this morning I had to shovel a bit of the porch. There are icicles on the roof of the second floor that are dripping onto a section of the porch under which I park my car. Icicles were forming on the underside of the porch right over the car and that was worrying. So I shoveled a bit.

Since I couldn’t get out the back door to where the problem spot was, I had to go out the front door (which is normally not used in the winter) and shovel a path to around the corner.

We have a lot of snow right now.

Also, it’s going to be 40F today. And I hear 50+F on the weekend. It’s going to be a lot of water.

Also, Monday is a holiday for me, which means MORE WEAVING. I hope to have more cotton stuff woven (bathmats) and another wool sample, possibly a competed shawl. And rip out the 3″ of the cardigan I started knitting so I can do it up correctly. And knit up another hat so I can get that in the mail. And finally just fix J’s sweater so I can give it back to her. But also, housework should get done at some point, and sleeping should also happen, so we’ll see…

Yesterday was a snow day for me. Finally, it seems winter has come here in western Massachusetts! The snow started about 7am, and I took this picture at about 9:45am. By about 11:00am, there was a foot of snow on the railing. It finally tapered off and stopped by about 4pm or so, and two hours later, the wind started howling.

So what do I do when I am not at work? Why, I get up early, make tea, and get right to work on a project. In this case, the bath mat warp was on the loom, and all that was left was to sley the reed and tie on. This went pretty quickly (hour and a half?), and then I started throwing the shuttle, which always really exciting. You spend all the time to get the warp just right, and it has to be absolutely perfect, but the only way to be absolutely sure is the when you start throwing the shuttle. So much suspense. Deep breath, throw, beat, throw, beat, throw, beat. And if everything is as perfect as it should be, you see the pattern come alive!

Alarmingly (and perhaps predictably), I’ve got a weaving-related injury: my right foot does most of the treadling, and since I’m treadling for several hours at a time, the muscles in my foot decided to rebel and cramp and be otherwise very unhappy. The remedy is ibuprofen, rest, ice, then gentle stretching and strengthening, which meant that all treadling yesterday had to be done with my left foot. I am not left-footed. Things went very slowly. But I did finish!

So. Two bath mats, all woven, hemstitched, washed, dried, and ironed out (for accurate post-wet finish measuring). I hemmed this morning.

I am so in love with this green!

I’m not 100% sold on the edges, but I have Ideas for more mats! And just look at that fringe!

Can’t decide which I like better: fringe or hem…

The reverse of each.

Here you can sort of get an idea of how thick they are.

I tested the fringed mat out this morning – it worked really well! It’s absorbent, and I find the size to be just about perfect. The fringed one came out to be 20″ x 30″ (incl. fringe), and the hemmed one came out at 20″ x 27″ (3″ worth of hem total). I’ll measure again after each wash/dry for two or three weeks to see if there’s any more shrinkage, and to note how they wear. This yarn is mercerized, which means it’s a bit stronger, shinier, and takes dye better than unmercerized, but it also means it’s slightly less absorbent. Mercerized cotton (I believe) should hold up better in the long run.

I am going to try a different treatment to the selvedges (edges) in the next run, too. Should be much neater.

Which I did. I totally did get all the things (or nearly all the things) done:

1. Vacuum the house – check
2. Wash and dry all laundry – check
3. Finish weaving the six yard warp, wash and dry twice, cut apart into towels, iron hems, hem. – check
4. Sewed a pair of pants for my friend, from start to finish. – check
5. Knit with friends for a few hours at LYS – check
6. Cook lunches for the week – (almost check – 3 lunches made, need 2 more)
7. Grocery shopping for the week – (almost check)

So, the house is squeaky clean, and I still got other stuff done! WOO!

Behold!

Trousers! Complete!

Inside pocket. I like fancy pockets!

This was the MOST DELIGHTFUL cloth to work with – cotton denim, very dark blue, with some stretch – but it’s not clear who made it. The suspicion is that it’s Robert Kaufman stretchy denim, but I won’t know for sure until I order some more and compare. If all works out, I’ll order enough for two more pairs of pants for my friend, and some for me! Made on Saturday, hemmed on Sunday.

Its kinda hard to see, but the white one is actually two-toned: white warp, natural weft. My favourite one is the green one, of course! I don’t know what happened with the green/pink/yellow one – maybe I was just really tired? It’s not my usual color palette. But I’m really starting to love bird’s eye twill.

See what I did there with the hem? It delighted me to no end that I could get a design element just by folding the cloth over. Isn’t it pretty? The details can be so interesting.

I also came up with another Plan: weaving a bath mat.

Okay, okay. I hear you: why not just buy one? Isn’t that a lot of work?

But that could be said for pretty much everything I make. 3/2 mercerized cotton was on sale, I wanted to play around with it for possible future endeavors, and I’ve never in my life actually owned a bath mat. I use a small towel that I hang up after every shower. I don’t like those fluffy, rubber-backed rugs for bath mats because they end up soaking water and everything else up and tend to look ratty after a couple months of washing, and they end up smelling funky. So, I’m not looking to make a rug, just a mat. Or two, so I could rotate them. Or make one and sell one. I’m not sure.

In any case, I bought two cones of 3/2 cotton, one willow green and one white, enough to make at least 2 bath mats measuring 20″ x 30″ finished. At first, the plan was for stripes, but using the colors evenly would be insurance against running out of one color if there was a mistake in my math, so they’ll be twill, probably bird’s eye. Yes, there probably should be a ton of floats in there for extra absorbancy, but an even twill will probably be fine. (It’ll be fiiiiiiiiiine.)

Also, this is an experiment to see what the resulting cloth will be. For perhaps future blankets. Or other mats. So, really, it’s a sample, hopefully fairly useful when all is said and done. And then, if it all works, perhaps there will be actual bath towels. And washcloths. And hand towels. OOH! And then, maybe curtains! And if I could weave yardage, there’s a bathrobe in there somewhere…. Guys, who wants to buy stuff from me so I can fund all of this?

Today, we’re having Weather: snow to start, then freezing rain, then maybe some plain rain provided it gets warmer. It could be exciting driving today.

That new yarn arrived yesterday! I’m really tickled. I looked everywhere for the right shade of blue to go with that beautiful golden orange I waxed about the other day because I have Ideas about copying an overshot colorway I found online made by someone else. The pattern is from Weaving Designs By Bertha Gray Hayes: Miniature Overshot Patterns, but you’ll see once I’ve managed to get another warp on the loom for overshot. Which will be soon. Hopefully in the next couple of weeks.

Bluuuuuuuue!

In the meantime, as soon as I got home last night, I immediately wound up a quill with some gorgeous blue and started towel #5. Aaaand then I somehow finished it this morning before work. One more towel to go on this warp.

I’m thinking maybe black for the next towel. Actually, I might try black and white clasped weft, something I’ve been wanting to try for some time. It may not really work as a dishtowel in the end, but it would be an interesting experiment.

BUT. I have to switch gears and make some pants for my dear friend Jenny (hi, Jenny!) who even sent me the fabric (quite a while ago, I’m embarrassed to realize) and I said I’d make them, and then totally forgot because I got distracted with weaving. Which is not like me at all, but I need to rectify this and just make them. They don’t take long, so I’ll be able to get them in the mail on Monday morning.

Then I starting measuring a new warp!

So, the weekend was busy. Really busy. Let me explain.

I’ve been toying with the idea of selling some of my handmade stuff. The “profits” (because, really, most people wouldn’t be able to afford my time beyond $5/hr, so we’re talking mostly cost of materials here) could go towards my hobbies, and if even marginally more successful than half of minimum wage, it could go towards helping me pay off my car loan and student loan. Weeeell, I can hope.

I also have some new brand (to me) of weaving yarn: UKI. A friend had told me about how it’s really the gold standard for mercerized cotton, so when an opportunity came up for me to get a cone or three without shipping costs, I decided to go for it and bought white, natural, a wonderful golden orange, and a nearly perfect red.

The goal of this past weekend’s adventures was to gather data for both figuring out if a profit were at all possible, and to see exactly how great this UKI yarn is. The first step for figuring out if profit is possible is to add up the total cost of materials used and time spent working with them in a given project. (The second step is to see if the market will bear the cost of your finished product, but I’m not there yet.) I already have receipts, so I needed to find out how long it takes me to complete a given project. Because there is a definite economy of scale in weaving, I broke it all down into steps.

The first block of steps involve measuring the warp, getting it on the loom, and then getting all the ends in order so you can start throwing the shuttle (what most people think of as “weaving”). This is a six yard warp, and I would say that the four yard warps took about the same amount of time – the difference was really only in the measuring and beaming (winding the warp onto the back beam while it’s under even tension). But two yards don’t make a huge amount of difference. Since this and the last three warps have required the same amount of heddles to thread (600), the time spent is about the same. If I were to beam a 12 yard warp, the only difference in time spent in this top block would be in actually measuring out and winding 6 extra yards.

Now I know I weave about 15″/hr as I’ve been keeping track over the last 12 towels. That’s 12 hours to weave half a dozen towels. (Which does not include hemming.) Already, you can see that about half of this project is spent getting the warp on the loom. But, in that delightful economy of scale, if I were to put a 12 yard warp on, and say that it only adds two more hours (for argument’s sake – there is a slightly faster way to measure the warp), then throwing the shuttle is up to 24 hours, but getting the warp on and ready is only 12 hours.*

Well. You can see that I think about this a lot. I’ve also been thinking about weaving rugs and wool or silk shawls because I think I’m more likely to get paid a better hourly wage than for dish towels. Though I do love weaving dish towels SO MUCH!

The really interesting thing about all this is yes, it’s a lot of work, but this is how cloth is still woven. Much is done by machinery now, but there are people who run the machinery, and make sure of dye lots, and make sure there are no mistakes, etc etc. And that cloth is later cut out to be sewn together into the clothes you’re wearing right now. This process of making cloth is at least 20,000 years old. Think about that for a moment. Twenty thousand years. TWENTY THOUSAND years. Not two thousand. Not ten thousand. One thousand years would even be famazing. We as a species have been clothing ourselves with fibers that human hands processed, twisted together, and woven (and we haven’t covered spinning yet, which is a whole other can of worms) in basically the same way I’m weaving towels.

The really, REALLY interesting thing is that because hardly anyone in the first world has been exposed to this process, it’s super easy for them to opt for bargain prices that, in the end, don’t actually pay the people involved in the manufacturing process what we in the first world would consider a living wage. (I need to find references for you guys.) All the time, I hear, “oh, I could never use that towel! It’s too nice!” And then they go to Walmart and spend $1.99 on a dishtowel that’s been made by the same process. I mean, I get that not everyone has $25 to spend on a single towel, but…this is getting into a different rant, so I’ll stop now and save it for another day.

Ahem. So. The other goal for this weekend’s weaving adventures was to see how this UKI yarn really weaves up. And I’m smitten. Compared to the yarn I had been using, this stuff is smoother, glossier, much tamer and less prone to tangling, and it weaves up so well! Also, weirdly, my selvedges seem neater. I’m pretty sure this is not due to all the practice I’ve been getting, but rather some quality of the yarn. I’ve woven two complete towels so far with UKI brand yarn wefts, and the third, which I started this morning, is with a previous brand weft.

Neat right selvedge

Neat left selvedge

The red is the second towel using the UKI for weft

This is the third towel with a non-UKI weft

I’m REALLY happy with those edges. Really. I know they’ll shrink up and neaten even more once the cloth has been washed, so I’m less critical pre-wet finishing. In this case, I think the edges will look really professional post-wash. Exciting!

We’ll see how it washes and how it wears. I’ve got another few cones coming in the mail – they should arrive this week. I’m going to have to sell something to address the dip in my bank account… wish me luck!

*This is the amount of time it takes for me to work with my loom, which is old, slightly rickety, very much handmade, and has wooden ratchets and pawls. And no crank levers. Which means I wind the warp on by physically grabbing back beam and rolling it. One day, I’ll be able to buy a newer loom with metal ratchets and pawls, and lots of crank levers, which should speed things up considerably.

The Bright! Towel! project has come to a very final end, which is not meant to sound so serious and dire. Honest! I finished hemming on Sunday, and then laid them all out on the floor to admire. It’s kind of amazing and almost surreal – I mean, I can’t quite wrap my head around the idea that I started with string, and ended with super brightly colored pieces of cloth. I can hold a towel, or two, or the whole stack in my hands, and even though I know I spent hours and hours calculating, measuring, beaming, threading, sleying, treadling and throwing, it seems disconnected somehow from the cloth I can hold. I know I made it. I know that every inch of string passed through my fingers at least twice during the whole process. And yet.

And yet, I’m intensely proud of my accomplishment!

Look at those colors!

Here they are according to warp:

Warp #1 – yellow and orange

Warp #2 – blue and green

Warp #3 – pink and purple

I’m looking forward to recreating a few of these, but not just yet. I’ve taken pictures and made some notes (to be fleshed out with more detail soon so I don’t forget completely), and I have some of these colors left. The next weaving project will likely have a white warp, and there may or may not be overshot – so many choices! I’m toying with the idea of selling towels, but I’m not quite there yet (though, if you’re interested in this, let me know!).

In other news, yesterday we had Weather. It was about 2″ of sleet, which you’d think would be pretty innocuous, but I can tell you that 2″ of sleet is like wet sand: it’s difficult to walk in and nearly impossible to drive in. There was only about 1/2″ on the porch railing when I got up, so I thought, “It’ll be fiiiiiine.” I got ready for work, and tromped down the walk where I realized there were actually two whole inches of the stuff on the ground. “It’ll be fiiiiiiine, ” I thought. I cleaned off my car, then tromped down to the end of the 400′ driveway to make sure the road was cleaned off. There was quite a bit of sleet piled up at the end of the driveway, so I figured I’d have to shovel that out a bit. Still firmly believing it would be fiiiiiiine, I tromped back up to my car, got in, put it in reverse, backed up, put it in drive, drove for all of 25 feet, and got pretty firmly stuck.

Things began to be not so fiiiiine. I started to rethink whether I should attempt to get to work at all.

An hour of shovelling and scattering salty sand, I attempted to back up. The plow guy would come eventually, and I didn’t want my car in the way.

A bit more shovelling and more sand later, I managed a running start in reverse, skidding everywhere, missing trees and boulders, and getting mostly where I wanted to be.

More shovelling and a bit more sand, and I finally got my car back in its spot, out of the way of the plow.

(The plow guy came at 5:30pm. Sigh.)

So, the lesson is: if you have 2″ of sleet, wipe all thoughts of driving in it from your mind. Also, this week I will be making an appointment to get two new, better quality tires put on my car.

The result of all this was a Snow Day for me (I have a cool job with an awesome boss – also no internet at the house, which makes working from home very difficult). So some knitting happened. Because knitting just happens.

My First Hat

The yarn is luxurious! It’s Berocco Ultra Alpaca Chunky. So, so soft. I love this stuff, having made a few pairs of fingerless mitts with the worsted weight stuff, I’m totally smitten with it. But I’m not sure it’s the right yarn for a hat because alpaca and stretching. Also, this hat (pattern completely made up by me, totally on the fly – okay, there was some ripping out and knitting back up, possibly several times) may not fit the intended recipient’s head. It’s a little loose on my head, and I currently have hair with a mind of its own (read: big), but I’ll send it anyway because my friend has a very cold head right now and probably this can serve as a layer. The next hat will be improved!

And then, with the hat nearly done (I have to weave in the ends still), I tackled a pillowcase.

When I lived in Germany, I bought a bed pillow, which was totally square. This seemed to be pretty common there, and since I didn’t have a real pillow for my bed for quite some time, actually having one was a welcome change. I got a cotton flannel pillowcase for it, which was gently used at the time, and that’s been on it since, um, 1996. Yes, it’s been washed a bunch of times, no worries there. But it was the only pillowcase I had for this pillow. When I returned home, my cat claimed the pillow. When she passed away (sniffsniff), I used it on my bed. Eventually, it ended up on my couch. The pillowcase developed a couple of rips last year(?) and since then has been slowly disintegrating. It’s embarrassing. The only thing I can say is that I’m sort of glad I don’t get many visitors at my house because that pillow is right there on my couch in the living room where people would sit if they ever came over.

An artful display

Hand bound is the way to go

I’m really super happy with this new pillowcase. It’s made of heavy linen I got a popular online site (a company I don’t actually recommend generally) that will likely last me the rest of my life. Or much, much longer. I may have to include it in a will eventually. Linen is that awesome.

And the buttonholes are bound by hand. I hear you asking, “but why??” Because I do not own a sewing machine that does any stitch other than straight. Why not? Because Singer Featherweight all the way, man. They just don’t break. Ever. And hand bound buttonholes are more durable and not that difficult to sew, honestly. Relatively quick, too – the five on this pillowcase took maybe a bit more than half an hour? Maybe longer – I was watching some pretty exciting Poirot. I still need practice to get the knots and stitches even, but everything requires some amount of practice, right? These are done with perle cotton, which I literally have miles of now that I’m weaving, with a light coating of beeswax. Actually, I usually do buttonholes with silk twist, but my stash of twist did not offer up any appealing colors, not even black. I find it absolutely delightful that the perle cotton is so versatile: weaving, buttonholes, and it can also be used to quilt quilts! (Hand-quilted quilts forthcoming. At some point.) Aaaand, there’s definitely something to be said for using cellulose fibers with cellulose fibers rather than mixing a protein fiber like silk in there, because then weird pH things happen in the wash and something doesn’t last as long as you wanted it to…and and and…a discussion for another day.

Out of a sense of completion, here’s an artful display of the old, 20+ year old pillowcase:

Auf Wiedersehen, lieber Kopfkissenbezug! Du hast mir gut gedient.

This blog is slow in it’s creation, but believe me, the ideas are there. They’re BRIMMING over and flowing out onto the carpet, soaking everything in their wake. Seriously. I have photos, full of colorful yarns, idea for weaving projects, felting projects, knitting projects, sewing projects….once this all gets posted, things will get underway properly.