White Tencel Update

Hi there, we have dried out a bit since last week ! The flood waters have receded and the surrounding area looks a bit more the way it should. Sheep are back in their fields and normal service is being resumed ! In fact we are now very cold, a forecast of -5 deg. for tonight.

The first tencel scarf is complete and the second one is hemstitched ready to go tomorrow. I was a bit ahead of myself thinking I had no threading errors though. Unfortunately I didn't see it until I had woven 36 of the 72 inches. It was difficult to see, partly because I had been careful to look across the weaving to ensure the pattern was working but I hadn't looked closely enough up and down the way. Suddenly I noticed two warp threads lifting together and realised that shouldn't be happening.
Susan from Thrums tells me it is called a 'flat". I certainly felt flat when I spotted it ! A hunt through the heddles revealed a 3 & 4 shaft warp threaded in the wrong order. Nothing for it but to insert a string heddle and correct the mistake. I finished off the scarf and won't really know until I take it off the loom how much it will show. This may be one scarf made especially for me !!

Am annoyed with myself for being a bit overly confident at the start and just because the shafts all seemed to work jumping to the conclusion that all was well. In future when I do the sample I must look carefully at the pattern in both directions.

I thought I would show you something else that Tony produced for me to help with the treadling sequence. The snowflake pattern has a repeat of 104 picks and I was struggling to follow from the draft. Spreadsheets to the rescue ! Tony loves to work on spreadsheets and this is the very helpful guide I now have. It is broken up into natural groups and colour coded which makes it much easier to follow and to memorise. You can see I have already scribbled on it !

We have been away over the weekend and visited a fibre related store called Twisted Fibre Craft.

I have been there a few times and purchased just one or two things !! Anyway, I had my own 'Santa' with me and as a result ordered an Ashford 20" knitters loom. This will allow me to keep on weaving when we are away from home and stop some of the knitting projects maybe ! It will be a new challenge but there seems to be lots of stuff on rigid heddle looms by Syne Mitchell on Weavezine.

Also Laura Fry on Weaving a Life has recently bought a rigid heddle loom and hopes to do some teaching. I'll be watching carefully for tips and patterns to follow ! I won't be allowed to get my hands on the loom until Christmas but what a busy festive season I'm going to have !!  I added into the order the double heddle conversion set and two 12.5 heddles to allow some finer work. This may have to wait a while until I get the hang of the basics ! The blog will have another strand to it though !

As far as knitting goes for this week, I have finished a couple of scarves. They are waiting to be washed and blocked so pictures next time !

I have just read Susan's latest blog on Thrums and am very envious ! Her new stock of Tencel arrived and the colours are stunning ! May need to do something similar as my white stuff is the last of my Tencel stash. Wonder if Yarns Plus export to the UK ? Do you think she really is going to share that huge delivery with someone else ???

Think that's all for this week. Next week should have some scarf finishing pictures to share !

Many thanks for visiting.

Floods, Sales & Tencel

Busy week here in south-west Scotland !
We have had torrential rain lasting almost three days and have many flooded roads and rivers with burst banks. About 50 miles away, Cumbria has had the worst rainfall on record and many hundreds of people are homeless and their lives seriously disrupted. The force of the water has swept away bridges and made others unsafe. Tragically a policeman lost his life when a bridge suddenly collapsed and he was washed away with it.
Here in Lochmaben we have been more fortunate but these pictures give you some idea of the flooding. The Loch we look out over has a bowling green in front of it and on Saturday the water level rose 8 feet and the bowling green completely flooded.

More rain forecast for tomorrow, another 4inches !

Now onto sales. I have never been to a craft sale to sell anything but I was encouraged to take a table at a local craft fair last Saturday. I am not good at selling things so my daughter Alison agreed to come and keep an eye on me. She is a dispensing optician and so thinks nothing of selling very expensive spectacles to her unsuspecting patients ! The ideal support person I thought. I was really very nervous but by the end of the day I had relaxed a bit and quite enjoyed the experience. Only one other person had weaving and knitting, most of the others were jewellery or cards and pictures.

I sold two scarves and a shawl. The shawl was a Victorian Lace rectangular pattern shown below.

I am not very well equipped to display things on a table but I will get better if this is to be repeated ! I didn't sell any weaving but many people admired the lavender tencel shawl. I think it was too expensive for people to buy ! I was grateful to a knitting and weaving friend Charlotte. She booked the table for me and stayed with us all day to be sure I was OK. She has certainly encouraged me and given me more confidence in my projects. Here is a picture of our table !

Now to the main event of the week ! The white Tencel scarves. I had things all planned out several days before I finished the placemats so I set off to wind the warp with great enthusiasm. I had read somewhere that experienced weavers can wind 3 or 4 warp ends at a time so I decided that would do for me !! I had 356 ends wound in no time 3 at a time. Nice smallish bouts to fit in with the structure of the pattern. I warp front to back so 12 dent reed, 28 epi meant 2-2-3 so no bother. Threading the heddles took me a while because the pattern was quite complex but once that was done I couldn't wait to get wound on. Husband had been on standby for a while and he was soon sitting  on the floor behind the loom ready to go. Well things ground to halt right there !

What a tangle (in Scotland we call it a fankle !!) there was ! From the very beginning I had a real mess with 3 threads wrapping around one another. Susan from Thrums kindly explained what I had done wrong ! If you are going to warp with 3 threads you must make sure each one goes round the cross seperately. Of course I hadn't done that, maybe I'm not so experienced after all and I should have checked out the idea before I went ahead.

I didn't have the heart to take a picture of the mess nor of my husband sitting on the floor doing sudoku puzzles whilst waiting for me to clear the next bit of warp ! It took several hours to clear the 7 yards of 10/2 white tencel !! It was grounds to open a bottle of wine anyway !  So lesson learnt, either stick with 1 thread at a time or be careful to seperate the multiple threads around the cross.

The next day I was able to get started and got a good sample woven without any problem. I was glad not to find any threading errors ! the draft is Canadian Snowflake by Laura Fry and I believe it was published in Issue 20 of Weaver's some years ago. My thanks to Susan for sending it to me. Here is the first picture, I hope you can get a sense of the pattern it really is stunning.

I am a third of the way up the first scarf so good progress so far. My floating selvedge broke on the right side but that was easily repaired and seems Ok now so not sure why it broke. 104 throws in the pattern repeat so no talking allowed and certainly no TV !

Think that's all for this week. Happy weaving to everyone.

Placemat Update

Time to bring you up to date with weaving and knitting here at Little Garth !
I will start with weaving and the first piece of news is that I bought an end feed shuttle.

As the picture shows it is a Schact model, I got the smaller one and it is just right for the size of placemats, scarves etc.

I followed Lynnette's instructions for pirn winding on her blog Dust Bunnies Under My Loom. That is only partly the truth ! I looked up the tutorial but in reality my husband winds the pirns for me ! I had to discourage him from filling them too full ! The yarn doesn't come off smoothly as it catches on the edges but more importantly I couldn't throw the shuttle because there is no base and the yarn wouldn't run along the race !!

Once the pirn filling was under control I got to work testing it out. I found it very easy to throw and very quiet. There is no doubt my selvedges improved in a very short time and I soon decided to tackle the last placemat with the new shuttle. I fiddled a bit with the tensioning but I really could have left it as it was set. The result is I am delighted with the new shuttle even if it was very expensive ! £75 ! Just as well I sold that scarf !

Anyway, how are the placemats shaping up ? Well, the weaving is finished, three sets in different patterns and lots of sample pieces. It is the biggest roll of cloth I have had on the loom so far, ten yards in total.

Next step was to separate them and I discovered that my new sewing machine did an oversewing  stitch so decided to do the raw edges with that.

Before starting on the hems I did a bit of searching through various blogs and I picked up the idea that a walking foot for the machine would help the finished look of the hem. I am sorry but I can't just remember where I read about it but my thanks anyway ! So off to the sewing machine shop for a walking foot ! It certainly helped to keep the top part of the hem moving in line with the bottom layer and the results were the best yet ! I have some tea towels with very rough hems !! So here is my pile of placemats ready for hemming !

The room I am working in started out life as my study when I was working but has now become my craft room ! It isn't big enough for my loom but copes with all my bits and pieces, stash, books and sewing machine. Who said I was retired !

Still have a set of placemats to hem and then they are all for the washing machine. That's after I have woven in the threads where I had to replace warp threads because of knots. Lesson here is to be more aware of knots when winding the warp and get rid of them then instead of having to use temporary warps during the weaving. Will post the finished article next time hopefully.

Now the knitting update ! I said last time that I had another Swallowtail shawl on the pins, well now it is finished and is blocked out. The yarn is lace weight cashmere in slightly off-white. The colour in the picture is a bit off as the light is artificial ! The shawl measures 50 ins x 22 ins.

A close up of the pattern

I think that's about all for this week except to say that the pearl Tencel is out of the cupboard, the loom is clean and ready to go. Already working out number of ends required for Canadian Snowflake draft by Laura Fry !

Belated post !

We have been away for a week and so no post ! I am feeling guilty already !
We have a lovely holiday place on the east coast of Scotland very close to St Andrews and we disappear every so often for some sea breezes and relaxation ! Unfortunately we have only very limited internet availability up there and certainly not enough to be posting blogs ! So if I disappear for a while that will be the most likely reason.

Here is a picture of the other half of the team sitting out in the sunshine in November in Scotland ! This doesn't happen often !

This is how close we are to the sea !

                                                

No loom here 'yet' ! Have thoughts about a rigid heddle loom, hoping Father Christmas is listening !

So when I am here, a lot of knitting gets done. I especially like to sit out on the deck listening to the waves and the sea birds with my knitting ! Often wrapped in a warm shawl. Here is a picture of my warmest one. It is knitted to the Girasole pattern (available on Ravelry) and I used 100% superfine merino in chunky weight. It measures 7ft across so gives good coverage against the wind.

The colour has got a bit distorted, it is actually chocolate brown and yes that is my husband helping me to do the blocking after I had wet finished it ! I also did the same pattern in DK weight so it is slightly smaller. One day there may be one in fingering !

My favourite pattern just now is the Swallowtail Shawl by Evelyn Clark, also available on Ravelry. I have knitted it twice and the third one is on the pins at the moment. This picture is of the first one I knitted, in 2 ply silk and cashmere.

The second one is in Manos del Uruguay silk blend DK weight. the colours are beautiful but I think I prefer the finer weight of yarn.

The third one is being done in lace weight cashmere in a slightly off-white colour. Will post a picture when it is done. I am dorothylochmaben on Ravelry if anyone would like to look at my other knitting projects.

However, now I am back home and the chance to weave again, so where am I ? Well, I am on the last set of placemats so hope to get them off the loom this weekend. major hemming exercise for the new sewing machine ! Twelve mats , so twenty four hems ! That's a bit daunting for a non-sewer !

here is a picture of the pattern in the last set. Again the colour has gone but you can see the pattern clearly and the finer hem weft.

I have another cone of 10/2 tencel hiding in the cupboard. It is pearl white and ,if truth be known, I can't wait to get it out and get started on another two scarves !!

I had a birthday last weekend and my daughter gave me a copy of Anne Dixon's book, Patterns for Four Shafts. It is absolutely great and I am now full of ideas for projects to keep me busy for months !

Well, I think that is about all my news for now. Will try not to have such a long gap before the next post. ! Many thanks for stopping by to see what I'm up to.