{"id":191,"date":"2011-10-22T10:00:12","date_gmt":"2011-10-22T15:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.knitbot.org\/blog\/2011\/10\/22\/looming\/"},"modified":"2011-10-22T10:00:12","modified_gmt":"2011-10-22T15:00:12","slug":"looming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.knitbot.org\/blog\/2011\/10\/22\/looming\/","title":{"rendered":"Looming"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nWeaving is fun and rhythmic — once you have the loom set
\nup.    And, you can’t really set up a loom until you
\nhave the parameters of your project pretty well nailed up, including
\nthe yarns for warp and weft, as well as the sett and specific threading
\npattern.  While you can vary the weft yarn once you’ve started, on
\na typical loom you’re pretty much fixed for sett and threading pattern
\nonce you’ve got the loom set up.  And, depending on the particular
\nyarns, things can look very different in the pattern once you actually
\nstart weaving — they rarely line up in tidy little squares like on
\nyour graph paper!<\/p>\n

I imagine that experienced weavers have a good sense of what threading
\npatterns will produce, and the various effects of different types
\n(thicknesses, composition, colours) of yarn with those
\npatterns.    <\/p>\n

I, however,  I can only imagine, becauseam not an experienced
\nweaver!  And, I found I was impeded in making progress on becoming
\none when I could not figure out how a pair of yarns were going to play
\ntogether for my next planned project.  I really didn’t want to get
\ninto calculating warp lengths and number of warp ends unless and until
\nI had some sense of how the yarns would play together.  So, I
\nstalled for several months.<\/p>\n

Finally, I did a couple of things to break the logjam.<\/p>\n

First, I ordered a weaving kit (Halcyon
\nYarn’s Waffle Weave Dishtowels<\/a>).    It includes the
\nyarns you need, tells you what sett to use, as well as the
\nthreading.  So, it’s just execution:  measure off 402 warp
\nends in various colours, sley the reed, thread the heddles, re-thread
\nthe heddles when you realize you made a mistake 1\/4 of the way in
\n(sigh), tie up the treadles, and you’re good to go!   <\/p>\n

\"Waffle<\/p>\n

And, waffle weave is pretty!  Perhaps others would understand it
\nintuitively from the pattern draft, but I had to actually weave by rote
\nfor a bit before I could start to see how it was building up the
\ntexture in the fabric:<\/p>\n

\"waffle<\/p>\n

\nGiven that it still took me a month of on-and-off work to get those
\nwarp ends measured et cetera, it’s pretty clear it will be a while
\nbefore I’ll be an experienced weaver with the kind of “mind’s eye” for
\npattern work that I describe above.  I really wanted something I
\ncan play with  to see<\/span>
\nthe different possibilities with the yarn before I commit to a real
\nproject.<\/p>\n

So, the other thing I did was get a Northwest Pioneer loom<\/a>. 
\nThis is a loom that is specifically designed to facilitate re-sleying
\nand re-threading mid-project.   Here it is, still bolted onto
\nthe base of its shipping crate.  It’s a 15″ table loom, and to
\nkeep that in perspective, the shipping box fit in the back seat of my
\ncar.  It’s a lovely bit of hand-worked solid maple — pretty! <\/p>\n

\n\"arrival\"<\/p>\n

In terms of re-threading — note that the shafts in the picture above
\nhave no “top”.  The headles have a slit through which you slide
\nthe yarn from the top — and which you can pull out and rearrange
\n(under loosened tension) mid-project.  Likewise, you can remove
\nthe top bar of the beater and re-sley the reed, for a different sett.<\/p>\n

As an added bonus, it also supports
\ncontinuous warping.    The pictures below show it with
\nits warping rails extended.<\/p>\n

\"Pioneer<\/p>\n

\"Pioneer<\/p>\n

Errr, yes, pardon the lovely studio decor — my fibre equipment is
\nslowly taking over the basement, but we haven’t done anything to finish
\nit.<\/p>\n

Within an hour or 2, I had it warped up and ready to roll, launching
\ninto a twill pattern with the brown linen warp and variegated pink,
\nshiny acrylic yarn:<\/p>\n

\"playing<\/p>\n

Among the things I would not have predicted accurately — the weft
\ndominance.<\/p>\n

Satisfied with that experiement, I re-threaded the warp to a different
\npattern, and test-drove it some more:<\/p>\n

\n\"changement<\/p>\n

Again, the weft dominated.  For this, I tried (completely)
\ndifferent yarn — a wool of finer gauge:<\/p>\n

\"changement<\/p>\n

\nAnd, the experimentation continues.  But, by the time I’m done
\nplaying, and I have it off the loom and wet-finished, I will have a
\nvery firm sense of what I want to do with my pinks and brown, and I’ll
\nhave the confidence needed to plan and set up the project on the big
\nloom — a 10″ wide table runner is the plan.<\/p>\n

And,  I’ll start throwing more yarns on the Pioneer to see how
\nthey work together \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

Well, you know<\/span> that “one” is
\nan unstable number for looms, right?  People who have one loom
\neither decide they don’t like weaving and get rid of it… or they are
\nhooked, and more follow…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Weaving is fun and rhythmic — once you have the loom set up.    And, you can’t really set up a loom until you have the parameters of your project pretty well nailed up, including the yarns for warp and weft, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,5,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all","category-knitting","category-weaving"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s7dQdt-looming","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.knitbot.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.knitbot.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.knitbot.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.knitbot.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.knitbot.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.knitbot.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.knitbot.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.knitbot.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.knitbot.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}