The Fine Art of Re-purposing

So, the last Guild meeting I went to, my friend, Dawn, was showing fancy hemstitiching. She brought a table loom, and several shuttles. One of the shuttles was a Little Man shuttle. I really liked it for a several reasons: It has an extra large bobbin area, the opening for the bobbin thread runs nearly the length of the shuttle, and it felt nice in my hand. When I got home and looked it up on www.villagespinweave.com, I liked it again because of the reasonable cost. So, I ordered one.
Since it has such a large bobbin area, the regular length bobbins don't really work. The size I got will take an inch bobbin (really just slightly longer) or two 4 inch bobbins. I had the 4 inch bobbins but wasn't really happy with using them for single threads. It will probably work well for doubled, (using the thread off both bobbins at once). Haven't tried that yet. Dawn had used the paper bottom from a coat hanger for a makeshift bobbin, and that works okay, but I really wanted something stronger.
I've always been one for wandering around hardware stores, poking into drawers, etc. just to see what I can find, but Lowes stumps me. It's just big. I decided to crowd-source my problem. I took a 4 inch plastic bobbin to work, and I must admit, I went to the engineer first. This is a re-purposing project, I said.
Chuck came out to my desk later that morning with the plastic bobbin in hand and said, "Solid fuel line." Buy it at the auto parts store. So, I stopped by the parts store on the way home. They told me they had no such thing, they didn't deal in solid fuel, and asked if my vehicle was fuel injected. Not too many minutes later, they understood that they had an odd one on their hands, they did not need engine size information, and decided what I needed was rigid brake line. I bought one in 12 inch size, since I needed nearly 9 inches.




I went by my mechanic's on the way home, he cut it off to size, took the brass nuts off, and flared the end. It works like a charm. The flare is not very wide, maybe 1/8 inch, but it's enough to keep the yarn from slipping off, and allows me to wind the shuttle easily.




I bought another the next day. It holds a ton of yarn, especially this 20/2 I'm working with now. The Little Man has a nice blunt end, the better to fly through the shed with, my dear, and when, on occasion I miss the catch, I can say, "Come back here, Little Man!"
I'm away from my loom for a while now, but Little Man and Bertha (the loom) will be waiting for me when I get back. Here's what I'm doing until then! Grandkids!



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Sample

I wove a sample of the Swedish Lace to check shrinkage and drape.








I have 15% shrinkage each way, which is about what I had figured. The end width of the piece is still wide enough for my blouse pattern. I'll have to piece the back instead of putting it on the fold, but that's expected.

The drape, as you can see from the second photo, is really nice. That's just held in my hand. It's quite light, and right out of the dryer there are no wrinkles. So, good, good, and good.

The selvedges are a mess. Since this is yardage, though, I'm not going to put a lot of energy into fixes. A floating selvedge would work, but for yardage .... not worth the time and trouble, in my opinion.

I'm using red for the weft in the cloth. Wasn't sure I had enough of the blue. I am measuring weight of weft used, though, for my records. If I had that already, I could weigh the blue and see if I have enough. I'm not courageous enough, though, to chance getting to the last yard and running out.

I think I may have enough on this warp to weave the cloth for the blouse and then cross the last few yards with white to make some curtains for my bathroom. As long as I don't stand next to my bathroom window a lot, I should be okay ;-)


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Progress

I haven't had a lot of free time the last couple days, but I did get the threading completed this evening and started beaming the warp. I hope to get that finished tomorrow morning and maybe, maybe, I can get started weaving on Sunday.
The 20/2 has a lot of twist and I measured it out by twos, so I tried to be very careful when threading to go back to the lease sticks and separate each thread within it's couplet so there was as little twisting around each other as possible. So far, so good. I have lease sticks in the back and in the front, and that helps keep it all nice and straight, too.
It's been a while since I've sewn anything for myself from my handwoven fabric. It's not really much different sewing with handwoven than with anything else as long as the fabric hand is what you want. However, I have been stuck forever, it seems, in the conundrum of wanting to sew something but not really having occasion to wear a fancy handwoven whatever. I don't dress up often, (that's the understatement of the year), and don't want to put the time and effort into something that hangs in the closet.
Then I started thinking about my ancestors. Their everyday clothes were made from handwovens, and talk about taking a licking and keeping on ticking. Those women got a lot of use out of their garments.
So I'm thinking a cotton blouse, or top, for summer wear. Something airy and light. I have threaded this warp in Swedish Lace, and am hoping the 20/2 threads will give enough air flow in the lace areas for comfort, but also give enough coverage for a summer blouse.

Here's what I have in my pattern stash. It will need to be one of these, because it appears decent patterns have gone the way of the rotary dial phone.




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Onward

780 ends. 20/2 unmercerized cotton. 30 epi. 120 through the heddles so far. Challenging.



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Decisions on sleep deprived brain - not good idea

This has been a very stressful week at work. I work at a Public Radio station and it's our Spring Fund Drive - early mornings, long hours. It just helps me to at least think about weaving some every day, even if I can't do much of it this week.

So, I have been mulling and muddling around all week with this painted warp:




It's 10/2 mercerized cotton, 716 ends, 12 yd. long. It is just wide enough for a twin blanket, if I weave the entire length, and seam it in thirds. I've made both my grandkids twin blankets already. Not sure they need another. Don't know anyone else with a twin bed.

I toyed with putting a couple threads of solid evenly throughout to widen it. I worked up an overshot pattern that would work with the # of ends, then talked myself out of doing that. Not before I wound 350 ends of solid, though. I thought about alternating painted warp with solid warp in stripes for overshot - even tried this idea out on some left over painted warp. Which means I wound some other threads of solid, tied it onto the overshot pattern I just finished and wove a couple repeats.






Meh. Don't really like it.

So, I have placed the painted warp and the coordinating solid warp, all of it washed and ready to go, back in the bag. Some day I'll find a use for it.

I'm not sure I've learned anything from all this. It was worthwhile to piddle around with the loom and patterns. I'm absolutely no further ahead tonight than I was Monday.

I've decided that now, in my low brain energy state, is good time to knit.

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When things don't feel right....

they're usually not right. This morning, I finished the tea towel I had started last night, and it just kept fretting at me. I had carefully written down the treadling sequence and made a little cheat sheet, which I tape so I can see it easily when weaving, and I checked it 4 or 5 times with the treadling indicated in the pattern, but it just didn't feel right.

For one thing, there were an uneven number of shots in a full repeat. The threading pattern is for a 70 end repeat, but the treadling showed a 69 end repeat. Hmmmm. What that means, to my small brain, is it takes two full repeats of the treadling to end up on the side I started on. Seriously, that's how I see things. Very basic. This is a muscle memory problem. As I learn the treadling, it sinks into my subconsious which side I am supposed to end up on at certain points in the pattern, and if I get off, things start feeling hinky. This was not lending itself to learning that muscle memory at all.

Overshot patterns start out, work to a mid point, and work backwards to the finish. The first part of the pattern mirrors the second part. So I started looking, and found a treadling error. Here's the treadling from the book, with the offending area marked:




It may be difficult to see, but the right leg of the bracket shows three shots on what we'll call Treadle 1. The bottom leg shows only two shots on Treadle 1. The entire part bracketed is actually the very center of the pattern. So these shots on Treadle 1 should be exactly the same: 3 shots in each place.

Here's the first tea towel, with the offending area marked. The arrow is actually pointing exactly at the problem. You can see there are two shots. Scan down the pattern and you'll see the three shots on the other side of that center-piece-looking-thingy.



And here's the towel I wove with the treadling error fixed.


Interestingly enough, the incorrect sequence didn't really make a difference on the diagonal, since it was not a single shot. There were two shots there instead of three, but still enough to drag that diagonal along.

With the fix, the treadling sequence mirrors itself perfectly, my shuttles are on the correct sides at the right times, and it feels so. nicely. balanced.

I started another tea towel, but it will have to wait until tomorrow. I worked out in the yard this afternoon, pruning for a couple hours, and I be tired. And tomorrow is a long day at work. Maybe I'll get to weave a bit in the evening.



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Curiosity becomes a search

I threaded my new overshot pattern "Flowers of Cromaine" (BGH) yesterday and beamed the warp today, which means I was able to weave a couple repeats:




It's a pretty pattern, and I'm looking forward to making some progress on the warp.

But I started thinking about the origin of the name of the pattern. Ms. Hayes put some interesting names on her patterns, like "Gastric Ulcer" and "Bomber Flight" to name a couple, and I was pretty sure "Cromaine" meant something.

This is where I love the internet. What would have taken days at a city library took me a few minutes on the internet.

It turns out that Cromaine Crafts was a part of the Hartland Area Project in Hartland, Michigan. It was one of those social experiment communities popular in the first part of the 1900s. Handcrafts was a big part of their "project" and they built a loom named the Cromaine Crafts Loom.

Here's a link to what Janet Meany has to say about it:

http://www.oocities.org/rugtalk/CromaineCraftsLoom.html

which is quite interesting. I had no idea when I chose this pattern that it was connected to what is The Mannings today! Wow! History is so cool! No telling what the connection was between Bertha Gray Hayes and the Cromaine Craft Project, but I'm pretty sure there was a connection.

I'm very glad I have this warp on the loom and ready to go. Sanity is a warped loom.