This week in the studio was a bit disheveled. Started with me still contemplating the huck lace workshop, continued into the business of weaving, then weaving, finishing, and a trip to help with my guild. Oh right, and a last minute excursion to Sacramento for the Quilting and Sewing expo with my mother in law. With this much going on in my brain I'm surprised I haven't see sparks coming out of my ears!While I was finishing up the last few towels in huck lace I realized that the way Rosalie does the huck blocks is more like Overshot than the traditional 2-block huck unit. With Overshot there are many blocks to use but they are not considered units because they require manipulation to insert into a profile. That means my deduction last week should be slightly altered in that Rosalie wasn't presenting a 6-block huck unit but that she was demonstrating a different method of huck which is more similar to overshot. Not sure anyone thinks this much about their weaving structures but hey, that's where my brain went. I also remembered a brief statement she said during class, something about how the plain weave section kept the huck stable for newbies. That’s when I decided to pay attention to the plain weave section while beating. That meant I could ignore the huck lace that bent around everywhere and just focus on the plain weave part. After that it was so much easier to get a consistent ppi, however, if I ever want to weave without the plain weave border I have no idea what I will do. I also took some time on Monday and Tuesday to watch the videos from last weeks' 'Careers in Textiles' presentation from the HGA. This got my brain charged up about how I can potentially make an income with my passion. Oddly, enough it also made me a bit depressed that I'm too old to take on some of the careers these people have made for themselves, but I know that if you tell yourself you can't do something you've already failed. So, I told that voice to bugger off because I'm going to find my own path! Besides, my name is Vader, which means I'm strong in the force, ha!! After finishing the six huck towels it was time to cut them off the loom. Then I started the process of cutting them apart and sewing the edges. I also still have the 10/2 Test napkins rolled up so I put them on the chopping block as well. Now I have a lot of stitching to do. Before washing I like to do two rows of a zig zag stitch at each end. The zig zag allows for a little bit of give, since it is a knit stitch and having two about 1/8" apart lets me get really close to the edge to that I don't have any yarns long enough to get pulled in the washer and thus distort the fabric. People also like to wash the whole warp in one piece. We had a chat about that at one of our guild meetings and both arguments were valid so I figure it is personal preference, and mine for now is to cut the warp into smaller sections before washing. Then I was off to the guild to help setup for our first hybrid meeting! I'm excited to finally see people in person. Has much as I love technology there is no substitute for communicating in the same space. Oh my gosh!!! you can have fun interjections again!!! Online you can't say a quick joke without the speaker getting distracted and fumbling, but in real life small jokes lighten the mood and usually inspire the speaker! Oh I can't wait for human interactions! And then last minute I received an email about the Quilting and Sewing expo in Sacramento on Saturday. I know gas prices are insane right now and COVID isn't completely controlled but we thought it would be an excellent trip for inspiration and... well... just getting out of the house. And since I have a yarn addiction I figured we needed to go to a local yarn store before we headed back to Santa Rosa. So we went over to the Historic District and visited Rumpelstiltskin Yarn an adorable yarn store with fantastic employees who love chatting and helping. I might have spent more than I should but they had 100% linen yarn in their discount pile! Which meant I had to buy it all. There was also an amazing tea store next door, which reminds me I need to order their black tea before I forget... We ordered iced tea for our drive back and the owner picked out the black tea for me (think it was Ceylon) and WOW! That perked up my mind like real fresh tea. I haven't experienced that in at least ten years when I was invited to a traditional tea ceremony near Golden Gardens Park in Seattle, WA. Found it! the place is called TeaCozy and I shall be ordering the Ceylon - Sri Lanka tea. So at the end of the day I came home with a few patterns, a butterfly panel, and lots of linen yarn. And that's pretty much everything I did in the studio last week, probably enough for one week, especially if I don't want sparks coming out my ears!
Happy weaving!
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This week in the studio was focused on the 'Design and Color with Huck Lace' workshop presented by Rosalie Nelson. We learned about designing with blocks and then practiced weaving huck lace towels. The first day was Monday and Rosalie described huck lace and how we would be designing it in the class. Though her interpretation was perfect for what she was doing in the class I found it a bit confusing because of the terminology used. I'm probably biased since I had already read Madelyn's book, 'The Complete book of drafting for Handweavers' before class but I found it more helpful because it uses specific terminology about each part of the structure. In Madelyn's book she states that huck is a 2-block unit. That means you have to have two different threadings and treadlings in order to make a solid structure. Robyn Spady also has a beautiful definition in her Heddlecraft magazine. "A unit in handweaving is a block that may be repeated or placed next to another block without modification." -Robyn Spady Heddlecraft July 2017 What made Rosalie's interpretation so interesting is that she used 3 blocks for one pretend unit. This makes the designing a bit more fun because you have a symmetrical block. Then when you go to design you have a larger balanced looking block. The draw back is that this is a pretend unit, and by that I mean it cannot be repeated without modification or you'll lose the integrity of the cloth. Her solution to this is simply have the next block be the inversion of the last. Meaning if your first block is odd-even-odd, then next the block must be even-odd-even. Read Right to Left Block A has the pattern thread on shaft 3 so it is odd, the next is on shaft 4 so it is even, then again on shaft 3. Odd-Even-Odd Block B has the first pattern shaft on 6 so it is even, the next pattern thread on 5 so it is odd, then again on 6. Thus it is Even-Odd-Even. Together both of these blocks become a unit. I loved the concept of elongating the units themselves for a weave because it gives rise to more possibilities! You could do a 6-block unit (meaning the image above goes into one filled square of a profile threading) or a 10-block unit to fill out short profile draft. Or maybe you are using tiny thread and you want to accentuate areas with lace, thus needing a bigger unit. The what if possibilities get my weaving brain excited! If we go back to the Madelyn's book she states that there are also 7-thread huck lace patterns, that just means a wide block: 1-4-1-4-1-4-1. Which is definitely good for elongating a section, say if you had thin yarns and you wanted the floats to really pop, however, this wouldn't show off that nice symmetric pattern Rosalie demonstrated in her workshop. Then we finished the first day making lots of designs with a few sheets from her book 'An Exaltation of Blocks' On the second day we talked about tie-up and how to use the huck lace design paper in order to find what shafts we need to add or drop to our plain weave in order to create the lace. Rosalie does an amazing job walking you through this! I kept wanting to jump ahead for some reason which meant that every question I asked, sure enough, was on the next slide. Guess, I should slow down on coffee during workshops, ha! Basically, once you find out what shafts you need to raise then you can make the tie up. In Madelyn's book she uses a fun feature of profile drafting to create the tie-ups. However, Rosalie took it a step further and made a walking treadle tie up! Back in December while reading the Leclerc series they strongly recommended using a walking treadle system for better and faster weaving. I've also seen the technique discussed in Handwoven, in fact it was in the first issue I ever purchased! (see bottom for references) But like most things with weaving until I'm ready to hear it I just shrug it off since there are already 10 billion things to learn. And now that I have tried it this walking stuff is a blessing! I like to think of my weaving as a consistent drum beat, and when I added the walking treadling it seems like I'm dancing to my consistent drum beat. I'm not going to explain it since it's not completely clicked into my brain, but all it means you are alternating your feet when you treadle on a floor loom. If you want a lesson take Rosalie's class and know that when it gets weird and you're pretty sure your missing something, Rosalie will show you one more thing and BAM! you get it. Wonderful lesson in walking treadling for huck lace. Then Friday it was kind of a show and tell. Looking at everyone's design ideas and our color choices. While having Rosalie comment on the different patterns and color choices. There are so many design ideas it's ridiculous. I’m half tempted to buy her book just for inspiration but now that I have no job I should probably make money before I start spending it all on weaving books, even if they do look awesome. After that I finished weaving 3 towels, this weekend I'll probably finished the other three and take them off the loom. The first one I think I messed up on since it is overly lacey looking, I used about a 13ppi. The second and third one I beat my normal way and they look much better. I think I took her advice to beat lightly too seriously. She did state that she had worked with Peter Collingwood and all things rugs before she turned to Rep Weave and now Huck lace, so for her she has to be conscious that her beat is much lighter. Me on the other hand, I hate rugs because of the heavy beat and all I’ve been weaving are light weight garment fabrics and silky scarves so my normal beat is perfect for huck. But if I ever try Rep weave or a rug again I'll definitely have to change! Well that's it for this week in the studio. Happy Weaving. References:
Books: Van der Hoogt, Madelyn. The Complete Book of Drafting for Handweavers. Shuttle-Craft Books, 1993. Neilson, Rosalie. An Exaltation of Blocks. Orion's Plumage. 2017 Website: https://weavingspace.co.uk/how-to-turn-a-profile-draft-into-a-threading-draft/ https://handwovenmagazine.com/dancing-with-your-loom/ Magazine: Spady, Robyn. "The Weave" Heddlecraft July 2018. p 4-12 |
Author: Vader
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