Quick and Painless

I finished putting the scarf warp on Mac this afternoon. So now I'm all set and ready to weave. The part I've been dreading is winding on. All summer I've had so many problems winding on every single warp. It's taken me over an hour to wind on a 3 yd. warp. I think it once took me 4 hours to wind on a 5 yd. warp. Ridiculous!! No wonder I've been dreading it!

Well a while back I posted about how I had been performing the technique I saw in Syne's blog incorrectly. Today was the first time I tried it with correction. It took me about 15 or 20 minutes to wind on an 8 yd. warp!! And that's with stopping to fidget with choke ties, thrums, texting occasionally etc. Wow. The yarns were all orderly and I only had one warp yarn break right near the beginning because I wasn't paying attention and pulled too tight. I'm still a bit in shock right now. So that makes getting to my favorite part (weaving) even easier. I don't mind taking the time to dress my loom. It doesn't really bother me because I know what I'm going to get out of it.
But if it doesn't have to take upwards of 10+ hours to get a warp on and ready to weave, I'm perfectly okay with that. Anyway, the yarns look really nice together. I was a little worried that the tan might be too tan and make the yellow just look icky. But it looks nice together. I'm not entirely sure what I'm doing for weft right now... (Which is why I'm blogging not weaving)

I don't have much of the yellow yarn left. Perhaps instead of trying to get a 4th scarf out of the warp I'll sample some ideas to get a clearer picture of what I want. That would give me about 30-40 inches for a sampler...Or something like that. Yeah. that will work. I'll sample some yarns and some ideas and then weave 3 scarves. Well I'm glad I have something on there. I'm still not sure that any weaving will actually get to take place before school ends, but that's okay. At least it's on there. I choose to remain positive.
~JoAnna

Wishing...

I made the unfortunate mistake of looking at Webs and Yarn Barn today to see what's new. Well not much is new, but it still made me want to buy yarn. :( There are these two lovely rayon colors from Yarn Barn that I wish I could buy!! Gold and curry.
*sigh* It goes with my current kick of fall colors. But it's not just fall. I'm just discovering them because it IS fall. Well...I've always loved that gold color. :)

Anyway, I am hoping to start sleying the reed and threading today. I hope everything goes smoothly since I haven't woven anything in about 2 months or so.
Back to the note of wishing...I wish that I could buy a new reed. :( I really do need a new one. Since the reed I currently have is metric (6dpc. Which is APPROXIMATELY 15 dpi) approximately is the problem. Since I'm using a sleying sequence to get a different sett than the reed "automatically" provides, the project is always off center by about an inch...sometimes less.

I was taught to measure the width of the reed, find the center, measure to the left of center half the width of the project and begin sleying from left to right. Generally this comes out only off by a few dents, but with the metric reed, it ends up off more than that because cm aren't the same as inches. And since 15 dpi is pretty tight, it doesn't matter how much I clean the reed or how many things I weave, it still seems to catch the yarn when I'm weaving.

Well...Lets not get all depressed. I'm still happy about the lovely weaving I get to do. I have an 8 yd. warp going on, and I SHOULD be able to get 4 scarves out of that. I know I used 11 yds. when weaving my last 4 scarf set, but I'm planning to make these shorter. I calculated a full yard of waste (which I'm sure I won't need) But generally (depending on the yarn's fiber content) I end up with aprox. 28" of waste. I calculate high because often when I am winding the warp on, it gets really tangled by the end and I end up just cutting it off. It's one of those decisions you make about yourself as a weaver. Am I more concerned with not wasting yarn or enjoying the process? Answer for me: Enjoying the process. If I end up frustrated and walking away from it because it's too hard to get the knots out without breaking yarns, I cut it off.

Anyway, I still have to work the numbers out a little more to make sure I have everything right, but I think it should be no problem to get 4 scarves. I was reading in my handy-dandy Weaver's Companion that the "normal" length for a formal woman's scarf is something like 45-48 inches. CRAZY!! I prefer my scarves long and lanky. I like them to hang down to my hips when wrapped once around my neck. For me, that's aprox. 72".
Since I am just going to weave tabby I've been thinking of ways of spicing things up a little. I found this lovely project on the Schacht Spindle site: http://www.schachtspindle.com/yearning%20to%20weave/lesson_03.php

One of the things she does in this lovely little scarf is weave in loose roving for spinning/felting.

I have some roving that my instructor gave us that she didn't want anymore and I think it would be fun to try weaving in some of that. It is 100% wool, but since it will be in such small quantity, I don't think felting or shrinkage should be a problem. Again, it's an experiment. I'm also going to try the stripe idea I had. Now if only I can get out of this office and get to my loom!!
~JoAnna

Weaving on the mind

I can't seem to stop thinking about weaving lately.
Today I had some thoughts. I think I'd like to do some scarves with some simple stripes in them. It could be quite pretty. I think knitting is teaching me about proportions and stripes. It just translates a little differently to weaving.

For example: I was thinking I'd do green Tencel stripes in the scarves I'm planning on weaving. (or at least in one) If I was knitting a hat, it would be like knitting 10 rows of green, 3 of white, 7 of green, 3 of white, 5 green, 3 white, etc. But in weaving I'd have to throw quite a few weft shots to get the green stripes to be the same length they would be in knitting. It depends on how thick the yarn I'm weaving with is, but since it would be 8/2 Tencel, that's pretty thin. I'll just have to experiment. I'll have to measure exactly how many inches the striping takes up on the first side and then weave the middle and when I get to the right number of inches left, I begin the stripe pattern again, just backwards so that they match. This could work!
Sometimes I just have to say things "out loud".
~JoAnna