Ball winder and umbrella swift!

They came in the mail today. I've been religiously checking online to see where they were, without much change in the past couple of days. And low and behold, when I open the mailbox today, there they were!

I spent the next two hours trying to unravel the mess I made of my skein of silk hiro. Not much success there.

But I do have some blankets off the 60" loom!

Dark Pink and Dark Purple weft in uneven stripes

Solid grey weft which highlights the colours of the warp

E

New heddles!

I just received my new (to me) heddles in the mail!

                                

They will go on my 60" loom. I was going to buy extras for the other two looms while I was at it, but realized they have the same size heddles, so I should be fine. But the big loom has 12.5" heddles and as I mentioned in a previous post, for the current blankets I'm making, I had to construct makeshift heddles and it took FOREVER. So I say this was a good investment!

E

New purchases

So I decided the other day that it was time to invest in a ball winder and umbrella swift.

This is going to make my life easier this summer for sure (and in the future). I did a bunch of research and found what I think are good products and at decent prices. I hope they come soon though, because I tried to split the skein of silk hiro so I could dye it for the weft of my painted warp scarves, and the splitting didn't go so well. It's going to be a backward process, but I will have to wind it in to a ball, and try to get about half in the first ball - the skein is way too big for just one ball anyway. But once I ball it, I'll have to re-skein it so I can dye it. So the ball winder will definitely come in handy.

I also bought a bunch of heddles for my 60" loom. When I threaded the last project I did on that loom, I didn't have enough heddles and had to make some out of cotton. And it took FOREVER. There was probably 80ish heddles less than what I needed, so I decided buying more would be a wise move.

E

Warping

So I've almost finished warping the silk hiro scarves. They are all dyed, which turned out better than I had anticipated. I still have some weft to dye, but it's on its way!

I ended up using Navy, Violet and Island blue for one section. It is definitely more subtle than the other side. I used Saffron and Raspberry on the other side, but made sure they blended together. 

E

Silk hiro - dyeing the second scarf

Well, I'm happy to report that dyeing the second scarf went much better than the first. As I was doing the first, I realized I should have soaked out the silk. But since I'd already started, I didn't want to change half way through. So it took forever. I soaked out the second scarf and it took far less time to dye. Lesson learned. Now it's steaming. After that's done, I'll let it sit for awhile, rinse it out, let it dry and should be able to warp in a couple days!

Silk Hiro scarves part two

I've started working on the silk hiro scarves. I'm doing a hand dyed painted warp - two different colour ways.  I laid out the first scarve very nicely. That was all the space I had, so I'm doing them one at a time. 

I think I've taken on too much with this one. 

And I took my gloves off thinking everything was ok, but I was wrong. Blue hands for days. 

I Decided to steam one before attempting the other end of it. Probably not a good idea, but it is what is happening at this point.

What an eventful Saturday night.

E

Sample Silk Hiro

My sample is complete (from this post).

The colour of the warp is something I would definitely do again - but I should have dyed some weft before I started weaving. I ended up using undyed silk hiro. It's an ok look, but not what I wanted.

I used a threading called Gothic Cross. I started out doing the suggested treadling, but then I started to do some variations. I think it looks pretty neat and am going to definitely use it on the actual scarves.

It shrunk about 30%, so I've redone my warp calculation and should be fine. Fingers crossed!

E

Silk Hiro

I've gotten all my cotton tea towels off my loom and my next project is going to be a couple scarves made out of silk hiro. It's a beautiful braided fibre with a lot of elasticity. I'm not sure if that's the actual name, or if it's just a new yarn type, because I can't find it anywhere online. But I have 2 skeins of it left over from a sweater that I knit in class last semester, so I figure I should use it.

I've never woven with it before, and I'm worried that the scarves might not end up the actual length I want it to due to the elasticity. So... drum roll please, I'm doing a SAMPLE. My teachers would be so proud.

I'm doing a painted scarf, so I'm going to pretty much do the exact same steps for the sample as I would do for the real thing. The picture doesn't do it justice at all (I really need to work on my photography skills), but I dyed it with acid dyes in Raspberry and Saffron, in a striped pattern, but having the colours slightly overlap. I'm not sure if I'll actually use these colours in the scarves I plan to make.

Anyway, it started out at 50" and after I'd dyed it was 36"! That's a crazy shrink rate! It was definitely dried with a weight on it before it was sold. I'm super happy that I did a sample now because I would have probably only ended up with one full size scarf and a tiny little extra bit.

Once the sample warp is dry, I'm going to put it on the loop and see how it looks. First step is to determine what threading I will use. Any suggestions?

E

Knitting machine

I finally got a knitting machine! It was a bargain and although its not the prettiest machine (in that it is old and yellowing), it works!! Well, in truth, I had to take it a part a bit to clean it out and oil it because I thought I broke it when I moved one of the levers, but I didn't! It just needed some TLC.

So now this will expand my crafting abilities. Although I do knit by hand, I'm looking forward to being able to whip something up quickly if the need arises. For example, yesterday Kristian asked me if I had anything for a baby shower. Which I didn't, so I spent a good part of the day making a cute gender neutral baby hat (doing up tension swatches and such) and although its done, it would have been a BREEZE doing it on this machine.  

                                 

For those who know a bit about knitting machines: it is a Brother KH-260 which is a bulky machine and only has about 100 needles on the bed, but I couldn't pass up this machine. Definitely a good one to start out with!

                                 

Taking it apart to clean it. God I'm good! (Sorry about the picture quality)

E

Happy Mothers Day

I decided awhile ago what I would give my mom for Mother's Day - a beautiful screen printed silk scarf - because I made a few in class and they are definitely in my mom's wardrobe's colour spectrum. I hope she likes it!

E

                                                   

Silk scarves

I'm making things in the next month or so to sell at Carter House this summer. I am going to be the manager there and there is a gift shop. The people who run it have been kind enough to say I can sell things there. So I decided that silk scarves would be a good idea.

I started by dyeing the scarves a base colour because they started out white and I didn't really want any white on them.

Base colours

Then I shiboried them. That basically means I tied them, folded them, creating resists that the dye could not penetrate. I did a few testers to see which method looked the best and some were really nice - others will likely be over dyed. Below are two scarves, one started out blue and the other yellow.

E

Examples

                                             

Blankets!

I was able to use my new loom bench with my new loom to make a blanket already! I'm working on finishing it right now (sewing in ends and such) and then I will post a full picture.

E

Loom bench

I'm in PEI this weekend visiting my friend Sarah for her birthday. Leading up to the weekend, I was on kijiji and figured I would check to see if there was anything on the island that I would like to buy... And there was a loom bench! Since I now have 3 looms and only 1 bench, this was something worth considering. And since a new loom bench is $450+,  I couldn't pass up this bench for $125!! So I got it. Apparently the owners had inherited it and had no idea what it was until they googled the name Leclerc. So now I have a really nice new-to-me bench!

New loom!

I was very fortunate recently to receive a 60" loom. Yes, I already have two, but this opportunity was too good to pass up. So I wrangled by dad in to helping me pick it up on Tuesday. It's wonderful. It was originally intended to be a rug loom, so its really well constructed (large pieces of wood) and has a significant beater on it. And the best part it, I was planning to make a number of trips up to Fredericton this summer in order to make a few large 60" blankets, but now I don't have to! It's wonderful!

But first I decided to do something crazy. I have a 45" loom that I have yet to weave anything on because it needs to be rebalanced. And I don't know how to do that. The unfortunate thing is,I realized that AFTER I had put a big warp on it. So I haven't done anything with it yet. And I have a bit of a deadline.

So I did the craziest thing ever and transferred the warp from the 45" loom to the 60" loom. Before I dove in, I thought about what the best way to do that would be. I figured would be nice to not have quite as much work, so I left it attached to the front apron rod and through the reed and wound it all on the front beam until I got to the end of the warp on the 45". Now I'm threading the string through the heddles backwards (using a twill, so it's not too difficult to do backwards). Then I'm going to tie on the back and wind it back through until I get back to the front where I can fix the tension and start weaving.

Definitely probably not the wisest thing to do, but I want to get it done as soon as possible and I don't know when I will get to learn about how to rebalance looms.

E