Woven Failure, Lessons Learned

I just noticed that I haven't posted anything for weeks, shame on me but in my defense I have been sucked into the massive underworld called Ravelry, WOW is that community huge and lots of fun by the way.


My weaving update, well I've been working on the light weight shawl after many difficulties and weaving mistakes I couldn't bear to weave two picks every ten minutes to then find mistakes and unweave 4 picks below that. The warp was not cooperating and was not lifting and lowering under any tension, I was aggravated beyond words and after two days and no progress I cut the warp off my loom.


This pic is of the loom warped with the second cotton which was Aunt Lydias 3, the weave was tighter but the warp of gassed cotton was not lifting.



This is a pic of the gassed cotton warp and weft, before washing and drying,totally unstable.




This final pic is of the top portion of gassed warp/weft and the bottom of gassed warp/ #3 weft. I have to say that after the wash the instabilities was significantly less noticeable, and in the bottom portion it was gone. I have about 4' of fabric that I plan to sew in to a project bag as to not waste the yarn and keep the sample useful.On another note,I have been informed that there are two more babies on the way, both girls so the next warp and weft will be for simple yet satisfying baby blankies. I need a break from the mind blogging stuff for a while, and to think Christmas is just around the corner and not one thing has been finished, not knitted or woven. AH - such is the life of a fiber artist if I can call myself that these days.

Open Weave Shawl

I was finally able to start weaving the shawl, (excuse the photo Blogger is uncooperative today) It has not been without some challenge the yarn is slippery and doesn't catch on to itself, it slips and slides from one position to the other it's behaving like fine fishing line. In order to stabilize the first few picks I hemstitched them.

Another issue I'm having is that when the shed is in the down position which causes the slotted yarn to be in the up position is is very loose this is annoying but I have resorted to sticking a pickup stick in before the weft to keep it down. When the slotted yarn is in the up position same thing really loose, what I've done here is use another pick up stick behind the heddle for tension.

In the passive position when all the yarn slotted and heddle holes are even across the loom, the tension is fine ** scratches head in question** okay I give - wasup with this?? What did I do incorrectly cause I can't figure this one out. I retied and rolled the back and cloth beam as tight as I can, you can bounce a dime off this stuff it's so tight, if I rubbed coal on it for a week I'd have a diamond.
This is the close up of the fabric being produced very open and lacy I was going to do some leno and lace work but not with this yarn I can't even begin to control it on plain weave and I think I may drive myself crazy with lace work. I'm planning on trying to use some other thicker yarn for the weft maybe the 3 ply cotton and see if it reacts any different. More on this later.

Mish Mash and Then Some

I finished the woven sample this one is 25.5 " x 25.5" (wasn't planned this way it just happened) on my RH with the 12.5 dpi heddle, crochet cotton. It's very open and airy really nice drape, what I don't like are the edges, which are my fault, because I smashed them as I was weaving I have to learn not to pull too tight on weft so that they would be more uniform with the rest of the fabric. I could see a very pretty shawl in the near future with this yarn. It's pink, beige, brown and cream it's really lovely and I'm looking forward to working with it.


In the knitting department I finished my sweater, it doesn't seem that the color variation is such a big deal once it was all put together, so I'm keeping it. It's been washed, dried and blocked and it feels so soft. I'll really enjoy it on my next trip in February to NC.





I have been currently knitting this http://www.knitty.com/issuefall06/PATTviveka.html for my DD in light blue and heather grey for the body, but I stop dead in my tracks last light as I cast on the front, why might you ask, well my co-worker is 6mnths preggos and I have not started her baby ghan (YIIIIIKEES!!). So in my panic stricken state I started to dig around for my copies if Creative Knitting and I found this



I like the mitered square afghan they had and think it's simple enough to accomplish in a smaller size for a baby, I wanted a bit of a challenge in my knitting since I'm a newbie. I did a quick search on the web and found that I am about two years too late for the mitered square crazy from the Mason Dixon Knitting book, just as well, I'm sure that bloggers were getting dizzy over all the posts of colors, patterns, stripes etc.. So what I'll do as to not get anyone to roll their eyes when they read about my mitered square ghan is, I'll post only one square and won't post again til it's finished (saving you the grief of having to view countless squares. So I'm armed with my mag, my Knitting Answer Book (I think this is a must have for baby knitters) , yarn, circs, straights, and stitch markers, wish me luck!