More on Black Jack

I managed to replace every lurex thread with a blue dyed thread (Debbie Bliss) and it is weaving up nicely. Now there are six plastic film canisters  dangling at the back of the loom, weighting these new threads. I use the canisters weighted with glass marbles,  winding the spare yarn round the canister, then trapping the thread in between the body and the lid of the canister. I have only once had a problem with this method which occurred when I was using a fine wool lace weight yarn as warp. The lid of the canister just cut through the yarn. The advantage of this method is that it is easy to alter the weight by adding or subtracting marbles. The disadvantage, at the moment that I have used up my stock of marbles as weights on the warp-weighted loom.

The hemming at the start is visible. This is done according to the Nancy Walker method which  I learnt during her course on linen weaving at the Denver Convergence in 2004. Very effective since you don't put any tension on the weft threads, only on the warp ones.




A comment on the Debbie Bliss pure silk yarn which is sold for knitting. It is expensive but it takes acid dyes beautifully and weaves up well.  It has an attractive high lustre and does not pill or shed fluff. I use it sparingly and this blue was some I dyed when experimenting about a year ago. I have shoe boxes (all labelled) full of 10 gm skeins of experiments in dyeing and I like to use them up.