Progress

The weaving class went well. With a bit of help from my friends (thank you Bonnie), the tension problems were sorted. The first person to weave on the Meyer got on fine and a colourful pattern was produced. I had to make it clear to everyone that I had no idea what colour combinations would look good. Everyone is getting on with their own projects and making progress.

After the class, three of us retired to the nearest service station and discussed what to do about Linda Scurr's handspun. It is definitely a 9 epi fabric so floats of more than 3 threads are not allowed.  We settled for dog's tooth and organised the colours to use all the yarn. Then home.

On Monday evening, I went over to Leamington Spa to look after my grandson. I took the Voyager and warped it up with some tie-dyed cotton. The dye was indigo and this is supposed to be warp ikat. The warp looks as though it has gone on so the pattern will show up. nicely When I have woven a bit, I intend to tie-dye some cotton for the weft.

Today is bookbinding and I must go into town this morning and see what I can organise in the way of end-papers. My problem is that the Jules Verne book is American size and I need a piece of paper which is slightly bigger than US paper. This is because it has to be printed on the laser jet (the inkjet runs if it comes in contact with anything water-based) and the laser jet printer will leave a white margin round the edge, in effect slightly less than US paper. So I am going to see what the local printer can do.

And in amongst all of this, I have written my talk for next Saturday but don't like it. It is not well focused. So I have posted a flashdrive to my sister who is the ideal audience.

Spa Weekend(2)

Lots of exercise and massage on Friday and Saturday. I attended a class on Zumba dance. I suspect this is an exercise artefact and not a true dance. Anyway after 15 minutes of leaping about the room, my knees started to protest so I chickened out. I've got quite enough wrong with me without my knees giving trouble so I abandoned the class. The other three survived to the end of the 45 minutes but came out saying they needed a long rest.

The party was in our room (Anne and mine) on Saturday evening.  Champagne this time! On Sunday morning I drove from Ashby dela Zouche to Newbury and joined the first Guild weaving class of 2013. Thanks to Bonnie Inouye, the tension problems on the Meyer loom were solved and one of the students wove on it during the whole class time without any problems. Everyone in the class was sorted and working away by the end of the class. One person has actually finished her samples and is getting on with the main body of her weaving.

After the class, I went to a service station and discussed with Linda Scurr what she wanted doing/would accept as a suitable draft for her woven handspun.  The problem is that, as I suspected, it needs to be set at 8epi and a float of any longer than 3 threads is too long so we are stuck with using nothing more complex than a twill variant. It turned out that Linda wanted a dogs-tooth weave anyway so we separated, all happy.  I have all the yarn she has spun and have to weigh it all, work out how many metres of yarn I have and then deal with the colour arrangement. I have 2 black skeins, 2 white skeins and lots of mottled/coloured skeins.

I have one or two little drafting jobs to do immediately but more important than anything, I need to finish a talk I am giving to the Guild next Saturday on Textile Techniques in the Far East. The problem is that I think I have put in far too much info and the audience will be bewildered. So my sister, Dorothy, is going to look at it and give her opinion.

Spa Weekend

This weekend is 'Spa weekend' and, in addition to Ruth and Anne (my daughters) and myself, Charlotte is coming and it is her 21st birthday as well.

Two friends came round on Friday morning and helped me dig the car out of its snow drift. We had to dig the path to the gate out as well as the pavement.  Then we packed the car. Why you might ask do I need two 12-shaft looms, a warping frame, four large bags full of yarn of various sorts and innumerable boxes full of cotton. The answer is that the first day of the Guild is Sunday and I am going there straight from the spa which is at Ashby dela Zouche.

But to return to Friday. I managed to get the warp on the 12 shaft Meyer loom, tie it on, correct errors (only two) and weave a bit. I am not very happy about this loom. The newest problem is that the distance between the breast beam and the first shaft is very short so there is not much space to work. I can't use my standard Bluster Bay shuttles but used a very small one from Bluster Bay and a Leclerc which is quite low. But there is a serious problem with the tension. If  you rachet up the tension as much as possible, then the lifted threads are worryingly tight while the unlifted threads are very slack so the shed does not clear well. I am using 16/2 cotton. If I was using a thicker yarn  then it might be okay but, as it is, I have to clear the shed manually at every throw.

There is not much more I can do about this loom. The Guild weaving class is going to weave on it , or five of them are. The old clanky 12 shaft which belongs to the Guild is similarly warped up and is fine so all I can do is offer the students, who were down for the Meyer, an opportunity to weave on the other one.

The colour combination of the first draft for the four colour double weave is good, a warp of airforce blue and apricot and a weft of yellow and green.

And now to the Spa. I have already taken lots of unaccustomed exercise and have a full programme today. Something about this place I had forgotten is the number of showers you have to take. At the end of the weekend, you feel awfully clean!!!

The spa provided a cake for Charlotte last night and we had a good wine with the dinner. Though I did feel that fruit cake with marzipan and royal icing was not appropriate at a spa!

Threading Up the Meyer Loom

It snowed seriously last night. I looked out at 7 this morning and thought 'it has snowed again' and went off to find breakfast. When I drew the curtains at 8, I was shocked to see 9 or 10 inches of snow on the patio table. So I scrubbed going to the bookbindimg class and settled down to threading up the Meyer loom. I have to report that, after yesterday's outburst from me, it all went very well. I am getting through an inch in less than an hour. There are 48 ends per inch and it is not straightforward being a four colour double weave. I have done 6 inches and that included rigging up lights, tyeing up the reed and so on. So I hope to be done by lunch tomorrow. I might do a bit more tonight - after David Attenborough's Africa which starts in a few minutes.

Even More of a wreck

This terse beginning is to express my indignation at the Meyer 12 shaft loom. The last blog said it had taken some effort (mostly on the part of the Handweaver's Studio) to discover that, while all the 8 shaft looms appear to use Phillips No 2 screws, my loom uses Posirdrive No 2 screws - and it requires a considerable amount of force to undo the screws. The  shafts themselves are good - black enamelled metal soldered/welded together on three sides and a fourth side which is screwed on.

 

 

 

 

The problem is with the attachment of the shafts to the levers which move teh shafts up and down. A length of Tex-Solv cord is used which is looped into a hole in the top bar of each shaft. The cord then goes through three holes and onto the wooden lever which move teh shaft up and down. Problem. The assembly was quite clearly done by putting the cord in completely, then applying a match to each end - which makes the cord dimensions greater than those of the three holes. What is more, if the re-assembly is carried out in the original way, the cord has to be inserted in the first hole (which is too small for it) and blind because tthe cord is coming up from below the loom top and you cannot see still less get your hands in.

 

 

Last night, I spent two hours adding 50 heddles to each of four shafts. This morning, I decided to abandon this method of cording and put in a variant of my own. This started at the top of the loom where there is good visibility. I anchored the cord to the shaft lever using a Tex-Solv anchor. Now the original method used a very small Tex-Solv anchor and I replaced it with a standard one. No harm done, the lever shaft does not need to be space-saving. I could then poke the cord through the three drilled holes and into the hole in the metal shaft, then used the very small Tex-Solv anchor to secure it.

Photo of a shaft immediately after it was removed from the loom. Note the simple loop fatsening in Tex-Solv cord and the screws at the left hand end 

 

 

The loom from below. I haed it propped upon end while I worked on it. Note how closely packed the shafts are.

The top of the shaft is away from  the top of the loom and there is space to get a hand in to secure the cord. Apart from being much easier and faster, it is better because I can adjust the length of the cord at either end, All in all, an exhausting day.

The last four shafts of the twelve took me 40 minutes to add 50 heddles to each and re-assemble. And when the original cord had a lump on one end so it would not go through the drilled holes, I replaced it. I replaced four cords.  It all seems to function correctly after all the trauma and is all tied up ready for me to start threading up. I am going to warp up this one from front-to-back because I am not at all sure I am doing to get all the warp length on to this dinky little loom. If I warp up front to back, I can retain the cross, cut off any excess and tie it on when what's on has been woven off. One additional thing I did was colour-code the shafts. 8 shafts is fine but 12 shafts needs colour coding in my opinion.

 

 A close-up of the new fastenings on the shaft levers  - on the left while the small original one is on the right.

 

 Adding extra heddles to a shaft. If the side bar is swivelled on one screw then it holds one set of heddles ends securely while the other ends are slid on to the upper bar.

 

I have been to the first evening class on cameras. I learnt a lot even in the first session. We are still snowed in and I whistled up a taxi to get to teh college. It is snowing heavily at this moment.

A Total Wreck

That's me - a total wreck. A Linux expert came to sort out my email problems and poked about for a few minutes. Then announced that the hard drive on the master server was on its way to the great dustbin in the sky where it would (presumably) live happily ever after, knowing that it had served for seven years. There was the small point that a lifetime of emails and my address book were on this machine. AAAAARRRRGGGGHH!

I have prepared (slightly) for getting rid of the Linux machines by starting a Google account and I was thinking of moving things. The other thing I did immediately after New Year was to check that there were no files I wanted/needed on either of the Linux machines.  The expert did know how to get the info into Googlemail! And the address book has been successfully transferred. I have editted out all the unwanted addresses and recreated the Groups. He also transferred the email folders across. Some of them have gone across but not them all and I am not sure about the contents. He did mutter about it all taking 24 hours so I will wait a bit.

That, as you can imagine, has taken a great deal of time. I did start on adding heddles to the Meyer 12 shaft only to run into problems trying to get the shafts unbolted. Eventually Wendy Morris discovered the right screwdriver to use and I have undone one shaft. I have finished off the enamels and they are hung. I don't see me doing any weaving as I have wasted most of today instead of warping up the Meyer 12-shaft.

That'll never work!

Thanks to Sandra Rude for pointing that there would be nasty floats in the feathers draft and, after 3 years, it is all coming back to me. The draft was designed to be woven in 90/2 silk which would be set at 60 epi. And what's a 7-thread float in that? Not important. But if your sett is 8 epi, boy, have you got problems! So I set about twills and, if you're not careful, you get 5 thread floats in that. This fabric is definitely limited to 3 thread floats. So simple does it and I will have to rely on colour - and coming from a sheep, the yarn will be pretty monochromatic. Oh well. I have asked from an interview with the owner of the yarn!! 

One odd thing happened last week. 2 weeks ago, two of us cleared out the studio of a deceased bookbinder and I acquired a cardboard box 3 inches thick of paper. I could see it was a mixed bag but, when I investigated last week,  the contents were a bit startling (no, no I said startling, not indecent). There were a number of elderly calendars of maritime scenes and a large number of sheets with calligraphy practice on them and about 20 A1 sheets of handmade paper (very nice) and several large pictures, eg of owls, of the earth and one poster.  I can't find this on the web - see below. It looks like a copy of a 1930s poster but might be modern. But I like it though I would not have bought and will give it a home.

I have finished the enamels piece on the Megado. When I inspected the previous weaving which was done with smaller enamels three years ago, I found the grey silk of the pockets was sagging so decided I would have to do something more secure.  I am not sure I did the right thing but it's too late now. When I got to the stage of inserting an enamel, I rubbed down the back with sandpaper and then put a thin layer of  Araldite over the back. A  layer was also spread on the cotton fabric at the back of the pocket (not easy!) and then I inserted the enamel slowly and carefully. The first one which is in the top row in the photo, I did not do well but the next row containing two, I did much better.  The piece has been cut off and I will leave it untouched under tomorrow morning when the Araldite will have set.

I have at least  a metre of usable warp left and have decided what to do, indeed I have adjusted a draft to do it. Kennet Valley Guild weavers have all been issued with postcards of paintings by Gerhard Richter and, by March, everyone has to create a weaving based on their postcard. One weaver has finished his work of art - a spectacular demonstration of clasped weave!! When he showed it round, you could see everyone thinking 'Must get on with that!!'.  My offering is going to be a table runner.