Thursday, January 29, 2015

That was Unexpectedly Complicated

The next stash busting project was supposed to be simple; I imagined matching a nice warp with an interesting weft, but I've been working on this for several days, thinking on my feet as it were, and proceeding with caution. 
The warp: gray wool overdyed with walnut husks, 3.3 meters, 162 ends.
The weft: Mom's hand-dyed, handspun wool, deliberately spun super bumpy, unknown wool, five skeins in various sizes. (The fat ones on the sides.)
I wanted to show off the weft so the sett was to be a little spread out than usual for the size of the yarn, 8 EPI; this made the piece slightly narrower than desirable, so I added two stripes in a thicker black wool but with similar flecks of colors as the one I dyed, using the top of the loom and a lamp! (Yarn colors in this photo is probably the closest to the real colors.)
Again, to show off the weft, I settled on a simple wavy design, but this took almost an afternoon to fine-tune.
With the loom dressed and sample considered, I calculated the handspun to weave about 140cm of the piece, so I needed to dilute without distracting so the piece will end up 180-220cm. I added tabby, which added "hidden" colors.
 These are the weft finalists. (Slightly bluer here than in real life.)
To show enough of the warp's gray in the fiished cloth, weaving is loose but beating depends on the size of the weft in each row. I'm not sure if you can see three tabby colors.
I can see the shapes if I step back.

With a long stick shuttle, and tabby, this piece weaves slowly; yarn texture is wiry, yarn size not delicate; I don't know how much of the tabby colors will contribute to the overall look, and the end product will be light but "bulky". I'm not sure how much of the planning will have been worthwhile, but it has been unexpectedly pleasurable.

I estimate three more days of weaving, because it requires more concentration than usual.

But it's been interesting. 

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