I am a weaver who loves to plan and sample, and find the actual weaving part, at times, boring. Clasping the weft is good in sustaining my interest. But my body and mind must find clasping exhausting also, as it took me four sittings in three days just for the first sample. In the last sitting, the draw-in was becoming so big was pulling at the selvedges all the time. I shall stop whenever my attention starts to wane when I move onto the scarves.
In narrower pieces in the past, I used wound bobbins not in shuttles for clasping, but this warp being wider, I put them in shuttles for the first time. Overall it worked well, but I noticed one thing; that slight differences in bobbin lengths makes a
huge difference. I make bobbins by recycling card stock to fit the longer shuttle right away, and cut to size when they go into the shorter. As you can see the two shuttles are only slightly different in length, and often the bobbins are cut short enough to fit in the shorter shuttle, but just. Whereas they tend to have more room in the longer.
While sampling, quite a lot of weft unwound from the longer shuttle as the bobbins moved more freely. I've had to manually rewind several times, in addition to pressing the bobbin ever so slightly with my forefinger when I remembered. This is not a problem per se, but an unwanted nuisance.
Because the wefts travel twice in a shed, after weft-finishing they bunch up nicely, looking in places like tiny beads, and adding meatiness to the cloth.
I am satisfied with the treading, particularly because it works better if I don't change the direction of treadling too often. But with lighter-value wefts the pattern is too visible, taking the eye away from the clasping.
And finally the colors. I had in mind darker, saturated purples, greens, maybe blues, and perhaps reds to complement, but also used up a lot of thrums to sample the threading, and practice clasping with shuttles. I wished I had a more cheerful true green, but otherwise, I see a few workable combinations.
A few surprises:
* A is a pale lavender a little too light for my liking on its own, but it worked well here, and I have a lot of it.
*
B is a salmon-based mix with dark purple, orange, and a few other
things from Mom's stash. She had a whole cone, and though I sampled it
in different warps it never looked good anywhere, so if memory servers, I
used it in a multi-colored warp. I have very little of it now, but this
is the first time it looks attractive, and darn it, I wished I
had saved it.
* C is the only cashmere/silk I auditioned; it fulled
nicely, almost as much as the 100%, and does stand out with its sheen.
I'm hesitant to use it in combination with 100% as it may distort the shape over the planned 180cm length, which is my plan for these
pieces, but may weave a piece with two cashmere/silk wefts.
B is at the top. I have three possible pairs, but two with potential problems.
A, the pale lavender and a rusty orange, (the middle orange,) look great together but I have only three bobbins of the orange, and from memory I need four to five if I were to use two colors in roughly equal amounts. I'm not sure if I like the idea of lopsided distribution.
And then the medium purple with the medium green; this is the closest to my original color idea, but I have even less of this green, and I really don't want to weave with even more lopsided distribution. Other greens I have are much lighter-value ones, and I'm not keen on the idea of mixing them with this one.
C, the middle green is the silk mix. Although I did not sample the salmon-colored silk mix, which is somewhere between the two sampled pinks but a slightly different hue, I'm pretty confident this combination will look nice.
Another thought is to use the two purples in the first and second pictures. And I have plenty of them.
I have been staring at the samples for a few days; if I were to start weaving, the last silk-mix combo is probably the best place to start as I have enough of both. Alternatively, I might sample navies and yellows to help me make up my mind. Oh, but this thinking and not knowing but having all the options is a most delicious moment.