I must be coming down sick, because pretty much all I’ve done the last day is sleep. Eight hours at night, plus four or five hours of naptime during the day. Since this is what my immune system does to me when it’s fighting off something, it’s probably Mike’s cold that is flattening me. I hope my immune system manages to fend it off so I don’t have to suffer through it. A few days of sleep is much better than a week’s worth of cold.
I have woven a couple of bookmarks! Alas, no photos yet (until I cut them off the loom) but thus far I have woven indigo blue, royal purple, violet, gold, yellow, kelly green, and gray-green as weft. Since I don’t have enough of any one color to make an entire bookmark (only about 21 yards of two strands of embroidery floss, which does about 4″), I’ve been using two colors in each bookmark, one for top/bottom and one for the center.
I’m very glad I decided to weave the bookmarks, because I can’t imagine WHAT I was thinking when I selected an orange warp for shawls. Orange is a very strong color, and while it does transmogrify somewhat based on what you weave with it, it remains very notably orange. Blending orange with purple, while it doesn’t look bad, doesn’t produce an effect you’d want to wear – looks OK in bookmarks or on a small scale, but is way too loud for a scarf. The gold and orange weave looks fantastic, and I plan to try red and orange shortly, but I think the palette of colors that will look good with it is limited. Black, yellow/gold, red, brown will probably about cover it. Oh well, live and learn.
I haven’t quite decided yet whether to go on using orange, with a more limited color palette, or whether to redye the warp skeins to black and use various bright jewel tones to weave with. If they were still skeined, I’d toss them back into the dyepot instantly; it’s just the prospect of having to reskein, dye, and (worst) infinitely re-wind into balls that’s making me hesitate. But I imagine it’ll be worth it in the long run.
Network drafting, however, is turning out fabulously well. The patterns are beautiful and distinctive, with areas of plainweave, 3/1, 2/2, and 1/3 twill creating fluid designs. Each treadling/tieup setup produces notably different designs – they all have the same symmetry and look related, but are clearly distinguishable from each other. I think it’s gorgeous.
Oh, and the colors are iridescent, too – they change depending on the angle at which you view the fabric. I’ve read about iridescence in weaving, but this is the first time I’ve seen it in action. Neat!
Off to go back to bed. Hopefully in a few days I’ll stop hibernating.
