A long, LONG time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…
…I put on a painted warp of 20/2 tencel, sett at 60 epi, with the intent of doing some sort of 5-end networked satin draft.
Now I’m back to debating what to do with it. I definitely want to make some sort of clothing out of it – those with long memories may recall that it had unpleasantly white spots where I had accidentally created a resist by tying the choke ties too tight while winding the warp. I tried covering them up, but to little effect. So the finished piece will have white spots. Chalk it up to experience.
Anyway, it won’t be good for yardage or for shawls, but I can cut out pieces and mostly cut around the white spots. So it’s salvageable for something beyond experience.
So, the question now becomes, what pattern do I want to use? I had been thinking of doing square snowflakes (mostly because I hadn’t time to do anything fancy), but upon thinking about it, the striping is so strong that a rectangular pattern will get lost, I think. So I think I will go for organic curves instead, to soften the stripes a bit. I’m going to have to refresh my memory on how to do liftplans for networked satin (I seem to remember playing with Photoshop a lot in creating the liftplans for my advancing satin snowflakes), then spend some more quality time at the computer.
Here’s a photo of the warp as it’s beamed on:
I think that if I do relatively small-scale, curvy patterns, it will complement (and soften) the striping nicely without “fighting” with it. I think small-scale (100-200 threads or fewer) is indicated because it’s going into clothing – I’m not a big person and large patterns tend to overwhelm me. But I could be wrong.
I could also do the entire thing as one nonrepeating threading – another interesting idea.
So many ideas! So little warp!
It reminds me of something I wrote back about ten years ago (if you’re motivated, you can find it in the Writings section under “Shaping Life” or something like that): the process of creation is essentially an act of destruction. You start with a blank slate, then, one by one, destroy all the things it could have been in the process of making it what it is.
The art of creation is therefore threefold: the artistic vision to launch the effort, the craftsmanship to guide the hands, and (perhaps most importantly) the courage to destroy what might have been in the cause of making what is.
Come to think of it, that’s a pretty good metaphor for life, too.
