Tie-up, treadling, and liftplans

I went back to Alice Schlein’s book and to Bonnie’s book, and tried some more things.  I think I am starting to understand where I went “wrong” with the network drafting stuff.  Whether I can explain it is another matter.

First, here are two versions of the “network drafted” drafts.  One is using networked treadling and a twill tie-up, the other is using a networked liftplan a la Alice Schlein’s method.

Two things are fairly evident here:

1. the treadled version with a twill tie-up does not produce a “clean” liftplan – see the first photo for details
2. the treadled version, as a result, does not result in nearly as “clean” a background as with the liftplan version – the goose eyes are much more pronounced in the liftplan version

I got curious about why the twill tie-up does not produce a “clean” liftplan – so I played around with the 4-shaft versions and discovered that there are actually 9 different patterns creatable by wrapping the tie-ups!  (13 patterns if you count patterns that are offsets of each other.)  See the photo below:

I think what is happening in the twill tie-up is that different sections of the networked treadling are “hitting” on different patterns in the tie-up, resulting in a combination of the 13 patterns and a complex, somewhat obscured design.  Whereas, the liftplan version is only using three patterns, with a “cleaner” result.

I’m not sure whether the twill version could be considered network drafting, but I like it almost more than the liftplan version – more visually complex, not quite as geometrically rigid.  The beauty, however, of computer drafting is that I can easily weave both! and see what I like better.

Next on the agenda is playing around with the threading and treadling – I used a very simple design and treadled as-drawn-in to simplify setup while messing around with the liftplan, but now that I’ve gotten a chance to play around with that (at least to my satisfaction), I can think about more complex patterns.

And I still need to tie it in with the color scheme, of course.  I am 3/4 of the way through winding the 30,000 yards of yarn (thank HEAVEN that I don’t have to do it all by hand!) so I will soon be in a position to start warping, which means I need to think up a color pattern scheme.  Also, Nancy has finished one of my two knitted blanks, which means I’m that much closer to being able to weave!