I am continuing to have problems with the warp sticking, although not nearly as badly as when I was trying to do plainweave. I am thinking this may be because the sett is too close – 45 epi in 2/28 Nm silk. I have used this sett successfully in 3/50 Nm silk, but I think the 3/50 was tighter spun and slightly thinner than the 2/28. Unfortunately I don’t have room in the reed to re-sley, having sleyed it for a 23.25″ wide shawl in a 23.75″ loom. I could do it by eliminating some threads at either side, but am going to wait on extreme measures to see whether it improves as I get through the hairsprayed parts. in any event I have a foot or two of color sampling left to do, so that gives me some time to play around with it and see if I can get it to improve.
The results are beautiful, however. I tried orange weft and the results are amazing! I’ve taken a photo, but it really doesn’t catch the vibrancy of the woven web. The orange and turquoise energize each other without clashing and the results are gorgeous.
I tried the 2/2 tie-up for the goose eyes (bottom half of the orange section) and I really like it. In fact, I like it WAY more than the 1/3 section (yellow at bottom), and even a bit more than the network drafted section (top of orange). The simple pattern shows off the color, whereas the more complex pattern is a bit distracting. But I plan to weave more of the network drafted sample to see how it looks when more is woven – it’s a fairly large scale pattern and right now I’m looking at only a very small portion of it, which can be misleading.
Today I will dye the knitted test sample that Nancy gave me in a variety of colors – pale pink, purple, and turquoise, and red/orange/yellow, and possibly some shades of green, just to see what happens. I don’t think green will work out that well, but since I have this lovely color gamp warp set up, I might as well use it! I think I will also try navy blue to royal blue, if I have enough space in the sample.
I am pretty satisfied with my results so far! Now, if I can just get that stickiness to stop…
