I have been laboring mightily to understand doubleweave, and am starting (on Pat’s recommendation) by generating all possible Photoshop presets for 1-3 and 3-1 right twills. I have no idea (yet) how many of them there are, but I’m suspecting about 36. I’m slowly slogging through it, making a lot of mistakes along the way, mostly to do with nomenclature. (“Wait – was that a 1/3 twill or a 3/1 twill, and is warp A and weft B on top, or was that warp B and weft A?”) But I am learning a great deal about how doubleweave behaves, and incidentally quite a bit about block weaves. I am not at the point where I can explain anything, but I am making a lot of observations, collecting a lot of experimental data (“What happens if I do this?”), and am starting to believe that it will all gel into understanding sometime soon.
This would all be easier if I had a firm, intuitive grasp of what happens when there’s a black vs. white square in the tiedown. I mean, I know it means the respective warp thread is raised when the respective treadle is pressed, but I haven’t yet connected it up on an intuitive level, where I can look at a drawdown and say, “Of course” (or, better yet, “I know what is going to happen if I do X”.). I have an intellectual but not an intuitive understanding, so figuring out what “should” be happening is mightily laborious, since I have to mentally calculate each thread. And, since the human mind can only track three or four things at once, by the time I’ve done five threads I’ve forgotten the first one.
Very frustrating, and probably why some things are learned only through experience – the intuitive mind needs a lot more data in order to function. But at least the pixel-pushing I’ve been doing in PCW is getting me that data, so hopefully I should develop some intuition soon. (Funny how intellectual understanding is not at all the same as intuitive understanding, eh?)
Anyway, I hope to have pretty pictures and an explanation of how it all works in the next few days.
Meanwhile, Ginny, my friend who is winding bobbins for me, came by and picked up my first set of dye samples yesterday. She’ll wind them and then return them to me, in exchange for the leftover yarn. (Only about 10% of the yarn actually gets wound onto the bobbins – but I can’t measure and dye less yarn with the precision that I want. So there are a lot of leftovers.) And the weather is clearing up! which will allow me to dye more samples over the next few days and over the weekend.
I must say, it is WONDERFUL to have free time! I spent three solid months laboring night and day to finish the dress in time for CNCH, so it’s nice to be free to work on whatever I want.
I am thinking of starting up a new weaving project, doubleweave on a block threading, but will probably wait until I’ve developed a slightly better understanding before diving in.
