Network drafted doubleweave

I debated whether to post this, as I clearly have not gotten network drafted doubleweave down yet.  But the effect was interesting, so I thought I’d post an image or two of the work-in-progress:

I still haven’t really touched on the whole potential yet – I could make the top side predominantly blue/yellow, for example, and the backside predominantly purple/orange, by changing around the twills on front and back.  Or, I could shade the orange/gold sections from gold to orange, which is what I’ve experimented with here:

Obviously I have only just begun my explorations, and I think I may not have the pattern presets right yet (I’ve got some very long floats that mean I’m doing something wrong), but there’s a tremendously exciting amount to be learned here!

Not just in network drafting.  I’ve been analyzing the pattern options in four-color doubleweave, and while I’ve only just begun, here are the variables I’ve found so far, for any given area:

• warp color that appears on top (the bottom warp color will be the other one)
• weft color that appears on top (the bottom weft will be the other one)
• weave structure on the front (completely independent of weave structure on the back)
• weave structure on the back (completely independent of weave structure in the back)

I’m still trying to visualize the difference between what you can do with four-color doubleweave, interchanging layers, and what you can do with two totally independent pieces of cloth, but here is what I’m thinking so far:

• Doubleweave requires twice as many shafts.
• With four-color doubleweave, you can weave up to four combinations of warp/weft, in a single piece; with two independent pieces of cloth, you’re limited to a single combination in each piece (2 total).  Thus, four-color doubleweave quadruples your color combination potential.
• Pattern-wise, if you can do it on 12 shafts in two independent pieces of fabric, you can do it in doubleweave on 24 shafts.  (This is trivially obvious by simply weaving two independent layers in doubleweave.)  With four-color doubleweave, though, you also (I think) have the option of interchanging layers from time to time, which changes the colors and the pattern.  You could do two independent patterns in a single layer on the same number of shafts by using two independent blocks in the threading, but you can’t do the color interchanges.
• Four-color doubleweave requires two shuttles instead of one.

There is more, much much more, but that’s my thinking so far.  It’s tremendously complex, and also tremendously exciting!

Wedding-wise, we have now settled all the details with the caterer, the location/setup, and the number of guests.  There are still a small host of details that need to be dealt with (what to do with my mother’s beautiful double-happiness pin/hair ornament, how to hang Sandra’s gorgeous banner that arrived yesterday, florist, ceremony music/harpist, vows, getting the marriage license, etc.) but the big complicated stuff is set.  Still, I think I may have to slow down the weaving stuff in favor of the wedding, sometime soon.