Tien Chiu

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Networked rosepath draft

I was trying to decide what I could weave for the CNCH yardage exhibit – it would have to be something interesting, of course, and also something I could do something with.  So I doodled a treadling, redrew it on a 4-shaft rosepath network, and voila:

networked rosepath draft
networked rosepath draft

I rather like this, and will try weaving it up, in the reddish-brown wool weft that I already dyed.  I’m still trying to figure out how to get some pizzazz into it, though – I have a few ideas, like throwing in a shot of gold embroidery thread every few picks, or else overdyeing it after weaving.  Probably the latter, since I’m on a tight deadline and need to crank out a minimum of 3 yards in the three weeks I’ve got left.  Don’t know if I’ll manage it, but I figure it’s worth a try.

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The pleasures of puttering

Now that the house inspections are just about done, the business travel is over, and Autumn Splendor is complete, I’m mostly just puttering around.  This doesn’t mean that I’m not busy – I’m constitutionally incapable of sitting still – but I’m not focused on any Big Projects right now, and I’m not under time pressure for anything – which is unusual in my life, since I’m goal-oriented and like to set deadlines.

Which gives me time for things like shredding the giant pile of credit-card offers (which have been accumulating for – I kid you not- two years!), organizing my samples, cleaning up the studio, and lounging about.  I’m deeply enjoying it, after two weeks of highly goal-focused time pressure.

I did, however, finish weaving up the new pattern sample, and cut it off the loom and wet-finished it today.  It doesn’t seem to have the soft hand I expect from cashmere, though – probably because the cashmere weft is very tightly twisted – so I may try finishing it the way the seller recommends.  Which means dampening it and throwing it into a warm dryer to bring up the softness and fuzz.  Radical, but it works; I’ve done it before.

I have also decided to dye the yardage, primarily because the recipient isn’t really a black-and-white kind of person.  I went through my dye swatches this morning and pulled out these four candidates:

four colors to try
four colors to try

The colors are somewhat different in real life, but you get the idea.  The black will tone things down considerably, so I’m starting with fairly bright, high-contrast colors.  It will be interesting to see what comes of it.

Meanwhile, I am spending tomorrow at Sharon’s place, where she is going to teach me how to drape in one all-day extravaganza.  So the dyed samples may have to wait until Monday, which I have off because it’s a holiday in the U.S.  More time for playing!

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New draft, book update

Got home last night, thoroughly exhausted, and fell into bed for ten hours.  Still feeling woozy this morning, though – I absolutely loathe airplane travel – so didn’t attempt anything difficult.

Instead I spent a little while doodling with Fiberworks PCW.  Network drafting and a little cut, paste, and reverse sequence produced this draft:

curvy diamonds, in a network drafted twill
curvy diamonds, in a reversing network drafted twill

I’m not sure it deserves to be categorized as network drafted since there’s a reversal in the treadling and the threading is a point threading, but whatever you call it, it’s pretty.  I think I will use it to weave off the next eight yards of the Infinite Warp, which will be a gift to a seamstress I know.  After considerable debate I think I’m going to weave it up in black and white – mostly because I have 400 grams of similar-weight black cashmere in my stash, and dyeing fine cashmere is a royal pain.  If I decide the contrast is too strong, I may overdye it later, probably a pale beige or pale gray, to make the contrast a little less striking.

Meanwhile, I wrote another 2,500 words during my trip, so the book is making real progress.  I’ve decided to expand the topic from learning a single craft quickly to learning to problem-solve craftwork generally, and work across multiple disciplines at once.  This seems more interesting and complex to me than just talking about a single craft – especially since I’ve realized that I rarely pick up a new craft in a vacuum, and that problem-solving skills are one of the most useful things a crafter can have in his/her arsenal.  This will let people build on existing skills as well as pick up a new one.

So this is an exciting development, book-wise.  I’m planning to continue working on it as I have time between house, getting in shape, weaving, and othersuch.  Still hoping to average 500 words/day for the next month or so.  That would get me to 15,000 + 7,500 already written = 22,500, which is probably about 1/3 to 1/2 the finished length.  I don’t anticipate this being a big book, unless I come up with more material than I expect I will!

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Got my work knit out for me

I started knitting the first blank yesterday.  Oy vey!  4,050 rows and about 2 hours later, I’m done.  The finished blank is 30+ feet long!   I tried doubling the width, but wound up with so many dropped stitches that I gave up.  I’m not quite sure how I’m going to manage the dyeing of the piece – I suspect it will just require lots and lots of plastic wrap.

I am debating whether to steam the dyed blank or to let it batch.  I’m a little hesitant to try batching, mostly because I’ve never tried it before: I’ve been told by several experts that it will work, but I’m so used to heating acid dyes that I can’t help wondering somewhere in the back of my mind if it will really be as lightfast/washfast as if I had heated it.  Fodder for more experiments, I suppose!

At any rate, I think I will try batching for this sample, because I don’t want to take the slightest chance of the blank felting.  (Yes, I know – if I don’t agitate it, it won’t felt, but I’m paranoid, OK?)  It’s hard enough to unravel as is.  So I will paint it tomorrow morning, wait a day or two for the dyes to set, and then rinse/unravel/weave it.  Then I will try simmering a swatch with soap to see if any dye bleeds.  That should put to bed any concerns about washfastness.

Once I have finished testing the swatch, I will take the 54″ sample and cut it into several lengthwise sections.  I will try overdyeing with fiber-reactive dyes in different color combinations, to see how different colors of silk warp interact with the changing colors of weft.  That will probably happen next weekend.  Once that is completed, I’ll be able to start the final material.

I plan to weave up twelve panels: ten for each panel of the garment plus two extras in case of mishap.  That is about 50,000 rows of knitted blank!  It makes me feel a little faint just to contemplate it, but I expect I’ll muddle through the way I usually do…one row at a time!  I think it will take a total of twenty-four hours to knit up all the weft, but I won’t do it all at once…and if I knit a blank, dye it, and then weave it up, it will break up the monotony of each task.  So, that’s the plan.

Off to bed!  Tomorrow morning I will do some dyeing, then run up to my friend Ginny’s to finish off the samples for that article in Handwoven.

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Maple leaves, woven

I have finished weaving up samples of both maple leaf drafts:

maple leaves, woven
maple leaves, woven

I love the sample at bottom!  It’s exactly what I wanted, except that the maple leaves are too big for what I have in mind.  I want the colors of the background to dominate visually, with the leaves only showing closer up; this looks like nearly equal parts maple leaf and background, so I will shrink the maple leaves a bit for this particular project.  (If I didn’t want the background to dominate, it would be just fine.)

The sample up top doesn’t appeal to me; I think the diamonds impose a stiff, stilted look on the maple leaves.  It would probably look better with a more geometric pattern, one more compatible with the straight lines of the diamonds.

Next step is to knit up blanks in 40/2 cotton and 2/60 nm wool, dye them, and see how they unravel.  If I can get them  to work, then I’ll work out the exact equivalencies between rows of knitting and shots of weft, and dye a “real” blank, to see how well my dyeing strategy works.  If I can’t get them to work, then I’ll need to use 60/2 silk, which will force me to rethink my colors and dyeing process.

Off to redesign the maple leaves!