infinite warp – Page 4

August 22, 2011 by Tien Chiu 5 Comments

Samples from The Infinite Warp

I cut off the samples from the Infinite Warp today, in preparation for re-sleying. To my surprise, I had over a yard of samples! I’m surprised I got that far (or had that much patience), since I was breaking threads like crazy.

At any rate, here they are:

sample 1 - Celtic braid with 3/1 twill stripe in between

sample 2 - Celtic braid with stripes in between

sample 2 - Handwoven.net draft 29495, from "Fancy Twill Variations" by Ralph Griswold — sample 4 - modified version of Handwoven.net draft 29495, from "Fancy Twill Variations" by Ralph Griswold

cherry blossom (top), draft 56976 from Handweaving.net, from Neues Build-und Muster-Buch zur Beforderung der Edlen Leinen-und Bild-Weberkunst, Johann Michael Kirschbaum (bottom) — sample #5: cherry blossom (top), sample #6: draft 56976 from Handweaving.net, from Neues Build-und Muster-Buch zur Beforderung der Edlen Leinen-und Bild-Weberkunst, Johann Michael Kirschbaum (bottom)

These have not been wet-finished yet, so of course the patterns are subject to change, but on a preliminary basis, here are my thoughts:

I like sample 1 (Celtic braid without stripes) better than sample 2. The white lines in sample 2 compete with the Celtic braid for attention. The black twill in sample 1 also competes a little with the Celtic braid, so I may try another version with a broken twill instead.
I like samples 3, 5, and 6 (though the cherry blossom needs some more work to prevent the two bottom petals from merging).
Bold patterns work better in fine threads – the 4th sample is barely legible, even close up and with high value contrast. At a distance it disappears into static.

I have removed the reed and am preparing to re-sley; however, as I plan to work on the samples for Handwoven next weekend, I need to prep for that, so the next pretty photos may come next week.

August 21, 2011 by Tien Chiu Leave a Comment

Some you win, some you lose

The silver clay workshop went well! Here are the things I made:

three small pieces from silver clay workshop

The left-hand pendant was made by using my wedding-ring to impress the wet clay (you can see the phoenix and dragon if you click on the photo). The middle piece used a commercial rubber stamp to impress the lines, then was dipped into a liver-of-sulfur solution to darken the lines. After that I painted it with Pebeo Porcelaine, creating a puddle of color using the markers we were given, then mixing and applying the colors using a small brush. Ideally it would have cured for 24 hours at room temperature before baking 1/2 hour at 350 degrees, but we didn’t have that much time, so we stuck it in a 150 degree oven to dry it out before baking 1/2 hour at 350 degrees. It seems to be holding up fine.

The right-hand pendant is just silver clay imprinted with a pebbled texture, then painted with the Pebeo Porcelaine colors. Not as exciting, technically speaking, but the colors are pretty.

Anyway, I enjoyed the experience enough that I bought some silver clay books, tools, and materials, and plan to read up and/or play around some with it (in my copious free time, of course). I doubt it will be more than a sideline, but I’d love to create some metal clay buttons for my handwoven garments, once I get to that point. A three-strand Celtic braid button, for example, would be pretty cool.

What is not so much fun is this:

I’ve had lots of broken threads – about one every half-inch or so – which puzzled me a lot, since from everything I’ve read a sett of 60 epi is appropriate for 60/2 silk woven in a 4-end twill variant, and the 3/1 twill I wove at the beginning appeared to be a balanced sett, since the twill line was about 45 degrees.

However, looking at the samples I’ve woven so far – and especially at the top one, which is woven in a 5-end satin variant – I’m concluding that 60 epi is too dense a sett; you’ll notice that the motifs are elongated vertically. So I need to drop it back some, maybe to 54 epi, maybe more. I’ve been resisting this conclusion for the past day, because I so wanted to be up and weaving, but it’s hard to avoid. I’m going to have to cut off, drop off about 2″ worth of threads, and then re-sley, re-tie-on, weave a header, reposition the temples, and all that other bother. And, because I have to start weaving my samples next weekend for my next article (which means designing them, winding the warp, etc.), I’m unlikely to get much more weaving done this week.

Botheration! I had hoped to be weaving yardage by now. But c’est la vie…patience is needed to be an artist of any sort, and especially a weaver!

August 20, 2011 by Tien Chiu 2 Comments

Up and weaving!

Yesterday I got my missing tool (thank you Amazon!) and made the adjustments on the Fireside temple. Then I tied on and debugged the warp, all the time waiting for the Magical Moment when the cloth would meet the temple. Despite staying up late, I didn’t quite manage to get there, but I have high hopes for this evening, after my class on working with precious metal clay.

Here’s a pic of the progress so far (just a simple debugging design):

cloth so far, showing the rolling temple

The rolling temple functions by rolling the cloth across two rings of pins. The clear plastic protector presses the fabric down over the pins, ensuring good contact. So far it’s been working pretty well just on the naked warp – I imagine it’ll do even better when it has fabric to work on!

Aaaaand, it’s off to the post office (to mail out my extra copies of Handwoven to everyone in my family who might be even vaguely interested), and thence to my precious metal clay class. I’ll report back on what I learn, tonight.

August 14, 2011 by Tien Chiu 5 Comments

Patience, grasshopper!

I’ve been feeling quite impatient recently, on several fronts:

The warp is taking longer than I expected to put on. I finished winding the thirty-one MILES of thread yesterday, and put it laboriously onto lease sticks and started threading this morning. It’s taking me 12-13 minutes per inch, which comes out to about 5 inches/hour, or about four and a half hours for the twenty-one inches left to thread. It will probably take another two hours to sley the reed, and then I have to make some loom adjustments before I’m able to start weaving – so it will probably be Tuesday at least before I can actually get weaving. I’d hoped to get there sooner!
The latest issue of Handwoven is out, and my Kodachrome Coat is the cover!! I’ve been reading everyone else’s squeals of joy at the latest issue and feeling terribly left out – my copy hasn’t arrived yet, and I’m starting to wonder if it ever will! I can’t wait to see it.
I haven’t had the time I wanted to work on muslins, and between weaving and the Handwoven article I’m working on, not to mention some upcoming work as Complex Weavers Publicity Chair, it feels like I’m never going to get there.

In short, I’m feeling overcommitted, impatient, and frustrated.

Which is why it was such a delight to get a comment from a blog reader on a post I wrote long, long ago, from Southeast Asia. It made me go back and reread the post, which is indeed delightful, and which reminded me of the joys of the road, and the fun in just letting things go and trusting in the universe to carry you where you want.

Here is the post: https://tienchiu.com/2002/11/arrived-in-ranong/. (It’s really hard to summarize without mangling, so I’ll just let you read it yourself.)

Having read that, I’ve decided that I’ve been focused too much on expectations, and need to let go of my mental to-do list. It’s not the doing of things that is stressing me out, but the juggling of all the to-dos in my head. So I’m going to write all the to-dos down in Evernote, organize them in order of importance, and then take the top item from the list and forget about all the others. One thing at a time, and don’t fret the rest. (Oh, and have fun along the way, too, because fun is the whole point, isn’t it?)

And, because every blog post should have a picture, here is the fully-beamed warp beam, with 55,000 yards (3.75 lbs) of 60/2 silk neatly wrapped around it. Isn’t it a thing of beauty?