Yesterday the ankle was feeling better, so I taped it up and started dyeing yarn. First I wound two 30-gram skeins of a superfine silk. How fine? I have no idea, but it’s about the thickness of one of my hairs. It was really challenging to skein because it is quite delicate, and comes on big plastic spools that weigh almost eight ounces. I had to set up a gizmo to allow the spools to rotate freely, and then start up verrrrrrry slowly so as not to break the yarn. I did get it wound, though!

After that, I wound three 70-gram skeins from cones of 140/2 silk. Piece of cake! And then I dyed four of the skeins in a scarlet dyebath, and one of them in a darker red dyebath. The skeins are now done and hanging outside to dry. We are having a heat wave (temperatures in the low to mid nineties, extremely unusual here) so I expect them to be done this afternoon.

Having dyed the yarn, I now have to figure out what to do with it. The warp will be 140/2 silk, solid scarlet. I think I’ll sett it at 90 ends per inch, which (I think) can be made to work with either plain weave or twill. So now I’m working on drafts. Here are a few of the options I’ve been exploring.

First, good ol’ plain weave. In fine yarns, with a scarlet warp and a dark red or black weft, plain weave will give beautiful iridescence, which will show as the dress moves. Kinda like this:

I have garnet and black wefts ready, and may try a yellow weft as well, just to see what happens.

Another possibility is a 3-1 twill vs. a 1-3 twill, in curves:

The advantage of this liftplan is that I might get some slight physical texture out of it, as 1-3 twill followed by 3-1 twill tends to pleat. However, as the edges between the 1-3 and 3-1 twills are blurry, I’m somewhat dubious about that. Never mind. It will produce nice visual texture, if nothing else.

A third possibility is plain weave vs. 3-1 twill:

This is not quite so high contrast, which would be nice if I want to keep the skirt patterning subtle.

There are other options, but the nice part about these three is that they can all be woven on a 5-end advancing twill threading.  That particular threading has a 120-thread repeat, meaning that the pattern would repeat every 1-1/3 inches. That makes the lines big enough to see, even at ninety threads to the inch. And there are plenty of other things I can weave on the same threading, like these “flames”:

So I think this is where I’m going for this particular sample.

But now, back to work on Creating Craft. I got my editor’s final round of feedback on the proposal, sample chapters, and query letter, so one more revision and I’ll be good to go.

My sprained ankle is much improved, but I’m still staying off it to avoid re-injury. So, no weaving, dyeing, or draping for me right now. I’m spending most of my time at the computer, watching fiber arts DVDs that I’ve been meaning to watch for awhile now.

I’ve also started playing with fabric design for the dress.  (For those who need a reminder of what the current design looks like, here it is:)

The bodice of the dress, being a painted warp, will be a plain, warp-dominant structure so I can show off the painted lines. I’m thinking 5-end satin. For the skirt, however, I have a bit of a conundrum: I think it should have subtle patterning to make it interesting up close, but strong patterning would distract from the phoenixes. The patterning should also relate back to the phoenix/fire theme. So what to do?

For subtle patterning, there are a few easy options. One is to create an iridescent fabric, probably plain weave with scarlet against black. If I design the skirt to have soft folds of fabric, the iridescence will add interest in the folds, and provide the illusion of additional motion as the wearer walks.

Another option is to create physical texture. Opposing a 1/3 with a 3/1 twill will naturally produce pleats in fabric – if I use a network drafted twill, like this one, I can get curvy lines, reminiscent of heat waves:

Of course, a 3-1 vs. 1-3 twill might give me more contrast than I want, since it will be solidly warp-dominant in one part of the twill and weft-dominant in the other part. So a 2-1 vs. 1-2 twill (which has less contrast between the two structures) might work better to soften the visual effect, though it would also reduce or eliminate the physical texture:

(Ignore the bands of lighter blue: I didn’t see that I had accidentally changed the color until after I’d saved the draft. Also, the “grid” in both of the small images is an artifact of the size reduction; click through to the large version if you want to see what it really looks like.)

A fourth possibility is to weave subtle imagery into the fabric, using a warp and weft that are very similar in shade (scarlet and dark red, for example) to reduce contrast. Something like this flame pattern, perhaps:

(The “grid” in the background is also an artifact of reducing the image size – click through for the larger version if you want to see what it looks like without distortion.)

So it basically comes down to visual and physical texture. There are tons of ways of adding either – the challenge is keeping the pattern subtle enough to be non-intrusive, and keeping the fabric from becoming heavy. I want it to float as the wearer moves – which means weaving with very fine silk and using weave structures that produce thin fabrics.

All this is purely theoretical, at least for now – until I really have the design nailed down, the skirt fabric could change at any time. Still, I think I’m close enough to finalizing the design that weaving samples could be productive. So, once I can stand comfortably again, I’m going to dye some 140/2 silk in bright scarlet, dye a couple of wefts in different colors, and start sampling!

I sprained my ankle on the last day of ANWG, alas – wasn’t looking where I was going, stepped on my foot the wrong way, and went down pretty hard. It stopped hurting after a few minutes, so I thought it was OK, but I took off my socks that evening to find a golf-ball-sized lump on my right ankle. Fortunately, the friend I was staying with is an ER surgeon, and she diagnosed it as “a classic ankle sprain,” iced me up, and wrapped an Ace bandage on it the following morning to get me through a day of traveling home. It’s better now, but it’s put quite a crimp in my work the last few days, as walking has been difficult. I’m just glad it wasn’t worse!

Anyway, I found more treasures in the vendor hall. I bought two 19″ reeds from the “scrap bin” at Glimakra, a bunch of videos on surface design techniques from Yarn Barn of Kansas, and 45 miles of yarn from Lunatic Fringe and John Marshall. Lest you think I was profligate, in this case, forty-five miles of yarn looks like this:

On the left is a ruby red tram silk from Lunatic Fringe, 6 strands of 20-22 denier reeled silk, which clocks in at about 30,000 yards per pound. There are 15 ounces of yarn on the cone, and a little math gives 15 miles of yarn on that one cone.

On the right is a very fine silk yarn from John Marshall. How fine? Well, here’s a photo that will give you some idea:

The red strand is the tram silk at 30,000 yards per pound, the middle strand is the black silk yarn, and the bottom strand is one of the hairs off my head! (The dime is just to give another way to judge proportion.)

Anyway, I’m not sure how fine the yarn actually is. Looking at it, I’d be shocked if it were more than half the weight of 120/2 silk, so being conservative, let’s say it’s 60,000 yards per pound. Then this cone, with 400 grams of silk, contains at least 30 miles of yarn!

So, very fine yarn indeed.

What am I planning to do with this? I want to try collapse weave, 1/3 vs. 3/1 twill pleats in a very fine silk yarn – 140/2 silk yarn, to be precise. To accomplish this, you need a weft yarn that’s much finer than the warp. But if the warp is 140/2 silk at 30,000 yards per pound, how do you find a thinner weft? Well, here it is! This will do very nicely. I’m not quite sure when I’ll get a chance to weave it up, as my ankle sprain more or less precludes weaving, but hoping to do it fairly soon.

Other than that, life has been fairly boring the last few days – mostly catching up on sleep, spending time with Mike, and staying off my feet as much as possible. I hope this ankle heals up quickly!