Been playing around with taquete and the techniques in Marg Coe’s book (Fit 2 Be Tied). I pulled a (noncopyrighted) Japanese family crest off this website, and tried creating a four-weft taquete draft for it:
I think I’ve got it right but will have to weave it up to be sure. However, I’m going over to Lillian Whipple’s tomorrow morning, so I can also ask her to check it for me…Lillian is an expert both on weaving with fine threads and the taquete structure, and has graciously agreed to help me figure out taquete. So I will be going up there tomorrow. I’m so excited!
I have also just received a mini stir plate from http://www.stirstarters.com. They sell them for brewing beer, but I’ve been using it to mix up my dye stock solutions. It works very nicely – before, I had to sit there shaking or swirling the flask with the stock solution for five or ten minutes to get all the powder to dissolve, but now it mixes up in a minute or two, with no effort at all! And at only $42 (shipping included), it’s a great deal. (By way of contrast, a heated stirrer from a scientific lab supply will set you back about $250. Admittedly, the Stirstarter stirrer is not designed to heat, but I don’t need that functionality, so it’s comes out to be a great deal.)
Anyway, using the Stirstarter, I have now mixed up most of my stock solutions and will be doing more dyeing over the weekend. So far I’ve dyed five of 14 “pure” colors – it’s going slower than I’d like, especially the winding-onto-bobbins part, but I’m making progress and expect to finish the dyeing and winding by end of next week. Then I will move on to trying to mix a color wheel, reproducing the colors in the Munsell Student Color Set color wheel.
This weekend: visit with Lillian, see the American Craft Council show, rethread the loom, dye as many remaining “pure” colors as possible, dye wefts for my new taquete project. Yep, busy!