The magical tie-up

I have been messing around in the tie-up a bit, seeing what happens when I tweak things.

The first thing I did was change the direction of the twill line, to rose fashion, which of course produced a profound change in the “look”.  Here is star fashion:

Random twills, star fashion twill tie-up

And here is rose fashion:

Rose fashion tie-up, random twills

Then I converted the tie-up to a 1/3/1/3/1/3/ 3/1/3/1/3/1 twill to produce the boldest possible lines:

Tie-up with a 1/3/1/3/1/3/3/1/3/1/3/1 twill tie-up, rosepath style

Whew!  Makes me think of a zebra.

To soften the lines, I added some 2/2 on either side of the 1/3 and 3/1 sections:

A 2/2, 1/3/1/3, 2/2, 3/1/3/1 rosepath twill tie-up

Notice how dramatically the lines soften with a bit of shading?

Finally, I changed it from a balanced tie-up to one with more warp on the front face:

And I finally settled on this one, which is ever so slightly weft-dominant:

Slightly weft dominant side of final tie-up

And the reverse side:

The reverse side of the previous image.

I think I will use this for my next shawl, which will be the red-to-orange-to-gold changing-color weft.  Having a slightly weft-dominant side will make for lifting slightly fewer shafts (hopefully meaning less stuck threads), but more importantly, it will give the shawl a slightly different look on opposite faces.  I don’t want to go overboard, because I want both sets of color changes to show, but I think it would be cool if it were slightly different on front and back.

I have been warned that all these shifting colors + complex design may turn out to be “just too much” – but while my hearing is excellent, I am occasionally hard of listening.    I think it’ll be a neat experiment to try, and if it works, it should be absolutely fantastic – and if it doesn’t, I’ll file it away for next time.  As I read on a blog (Alice Schlein’s?) recently, “If no one is willing to go over the top, how will we know what’s on the other side?”