Wall hanging by Ulla de Larios

It’s beautiful, despite not being representational art, and I love the way the colors blend into each other, yet stay distinct enough to make out the pattern, which is a fairly classic “Snail’s Trail” overshot pattern (I think I got the name right, not entirely sure as I don’t do much overshot).  I could easily see incorporating this into my work.  Ulla very kindly agreed to have a longer conversation later, so I’m going to call her today and see if I can set up a time for coffee, or to visit her studio.  I think this technique could be fantastically interesting if you combined it with something like network drafting or  (dare I say it?) doubleweave.  Complicated, of course, but then, I love complicated. 

Mike and I have now more or less finalized the design of our wedding rings.  We’re going to have rings carved out of 14K gold bands (14K being harder and hence less likely to get damaged over time).  And we are definitely going with a Chinese dragon and phoenix facing each other along the ring, with a “flaming ball” of gold in the center.  Carved rings are unusual; normally  they are carved from wax and then cast using the lost-wax method, not carved out of a thick band of gold.  But we loved the look of the carved rings, so that’s what we’re going for.  The jeweler thinks the timeframe will be tight, due to her other commitments, but she says she should be able to get them done in time for the wedding.

Anyway, I have been messing with Photoshop and liftplans, and produced the following interesting combination a few minutes ago:

The first section is a mix of 1/4 satin (background), 3/2 satin, and 4/1 satin; the bottom section is just a set of squiggles in 1/4 and 4/1 satin.

I find it intriguing how the contrast varies – in the first section the lines are soft and blurred, in the second section they’re bold and stand out clearly against the background.  I will probably weave with both options and see how it comes out – I think in a weft that stands out clearly against the warp.

I like the scale of this particular design (the threading, incidentally, is a large semicircle chopped down and turned into concentric bits-of-circle in Photoshop) – the semicircles are about 1.5″ in diameter, making the overall scale of the design relatively small.  I like the organic, curvy nature of the squiggles (which I drew freehand using the pencil tool in Photoshop, with a brush diameter of 5) – I was going to use more regular shapes like circles and ellipses, but now I think I like it the irregular nature.

…I put on a painted warp of 20/2 tencel, sett at 60 epi, with the intent of doing some sort of 5-end networked satin draft.

Now I’m back to debating what to do with it. I definitely want to make some sort of clothing out of it – those with long memories may recall that it had unpleasantly white spots where I had accidentally created a resist by tying the choke ties too tight while winding the warp. I tried covering them up, but to little effect. So the finished piece will have white spots. Chalk it up to experience.

Anyway, it won’t be good for yardage or for shawls, but I can cut out pieces and mostly cut around the white spots. So it’s salvageable for something beyond experience.

So, the question now becomes, what pattern do I want to use? I had been thinking of doing square snowflakes (mostly because I hadn’t time to do anything fancy), but upon thinking about it, the striping is so strong that a rectangular pattern will get lost, I think. So I think I will go for organic curves instead, to soften the stripes a bit. I’m going to have to refresh my memory on how to do liftplans for networked satin (I seem to remember playing with Photoshop a lot in creating the liftplans for my advancing satin snowflakes), then spend some more quality time at the computer.

Here’s a photo of the warp as it’s beamed on:

I think that if I do relatively small-scale, curvy patterns, it will complement (and soften) the striping nicely without “fighting” with it. I think small-scale (100-200 threads or fewer) is indicated because it’s going into clothing – I’m not a big person and large patterns tend to overwhelm me. But I could be wrong.

I could also do the entire thing as one nonrepeating threading – another interesting idea.

So many ideas! So little warp!

It reminds me of something I wrote back about ten years ago (if you’re motivated, you can find it in the Writings section under “Shaping Life” or something like that): the process of creation is essentially an act of destruction. You start with a blank slate, then, one by one, destroy all the things it could have been in the process of making it what it is.

The art of creation is therefore threefold: the artistic vision to launch the effort, the craftsmanship to guide the hands, and (perhaps most importantly) the courage to destroy what might have been in the cause of making what is.

Come to think of it, that’s a pretty good metaphor for life, too.

The first shows most of the shawl, the second shows the beaded fringe.

I’m very pleased with it – the gold foil sets off the tan/gold warp and the overall effect is of antique gold and rubies.  The big garnet beads match perfectly, and the amber accent beads are nice as well.  I really should have photographed it against something light-colored so the beads would show up more distinctly, but Mike is in the bed right now and I don’t have any other horizontal surface that isn’t covered in stuff!  So this will have to do for now.

This and the brown/tan jacket are both going off to the Black Sheep Guild’s exhibit booth on computer-assisted weaving.  I hope it will inspire some people to see computer-assisted weaving as an art form and not as “cheating” (which some people apparently do.  beats me why.).

I am debating entering the tiger eye shawl in one of the judged galleries – haven’t decided yet.  If I do, it will have to be re-hemmed, as the hem is sloppily machine-hemmed.  I was too impatient to get started. 

Meanwhile, I have inspected the painted warp. It looks glorious except for one thing – where I tied the choke ties, the warp is still white.  I knew that was going to happen when I painted it – unfortunately I had already soaked the yarns when I realized the error of tying tight choke ties – but it is still distressing.  It will definitely not be the “perfect project” I’ve been seeking, but, well – let’s see how it looks on the loom.  I think it will be OK for casual wear, but I could just weep at the white spots in an otherwise beautifully colored warp.  Next time I will tie loose ties instead of tight choke ties.

Oh well.  It will still look fine from five feet away, I guess.  It’s just that I’m seeking perfection.

Sara used a warp-emphasis plainweave for her kimono, but since I’ve been unable to weave a good plainweave on Lady Di (possibly because of the cable problems, so that may be fixed now), and because something in me just won’t settle for a structure so simple, I think I’m going to weave it in 5-shaft satin. Satin is warp-faced on one side, which will let the glorious warp colors show, and the yarn is fine enough that a four-thread float isn’t going to catch on things.

I’m going to use two different painted warps, the primary warp in bright shades, fuschia/orange/blue/purple, and the secondary warp in just blue/purple, alternating in stripes.  This will break up the horizontal stripes of the primary warp and give a bit more motion to the finished garment.  (It will also make it visually “busy” enough that I won’t have to worry much about matching stripes in the garment.)

I will probably thread the main warp on shafts 1-10 and the secondary warp on shafts 11-15, both to spread things out a bit and to allow me to control the weave structures separately if I feel so inspired.  With fifteen shafts, I can do three blocks of satin, which gives me enough leeway to play around once I finish the necessary yardage for the garment.

I’m not entirely sure about the sett.  The formula in Sharon Alderman’s book gives sett S = (W*R)/(I+R) where W= wraps per inch, R = # of threads in each repeat, I = number of intersections between warp and weft in each repeat. 20/2 tencel has 68 wraps per inch (according to Halcyon Yarn’s website), and a 5-shaft satin has a 5-thread repeat with 2 intersections per repeat.  Doing the math, that comes out to a sett of about 49.

But wait!  Alderman goes on to say that, for slippery yarns (tencel being very slippery), you want to increase the sett by 10-15%.  So that yields a theoretical sett of 54-57.

For my weave structure, I want my raddle groups to be a multiple of 5, so repeats of the pattern stay within each raddle group rather than “jumping” into a new raddle group.  My raddle has 1/4″ spacing, so ideally the sett would be a multiple of 4*5=20.  The closest value is 60, so I think I’m going to try a slightly denser-than-suggested sett and sett it at 60 epi.  At that sett it may not beat square, but that’s not really an issue with satin and I don’t care if it comes out a little more warp-faced; a slightly stiffer fabric will also be better for garments, so I think 60 epi will do.

I’ll start winding the warp either tonight or tomorrow, in between studying up on web design.  I’ll also start investigating patterns for AIDS Lifecycle outfits.  Next weekend, if it isn’t raining, I’ll paint the warp.

Whee!  The world contains FAR too many interesting things to do.