Tien Chiu

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July 11, 2010 by Tien Chiu

Dyeing to start

I have now finished dyeing and winding all the skeins onto cones – 26 colors from red to golden yellow:

red to gold gradient color yarn for doubleweave shawls
red to gold gradient color yarn for doubleweave shawls

And here is the fuchsia to turquoise that I did awhile back:

blue to fuchsia color gradient for doubleweave shawls
blue to fuchsia color gradient for doubleweave shawls

Now I’m busily manufacturing paper pirns.  These are basically just paper quills, rolled around a ball-point pen.  I decided to experiment to see whether paper pirns would work after realizing that I would need 54 pirns just for this project!  At $2-3/pirn, that gets expensive fast.  And paper pirns work!  You have to be a little careful about winding the back end, and about keeping the edges smooth, but other than that it’s easy, fast, and cheap.  I will never buy another pirn again!

homemade pirn, rolled from an ordinary sheet of paper
homemade pirn, rolled from an ordinary sheet of paper

So now it’s time to start weaving.  I managed to get most of my loom woes solved, but not quite all.  I think I will mount a second mirror to see if I can catch the long floats as they happen, but I am not optimistic.  I will weave about another six inches of samples to see if it happens again, and try to debug it if it does.

I have also started work on my process testing for the dye study group…spent most of yesterday mixing up batches of dyebath, dye stocks, etc., and will be doing more samples today.  So far the results have been disappointing, but I am persevering.  Hopefully I will have results to show soon!

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Filed Under: All blog posts, textiles, weaving Tagged With: doubleweave, doubleweave shawls

Previous post: Starting to dye
Next post: The real thing

Comments

  1. Geodyne says

    July 12, 2010 at 3:04 am

    Those colours are fabulous.

  2. Kati Meek says

    July 14, 2010 at 8:25 am

    Hi Tien,
    Your systematic approach is inspiring. Thank you so much for your generous sharing. Great solution to the many pirns. Thanks for the picture. Just like your description! Looking forward to seeing you in Albuquerque – maybe for longer than we had in San Jose. Treadle with Joy, Kati

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