Tien Chiu

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Almost done!

I came home from work yesterday and started weaving like a madwoman – not sure what got into me!  At the end of two hours I had woven another 27″, and this morning I wove another 20″, bringing my total up to 66 inches.  The shawl will be about 84″ long (which is on the long side – my initial picks per inch calculation was off, so it’s longer than I had planned), so I have about 18″ to go.  I’m currently weaving at about 18″ per hour, so that’s only an hour’s weaving!  Piece of cake.

Here’s a photo of the last portion woven:

handwoven doubleweave shawl, on the loom
handwoven doubleweave shawl, on the loom

Here you can see the gradual progression from gold to orange, and the introduction of contrast.  It’s more interesting in real life, though – the colors shift and flow depending on the angle of view.  Nice iridescence – can’t wait to get it off the loom!

I could actually finish it this morning if not for FedEx.  Yes!  They are delivering my 21 kg of 30/2 silk today.  12 kg is for other people, leaving 9 kg (about 20 lbs) for myself.  But the loom is noisy, so I’ve quit weaving so I can hear the doorbell when it rings.  I don’t want to miss this package!!!

Now the question becomes, do I weave a second shawl or concentrate on finishing this one before Complex Weavers?  It depends mostly on how much I like this shawl once it’s off the loom.  If I find I don’t like the pattern much I’ll try to weave another.  I have four hours on Friday, almost all day Saturday, and the first half of Sunday to weave, so I’m pretty sure I can finish a second shawl in time.  If I like this shawl, though, I’ll focus on getting it finished before embarking on a new one.

Over the last few hours of weaving, I’ve started getting into the swing of weaving with two shuttles.  I’ve gone from pure incompetence (having to figure out laboriously which shuttle should pass through from which direction) to reasonable competence (being able to glance at the loom and tell which shuttle goes next).  I’ve reached the point where I rarely make mistakes.

I’ve also been working on smoothing out my hand movements.  At first I was clumsily grabbing the shuttle with one hand in order to hand it off to the other hand (inefficient and slow), now I’m using only one hand to pick up each shuttle.  Because I know the order and where to place each shuttle, I don’t have to slow down to figure anything out – catching the shuttle, placing it, picking up and throwing the next shuttle is virtually automatic.  Now I’m working on making my movements more circular, smoother, less bumpy.  This makes for better weaving rhythm, which is more comfortable, more efficient, and more Zen (to me anyway).

It’s also faster.  Over the course of the last several hours, I’ve reduced my time from about 3.6 seconds per pick to about 3 seconds per pick, including the time required to advance the warp, reset the temples, etc.  That’s a 17% decrease!  I’m definitely weaving more efficiently.

At any rate, I hope my yarn gets here soon.  I’m not very good at twiddling my thumbs.  🙂

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Back in action

After several more unfruitful repair attempts, I called AVL yesterday.  I talked to one of their technicians and within fifteen seconds he told me the cause and the solution.  I moved out the end caps on shafts 22-24 a little bit and voila! problem fixed.  Like magic.

So I have been merrily weaving away, and am now at the 19″ mark, about 1/4 of the way through.  I’m weaving at about 3.6 picks per second (including advancing the warp, checking the underside for errors, etc.), which means that it will (in theory anyway) take me about 6 hours to weave the rest of the shawl.  Add another two hours for unpicking errors, floats, etc. and that comes out to about 8 hours.  This is reassuring since it means I can most likely get the shawl woven in time for Complex Weavers.  I will likely be finishing it on the plane and wet-finishing it in the hotel, but hey, a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do, right?  And it means I will have something new to show at Complex Weavers/Convergence.

I took a couple photos of the work-in-progress, but I couldn’t get enough of it in the shot to show off the color progression.  So instead I will give you a photo of the first 36 pirns, which do show a clear color progression, and are quite pretty, arranged on the windowsill:

wound pirns for handwoven doubleweave shawl, showing the color gradient
wound pirns for handwoven doubleweave shawl, showing the color gradient

And now, back to weaving.  I gots a shawl to finish, after all!

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The real thing

I wove up a few more samples, and wet-finished the first one.  Here is the front of the first sample, wet-finished:

Wet-finished handwoven doubleweave sample, solid color warp and weft, front
Wet-finished handwoven doubleweave sample, solid color warp and weft, front

And here is the back:

Wet-finished handwoven doubleweave sample, solid color warp and weft, back view
Wet-finished handwoven doubleweave sample, solid color warp and weft, back view

You can see the long floats where I had problems with shaft #24.  But more on that later…

I then decided to see what the color progression would look like when woven.  Here is a portion of that sample (the rest is wound onto the cloth beam, and I don’t want to disturb the weaving-in-progress by unrolling it):

handwoven doubleweave sample, showing the color gradients
handwoven doubleweave sample, showing the color gradients

Here you can see a progression from gold/turquoise weft down to fuchsia/red – the final set of squares does not belong to the color gradient but is an experiment to see whether I liked starting the yellow against the fuchsia warp (instead of red against fuchsia).  Preliminarily, I don’t like the combination, but it is intriguing enough that I may weave it up to see.  For this warp I am worried that the turquoise weft combined with the gold weft will produce large areas of low contrast between warp and weft, resulting in “plain blue” and “plain yellow” squares.  I am not sure whether that will work in this shawl or not.

At this point I had reached the limit of what could be simulated with samples, and I was eager to get on to the “real thing”, so I started weaving the “real” shawl:

handwoven doubleweave shawl, first seven inches
handwoven doubleweave shawl, first seven inches
handwoven doubleweave shawl, first seven inches, second view
handwoven doubleweave shawl, first seven inches, second view

The  color gradients are not really visible yet, but I expect them to get considerably more visible in the next six inches, in the fuchsia warp anyway: that weft is headed rapidly into purples.  The red is tinged with orange, but the real progression to orange occurs in pirns #12-18, so not as much change there.

All this is beyond my ability to simulate using Photoshop, so I’m “weaving blind” – it’s too complex for me to visualize in my head, so the only thing to do is weave it up!

Which brings us to the weaving part.  Shaft #22 and 24 are giving me conniptions.  Shaft #22 now rises all the time unless I shove the compudobby box as close as it will go against the loom.  Fine.  I can do that.  However, now shaft #24 refuses to lift, because the solenoid cap (the little U-shaped thing) is rotating until it no longer “cups” the wire when retracted, but presses up against it instead.  The end result is the same as if it refused to retract – the shaft stays down all the time.  I managed to weave about eight inches before it started its antisocial behavior, but since then it’s mostly been weaving and unweaving.  Unweaving is an incredibly slow and tedious process because there are two layers that need to be unwoven, so it takes double the time.  I have now made some adjustments to the loom, and we’ll have to see whether that improves matters.  As soon as Mike gets up I’ll take it for a test run.

Dye-wise, I am still doing samples and experimenting with my process.  For some reason, at pH 5.0 the red dye simply will not exhaust.  I am going to drop the pH down to 4.5, take out the leveling agent, and see whether that works any better.

Between the weaving and the dyeing, I’m starting to get frustrated.  I have the patience of Job (or can at least fake it when necessary), but to have major setbacks on two projects at once is incredibly frustrating.  I sure hope the last round of loom changes fixes the problem and I can get back to weaving!

Off to the dyepots!

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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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You never know until you weave it

I decided to weave up a different pattern yesterday – here it is:

doubleweave sample, horizontal banding in the background, top view
doubleweave sample, horizontal banding in the background, top view

In addition to varying from 1/3 to 3/1 twill in the blocks, it also varies rapidly from 1/3 to 2/2 to 3/1 twill in the background, producing a soft banding.  Because the variation happens over such a small area, it blends together and mostly adds texture to the background.  I love it!

The interesting part is that I did not like this pattern much when simulated in Photoshop!  (Click through to see the larger version.)

doubleweave sample, horizontal banding in the background, Photoshop simulation
doubleweave sample, horizontal banding in the background, Photoshop simulation

In Photoshop the color changes look garish and distracting.  In the actual weave, the colors are more subtle and they add a shimmery look to the shawl.

Which just goes to show, you never know until you weave it!

I have repositioned my mirror to show the shed, and have discovered that the sheds are mostly clear, except at the boundary between blocks.  That is good news indeed, and the weaving is looking  much better on the underside.  Except for this small problem (click through to the larger photo to see it):

doubleweave sample with horizontal banding in the background, bottom side
doubleweave sample with horizontal banding in the background, bottom side

One of the blue-warp shafts is not lifting, producing extremely long floats on the bottom.  I suspect it of being shaft #2 since it got itself stuck earlier – for once, not a compudobby issue but a problem with the wires inside the dobby box.  I will have to do some more diagnosis tonight.

Meanwhile, I have finished dyeing the skeins for the weft.  I have to take a look at the second set in bright light.  Those skeins look blotchy, and I am thinking I will probably redo them.