New Kitten Has a Name

We've decided on Gracie. As in, "Say goodnight, Gracie." She has a high, squeaky voice like Gracie Allen, and is a little comedienne. Plus, like everybody else in the entertainment world, she just simply thrives on attention.



Hey, she was completely in the frame when I pressed the shutter release. The delay in a digital camera is just long enough to give her ample time to scramble the composition.

She's in my lap as I type, and nudges my hands whenever I stop petting for about a millisecond. Hard to type this way...

On a fiber-related note, we're in the midst of preparations and packing up for the Contemporary Craft Market show in Santa Monica this weekend, Friday 10/31 through Sunday 11/2, at the Santa Monica Civic Center. If you're anywhere in the LA area, and have a moment to drop by booth #409, we'd love to see you. It's a good show, with a lot of terrific artists in all craft media.

So, the blog will be on hiatus for a few days.

Painted and Solid Warp

In a comment on the last post, Joanna asked whether what I call a "painted warp" is different from what she calls a "space-dyed warp"? No, they're pretty much the same thing. Even in the cases in which the space-dyed warp is created by dip-dying sections in different dye-pots, if the end result is a movement from one color to another, they're going to give the same visual effect. If it looks like a duck, right?

She also asked if I painted it while it was chained. Again, no. I chain it to soak in the acid solution, then unchain it to paint and wrap in plastic to steam. After steaming, I remove the plastic and rechain it so it's easier to handle while rinsing. Then I unchain it again to dry, and re-chain to store. It's all an effort to keep a bundle of 60/2 silk from tangling hopelessly in handling, while making it available to the brush and dye, and to the [very dry] air after rinsing.

Open Studios was pretty quiet today, so not only did I have time to press two scarves (recently fringe-twisted) that were laundered last night, and twist the fringe on another scarf from the to-be-fringed pile, but I also was able to photograph the solid-dyed skeins of warp thread alongside the painted warp.



As it turned out, the solid thread is a tad lighter in value than the painted warp, but I think the colors are so nice together it'll work out just fine in the weaving.

The next task is to wind off skeins of 100/2 silk for the wefts, and use the left-over 1% dye stock from the painted warp to dye the wefts. I'm gonna try really hard to make the wefts either much lighter or much darker than the warps - I don't want 'em in the same value range. We'll see.

If you're in the area, do drop by tomorrow for the last day of this season's Open Studios. DH and I are in danger of getting bored with so little traffic! We have managed to meet more neighbors, but would love to greet more patrons of the arts!!! Or fellow artists, for that matter...

Painted Warp Drying

It's been a while (months? years!) since I've done a painted warp. This time I followed a recipe quoted by a member of the Dyers List for a pre-soak of a citric acid solution (4 tsp citric per quart of water), in which the chained warp soaked for maybe 15 minutes before I began painting with Lanaset/Sabraset at about a 1% solution (each of the main stock colors was mixed with 3 gm of dye powder to 300 ml water). No acid in the dye-stock, only in the pre-soak. After painting, the warp was steamed for an hour and a half, and then it was dinner time so I just turned off the heat and left the steamer wrapped in towels overnight.

This afternoon I was able to find time to remove the plastic wrap, re-chain the warp, and rinse it. To my surprise, there was absolutely no color rinse-out. The water was clear. I've always been able to get Lanaset to exhaust completely in an immersion dyebath, but this was the first time there was no color rinsing out of a painted warp. Wow! I'm gonna use that pre-soak recipe again!

Here is the warp, unchained so it'll dry faster (it's below 20% humidity outside at 5pm, so it won't take long), but even damp it looks pretty good.



That purple near the bottom of the picture is deceptive - it's really closer to royal. The color transitions are as smooth as I'd hoped - no sudden, sharp changes, just slow movement to the next color. Tomorrow when it's dry, I'll try to get a picture of the painted warp next to the solid warp yarn. Hopefully the value range is pretty close.

Whoops! Tomorrow and Sunday are Open Studios again, so if I have a moment to snap pictures, it'll have to be after the studio hours. Oh, well...

Rain in Progress

The project, not the weather. The solid warp skeins are dyed, using equal parts of turquoise and royal blue:



Yesterday, I mixed a set of 10 gradated colors for the painted warp, and today I did the painting. Sorry, when it's wrapped in plastic and steaming, you haven't a hope of seeing the colors:



It's all blues, blue-greens, grey-greens, and other wet-weather colors. The five main colors are painted in very long sections; in between these are intermediate colors in short sections. Hopefully, the effect will be seamless transitions between main colors. That was the intent, anyway! I'm leaving the wrapped warp in the pot to cool overnight, and will unwrap, rinse, and dry tomorrow. Maybe then I can get a shot showing the colors.

As far as weather goes, we've had incredibly dramatic temperature swings the past couple of days - 37 F at night, 97 F during the middle of the day. No rain of the meteorological sort in sight.

Little Miss Noname

In a comment on an earlier post, Karen took me to task for not including a picture of the new kitten. The problem is, it takes two people to snap one kitty! She wants to be held all the time, and thus is completely incapable of posing for the camera if there's only one person in the room. It's a task that requires both a handler and a photographer. Here she is, 5.5 pounds of light grey tabby with green eyes:



Several names are applicable: Wiggles, Static Cling, Velcro - I've suggested all of these to DH but he hasn't liked any of 'em. So she remains nameless for now.

New Book: Collapse Weave by Anne Field

My copy of Anne Field's new book arrived last week. She and I communicated a long while back when she was looking for images of various weavers' collapse weave work to include in the book, and I sent her full-size versions of a lot of the photos that are on the Textured Cloth page of my website and said to take her pick. Not only did she include 5 images of various collapse projects I've done in the past, she wrote a very kind mention of me and my work on the Acknowledgements page.

Here's the info on the book. If you like the wonderfully tactile effects that are possible with the many flavors of collapse weaving, hurry out and find a copy!



ISBN Number 978-1-877427-17-6
Published by Wilson Scott Publishing of Christchurch, New Zealand

Anne is so generous with her knowledge. I think I've bought every book she's published, whatever the topic. One of the best weaving books I ever owned was her Ashford Book of Weaving, which I discovered as a new weaver, and loved because she made very clear some things that had seemed like total mysteries to me after reading other authors' beginning weaving books.

And if you're curious, I'm on pages 64, 101, 103, 120, and 139. As I said, all of the images are also on the website (Three Springs Handworks).

For you spinners out there, her spinning classes are not to be missed. If you get a chance to study with Anne, DO IT!

Warp in Progress

The skeins for the solid color layer in the upcoming Water Series scarves are wound (actually have been for several days) and ready to be dyed later today. The dye will be a mixture of Lanaset royal and turquoise, for a sea-blue hue.

And the measured warp for the layer that will be painted is wound and secured with waste yarn in figure-eight ties at intervals. I'll mix the dye concentrates tomorrow and do the painting the next day, if there are no interruptions or distractions.

However, we have a new kitten in the house, so the primary distraction is small, furry, and cute as anything... She has no name yet, but Wiggles is a strong contender. Because she came from the humane society, she has inevitable and communicable ailments like respiratory infection (similar to a human cold) and an intestinal bug (giardia), is on medications and in quarantine for a week before being introduced to our adult cat. He's consumed by curiosity - he knows she's there in the spare bathroom, but he doesn't know who she is or why she's there and so he spends a lot of time murmuring to her under the door. It'll be interesting to observe the interactions when he finally meets her in person.

A Milestone!

Just realized that the blog is now a little over 2 years old, and the visitor counter reached 28,000 yesterday! Here's a chart from StatCounter showing where recent visitors are located:



Welcome, Guatemala! It's always fun to see where you folks come from.

On a more directly fiber-related note, I've managed to wet-finish the last two faux seersucker scarves, and am very pleased with the hand of the finished cloth. These two weight in at 2.5 and 2.3 ounces (71 and 66-ish grams) respectively, and are soft and cozy to wear.





The upper scarf was woven entirely in a 2/2 broken twill with a silk weft, and at the beginning and the end, and every 4 inches between, I wove 12 picks with a wool-lycra yarn. That gave a nice irregular texture to the finished cloth.

The lower scarf had 2/2 broken twill in the dark wool stripes, and plain weave in the silk/tencel stripes, and 12 picks of the dark wool at beginning and end, and the texture is quite different from the previous one.

Weaving with a wool or wool-blend yarn at beginning and end secures the fell of the cloth nicely so no knotting or plying or hemstitching is necessary. Once the scarf is felted in the washing machine, it'll never fray at the ends. There are a few picks of a waste yarn in there to hold things in place during washing, and then I pull those out after the scarf is dry.

Plus, I made inroads into the pile of unfinished scarves that have been waiting to have their fringes plied. There were two Fire Series scarves and one Wood Series scarf in the pile. I must confess that some of the others have been waiting a really long time, so it's a huge relief to finally get 'em done! More fodder for the booth at the upcoming pre-holiday shows.

Here's What's Next

More water. I do love weaving water! And I think a project that combines one solid warp with one painted warp will fit nicely into the Water Series.

Here's a partial view of the draft I have in mind. The drawdown doesn't show the effect of a painted warp - it would take much more sophisticated software than I use for designing and weaving to do that. I'm sure I could improvise something in Photoshop, but it's not worth the time it would take. (This is my busy season, after all!)



The image I had in mind was a heavy rain falling at an angle on a window, then trickling down in wiggly lines that change shape as several drops converge into a larger stream. When I zoom out to get the draft to about real-life resolution, this is what it looks like:



You can click the image to display it at whatever the maximum size is that Blogger decides to show...

This will be a shorter warp than I usually do, mostly because of the extra effort in handling the warp for the painting process, and then getting it onto the loom with a minimum of fuss, tangling, and tension differences. I'm going to try for fairly long, gradual color changes, all within a very narrow range of values, and hues including teal, green, turquoise, slate blue and grey-green. The solid warp will be a royal blue in the same value range. The wefts will be similar hues, but values either lighter or darker than the warp.

I'm thinking I'll beam the solid warp on the sectional beam, and the painted warp on the plain beam. The last time I tried to get a painted warp onto the sectional, I wasn't happy with the tension, so hopefully it'll be more successful to beam the two separately.

Next Up... ?

For some reason, I've been in the design doldrums for a few weeks. Fortunately, there's been a warp on the loom (the faux-seersucker series) and a large accumulated stack of scarves that needed their fringes twisted before the upcoming Fall shows. That meant I didn't need to face the doldrums head-on, but could mull ideas over at my leisure before deciding what the next warp would be.

I've been wanting to try an interleaved threading in which one of the layers is a painted warp, and one a solid color. The skeins are wound for the solid color, and tomorrow I'll start winding a warp to paint. Still haven't got a clue what the colorway will be - and that depends upon which series the warp will be part of.

Drafts, maybe, tomorrow when I've got the design more solidified...

Open Studios

Although DH and I didn't move to the California Central Coast in time to be officially part of San Luis Obispo County's Open Studios Tour, we'll be unofficially opening our studios this weekend from noon to 4pm and again Oct 25-26 from 10am to 4pm. If any of you are in the area and would like to stop by, we'd love to see you. Mike is a woodturner, and creates some wonderful bowls and sculptural pieces. And I do a little weaving :)

Email sandra at 3springshandworks dot com for address and directions. We're about midway between San Luis Obispo and Paso Robles, and less than 2 miles from Hwy 101.

Blog Award

Judy, a weaver in Sydney, Australia, who blogs at Fibres of Being, tagged me with this blog award:



Thank you, Judy! I'm so glad you visit my blog and find the ramblings herein useful and entertaining!

The responsibility of anyone receiving this award is as follows (and yeah, it does sound kinda like a pyramid scheme of some sort, but hey...):

1. Post this award on your blog.

2. Add a link to the person who awarded you.

3. Nominate at least 4 other bloggers, and add their links as well.

4. Leave a comment at the new recipients’ blogs, so they can pass it on.

Wow! That's a challenge, as I read a lot of blogs (admittedly on a fairly sporadic basis due to schedule commitments). Here are just a few blogs that I particularly enjoy:

Alice Schlein, in South Carolina; weaver, teacher, and author extraordinaire, who can make the intricacies of jacquard design sound easy (!)

Michael Cook, from Texas; silk reeler, tablet weaver, and embroiderer whose work I admire

Bonnie Tarses, in Seattle; whose sense of color (and playful use of color) is unequalled

Neki Rivera, in Barcelona; an all-around fiber artist - weaver, needleworker, and dyer

Abby Franquemont, in Ohio; teacher, weaver, spinner, dyer, proprietor of Abby's Yarns! and a grand story-teller.

Okay, folks! Tag, you're IT.

P.S. I love the fact that I can get to know fiber folk from around the world, and even if we've never met in person, we can share ideas, skills, and inspiration with one another. All through the medium of cyberspace - ain't the Internet cool?

Silk Waste

In a comment on an earlier post, Dianne asked if I had ever tried spinning the silk waste from my scarf warps.

I have tried spinning "throwster's waste" that I bought from Treenway some years ago. I still have most of the package, and will someday make something with it. It's low on the priority list compared to weaving, which is how I make my living. The knitting and spinning are activities I enjoy on the road, but rarely at home. The spinning wheel fits into the car much better than a loom!

However, I do save up my silk waste, and every year send a package of it to a friend who is a wonderful papermaker, who chops them up into small (1" or less) lengths and incorporates them in her handmade paper vessels. You can see some of Jeanne Tillman's paper sculptures here and here.

Warping Wheel Information

There was recently a thread on the WeaveTech discussion group about whether or not it's possible to build a warping wheel similar to the AVL product. DH has already built me one, so yes it's definitely possible.

DH is one of those handy guys who says "How much do they want for it?" and when told the retail price says "Heck, I can build you one for way less!" Over the years, I've acquired lots of weaving tools that way: a spool rack, an 8-shaft table loom, a motorized shaft lifter for the 24-shaft AVL, a tensioned lazy kate for plying yarn, a motorized skein winder, several drop spindles, adapters so I can use my bobbin winder to wind cones...

A lot of weavers asked for photos of DH's finished warping wheel, and rather than flood the net with multiple emailed photos, I've put the pictures on my website for download.

If you're interested, go to this page on my website and click the link for the download, which consists of a ZIP archive containing JPG images and one RTF file (openable in most word processing applications). The latter lists approximate dimensions of the various parts of the warping wheel.

This tool is used to wind a warp in sections, which are then wound onto a sectional warp beam. I don't intend to give detailed instructions for using the warping wheel here or on my website. AVL has instructions and a video, and the WeaveTech archives have lots of entries on the subject.

Anyway, enjoy!