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Tuesday, January 26, 2016

Note to Self...

In the future, never dye a skein of Chinese silk in its original skein. Always re-skein it on your winder, even if it's the right yardage as-is.

It seems that the Chinese silk mills make much smaller skeins, and they are wound in such a way as to make it very difficult to unwind after dyeing without many yarn breaks. That's what happens when I get lazy and decide to use the skein in its original form. Knotted ends mean slower weaving, because of the time it takes to swap in replacement ends.

This is the back of the loom during the weaving of scarf #4.


The 7 lower film cans are holding the replacement ends, and the 7 upper film cans are just there to keep the knotted/broken ends under control so they don't tangle with one another or with the replacement ends before I'm ready to swap them back into the cloth at the end of the current piece. Except that in this case, the current piece is also the last piece, so I will soon be able to simply snip the knotted/broken ends off at the apron knot and get them out of the way altogether.

And then there's a new piece ready to go on the jacquard loom. A change of pace!

3 comments:

Laura Fry said...

Ooooo...hate when that happens. :(

Alice said...

Those film cans are true antiques.

neki desu said...

'nother antique collector here.in search of old fashioned photographers to replenish.and oh yes, chinese silk is p.i.t.a.