Still Weaving!

My solution for the moth eaten warp was to just take about an inch off the side, so I lost 10~ ends, but it was worth it to still be able to use the warp.  My mother joked that it had upset me so much, she was just going to go down there and cut the warp off, I did not find that funny x_x

I finished up the last weaving that had some broken ends in it and started a new one!  This one I'm just using a variegated yarn so the weaving goes super fast when I don't have to switch colors.  I really like how it looks! 

Hopefully I'll have it finished early next week, I want to try a rainbow warp next!

Oh no!

I went to weave some today and found this :(

It looks like a moth took a big bite out of my warp in the time it took me to get my basement work room back in order.  I'm guessing this only looks really bad to people that weave, but it's really bad.  It goes through several layers of the warp, so a few of my ends are essentially chopped into pieces which really sucks!

I can finish the scarf that I have on the loom now at around 60" without having to mess around adding new ends, but I don't know quite what to do with what will be left.

Augh, it's so frustrating to have broken ends, I just hate having to deal with it T_T

I'm going to try to get back into this!

Oh no, I've been gone forever :(  I don't know what happened to me, I keep saying 'I've been really busy' but can't come up with any one thing to point to for why I've been so busy.  I've said it before and I'll say it again, I have no excuse!

What have I been doing then?  Most a lot of Monster High customs!

A Lagoona Blue.

Abbey Bominable.

I have a bunch more, but they're all on my flickr if you want to see all of my customs in one place.

Another thing I've been doing is that I won a HUGE lot of yarn off of ebay!

It was 150lbs of yarn.  It's all organized by color now, but I need another bookcase for all of it!  I'll never have to worry about not having a matching color for something again.

Anyways, I'll really try to keep up with this again, just taking pictures of whatever I work on day to day.

Lots of White

So I've finally gotten around to working on the white warp that I put on my loom!  I decided to go with the white angora that I spun myself to go with it, and a little black that I had for some accents.

I like things better when they're woven loosely like this.  I think it might have been better for me to treadle (1,3) (2,4), but I wasn't paying much attention and ended up doing (1,2) (3,4), so two ends sit together, but it's hard to notice I guess.

This is the white angora that I hand spun and am using for the weft.

This much progress didn't take too long, maybe an hour!  Hopefully I'll finish it this week sometime :)

More fixing things

So last time I strung up my loom I had two ends crossed, which caused them to cross over each other and not come apart cleanly.  I put off fixing it a little bit, but finally did!

Pretty simple fix, but not fun if you've JUST finished stringing everything only to find it.  You just have to untie the bundle that the opposing threads are in and identify which ones it is.  In hindsight it might be easiest to tie a thread around the ones that need fixing, so you'll be sure to know which ones they are when you've got them out.

For this one all I had to do was switch their positions in the reed, simple!

I held the one bundle taught and lifted the harness to check that it was fixed and that I hadn't made it worse or something.  Look good?  Good!

Perfect, a nice pristine shed!

I am starting to wonder if using this thin yarn was a mistake... 8I

Still busy!

I'm working up to getting working on everything again!  I've had this warp made for a while now and since I finally finished my last warp it was time to start all over!

Unfortunately I picked such a thin yarn for this one so that means MORE ENDS.  This one has about 160 I think, and anything over 100 tends to get tedious I think.

Unfortunately I got two of the threads twisted when stringing! x(

So that means I have to untie the bundle that those are in and string those two through the reed in the correct order again, then tie it back again.  I had to step away though because I was getting pretty tired of stringing, and I think I was pushing my luck for breaking an end.

2-2 Twill

I haven't worked on this in way too long since I just haven't touched my loom, but it's a 2-2 twill!  (that means it goes up two down two)  Not my best choice in yarns I think T_T;  I was limited in my options, so mostly I just want this piece to be over?

White warp

I bought this nice looking yarn off of yarn.com since it was a good price, and had good reviews!  It's hard to shop for yarn online though, since you can't see the scale very well, and the colors are usually pretty different.  The trouble is that it's hard to beat the deals you can get online!

When I need to get 1000 yards of yarn at a time it's just no economical for me to go to a store and pay $10 a skein when I can find what I need online for half that.

So, this was one of the yarns that I bought, unfortunately I didn't stop to consider quite how thin it was!  It's pretty strong for how thin it is.  We'll see how much patience I have for weaving it, but I'm never one to throw away yarn!

It's only 160 ends, so it won't be too impossible to string onto the loom.  Sure will be tedious though.

Time spent weaving

So I've started weaving on this warp, it's going okay so far!  I mentioned before that the yarn I chose will cause me difficulty since it is a single (as opposed to 2-ply, 3-ply etc), and that makes it more likely to come apart.  This is problematic since to weave, since the threads need to be kept under tension for weaving, but you have to be careful to keep the correct amount.  Too little tension and the threads will get rubbed on too much, too much and they will snap.

My first instinct was to go with really high tension, thinking that they will be a little thinner that way, and it will keep them together?  It was a poor argument, and did not go well, I had three snap during weaving.  So this time I went with a medium/low tension, just enough to let me beat the threads down without them stretching every time I pulled.

I don't know how well this shows the tension, but it's not terribly taut.

I have the harnesses set up to do a basket weave!  I have a four harness loom, and I strung it on a straight draw (1, 2, 3, 4), so I set up my pedals to do 1 2, and 3 4.

Before I can weave I have to even out all of the threads!  Since they're in sort of V patterns from where I tied them onto the rod in groups.  To get them even you open the sheds (the spaces between the threads when you lift up a harness) and put yarn through a few times before beating.  You will have to pull harder on the beater to get all three shots down to the bottom, but it works really well to get things even!

Better, but not great!  Most people recommend weaving anywhere from one to four inches before getting to the real weaving, but I'm lazy so I usually end up just shy of an inch.

Not perfectly even, but since these threads are really thick, it's not much of an issue.  The more you weave the more even they get though.

Getting started weaving!  I bury the ends while I'm working, though there are other ways to do it.

A few inches in!  I have to decide what pattern I'm going to go with, since I have orange and green yarns!

Patten decided!  I made the error of cutting the ends of my yarn when I was burying them.  If at all possible it is so much better to tear the yarn, so that it will taper off and not stick out.  I tried that first but couldn't get it to tear, so I started cutting the yarn, but as you can see it's sticking out!

I thought about it and figured out that if I just untwist the yarn a little and hold it that way while I pull it comes apart easy.  I'll have to go back and fix the first few, but once I switched to tearing the yarn the ends are not a problem!

 More progress!  It'll take a while to finish it though!

Stringing the loom part 2

So last time I left off I had just strung the yarn through the reed, which is a part of the beating apparatus!

Next is to string it through all the heddles!  This part is by far the most difficult for me.  On my loom, it does not fold up in any way so there's no way for me to sit on either side and string the yarn through them, it's simply too far.  Neither the front or back beam is removable, and since it's a 40" loom the castle is too far inside for me to sit on either side.

My last option is to get somewhere inside of the loom to string it.  I tried standing in front, between the castle and the fabric beam, but it was a tight fit and I had to lean down every time to string a heddle and it was really hurting my back.  Next I tried kneeling in the same spot, but after I rather embarrassingly got stuck (thank god I got out on my own, that would have been awful to call for help) it was clear that was not working either.

What I've been doing now is standing inside the back of the loom, between the warp beam and the castle.  It's not ideal, since the beam has lots of wooden pegs poking out of it on all sides, so it's constantly poking me while I'm trying to do it, but at least it works!

Since there were only 52 ends this time it was super fast and easy, only took me about a half an hour to do.  It gets difficult to do when there's more than 100, I have to take breaks. 

After they're all strung through I tie them onto a beam in the back and tie that onto the warp beam.  At this point I don't have to worry about the tension being even at all.

I'm never quite clear on how it happens since everything seems so even when I put everything on the warping board.  But then it all gets so messy!  I just comb it out with my fingers to try and keep it from getting tangled.

This is the warp once it's all wrapped onto the beam!  The pegs make it so that I don't have to (can't?) put anything to keep the layers separate, but I don't have to worry too much about the tension anyways since I never make a warp too terribly long.

I do this on my own and don't have any help.  Usually this is a two person job, but I got a book from the library and have been using the technique from that to wind the warp on.  I don't put any pressure on the threads, and wrap it around once.  Ever wrap I go around to the back and grab handfuls of yarn and pull as hard as I can on them.  This doesn't do much the first turn, but after that it helps pull all of the yarns taut and even, and they usually stay fairly even.  It's not perfectly ideal, but again I said my warps aren't usually very long anyways, not usually more than 200", and even then I can even everything out between projects.

 

This is the yarns tied to a beam in the front!  This is the part where it's important for me to tie them all on with the same tension.  My loom has a really nice length of fabric that reaches up and over the breast beam, so I don't have to worry about tying anything on!

Now it's ready for weaving!  Unfortunately I am dumb.  I love yarn so much, but I don't always choose it based on what would be good for weaving.  My usual yarn selection process is "oh that's a pretty color, yeah I'm buying that!" followed by "Is it on sale (y/n)?".  This yarn that I'm using is a single ply, which is very much not ideal for weaving.

Do not be fooled, it will cause me great distress to weave with, but I did it anyways.  It will work, but not well.  You can also see how fuzzy it is, which as you can imagine can cause even more problems when I have to repeatedly push and pull the beater back and forth over it, many, many times while weaving.

Stringing my loom, part 1

I don't think I'm good enough at this to do any kind of tutorial about it, but I thought it might be nice to show some progress shots of how it usually goes!

I finished the throw blanket project that I had been working on, so I started on this new one!  I had already made the warp, and it's long enough for three scarves.  I usually string my loom front to back, since I don't usually have anyone around to help me, and I can usually manage on my own that way.  If you string it from the back you need someone to hold the yarns while you wind them on.

You usually only use lease sticks when stringing from the back, but I use them since they make me feel less worried about losing the cross.

The cross, as ever, important!

This is how I set the yarn up, with the lease sticks hanging off of the beam, and the lump of chained yarn sitting on the pedals.

I tie the beater to the castle so that it will hang just in the right place for me to reach over it and pull the strings through!  So, I also know how crappy those clamps look on the beater... I bought a 6 dent reed since I was pretty sure sizes were quite standard.  Unfortunately the measurement was off by about half an inch!  So it kept wanting to pop out of the beater, I actually pinched my hand pretty bad trying to get it to work, it was bleeding x(

My solution was to take the screws out, let the top bar slip down a little and clamp it in place since obviously there's no screw hole there.  It works just fine, even if it sure doesn't look right!

Here's the yarn all strung through the reed!  There were so few ends this time, it was practically a pleasure!  There were only 52 ends, and I strung it so that it's 5epi, so every five gaps I would skip one, since it's a 6 dent reed.

Anyways, I'll show you the rest tomorrow!

New warp!

Well, since I'm waiting for the new reed to come in I thought I would plan out my next project!  I had some more awesome sale yarn from yarn.com that I bought.  It reminds me of watermelons.

So I've had to get back to using a lot of math to figure things out.  I bought six skeins of this yarn, three coral, three green.  Each skein has 132 yards on it, so I had approximately 400 yards of each color.  From there I had to calculate how much yarn I need to use for the warp!  I used half of it on the warp, so I'm hoping I'll have plenty for the weft too!

This is how much I decided to do:
5 ends per inch x 10" wide x 280" long = 140,000 inches

Divide 140,000" by 36" (the number of inches in a yard) to get the yardage that you need!
140,000 / 36 = 389~ yards

Perfect!  That should be enough for me to make three 80" scarves!  The loom unfortunately takes up a lot of waste, I can usually get away with about a foot of loom waste per item, maybe a little less if I take the time to carefully tie on.

I can't wait to start working on this one though!  I'm thinking a basket weave might be nice, but the yarn is pretty thick so it might be too much, I don't know!  Maybe I'll just do one of them basket, and switch up the other two, hm.