SpinnySpinny

I’ve got half the warp measured and sleyed. Honestly, I don’t know which half. It doesn’t really matter as long as I keep the yarn from each ball together.

I did it in two sections, sleying one group on top of the other. I tied a string above the first group to keep the second from getting tangled and make it easier to see what I was doing.

I’m working on a proposal for Maker Faire, the local geek extravaganza at the San Mateo County Fairgrounds the first weekend in May. With CNCH that same weekend, the usual suspects will be in Sacramento. The deadline to submit is 12 March, so I need to pull this together quickly. I have some equipment and some fiber and a few interested parties but I need people who can commit to spin and/or weave for one or both days so it’s not just me. That could very well be you.

Either way, I will be there. Because I always am, for one, but also The Boyfriend will be showing off the singing, dancing robots. But it sure would be nice to have a kick-ass textile demo.

So in measuring the warp, we learn a few things. First, it’s more sticky than I’d like. Yeah, I knew it was an issue but it was getting a bit annoying there. The amount of twist isn’t helping, either. Second, the yellow from the canary stain is a problem. When I got part way through winding the warp, I could see color differences that will turn into yellow stripes in the finished piece. Not good.

So I’m going to change the sett to 18 rather than 20, and interleave two sets of warp ends so every other comes from a different part of the ball. That will spread out the color changes and make it less noticeable. I’ll have to do it in the weft too, I think. Well, I can try it and see how it goes (as this involves two shuttles, in the sections where I’m using both yarns, four. Yikes.) It is just a sample after all, so I can do it several different ways.

Measuring the warp isn’t a big deal, make two smaller chains instead of one big one. In this case 76 ends each. (It is far easier to work with even numbers.) Sleying the reed is another matter.

For 18 ends per inch in my 12 dent reed, I need to sley 1-2. That is, one dent (slot) with one thread, one dent with two threads, repeat. But to get 18 epi from two chains interleaved, that means 9 epi each or 0-1-1-1 according to this handy-dandy reed substitution chart. So sley one chain at 9 epi and then sley the second on top of it so the final result is 1-2 for 18 epi. I’m going to have to chart that out so I get it correct. This is, btw, one way to put two colors in a warp. But it’s much easier to keep track of when you actually have two different yarns.

I briefly thought about winding the one ball of yarn into two smaller ones and measuring two ends together. That would solve the interleaving problem neatly. But measuring this yarn two strands together would be a different disaster as they tried to twist around each other and stick. It’s going to try to do that anyway, so why help it. Better to measure singly. I also sprayed the yarn with water and let it dry while still on the warping board, basically blocking it a second time to better control the twist.

I’ve got the second of the set drying on the warping board, I’ll sley them both before I start the other yarn so I can’t get them confused.

Posting mainly to have notes on the ongoing project. I’ve got the S and Z yarn wound into balls so I should get on with actually planning the warp. They came out in the neighborhood of 30 wraps per inch so I’m going to go for a sett of 20 ends per inch in plain weave. (I don’t have metric reeds, so I have to stick with what I’ve got for this part.)

I figure a 40 cm/15 inch wide sample is good, so that’s 300 ends total: half S and half Z. To use approximately half the yarn for warp that would give me 2 meters, of which about 1.25 will be usable. That’s a pretty good-sized sample. I’ll wind two sections of warp, 150 ends, with each yarn and then have about half left for weft.

I won’t need that much because the smaller warp has proportionally more loom waste, but I’m not going to worry about it. Too much yarn is far better than the alternative.

I went to Stitches West at the Santa Clara Convention Center this morning to do a spinning demo, and of course since I was then in for free, some shopping.

It’s kinda like MacWorld for yarn. It would be dangerous if I bought knitting yarn, but typically I don’t. There were more vendors with spinning equipment and fiber, which was nice. I of course bought stuff I didn’t intend to. I wasn’t organizing this demo but only showing up to spin for a couple hours. I did teach so I wasn’t a complete slug. But I might have been more focused if I had actually had breakfast. Or lunch.

The demo was not the usual guild thing but for the Spinning and Weaving Association, a trade group of manufacturers and retailers. We were teaching, but not with the box of CD spindles the guild has. I got to play with a Ladybug wheel from Schacht, a beginner wheel less expensive than the Matchless.

It’s a nice little wheel, but I have to say I’m still a Lendrum partisan. The way it was set up was too slow for the kind of yarn I spin and too fast for real beginners. From looking on the website I think it had the medium whorl rather than the slow one but I’m not really sure. I found the scotch tension adjustment a little fussy, with the small plastic knob slipping when I tried to adjust it. Apparently it can also be set up for double drive, which I wouldn’t recommend for a first wheel. (Yes, when it works it’s wonderful. But getting it set Just Right is a bother.)

We had several small rigid heddle looms designed to use typical knitting yarns. They were already warped, I didn’t play with them but they seemed to be typical for the style. They had floor stands, which was nice. I really don’t know the manufacturer, I thought they might be the Knitter’s Loom, but it seems that Ashford is not a member of the association.

There was a small drum carder also, I carded some random layered batts and was spinning huge fluffy woolen yarn. Entirely unlike what I normally do, but suited to the fiber and equipment. Everybody seemed to like it and it got people’s attention.

I then spent about 90 minutes doing a fast tour of the show. I got a new spindle, some hand-dyed silk fiber and a length of Japanese silk fabric. Here’s a summary of the haul:

Hand-painted tussah silk from Fiber Fiend. It’s in blue, gray and purple in a colorway called Blackberry Swirl. Also a Maggie spindle from Carolina Homespun (27g I think the label said, before I lost it.)

The silk from Japan with a floral design was from John Marshall. No way I can afford any of his own work, but this was a nice piece he found in Japan. He told me how they are turning up now because people aren’t doing much traditional work anymore and you can find them discontinued. Good for shoppers, at least the Americans who are buying wholesale and bringing them back, but bad for the craft. I’m not sure of the exact technique but boy is it nice. It has a large group of flowers on branches on each end and some additional flowers between. I’m guessing it was originally intended for kimono, with the large design.