Random Acts of Color

What Is a Skeleton Tieup? (Fair Warning: This Post Involves Math)

2026-04-04T12:16:00.009-04:00

What is a skeleton tieup? I think of it as connecting two (or sometimes even three) bones, as in a real skeleton, to achieve one function -- to work like a leg or an arm, you might say.

Why do skeleton tieups exist? Because most weavers with 8-shaft jack looms would decide, upon seeing this draft for the first time, that they can't weave it because they don't have 16 treadles. That's the reason you need to create a skeleton tieup -- again, a sort of bare bones tieup using 2 treadles at a time, each treadling different groups of shafts -- so that you can weave this pattern.

Let's work through creating a skeleton tieup, beginning with this design below: an 8-shaft double-weave pattern, using a parallel threading, that calls for 16 treadles. While it can't be woven on 10 treadles using the tieup below, it can be woven on 10 treadles using a skeleton tieup.

Here is the 16-treadle tieup and treadling, enlarged.

Now, here's what the skeleton tieup looks like, using only 10 treadles. This lets you weave the same design.

The details, for those who have the patience to read them: You can see that for pick 1, you step on treadle #3, lifting shafts 2 and 8. For pick 2, you step on treadles 3 and 7, which combined lift shafts 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, and 8. On pick 3, you step on treadle 2, lifting shafts 1 and 7, and then for pick 4, you step on treadles 2 and 8, which together lift shafts 1, 2, 4, 6, 7, and 8. (No matter that shaft 8 is lifted by both treadles; it gets the job done.)

Looking closely, you'll see this tieup is really the identical treadling as in the preceding diagram: on the first pick shafts 2 and 8 are raised; on the second pick you're raising shafts 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, and 8; on the third pick, you're raising 1 and 7; and on the fourth pick, you're raising 1, 2, 4, 6, 7, and 8. The skeleton tieup uses the same liftplan, reduced (or broken into patterns) to use just 10 treadles.

In the days before computers, I'm guessing that, to create a skeleton tieup, a dedicated weaver had to sit down and figure out which groups of shafts could be combined in a pattern that would work with another group of shafts to lift the total number of shafts needed. It's all about math, which dovetails nicely with the computer era we're in. Which brings us to...

Tim's Rudimentary Treadle Reducer 🙌

Tim McLarnan is the Tremewan Professor of Mathematics Emeritus at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana. And, for the mind-bending ease of weavers everywhere, he created this online tool. With a few short steps, you can reduce a lengthy tieup to a skeleton tieup, allowing you to weave more intricate patterns in double weave, overshot, and summer and winter, among others.

(Please note: There are many complicated tieups that can't be reduced to a skeleton tieup. The treadle reducer will let you know that in a dismally short period of time.)

Here's how it works. First, you're asked to plug in how many shafts you have, how many treadles are in the original tieup, and how many treadles you have.

After that, these diagrams pop up.

You fill in the original tieup, click on how much time you're willing to wait for an answer, and then click on "Find Reduction."

If you're lucky, you will get a skeleton tieup. This is what the Treadle Reducer shows you at that point.

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And there you have it! But you're not quite yet done, because, for those of you who use Fiberworks or other weaving software -- or for those of you who use graph paper, for that matter -- you will have to draft a new tieup and treadling to match the Treadle Reducer's directions. Which takes some time. (In the fifth image from the beginning of this blog post, you can see the results of changing the tieup in Fiberworks to create the skeleton tieup for the 8-shaft example I'm using. By the way, you'll have to click on "Allow Multipedal Action" in the Treadling drop-down menu.)

This may seem like a lot of work, but it's a lot less work than figuring out a skeleton tieup using pencil and paper -- and you get to weave the pattern you want on the loom you have.

Here's a sample of the pattern in double weave, woven with cotton and wool wefts

(then washing in soap and hot water and agitating, so that the wool fulls

and the cotton pleats for a differential-shrinkage effect).

Skeleton tieups demystified. Thanks to Professor McLarnan and thanks for reading!

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Note: for those who want to dig deeper, here's a design that could use a skeleton tieup -- but you don't really need one. All you have to do is study the existing tieup, because it's easy to reduce the number of treadles.

Again, this is NOT a skeleton tieup. I'm showing you this draft because it's a close relation to a skeleton tieup, which gives you an introduction to the basics before we get into the details.

The pattern shown above, pattern #42887 on Handweaving.net designed by Eugenio Poma of Italy in 1947, is an intriguing double-weave pattern that gives you the illusion of squares rising above the surface of the cloth, in a sort of embossed effect.

Folks with 8-shaft table looms could weave this, because these looms have a direct tieup (one lever lifts one shaft at a time) and thus can weave any possible combination of 8 shafts (way more than 16 combinations). But a jack loom has 10 treadles that are fixed (tied up), so you have only 10 possible combinations of shafts.

So is our design unweavable on a jack loom? If you study the tieup carefully, you'll see that, in 4 instances, 3 treadles lift the same shafts. Why? Perhaps it's because these repetitions in the tieup helped the designer "build" the pattern on a straight draw (and perhaps that helps the weaver with treadling or in understanding how the illusion of the embossed squares is created).

Anyhow, let's break it down so that we can eliminate the duplications in the treadles.

Treadles 1, 5, and 9 all lift shafts 1, 2, 3, and 6. So you let's combine all these for treadle 1.

Treadles 2, 6, and 10 all lift shafts 3, 6, 7, and 8 -- same thing, so these 3 identical treadles are treadle 2.

Treadles 3, 7, and 11 all lift shafts 1, 3, 4, and 8 -- they become treadle 3.

Treadles 4, 8, and 16 all lift shafts 1, 5, 6, and 8 -- they become treadle 4.

We've reduced 12 treadles down to 4. Now we have 6 more to play with, but the final reconfiguring requires just 4 treadles.

We will make the "new" treadle 5 the same as the original treadle 12, to lift shafts 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, and 8. The new treadle 6 will be the same as the original treadle 13, lifting shafts 2 and 6. The new treadle 7 is the same as the original treadle 14, lifting shafts 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 8. And finally, the new treadle 8 is the same as the "old" treadle 15, lifting shafts 4 and 8.

There you have it! We've combined all of the treadles that lift the same shafts and retained the 4 original treadles that are one-offs, meaning that they appear only once in the original tieup.

Here's the result.

Remember that this is NOT a skeleton tieup. It's merely a rearranged, reduced-to-the-lowest-number-of-shafts-lifted kind of tieup. But I've started with this exercise to give you the basic idea of how a weaver can reduce a 16-treadle tieup to just 8 treadles.

How to 'Downsize' a 14-Shaft Pattern for 8 Shafts... and even 4 Shafts

2026-03-04T10:20:00.007-05:00

Let's start with just one draft, because -- while these principles can apply to many designs -- I recently had to downsize a point-twill design, which happens to be one of my favorite weaving patterns.

It's a historic 14-shaft draft, fondly known as "The Earl," derived from a tablecloth that was used as the canvas for a 1626 painting of the Earl of Mar in Scotland. (To read the original 2020 post about "The Earl," click here.)

Above is the original Gebrochene pattern (in German that means "broken," while in English we call it Ms and Ws). Marjie Thompson, master weaver and lover of historical patterns, shared the WIF with me some time ago. Thank you, Marjie!

But not everyone has 14 shafts, right?

"Shaft envy" is what weavers call it. What can you do if you love this design but you have just 8 shafts? The answer is to "downsize" the threading, tieup, and treadling, following the shapes of the original 14-shaft threading but systematically reducing the peaks and valleys as best we can by using a ratio for each twill line (or block, depending on how you want to define your terms). And that ratio may have to vary across the threading. It gets complicated.

In keeping with that explanation, here's what the Earl might look like on 8 shafts.

Not bad, eh? Not quite as ornate as the original design, of course, which is what happens when you're weaving with fewer shafts. But it's a pretty good adaptation, in my view.

So how to do this? Since the design is tromp as writ (treadled as threaded), all one has to do is reduce the ups and downs of the threading to fit into 8 shafts, then repeat the threading in the treadling and create a tieup that mimics the original.

Let's start with the first twill line. For the 14-shaft version, you have a descending twill line, from upper right to lower left, which can easily be reduced from 14 to 8 shafts.

Original twill line on 14 shafts

Same twill line reduced to 8 shafts. This is the easy part ;o)

For the second motif, forming a "V," the original threading has a descent and an ascent of 6 shafts each, beginning at shaft 14, descending to shaft 9, and then ascending back to shaft 14. To keep the draft within 8 shafts, I began the "V" at shaft 8 and then descended to shaft 5 and back up to 8. That means the "ratio" is now 6 shafts reduced to 4 shafts -- not quite following the ratio of 14 shafts to 8 shafts, but creating a "V" threading that looks like the original pattern.

The Earl on 14 "V" threading (second motif from the right in original threading).

6 ends going down, then going back up

The "V" motif (aka descending-point-twill block) reduced to 8 shafts

This might not be true for all weavers, but when I downsize a pattern, I'm not looking to maintain an exact ratio for every block in the threading, as if 14 to 8 would be the rule throughout. (Besides, it just won't work out mathematically, because sometimes you would have to round up or down accordingly in your numbers.) More important, in my view, is to try to follow the original silhouette of the draft. So, for the above portion of the threading, a 6-shaft descent in the original 14-shaft threading becomes a 4-shaft descent in the 8-shaft version.

Moving on to the next descending twill motif: the line in the original descends 10 shafts beginning on shaft 14. For 8 shafts, the line begins at shaft 8, the topmost shaft (as with the original design) and descends 6 shafts. Again, the ratio differs from the original 14 to 8 -- in this case, the ratio is 10 to 6. So I'm adhering to the form of the design rather than exactly to the numbers.

On 14 shafts, the third twill block descends from shaft 14 to shaft 5

On 8 shafts, the third twill block descends from shaft 8 to shaft 3

The next twill line, ascending from the right to the left: the design rises 5 shafts in the original and 3 shafts in the 8-shaft adaptation. I could continue describing the pattern adaptations, but I think that you get the idea....

As you can see, there's a method to the madness here. Basically, you want to preserve the overall form of the threading. This means you don't have to be precise as much as you have to be painterly, you might say, creating a simpler line that follows a similar shape of the original, but with shallower ascents and descents.

The bigger challenge is when you want to reduce a complex design on 14 shafts to just 4 shafts. It can be done, certainly, but you lose a lot of detail.

Here's how you might design The Earl on 4 shafts.

It's hardly recognizable, you might say.

And yet... this is still an Ms and Ws pattern, with interesting motifs throughout, worth weaving into a scarf or a tea towel. (It also might work as a great threading for overshot. But that would be another post.) If you look back at the threading of the original draft, you'll see that this 4-shaft version does follow the hills and valleys of that threading, even though much is lost in the details of the pattern.

I invite you, dear reader, to share in the comments your own method of adapting a draft to fewer shafts. Someone else might have a more exacting approach, for certain. (Perhaps someone really savvy could use AI, come to think of it.) And certainly some patterns (other than twill) may lend themselves better or worse to a reduction in shafts. In any event, the approach I've outlined works well for me.

Thanks for reading!

Here's to John Erskine, 2nd Earl of Mar, painted by Adam de Colone, 1626.

(Still, we're more interested in the canvas.)

How to Paint One Warp and Get Two Colors

2026-02-02T20:29:00.001-05:00

Last month's blog post promoted a workshop I'm teaching in April in Bucks County, PA, on how to weave a "Harriet Tubman Shawl."

Here, once again, is a photo of the scarf (as seen in last month's post). It honors the heroism of Harriet Tubman, who spent her last years in Auburn, NY, near where I live. She was photographed at least a couple of times during those years wearing a shawl over her shoulders. I admire her greatly, as so many of us do.

If you look very closely, you'll see that the warp is painted -- but, because it's Echo, you need at least two colors in the warp. Again, looking closely, you'll see that one warp thread is painted and the next one is black. Painted/black/painted/black -- that's how the colors of the warp are arranged for my parallel threading.

Another clue about the two warp colors: Just look at the two colors

in the twisted fringe, with a painted thread alternating with a black thread.

That's the secret to achieving two colors in your warp while painting one warp: wind a warp of natural and black threads together. Black yarn does not show the dye, so you can paint right over it.

In this case, I've wound the warp in 24/3 cotton, which is the same grist as 16/2 cotton, but I find it's a bit sturdier thread. The drawdown for this warp is 8 shafts and, while the warp count in this case was about 840 ends, the warps for the workshop will call for 400 ends. (Not many people want to wind 840 ends for a workshop, I believe.)

So here are the steps in the dyeing process. I'm actually giving away a good portion of the instructions for the warp prep in this workshop, but I enjoy the results so much I thought I'd share it. The complete directions can be found on the ProChemical and Dye website, under MX Fiber Reactive Dyes: the instructions are for warp-painting on cotton and silk. (Please note: I don't use print paste in this process, so you can ignore the step that calls for making print paste as well as the instructions for making thick dyes.)

Step 1) As you wind your warp, do not use choke ties. Instead, use twining every 18". (If you use choke ties, they will resist the dye and you'll get little white lines across your painted warp.) Of course, you will want to use a choke tie at the end of the warp, where you cut it, and at the beginning of the warp, where you secure it around the back tie-on rod. (I warp back to front.) Also, you'll want to secure the cross quite snugly. But otherwise, use twining, as you often see when you purchase a skein of yarn. Here's a photo of what twining looks like.

Step 2) Soak your warp for at least 30 minutes in a soda-ash solution, according to the directions. (This assumes that you have already scoured the warp to get rid of any oils, dirt, or sizing in the yarn.)

Step 3) Prepare the urea water. Urea basically helps the dyes to stay active longer. I use 4 cups of urea for 1 gallon of water. Make sure the urea is completely dissolved. This is your basic water solution for making your dyes.

Step 4) Put on your respirator mask and gloves. Make sure you're wearing old clothing, too.

Me rockin' my respirator mask

If the water is really hot, I use these humongous gloves.

Otherwise, I use food-preparation gloves or the cleaning gloves

you can get at the grocery store.

Step 5) Mix your dyes.

I alter the recipe a bit, using 1 and 1/2 teaspoons of dye powder for one cup of urea water. This gives me a medium shade that I like.

8 different colors all lined up and ready for painting.

Step 6) Paint your warp. Make sure you thoroughly saturate the threads with color -- so for me that means using 2"-wide sponge brushes and turning the warp over as I paint, so that both sides get painted. I don't follow any particular color order, just using the colors randomly. Also, I try hard (although I don't always achieve this) not to paint horizontal stripes with my dye colors. Instead, I work to paint each color at an angle on the warp, which makes the warp more interesting visually. For each color, I paint a 2-4" long swath of color, no longer than that. (Don't want the weaving to get boring.) So each of the colors is about the same length on the warp.

Step 7) Wrap the warp entirely in plastic so that none of the dye leaks out onto your floors or tabletop or any surface. One thing I do to avoid leakage is that I sop up the excess dye on the sides of the warp as I paint, using old bath towels. (This makes for some very colorful towels that I continue to use for dyeing after washing and drying them. Somehow, with no soaking in soda ash, the dyes do adhere to the cotton towels.)

Step 8) Cure the dyed warp for 24 hours in a room that is at least 70 degrees Fahrenheit. This is really important. If your room isn't warm enough, your dyes won't strike (adhere) to the yarn and you'll be rinsing and rinsing to the get color out, only to wind up with faint colors. There are many ways to achieve a temperature of 70 degrees or higher. In my case, I take the warp (rolled in plastic and then put in a plastic bag) and place it on top of my boiler in the basement, which is hotter than 70 degrees. Some folks use those grow-mats for keeping seeds warm. Others use electric blankets but somehow that makes me nervous....

Step 9) Rinse out the warp. I have two stationary tubs, so I load one plastic bucket in each tub and rinse the warp in warm (maybe 100 degrees) water until it's filled with color (and it usually is). Then I transfer the warp to the other water-filled bucket and repeat the process. I do this until the water, with the warp in the bucket, runs nearly clear. To be honest, I have yet to achieve perfectly clear water in rinsing a warp with fiber-reactive dyes. But a pale-colored water is good enough for me.

Step 10) Hang the warp to dry. Understand that, at this point, the warp will look pretty tangled. I urge you to leave it this way until it is completely dry. Tangles come out much better when the yarn is dry. What I do, when it's dry, is wind the loop at the end of the warp on a hook and walk back the entire warp until it's taught, stretching and snapping it straight as I go. Even then, there will be some tangles. These will have to be combed out as you dress your loom.

So there you have it! Two colors for the effort of painting one warp. Although I almost always use this for Echo and Jin designs, I have used the same process for a striped warp in 60/2 silk -- black stripes alternating with painted stripes -- and then woven in a turned twill, going in one direction for the black stripes and the other direction for the painted stripes. The effect is always beautiful, because we all love color, don't we?

Feel free to ask any questions in the comments section. And thanks for reading!

Interested in an Upcoming Workshop in Bucks County, PA?

2026-01-01T20:35:00.004-05:00

This shawl, pictured above, is a tribute to Harriet Tubman, who guided some 70 slaves to freedom, through wilderness in the dark of night, chased by bounty hunters, guided only her instincts, her visions, and the North Star. She reportedly made 19 trips back to the South and notably never lost anyone.

I called it "Harriet's Shawl" because in her later years she was often pictured weaving a large wrap around her shoulders. (By the way, she spent her later years in Auburn, NY, near my hometown of Rochester. It never ceases to amaze me to feel so close to greatness.)

Why did I dedicate it to Tubman? Because the motifs remind me of the forest, of darkness, of the stars she followed. And I did my best to make it beautiful, because her courage and strength are worthy of the best work I can create. (Not-so-humble brag: The scarf did win first prize at the faculty show at NEWS a few years ago, which makes me very proud.)

So what does this have to do with a weaving workshop? A dear friend, Hedy Lyles of Willow Grove, PA, passed away a short time ago and she had planned this workshop. We're doing it for the love of Hedy. Here she is at the loom she sold me, a 16-shaft Toika that I really like. (Except when it's hot and humid and the shafts stick, but that's another story.) Here, she's painstakingly showing me how to put the loom together.

She was also a terrific weaver, as you can see by this photo of her work:

So the workshop must go on, honoring both Tubman and Hedy. Here are the details:

GUILD: Handweavers of Bucks County

DATES: April 8-10, 2026

VENUE: Trinity Buckingham Church, 231 Durham Road, Buckingham, PA

WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION: For anyone who can read a draft and warp a loom. For looms from 4 shafts to 16 shafts. Each weaver will first, with guidance from the instructor (on Zoom), paint her warp using alternating black and beige yarns in 16/2 cotton. (The trick is you'll automatically have two differently colored yarns for an Echo threading, as the beige yarn will dye colorfully and the black yarn won't take the dye.) You will come to the workshop with your warp dressed and ready to weave. For your "Harriet Shawl," you will weave a series of structures on your Echo threading, using different tieups and treadlings to weave Echo, Jin, Decorated Jin, and double weave. You'll also experiment with different weft yarns and colors, including active yarns such as wool/stainless steel, which will be provided by the instructor. You'll come away with a colorful, textured scarf with a multitude of patterns, colors, and textures that will be unlike any scarf you've woven to date, I boldly venture to say.

To give you a taste of what you're you'll be weaving, here's the double-weave design for the 8-shaft version:

That's just one of the varied designs you'll be weaving in different colors and textures.

We're looking for a few more weavers to sign up for this workshop. If you're interested you may contact me at kovnatdenise[at]gmail.com

I look forward to hearing from you!

By the way, I want you to know that I do try faithfully to write one blog post a month. December got away from me (not surprising, right?) so (fingers crossed) you'll be getting another blog post toward the end of January. Gotta meet those deadlines, right, even though they're self-imposed....

Thanks for reading!

Making Plans...

2025-11-28T16:57:00.003-05:00

The image above is part of a drawdown of a design I call "Azteca," which refers to the indigenous people who founded the Aztec empire as well as to their culture. They flourished in central Mexico from 1300 to 1521 C.E., founding their capitol, Tenochtitlan, on the site that is now Mexico City. To me, the warm, vivid colors and the geometric motifs have the feeling of Aztec art.

Architectural model, Mezcala, 1st-8th century, Metropolitan Museum of Art

(Public domain)

Coronation stone of Moctezuma, Xocoyotzin, 1503, Art Institute of Chicago

I'm thinking of weaving this pattern to create a tunic that derives from the art of the traditional Azteca women's tunic known as a huipil (pronounced wee-PEEL), worn by indigenous women from central Mexico to Central America. The garment's history predates Spanish colonization, with designs and weaving traditions pass down through the centuries. These designs represent a complex tradition of communication, with weaving and embroidery symbolizing the wearer's ethnic community and identity. Traditionally, huipils were woven in cotton on backstrap looms, such as the one seen below.

As for my plans for this modern-day huipil: I aim to weave it in 16/2 cotton and rayon/bamboo on my 32-shaft Louet Megado, with a width in the reed of 24.75 inches. I figure this gives me plenty of width to weave a rectangular shape that can be folded in half to fit an average-sized woman. Further, I want to decorate it with an inkle-woven band or two, maybe adding beads, giving it a look similar to the images below -- which are, by the way, from the wardrobe of Frida Kahlo.

In fact, I found a "Frida Huipil" sewing pattern on the website of the Victoria and Albert Museum. Here's the link: Frida Huipil V&A.

The design is a 4-color parallel threading, based on a design line that is basically Ms and Ws.

The tieup makes it a Jin pattern, and the treadling is an advancing point twill (with tabby shots in between the pattern shots, in keeping with Jin).

I would like to make this more of a garment for show rather than an everyday piece, so I may embellish it with beads and -- get this, real gold thread! (It's actually gold-plated, I guess you'd say, not solid gold, because that would be unaffordable.)

There is so much that weaving has to say, non-verbally but beautifully, to celebrate other cultures, traditions, and beliefs. Textiles awaken us to our connections and our individuality as well.

Now, off to the warping reel!

Thanks for reading.

The Huipil de la Malinche, one of the oldest huipils

ever found, carbon-dated to the 1700s.

Creating an Optical Illusion in Block Double Weave

2025-10-25T10:40:00.015-04:00

Please note that, unbeknownst to me as I worked on weaving this image, it is, in fact, an ancient, sacred pattern from the Itneg people of the Philippines. Here are the words of a reader who pointed this out:

"This is an optical art pattern from my culture which originates from the Itneg indigenous people's group in the Philippines. Its dizzying pattern is said to scare away malevolent spirits, so this is a heritage motif in my culture."

And in a second comment, the writer states, "...(T)his particular motif is a sacred pattern that means something spiritually. Other people brought it to other parts of the world through colonization. As weavers, I think it's important to honor the original stewards of that material culture. It's not just weaving or weaving patterns. It's so much more."

So, with that reflection and understanding, I hope that bringing this image to the loom is a respectful act. To be truthful, for me, this did not come from any source that I recall other than the idea that weaving blocks can create optical illusions. At that point I saw that I had re-created a pattern familiar to weavers. Now that I know its history, I share this ancient illusion with a deeper understanding of the reverence felt by the people who created it.

Below is my original post.

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Perhaps it's because our brains just want to see patterns -- but do you see expanding circles in this drawdown?

But it's all squares, right? What's going on?

This is known as a "fiction illusion," in which the brain perceives a shape or figure that is not actually present in the image. Optical illusions involve different ways in which the brain and the eye process visual information, such that the perception is different from the reality.

Why does this happen? Quoting from my Google search: "Your brain uses patterns, past experiences, and context to make sense of visual input, but illusions exploit these processes by presenting confusing or conflicting information, causing the brain to 'fill in the gaps' in a way that leads to a perception that doesn't match reality."

Aha! Confusing or conflicting information, differences between perception and reality -- this is where weaving can createsome interesting patterns!

Our immediate perception of this black-and-white version of the pattern above: It's full of flowing lines that intersect, dilate, and compress.

But, in the weaving pattern, it's all black-and-white rectangles, increasing and decreasing in length and width. In weaver-speak, it's just double-weave blocks.

I'm in the process of dressing my loom with this design, which is simple block double weave on 8 shafts. Here's the threading:

Two blocks, that's it. But, if you look at the top of the threading, you'll see that the units of 1, 2, 3, and 4 descend from 9 to 8 to 7, etc., in number, all the way down to 3 -- and then they begin to expand again. This means that the widths of the two different warp blocks get progressively smaller, and then they reverse and get larger again.

The treadling is "tromp as writ," meaning that it's identical to the threading. ("Treadle as written" is my rough translation.)

Looking at the weft, you'll see the same progressive increases and decreases in the number of units per block -- from 9 units in the first block to 8 in the second to 7 in the third and so on down to 3, where the number of units begins to increase again. This means that the height of the blocks changes, getting progressively longer and then progressively shorter.

The beauty of double weave is you get solid colors: In the case of my drawdown at the top of this post, green weaves with green, in alternating blocks that are either on the top layer or the bottom layer. And red is doing the reverse. Double weave makes for bold colors and graphic patterns, which is probably why weavers like it so much.

Here's the tieup. It's a double-weave tieup, so that the first 4 shafts on the first treadle lift just shaft 3, while the second 4 shafts weave the bottom layer, which is being woven upside down. This means that, effectively, shaft 7, which is technically down, is the only shaft lifted on the upside-down bottom layer. Then, on treadle 2, the layers exchange, so that shaft 8 is lifting the warp on the top layer while shaft 2 is "lifted" on the upside-down bottom layer. You're exchanging the top layer and the bottom layer to form differing rectangles. And effectively you're weaving plain weave on both layers. (Caveat: I don't consider myself a double-weave expert, so I simply created a tieup that works for me.)

The structure itself gives you two layers of cloth that exchange (top to bottom) in the pattern we talked about, squares that

increase and decrease in height and width. In my case, I'm threading everything in beige -- but one layer is 20/2 wool and

the other layer is 17/2 nm silk noil. Using differential-shrinkage techniques (where the wool fulls and draws in

and the silk noil buckles and puckers because it's being drawn in by the wool), I hope to end up with a fabric that has a

really interesting texture. But I haven't finished threading yet ;o) because I had to re-thread to get the pattern just right....

(Please note that yes, this is an unusual double-weave tieup. A friend pointed this out and, to be honest,

I created it because that's how I puzzled it out. I hope to fix the tieup in the next few days....)

And my loom's acting up, but that's another story. Fingers crossed.

Thanks for reading!

Name Drafts Aren't Just for Overshot....

2025-08-27T13:36:00.007-04:00

Above is a name draft using -- why not? -- the name Michelangelo, employing an Echo threading and a twill tieup and treading. A name draft is a fun and fairly easy way to design a weaving pattern, working with the name of a friend or loved one or, in the case of Michelangelo, an icon, as a sort of coded message in your weaving. You can achieve this either by hand using graph paper or using weaving software.

(A bit of self-promotion here: I will be teaching a one-day workshop on this subject, called "Name Drafts, 8 Shafts, and Parallel Threadings," at Convergence 2026 at the Sheraton New Orleans in New Orleans, LA, next August 12-16. Registration will begin soon, but the schedule hasn't come out yet, so keep checking back on the link above for updated information. The subject of this post is NOT how to create name drafts with Echo threadings because I wouldn't want to give away the gist of the workshop. However, if you keep reading, I will walk you step-by-step in creating a name draft using deflected-double-weave techniques.)

As for name drafting itself, let's define our terms. We'll start with an impeccable source, Madelyn van der Hoogt, who wrote in Handwoven magazine on January 22, 2018, "A name draft is an arbitrary way to create a threading draft (usually threading, though it can be used for blocks or for treadling orders, too). There are many ways to do name drafting, but one is to assign a letter to each shaft: A = 1, B = 2, C = 3, D = 4, E = 1, F = 2, etc., for four shafts, for example. Then you just thread the number corresponding to the letters from words or phrases. Naturally, this doesn't necessarily give you a threading that can be used, so then you adjust. Most often name drafting is used for overshot."

But not just for overshot, as you can see from my Echo example above. As Marg Coe points out in the introduction to her online course, "What's in a NameDraft?", "Traveling outside name-drafting with traditional overshot we will design shadow weave, deflected double weave, double weave, rep, Corris effects...." All these designs are possible using name-draft techniques.

Sneak preview: In the upcoming issue of Handwoven magazine, I have used a name draft to create a deflected-double-weave design based on the name of my beloved grandfather, George Relyea. (I won't give away any more of the story, which is the "Yarn Lab" project in the next issue -- and it brings some exciting news! 'Nuf said.)

Here's how George Relyea weaves up in deflected double weave on 8 shafts. I really like the design!

So how do you do this? I work with Fiberworks (the Mac version, which varies slightly from the PC version, but these instructions should get you there on either system).

Step 1) Pick a name. (Please note that some names do work better than others, so, as Madelyn writes, you have to make adjustments.)

Step 2) In the "Tools" drop-down menu, (found at the top right side of the drawdown page as you begin), click on "Namedraft" and then type the name in the box provided. No spaces, no initial caps. The name-draft window gives you all sorts of choices, but for the purposes of this tutorial, just leave it as is. (You can experiment to your heart's content after you've learned the basics.)

Step 3) Click on "Accept" (making sure you have one color in the warp and another in the weft), and there you have it! An overshot-looking design (more like turned overshot, but anyway) that's built on the name you chose.

Here's what the beginning of my name draft looks like on my computer screen.

Step 4) On the "Tools" menu, click on "Block Substitution." Then click on "Classic Weaves," and "Overshot, Multishaft." Then click "Accept." My draft now looks like this.

Step 5) Using the shaft-shuffling tool at the top of the Fiberworks window (the one that has a single arrow pointing both up and down with a horizontal line going through it), use the cursor to change shaft 3 to become 5 and shaft 4 (which is now on shaft 3) to become shaft 6. This means that your threading blocks always alternate between shafts 1 or 2 and shafts 3 or 4. This is based on the Stubenitsky method of drafting deflected double weave.

Step 6) On the "Tieup" dropdown menu, click on "Shafts and Treadles," change the number of treadles to 8, and then click "Set."

Step 7) Again on the "Treadling" drop-down menu, click on "Weave as drawn in," making sure that you unclick the box for "colors." Then click "Copy Exactly as Drawn."

Step 8) At this point, your draft will look like a mess, but that's because you need to change the tieup to a deflected-double-weave tieup. These tieups are always boxes of 2 shafts and 2 treadles that are either 1) all black, meaning two adjacent shafts will be lifted together twice in the treadling, 2) all white, meaning that two adjacent shafts will stay down together twice in the treadling, or 3) weaving plain weave.

My tieup looks like this: (Note: To repeat, I'm following the Stubenitsky method in the tieup, in which -- for an 8-shaft draft -- the four shafts and treadles on the bottom left and the four shafts and treadles on the top right are tied up to weave plain weave, while the four shafts and treadles on the top left and the four shafts and treadles on the bottom right weave the pattern, comprising four-unit squares of two shafts and two treadles which are either all black to lift the warp or all white to lower the warp. The plain-weave portions of the tieup are always stationary, while the blocks of 4 black or 4 white can be moved about to alter the pattern.) Here's what my tieup looks like.

Step 9) To see your design as deflected double weave, you need to change the warp colors so that every other block of four warp ends is one color and the adjacent blocks are another color. And you need once again to click on the "Treadling" dropdown menu, click on "Weave as drawn in," and click on "Copy Exactly as Drawn" so that the colors in your weft alternate block by block as well.

And this is what you get with my name draft.

Not bad for an hour's work, don't you think? And this technique allows you to encode something special, unique, and meaningful to you. Again, if you're interested in learning the full spectrum of possibilities for name drafting, I urge you to check out Marg Coe's free, live course (click here).

Thanks for reading!

My "George Relyea" name draft again, this time with a different tieup.

Build Your Fiber Skills -- and Friendships -- at EGLFC this October in Upstate New York!

2025-07-24T15:23:00.005-04:00

Come join us this October 10-13 at beautiful St. Bonaventure University in Olean, NY, for a weekend of fiber learning and sharing.

For more information, see below. To register, visit https://eglfc.org/eglfc-registration-stub/

Registration has been extended through July 31st for two workshops that still have room:

"Ultimate Spinning" with Cindy Koedoot Knisely

Cindy, pictured above, is an admitted fiberholic. She has been playing with fiber-y things since early childhood when she made clothes for her Barbie dolls. She crochets and knits, sews, quilts, and weaves baskets, but her favorite pastimes are spinning and weaving. She is never happier than when she has fiber of some sort in her hands. She loves sharing her addiction with others. For more information, visit www.redstoneglen.com

During the workshop, we'll take an in-depth look at your spinning wool: short, medium, and long staples and how to set up your wheel for each of these. Then we'll advance to other protein fibers, camelids, mohair, and silk, among others. After that, we'll switch to plan fibers -- including cotton, linen, and hemp. We'll work on combining fibers to get the most out of each fiber. What works best? We'll look at prepping fiber with hand cards, wool combs, and drum carders -- and we'll even try a blending board.

You'll learn how to adjust your wheel for the fiber and the yarn you want. Also, we'll spend time on fiber prep, spinning long draw and short draw, blending fibers, spinning woolen and worsted-spun yarns, and plying and finishing yarns. And we won't forget to play along the way, color blending, art yarn, glitz.... We'll try anything and everything!

Level of experience required: Intermediate

Equipment requirements:
Spinning wheel in good working condition
As many bobbins as you have for the wheel
Spinning oil, threading hook, Niddy Noddy, and the usual spinning tools
Notebook and pen for taking notes
A sense of adventure: Imagine all the possibilities!
If you have them: wool cards, wool combs, drum carder, any fibers you'd like to share

Materials fee: $40

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"Weaving 101 -- Mission Possible: Try Weaving and Complete a Scarf or Two" with Jan Hewitt Towsley

Of her work, Jan Towsley (pictured above) says, "I love to weave. I love to explore all kinds of weaving and fiber-art techniques that bring it all together. Starting with those little pot-holder looms I used as a child, I was intrigued with the creation of fabric using patterns, textures, and color. I earned my BFA in Weaving and Textile Design at the School for American Craftsmen at RIT (Rochester Institute of Technology) and I continue to weave utilitarian and art pieces in my studio. I am honored to have my work at such locations as RIT, Strong Memorial Hospital, Lipson Cancer Center, and the Susan B. Anthony House. Further, I teach in area schools and at the Weaving and Fiber Arts Center in East Rochester, NY. For more information, visit Jan Hewitt Towsley at Anderson Alley Artists

Information on Jan's workshop: Accomplish two new goals! Participants will learn the basics of loom weaving: How does that yarn get onto a loom? And how does it become fabric? Also in this class, you'll complete one scarf and have enough warp left to weave another scarf at home. This is a chance for students to bring a loom and receive instructions and help with setting it up. A questionnaire will be sent to the students to customize each person's projects. Students will select from a variety of cotton-warp yarn colors prior to class, so that the instructor can prepare customized warps. Students may also bring their own weaving yarns.

Don't have a loom? Many local guilds offer equipment rentals and the instructor has some table looms available to rent during the workshop. The instructor will contact you to find out about your loom availability and warp-color choice.

Level of experience: Beginners and up

Materials fee: $30 for pre-wound warps and weaving yarns

Warning: This class may lead to a desire for more weaving projects and classes!

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EGLFC (Eastern Great Lakes Fiber Conference) is a popular biennial weaving conference held in western New York State. Its small size and intimate setting provide excellent opportunities to hone your skills and make fiber friends from other regional guilds, including those from New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Ontario, Canada. The weekend also includes:

Friday evening Meet & Greet slide presentations by our instructors, once you've arrived and/or had dinner at a local restaurant.
Saturday afternoon Classroom Walkabout to see what others are doing in their workshops; time to relax with others at your hotel or take a walk around campus.
Saturday evening Studio Bonanza fundraiser to unload your no-longer-needed equipment, books and stash. The fun is contagious as we drop tickets into baskets next to our hoped-for prize. Will you be a winner?
Sunday night Banquet and Fashion Show. Don’t be shy! It’s a low-key time for participants of all levels to show off wearables (from scarves to full garments) on our “runway” following dinner.
All weekend Exhibit Tables feature work from volunteer participants – let’s see what you’ve been working on!

Fall foliage, fiber, and friends -- all together for one great weekend at EGLFC. Hope to see you there!

Aerial view of St. Bonaventure University, Olean, NY

A Tale of Three Looms

2025-06-22T16:33:00.006-04:00

They're all dressed up (well, almost) but not ready to go! Pictured above: At top, my 16-shaft Toika Eeva, threaded for a differential-shrinkage pattern in double weave; in the middle, my 16-shaft Germaine table loom threaded with gossamer-weight silk still in the gum (which I wrote about at length in my previous post); and on the bottom, my 32-shaft Louet Megado only partially threaded (I have to thread the second back beam) for an 8-shaft differential-shrinkage pattern.

So why are they all sitting idle? Well, as you know, weaving is hard because there's lots of preparation. And sometimes you don't even know how much preparation it takes until you're in the thick of dressing your loom. (And sometimes you change your mind -- halfway through dressing your loom -- about which pattern you're going to weave. Does anyone else do this?)

Some details about what's on these three looms...

On the Toika compu-dobby (first photo), I have an 8-shaft double-weave pattern threaded and ready to weave. The only problem is that two shafts were rising when they shouldn't, so I couldn't get the proper sheds for my design. I sent a quick email to Claudia Spaulding (thanks, Claudia!), who is CFO of the Hartford Artisans Weaving Center and happens to be a Toika rep -- and also happens to be a physician. I thought the problem was humidity but her diagnosis was that the posts inside the box on top of the loom had to be adjusted. She also cc'd Bran Gardner in on her reply, the weaving manager for Webs and the chief U.S. support for Toika. Bran has put together very detailed instructions on how to adjust the posts so that the magnets assigned to each shaft are connecting properly.... My electrical-engineering in-house consultant (and husband) did the rest. He's a weaving angel, really.

The pattern uses two layers -- one layer being a yarn that is active and one being a yarn that is inactive. (The red layer is on top and the black layer is on the bottom, while the long black rectangles represent where the two layers weave together in a tied double weave.) After fulling, the active yarn draws in and causes the inactive yarn to buckle, with the tied double weave giving the fabric some stability. Here is the drawdown.

It's threaded as a double-two-tie-unit weave, which can be tied up and treadled to create a range of designs, including double weave. I learned the technique in a workshop I took with Ann Richards in London in 2014, based on her book, Weaving Textiles That Shape Themselves. The two warps are 18/2 superfine merino from Jaggerspun (no longer in business but still available from Jane Stafford Textiles) and 20/2 Mora yarn (which, unlike the 18/2 merino, doesn't full), a Swedish yarn available from Vävstuga.

The two wefts are 20/2 Mora (in red, below) and a black wool overtwisted yarn, 52/2 nm Z-twist, from the Handweavers Studio and Gallery in London, an excellent source for energized yarns.

Here's an idea of how the design should look after finishing -- although the sample in this photo differs somewhat, using 30/2 silk and 52/2 nm Z-twist wool in both warp and weft.

So, for all intents and purposes, the Toika is dressed and ready to weave!

On to the Germaine: ah, the Germaine. It's a Purrington copy, really. And this particular iteration was pretty badly made. I'm just saying it straight. But the latest generation of Purrington Looms is very well made, back up to the traditional Purrington standards, by the Bannerman family in West Virginia. I bought the Germaine because it has 16 shafts and, at the time, our guild had a very skilled "loom doctor" who fixed it all up so it works well for me.

What's the warp on that loom? Undegummed silk, very fine, that I will also use as weft to weave a 16-shaft twill pattern with added threads for tying the fabric up warp-wise in order to create a shibori resist. My thinking is that, if I de-gum the silk when the fabric is tied up in a tight shibori "package," I should get some really interesting horizontal pleats in the cloth. I will report back on this experiment.... Here's the pattern. (The red threads in both warp and weft represent potential positioning of threads for shibori ties.)

Lastly, what's on the Megado? Only half a warp, again using 20/2 Mora. The second warp, going on my second warp beam, will be a silk noil purchased from a now-defunct mill in England many years ago. I plan on weaving the piece all in beige to emphasize the texture, using differential-shrinkage techniques.

Trouble is, because the yarns are so fine, calling for a sett of 60 epi (or something close to that) -- predictably, I didn't have enough heddles. It took me two orders from Jane Stafford Textiles to get it right!

Did you know that, when you purchase Texsolv heddles, those four little blue twist-ties on every bunch of 50 heddles allow you to place the loops directly onto the shaft bars? They're tied completely in order, so once you've got them on the shaft bars, you simply undo the twist ties and you're good to go. (I must say, with great humility, that it took me a while to figure this out.)

My second challenge with this loom has to do with my second warp of silk noil. It's typically not used as warp because it breaks easily (silk noil being made of the waste products from producing all the other kinds of silk yarn). I sprayed it with spray starch to make it stiffer, which should help avoid breakage.

Above, my warp chain of silk noil after it's been sprayed with starch and dried.

That's my story of three looms, just one of them ready to go. Hopefully you'll see photos and read updates in upcoming posts. (I'm keeping my fingers crossed....) Until then, may the weaving goddesses be with you -- and me!

Thanks for reading.

A Saga of Silk in the Gum: Chapter 1, Winding the Warp

2025-05-22T18:01:00.004-04:00

Above photos: first, gossamer-weight silk on the cone; second, a detail of one strand of silk yarn;

last, a microscopic look at the same yarn (about 100x).

Thanks to the valiant de-stashing efforts of a friend, I now own about 3 ounces of raw silk organzine, which has a grist of about 18,700 yards per pound. It's wonderful yarn because it's reeled silk -- a.k.a. thrown silk or raw silk -- meaning it came straight from the cocoon. A single strand of silk filament from one cocoon typically ranges from 2,000 to 5,000 feet long. And it's very strong.

Silk reeled straight from the cocoon is still "in the gum." When the silkworm spins a cocoon, the filament it creates is coated in sericin -- a gummy substance that makes each ever-so-fine strand adhere to others, in order to create a sturdy, solid cocoon. To make silk yarn, these filaments are gathered to create one strand of silk, which is plied with another strand to create silk yarn. It's a very delicate, laborious process.

Even after it's spun into yarn (such as the yarn on the cone shown at the beginning of this post), silk in the gum is not easy to handle, because of its tendency to twist back on itself. Also, the stiffness of the yarn causes challenges: If it's not under tension and it's on a cone, it unravels all over the place, fast. Elastic socks (cut into a tube) don't help much, in my view. Neither do "yarn bras" (otherwise recognized as the green plastic webs we put over wine bottles to keep them from breaking). I use them to store the yarn, but not when I'm winding a warp.

(A slight but necessary digression: Nearly all of the silk used by weavers today is degummed, so that it's silky and shiny and gorgeous. Further, nearly all of the silk used by weavers today is spun silk, which is made from fiber left over from the reeling process or from damaged or imperfect cocoons. Spun silk is not as strong as reeled silk -- because the filaments are much shorter -- and for that reason it's much fuzzier, so it often pills. I've sometimes resorted to a seam ripper to separate two warp yarns that were bound together by one of these pills, or "nits," as I call them.)

In contrast, despite how tricky it is to handle, reeled silk is a genuine treasure, creating fabric with a drape and hand that's hard to find with any other yarn. Plus, it takes dye beautifully.

Above: detail of a scarf I dyed and wove using degummed, reeled silk.

It's a 12-shaft Echo pattern I call "Pagoda."

Reeled silk still in the gum is used to weave silk organza, a gauze-like fabric with a stiff hand and a matte finish. Above, a silk organza scarf shibori-dyed in black by Ana Lisa Hedstrom, which I was lucky enough to buy at the Conference of Northern California Weavers (CNCH) last year.

Again, back to the story. I've got this fine silk yarn in the gum and I want to degum it after weaving, using a shibori-resist technique, so that portions of the woven fabric will be degummed (becoming soft and shiny and pliable, like silk Habotai) while the rest of the fabric will still be in the gum and stiff (like silk organza). The idea is to create contrasts in texture -- a dimensional fabric -- with lots of interesting pleats and bumps.

Below is the pattern I plan to use. The red-colored ends in the drawdown show where I will add the shibori-resist yarns, yarns that I will pull tight and knot to create a sort of "package" of the fabric with tight accordion folds. When washed in soda ash and Orvus paste to remove the sericin (gum), the edges of the folds will be exposed to the solution while the interior of the folds will not. At least that's my theory. I'm going to weave up some small samples first, of course, because you never know. Best-laid plans and all...

You'll note that I've got red ends at the corners of the diamonds in both warp and weft. That's because I plan to sample it both ways: using warp tie-ups to create horizontal pleats and, for another sample, using weft tie-ups for vertical pleats. Once you draw the fabric in using these yarns (which have to be very strong or they'll break and ruin all that weaving), you will have a tight package of pleats ready for degumming. The pattern is #78120 from handweaving.net.

For the warp ends that I'll use as shibori ties, I plan on using this Nymo beading thread (shown below) because it Simply. Won't. Break. My fingers may hurt, but my shibori ties will be intact. Again, that's my plan.

But first I have to wind the warp. I called my friend, Deb Kaplan, a brilliant weaver from Boston, and asked her about winding the warp from cones -- knowing full well that it would be a challenge. She suggested I first wind the yarn onto spools, which I don't have so I substituted bobbins. She also suggested using a manual bobbin winder rather than an electric one, because a manual winder is slower, making it much easier to keep an even tension as I wind the bobbins.

You want the yarn to look like this as you wind it onto the bobbin.

Not like this. (Excuse the background. Weavers need stuff.)

To get just the right tension, you might want additionally to wind the yarn around a chair leg or anything rounded and handy. Here, I used part of a steel utility shelf.

Deb suggested I wind two ends at once in the warp cross, which I often do. Of course, winding the warp is the ultimate even-tension, straight-line-to-the-warping-reel kind of challenge. A creel would be helpful in this case, but alas, I don't have one, so a shoe box will have to do. (Final Sale, $31.73 at Macy's.)

Below, my shoebox creel with bobbins in place (with yarn coming forward from underneath the bobbin, hoping that gravity will also help tame it a bit). Ready to begin warping.

Samples to come, probably a good couple of months from now, as I already have a warp on the loom....

Thanks for reading!

Bombyx Mori silkworms munching mulberry leaves, courtesy of Wikipedia

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Post script: My shoebox creel didn't work. The yarns unwound and got tangled all over the dowels. So I resorted to a simpler approach: I put my two bobbins in two plastic yogurt containers that I placed on the floor.

Believe it or not, the weight of the bobbins themselves created enough tension for me to successfully wind my warp. I did take care to divide the two ends of yarn with my fingers, to keep them from tangling.

It worked! Warp wound. More to come...

Now on Exhibit at the Handweaving Museum in Clayton, NY

2025-04-24T21:14:00.004-04:00

I call this piece "Murmurations" because the intertwining curves remind me of the shape-shifting patterns of starlings.

Public domain, courtesy of Wikipedia

These formations in flight are called murmurations because of the soft fluttering sound of the birds' wings as they speed through the sky. I think it's a lovely word. But the real reason they do this is to elude predators, primarily hawks, before roosting. Imagine trying to catch just one starling among thousands flying in ever-changing patterns at top speed? Nature offers us astounding beauty and we admire it and honor it in the arts -- music, photography, dance, painting -- and yes, weaving.

"Murmurations" is about 2 yards long by 2 feet wide, woven on a 32-shaft Echo threading in alternating warp colors of royal blue and mint green 16/2 cotton. The weft is a single-ply silk noil of unknown grist, dyed in peacock colors, a variegated pattern that adds subtle interest to the cloth. (I've found that silk noil is often the perfect weft for Echo designs, as it nests in between the warps, almost hiding, yet adding an ever-so-important shading to the cloth.)

Here's the draft -- and there's a key point I want to make in this post for those who are interested in weaving parallel-threaded designs. (The colors in the Fiberworks drawdown are different from those in the final weaving because, as many of you know, what seems to work well in Fiberworks doesn't always translate well in the actual cloth.)

It's easier to get an idea of the threading when you look at a detail.

Note that the threading itself looks a bit like a murmuration of starlings. That's because it's curved, of course, but it's also because of the unique interval between the two parallel threadings.

When I teach Echo designs, I always start with the basic rules -- one of which is that when you're threading with two parallel lines, each in a different color, they're separated by an interval of half of the number of shafts you're using. So an 8-shaft Echo pattern would have an interval of 4 between the two parallel lines, as in the photo below.

So, if you look at the first four warp ends, alternating in white and black, you'll see they are separated by an interval of 4 (again, because the design is on 8 shafts), starting with 8, 4, 7, 3, 6, 2, 5, and 1. Here's the full drawdown.

But if I change the interval from 4 to 5, note how the pattern changes.

The difference may be subtle, but when you're designing -- and playing with two warp colors, one weft color, different tieups, and different treadlings -- an unorthodox interval between your two parallel lines in the threading can make a significant difference. And sometimes a very pleasing one at that.

So that's part of how I developed my pattern for "Murmurations." I created an Echo design on 32 shafts, but instead of using an interval of 16 shafts (half the number of shafts I have) between the parallel lines, I played around a bit with different intervals and finally settled on an interval of 4. It helped create the illusion of the patterns that starlings make in flight.

But enough about weaving technique. Let me give you the details of the exhibit that includes "Murmurations" at the Handweaving Museum in Clayton, NY, which is part of the Thousand Islands Arts Center.

The show features the work of three weavers from the Weavers' Guild of Rochester: Mary McMahon, Ruth Manning, and me. It runs from April 23 through May 17, with a reception on the evening of May 9. Here's a sneak peak, just after we'd mounted all of the pieces, but before the identification cards were put up (I breezed through so as not to give it all away):

If I do say so myself, it's a great exhibit, well worth your time to visit -- whether you drive, walk, run, or fly!

This Color Doesn't Exist

2025-03-29T20:02:00.013-04:00

Yes, but you're seeing it, right?

Truth be told, our eyes perceive magenta but it really doesn't exist as a single wavelength of light in the visible spectrum. Magenta is a color our brains "create" by combining signals from red and blue light. It's essentially a made-up color.

Photo courtesy of Encyclopedia Britannica

Tell that to a rhododendron.

Why would I devote a blog post to the fact that magenta is not a real color? To underscore a larger point: that often, as weavers and as human beings, we perceive colors differently from what they truly are. To explain this succinctly: Our brains play tricks on us as they strive to interpret the color wavelengths that our eyes -- specifically, the cones in our retinas -- receive.

As many of you know, our eyes comprise photoreceptor cells known as rods and cones. They convert light into electrical signals that are transmitted to the brain. The rods are responsible for low-light vision. They are highly sensitive to light and detect shades of gray, providing peripheral vision and night vision. Our cones are responsible for color vision and fine details in bright light. (Little-known fact: Each of our eyes contains approximately 120 million rods and 6 million cones.)

Our perception of color arises from three types of cone cells in the retina, each sensitive to different wavelengths of light: red, green, and blue. They send signals to the brain that are then interpreted as colors.

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia

The operative word here is "interpreted." Again, our eyes receive wavelengths of color, which are transmitted to the brain as electrical signals which our brains have to interpret. These interpretations can be influenced and even altered in a number of ways. (Also, keep in mind that every individual's rods and cones are unique, adding another variable to our perception of color.)

These principles have been studied and elaborated upon by many scholars, artists, and scientists, of course, ever since Newton discovered the visible spectrum. One of the most famous books on color, The Interaction of Color, was written in 1963 by artist and Yale professor (and husband of Anni) Josef Albers. Pictured below is the cover of the 50th anniversary edition.

Albers teaches us, through exercises and text, how -- like magenta -- what we think we see is not always the real color. Here are a few of his thoughts on the subject:

"In visual perception a color is almost never seen as it really is -- as it physically is. This fact makes color the most relative medium in art.

"In order to use color effectively it is necessary to recognize that color deceives continually....

"First, it should be learned that one and the same color evokes innumerable readings. Instead of mechanically applying or merely implying laws and rules of color harmony, distinct color effects are produced -- through recognition of the interaction of color -- by making, for instance, two very different colors look alike, or nearly alike."*

I often summarize that last sentence by saying that colors seem to "bend" toward each other.

The takeaway from this post: color deceives continually! That's something weavers need to know: that one color, juxtaposed with another, or combined with several different colors, or viewed in a different light, can vary greatly to our eyes.

Reproduced from the award-winning knitting blog,

KDD&Co

Thanks for reading!

*For a deeper look at what Albers considered "the magic of color" -- and how his book gives us tools to unlock it -- visit "The Marginalian," a weekly newsletter devoted to books and the arts, divinely curated and written by Maria Popova. You can find Popova's discussion of the 50th anniversary edition of The Interaction of Color by clicking here. Further, the book is offered as an interactive digital edition by clicking here.

Some Notes from My New Lecture, 'You Can't Judge a Warp by Its Color'

2025-02-24T20:56:00.006-05:00

When I teach workshops on Echo and Jin using a 4-color parallel threading, weavers will often say to me, "I don't like the colors in my warp." I jokingly answer, "You can't judge a warp by its color." I do mean this seriously, because your weft makes a big difference (owing to a principle of optical mixing known as "simultaneous contrast," which I'll discuss later), as does your pattern, as do the rods and cones in your eyes.

I've created a new lecture with just this title, and in it I try to unwrap some of the mysteries of color in weaving, looking at color chords, color blending, our own rods and cones (which number in the millions) and how to develop a greater understanding of what colors to use in your own work.

In this blog post, I'm looking at just one of the concepts in my talk -- but one that is of primary importance: the concept of "simultaneous contrast," a term seldom used today, but a concept very useful to weavers.

Above, in the first photo, you see my warp colors in 10/2 pearl cotton, based on a rectangle taken from Johannes Itten's publication, "The Color Star." If you're lucky enough to have one, it's enormously helpful as it presents 8 templates that can be rotated around his 12-point color star, providing all sorts of options for choosing hues and values for what he calls "color chords" that are harmonious and satisfying to the eye.

My warp colors were turquoise, bright green (not quite chartreuse), orange, and wine. All quite saturated, with the wine color being the darkest in value.

In the second photo, you see a 16-shaft design I call "Tesselations," which uses a 20/2 pearl cotton weft in olive green. To my eye, the turquoise now appears to be a lighter blue, the orange becomes more of a rust color, the green is now definitely chartreuse, and the wine color is now more of a purple.

What happened? Simply put, simultaneous contrast.

Above: Two images from Josef Albers's classic book, The Interaction of Color, showing (in the first image) how the rust-colored square against a teal background becomes brown against a copper-colored background and (in the second example) how a raspberry-colored trapezoid appears light and pinker against a black background (at top) and appears darker and more raisin-colored against a dark adobe background.

Simultaneous contrast was discovered by French chemist M.E. Chevreul in 1839, after he was hired by the Gobelins tapestry studio to determine why their black dyes were not consistent. He analyzed their dyes and found that, in fact, they WERE consistent -- and he went a step further, developing what he called the"Law of the Simultaneous Contrast of Colours."

Simply put, "this color placed next to that one is modified as follows," he wrote in 1854. He added in a review in 1855: "the purport of this law, is to point out the singular fact, that when two coloured objects, such for example as a red and a green ribbon, are place side by side, or so near each other as to be seen together, the quality and intensity of their respective colours do not appear the same as when each is looked at separately. Thus, the same red ribbon will have a different tint if seen side by side with a green, with a yellow, and with a blue ribbon, and these colours will in their turn be modified to the eye, by their juxtaposition with red. This is the Simultaneous Contrast of Color."

I like to put it simpler, by saying that colors bend toward each other. And this concept is particularly important in weaving, because of the pixelated nature of warp and weft appearing over and under the cloth.

Here's an example, a double-weave sample on 8 shafts using an Echo design. What colors do you see in this warp? If I were to guess, I would say mint green and magenta.

Wrong! The warp colors are cherry red and leaf green (shown below), which happen to be complements.

The colors in the warp change considerably because the weft, if you can detect it, is purple. The purple makes both the red and the green appear bluer.

To dig deeper into this concept, let's try the familiar trick of staring at a colored dot and then staring at a white background. First, focus your eyes for about 10 seconds on the dot in the center of the yellow circle. Then focus on the dot in the center of the white rectangle.

You see a hazy purple circle, right? Purple is the complement of yellow. This is central to the concept of simultaneous contrast. The cones in your retina become fatigued in staring at the yellow, leading to a temporary imbalance in which the opposing color (its complement) appears when you look away.

What does this afterimage effect have to do with color blending in weaving? Quoting from http://onlineartlessons.com: "The law of simultaneous contrast describes the phenomenon where two colors juxtaposed... will influence each other, causing each color to take on the hue of the complementary color of its... partner."

I confess I have yet to figure out exactly how this works when I look at weaving samples or drawdowns. I don't see colors taking on the complement of their partner but rather I see them taking on an element of their partner, as in the example below. (Comments, thoughts, insights appreciated.)

In this partial drawdown of an Echo pattern I designed using Fiberworks, there appear to be two shades of green in the cloth. Yet there is only one shade of green in the weaving: a medium grass green in the weft. The warp is khaki and purple.

Why do the greens shift in the drawdown? Again, because of simultaneous contrast. Remember that weaving is, effectively, a pixelated method of creating patterns. So when a "pixel" of green weft is close to a "pixel" of purple warp, the green appears to be more like a teal blue. (I attribute this to the green taking on the blue shade in the purple.) And when the green weft is next to the khaki warp, it appears to be brighter green, taking on the yellow in the khaki warp.

Weavers can use these effects to optimize color-blending in their work, particularly with parallel-threaded patterns. As in the drawdown above, three colors of yarn in the design produce four colors in the cloth, adding interest and richness to the overall piece.

But back to M.E. Chevreul at the Gobelins studio. As he began writing about his observations on how colors affect each other and how complements and simultaneous contrast can produce shifts in colors that add energy to a work of art, the Impressionists took note.

Above, Monet's "Impression, Sunrise" from 1874, with its complements of orange and blue, is credited with inspiring the name of the Impressionist movement.

It took a chemist, analyzing color scientifically, to give artists a greater understanding of how colors can work to add energy, to soothe, to excite, and to dramatize their vision.

Van Gogh, Café Terrace at Night, 1888

Thanks for reading!

Open Registration for My Upcoming "One Warp, Many Structures" Zoom Workshop

2025-01-17T10:26:00.006-05:00

Above: An Echo sample by Maryann Ariizumi of the Seattle Weavers Guild, woven

on 12 shafts in my "One Warp" workshop. Photo courtesy of Maryann Ariizumi.

Thanks to the generosity of the Ann Arbor Fiber Arts Guild, we're opening up the registration to weavers everywhere (no exaggeration) to take my "One Warp, Many Structures: Explorations in Extended Parallel Threadings" 3-day workshop. (For a detailed description, click here and scroll down. To register, click on the two links at the top of the page. For further questions, please contact me at kovnatdenise[at]gmail.com.)

The workshop will be in the Eastern Time zone on three Saturdays: February 22, March 1, and March 8, with three Zoom sessions each day. The idea is that weavers can weave along at home and then join the teaching sessions where they will show their work online, ask questions, view my PowerPoints and presentations, and discuss issues, just as we would in any workshop. I ask weavers to upload photos of their work as they proceed, as this is a really useful tool for discussion.

We make extensive use of Google Drive, where you'll have access to loads of handouts, photos, WIFs, drawdowns for printing out, and reference material. Further, all of our sessions will be recorded and uploaded to YouTube, for those who want to review or miss a session. And, as always, I'm available via email or text or phone to answer questions.

My samples of an 8-shaft pattern called "Many Rivers," showing both sides

of the double-weave variation of this particular threading.

Thanks to program chairs Carolyn Michaels and Trish Ritchie for their willingness to make this workshop available to weavers outside the Ann Arbor Guild. Hope to see you on Zoom in February!

What's (Almost) on the Loom Right Now?

2024-12-20T19:55:00.003-05:00

Well, not quite on the loom yet, but this is what I'm aiming for. It's a 32-shaft Echo design I call "Murmurations" because it reminds me of those wonderful rounded forms made by starlings and other flocks of birds as they shape-shift aerobatically across the sky.

A murmuration of starlings (courtesy of Wiktionary)

If you're lucky enough to see one, you will marvel at the sight. As magical as they appear, there are practical reasons for the birds to create these ever-changing forms in flight: They serve to help protect them from predators like peregrine falcons. Like sheep, the starlings create safety in numbers -- and they keep moving as well. Even a peregrine falcon will have a hard time catching a single bird among the hundreds or even thousands in constant motion.

Anyhow, I like the pattern and I love weaving with Echo designs, because you can achieve so many different designs just by changing the tieup and treadling. Like this one in double weave (shown as a detail, because the overall design is really big.)

Or this, woven as Shadow Weave (well, sort of), again shown just as a detail because the design is so large.

So I'm rather excited to start weaving and see the results. (Side comment: A friend and I were talking about the differences between a weaving design as seen in Fiberworks versus how it turns out when it's woven. I see Fiberworks as a sort of "flight simulator" -- that is, it gives you a pretty good approximation of what you're going to get on the loom, but you never really know until you weave it up.) And the weft color makes a difference, of course. And the sett, and the beat...

Here are my warp colors, in 16/2 unmercerized cotton, to be set at 48 epi.

The colors don't show up really well in this photo. That's mint green on the left and royal blue on the right. So the weft for my first design (seen as the first photo in this post) will probably be a copper/rust color, serving as a complement to the blue and turning the mint green into more of a rusty gold.

This post is dedicated to good intentions, because my Megado loom isn't completely dressed yet. The warp is beamed, but now I have to thread some 1,200 ends.

View from the front

Rear view

So here's a toast to weaving in the new year, to challenging ourselves, to threading myriad numbers of heddles, and to keeping our fingers crossed that our designs will translate really well from Fiberworks to the loom!

And to weavers everywhere: Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Bright Solstice, Joyous Kwanzaa, and best wishes for any and every celebration at this time of year.

Thanks for reading!

Let's Do This! Strickler's Pattern #728 for a Baby Blanket

2024-11-22T14:35:00.003-05:00

My nephew and his wife are expecting their second child in early December -- so of course I had to weave them a baby blanket. That's what weavers do, right?

It had to be machine washable (but I dryed it on the line, to prevent shrinking), without long floats, soft to the touch (of course), and, at least in my opinion, made with natural fiber. Again, in my opinion, cotton is the way to go, particularly unmercerized cotton because it's softer and loftier than mercerized cotton.

Like pretty much everyone else, I love pattern #728 from A Weaver's Book of 8-Shaft Patterns by Carol Strickler. This multiple-tabby pattern has charm and subtlety -- and also offers the opportunity to play with color by adding stripes that emphasize the various motifs. (If you have the book, it's the pattern on the bottom-right corner of page 228.)

I think I've seen more weavings in this pattern than in any other well-known 8-shaft design. For those of you who don't own the book, here's the threading and tieup:

The design is by Joan McCullough of Campbellford, Ontario, Canada, who just passed away in October, sadly. But what a gift she gave us. The design is described as rosepath in multiple-tabby weave, deriving from page 48 of The Rosepath Motif: An Approach to Weaving Design by Margaret Windeknecht.

A brief explanation: multiple tabby is simply a series of threadings, typically evenly spaced among the shafts -- each of which, when tied up correctly, will weave tabby. For instance, instead of threading tabby as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and tying it up as 1, 3, 5, 7 versus 2, 4, 6, 8, you can thread tabby as 1, 5, 2, 6, 3, 7, 4, 8 and tie it up as 1, 2, 3, 4 versus 5, 6, 7, 8. It really doesn't matter how you thread for tabby, as long as you tie up your shafts to weave on opposites.

In the case of Strickler #728, we're not weaving tabby but rather twill variations using a 3/2/1/2 ascending twill tieup. This creates a variety of interesting motifs in the warp when treadled with a point draw, as you see in the treadling below.

Here are the basics for warping, weaving, and finishing the blanket.

Warp yarn: 6/2 unmercerized cotton from Webs (in my case, I wound 21 stripes of 15 ends each in turquoise and then, in between these stripes, I wound 4 stripes of 24 ends each successively in sage, yellow, and light yellow, yellow, and sage, for a total of 20 stripes.)

Weft yarn: 6/2 unmercerized cotton

Sett: 24 epi. Sley 2 ends/dent in a 12-dent reed.

Width in reed: 33.29"

Begin by weaving a 1-inch-long base for the cloth (for turning over and hemming) using 10/2 cotton as weft to prevent the hem from being too thick. Do the same at the end of the cloth.

After this, using a weft of 6/2 cotton, weave the treadling pictured above in as many repeats as needed to achieve a blanket that is 2 yds. in length (not including the total of 2" of hem fabric woven with 10/2 cotton).

Finish by running a zig-zag stitch along the cut fabric on both ends of the blanket. Tuck this end under and iron the hem flat in preparation to stitch down the hem.

Hem as seen from the front of the blanket (which I define as the side with the warp-emphasis motifs, which appear slightly textured, as if emboss)..)

Hem as seen from the underside of the blanket (the side that has less texture, appearing to emphasize the weft more).

I washed the blanket in my top-loader, using cool water and regular detergent. I then hung it to dry (rather than putting it in the dryer, where it would shrink more) and finished by ironing it neatly. The final dimensions are about 2 feet 6 inches wide by 4 feet long.

There you have it! An attractive, functional, warm, and cozy blanket for the soon-to-be-newborn of the soon-to-be-parents in your life. On 8 shafts, it weaves up fast -- maybe just in time for the holidays?

Thanks for reading!

A Visit with Eva Stossel

2024-10-21T17:50:00.003-04:00

Above: My favorite piece among all the weaving I've seen by Eva Stossel, in networked double weave on 16 shafts, with warp and weft in 20/2 cotton. I really like the tesselation effect.

Which brings me to the point of this blog post: Eva Stossel (you can visit her blog at www.evasweaving.wordpress.com) is, in my humble opinion, one of the best weavers around the country these days.

Take a look:

Another 16-shaft network-drafted double weave, again using tesselations. Even more interesting: If you walk far enough away from the photo on your screen, you'll see an overall pattern in this piece, sort of a vertical-ellipse shape, made by the squares themselves!

Here's a detail:

How did she DO that? I figure it's two colors in the warp and weft of the top layer (white and red) and two colors in the warp and weft of the bottom layer (purple and red), and her design is networked but not paralleled. And then she shifted equal-sized rectangles in both threading and treadling throughout the piece to achieve the tile-like effect.

And how about this?

Tied Lampas in 4 blocks, in a clean, refreshing design (and, by the way, using complementary colors of green and red and purple and yellow, which add to the aesthetic appeal).

And yet another:

Woven moiré in pearl cotton on 16 shafts

Eva is really generous in sharing her drafts -- both in her blog and as WIFs when asked (although at times, rightfully, she does keep some designs to herself). Her writing is clear and concise, making her blog a gift to the weaving community at large.

I had no idea where she lived until I happened to mention how I admired her work to my friend Hedy Lyles, herself an excellent weaver from Willow Grove, PA. Both Hedy and Eva belong to the Philadelphia Guild of Handweavers.

One of Hedy's twill scarves, on display at Convergence 2024 in Wichita in July.

Come to find out, Eva and Hedy are friends! Over a weekend when I was visiting family in Philadelphia, Hedy and I took a road trip about an hour out of town to visit Eva. It was a pleasure to finally meet her. She seemed surprised when I told her her blog has fans nationwide!

Hedy, left, and Eva, right, talk weaving. Note one of Eva's designs at the bottom of the photo, woven to create an Ikat look.

I remember Hedy telling me that she weaves on a 16-shaft Macomber loom, which surprised me, as I expected her to rely on the convenience of a compu-dobby. It takes a lot of strength (and a lot of tromping) to weave on 18 treadles to lift the cast-iron shafts of a Macomber!

Eva's Macomber, with an end-feed-delivery shuttle poised on the shuttle race.

She samples religiously and keeps detailed records, which is exactly what all the great weavers do, in my view.

Eva told us that often she will use her 4-shaft Structo for sampling -- clearly not to see how a 16-shaft pattern works, but just to see how the warp and weft yarns weave together. I consider that a noble endeavor, one that never even occurred to me ;o)

Eva with her files

More samples, more notes

Really, I wanted to meet Eva because I so admire her work and her generosity -- and I wanted to learn something about how a master weaver works. Of course, you can't access a person's mind and discover the source of their creativity (don't I wish). What I did learn: Start with a good idea, sample it, sample more, make sure the yarns and colors work, dig deeper, keep weaving, keep learning. That's the essence of what it takes.

And, as is so often the case, I found how much I enjoy making friends with fellow weavers. Thank you, Hedy and Eva, for a delightful afternoon!

Not the most flattering photo of any of us (from left: me, Eva, and Hedy) but it documents a meeting of hearts and hands, you might say....

Thanks for reading!

Echo... Echo... Echo on 8 Shafts

2024-09-24T16:18:00.010-04:00

It all started with Handweaving.net, as I'm guessing it does for many of us.

One of the easiest ways to create an Echo design is to look on Handweaving.net for patterns with advancing-point-twill threadings, such as Ms and Ws, Gebrochene, or Crackle. These threadings can easily be made into Echo designs, simply by clicking "Parallel Repeat" on the "Warp" drop-down menu in Fiberworks Silver and then interleaving a threading line that's parallel to the original threading, separated by an interval of half the shafts you're using.

A bit of weaving terminology here -- because I remember wondering what in the world "interleave" meant as I was learning to work with parallel threadings. I always thought it meant inserting a page into a book. Actually, in weaving, it's sort of like that: You insert a second threading line above the original threading line -- so that each parallel thread is "interleaved" between two threads in the base threading -- A/B/A/B and so on.

In other words, if you take a simple 8-shaft point draw like this...

You can interleave it with a parallel threading that is 4 shafts above it....

This represents an interleaved threading that is parallel to the original threading (there are lots of variations on this, which I won't go into in this post). Typically in an Echo threading, the parallel threading line is half the number of shafts above the original design, as it is in the diagram above: Threads 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 have a parallel threading line that is 4 shafts above them on an 8-shaft loom. The overall Echo threading -- a.k.a. parallel threading -- is now 1, 5, 2, 6, 3, 7, and 4, 8. Then, when you reach the base-line thread on shaft 5, the parallel thread "above" it is on shaft 1. The reason: Remember that Echo is a technique based on twill, so, just as with a straight twill -- 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 -- the next thread for a straight draw is 1. (Because we don't have 9 shafts on our loom, you have to corkscrew around to shaft 1 in your threading in order to weave a continuous twill line.)

Echo calls for two colors in the warp, one for each threading line. (You can also design Echo using 3 or 4 parallel lines, each with a different warp color, but again, we won't get into that.) Another key to this technique: Echo uses a twill tieup and, typically, a sett that is somewhere between that recommended for twill and that recommended for double weave. Also, Echo usually requires a weft that is about half the grist of the warp threads. These are not rules, just recommendations, helping to show off the warp pattern. (Echo designs are warp-emphasis designs.)

So here's where I began, with this lovely 8-shaft advancing-and-descending-point-twill design on Handweaving.net:

I really like the luminous quality of the chartreuse weft, defined by the grass-green color of the warp.

And simply by clicking "Parallel Repeat" on the Warp drop-down menu in Fiberworks (a feature, like networking, that is only available on Fiberworks Silver), I got this variation:

I confess that I tried hard to find the draft on Handweaving.net so that I could give you the number to look it up -- searching under "Twill," "Ms and Ws," "Point Twill," and even "green," but I couldn't find it! The site is so full of treasures, you could spend an entire day looking at drafts and saving the ones you like....

Anyhow, I decided that the above design was too stretched out width-wise, so I created a version in Jin (which is basically Echo with a tabby tiedown in the treadling) in order to balance the motifs.

I like the simple variation of colors in the warp: bright green and turquoise, with a weft of slightly lighter green. And then, while I was shopping at Convergence in July, I came upon a 4 oz. skein of chartreuse Tencel and a 4 oz. skein of hand-painted Tencel in a variety of blues (at the Eugene Textile Center booth, which was full of temptations). Both skeins were 10/2 -- perfect! And here's the result (another version of the photo you saw at the beginning of this blog):

Along with being one of the most environmentally friendly of all the weaving fibers, Tencel also has a great sheen to it, giving the fabric a gloss similar to silk. Plus it has considerable tensile strength (hence the name Tencel, I'm guessing).

Because I didn't feel like plying lots and lots of fringe -- which is a graceful accent to a scarf but takes a lot of work -- I wove a double-weave tube at both ends of the scarf. All you have to do is fold it inwards, iron it flat, and blind-hem-stitch the sides of the tube together.

Here's the drawdown for weaving a plain-weave tube on an Echo threading:

I'm considering -- that's the operative word, "considering" -- writing a second book, this one about Echo, offering designs for 8 shafts only, as that's the easiest way to learn this technique and 8 shafts seems to be the number of choice for the majority of weavers. This pattern would be one of them and, of course, I will have to weave up another 11 projects before I even start writing the book. So, if this book gets written, it will be a while....

Thanks for reading!

Seasons of the Finger Lakes: Sampling, But Not There Yet

2024-08-22T11:24:00.006-04:00

Summer -- my favorite design and the sample that has the most errors, darn it.

Autumn -- my favorite sample so far. This photo has more blue in it than the cloth itself.

Winter, which my spouse thinks looks like summer, but I see it as cool and icy.

Again, the photo is bluer than the real cloth.

Maybe it needs a thicker, grayer weft.

(Note to self: Do not ask spouse's opinion if they are not weavers.)

Spring. This one is inarguably spring.

I don't know where this one fits in but I love periwinkle.

So maybe it's bluebell season, something like that.

So. It all started on an airplane a year or two ago. I was flying from my home in Rochester, NY, to teach a workshop. Looking out the window, I could see laterally east across the Finger Lakes and the bordering hills, with the lakes stretched like blue/green ribbons north to south across the land, fading into the distance.

An aerial view of the Finger Lakes, courtesy of NASA. I figure this is fair use, because it's NASA and this blog is definitely non-profit ;o)

Canandaigua and Keuka are my favorite lakes, with Keuka having a slight edge. I have spent many happy sunlit hours swimming, boating, water-skiing, throwing sticks for dogs, making sure everybody has their life-jackets on, eating burnt marshmallows, walking on dirt roads, looking for fossils and lake glass, and generally mucking about on the shore and in the water.

The image outside the airplane window, the memories... why not weave my impressions? I had grand visions of maybe 11 long panels as a series (because there are 11 Finger Lakes, from west to east: Conesus, Hemlock, Canadice, Honeoye, Canandaigua, Keuka, Seneca, Cayuga, Owasco, Skaneateles, and Otisco)....

For many reasons, some discussed in previous posts, including a flood in our house (ironic? I think so), that plan for 11 panels got reduced to a plan for four.

Perhaps the four seasons? I began weaving. Long, long story short, I made errors. You understand. Still, I finished my four seasons, cut them off, serged the edges, washed and ironed them, and bravely brought them to lunch with two friends who just happen to be esteemed weavers: Susie Taylor and Ruth Manning. You can look them up, I am telling you they're GOOD.

Weavers who lunch, left to right: Susie Taylor, me, and Ruth Manning

I showed them the results and, in between bites of salad and Mandarin oranges, quickly came to realize that these are not finished pieces, definitely not ready for prime time, but good samples that give me a sense of direction and at least the beginning of a plan. They are studies, the templates for something, with more work ahead if I want to weave something special.

(The details, for those who are interested: My samples are all variations on a 32-shaft threading in four-color Echo, using 16/2 cotton in burgundy, turquoise, chartreuse, and Provence blue, with wefts in 16/2 rayon and, for the winter sample, very fine silver thread.)

And so, as always, the moral of my tale? Sample, sample, sample.

Thanks for reading!

Post script: This piece is dedicated to Australian weaver Liz Williamson, who died this week at the age of 75. I was fortunate enough to take a workshop with her at Convergence in Vancouver in 2002, which inspired me to pursue dimensional weaving. She was one of a kind -- and she was a kind teacher.

A Talk with Master Weaver Lillian Whipple

2024-07-30T17:57:00.008-04:00

The photo resolution may not be good enough to show it very well -- but the warp for this piece is 240/2 silk! Or maybe it's 260/2, which is another yarn she often used for warps....

Here's another example of her work:

That's Lillian Whipple's superpower: weaving with silk so fine that most of us would need our reading glasses to see it. Here are a few more of her ever-so-delicate, feather-light "kimono" weavings, each one a work of art on its own, each about 1" wide by 2" long.

Many weavers boast of having an entire collection of Lillian's pieces. That's because, at every Convergence conference for many years, she was known for sharing them with every attendee she encountered, myself included.

Motifs on Lillian's loom

Lillian's beloved 24-shaft AVL

I first met Lillian at Convergence (not sure which year), standing in a group of friends, when she approached us, introduced herself, and shared her tiny, lovely kimono samples with all of us. This was my first time I'd received one of her weavings and I felt like I had been initiated into a very special club. Since then, I've met many people at weaving conferences proudly wearing name-tags accompanied by maybe half a dozen of Lillian's postage-stamp-sized pieces, each woven in exquisite detail.

And one day, surprisingly, she appeared in one of my workshops. It may have been at Convergence in Reno in 2018. (Side note here: Like Lillian, many well-known, highly respected teachers are more than happy to take workshops. I think of Chaucer's quote about the Clerk in his Canterbury Tales: "And gladly would he learn, and gladly teach." But I didn't know that then. All I knew was that Lillian Whipple was in my class and I'd better be on my toes.)

"It was about 50 years that I was weaving," Lillian told me in a recent phone conversation from her home in California. "I can't weave anymore but I had a great time and I'm still hearing about it," she continues, laughing. "I have many pieces on my walls and in my closet to remind me."

She has two COEs (Certificates of Excellence from the Handweavers Guild of America), highlighted by an in-depth study for her second COE entitled "By a Fine Silk Thread." For more than 15 years, she chaired the Fine Threads Study Group for Complex Weavers, serving as a mentor to talented artists like Molly McLaughlin. Her many accomplishments include teaching, exhibiting, writing and publishing, and a host of awards for her garments and wall hangings. She is perhaps best known for her Taqueté and Summer and Winter weavings in fine silk -- such as the pieces shown at the beginning of this post.

What drew her to weaving? "It satisfied something in me," she muses. "I was able to create what I wanted. I was able to design what I wanted and the field was open to me, wide open."

Her advice to aspiring weavers relates to this. "I would tell people to enjoy themselves and do what you want and go where you want, because it's wide open! You can do anything you want, I believe."

Words to weave by. Thank you, Lillian!

Top, Whipple in 2009 and below, one of her Summer and Winter weavings.

(From WeaveZine, October 1, 2009.)

Sampling, in Search of Beautiful Cloth

2024-06-22T18:12:00.000-04:00

Way back in the misty past -- that is, about two years ago, my memory being what it is -- I was flying out of Rochester on my way to teach a workshop. As it happened, I had a beautiful view out the window looking east over the Finger Lakes. They're a series of 11 lakes in western New York State that all stretch north to south, long and lean, like fingers. (In the image below, you can see them in the winter and you can sort of see where I live, in Rochester, NY, in the top left-hand corner of the photo, with Irondequoit Bay flowing south and Lake Ontario filling the northern left half of the photo.)

Above, from NASA, a satellite photo of the Finger Lakes region in winter. Public domain.

They really are way more beautiful than this, especially when you're on one, in a boat or on a dock or in the water, in the summer, in a bathing suit on a sunny day. Some of my fondest memories come from these lakes, especially Canandaigua and Keuka, both close to my home, where I learned to waterski, and tried to sail, and swam and floated and tanned and roasted marshmallows and threw sticks -- or stones -- for dogs.... (Our beloved boxer, Bruno, seemed to think he could retrieve a rock after it was thrown into a lake that was full of them.)

But back to weaving. After seeing that view and reminiscing, I opened my computer and started to design a draft with many variations, based on my feeling for the Finger Lakes. (Background: I have a 32-shaft loom and I love designing curves for 4-end parallel threadings with lots of colors.) Here are some of the variations I came up with, all on the same threading. The draft at the beginning of this blog post is my favorite, which I've named "Finger Lakes Summer."

These drafts are, from top to bottom, "Finger Lakes Farewell,"

"September," "Spring," and "Storm."

Finding the right warp has been a real challenge. I started with with 50/2 linen (or something close to that, not absolutely sure) that I dyed in natural dyes to resemble the colors seen in lake water.

Nice, right? Wrong!

This is how they looked when I started weaving one of the "Finger Lakes" designs.

Blah and bland, even when I used red in the weft.

And then, we had a flood in our house. I'm not kidding. How is it that I'm weaving up a warp using water colors, and it doesn't work at all, and a pipe bursts in our house and floods the better part of two floors? Coincidence? I think not.

I'm telling you, this was no fun at all.

You don't know the half of it.

Fortunately, my looms -- and my husband's pianos -- were unharmed. I don't know how that happened, but they were fine. Next, only slightly deterred (and living out of a hotel), I cut off the linen warp, which was a first for me. It just wasn't going to work. I know, it's linen... but I was in no mood to put extra work into this one. So, like Goldilocks, I went in the opposite direction: I wound a new warp in a much heavier linen, 16/1, in much brighter colors.

Nice, right? Wrong again!

Dare I write this? This warp was also a clunker. The yarns were just too heavy for the patterns, although the colors were fine. At this point, I'm realizing just how important materials are to the success of a project....

Not working for me. At all.

Yes, dear reader (if you're still with me), I cut this one off too. That makes the second warp I've cut off in my weaving career.

By now, these missteps had taken up the better part of eight or nine months, what with living in a hotel for three months, keeping on top of the home repairs, and teaching workshops (mostly on Zoom, during the winter). I'm not sure what possessed me, but I decided to press on. It's not even that I thought these designs were so great... maybe it was just curiosity, wondering whether I could get even one or two good patterns out of the dozen or so I had designed.

Well, long story short (even though the story is already long, it could go on much longer), I finally went back to my go-to yarn for these 4-color Echo designs: 16/2 cotton (or sometimes bamboo/rayon, depending on what colors are available). The ensuing saga involves tying on a warp, not knowing what I was doing, adding a cross, figuring out that a raddle might be nice, making lots of errors, and having to fix my Megado because shafts were sticking.

BUT, although the story still isn't over, I've at last found one pattern that seems to work! And the warp grist is right and my loom is running fine (thanks to my clever spouse).

I prefer the top part of the sample, with warmer hues in the weft. But not sure.

Ignore the treadling error about a third of the way up in the photo.

Below is a detail of the drawdown. The pattern is Jin and, while you may not be able to see it, there are actually two colors in the weft, which is not traditional. Typically, there is one color in the weft, but I've learned that using two colors adds richness to the overall color mixing. For the top part of the sample pictured above, I alternated red and golden orange for wefts.

A detail of the drawdown

The moral of this tale is that you learn a lot from your mistakes. Way more than you learn from success, in my view. I've learned that materials are foundational to what we do. I've learned that it's good to break the rules (in my case, using two colors in the weft when weaving Jin). I've learned that it's OK to cut off a warp (or two).... I've learned that the best-laid plans don't always work out but if you adapt and persist and shift your goals, you might come up with something worthwhile.

I guess I've learned overall that weaving isn't easy! Well, occasionally it is, but you can never tell what the weaving goddesses have planned for you....

Thanks for reading!

It's Conference Season -- Which Means Exhibits!

2024-05-24T15:21:00.003-04:00

Every other year, in some city in the U.S., weavers travel from all around the globe to attend two of the best conferences worldwide: Convergence, sponsored by the Handweavers' Guild of America, and "Seminars," sponsored by Complex Weavers.

There are classes, talks, gatherings formal and informal, vendors (of course), and exhibits (of course). Among the best-attended exhibits are Complexity, an international show sponsored by Complex Weavers, and the Convergence fashion show.

And every other year, I challenge myself to weave and apply to both of these shows. (Some pieces are juried in, some pieces aren't, but that's how it goes....)

The piece shown at the beginning of this post is titled "Harriet Tubman Dreams of the North Star," and I'm proud to say it was juried into this year's Complexity exhibit, to be mounted at Mark Arts Gallery from July 7-August 16 this summer in Wichita, KS, where both conferences will be based. Here are a couple more views.

A detail pic of the corner of this piece --

including the beaded fringe,

which took months to complete....

Here's a medium-range photo of the weaving,

which also took months

to design, dye, wind the warps, and weave.

Tubman was born into slavery in 1822 in Maryland and died a free woman at 91 in Auburn, NY, near my home in Rochester. Before the Civil War, she escaped slavery and returned to the South to lead some 70 slaves to freedom, traveling through the night, following the North Star, making stops along the Underground Railroad on their way to freedom in Canada. After enduring the hell of slavery, she faced down unimaginable dangers and terrors to rescue others, leaving a legacy of bravery that inspires and awes millions. My weavings are a modest tribute to the woman who was called the Moses of her people.

These photos of my work were taken by Tim Fuss of Pixelwave photography. We've worked together for at least a decade and he never fails to get the lighting and the setup just right.

Below are more photos by Tim -- images of another piece that was juried into Complexity 2024, also honoring Tubman and to be on exhibit at Mark Arts in Wichita.

I've named this "Harriet's Shawl," inspired by photos of Tubman wearing a shawl in her later years.

Harriet Tubman, taken in 1885 in Auburn, NY

Tubman at the end of her extraordinary life,

again photographed in Auburn.

A third piece completed last year for exhibit is a dress I wove on 24 shafts, on a warp of 16/2 bamboo/rayon in orange and purple. I call it "Purple Waves." It was woven in doubleweave on an Echo threading, as one piece of yardage on my loom that was simply folded in half horizontally and sewn only at the shoulders and seams.

This dress will appear in the fashion show at Convergence in July -- an event that is always the high point of the conference. Again, the photos are by Tim Fuss.

Because it's doubleweave, there are two wefts involved.

For the bodice, one of the wefts is linen crepe,

which draws in and creates gentle pleats

that mold themselves over the body above the waist.

For me, it's important to set up a weaving challenge for myself every year or so, to aim for a juried exhibit or a show. It makes me work harder, take some risks, aim a bit higher. Of course it can hurt when a piece doesn't get accepted or there are issues -- which I won't share, it's complicated -- but I keep trying, focusing on the next one. I always learn, regardless. And I have an excuse to attend these wonderful events....

Convergence and Complex Weavers Seminars, taking place this July in Wichita, KS. Hope to see you there!

And, as always, thanks for reading.

Notes from CNCH, the Conference of Northern California Handweavers

2024-04-28T20:50:00.004-04:00

Let's start with the photo above: a series of samples woven on eight shafts in deflected doubleweave by Marta Shannon. It's just one picture of dozens of interesting, colorful, and always original samples created by weavers in my workshop this past weekend: "Deflected Doubleweave for Collapse Fabrics."

The goal of my workshop was twofold: 1) to teach weavers to recognize and even design deflected doubleweave patterns and 2) to push the already tactile, off-the-grid quality of DDW by using "energized" yarns such as Colcolastic, metallic gimp, wool-stainless steel, silk-stainless steel, overtwisted linen singles in S and Z twist, overtwisted wool singles in S and Z twist, and, of course, the ever-reliable Jaggerspun 18/2 superfine merino, which fulls beautifully when you give it some wiggle room in the cloth. (Bottom line: plain weave resists fulling and other collapse techniques, because it's the most stable, firm structure of all, while DDW encourages pleating, poufing, and billowing of your fabric because it has warp and weft floats built in, by design,)

That's a lot of words, so here are some photos to give you a better idea of what we were working on.

Some four-shaft samples woven with wefts of both active and inactive yarns. Weaver Rusti Icenogle points to the bottom sample, which pleats vertically because the rose-colored weft is wool/stainless-steel yarn, which fulls and draws the fabric in after it's washed and agitated with hot water and soap.

You know that famous quote, I think it's from Laura Fry, "It ain't finished until it's finished"? We spent a lot of time at the sinks in the ladies' room scrubbing away at our samples, using regular hand soap....

Above, a series of samples woven by Autumn Barr, who was weaving on her brand new eight-shaft loom for the first time. Her warp was 10/2 cotton (brown) and 18/2 merino (white) and she alternated these two yarns as weft also. It's hard to see in this photo, but the sample at the bottom shows lots of horizontal pleats in the brown stripes, which are drawn in as the white wool fulls in the washing.

This sample belongs to Denise Lee, who wove an eight-shaft pattern I call Mardi Gras. For this sample, she alternated green Colcolastic and 10/2 cotton in the weft. The Colcolastic yarn, brand name Venne, has a 20/2 cotton strand combined with a strand of elastic, which shrinks up immediately when washed.

These samples are woven on eight shafts by Colleen Harvey-Arrison. The larger blocks in teal are 18/2 merino, which fulls and draws in the magenta cotton blocks, adding texture and making them curve and flow over the fabric.

The CNCH conference, affectionately known as "Cinch," is held every year in a different area of northern California. It's well worth attending, with exhibits, vendors (including Lunatic Fringe Yarns, Dharma Trading, and Eugene Textile Center), a keynote speech (this year by tapestry artist Susan Iverson), terrific meals, and lots of friendly fiber artists.

Take Sara Lamb, for instance, who is a well-known author, teacher, spinner, dyer, and weaver.

Sara wears a jacket she wove and sewed, of course! Plus the yarns are handspun silk that she dyed, all plain weave in structure -- showing off those yarns to the maximum.

The cloth is warp-emphasis (and is displayed horizontally in this photo).

I got to rub shoulders with other weaving royalty as well: seen below, Ana Lisa Hedstrom and Peggy Osterkamp. I had dinner with Peggy -- during which at least two weavers came up to our table to thank her for her many books that helped them build their weaving skills.

I fell in love with this tapestry on exhibit, shown below, titled "Pandemic Oasis" and woven by Nancy Isaac of the Loom and Shuttle Guild in San Francisco.

I also fell in love with this tatted piece, a work in progress by Nancy Alegria, in which she is recording the temperature and the sunlight (encoded in colors) of every day in 2024.

Even after the conference, I'm still taking it all in. Lots of learning, too many purchases (I won't list them, but there was yarn involved), and great camaraderie.

Here's to next year!

Can You Name Your 10 Favorite Weaving Books? These Are Mine.

2024-03-26T14:17:00.003-04:00

For me, hands down, my list starts with this one. Not because this is how I learned to weave or even because this is how I learned that weaving has cosmic possibilities. It's because I can't stop learning from this book and I love the beauty and intricacy of the ideas in this book. Sometimes I can't fathom what she's writing about, but I keep trying.

What's more important: Taking care of a book or reading it a lot?

I spent maybe a decade weaving my way through this one.

And writing notes on it -- in pen -- which is not very classy.

"Strickler," that's how weavers describe it, sort of like "Beyonce" or "Marilyn" -- a true star. This book is a delight and (in my humble opinion) belongs in your library if you have eight shafts. Maybe even if you don't.

Atwater -- another single-name star.

I think Mary Meigs Atwater single-handedly resurrected the art and craft of weaving in America in the 20th century. This is not hyperbole. We owe her almost everything (again, in my humble opinion). Published almost a century ago, the book is grandly and authoritatively titled: The Shuttle-Craft Book of American Hand-Weaving, Being an Account of the Rise, Development, Eclipse, and Modern Revival of a National Popular Art, Together with Information of Interest and Value to Collectors, Technical Notes for the Use of Weavers & a Large Collection of Historic Patterns. My edition is inscribed "Wayne Baker April 1951," a year before I was born.

Davison. Now that I think about it, ALL of the weaving classics

are known simply by the last name of the writer/weaver.

First published in 1944, my version is from the fourth printing in 1947. I treasure this book for several reasons -- among them, it's stamped with the name "Ruth C. Herron." She was a beloved member of our guild and a superb weaver, who continued to correspond with us from her late-in-life home in California, where she died at 107. I think of her often.

Even Ruth wrote in her books, albeit in pencil.

This book. We all have our heroes.

Is there anyone more loved among weavers than Anni Albers? From the Bauhaus to the gold medal for craftsmanship from the American Institute of Architects, the weaver who summoned us to "take a thread for a walk" and continues to teach us to this day. This book is her masterpiece, second only to her art.

Oh my gosh, I'm only at book number five. But this is a good time to pause and qualify my listings, to try and explain why I've chosen them. My list is by no means a "must have" for every weaver, or for beginning weavers, or even for a guild's weaving library. Not at all. These are just the books that I, at this moment in my life and in my weaving practice, love to have on my bookshelf. You might say these are my "desert island" books -- you know, if you were stranded on a desert island and could take only a handful of books with you, what would you choose? I'm also writing this as a sort of dialogue with you, the reader (assuming you've gotten this far), hoping you might, like me, appreciate the weaving books you love and perhaps even consider reading the books I've listed, if you haven't read them already.

(Not that I've read each book cover to cover. I'm really not that kind of a reader when it comes to books about our craft.)

So on down the list. And one more note: This list is not in any particular order of preference or value. It's just for perusement, as libraries themselves are.

I have to include Chandler. May the weaving goddesses bless this book,

because this is how so many of us learned to weave.

There was a time when I referred to Chandler as I was dressing my loom, as I learned to read drafts, as I was deciphering how to sley 16 ends per inch in a 12-dent reed, all of the basics. She gave us this gift and this book will always be in my library for that reason.

Wait, what? Not quite about weaving, but this book is

where I go down my own special rabbit-hole.

If you love dyeing, as I do -- and if you love creating textured weavings using shibori-resist techniques, as I do -- this book is another masterpiece, a weaver's companion. (Detour: There's a relatively new book out there, a brilliant book written by a former New Yorker writer who became a guard at the Met: All the Beauty in the World. You should read it, just saying.) Anyhow, this book by Yoshiko Wada presents all the beauty in the world of shibori. It's a big book, 9 1/2" high by 12" wide, with 211 pages of photos large and small, with information and inspiration about the magic and mystery of the Japanese art known as shibori.

Three more to go. This is hard and a lot of you may not agree at all. But I will press on. (Get it? Press, as in publish?)

Another book in my own area of interest: Ann Richards's definitive book on weaving dimensional textiles. She approaches her designs with a laser-like focus and creates beauty as a result.

Ann Richards of England is one of the luminaries in the field of dimensional weaving. I traveled to London to study with her, and that workshop plus this book gave me a foundation to build my own textured weavings. The joy is in the process, from start to finish: learning how to tame unruly threads as you dress your loom and then how to give them freedom as you weave so that they have room to move about in the finishing. And the finishing is a joy, as you see a fabric change almost organically in the water.

Sometimes the best books are those that continue to offer up insight and enjoyment well after you've read them -- or rather thought you read them.

There's a saying attributed to several sages: "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear." This book keeps bringing me lessons for new techniques -- and I've owned it for at least 20 years.

Ah yes, the old Weaver's magazine, perhaps one of the greatest how-to resources for weavers. Somehow I got my hands on the entire collection (which is another treasure, but not a book, that I could add to this list). Fabrics that Go Bump is a compendium of patterns and instructions that appeared in a number of issues, all focused on achieving bumps, pleats, ruffles, and billows in your fabric. I turn to this book often for inspiration and understanding.

So what's number 10? Stubenitsky once again!

Why? Because it's crammed with originality and innovation

about one of my favorite techniques: deflected doubleweave.

Stubenitsky always lays a world before you, this time looking at the graphic, colorful, texture-full world of deflected doubleweave. (The woman is merciless when it comes to writing books: I think she's at five now, if you include Janna Weaves, and they're all abounding with patterns and ideas.) What I like about this book is that she offers a solid explanation for drafting DDW, which isn't as easy as it looks. One of my friends whose work appears in the book, when I asked how she arrived at her wonderful designs, told me she "played around a lot." And I understand exactly what she meant. There is a mystery to creating these designs and Stubenitsky helps de-mystify much of it.

That's my top ten. For right now, at least. What are yours? If you're like me, you have a library -- some of which you love, some of which you like, some of which you don't like but can't seem to part with. We need them for our work but we also need them as friends, it seems. That's what books are for.

I can't forget to mention my own book,

which is a favorite because I wrote it ;o)

Thanks for reading!

We Are Experiencing Technical Difficulties. Please Stand By.*

2024-02-15T13:41:00.003-05:00

*Warning: This post is just partly about fiber.

Remember those test patterns on your old black and white TV? They were typically accompanied by an ear-piercing alarm to tell us that a TV station (we had three back then) was malfunctioning for some reason or other. Kids like my sisters and me -- who loved watching the Three Stooges and Bugs Bunny and Spanky and Our Gang -- were out of luck.

Truth be told, I'm experiencing technical difficulties right now, accompanied by malfunctions in my weaving, ever since our house was damaged by water -- more like flooded with water -- last September 18.

After the flood

Another water-logged view

How did this happen? I had just gotten back from teaching in Rockville, MD, and had come down with Covid. (First time, so I'm a novice.) My husband and I were quarantining in separate bedrooms and I got up early, around 6:30 a.m., and... stepped in what felt like a deep puddle.

You know how crazy our reactions can be when something weird like this happens? My first thought was, "Larry is going to kill me because I left the window open and it rained last night."

But it wasn't just a puddle. This was a lake. I continued splashing to the bathroom and heard this gushing sound pouring from the sink. An indoor waterfall kind of sound.

The Culprit

That's all it was! A burst tube that connected the water source to the faucet. It was probably gushing for hours.

The next weird thought: We tried to soak it up all by ourselves. Larry went and got the shop vac and I got a bunch of towels. Maybe we weren't awake yet. Or maybe "de-Nile" isn't just a river in Egypt. (Get it? De-NIAL -- as the joke goes?)

We quickly came to our senses and called a company named Jet-Dry. (Shout out here to Walt Latiuk and his team.) They showed up like the cavalry and spent the rest of the day clearing out the house and soaking up the water. I've learned a lot of words since then, among them, "mitigation," which means bringing in all kinds of really loud equipment to dry things up. (About half of the house was affected -- but not my looms and not Larry's pianos, amazingly.)

It took almost a month to dry the house out, using all manner of machines and tubes and mats and fans. We lived in a hotel during that process. (Bonus: We amassed lots of points.)

And then we started the renovations. Here I give a shoutout to Brad Colletti and his crew, who came highly recommended by Walt -- and completely lived up to his recommendation.

Starting to replace the ceiling in the living room

We live in a house built of concrete and steel. I think that was super-quality construction back in 1929, when it was built. So in this photo above, you're looking at concrete supported by girders and steel struts in the ceiling, newly reinforced by sturdy two-by-fours. This house is built like a battleship. It's hard even to hang a picture on the walls.

I won't print some of the oaths we heard from contractors who came to take a look when we were asking them to bid. "Wow" was the mildest we heard....

But Brad and his team took on the project and fixed things really fast.

Ceiling fixed, not yet painted, husband observing (left)

We're pretty pleased with the results so far, although we haven't yet moved back home.

Better every day!

So, back to the title of this post, referring to "technical difficulties." I'm not talking about the disruption and stress of having our home break -- because, unlike so many folks around the world, we have insurance (shout out to Jeff Yorkey at State Farm) and a home to return to and a contractor who was terrific.

No, I'm not fretting about the house. I want to talk weaving, of course!

16-shaft Jin design with painted warp, currently on my Toika

All during this craziness, I just couldn't find my weaving chi, you might say (actually it's more accurately spelled qi). It's a Mandarin word that, as I understand it, means vital life force, spirit, energy. Chi can be depleted by illness or stress.

And guess what? When you're under stress, you're not going to do your best work. I learned that the hard way.

I threaded my loom once, in fine linen dyed with natural dyes (in colors based on a water theme, oddly enough), and wove it with less than stellar results.

Yawn

I actually cut off this warp, something I've never done before, and put on another warp, this one in 16/1 linen in much bolder colors.

Yikes!

So I cut off that warp too (I figure I'm a veteran now) and slowly backed away from the loom. This phase -- staying away from the loom -- lasted a month or two, maybe more. It bothered me, because nothing I did seemed to work. I felt like I couldn't even count (which I often can't, to be honest, even on good days).

But nevertheless, I persisted. (Remember that famous comment Mitch McConnell made about Elizabeth Warren, when she continued to speak after the U.S. Senate voted that she stop speaking in opposition to the confirmation of Jeff Sessions as U.S. Attorney General? It's become a feminist rallying cry.)

Nevertheless, I persisted. I had a warp on another loom and decided to tackle it.

Long, long story short: After way too many miscounts and re-theading and re-sleying (and re-sleying again), I have a viable fabric (shown in the third photo above and shown in a detail below).

The weaving goddesses decided to give me some slack.

BUT there are errors. (If you look closely, you can see a treadling error in the middle of the photo above.) Quite a few. So you know what I've decided? This piece is for me alone, not for show, not for sale. I may sew it into a tunic and tell people not to look too closely at the fabric.

I might even wear it out of pride, optimistic that I'm starting to find my chi again.

Errata

Thanks for reading!