Respite
As an empath by nature, I am influenced by the emotions and energy of those around me, as well as the environment in which I find myself.
My mother stayed with us for a month over the holidays. Her constant state is usually one of chaos, a flurry of activity and motion for the sake of moving and nothing more, as she has never been one completely comfortable with her own thoughts.
As much as I love her and am grateful to still have her and for all she does, she taxes my soul and drains the life completely out of me.
With 2020 drawing to an end, I finished one warp after another. Instead of immediately dressing a spent loom, I allowed them to lay barren, as I focused on a long warp of baby wraps. Two of the four recipients are due in February and one in March. The other just announced her pregnancy with a baby coming in August. I am delighted three have been delivered. Perhaps, this coming weekend, the sweet husband will hand carry the final one to its family.
When I worked on the baby wraps, the studio was not the quiet and refreshing haven I needed because my mother frequently came up the stairs to check on me, her presence a constant reminder my life was not my own. As such, I did not feel comfortable spending more than an hour on a loom, at a time, once or twice a week.
Just before the holidays, I reconfigured the studio to accommodate the fourth and final loom (40" Macomber). While satisfied that everything fit and was fairly well organized, I was somewhat concerned how well it would actually function.
The husband drove my mother home to Louisiana on Saturday morning. We had also enjoyed additional, delightful company Friday night. By noon, I was left to my own devices, but I had committed to cooking for a family in the community who have experienced a variety of health challenges and losses. I did not get to the studio until Sunday morning.
With CoalBear for company, I threaded the heddles on the 24" Meg.
The colorway is Feisty Tonic. These will be tea towels.
In fact, everything on all the looms at the moment are tea towels. My stash of towels was literally reduced to nothing after the holidays.
On the 56" Beast, I beamed a gradient warp I prepared back in the spring called Feisty Erotic.
Completely out of character, instead of threading the heddles and completely dressing the Beast, I moved over to the 32" Lil Miss. She was the last loom without a warp.
With the SawyerBee warping square, I began dressing her sectional beam with a 25.5-yard warp in light, silver grey.
I have mentioned before most all of my weaving equipment is second hand, except for three items: a Leclerc double-end bobbin winder, a Macomber bench, and the SawyerBee warping square.
I actually spent more on the warping square than I have spent on the initial purchase price for each of my looms. The Beast was the only exception.
That is not to say the square is worth more than the loom, as each of them have been upgraded significantly.
As I have stated previously, if someone needed or wanted to warp both a sectional beam and a plain beam and only wanted to have one piece of equipment, this would be the one piece to have; however, I am still not sold on it. I have had it since the summer and used it a dozen or more times.
I want to love it, but I do not.
As the square is limited to 2-inch chains, it is not efficient to prepare plain warps, as I enjoy doing for dyeing. Thus, I have kept the Glimakra warping mill. Both items take up precious studio space, but I cannot let go of the mill.
For sectional warping, particularly in a solid color, the warping square is not as efficient as using spools, a spool rack, and a tension box.
In addition, the tension with a tension box is superior. Hands down. No argument.
However, to use the square and add the tension box is certainly possible, as I have done it, but it compounds the inefficiency.
Where the square shines is when making a long, greater than ten-yard, gradient warp sectionally.
Here is a thirty-one yard gradient warp for the baby wraps I made using the square. In this application, the square was far more efficient that using spools, spool rack, and tension box due to the frequent color changes. There is also far less waste with the square.
As such, I kept the tension box when I bought the square, and sold the spools and rack.
My thought was I made gradient warps more often than I did solid warps...
In any event, I wanted a long (25.5-yard) warp in grey on Lil Miss for a slew of tea towels using a block twill draft.
To achieve as much tension on the warp as possible, I have had to tighten the knob on the square as far as it would go. It gave adequate tension, but not as good as a tension box.
It bothered me I had to tighten the knob on the square, almost to the point it would not turn.
For this warp, I decided to loosen it slightly, thinking "Surely this is not how this thing was intended to perform..."
Sigh.
My nature is also to learn the hard way.
The first three sections seemed to be okay, but by the fourth I realized I had made a grave error in judgment. The tension was absolute CRAP.
However, I was already too far along to trash what I had done.
Further, if I tightened the tension on the square, the remaining nineteen-inches of warp would be at a different tension than the first four, which would create issues as I wove.
I was locked in.
Originally, I bought five pounds of the Brassards 8/2 cotton, which comprised ten half-pound cones. At $11.25 each, I had over a hundred dollars invested in the warp alone.
With disgust settling into my stomach, I continued.
As soon as the warp was beamed, I threaded the heddles.
For those unfamiliar with sectional beams, these threads should all be smooth and even with no bumps, gaps, or looseness.
Here is the 40" Evangeline with her current warp.
HUGE difference between the threads on both beams.
Of course, Evangeline's beam is older, the pins are rusted and they are two-inches apart, while the other beam is newer and has one-inch sections.
Neither the rusted pins, nor the one- versus two-inch sections impact the tension of the warp.
Plus, I have put more sectional warps on Lil Miss than any other loom. With the widest and cleanest shed, she is as close to a production loom that I have. I use her almost exclusively for longer (twenty-plus yard) warps than any other loom.
As unhappy with the tension on this warp as I am, I do not blame the square. I purposefully adjusted the tension because I could not believe I had to crank it down so tightly to use it. Apparently, I do.
It is not the equipment's fault I have such a hard time wrapping my head around it.
Lesson learned.
The tension adjustment knob on the square will remain as tight as I can possibly make it.
With respect to the grey warp, at the moment, tension is fine to weave the current towel; however, I anticipate as I continue, there will be differences in tension across the fabric as I weave. When those issues adversely impact the quality of the cloth, I will cut off the fabric and re-tie the ends. It is wasteful and time-consuming, but it is the only way I can ensure nice tea towels.
Only a dozen of these towels are dedicated to specific recipients, the remaining were going into my gift stash, fortunately. As I weave each towel to thirty-six-inches under tension, I knew I would have a surplus with up to twenty-four towels total. Every time I cut and lash on again, I will probably lose half a yard.
If I have to do that four times over the length of the warp, I lose two towels.
Hopefully, I will not have to do that more than four times.
In addition to the ease with which I can make gradients warps of significant length on the square, I also really like how heavy and stable it is. I love that it is on locking casters, as I load the square in one place, then roll it a few feet over to offload it onto the beam with absolute ease.
I debated between the AVL warping wheel and SawyerBee square, but two things swayed me: the casters and motor on the square. With four looms, all with sectional beams, A) I warp a lot of looms frequently and B) I knew I needed to be able to move it between and among the looms, and I did not want to have to physically pick up a piece of equipment and move it from one position to another. It is much easier to unlock the casters, roll it into place, and lock them again. In all other respects, I believe both models work the same way.
Once I had Lil Miss up and weaving, I redirected my attention back to the Beast and his luscious gradient warp.
The Beast is the favorite because he was my first Macomber, he is huge, and he is by far the most versatile of all the looms.
No matter what I throw at him, he comes through steady and sure.
The last project I did on him was a run of cottolin wash cloths at 15" wide. Such a narrow warp seemed ridiculous on a loom with a 56" weaving width, but they were done quickly and beautifully.
As the Feisty Erotic warp is rich with colors and contrast, I wanted a pattern, which would not compete with the warp.
I do not often use four-shaft patterns, as I tend to enjoy more complex designs afforded by eight-shafts at one end of the spectrum or plain weave at the other.
Having expressed that, I do have a favorite set of four-shaft drafts I found on Pinterest when I first began weaving.
Using the sequence of the column on the far right, I threaded the Beast.
It did not disappoint:
In all, I anticipate using each of the treadling patterns throughout this run of towels for a Bohemian Bride.
The weft for this project is interesting. There's an eBay seller called WeHaveYarn. Over the years, I have purchased from them several times. They have leftover fabric weaving threads in various size cones from one pound to three or so. They do not advertise the thread as 5/2 or 8/2, but they do give the content (I like cotton) and the weight per pound, which allows me to estimate what size I am dealing with.
When ordering from this seller, be sure to ask her to combine the shipping before you purchase. This allows a lot of savings.
I bought a cone of this antique gold/bronze color, at least a year or two ago. It is mercerized and slightly thinner than 8/2 cotton, but not as thin as 10/2. I knew one day I would have the perfect project for it.
Apparently, that day has arrived.
The reason I chose the Beast for this project had to do with the number of heddles on his shafts, particularly the first four.
I do not like to move heddles between shafts or from loom to loom. This is another efficiency thing. First, it takes time to move heddles. Second, for project planning purposes, I need to know exactly how many heddles I have on each shaft of each loom at all times. Third, the last thing I want to do is recount heddles on four different looms to find where my heddles are.
Of the looms available (24" Meg, 32" Lil Miss, and 56" Beast), Beast was the only one with enough heddles to accommodate a four-shaft project at twenty-two inches wide.
In a nutshell, I needed a total of 96 heddles on harnesses 1 and 4 and 168 heddles on harnesses 2 and 3.
The Beast has 200 heddles on each harness.
The next largest loom is Evangeline at 40". She has a total of 125 heddles on each harness.
On an aside, the number of heddles on each loom is a constant debate in my head, especially when weaving the complete width of each loom.
Meg is the major problem child in this debate at 24" wide.
I like large tea towels. Twenty-two to twenty-four-inches is my standard, even though I know a number of weavers on Etsy routinely sell tea towels sixteen-inches wide and twenty-inches long. It is simply personal preference. I like large, thirsty towels.
The pattern on Meg at the moment is a point twill, which uses fourteen ends per repeat, one heddle on shafts 1 and 8, two heddles on shafts 2 through 7. Over twenty-four inches (with a sett of 24), it requires a total of 41 heddles on shafts 1 and 8 and 82 heddles on shafts 2 through 7.
Meg has a total of 82 heddles on each shaft. (This was actually by design. Point twill is one of my favorite weaves, and I wanted to make sure Meg could handle them across her entire weaving width.)
The issue on Meg is what to do with the extra 41 heddles on shafts 1 and 8 that are not required in the pattern.
As her weaving width is 24" and the project spans all 24", there would not be enough room on either side of the warp, as threaded through the heddles, to rest while weaving.
One option is to remove the heddles, but I do not move heddles.
What I did was incorporate the loose heddles into the warp, as I threaded the heddles.
Each repeat of 14 threads contains two extra heddles, one each on shafts 1 and 8.
By the time I threaded all the heddles, the warp rested comfortably and unencumbered through the harnesses. While each heddle is slim, twenty extra on either side of the threads on harnesses 1 and 8 would have crowded the threads and adversely impacted the weaving.
However, there was plenty of space among the threaded heddles for a few loose ones, especially as they were evenly spaced throughout.
YAY!
Now that I have managed to warp and weave on all the looms in the present layout, I can say the studio is fully functional. Space is tight when warping. I do not have the luxury to spread out as I once did, but I certainly have room to dress each of the looms without moving any of them, which is certainly easier on the looms.
Also, I usually warp a loom as soon as I finish a warp and do not allow more than one to remain bare at a time.
Because ten yards is usually the shortest warp I work with, warping is such a small part of the time I spend on each loom.
With all the looms up and weaving, I must refocus on Evangeline's warp again. She has upgrades waiting on her.
Once my Loom Whisperer adds the harnesses and treadles, I will pull her beam off and attempt to remove the rust from her sectional pins. I have a restring kit on order with Macomber to replace the worn cords on that beam, as well. Then we have some stop bar pads to install under the jacks...
Just as soon as she is ready to go again, she will get a run of Spa Bath Towels in 4/2 cotton.
The last few days in the studio with no one in the house and only CoalBear for company has been such a breath of fresh air.
Working on the looms may not seem much of a respite, but it is exactly what my tattered soul and frayed nerves needed.
I am so blessed.
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