Beam me up, Scotty!
I took the loom to Knit Night last night so the yarn store owner, M, could help me beam the warp. (I'm proud of learning the lingo, but that still sounds very Star Trek to me.) I thought it was all very organized and would be really easy. I thought it couldn't take more than an hour or so.
I was wrong.
We think that I was holding the cross the wrong way when I sleyed the reed. The result was that the entire warp was kind of pulled through itself. And being a nice fuzzy wool, it was all stuck to itself besides. We had to unchain the whole warp and untangle it, section by section, one foot at a time - it took the two of us a full 3 hours to beam a 4-yard warp.
I am so glad I didn't try to do this at home by myself - that would have been a nightmare.
At any rate, I came home from the store ready to weave. It also turns out that just because you can fold up a loom with the warp on it, it might not be a terrific idea, at least before you've started weaving. I'm sure I had the tension even across the warp before I left the store, but we had to loosen it a bit to fold up the loom. When I started weaving, I found that the warp threads on one end had sort of slipped off the main rolled-up part and onto the beam, which flubbed up the tension on those threads. And the other end was doing something equally weird, but opposite - I'm not sure what happened over there, but the tension was off. I ended up untying the offending sections and adjusting the tension, which seemed to help. There's still some residual weirdness, but I think it'll be OK.
I couldn't wait to weave, of course. By the time I konked out and went to bed, I had a good 6-8 inches of actual cloth. Super-exciting! I mean, it's kind of weird-looking and you can totally see through it, but that's what people have told me is right at this stage. I'm taking that on faith. I've knitted with yarns similar to this, so I have an idea how it will behave. I also know it should felt really well, so if I screw up really bad, there's always that. Felting, after all, will hide almost any sin. I don't think it'll actually come to that, though. So far, I have a few weirdnesses in the selvages, but nothing structurally unsound - and after all, if I do make any sort of garment from the cloth, I can avoid using the funky parts. I hope the selvages get better, and I think they're starting to. I'm a looooong way from having them actually look good, but I think they're pretty OK for a beginner. There aren't actual loops sticking out, and I'm trying to keep the edge pretty even. The main issues are because of that tension problem - on one side, the weft is doing this funky angling thing in one direction. Then it's doing a funky angling thing in the opposite direction on the other edge. (This is maybe the outermost inch on each side.) The rest looks pretty even, and the weirdnesses got better after I fiddled with the tension on those sections some more.
Up until the moment I started winding onto the shuttle, I was debating which yarn to use as weft. I ended up going with the purply color, and I think it looks pretty cool. The color is similar to something you could get from lichens, I think. I know I once dyed some silk to a shade pretty close to this color with alkanet. The warp stripes are subtle in the cloth - it almost looks like shadows, like the cloth is rippling. Pretty cool.
I was wrong.
We think that I was holding the cross the wrong way when I sleyed the reed. The result was that the entire warp was kind of pulled through itself. And being a nice fuzzy wool, it was all stuck to itself besides. We had to unchain the whole warp and untangle it, section by section, one foot at a time - it took the two of us a full 3 hours to beam a 4-yard warp.
I am so glad I didn't try to do this at home by myself - that would have been a nightmare.
At any rate, I came home from the store ready to weave. It also turns out that just because you can fold up a loom with the warp on it, it might not be a terrific idea, at least before you've started weaving. I'm sure I had the tension even across the warp before I left the store, but we had to loosen it a bit to fold up the loom. When I started weaving, I found that the warp threads on one end had sort of slipped off the main rolled-up part and onto the beam, which flubbed up the tension on those threads. And the other end was doing something equally weird, but opposite - I'm not sure what happened over there, but the tension was off. I ended up untying the offending sections and adjusting the tension, which seemed to help. There's still some residual weirdness, but I think it'll be OK.
I couldn't wait to weave, of course. By the time I konked out and went to bed, I had a good 6-8 inches of actual cloth. Super-exciting! I mean, it's kind of weird-looking and you can totally see through it, but that's what people have told me is right at this stage. I'm taking that on faith. I've knitted with yarns similar to this, so I have an idea how it will behave. I also know it should felt really well, so if I screw up really bad, there's always that. Felting, after all, will hide almost any sin. I don't think it'll actually come to that, though. So far, I have a few weirdnesses in the selvages, but nothing structurally unsound - and after all, if I do make any sort of garment from the cloth, I can avoid using the funky parts. I hope the selvages get better, and I think they're starting to. I'm a looooong way from having them actually look good, but I think they're pretty OK for a beginner. There aren't actual loops sticking out, and I'm trying to keep the edge pretty even. The main issues are because of that tension problem - on one side, the weft is doing this funky angling thing in one direction. Then it's doing a funky angling thing in the opposite direction on the other edge. (This is maybe the outermost inch on each side.) The rest looks pretty even, and the weirdnesses got better after I fiddled with the tension on those sections some more.
Up until the moment I started winding onto the shuttle, I was debating which yarn to use as weft. I ended up going with the purply color, and I think it looks pretty cool. The color is similar to something you could get from lichens, I think. I know I once dyed some silk to a shade pretty close to this color with alkanet. The warp stripes are subtle in the cloth - it almost looks like shadows, like the cloth is rippling. Pretty cool.