Saturday, June 11, 2016

A Little Cheating

I'm sure the photo below looks very, very 'wrong'.  All those crossed threads!  Goes against everything most people have been told about good practice.


Thing is, if you know and understand your materials, you know just how far you can bend the rules and still get the results you desire.

Now everyone knows I'm all about the efficiency.  In the photo below, you can plainly see that for one third of the warp the two colours are a) ABABAB, then b) AABBAABB then AAAABBBB.

Since winding one end of one colour then one end of the next, or even four and four is a bit of a pain, what I do instead is simply wind both colours at once (with a finger between them to minimize twisting, although many people say they don't bother and everything is fine), then when it comes to threading, I just manipulate the colours to be in the sequence I want them in.




The yarn is a highly textured rayon, very slippery.  The less I mess with it in the warp winding the happier it, and I, will be.

Currently reading Boar Island by Nevada Barr

3 comments:

Lady Locust said...

Good Morning,
That is beautiful. I bet with the rayon, it will be soft and drape nicely. Can I ask what size reed you have on? I am just learning to use my loom:) and my reed is a 15 which I think is pretty fine. I like some of the "nubby" sorts of yarn so am looking at other sizes but don't seem to find much in the way of suggestions. (I do have a friend who uses a 9 for nearly everything???)

Laura Fry said...

I have reeds from four dents per inch to 15. (I have a 20, which I've never used, partly because I'm not working with yarn so fine that size would be required.)

The reed in question is an 8, with two yarns per dent. The yarn is textured and set fairly 'open' because I wanted really good drape. If I wanted a cloth with more stability, I might have used the 9 and 18 epi.

The resulting cloth is a bit 'bouncy' but makes a nice scarf.

Lady Locust said...

Thank you:)