Progress Report…

The thing with not having any kids in regular school anymore is I don’t get those mid marking period progress reports.  You know the ones, where you find out how well your kid is doing before the actual report card comes in?  For some kids, it is knowing whether or not they are in danger of failing, and for others it is knowing how close to an A they are in each subject.  I had one of each.

Now that my daughter is in college, I don’t get any reports at all, except what she chooses to put up on Facebook, something like, “I think I did OK on my bio exam…”

I sort of miss them.  So as a tribute to all the progress reports I ever got for my kids (we didn’t do them when I went to school) I thought I’d post one of my own, on my own progress on a couple of things I’m working on in the studio.  This will be a two part post since I am currently tearing through two projects at the same time…  And I have details!

The first post tonight, will be an update on the delicious yardage that is now on my loom.  I finished threading over the weekend, and sampled all kinds of wefts, really not sure how I wanted to weave it and wanted to check the sett before I committed to the whole yardage.  So I wove about 15″, sampling a dozen wefts, and then cut the sample into three, keeping the middle one as a “right from the loom” sample.  The one on the right was hand washed and air dried, and the one on the left was washed and dried in the machine.

In all cases, I liked the dark navy rayon bouclé second from the top, the best.

The warp is actually a series of Fibonacci numbers, Google it if you don’t know what they are.  I used the numbers 5, 8, 13, and 21 to determine the width of the stripes, and assigned randomly plain weave and 2/2 twills in opposing directions, along with a supplemental ribbon and I love love love the effect.

I put the supplemental ribbons on a separate warp beam, so they could tension independently.  A smart move over 9 yards of warp.

And I have my little set up to make life and weaving within reach…  I use tall narrow plant stands, the kind you find in garden shops in the spring, they are perfect to drag over to where you are weaving to hold tea, cell phone, extra bobbins, scissors, pins, etc.  They take up almost no floor space and are handy to move up close when your bench doesn’t have side pockets.  I find sitting on a folded sheepskin to be much kinder to my sitting parts…  (And I keep Sharpie Markers in colors that match the warp handy for when a warp comes up with a small spec of missing color from a too tight bundle wrap before going into the dye bath…)

This yardage is really making me smile.  Not only am I flying along like a speed demon, it is weaving like butter, and before I knew it I was into my second yard.  I was admiring my fabric, and I noticed that something just didn’t see quite right along one of the supplemental floats.

I peered through the warp to the fabric that was coming out underneath the warp as it rolled onto the cloth beam, and damned if there wasn’t a mistake, and it took me quite some time to figure out what it was.  The threading was actually correct, but the supplemental ribbon and it’s adjacent pink silk thread were crossed in the reed.  I didn’t pick it up for more than a yard.  Damn I hate when that happens…

So there are now big pink raw silk floats on the back side of the yardage.  I was able to fix the mistake of the crossed warps, but I’ll have to by hand once the yardage is off, carefully reweave the mistake warp, if this yardage is going to be entered into an exhibit, it has to be perfect.  I couldn’t figure out how I missed it in the washed samples, and then realized that the mistake was in the middle section that I didn’t actually wash.  I flipped it over and sure enough, there was the mistake like a giant neon sign…  Duh…

So I’m through a couple yards, and back on track, I’ll deal with the mistake in the yardage later.  For now, I’ve never enjoyed something so much, it is lovely to look at and lovely to weave and worth all the work on the dyeing and warping.

Tomorrow, the dress…  Stay tuned…