Cotton Bambu – Daryl's Blog

Inspiration and some help…

I’ve been giving a lot of remote lectures the last couple of months. And I’ve done another podcast, which hasn’t aired yet. And there are the questions that come in connected to my YouTube Videos, The Weaver Sews. Lots of opportunities for Q&A. I would say that the one question that I get asked over and over, (other than, how do you cut into your handwoven fabric, now I can happily say there is a video for that…) is, where do I get my inspiration. I think people really care about this issue, they want so badly to produce great work, and original work, and really want to know how others interpret what’s around them into something awesome.

Some of it, actually a large amount of it is confidence. And confidence comes from doing. Confidence means that even though you are in uncharted territory, and you have no idea how this is going to work, or if it will be great, or awesome or really stupid, confidence means no fear. So what if it doesn’t work, it is cloth. So what if it isn’t great or even stupid, you never know if you didn’t try. And whether it is great or stupid, something is always learned, something tangible, that will serve you on the next grand adventure.

So I just started a new project and went through all the steps to come up with something I think is going to be great, but maybe won’t be, but I don’t care because it will serve my purposes. I thought I’d go through my thought processes the last couple of days so you see how I think, and that it isn’t so special or brilliant or inspired, it just is a series of steps that lead me on an adventure. I sometimes can’t decide, so I’ll send a photo to my weaver friends, we message daily, or I’ll ask my daughter, and sometimes she actually gets me to make a decision by allowing me to talk through what I’m thinking and why. And a good portion of the time I don’t take anyone’s kind advice. I just go with my gut.

First, and I’ve said this over and over in my talks and podcasts and videos, I weave when I’m in the mood to weave, when I have an idea and something sparks my curiosity. I never have a plan as to what I’m going to do with it. This just happened with the last warp I did, which I pulled off a couple days ago, tossed in the washer and off it went onto the shelf. There was no plan for what it will be. I weave to weave, and I make fun cloth. What I do with it down the road (probably clothing) remains a mystery. I was determined to finish this off this past weekend. I had lots of help.

I had done a similar cloth for Silk City Fibers, the draft is available here for free. I called the fabric Confetti, and I liked the idea that you could take a fatter yarn and float it over and under two weft picks having a stable ground underneath. I rooted through my hand dyed yarns and found a whole bunch of skeins of some natural colored silk I probably bought from a friend a number of years ago. A fat silk.

So I sat with a draft, and figured out how to make all these skeins work in yardage, and I have no idea what I’m going to make with it. It will sit there and age like fine wine until the mood strikes. Here it is washed and finished. I definitely want to play with the stripes and have them intersect on the diagonal. That would be fun…

Meanwhile, I wove this fabric last year, another one using Silk City Fiber Yarns, the draft is available here for free… It is called Shadow Tapestry and uses their old standby variegated chenille, with their newer yarn, a Cotton/Bamboo combination with a lot of loft, soft and spongy. I combined the two in a Shadow Weave Structure. Apparently my beat was less than perfect and the end result was that each repeat was just slightly off from the previous repeat, which is why I encourage people not to do weft repeats when weaving yardage.

But there is always a way…

So we have finished up the video series making a couple of my 200 jackets, showing step by step how to do some pretty complicated things. The last installment of that series should drop Friday. We have one more in the can, the one for the “Ask Me Anything” segment that should air the following week and then I need a new theme. I figured that the 500 vest and 600 walking vest, were pretty close to the construction of the jacket, with a couple of differences in how the armhole and lining are treated, and I could probably knock them out in a video. And I’m scheduled to teach a three day remote class using this vest as a background for my piecing technique, so it would be helpful to have a video to direct students to areas of construction they might not understand in the printed directions. I should make a vest next.

So what should I use to make this vest…

I looked through the handwoven fabrics I had on the shelf, and a couple of commercial fabrics I could justify using (sort of like a handwoven), and the Shadow Tapestry fabric jumped out at me. So I rolled it out. I’m not even sure at this point if there is enough, but that never stopped me.

I tried on the samples for my 500 vest and yeah, quarantine has been tough, food plentiful, and exercise non existent. Yes, I’m now walking 4 miles every morning and starting to work in the yard, but that doesn’t help me with the 10 pounds I gained last year. So definitely cut a larger size in the lower half…

Once I have a pattern I can play around with the fabric. There is definitely not enough to do the bands. So I’ll have to come up with a plan B for that… And the layout is tough, I’ll have to have a center back seam, and that means that matching these mismatched shadow weave blocks will be a challenge. I actually measured each repeat to see if I could find like areas. Cutting a yoke would help, the lower part could be cut from one area, and a full yoke across the back would fit across the fabric, EXACTLY. Complete luck.

Which means piping between the lower body and upper yokes.

Last month in a disgusted clean out of all of my skirts and pants that no longer fit, there were some treasures that I hated to toss, so I thought of them as new raw material. Surely that skirt had enough fabric for the trim on something. And my beloved leather pants. I didn’t wear them last year, because I never got out of my pajamas, but I couldn’t get them on. So I lovingly carried them to the studio and put them on the shelf. They would find their purpose one day.

I thought I found their purpose, because they went beautifully with this handwoven Shadow Tapestry. I would cut them into bands and piping and it would be gorgeous. I started to remove the lining in the pants, and realized that years ago, leather of course gives and they had gotten too large for me and I had taken them in substantially in the center back. So I let them out. And they fit. And I’m over-joyed. I loved these pants. I could do a whole blog about the history behind them. But largely this meant that I couldn’t use them for my vest.

Plan B…

Back in 2007 I made a vest out of a very small warp someone gifted me, I wove off the warp and turned it into this lovely vest, which I adored, but sold in a guild sale to one of my guild mates. It was called Native Woods.

I lined it with a woven alpaca pile fabric, the kind from a vintage zip out lining in a men’s trench coat. The pile fabric was gifted to me by someone, the card exists in my design journal from 13 years ago, but I always loved that bit of pile fabric trimming the exterior edges of the vest. I sort of missed that vest after I sold it.

I have the scraps. And I think it is enough for a neck band and pair of armhole bands. And the color is good. But that means I have to come up with something else for the piping. In the middle of the night, I woke up with a voice telling me to check if there was any leather left from the Harris Tweed jacket I just made.

In the morning I checked, and I had enough in the scrap bag for piping for the two front yokes and the back yoke.

Which left the lining…

I rooted around in my stash, and pulled out a couple of contenders, one of which is here. A lovely silk print, maybe from the old Waechter’s Silk Shop in Asheville. I mourned when it went out of business. I use to raid their remnant bin whenever I would visit.

And then I spied this silk blouse I had just added to my stash. Back in January, armed with a dozen masks, I drove to Maryland to help my 89 year old mom move to a smaller apartment in the senior complex where she lives, after her husband, my step dad passed in December. It was a busy week, and as we moved her clothing, she culled some of the pieces she didn’t think she would ever wear again. My mother and I are not even close to the same size and shape. But she had in the “to be given away” bag this lovely silk shirt, not anything I would fit into or wear, not my style, but it was silk. And silk is silk. So I took it and added it to my fabric stash.

And so I pulled it out and put it next to the Shadow Tapestry fabric and my eyes lit up. It was unexpected and fun and though my daughter didn’t like it, she liked the first choice, I just thought it was perfectly timed and meant to be…

So now everything is cut out, and I spent the day assembling the parts. Tomorrow I will write the script and Friday we will shoot the complex parts of the construction. I don’t know if the fur bands will be successful or not, but I won’t ever know unless I try. I can always take them off and replace them if I change my mind. Then I can shoot a video on how to rip out handwoven fabric…

And of course I had help, this morning when I came down to start constructing this is what was waiting for me, letting me know that he kept the pile warm and it was all ready to sew. This cat makes me laugh… He is sitting in my lap as I type…

Anyway, this is pretty typical of how I go through the process of deciding what to make. The fabric came about because Silk City developed a new yarn and asked me to test it and see what I could do with it. I asked for a cone of it along with a variegated chenille. I don’t know why when I looked at them I thought Shadow weave. I hate weaving anything with two shuttles. But I did, and so far it is working out. I’ve got so many threads of ideas, like seeds that germinate, and it is a process getting that little seed planted and see what sprouts from it.

Stay tuned…

Two in one weekend, it was a busy week…

Huge apologies right up front. I have never posted two blog posts back to back in the same weekend. Yesterday’s blog was a story of triumph, but there was lots more to tell on my week of extreme productivity. So indulge me this one…

I worked hard to get all of my floor looms filled with something interesting for the virtual HGA studio tour that we filmed back on October 8th. That meant that every loom had something going on, and my daughter, who is madly prepping for this lecture next week, needed a floor loom or two to be empty, and I’ve got ideas of what I want to put on a loom that isn’t available.

So the only thing to do, is to just weave. I had a couple cranky mishaps with a couple of looms, parts get old and worn, especially cords, and I’ll need to do a bit of repair work, or had to repair in the middle of a large piece of yardage, when the front crank broke in two in my hand…

Despite roadblocks, I managed on Monday to clear one of the 4 shaft floor looms, of yardage that has been there for a couple of years. It was a welcome site when the knots came over the back beam!

I pulled 7 yards off the loom, and popped that baby in the washer.

The end result is really pretty. A flower garden. I have ideas for the yardage, but nothing set in stone.

In case you want the details, I wrote up the yarns and the draft back in a post in January of 2019, scroll way down to find the information here…

So Tuesday I had to set up a complicated Zoom class, which I was to give that night, the night of the election here in the states, for a group in Toronto. I spent the morning getting the camera and lighting right for the live demo on the loom. The topic was “doup leno”, a structure I wrote about in a lengthy article for Heddlecraft Jan/Feb 2019 I believe.

Once I was set up, I decided to kill a few hours until showtime, by weaving on another floor loom. And pretty soon, the knots were up and over the back.

This yardage was one of the ones I put on the loom to play around with one of the new yarns from Silk City Fibers. I combined the Nile cotton tape with their traditional Skinny Majesty Variegated, in a simple plain weave. And after some extensive testing, which I talked about in an earlier post, I ended up using Silk City Fiber’s Deluxe Wool Crepe. Which is Merino and rayon. This is my new favorite weft. Highly recommend. I can’t wait to do something with this fabric. It feels amazing and the wool crepe weft keeps the rayon in check.

Anyway, because the yarns came from Silk City Fibers, I wrote up the specs and the draft for what I’m calling Antique Jewels and it is available in my eShop for free. Click here.

Wednesday was a tough day. I had to teach again in the morning, after a very successful, at least I thought so, class Tuesday night. Because no results were declared Tuesday night, and I didn’t expect them to be, I didn’t sleep all night, and I suspect neither did most people in the US. So bleary eyed I logged onto my class Wednesday morning, and I believe all went well, and this time no landscape crew came by to blow my leaves like the class the week before. Wednesday night was my guild meeting and we had a terrific program with an old weaving friend of mine, Sheila O’Hara. I’m blown away by how easy it is to bring a guest speaker from 3000 miles away for an evening lecture. She was fantastic. We are only about a year apart in age, and studied the fiber arts in college about the same time in the 70’s, it is amazing how different our paths took as weavers. She was one of the first to truly embrace Jacquard weaving.

So Thursday, prior to the debacle I covered in yesterday’s post , I managed to clear yet another loom. This one was also the result of a challenge with yarns from Silk City Fibers. An odd combination, but I took their new poofy Cotton Bambu, and combined it in a light/dark 8 shaft shadow weave with their old standby chenille, in a variegated color. The two worked perfectly together, and I soon had the knots over the back beam as well.

The fabric was a bit coarse when I pulled it off the loom, kind of what you would make a carpet bag from, but never the less, I went to the washing machine and tossed it all in.

What came out is the most gorgeous, glorious fabric you’ve ever felt. Cotton Bambu doesn’t have any body weight behind it, but in this context it became gorgeously flexible and mixed with the velvety feel of the chenille, I can’t wait to weave more in a larger piece of yardage. I wrote up the specs for this fabric as well, which I call Shadow Tapestry, and again, the PDF download with the draft is free. You can find it here.

I’m off to the studio to weave another scarf on one of the other floor looms, and then do stupid stuff like clean my bedroom and bath, annoying Sunday chores, though I can’t wait to remake the bed with the new sheets I just got from LL Bean. Portuguese organic cotton flannel. Looking forward to a good night sleep tonight. I had a set from the last couple of years, but when I went to change my sheets with the change of season, from linen to cotton flannel, I discovered that my daughter had swiped them. They were on her bed. So shopping I went for another set!

Stay safe everyone, one of my closest friends was just diagnosed with Covid. These are scary times… Stay tuned…

Simple days, complex world…

The days pass quickly in a routine that is pretty pleasant truth be told. I’m not missing traveling, not missing even leaving the house. I see friends and family enough via zoom, and with all the remote lectures I’m giving, I feel as though I’ve just attended the world’s largest weaving conference. Each day I bounce around to some part of the country, and each lecture there are old friends and familiar faces in those tiny boxes on the screen. I’ve been corresponding with someone in MO, who was supposed to take a workshop with me in August in Kansas, but appeared in a lecture in western MA. We weavers get around…

Having my daughter here, working with her, developing new content, shooting a new video every Friday for my YouTube site The Weaver Sews. It has kept us busy. The biggest challenges are keeping the animals quiet, and hoping the landscape people don’t come through in the middle of filming the way they did last Wednesday in the middle of a class I was teaching remotely. Those leaf blowers right outside the garage doors were pretty noisy.

So the election in the US is Tuesday. I don’t hold hope that things will be resolved by Tuesday night. I don’t hold hope that things will be resolved for a very long time, no matter who is declared the winner. I’m sad for the polarization, I’m sad for the divisive language used by both sides, I wish we could all get along and move forward. We are in the middle of a couple of international crises and I’m a firm supporter of science (having a daughter with a science degree means I can’t even cook without a science perspective thrown into the recipe), and no matter the results, I hope moving forward that we as a nation can come together to solve some of these major issues. I’ve just heard of another weaver who lost their entire studio to one of the fires in Oregon. She took a workshop with me just in March of this year, my last stint before the world shut down. I sent her digital files of everything we could piece together that she lost from my workshop, but that doesn’t replace yarn, samples, looms, weaving equipment, spinning wheels, and a life time of knowledge in physical form. My friends in California, Oregon, Washington, as well as Louisiana have taken the brunt of this year’s climate disasters. I wish the world had a plan moving forward. For me, I voted within 24 hours of receiving my mail in ballot (only mail-in voting in NJ this year because of the pandemic), so on Tuesday night, I’ll be teaching remotely for a guild in Toronto. I can only do my best to keep moving forward, being kind, paying attention to the science, fighting for equality for all, and embracing my countrymen no matter what and who they are passionate about.

Since Tuesday night’s lecture is on Doup Leno, a technique I wrote about a couple years ago for Heddlecraft Magazine, (January/February 2019), I needed to have something set up for a live demo. The warp that I had been using was mostly used up. So I rewarped this week, with a couple of handdyed skeins of cashmere I had sitting around, one a dark and the other a variegated turquoise. The goal is a couple of scarves, the leno structure will keep them lacy, but the structure will hold together.

That said, I’ve been rather busy with my simple days. Simple means I can fill my days up with juggling 40 things at once, because I can’t imagine a day when 40 things aren’t happening simultaneously!

I’ve been working for the last couple of weeks on a new project. The last two vests I made both had welt pockets. It has been on my to do eventually list for a couple of years. I finally sat down, designed a diagonal entry welt pocket and then once I did a few of them, drew illustrations and wrote up the 12 page directions.

Now you can actually purchase the Welt Pocket Variation as a download. The download contains the 12 page heavily illustrated directions, the two pattern pieces full size for the welt and pocket, and replacement pages for the 100 jacket, 200 jacket and 800 vest. By substituting the pages in the pattern digital files, you’ll see where the pocket goes. So if you’ve purchased the 100, 200 or 800 vest, you might enjoy this variation. Of course it will work for any jacket or vest you make from anyone’s patterns, you’ll just have to figure out where to position it.

The second vest I finished is the one I’ve been using for demonstrations during my last few YouTube videos. The fabric was a remnant I bought somewhere, can’t remember, but it was a gorgeous sleezy Chanel type tweed, really challenging to work with, like your worst case handwoven. My handwoven fabrics aren’t nearly as challenging! I made up the 200 jacket but left off the sleeves, bringing the lining to the edge of the armhole. With the shawl collar and welt pockets, it is a much different look than my other vests.

I realized of course that I haven’t updated my gallery on the website with the last couple of pieces I’ve made, the Summer Rain Top, and of course the leopard trimmed and lined Confetti vest shown above. It is much more important to be timely in those updates because my daughter references those details and images when she creates the show notes for each video I do. We took one of our guest rooms, since we aren’t getting a lot of guests (none actually) and turned it into a temporary photo studio. So I popped the Summer Rain top onto the dressform, and perched it on top of the table to take a quick shot of the top. The free draft for the fabric for this top, using Silk City Fibers is available here. The pattern is a combination of my 1000 Swing Dress, very modified to take out the “swing”, and the armhole and sleeve from my 200 Jacket.

Meanwhile, now that all my looms are full, I filled them up for the HGA remote studio tour the beginning of October, I need to start clearing looms because I’m getting more ideas of stuff I want to weave. So I cleared one of the table looms first. This one had a test for Silk City Fibers, their Supermerino yarn, sett in an 8 dent reed, plain weave, to simulate what one would experience with a rigid heddle loom set up. One was a single end in an 8 dent reed, single weft, spaced a little far apart for my taste, but that was the point of the test. I gave that one to Silk City and kept this one, which is two ends together in an 8 dent reed with a doubled weft (I used a double boat shuttle for that scarf). Supermerino is a superwash yarn. It doesn’t say that in the description, but it doesn’t full at all when washed. The result is actually quite soft and lovely, and I’m glad they let me keep one of the scarves. I suspect I’ll be venturing outside a bit this winter, if only to walk the property and pick up dog debris, and I think this will be quite warm.

I did a round robin sort of day earlier in the week, I wove a yard of two on each of the other floor looms, just to get them moving forward. I can probably just sit and weave and finish off a couple of them in a day or two. To have time to just sit and weave is such a gift. And that means I’ll have yardage to sew. And empty looms to rewarp…

There is this one, which has been on the loom for way too long. The yarn is Noro Taiyo Lace, a pain to work with but really beautiful in its gradient effect as the weft. 4 shaft, warp is vintage Harrisville singles Shetland wool and vintage Maypole Nehalem worsted. I’ve probably got less than two yards to go…

This is another test for Silk City Fibers, their new Cotton Bambu yarn mixed with their Chenille Tapestry yarn. I modified an 8 shaft shadow weave draft, it is a bit slow to weave because of the two shuttle complicated repeat but it is moving along nicely.

And this one is also using Silk City Fibers, their new Nile cotton tape mixed with Skinny Majesty variegated. The weft is their Wool Crepe. I can’t wait to weave off this fabric, it is weaving like butter and I want to make swing dress out of it. Over a black turtleneck, this could be fun for winter, something new to wear, even though I don’t go anywhere and only dress for the upper third of my body for remote Zoom meetings. And for the videos, I get to dress up, put on makeup and look remotely professional, but everything has to be 2-piece to support the remote microphone pack clipped into my waistband.

Days are cooler now, we have finally had frost in NJ. I cuddle up with the gas stove in the living room, and a 1000 piece puzzle and some wine in the evenings, or watch late night political satire on the TV with my daughter. We need to keep laughing, we need to surround ourselves with art, humor and good food and drink. And of course animals, there is a cat asleep on my lap as I type, with one paw draped over my typing hand. And yarn and good books. I have all of that, and new flannel sheets coming this week from LLBean. My daughter stole my other set. Life is OK for now in my small neck of the world. I quietly keep making up new stuff, and keep an eye out for important things to know about.

See you all on the other side of this election, stay safe, wear a mask, and don’t forget to vote…

My new favorite place…

I blogged a lot about the major studio changes last winter, HVAC was installed as I was walking out the door to teach in Oregon the beginning of March. I returned from Oregon just as the world was beginning to shut down and so embarked on a five month effort to convert all my patterns to digital downloads. So though I had this brandy spanking new shiny place for all my looms and fiber equipment, with the basement as the new sewing room, I never really got a chance to use it. It kept calling me. I felt really guilty. I kept thinking about all those gorgeous magazine worthy studios in houses where I stayed, and their owners admitted that they didn’t actually do much in them. I hoped that wasn’t the case with mine. Most of my days since the quarantine began have been sitting right here at my computer in my office generating some kind of content. Sigh… Creative in a way, but not what I really want to do.

Enter an email from Silk City Fibers. I’ve had a very long relationship with them, and I’ve blogged about recent encounters with them, but this time they wanted me to consider being a “weaving influencer”. My discussions with the head of Lion Brand Yarn marketing turned into, send me yarn and I’ll see what I can do with it. And blog about it, or write about it, or give them usable content, or whatever.

What a shot on the arm that was, and in one of my last posts I blogged about the fabric Summer Rain that I got on and off the loom in record time. It was the first time I had set up a loom since I built the new studio. I ran into a lot of, gee, where did I put that tool… but ultimately the studio did its job and created a brightly lit, comfortable and easy place to do what I do best. So as I wrote in my last post, the Summer Rain fabric is finished and sitting on the cutting table in the basement waiting to be cut and sewn into something fun. The draft is available in my store, and any of the drafts/fabrics that result from the relationship with Silk City Yarns, especially if they are giving me the yarn, will be available for free. Add it to your cart, and there won’t be any charge at checkout. You’ll get a link in your inbox and you are ready to go! Find the PDF notes and draft here.

Meanwhile, having discovered the joy of my new studio, and having finished the scarves that were on the 8 shaft small floor loom, I decided to wind a new warp, this one called Autumn Harvest, based on a forecast from my Handwoven Column back in 2004. It is on the loom, and it just glows! The draft is available here.

I got more yarn from Silk City Fibers. A lot of it. I think of nothing else… I gave them a general idea of what I’d like to work with based on what they want to promote, mostly their newest yarns, and I gave suggestions of color combinations, but I get what I get. Which is just wonderful fun. I work best designing with what’s immediately in front of me.

Right out of the box I grabbed this orange Cotton Bambu, (one of their new yarns) which is a little heavier than I like to work with for garment yardage, but I successfully used it in the Summer Rain fabric in a 4 shaft mock supplemental, and I thought I’d like to expand on that for a full yardage. So I added Saphira, a viscose and polyamide variegated with very cool slubs, and a gorgeous copper metallic called Radiance. The weft is a beautiful cotton yarn called Nomad, which I actually prefer to Bambu 7, it has way more body and the same 2100 yds/lb yield. Under the studio lights the fabric just glows, but it doesn’t really show in the photo. Trust me it is head turning when you see it in real life. It is a 4 shaft structure, and I’ll eventually post the details as a PDF download like above. I’m calling it Confetti.

Meanwhile Silk City wanted to know if their SuperMerino yarn would work in a Rigid Heddle loom with an 8 dent reed. I don’t do Rigid Heddle weaving, but I have a table loom with an 8 dent reed, and I can set up a two shaft plain weave. There is enough for two scarves, the first one we doubled the yarn (Brianna did the grunt set up here). She has a heavy hand with the beater, so I’ve taken over and using a double weft, the effect is quite lovely. I believe their SuperMerino is superwash, but I’ll let you know once the scarves are off the loom.

Meanwhile in the bag of yarn from Silk City were these two, Nile cotton tape in Onyx, and Skinny Majesty variegated in a color called Antique Jewelry. I wound the 6 yard warp alternating one of each, and after it was wound, I changed my mind. Nothing like redesigning after the warp is wound. I used every inch of both cones, which is always fun, to have no leftovers! And if you are wondering about the contraption on the back beam, I use the Harrisville tensioning device for perfectly tensioned warps every time. (I’m a front to back warper). Problem is, this is the new to me 32″ Tools of the Trade loom, one of his really old ones, and I have tensioning rods made for the 45″, the 36″ and the 25″ looms. Not the 32″ loom. So using the second back beam from the 36″ loom to support the set up of the tensioning device with the 36″ rods, and a number of C Clamps, we got the job done. (I confess it was all Brianna’s idea).

So I threaded the updated design, beamed and then began to test a number of wefts they offer that have a wool/protein content. I’m a big fan of putting something in the weft that will give a modest amount of fulling to really keep slippery rayon fabrics under control. I have used Zephyr merino/silk from Jaggerspun, and Webs Colrain Lace Merino/Tencel, but wanted to try out some of the Silk City Fiber offerings. Left to right is Nature’s Way Merino doubled, Eco Cashwool, SupraMerino doubled (which I believe is a superwash), Baby Alpaca doubled, and Wool Crepe Deluxe (80% Wool and 20% Viscose Rayon).

I kept the first sample right off the loom (top), the middle sample shows some hand washing in warm water, and the last sample was thrown in the washer and dryer with a load of towels. I love knowing what a yarn can do. I’m ultimately going to use the black Wool Crepe for this particular fabric, but the Nature’s Way Merino (far left in navy) is awesome. The Baby Alpaca (the ivory one) didn’t shrink or full, but it is fluffier than an angora rabbit’s butt. I’m not a fan of superwash, so I probably wouldn’t use the SupraMerino (the middle one) unless the goal was a washable baby blanket, it is really lovely for that kind of purpose. And I liked the Eco Cashwool as well. This was a test I’ve wanted to do for a long time, and I’m grateful for the opportunity.

And of course, this loom still has fabric on it that I really should weave off, but there is something about full looms that make me smile. My babies have been naked for far too long. This is a wool warp with Noro Taiyo Lace weft. January of 2019 to be specific. I’ve blogged about it here.

Assuming the internet gods are cooperating on Tuesday September 1st, I’ll be the featured guest on the Shi Show, which airs live at noon daily on the Lion Brand Yarn Facebook page. I’ll post the link when it shows up on Youtube or you can tune in at noon EDT. I say if the internet gods are cooperating because three times in the last week, there was an area outage, and though I still have some unresolved internet issues, Like I can’t get my printers to connect, the tech guy came yesterday morning and the whole system went down as he started to work, area wide I was told, and so he could accomplish nothing. He is supposed to come back today. He texted me that he is having issues at his house, different carrier, but his power and internet are failing. And there are no storms, nothing that should cause these constant outages, but there are seriously weakened trees and limbs just randomly fall and take out the grid for whatever period of time you need it. We were successful last weekend in running new lines in the walls, upgrading switches and network cards so all the important rooms and devices are hard wired for ethernet at 1GB of speed. Brianna ran the last line herself much to her complete amazement and satisfaction. She is her father.

And so, I’m looking in corners of the studio to see where I can pitch a sleeping bag. This is my new escape, a place that the world stops spinning out of control, actually the only place in the whole world where I have some control, and nothing in there needs electronics or power to actually operate. Maybe the bobbin winder, but I do have hand cranks for that…

Stay safe, wear a mask and stay tuned…

Meanwhile…

Meanwhile there is a tropical storm moving in tonight. Finally, a typical summer… At least we need the rain desperately…

Meanwhile, I launched another pattern for download. And I’m beginning to add Lookbooks for some of the patterns. I’ve had a number of requests from potential buyers to see what people are doing with the patterns. I know this is a thing on Ravelry, and it does help to see what people do with the pattern, and how it fits all different body types. This is one more thing on my never ending to do list, but I’ve managed to post three of them, one for the vest below, and one for the 700/1700 tunics and the 100 jacket. I don’t know if it helps, and obviously the patterns are too new for purchasers to show what they’ve done with them, but I’ve been using these patterns for years, especially the jackets, and I have a collection of mostly in progress, not completely finished versions from all of my workshops.

What’s important here is that if I used a photo of you in your garment, I cropped all body parts, so you wouldn’t be recognized. Still, if you object to my using your garment, please let me know. And if you have a photo of a garment you made in one of my classes and/or from one of my patterns, especially a finished version, please let me know at theweaver@weaversew.com

The 800 Zippered Vest is fully lined to the edge and has bias bound edges. The vest has a stand-up collar with front separating zipper. View 2 uses the lining as a seam finish on the side, shoulder and neckline/collar seams. Optional yoke on both views. This pattern does not contain directions for sewing. The directions, which contain metric equivalents are available for free from my website https://www.daryllancaster.com/Webfiles/800ZipperedVestDirections.pdf

In addition, a lookbook of garments made from the 800 Zippered Vest is available here https://weaversew.com/wordblog/800-zippered-vest-lookbook/

I’ve only got one more pattern to go in the current collection, which will give me a total of 12! The pattern for the 1800 jacket is done, it is a combination of the 800 zippered vest above and the 400 jacket with waist darts. The directions are rewritten, I’m waiting for the final edits from someone I hired to make sure what I wrote makes sense. The conversations between us are hilarious. Usually she writes that something doesn’t make any sense, and I respond that it would have it they were in class because there would have been an entire class lecture on the fine points of that technique earlier in the morning, and then she responds that people who buy the patterns won’t have been privy to that lecture, so I have to spell it all out. So I’ve added so much to each of the directions for each of the patterns. I keep them separate because whenever something is unclear, I can edit easily and post on a page of my website, without generating an entire new pattern download. The directions are always free, so if you already traced a pattern from one of my classes and need the updated directions, please find them here. As always, if something isn’t clear, please let me know, I’ll try to fix it. And there is the goal to have a YouTube channel to explain many of the techniques I feature in my patterns.

Meanwhile I’m already thinking of how to combine the patterns and what silhouette I want to work on next. A scoop neck top with sleeves…

Meanwhile, I met with a consultant about video equipment and improving the image of my online teaching via Zoom or whatever platform works for the guild hiring me. And they are hiring me. My October Calendar is really filling up with remote guild lectures and a few short workshops. I’m beginning to get cancellations from next year, and I’m really good with that because I don’t see us returning to a normal any time soon. I don’t see me hopping on a plane, dragging 170 pounds of luggage, staying with people, and teaching a 5-7 day class working intimately with students, and returning safely to NJ. Right now there is a list in NJ of 31 states that you have to quarantine from after traveling to… So I’ve edited some of my lectures to list what can be done remotely. I will start on the half day seminars shortly.

So I now have a couple of Canon SLR’s that actually were designed to also work as webcams, in addition to 4K video. I have an AC battery adapter so the camera battery doesn’t die in the middle of a zoom meeting. I have my tech guy coming this week to run an ethernet cable to the garage weaving studio so I don’t have to rely on WIFI. I have the cable company coming to upgrade my modem so I can get 1GB of internet speed. And I purchased a sound system and video lights for recording videos, all that of course contingent on my daughter, who works for me now, learning how to use them. Right now she is creating a logo.

Meanwhile, I’ve mentioned my long time association with Silk City Fibers, which is now a division of Lion Brand Yarns. Alice, who is the director of that division is an old friend and coincidently lives in my town. We are in regular contact about what’s new there and my opinion of the market, the type of yarn, the marketing, and anything else that comes to mind. Last week I was asked if I wanted to be a “weaving influencer”. I suppose I am an influencer. A few thousand friends on facebook, been teaching this stuff since the early 80’s and using their yarn since then as well. I’ve been blogging for more than 10 years, have about a thousand subscribers, and earlier posts have been viewed thousands of times. And of course I always have an opinion. I’m not always right, but my opinion always comes with a thought process that shows how I got there. I met with the powers that be at Lion Brand, via remote conferencing, and largely I said, if you want to toss me yarn, I’ll make yardage out of it, document what I do and what it does, and make clothing out of it to sell my patterns.

And so, at the end of last week, Alice dropped off a small bag of assorted cones, two of them yarns I’d not worked with before. Left to right is Nile, a cotton tape yarn, Cotton Bambu, a heavier parallel plied yarn, great for supplemental work, Linen 14, a fine linen yarn I’ve had experience with before, and Bambu 7, bamboo yarn, pretty much a SSF staple. There was about a half pound of each, which doesn’t seem like a lot to work with, especially if the goal is yardage. But that never stopped me.

I thought about the yarn, and then looked through my stash to see what I could add that was part of their current line. Not much, since my shelves are full of older discontinued styles and colors of Silk City Yarns, all wonderful, but I thought I’d try to stay current. I was able to add these. Clockwise from upper left, Saphira, Skinny Majesty Variegated, and a possible weft, Bambu 7

First I had to figure out exactly what I had. I use a McMorran Yarn Balance and a scale and I can come within a few yards of knowing what’s on the cone.

I played with yarn wraps…

…and adapted the draft from Chaos, which you can purchase from my website here…

…and came up with something that reminded me of summer rain. Think Tropical Storm Isaias.

Meanwhile, I haven’t actually wound a warp or set up a loom since the huge studio move last winter, which seems at this point like a lifetime ago. When I returned from Oregon the beginning of March, the heat had just been installed, but the entire world shut down, and I dug in and made a bunch of new garments, in the basement sewing room, still thinking I had to submit five new works for the Convergence Fashion Show as a guest artist (of course that conference was postponed until 2022). And I started on what seemed like an impossible task at the time, creating downloadable patterns from the ones I developed for classes. I was sitting on a lot of handwoven yardage I had stockpiled, and now my stash is depleted.

So I did what I do best. Create with a small pile in front of me, and see where it takes me…

First up was winding the warp. There are many ways to wind warps, but I wanted to see the colors unfold, so I chose to just do a straight wind off of the draft, as opposed to winding individual chains of each color. The winding was slow, but the sleying would be much faster. The first thing I discovered was the Nile tape lace had to be unwound from the cone like a toilet paper roll, instead of off the top, like typical coned weaving yarns. When exiting from the top, the tape seriously twisted and I knew would never lay moderately flat in the woven surface. So I put the cone on a spool rack, with the rack facing away from me at about a 30 degree angle. The cone unwound easily in that position.

Next hurdle was of course the dreaded slippery rayon, and Silk City Fibers has lots of these. I’ve used them for years. This was one called Saphira, a pretty shimmery yarn with slubs. The color I had has actually been discontinued, but a similar one is available with a black core instead of a white one. Winding a warp with a yarn like this is problematic because any break in movement, like the turn around at the top of the warping mill, causes the yarn to pool around the base, getting caught as the movement resumes. I usually use a nylon stocking around the cone as a drag, which works really really well, except in the move, they are hiding and I can’t figure out where they went. So I used the mesh covering from an Asian Pear, which when tucked around the base, stopped the pooling and the warping could continue.

I loved the way the colors built on one another.

By dinner time yesterday I had the loom’s beater sleyed. Each of these steps was sort of like reinventing the wheel. The chair I usually used for sleying was now in the basement in my sewing studio. So I had to come up with new tools and devices, figure out where my regular tools were now living, figure out where to plug in the magnifying light (in the ceiling as it turned out), and how to adjust the split HVAC system that was spilling copious amounts of frigid air right on me. I figured that out and the room was really comfortable. The new studio worked well. I’m happy and can’t wait to actually spend most of my days out there even when I’m Zooming…

I started threading after dinner.

Meanwhile, my beloved brat of a dog Ranger got his manhood clipped last Monday. He was very depressed and had to wear the “innertube of misfortune”. And of course, that meant he couldn’t wear a bellyband, so my fear all week was that he would pee on everything in my house. We were good until late last night. He saddled up to a shelving tower of handdyed yarn skeins and lifted his leg. So I got to use the new dye sink in the studio and wash all of the offended skeins as I cleaned up the mess. The dye sink worked really well. And incision or no incision, he is now wearing a belly band. The relationship between the two males dogs is slowing changing, it will be interesting to see where this goes. The week for the most part wasn’t nearly has challenging as I thought it would be. I got a lot accomplished locking myself and the dog in my office for hours at a time while he healed. He liked the constant companionship.

Meanwhile, did I mention we are getting hit with a tropical storm tonight? Note to self, pull in anything that isn’t nailed down, like umbrellas, etc. Better yet, send Brianna out to do it…

Stay tuned…