unplugging the unplugged

This is a parable.You have to do things at their right time.To everything turn,turn, turn. If not you risk having the man in the house, the aesthetic ruler in person, exclaiming OH no we're back to the 70's!

i had never ever indulged in textured weaving as i thought it was the most evident and the easiest way out. Take some textured yarn and pedal away and you'll have a hit. When i started weaving i wanted to take all those old fashioned patterns that appeared in Davison's green book
and update them by giving a contemporary look. i have a tendency to be blinded by ambition.

After some years it wasn't enough and i started designing my own patterns and that brought me to fine yarns.
All of a sudden the 70's were over and i had overlooked the lumpy clumpy yarns in fashion never to look back.
It is very comforting to be able to refer to the 70's in weaving circles. In the DIY circles most of the people were not even projects in the 70's :) But i'm digressing.

My own personal stash reducing campaign put me in contact with the Haitian cotton skeins i had acquired way back. Well, yes, a table runner, something simple and quick as the goal is stash reducing. It resulted in a time warp confirmed by husband-san.

The table runner needs a very hard press to flatten it a bit but we will be using it no matter what. We've got the dishes that go with it . Scandinavian, of course :)
That's it for unplugged and unplugginess.

i'm done with wabi-sabi for a while. i want to weave something complex and intricate now in very,very fine threads. Moving on.


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8 big misconceptions about dyeing

photo by Liz Plummer

The other day the periodical alarm regarding dyes went off again.It has always annoyed me and the tales about how incredibly toxic MX dyes are have always amazed me. Yet everyone goes about the house happily spraying oven cleaner, window cleaner etc etc. etc without giving them a thought. The reasoning behind the lack of concern might be that as they are household products they are perceived as safe. WRONG! and yes i'm shouting.

Hand in hand with that myth, -excuse me you're not going to eat the powder as a spread or breath into the jar as you judiciously would not breath into any unknown jar, right?-the following go around and around in the ferris wheel of dyeing and they periodically re-surface causing varying degrees of alarm to new dyers and fiber artists.
And now without further delay and not in any specific order here they are, the MoD s - those magnificent myths of dyeing

• you should use hot water to dissolve MX dyes.

If you do that what you'll be doing is activating the dye making it react with the water before it can hit the fabric.It means waste of dye and weaker color yield.

• MX dyes cannot be used for silk.

Yes, they can be used, provided you use acetic acid as the auxiliary chemical. Colors are as bright as you are able to dye them.

• Avoid using soda ash with silk.

This is a half truth. While in strong solutions it may weaken and dull silk, weak solutions do not present problems. In fact silk is scoured using a mild soda ash solution in a number of short baths.

• Salt is needed to fix the dye.
  

Not really.What salt does is reduce the solubility of the dye in water and this favors the adsorption of the dye by the fiber.It also acts as a surfactant by suppressing the negative surface charge on the water so that the dye molecule can move towards the fabric and attach to it. (Knutson.p 51)

• Dyes have a shelf life and after that they are useless.

Another half truth. They will probably not work with cellulose fibers, but will perform satisfactorily on silk with acetic acid as the auxiliary chemical. Shelf life depends on the storing conditions, light and humidity. We too have a shelf life.

• MX can be used to dye in cold water.

Well, depends what you call cold. They need at least 70ºF(20ºC) to perform optimally as immersion dyeing.below that, you're throwing dye way and wasting your time.
And i will not discuss batching temperatures here as this is a topic all by itself.

• Fabric/fibers should be rinsed in hot water.

Not the first rinse. This one removes the salt and chemicals. Then you can rinse the fabric in hot soapy water until it runs clear. The last one -and this is me- should be with Synthrapol just to be sure there's no more unfixed dye.

• Natural dyes are greener and eco friendlier. Yes, provided you do not use any mineral salts as mordants. However there's a debate as the amounts and dilutions a home dyer uses will not change the eco system in ages. There's a personal choice here as with most things in life. Yet there's also the issue of toxicity in plants. Not all plants are made equal and being plants is not a synonym of being pretty and friendly. This is my all time favorite myth, seems that not too many have been attacked by a nettle plant :)
  

And the onions you may ask. Apart from the fact that their skins give beautiful oranges and yellows they also make me cry just like the above.

There is an excellent on line resource all facts as it is kept by a chemist. It's also a labor of love . If you have doubts about dyeing visit Paula Burch's site

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of semiotics and syntactics

twisting on itself
see also loosely spun

straightening the kinks

hidden beauty

back in the swing

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factual evidence

i am into rust! found this application in Flickr toys and created a mosaic from some of my photos.Photos were randomly chosen and it was surprising to see the underlying theme.Rust related either in topic or in color. And this is what i'm doing, procrastinating a big warp fix :(

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new love

There's a new(to me) online crafters community. It's not a venue, but more of a promotion place for your items. The tone is very friendly and there are lots of cool applications,networking opportunities and you even get a blog. What more can i say but that i'm in love with it.
Visit them at Byhand.me

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as if i didn't know..

that life's too short to be dealing with a mixed warp of cotton and linen!But i didn't- or so i thought- have any 16/1 linen in white.That's what happens when you're deep into SABLE, the inspired term coined by Laura Fry and meaning stash acquisition beyond life expectancy. Note to myself-must do something about this asap.

Found not only one but two cones and went on to the warping board singing a little ditty.

Warp went on the loom and started with the boring part, weaving the heading and checking for mistakes. No mistakes glory be! Hey wait, this is too narrow for a table runner!! How come after all the counting, adding, dividing and doing all sorts of caballistic numbers? As if i didn't know that's why i studied literature and not astronomy.

i can't believe calculating the size of the universe and being off by a trillion solar systems, wiping out entire civilizations because of miscalculations or a transposition of a decimal point, something i have lots of experience with.

Anyway i'm off by 12 cms. And i thought this was the boring part. i'll have to make another chain
sley and thread it. But i'm not going to tie it to the back beam,that's too much. i'll tie it to cleaning product jug full of water and suspend it from a rig yet to be invented .And i'm alrady exhausted just thinking about it. Will have to wait until Friday as tomorrow i have Japanese class.....

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one of those big postcards

This was the original plan for March postcard for Calendar Girls, it was taking way too long and i had to design something else with the photo for the month. As you may recognize it was, yes, part of the NEW- aka never ending warp :).

Easter holiday gave me some time to finish projects and start others. And here is what happened to the weaving.

The iridescent blue is somewhat subtler, one can never photograph iridescence right.
And there's a lot of acting on on the weaving. i'm the decider right? WINK!

Which coincidentally brings me to some debate that's going around about the durability of Tyvek.
i think that if you're giving your work to friends, well poor friends will see their collection disintegrate, but friends are friends are friends.
But if you're charging for it there are other considerations.
i'm interested in your views.How do you feel about the issue?

BTW there's no Tyvek in the big postcard so Pat you'll have to burn it :)

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the never ending warp-the end

This is like a Mozart symphony.You think it's ending, getting ready to applaud and there is a turn, a coda of a coda and it goes on.But it finally comes to an end .

This is the original project for the never ending warp, a double weave stripped scarf aka the first woven :) It didn't turn bad at all although it has not been wet finished yet.It's been raining a lot over here and i wanted to conclude the saga. As you may guess i am into sustainability and depend on sunshine to dry the laundry.

Here is the original tie up and it was woven tromp as writ. Lovely old fashioned term!

Now back to the warping board to finish the new warp.This one has been more judiciously planned and there will not be much remaining warp after finishing the project .Famous last words.

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we interrupt the weaving briefings..

To do a bit of serious eating.Yesterday we hopped on a train and after a pleasant one hour ride we were in Tarragona one of our favorite day trip spots. Passion Thursday if you may.
Lovely weather, excellent food ,great wine and a walk around the countless Roman ruins, as it was at times the second most important city of the empire, right after Rome itself.

While having lunch in a lovely restaurant terrace in a plaza surrounded by the ruins i couldn't help thinking about my friend Passionate Eater and how she would have enjoyed this. She gave me an award last week and i wanted to do something special for her, as it really rocks when someone outside the weaving-textile world enjoys your blog.
Therefore photos here for your vicarious enjoyment :) :) And for everyone else!

More weaving tomorrow.

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the never ending warp epilog part2

When i said starting from the end i meant last woven first shown.This is the first woven sample.A much more conservative approach. Kept the same wefts
. original tie up
As for the tie up it was transformed with a diagonal break.
Then just started rotating it to see how the patterning was affected by the tessellations.
Actually the sample is horizontal and not vertical as shown. But i wanted a polaroid shot :)

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the never ending warp-epilog part1

Starting from the end.i got 50 centimetres from the damask preset-see here and here Being a kamikaze weaver i don't know if i got what i was supposed to get, but it was fun and you can't beat that.Now, don't take the kamikaze reference literally :)!

This is an image of the curves developed on the liftplan

And this is the liftplan with the structure thrown :) on the graphic image. Even after coloring the image it doesn't show very well, but you can click on the image for a better view.An awesome system as the same curves can be woven in other structures!! Graphic blocks or graphic profiles.
Now i need to find how to use that bit of silk cloth. Ideas anyone??

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april showers

Bring the flowers. This morning my terrace was looking good.Have a good weekend!

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fun, funner, funnest

The last lap of the never ending brown and black silk warp has turned into a funner. Straight draw on 24 shafts 2 ends x dent for a 24 ends x cm density.There's a lot of leeway here. What i did. Following the discussion at Weaverly i wanted to try the damask preset.Designed a curve 24 pixels wide with the P program and distorted it. Saved it as bitmap and then took it to Fiberworks.
Opened in sketchpad and copied to liftplan then repeat advance. After i had a nice advancing repeat i just threw ( like this as it conjures images of Mickey Mouse as the sorcerer's apprentice in Fantasia) the stuctures on the graphic image on the liftplan and dedicated part of the afternoon to weaving fun.
This is my quick and dirty take from The Woven Pixel. i can hear Alice from here grinding her teeth :)

Don't do as i do do as she says.
Also grateful to Suika for the inspired photo angle at the top.

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