At the Loom

I have definitely been at home during this Stay At Home time. I’ve been glad to spend some of that time at the loom. I’ve been taking photos with blog posts in mind, but haven’t written any about weaving. So these will be in no particular order—not that it matters here, but I usually do like to be methodical about the order of things.

Those three blankets on the bottom all came from one warp. They look quite a bit different before they are finished. The next photo shows what they looked like when they came off the loom and before being wet finished.

Wool products benefit form wet finishing or “fulling” after they are off the loom. I use the washing machine with hot water and controlled agitation. The wool fibers grab onto each other and become cohesive fabric. These blankets used the Timm Ranch yarn for warp. They will be on the website eventually bu that’s another process.

Part of my goal with my recent weaving is using up all the yarn that has been stored here. The weft in this one is a large skein of handspun yarn I found in one of the boxes.

This blanket will be on the Fibershed Marketplace website and will be part of the upcoming virtual Marketplace pop-up. The blue yarn was dyed with indigo by a friend of mine.

It is obvious that this blanket has some flaws—not that they will affect the usability of it, but they don’t photograph well. The weft in this one is the same as the warp, but dyed with coreopsis.

This is another photo of the blanket on the top of the pile in the first photo. This is all handspun warp—more yarn that has been accumulating forever. It’s feeling good to use up some of it. In this case the weft is the Timm Ranch yarn.

Here is how it looked while on the loom. This is another example of the difference fulling (wet finishing) makes.

I’ve also been weaving some scarves. I have warps already wound and dyed from BEFORE the accident. I’ll be glad to finish using up things that were Before now that my life seems to be sorted into Before and After mode.

This is the third scarf on that same warp. It was fun to have a shuttle that matched my yarn. That is one of the specially made shuttles that I picked up at Schacht Spindle Company’s 50th anniversary dealer weekend last fall Before the accident. It got misplaced in a bag of stuff that I lost track of from Before and was glad to find not long ago.

So what is on the loom now? This is almost 30 pounds of pale green cotton yarn that has been moved from shop to trailer to other trailer and back again. I had a plan for it but never found time to use it. Now I have this on the AVL loom and am weaving a new style of baby blanket.

Here is how it looks on the loom with a blue-green weft. I didn’t realize until I got ths all threaded that I didn’t wind as much as I thought and I also sleyed the reed at a different sett. So this is a 21 yard warp that is about 6” too narrow. It will be an experiment.

This is on one of tge other looms and will be more of the baby blankets that I have been making for years. When it is off the loom and washed the color will be obvious. More photos to follow when these are all finished.