Weaving twill

I finally got the heddle to bend to my will. Mostly...

My twill might only be good enough for country music as they say, but it is MINE and it is TWILL made with VIKING loom. And it is a good start.

I stringed the heddles one stick at a time. I found it easiest to separate the warp yarns to (in this case) four, tie and weight them and then use a big needle (nalbinding needle is my tool of choise) to gouge the heddle and tie it. My heddle is continuous, again because I find it easier to get the length of heddles uniform.

This is how it looks. Weights are up in this picture, so the warp isn´t as straight as it really is while weaving.

The first centimeters of weaving. Again I made the warp with a tablet woven band. And then I sew the band (and the warp with it) to a piece of flat beam with a row of holes in it. (the white one in the picture. It´s a piece of old rooflist that has drilled holes every 1,5 cm) Then that beam is tied to the actual upper beam of the loom. The drilled list is varpapuu in Finnish, but I don´t know what´s it in English. 

There´s an idea for a blog entry: weaving/craft vocabulary in Finnish an English. And possibly Russian too. Some use for my translation studies...

Oh-kay. Here´s the loom all heddled and ready to go. Three heddle sticks and the kneebeam of the loom are numbered 1-4, from up to down. And from back to front, which means that if I pull the highest stick forward (no 1), it brings furthest row of warps to the front. Second stick operates the middle row, third the last row that is behind the kneebeam. The warps in front of kneebeam are number four, and they just stay there. 

Sheds go as follows: 

1st is heddle 1 forward, weft behind it and warps no 4 on the kneebeam.

2nd shed is heddle 1 stays and heddle 2 joins it, weft behind them.

3rd is heddles 2 and 3 forward

4th shed is 3 forward and weft behind it and the heddle 4 on the kneebeam.

In this case 1st shed is the sonnovabee that takes most energy to get clear, as it contains the warps from the kneebeam and warps from the furthest back in the front and the middle ones behind. 

Heddles better be long for this one... Mine still aren´t long enough, but it´s manageable.

Four rows of weights.

The varpapuu again. Also the many hues of brown in my warp can be seen here. Artistic. Very. And absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I had not enough of any one colour to make a 55 cm wide warp... 

Here´s some of the ready woven cloth. Different hues of brown actually do look quite nice.... 

And here is the reborn binding of that diagonal beam holder. Some adjustments took care of the problem, and the trouble I had the first time is all gone.

Firstly, we made longer varpapuu, that reaches the holder with the beam.

Secondly we drilled 8mm wide holes through the beam about 20 cm from both ends to make the binding of varpapuu to the beam less prone to slip.

These two would have done the trick, I think, but to make sure, hubby reinforced the binding of the holders to the uprights with leather strips and small nails. He even wet the leather first, so that it shrunk when in place.

Beside the black leather bindings look cool!

My loomy loom -the building and troubleshooting

Now I guess it´s time to introduce my warp-weighed loom.

Hubby and I built it in the summer. Nice little project for semi-accomplished carpenter and semi-able helper...

We used round wood beams from the local hardware. The frame beams are 4,4 cm thick. I Would actually use flat wood (like 2x2 or even 2x4 for a really wide loom) if we did it now. Easier to make holes in the right places and also easier to attach the holders for the upper beam where the warp is tied.

Here is the first time the basic frame is up. Joint by wooden pegs, notches for better fit and ultimately tablet woven bands to tie it tight. We used "double beaming" on the top of the frame to make it more sturdy. The frame beam (seen here) and separate upper beam with Y-shaped holders.

The Very Thorough And Official Blueprint

These diagonal notches for the upper beam holders were a bitch and a half...

Test assembly number two to place aforesaid holders.

Note the heddle stick (the long one in the middle) and the heddle stick holders, that are ingeniously pegged to holes in the side beams... Also these holders I´d like to modify some. The apparatus holding the heddle stick drawn when weaving is basically just a wooden peg here. It´s easy to make and okay to use, but it could be a bit sturdier. The heddle stick sometimes slips if there´s a lot of tension in the warp. Also, the places for heddle stick holders could start lower and be closer to each other. Weaving twill I need to get the heddles just the right length to get all the sheds to open enough (or at all...).

And now we are ready to rumble! 

Bands for assembly and the weddle holder sticks artistically dumped on my precious heirloom chest from the year 1839.

Up and ready for testing!

This bind caused a lot of gray hair, as it wasn´t tight enough this way. The weight of the warps and the jolting of actual weaving caused the upper beam to roll when it definetly should not, so we made some changes here. I´ll introduce the changes when I get some photos.

Making the first warp using the loom frame. Handy. I made this one the traditional way i.e. tablet woven band, whose wefts are the warps of the future cloth.

Ready for the tedious and time-consuming task of threading the heddles. More of this nicety when I introduce my WIP, which is twill. Oh boy, when this photo was taken I knew nothing of heddling... 

Weaving. My beautiful weaving sword on the heddle... Some things are best done by a real craftsman (my father in law in this case). Note also the tablets on the edges of cloth: I tried to figure how strengthening the edges that way would work without finding any instructions. The principle is sound, but it slowed my weaving some.

And heres one of my three test pieces from that first warp. It was three coloured linen warp, and this is weaved so, that only warp threads can be seen. I´m finishing the end with another tablet woven band. And that isn´t as easy as I thought... I tend to make the band too tight, which draws the cloth quite unaesthetically... Practise makes perfect I guess.

So. Linen was easy. Twill is proving to be more challenging. More of that later...

Update on the wool front

I spent the last (hideous) week home alone with the girls, so no opportunities to run away and write the blog. Or just run away. 

For the record here, I´m not a very good (or willing) housewife or stay-at-home mother...

But I did some nice things too.

I visited these cuties when the girls were at school and in the daycare. Poor babies are all sheared... The grey girl is Aland sheep and the white ones are Finnish sheep.

Apparently the Aland sheep are more goat-like than the Finnish variety. They climb and are a bit smarter all around. The farm I visited (this one, check it out both in Web and especially live!!) also had Gotland sheep, and the lady of the house told that they are the bastardly fence-jumpers and don´t much care about human help in lambing. 

Now I want some sheep...

Well, I got a part of some sheep... Three and half kilos of two-layered wool for the long winter evenings.

Here´s how it looks separated. Up there is outer layer, which is like human hair: long fibres, very coarse and slippery... And Pure Hell to spin with my skills...

Lower two stashes are the soft, thin and fluffy fibres from the inner layer. Wonderfully greasy and looks like thin ribbons of silver and mithril up close. I can see some Dwarven projects in the future...

I´m in the middle of some weaving at the moment, so wools are on the hold for now... until comes the moment I need more potent stress-relief than fighting with the heddling of my loom...

Considering that I´m doing the heddles (3x150pieces, one by one) the second time now (blew it the first time. Realised it when I was all done...) that day might not be far.

Warp weights

A little spin-off project concerning my loom: Me and my ever-present child labour made weights from clay. I´m testing different shapes and materials now: Stones (courtesy of my father-in-law and his stone carving tools), bags of sand (if someone wonders why there is a bit less sand in the nearby playground, I confess. I´ll return it, I promise...) and these clay ones in two basic shapes: round with a hole in the middle, as seen up there

...and then these conish-shaped ones. 

The flat round ones are as I´ve seen in pictures and desriptions of Viking and Northern Europe looms. The cones are inspired by ancient Greek loom weights. 

Incidentally I found a great lecture about textile production in ancient Greece. Here´s a Youtube link for it. That lecture gave me the idea to stamp the weights with my mark (I ended up with my initials in Khuzdul runes of Tolkien), as the women evidently did in ancient Greece (well, they didn´t use runes obviously... But e.g. stamped their heirloom ring or scrathced some other mark on the clay)

Oh, and here is another great lecture about textile archeology in Iceland. I highly recommend!

So far I deem the round clay ones my favourite. And the stones with flattened bottoms and hooks inserted on the top are a close second. The clay cones have a habit of hanging all skewed (at least the way I tie them. Maybe the Greeks knew a better way...) and the sandbags slip through the knots too easily.

But the cones were so much fun to make... It was so easy to slip something special there. 

Like these kitties... The left one is mine and on the right my daughter´s.

Or this poor kitty, who already lost an ear...

Or this Slytherin loom weight, because why not...

All the clay ones weigh approx. 400g (I used 500g of clay for each, so it looses 20% of its weight when drying). With the stones the trouble is they vary more. The ones I have weigh from 530g to 730g. I prefer the smaller ones.

...Except this dude is my favourite. It weighs exactly 666g. Heavy Metal!

I ordered the clay from web bookstore (!!) called Ad Libris and 10kg cost a little over ten euros. Shipping free of charge. The making was so much fun that I think I´ll get some more. And also my motley collection of weights is pretty unpractical, as I have not enough of any one variety for weaving.

And now for something completely different...

My current projects have nothing to report at the moment, so I dug up some older ones to flaunt. I was a bit surprised to realise they are all done this year. And they aren´t by far the only ones. Crafty year.

Here´s my masterpiece. I started in January and finished by March, I guess. Portraits are double knit (so there´s a negative image on the backside) and name tags (in Dwarven runes, mind you!) are cable knit with two colours. I made the charts too, so if you´re interested...

This one was actually made last December, as it was a christmas present for my uncle. Why Lenin? It´s a long story that boils down to bad jokes. Double knit again.

I do like double knitting, as you see... This one was made for an awesome Star Wars fan. 

And then there´s this. I really enjoyed making and braiding the beard. It was good practise for doll hair... Come winter, my hubby promised to use it. I´m going to make sure he does.

When I wear this thing I look like I´m one of the ZZ Top...

And the dolls. (The big one I bought second hand)

Meet Frodo, Ginny (sitting on the drum), Peter-Johannes, Anna, Raisa, Kauko and Siiri. I intend to make more, and maybe introduce these guys in their own posts.

These gauntlets don´t look much in this picture, but they have nice braided medallion on the back of the hand and around the wrist it says Khazad (dwarf) in cableworked runes.

Some more cablework. This one also says Khazad.

And this one Amralime (my love/I love you). Longer word for a bigger head...

So the big knitting themes of past year have been double knit, cables and dolls. When the mood swings me that way again, I´ll continue with the doll project. There are many national costumes to knit still, and I have some other weird ideas too...

Now we are getting somewhere...

Aand... spinning done for now (ran out of wool...)

Here´s the results before plying. There´s my precious black Finnish sheep wool and some dark brown merino/alpacca rovings (which is actually darker than the "black" natural wool)

Traditional working with style and entertainement...

All plied (or plyed? Halp!!) and washed! The grey yarn is an experiment from some odds and ends of very dry and overwashed felting wool.

No worries! I get to feed my addiction very soon, as I contacted a local sheeper who raises Aland breed, a very ancient and original type of sheep, that still has the two-layered coat that modern breeds lack. It is from that kind of wool that the garments in Iron age (and later too) were made. It might make me a wool nerd to admit I´m excited... Nah, who cares. I AM EXCITED!!

Shearing happens in a week or so, and after that I shall go and buy (hopefully) enough wool to keep me occupied for a long time.

Oh, and then there´s this. I´ve been roaming around and harvesting nettles. Apparently that is the material of choice for real traditionalists. And also easier to prepare than flax. That remains to be seen, but I so have to try.

Nettle and hemp were far older plant materials for yarn than flax here in the north. And later nettle cloth was the choice for nobles, because it was softer against the skin than flax.