End of the semester

Tomorrow i must give up my loom. I've done what I intended to do and a little of the options. But for me, there is never enough time with a loom. I just absolutely love weaving. I've done at least 4 complete yarn sequences, so I will be able to do four experimental treatments. I've also done a small section of double cloth in which I've separated the textural weaves of the silk/wool and the cotton. I used silk as the weft for each.

Thee have been several significant surprises. I tried to choose silk, cotton, and wool yarns that were approximately the same thickness, but I must have been off some. The wool side of the warp has been significantly thicker than the silk side, so that as I wove and wound the fabric onto the breast beam, the fabric built up faster on the wool side. At first, this just created a bit of a gap on the lesser side, a noticeable horizontal shift on one side each time. But eventually it was impossble to tighten both sides of the cotton part of the warp. I added weights to the cotton side and eventually some sticks to take up the loose part at one side of the warp beam.

I have also discovered that the textured weaves I chose accumulate at different rates when an equal number of picks of each wave are used for the double cloth. I was able to do a bit of experimenting today, doing a whole repeat of the top cloth of the double weave and then a complete repeat of the bottom. This left gaps in each because the reed could not come all the way back to the last weaving, but I think the two layers would give an interesting effect by showing through these gaps. It's a very shor segment, though.

I wish there were time for more experiments. I've got about a yard worth of warp (cotton got used the fastest somehow) left, but only one day.

I also wish I could leave the work on the loom long enough to give a presentation to the class that will be weaving the first of the year. I haven't even met the weaving teacher, and I was really hoping to.

On to the next part of the project. I will probably bring the left over yarns home with me and work with them at home using my bulky knitting machine during the holidays. I also have ot finalize my plans for the pieces I have completed weaving and consider what I might do when the looms are available again. I might switch looms. I might do an idea I have for bought devore cloth based on the shadows cast by trees on the dirty windows of a bus I was riding. I may want to do some silk screens. And I definitely want to become acquainted with the machines for embroidery.