Tuesday, August 25, 2009

In Which I Learn a Few Things....

...mostly about the properties of yarn.



I spent yesterday playing with the drum carder I have on loan. Did I tell you I have a week off work? Anyway I borrowed my spinning groups drum carder to have a play with and produced some lovely batts of fibre to spin. Photos of all that tomorrow.



Today I thought I'd do a bit of weaving. I got out my Knitter's Loom and rummaged in the stash and found some lovely purple Rowan Dk and some matching mohair. There was only a little of the Rowan and my plan was to use it as the warp and some handspun and some mohair as the weft. But there wasn't enough of the Rowan so I added some warp strands of the mohair. I can't imagine what I was thinking. Warp yarns need to be strong and SMOOTH. (for non weavers the warp is the long threads that run the length of the weaving that you weave the shuttle over and under to create the fabric.) Well this mohair was strong but it was very, very fluffy. So fluffy that it stuck to itself with the slightest of provocation. My first problem was that when I tried to wind the warp thread onto the back beam the mohair fluff wound itself round the heddle bars and clung on for grim death. I poked and teased it and eventually got the warp all set up. When I started to weave a few rows with scrap yarn at the start though I hit the next problem - the mohair was so sticky I couldn't beat the threads into place! At this point I gave up and cut the mohair off the loom.



Lesson learned. Need to rethink this project.


BTW...still knitting.

1 comment:

Leigh Russell said...

This looks like complicated fun. I was very into embroidery at one time. Now I write. I see you're a fan of crime fiction and wonder if you've come across Cut Short, the first in a new series of crime thrillers, introducing a new female detective? Cut Short was published two months ago and has been selling so fast that my publisher has already had to reprint. More details on my blog if you're interested, where you can also read about my experiences as a new author.