Relearning

I know you miss the brilliant photos to go with my witty, articulate texts. :-}

The camera shop gave me a quote for cleaning the sensor, or whatever needs cleaning, much less than Ben and I had expected, so about today, my camera will undergo surgery. Without him I have felt like, as my friend Gino described, an Italian with her hands tied, or, speechless. So I've been working away quietly.

Yesterday I worked on the first piece on the merino warp, with merino/mohair weft. It started with editing the draft.

With 2/20 cotton, I allow floats over between 11 and 13 warps/wefts, woven at 36DPI and in approximately balanced weave. With my normal merino warp, at 18EPI, I keep this to 8 or 9. In the current piece, I'm suing the merino/mohair weft, which needs to be packed in tightly for better drape and sheen, so I can allow warp floats over 9 or even 10 wefts, but weft floats over perhaps 7 warps. But because the yarns are thicker than 2/20 cotton, it also means I can make a fussier (in the draft program) draft and still make individual threads, particularly the warp, stand out.

At first I set out to edit an old draft, but remembering that with this warp/weft combination, the draft gets squashed, too, so I ended up making three new drafts, and I chose one with 848 picks to one repeat. I intended to mirror repeat this to weave 1695 picks. And started weaving.

With my most familiar combination, merino warp with Possum/Merino/Silk weft, I need about 1500 picks, give or take 100 picks depending on the draft, to weave approximately 180cm. So I had thought, even with the hard beating, 1700 picks would be enough. But after weaving 200 and 500 picks and measuring, I remembered that I need more 2800-3000 picks to get 180cm, the same as the old Paua. I new all this when I used to use these yarns more often.

But I'd forgotten since I've become engrossed with my cotton yarns. So this morning, I must rework the draft by between 100-120 picks at the end, where the mirror occurs, and I'll weave top to bottom, then back to the top, then back down again. And if the final piece is longer than 180cm, I'm not worried.

This one is not as silly as it looks. I only tried something new in the tie up.