Afghan Progress

Sunday I started weaving on the afghans. With this warp it is essential to use a temple. I really wish I had rotary or ring temples when I'm weaving full width, and perhaps after Convergence I will. At least I'm hoping Fireside will be there so I can look at their temples. I hear a number of AVL owners have set their looms up with the Fireside temples, so we'll see.


The first afghan was woven using a fairly dark muted blue.




The second was woven with black as weft. You can mainly see the difference in the red stripe. In the blue weft afghan the red is shifted slightly to the purple end of the scale and the varigated stripes look bluer.

I had a picture of how I mark flaws, but see that I neglected to load it. Since loading a bunch of pictures is a bit of a pain, I'll just describe it.

The warp had some knots in it and I chose to deal with them in the loom by using Kerstin's hint of adding the repair thread before cutting out the original (knotted) end. After weaving so that old and new ends are overlapped for about 1.5 inches I cut out the knot and draped the original end over the back of the warp. When I finish the afghan I tie the original end in again. This way there is no need to repair afterwards. The repair ends hang over the warping valet. I didn't think to take a picture of that but can if anyone is interested.

Unfortunately a couple of the knots didn't subscribe to this plan and naughtily got woven into the cloth. (Bad pun - sorry!)

Anyway, I keep a tapestry needle handy with a contrasting thread in it and when I spot these miscreants sew the thread through the web in an "X". When I'm rolling the cloth off onto the inspection table I can easily spot these flaws and mend them.




After weaving two afghans it was time to cut in the next colour. Sorry about the photo - it was dark and gloomy under the warp and I see now it isn't in very good focus.

After unwinding the new bout and laying it flat on the woven cloth I cut the old warp and laid it onto the web. Carefully selecting the ends in their sequence (hopefully), I tied the new warp to the old. I tried working toward me and away and haven't decided which is more efficient yet. I'll get more practice when the next two afghans are woven.




This looks a bit of a rat's nest but really the threads are all nicely tied together. I used an overhand knot because I really don't want these knots to come undone. Certainly not while I'm easing them through the heddles and reed!




The tension on the second beam was let off so that the warp could roll forward freely and I stuck a stick in the loops because I didn't want any errant ends wrapping around the sectional dividers. In this photo the knots have been eased through the heddles and I'm about to ease them through the reed.




And here we are - all ready to go again. Unfortunately today was a write off for a number of reasons but I did get the afghan warp ready for Wednesday. Tuesday I've got appointments all day and doubt I'll get to the AVL. But it looks good that I can finish weaving on Thursday or Friday and begin fringe twisting, which will take as long as the shuttle throwing.

Currently reading The Stone Butterfly by James D. Doss

Ready to Thread

Here is the warp in all it's colourful glory. You can clearly see the gaps where the varigated yarns will go.

In order to transfer the ends of the warp to just behind the heddles, I cover the second beam with some plastic. The 6 bouts of varigated yarns have already been transferred behind the heddles, leaving the rest of the colours taped to the beam, ready to be cut in as soon as the first two afghans are woven.



Since there were only 6 bouts of the varigated, I didn't hang the second stick but transferred the six bouts of varigated to the stick with the main warp. In this photo I've already done the 3 bouts on the far side and am about to do the last three.

The empty stick was removed after the transfer just to get it out of the way.

While I can thread from two sticks, the top one isn't as stable because it's hung from cords so it will make threading somewhat easier (and therefore faster) to consolidate all the bouts on one stick and tape it firmly to the loom behind the heddles.

I'm not sure where today has gotten to - I had great intentions for getting a bunch of stuff done this morning, but seem to have frittered it away on various and sundry distractions. Like reading through the paperwork to apply for an Ashford dealership. :}

I've been saying for years I want to cut back on all the stuff I do, but the opportunity presented itself to take over a dealership so Doug and I talked about it and since he wants to retire in a couple or three years we decided to go this route and see how it works out.

He likes messing with the equipment involved in spinning and weaving, and he's much more comfortable at being a salesperson than I am so we've been looking at doing more shows. Having him come along to share the driving and set up/tear down will take a huge load off of me, doing it all by myself. Adding an Ashford dealership would help expand our offerings. Doug talked with the distributor this morning and now I just need to get the info to him and hope for a favourable result.




In the meantime I did finish weaving the placemat warp and worked out a simple stripe sequence for a tea towel warp. Here are the first 6 inches of the warp wound onto the warping board.

There is a meeting I need to attend tonight so I think rather than start threading the AVL I am going to continue winding the tea towel warp so that I can get it into the loom tomorrow. That way I can do my daily 45-60 minutes of 'therapy' weaving. My bp is still throwing small spikes, although it's been much better for the last week or so. Since exercise still seems to be the most effective way to calm a spike down, there is high incentive for me to keep at least one loom weave-able at all times. :)

Beaming the Afghan Warp

Warp beamed on smaller second beam



Main warp being beamed on upper 1 yard beam

With my trusty chart close to hand I started beaming the main warp this morning.

My chart lays out how many sections of each colour: A will have x sections, B y, C z and so on.

I count out the cords for each section grouping them by how many needed for each colour. Then as I'm winding, I check and double check to make sure I've got the correct count for each colour.

You can see the empty sections in the main warp where the varigated wound onto the second beam will be threaded. This yarn is fairly elastic so there should not be any trouble having the colours be slightly out of alignment. I've done this successfully before with 2/8 cotton (warp twist) and there was no sign in the finished cloth that sections were slightly out of sync.

The cords for the empty sections on the main beam have been taped down in their section so that they don't tangle or in any way mess up the warp.

As I finish each pair of afghans I'll stop and cut out the varigated, tie the next colour on to the old warp and pull the new threads through pinning them to the already woven cloth (actually the header or cutting line between each afghan) and resume weaving.

While this is somewhat fiddly to set up in the long run there will be less loom waste than if I dressed the loom three times, and more efficient in terms of time - only setting up the loom once instead of three times. The amount of fiddle time tying on the new colours will be a tiny fraction of the time invested in dressing the loom 58" wide.

Currently reading Witch's Tongue by James D. Doss

Designing the Afghan Warp

meter/counter set up for winding spools


meter/counter with tensioner



meter/counter with channeled wheel for measuring yarn

Got the stripe sequence for the afghan warp designed and numbers crunched for how much yarn to wind onto the spools.

I'm working with four different coloured stripes, one of which will be a varigated yarn that will get changed out after weaving two afghans. The varigated yarn will be wound onto the second beam, which is a half yard circumference and is positioned below the big (one yard) main beam.

Over the years I've found that it is much easier to beam the small lower beam first rather than after the big beam has been wound, so I'm starting with the varigated yarns.

The counter is a very accurate (and very expensive) meter made for the textile industry. I bought it back in the '80's when I started weaving for a fashion designer, doing humongous warps and weaving many yards of the same fabric. I needed a way to measure how many yards I'd woven so that I didn't weave too little or too much of each fabric. A measuring tape was not efficient, so I asked Doug to source a proper meter for me. We eventually found this and bought it through an industrial supplier. I think it was around $150.00 at the time, but since I was using the meter to bill the fashion designer and she needed to have an accurate measurement of the fabric, it was well worth the cost.

There were several options for measuring wheels, and we bought two of them. One is a textured wheel that is used for measuring fabric on the loom. The one shown here has a channel and is used for measuring yarn.

This particular meter measures feet - in terms of billing the fabric, a foot meter allowed me to bill in units of 1/3 of a yard.

For doing yarn, it was awkward to hold the yarn as it was winding to provide tension so Doug scavanged the tensioner off the second pirn winder to use to tension the yarn from the cone. With the yarn under tension (a yarn under tension is a yarn under control) I can pay attention to winding the spool and watching the numbers flip by on the counter and not worry about what's happening at the cone end of the yarn.

To work out how much yarn to wind onto each spool I first worked out my stripe sequence in units of one inch (my sectional has 1" sections).

Then I counted how many sections for each colour. This number was then multiplied by the number of yards I wanted my warp to be - with a small fudge factor in case of oopsies.

This number was multiplied by 3 (the meter measures in feet, remember) so I then knew how many feet each spool required.

I only have 60 spools, and since I need 20 spools per section, I have just exactly enough spools to wind the varigated yarn. Once that beam is wound, I'll strip whatever is left on the spools in order to do the other three colours required for the warp.

It's a lot of standing around watching numbers flip by, but since I can only get the Bambu 7 on cones and I didn't want to invest in sufficient cones to beam directly from the cones, standing winding is what I'm going to be doing for the next couple of days.