Helen's Silk Scarf

Hi there, in my last post I said I would be working with silk from  Helen of Ripplescrafts lace weight collection.

Now I am able to explain a little bit more about this 'commission'. After my visit to the dye shed last month Helen asked me if I would weave a nice scarf in the lace weight silk to show off how her yarn could be used for something other than knitting. I was delighted to agree to this idea and although I don't have a lot of experience of weaving with silk thought it was something I could do.

The silk arrived by post and Helen had specially dyed a beautiful deep blue for warp and a warm gold for weft. I had promised to take pictures of the process for her but thought I would  share some of them with you here. 

I soon got started with the winding. In this picture you can see the blue yarn on the swift made for me by my husband Tony. It has a 'lazy Susan' as its base and so it rotates at great speed !

The yarn is being fed onto my ball winder.

I didn't realise it at the time but that was my first mistake ! It wasn't long until I discovered the yarn was getting tangled on the ball winder. I have since learnt that the best way to deal with slippery silk yarn is to warp it directly from the swift and miss out the ball winder stage. I needed help from Tony to untangle the mess and hand wind the silk into balls. Not the best of starts.

Next picture shows the warp on my warping board. The warp was just over 3 yards and wound in two bouts of 94 each.

Here I am with the two bouts onto the back rod and the lease sticks inserted in the cross ready to  place in groups of four in the raddle which is the black plastic strip you can see below the piece of protective non slip plastic.

I believe that a person who helps prepare a loom is called a 'tuner' ! Well, here is my tuner ! He is an expert winder onto the back beam whilst I keep things under control out front. He is looking a bit fed up as we had spent a long afternoon untangling balls of silk !!

Once onto the back beam I am ready to thread each of the  188 ends into a texsolv heddle. They have been double checked at this stage and are tied in bundles to keep them secure.

Next step is sleying the reed. In this case a 10 dent reed and two ends per dent except for my selvedge threads which are threaded three to a dent.

My next step is to tie up eight of my fourteen treadles to lift and lower the harnesses. The loom goes up on these trestles so that I can sit in the stool and get my legs in underneath. Saves a lot of bending and backache !

While I'm busy doing that here is my 'tuner' again ! This time he is winding the weft silk onto pirns for my end feed shuttle. This is his own gadget ! An electric drill and a dimmer switch is all I can tell you ! It allows the drill to go less fast. He is always keen to get as much onto a pirn as he can in spite of me saying I don't mind doing a join. You can see how full it is !! It is very much not my department !!

In the meantime, I am busy tying onto the front of the loom to complete the threading. Usually I tie on in small bouts but this time I took Susan Harvey's advice and lashed on with a cord. I didn't make a very tidy job of it but it certainly saved me some warp. There is hardly any waste with this method as you can begin weaving very quickly once the warp threads are spread out evenly. Susan

has just done a very good post on this technique, well worth a look.

You can see I have already done my sample and things are looking ok so far. The draft is an undulating twill.

This next picture shows that I have almost completed my hemstitching at the beginning of the scarf. I always do this as I find it makes such a nicely finished edge for the fringes.

Then, here is what it's all about ! I am actually weaving after all that preparation. Now this is supposed to be the easy bit and I thought it was but stay with me there is more to come !!

Once I have woven about 75" the scarf comes off the loom and onto my fringe twisting board.......

I have a fringe twisting gadget ( probably the only gadget not made by Tony !) First of all I attach four groups of threads to the clips and twist in a clockwise direction for 30 twists in this case.

Then I double up the twisted ends and twist anti clockwise for 30 twists. Then I tie a knot and pin all the fringe ends to the same place on the board so that they are all of equal length. You will not be surprised to know that I learnt this finishing technique from Susan.

Once the fringes are done it is into the wash tub. Warm water and a small about of silk washing detergent and leave to soak for 30 minutes.

After rinsing well and hanging up to dry I go off to do some knitting and relax. Just before going to bed I go to check on the scarf which is now dry. Panic !! There is something not right with the precious silk scarf. This next picture is not for the faint hearted and I have enlarged it so that you really can see what had happened. This now turns into 'the confessions of a weaver'. I had stripes in this scarf which were nothing to do with the undulating twill. However, they were to do with the way I did the supposedly easy bit, the weaving. The stripes were about 4" in width and I now confess that I have been in the habit of weaving that amount before I advance the warp. I have now learnt that that is very poor weaving practice especially when weaving with a twisted silk. I should have been advancing at the most, every inch to prevent this display of uneven beating.

I tossed and turned a bit that night, how was I going to tell Helen I had ruined her silk. 

The next morning, very early, an e-mail was winging its way to the northwest with photos and profuse apologies. The only good thing was that when I photographed the scarf as if it was being worn you didn't see the stripes !

Helen was very kind and immediately said she would dye more silk for me ! How's that for a wonderful response.

I posted off the offending scarf and wondered how she would react. Well, she loves it and even posted a blog about it which you can read  here. 

The silk is very lovely and the scarf is very soft and drapey. Only my inexperience with silk caused a problem so please don't be put off using it to make beautiful scarves or shawls.

Of course I am now scratching my head about which draft to use for the next one so that it will be right ! I am also training myself to advance the warp every inch or so and not try to fill the gap between front beam and reed !!

I have posted a lot of photos just in case there are some new weavers out there who might like to see more details of how I work with the loom.

Hope you have all enjoyed the 'confessions of a weaver'. I feel better for having shared it ! And special thanks to Helen for being so kind and understanding.

Ann Madsen Scarves

Hi there !

I have a lovely book produced by a Danish weaving school called Vaev i Tiden, it contains a number of very attractive projects but one of my favourites has always been a scarf by Anne Madsen. My amateurish interpretation of the Danish draft made me think it was a double weave project but I was wrong, it was double treadling not double weave ! Thanks to Ellen on Ravelry first of all for giving me the book as a gift but then for correcting my misunderstanding of the technique !!

The sleying and tie up was a bit different but I will come to that in a minute. I had made up my mind that this was going to be difficult and so did a practice project using some left over tencel 8/2. this is the result.......................

It was a very easy weave after all and I was completely captured by this draft and have been weaving it ever since !! First of all, I need to explain some things about the sleying and the tie up.

The draft only shows the threading for the pattern section not the plain weave section. The ends were threaded one per heddle and I used a 12 dent reed, sleying the plain weave at 2 threads per dent. The patterned area shown above was sleyed at 4 threads per dent.

The tie up was the part I had not previously experienced. harnesses 1 and 2 and treadles 1 to 8 had no tie up at all. Treadles 9 and 10 had no tie up for harnesses 3 to 7. So, treadles 9 and 10 dealt with the plain weave and treadles 1 to 8 dealt with the pattern column on harnesses 3 to 7. I thought this was going to be really difficult and I couldn't envisage how it would work until I actually got started. The treadling was incredibly easy and after a couple of cycles I had it mastered. It meant double treadling, my right foot was either on treadle 10 or 9 and my left foot was working treadle 8 down to 1, always pressing two treadles at once. I hadn't done anything like this before.

I liked the result so much that I decided to embark on a 'collection' ! You will remember that I had paid a visit to Helen from Ripples Crafts and I brought some yarn home with me. Seemed like an ideal project to use those yarns ! The first one was the pale chocolate coloured alpaca, cashmere and silk combined with some soy silk in orange for the pattern. Both were 24/2 yarns set at 24 ends per inch. Here we are on the loom........................

And here the fringes are being twisted.........................

And here is the finished result. I was thrilled with this, it looks very elegant and drapes beautifully  and so soft.

I even put one of my new labels on, it says it is handwoven in Scotland !!

Spurred on by my success I started another one ! This time the gold colour of Royal Baby Alapca and Silk at 24/2 with a black 10/2 tencel as the highlight. The result is fine but the thicker tencel yarn is not something I would repeat, it seemed to get very tight in the warp. there are two of these............

I'm not finished with this draft yet ! I had a vision that this would look good in classic black and red ! I had some black cashmere left over from a failed double weave project and decided it was time to use it up along with some red cashmere for the highlight.............

This one isn't finished yet but I think it will look ok and will complete my 'spring collection' !!!

Time I moved on, although I can think of lots more combinations to try and I am sure I will return to this before long !!

For those of you following Helen from Ripples Crafts progress you might be interested to read a very nice article about her business which appeared in a Scottish newspaper Turning ideas into industry. 

On her web site you will see that this week she has added laceweight and 4 ply silk to her stock. I know that this is beautiful silk and I am hoping to be weaving with some very soon ! Hopefully my next post will tell you all about it ! Quite an exciting project for me !

Many thanks for visiting. Hope you like my spring scarf collection as much as I do, do let me know, I enjoy your comments and appreciate them very much.

Visit to Ripples Crafts

This last week, Tony and I took ourselves to the north west of Scotland. Now most sensible people of our age don't move about much during the winter here in Scotland mainly because of the chance of bad weather including high winds and snow. However, I took a notion to go  wandering to visit Helen Lockhart of Ripples Crafts. I have been using Helen's hand dyed yarn for the last few months and just think it is the best yarn I have worked with. The only problem is, Helen lives way up in the north west highlands in a crofting area called Assynt. I have, I think found it on Google maps ! Helen's road end !

Anyway, to start the story, we drove to Inverness, about  5 hours driving away and stayed in a hotel there. The weather was amazing for the end of January and we had a lovely walk along the River Ness and then a part of the Caledonian Canal. This picture shows a set of locks used to raise and lower the boats and Tony is walking away from me !! 

Just to let you see how sunny it was, here I am scowling at the camera but looking like the Michelin man as it was still very cold !

The next day we drove another hundred miles from Inverness via Ullapool and Lochinver to a very small place called Clachtoll. For the last six miles the road became single track with passing places and many twists and turns but with stunning scenery. You must now look at the picture of Helen's road end ! The narrow white road going off to the right is where we headed and just over the brow of the hill there was the house. A wonderful place ! First thing to say is that they are 'off grid' i.e.. no mains electricity ! They do have a 'whirligig' though..................

And this is the view over the other side of it.......................

Sorry about the wire in the picture !

Now here is the person we really came to see. This is Helen in her dyeing shed showing just one or two of her skeins of hand dyed yarn.........................

Tony had the sense to leave us in peace to chat and he walked back the six miles to Lochinver where he waited for us to join him for lunch.

Meanwhile, I really enjoyed hearing from Helen how she dyes her yarn. She uses acid dyes and then all the dyeing is done in these two pots heated by gas ..........................

She mixes the dyes up in advance taking care to wear a mask and not breathe in the fine dust. The milk cartons work as storage bottles. She will dye two or three skeins at a time depending on the type of yarn. I was fascinated to see that the water is completely clear again once the yarn has taken up the dye. It was like magic ! Not nearly as messy as I thought it would be.

Helen buys very good quality yarn from one main supplier. I was saying how good it was to have never found a knot yet in any of her yarns. Knots are annoying when winding warps ! The selection of yarn types is very varied and always having new things added. She has lots of sock wool and other knitting yarns but my interest lay in the lace weight yarns for weaving. She has 16/2 merino tencel, 20/2 merino silk and 24/2 alpaca, cashmere and silk just as examples. I believe there is silk on the horizon as well ! 

Her colour palette takes its inspiration from the view from the shed window. The colours in the rocks. bracken, heathers, lichens and the waters in the many lochs around them. This photo doesn't do the colours justice but how many of us can boast a view like this while we are working ?

Helen's business is growing and has even reached Germany and Switzerland in the last week or so. I am so impressed that she can manage all of it herself from this tiny oasis amidst the mountains of northern Scotland. When she says she is going to the post office with parcels to mail she is really driving a six mile round trip on a very narrow sometimes dangerous road ! Not good news if you forget the milk !

Lunch time was soon upon us and so we set off on that six mile drive to Lochinver where Tony was waiting for us at the Mission. This used to be the Seaman's Mission but as a result of a local community initiative it is now a very nice eating place with accommodation. We had a lovely lunch and chatted more about Helen's involvement in the community and her love of the life here with her husband in Assynt.

This is a picture of the Mission................

We said our goodbyes and headed back the two hour drive to Inverness before it got dark.

Next day we had to head for home. We decided to take the longer more scenic route. It had been a few years since we had been in this area and it was another lovely day so we wandered ! Out of Inverness and down the shore of Loch Ness and the Caledonian Canal until we reached Fort William. memories of a time when we walked the Great Glen way and I even climbed Ben Nevis ! On through Glencoe with its imposing mountains capped with snow. Reminders of walking the West highland Way through these long miles !

Then we reached Loch Lomond, always such a beautiful place and so nice and quiet in the winter.

Here is a view of the famous Loch....................

And here is Ben Lomond, been up there too but not in the snow !

Home safely after a wonderful 700 mile trip. I don't know how it happened but some yarn stowed away in the boot of the car.......................

All fine lace weight for weaving. Carefully chosen to go with yarns I already have in my stash.

The chocolate brown, second from the left is already in use on the loom. You will have to wait for news of that though !

Hope you have enjoyed sharing the trip with me ! For more information about Helen's yarns check out her website Ripples Crafts and her Blog