I’ve tried everything else I can think of with the Rhythm Crackle draft. What’s left? Turned Crackle!

Turned Crackle is a one shuttle weave. The warp consists of alternating thick and thin threads. The weft consists of either the thick or the thin thread (your choice, but I prefer the thick). Berta Frey wrote about turning crackle drafts in her book Designing and Drafting for Handweavers. She notes that the treadling draft for classic crackle looks like a threading draft for Summer and Winter. By turning the treadling draft to become the threading draft, we can weave the design using one shuttle instead of two.

I tried two different versions with yarn sizes. The yellow and the orange are 16/2 unmercerized cotton (yellow) and 8/2 unmercerized cotton (light variegated) warps with 16/2 unmercerized cotton weft. By the time I got to the end of the orange one I was ready to tear my hair out. Much too slow! So, for the blue and the green one I used 8/2 unmercerized cotton weft. This time the weaving time was much more acceptable. For all the sett was 24 epi.

Here is the drawdown:

I used my weaving software and applied the “turn draft” function to my Rhythm Crackle drawdown.

These two details show the difference between using a thick weft (blue) and a thin weft (yellow). Besides being faster to weave, the blue just looks better. The yellow looks more honeycombed? (head scratcher there).