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Crackle Evolution

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This is a towel woven with 6/2 unmercerized cotton in a design that originated probably in the 1940’s. I took it from a Practical Weaving Suggestions weaving pamphlet published by the Lily Mills Company in 1957, where it was attributed to someone named Heather Thorpe from 10 or 12 years prior. The design in the pamphlet is called Rhythm Pattern and was written for Crackle Weave. It came with a woven sample that caught my eye probably about 25 years ago.

This is the page from the pamphlet. It shows the Crackle threading for the Rhythm Pattern

This is the profile draft of the Crackle threading:

I wove a small finger tip towel from the pattern on an old table loom way back when:

Sidebar: We bought a c.1915 house in the 90’s that had been “updated” in the 50’s with some Mid-century modern Formica that was yellow green, complete with a kidney bean shaped kitchen table. That Formica was everywhere, but I loved it. I wove that towel as a kind of homage to the period.

But, it seems I wasn’t done with that design. About 10 or so years after that I became interested in Diversified Plain Weave using cotton and rayon chenille. I wove several scarfs in that weave, always starting with a profile draft. I seem to have lost the drafts for that scarf, probably when I switched software or upgraded my computer. Here is the scarf, again in greens:

Fast forward to now. I took the four block profile draft, expanded it, and, using block substitution in pixeLoom, transformed the Rhythm Crackle draft into a 16 harness Turned Taqueté straight draw weaving draft. I used 6/2 cotton (more greens!), because I had it on hand, not because I like it very much. But I enjoyed the process, and I think I will like it better as a scarf in 8/ tencel :-).

I recommend that you explore block substitution with this profile draft and see what you come up with!

New! Rhythm and Blues Turned Taqueté Towels Weaving Pattern for 4 Harnesses

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Four harness weavers, this one’s for you! Just listed in my Etsy shop, this pattern with drafts for three different variations of my straight draw Turned Taqueté weaving pattern. You get three WIFs plus a PDF instruction booklet. Click on the “Etsy” button on the right side of this post to go to my shop.

The same pattern for eight harnesses is coming soon.

Group portrait of Towels #1, #2, and #3:

New Turned Taqueté Design!

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I’ve been working on a new pattern design for my Etsy shop (see right 🙂 ). And I thought towels would be awesome. And what better structure for towels than … Turned Taqueté (or Jin if you prefer)? This time I’m aiming for the 4 harness weavers and the 8 harness weavers. Yes, two patterns will be offered. Same design, but easily woven on either 4 or 8 harnesses. Cool, huh?

I wove these towels in 8/2 unmercerized cotton sett at 24 ends per inch. As you know, Turned Taqueté structure alternates dark and light threads to create the design. I used navy as the dark option, and a selection of blues and green for the light option.

This is Turned Taqeuté on a straight draw threading. Four harness weavers will thread the loom 1,2,3,4 all the way across, alternating dark and light threads. The pattern is created by changing the color order for each new block. The difference for eight harness weavers will be the ability to spread the threading over all available shafts.

I’ve started writing up the patterns (slowly). I’ll be announcing the patterns soon!

This and That

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Here we are at the end of the year, and I just have a few loose ends to tidy up.

You might recall that this was on the loom a couple of months ago. It is my version of the Vlak-in-Vlak-in-Vlak pattern. If you still haven’t gotten a copy of that pattern, I gave the link to purchase it in my last post. This is not my original pattern. I’m just a satisfied customer.

Here are photos of my finished scarf. I wove it in 8/2 rayon, and the structure is Turned Taqueté on 12 harnesses. I love wearing it.

After that was done, I wove a batch of Circles and Checks towels on my 8 shaft loom, and they are in my Etsy shop. Here are some photos of those beauties:

Next, I want to give a special shout out to Bradley Rohr. He has an Etsy shop in which he is offering for sale variations of my Circles pattern in Wif form and with PDF pattern instructions. Bradley has very kindly given me credit for the original pattern. Always appreciated!

Here is the link to his shop: https://www.etsy.com/shop/BradsWarped. You can get a pattern pack of 6 patterns, or you can buy them individually.

Sales from his Etsy shop raise money for Ukraine. According to Bradley, he and his husband have been able to raise nearly three thousand dollars this year for the UNHCR Ukrainian refugee relief, as well as one thousand dollars for direct support to people in Ukraine for food, diapers, boots for soldiers, etc. This is a great cause, and the patterns are well written and provide endless entertainment!

I wove samples each pattern at the end of my towel warp (see above), and here is a taste:

Until next year!

Palate Cleanser

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In September I was weaving text and getting up to speed with my Tempo Treadle setup. When I finished the Bon Appetit mat, I was pretty dissatisfied with how it turned out. If I’m honest, 16 harnesses is really not enough for a good rendering of text in weaving when using 3/1 twill or broken twills as the foreground and background. The letters aren’t scaled up enough for clarity, and it kind of all turns to mush when it is washed. Sigh.

So I needed a change of pace, a palate cleanser, if you will, and the stars aligned quite nicely when I decided to turn my attention to the pattern called Vlak-in-Vlak-in-Vlak. This pattern is woven in Summer and Winter. It has been floating around the interweb for a while. It’s very intriguing. But it’s hard to find it. Links to it are good for a while and then they don’t work anymore. Years ago, somehow I had managed to find a Dutch language copy of the pattern and printed it out. That’s the first part of the story.

The second part of the story is a posting by Bonnie Inouye on a Ravelry Warped Weavers forum on Drafting Turned Taqueté. In 2020 she whipped up a short tutorial and drawdown using just part of the Vlak pattern in Turned Taquete using 12 harnesses. I became obsessed with working this out myself using her method, and I finally was successful. For those interested, this is the link to that posting. (You have to be a member of Ravelry, BTW. Scroll down the page until you find a posting titled “Creating TT drafts with blocks or Images”). The point of this exercise was to draft a Turned Taqueté design with clean lines separating the elements, rather than moving along a diagonal or a curve.

So I was a busy little bee for a while, working on the draft, working on the colors that I ultimately chose. Eventually I came up with this draft:

And I posted it on my Facebook page. People seemed to really like it. I was really excited. I started weaving, and it looked really good. I began thinking that I might work up a pattern for it that I could put in my Etsy shop.

However, I knew that at some point I would have to contact the designer of this wonderful draft. Who turns out to be Ineke Elsinga of the weaving studio Tissien in Haarlem, Netherlands. I emailed concerning my use of her weaving draft, and she kindly informed me that the pattern is copyrighted. Also, it isn’t free. She sent me the link for purchasing the pattern and I did so. The website for Tissien is in Dutch, so when accessing it, it works better if you use a browser, like Google Chrome, with a translation feature. But even if you go to the website, the pattern link is hard to find. So, if you would like this pattern, which costs 15 Euros, here is the link that will get you there:

https://tissien.nl/#!/Vlak-in-vlak-in-vlak-pattern-woven-in-summer&winter-EN-translation/p/306531328/category=21408636

Further, the pattern is for personal use only, for making items for gifts or oneself. Commercial use is not allowed. If you publish or exhibit something using this pattern, the following line must be used in full: Design © 2011 Ineke Elsinga – http://www.tissien.nl. This copyright ownership is clearly stated on the first page of the pattern and when purchasing the pattern.

I’m just glad that I can weave it for myself. And it makes a lovely break from the frustrations of weaving text.

Placemats Again

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Back toward the end of last year I was planning a Turned Taqueté circles placemats warp in Mid-Century Modern colors. Meanwhile I got a special order for the circles placemats in blues before I could get my act together, so that went on the loom first. Once finished, I did something I’ve never done, but have been tempted to do for a little while.

I tied on a new warp to the old warp. And aside from a couple of tying mistakes (don’t ask) it worked very well. And because I tied on to the old warp, I was able to eke out one more placemat than I thought I was going to get from the warp. Pretty cool!

Here they are still on the loom:

Here are the finished placemats, now residing in my Etsy shop:

The warp is 5/2 cotton, sett at 24 ends per inch, and the same width on the loom as my ubiquitous dishtowels. It was fun working in an entirely new colorway. I seemed to be in a rut in that regard, so a completely different style concept was very welcome.

The warp that I tied onto is still in place, waiting for my next project, which will be dishtowels. And how great is it that the towels will be the same sett and width as the placemats?

On Circles

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I’ve been weaving a lot of circles lately. Thinking it might be time for a another blog post. And trying to decide on a snappy title, something to do with circles. I found some circly phrases on Google: circle game, full circle, circling the drain, circle the wagons, magic circle. Nothing spoke to me. So I went with a title that hinted of treatises. Very dignified, no?

I have just finished another dishtowel warp. The Turned Taqueté draft is such a classic by now. I see lots of examples of towels on Instagram and Facebook, and the multitude of color combinations and treadling variations are wonderful. In my last blog post I hinted at a new variation that I was working on, but, sadly, I was disappointed once I committed to trying to weave it.

But this last warp does have a new and improved aspect that I would like to share, albeit very subtle.

This is the draft as it was published by Handwoven magazine last year. Each circle depends for its roundness on the repeats of treadles 2414 or 1828. This draft presupposes a warp of 8/2 cotton sett at 24 epi. But. Sometimes I found myself beating a bit harder and finding my circles somewhat …. compressed.

I found that by adding a half unit in each of the circled (treadling) areas, that is, starting each area with a 1 and ending with a 1x, that the roundness and predictability of roundness vastly improved.

And, it turns out this is a much easier sequence to remember.

This is the other circles warp that I’m weaving right now on my Ashford. It is a 16 harness point twill draft and comes from the collection called Thrilling Twills by the late Ingrid Boesel from Fiberworks. The possibilities are endless on this kind of draft. Change the liftplan (or tie-up) and you have a piece that is entirely different.

As soon as I started my adventures on the table loom, I realized that I liftplans were essential to making any kind of progress when weaving.

[A liftplan is a treadling scheme which is particularly useful for floor looms having a direct tie-up, one shaft per treadle; for dobby looms, mechanical or computer; and for table looms. The tie-up part of the layout is either empty or appears as a straight diagonal line.]

I am a very visual person, and as it turns out, I find that liftplans are infinitely better for visualizing a weave design. Consider the Turned Taqueté draft in liftplan mode:

While I would never attempt to weave from this on my treadle loom, someone with an 8 harness table loom would find this a very snappy alternative, no?

My journey into weaving theory has included a deep dive into the book The Liftplan Connection by Alice Schlein. This is a manual which teaches how to use Photoshop and pattern presets to design for dobby looms. Liftplans! My version of Photoshop is a very up to date Photoshop 2020. But with persistence I’ve been able to take her tutorials using a much older version and make them work. Mostly.

Circles Fad

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Yesterday I was noodling around the Long Thread media site looking for some Loom Theory downloads I purchased a few months ago, and I came across this:

I think it’s fairly recent, and you can find it at this link:

https://handwovenmagazine.com/join-in-the-circles-and-checks-weaving-fad/

I don’t know if I quite agree with the use of the word “fad”. I prefer obsession or passion, if you will 😉 . However, the nice thing is the wif downloads from this little article are free.

So, if there is anyone out there who still doesn’t have the wif and is pining for a great weaving project, this is the place to go.

Stay safe!

A Tale of Two Warps

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It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. Worst: well, no need to explain that. Best: unlimited weaving with no end in sight! Woohoo!

On my eight shaft loom I’ve got a dishtowel warp in 8/2 unmercerized cotton in blues and greens, and I threaded it for Turned Taqueté according to the ideas I was exploring in my last post. I threaded a straight draw following a light/dark color sequence all the way across. I used a two-block profile draft from Jakob Angstadt. The first block is on harnesses 1-4, and the second block is on harnesses 5-8. The design is symmetrical, and I am keeping to color combinations of dark/dark, dark/light, light/dark and light/light in treadling.

This is the first towel, for which I used only a dark blue weft.

This is the second towel, for which I used only a light weft:

And the underside:

As you can tell, I’m big into the checks. And there a few different ways I can play this. I have four more to go, so my next move is to plan number three.

I alternate days weaving on the 8 shaft, and days weaving on the 16 shaft looms. I am well into the second ever warp on the Ashford, this time weaving scarfs in 8/2 rayon threaded to a sixteen shaft straight draw.

This is the first one, now off the loom:

This is the second one, an undulating twill:

This is the third one, just started:

I am still struggling with the warping, and decided to order a raddle kit for next time. The warp sticks provided are very thin cardboard and I decided I really don’t like them, so will switch to wood warp sticks. Plus I will figure out a better way to weight the warp as it is wound on.

I do enjoy the slower, more focused pace that the table loom requires. And I am dazzled by all the pattern possibilities. One of my goals with this loom is to explore more ways to weave circles, a design motif with which I am perpetually obsessed.

I decided to put my Etsy shop on indefinite Vacation Mode, thus avoiding a lot of unnecessary trips to the post office. However, I will be adding to the inventory, so whenever I feel safe enough to go out more, there will be lots of new stuff.

And, I am reading Hilary Mantel’s A Place of Greater Safety, her first novel, although it wasn’t published first. It’s loooong, and I love her style, and it focuses on characters in France before and during the Revolution. I thought the title was entirely apropos 😉 .