16 shaft weaving, plant dyeing and start of a knitting project

Weaver's log, Earthdate 10022020 

Then I arrived at my desk this morning this lovely pieces of silk were waiting for me.

I asked a student who is sewing at home, that was in on Friday to get advise and do some fittings with a teacher if I could get any scraps she thought she wouldn't want. Thes are going to look great as decorations on my Viking clothes. As I don't have any inlay yet I started with some spinning.

Then just more weaving magazine, I have a goal to read all of them they hade here at school until we end this summer, and am on a good way to do it. Then I got home I felt weave inspired and went out to the shed to work on the curtain weave I haven't worked on for years now. Then I started to tie up at the front I noticed in horror that the shed sticks weren't tied together they didn't even have holes in them. So I quickly fixed that.

Then that was done I did the front tieing and there was something off with the shed but can't figure out what, so I will ask my teacher tomorrow.

Weaver's log, Earthdate 11022020
Dyeing with the sewers again this time with some plant. Today we did unions, red onions, black rice, walnut leaves and I did avocado pits.

As there is a lot of waiting time, I started knitting on a headband that matches the scarf I wove.

Haven't knitted sins I did the caps back in 2014, so I am glad that I got a friend to lean on. Almost forgot we put black beans and cochineal in water too so they will soak to tomorrows dyeing.

Weaver's log, Earthdate 12022020
Remember then I did the binding to the treadles and I hade doubled up on one so I hade to open each and sort of redoing them. Well, it turns out I did not put all the rings in the order of each shaft. So after two hours of fixing, with my teacher in the loom and me with the draft saying what string to go where I can now weave.

But that will be a thing for tomorrow as now there will be more dyeing. Here are the samples we did yesterday, the yellow unions are insanely strong.

I have never seen it turn out that strong before. Black rice is nice too.

Then we dyed in cochineal another go with the avocado pits but more and we will let the sup be for some days, likewise we did avocado peels. Some fabric got put into the black beans as well, it will live in the water for at least 4 days or so with steering each day. My job for the day was madder. First time I did it with it in powder form, with the powder you don't need to soak it 12 hours before and you need less so its cool stuff.

Weaver's log, Earthdate 13022020
My plan for today was to use the 3ed bath of madder and cochineal with my friend and mostly let it do its thing but I ended up spending most of the day down in the basement, we did one bath of madder then we mixed the madder and cochineal together, turns out that the powder of the crap hade sunk and sedimented on the bottom of the bucket so we got a lot more colour in the mixed bath, not too much cochineal though but it could have been worse. With all the time waiting and checking, so the madder didn't go over 70 C, I got a lot of knitting done.

The other half of the day I got started weaving on my 16 shaft. The two yarns this green ****** and this black wool 28/2 is bobbin together, new exciting stuff.

The next exciting thing was that at first, I thought the design of the pattern was off, and I was right as I increst the thread count the medallions fall on its side isn't that just so cool. That 5 more threads per centimetre can do that much different.

To keep track of where I am I draw up this tredel order so I can use I pin if I have to leave somewhere in the middle.

Weaver's log, Earthdate 14022020
Kept on the weaving and today I have encountered two of the issues I will face with this weave. The first is that the back row of strings to the treadles get stuck on the wingnut some times,

and you have to walk to the back and release it. The other is the two threads that are spooled together don't unspool at the same time so one gets longer. If it gets really long it travels back in the shuttle and locks the bobbin.

The last thing I did was to take a look at my dried yarn from yesterday, and as I was down in the basement I stirred the black beans, this is how it looks after two days,

and finally for this entry here is the yarn from yesterday, the once on the right are just prepared with alum, the back left one is the one I got from just the madder and the front left is the mix bath one.