Twill on the rigid heddle loom

I've been playing with 1/2 and 2/1 twill recently. I blame this book. On one of my rare forays to the shops, I visited Borders bookshop and found this, the only weaving book they had. No longer are fabric types totally mysterious. Sadly for me, the book is aimed at weavers with a 4 shaft loom, but there are a few things which are for 2. This twill isn't one of them really because it needs 3. Undaunted, I figured out the threading for extended point threading. I used two 10 dpi heddles and some red 4 ply wool/nylon yarn. I used the holes in one heddle as one shaft, the holes in the second heddle as the second and the slots in both as the third. This involved missing every 4th hole in each heddle and having either 1 or 2 threads in each slot which meant that the sett was variable.

With this setup, six different sheds are possible: front heddle up, rear heddle up, both heddles down, giving weft dominance and the opposite: front heddle down, rear heddle down, both heddles up, giving warp dominance. The patterns you can get are not what you expect to see on a rigid heddle loom. Yet again, I'm using up oddments so my trademark eclectic colourways are in evidence.










It's been fun trying this out and I may use the technique for an actual item sometime. The uneven sett doesn't really detract from the fabric, in fact it adds an extra dimension to it, especially on the chevron pattern.

Just to say that I have still been knitting, and that the second sleeve of Kearsarge was finished last night. I will have enough yarn. Phew!

It's been a while...

Yet again it's been a month or so since I wrote anything here. Mainly because I've been weaving a lot and knitting a little. I find it difficult to find suitable blogging time for some reason. Anyway, my progress on Kearsarge has been steady, and now I just have one sleeve to do, along with the neckband and seams.

I've made some modifications to the raglan shaping, since I didn't like how the decreases were spaced in the pattern ie. decreasing every 2 rows x times, then every 4 rows y times. This gives a strange shape to the pieces. I recalculated the shaping to give a smooth slope to the raglans which I prefer. If the sleeve looks a bit skinny, it's because it is knitted in mistake rib which contracts when left alone. It has lots of stretch and goes round my arm fine.

I took the scissors to my piece of green stripey wool fabric having sewn a zigzag either side of the cutting lines. This turned out to not be necessary as the fulling was enough to hold it together. I made a long bag with pockets on the outside for the shuttles. Inside is plenty of room for the heddles, warp rods and pickup stick. I had trouble getting a picture of the whole thing, but here are the pockets.



My sewing machine grumbled a bit about the multiple thicknesses, but we made it. I took the lengths of tapestry wool left over from the warp (the ends of skeins which weren't long enough for a warp length) and plaited them into a thick drawstring for the top.


Since then I've woven a scarf using patterned all wool sock yarn which I overdyed first, because it was too bright. I warped in stripes with the colour repeat staggered. I'm puzzled about something though, why did this scarf increase in width when washed? The weft was slightly finer than the warp. I've never heard of this happening. I tried hemstitching for the first time and find it much easier to do than tying matching knots.

I've also been playing with a narrow band, the sort of thing you make on an inkle loom, this was fun. I used DMC Petra pearl cotton size 5 for this.


Last but not least, experiments using two heddles: first was a fine 2 ply wool. It was difficult to keep the edges even on this, and the finished fabric has a strange texture all over. I assume that I was getting the wrong length of weft. I think I was trying to avoid extreme draw in by using plenty of weft and got it wrong. Still, it's consistent and feels nice.

After that was a sample piece using crochet cottons. I found this from the Schacht website, and I just had to try the patterns.

This is half of it. I was trying different thicknesses of cotton for weft. Towards the end I was trying 1/3 twill and even had a go at 2/2 twill (last pale blue bit on the right), using a pickup stick and string heddles and a dowel rod to make the 4th shaft. Verdict: fiddly, but possible.

Currently, I'm pushing the possibilities with 1/2 and 2/1 twill, but that will be for next time.

Ripping and weaving

It's been a while again, but I've been busy. This loom has taken over my crafting time big time. I'm still knitting in the evenings, but Ribena is no more. Having done the front and back and more than half of both sleeves, I felt disappointed with the look of it. My knitting was not very even in places, and the leftmost stitch in the 2x2 ribs was a lot bigger than the righthand stitch. I know this is common, but it didn't look nice. There is a fix involving wrapping the yarn the other way round the needle when purling the first stitch after the knit stitch, and then knitting into the back of that stitch on the return row. I've used it successfully when cabling, but not on a ribbed section. The major revelation is that the yarn, once skeined and washed, is much softer and knits up really nicely. I'm now knitting Kearsarge from the book A Fine Fleece by Lisa Lloyd, which is a basketweave pattern for the front and back, and mistake rib for the sleeves. So far, I'm about a third of the way up the back and one sleeve.

This is the result of the first warp, it's a sampler of various things. I've tried stripes, leno and Brooks bouquet which are both lacy effects, also weft floats and warp floats. I used it as a practice piece, using oddments of 4 ply yarn hence the eclectic colours.


This is the next step. I bought the book by Betty Linn Davenport 'Hands on Rigid Heddle Weaving', and couldn't resist trying the colour and weave sampler in it. I used some Forsell Shamal 4 ply (80% acrylic, 20% wool) from the machine knitting stash and the result is lovely fabric with great drape. The patterning which is possible from different arrangements of two colours is astonishing, and even plain weave can look really complex.

I bought an extra set of heddle blocks and more heddles, along with some shorter shuttles. A 32" shuttle is a formidable thing to be waving around, and for narrower warps is over the top. Anyway, I decided I need a way to store them safely together, so I thought I'd weave some yardage to sew a bag. From my needlepoint stash, I have a lot of tapestry wools, and since I don't do needlepoint any more I figured that I could use some of it as warp, so that is what I did.
I used two threads of tapestry wool and then one of a double knit green wool repeated across the warp. The weft is all the same dk green wool. This time I used the Ashford 7.5 dpi heddle, which fits the Kromski Harp fine.

Warped and ready to go...

Off the loom with ends knotted.

Washed, lightly fulled and steamed, ready for the scissors. I'm trying to summon the courage for that.

Next up is trying to weave with two heddles, the warp is ready to go on the loom - maybe tomorrow.

Something new

I'm excited because I had a Kromski Harp folding rigid heddle loom for Christmas. I've been wanting to try weaving for a while so I'm delighted. I put a warp on it of 4 ply oddments and I've been practising over the last few days. Since I took this photo, I've tried patterns with the pick up stick, which gives some interesting effects. I think I'm getting the hang of it now.

As the weather has gotten colder recently and getting into bed is like getting into the fridge, I bought a hot water bottle and of course I had to make a cover for it. This is crocheted from Jaeger Matchmaker DK and it feels nice. I made the pattern up as I went along. Crochet is great for that, it's much easier to design on the fly than knitting, for me anyway.

The Ribena sleeves are growing steadily but there is still about 3 inches to go before the armhole shaping.

Wherever does time go?

I'm astounded that it's been over five weeks since I posted. Still, there has been a lot of sampling, and progress has been slow. Knitting is going on, I started Ribena from Knitty, only I'm going to make long sleeves. I wanted something fairly simple and this fits the bill nicely. So far, I've finished the back and front and am making both sleeves together. The yarn is Patons Diploma Gold DK and I'm using 4mm needles for the stocking stitch sections, 3.75mm for the ribs.

It took a long time, but I finally spun up the merino silk blend. I made a 2 ply and it is 469m weighing 100g. I think I've found a pattern for it, but I won't be starting yet.

After a lengthy drilling session, my oak peg loom was completed. The first project on it was a small rug, which I wove with english wool tops which I divided lengthwise into eighths, and then spun lightly.




Mollie, one of our two cats, is very attracted to this rug, and sabotaged it a couple of times during weaving. As a result, I decided to felt it, or it would have a very short life. My attempts in the bathtub were ineffective, so into the washing machine it went. Now it is smaller, still damp and much denser, but crucially, it's cat proof.

Spinning fine

First of all, here is the progress on the first sock knitted with the kettle dyed yarn from my last post. There is diagonal patterning, and if I'd used different size needles or more or fewer stitches, it would be different. I'm using a 2.5mm needle and 72sts. It's growing on me.

I've been swatching and ripping a lot lately, indecision rules, it seems. Why do I have so much trouble finding a sweater pattern to knit? I'm not short of choices, but nothing is calling out to me. I suspect I'm going to be designing my own.

As a bit of a change, I dyed some merino/silk blend tops which I treated myself to a while ago.


I've made a start with the spinning, and it seems to want to be spun fine, so that's what I'm doing. I'm aiming for a 2 ply maybe for a lace scarf. This fibre is very soft with a lovely sheen from the silk and I managed not to felt it when I dyed it.

This wasn't the case for this red wool. I had to work quite hard to predraft this because it had become a bit matted, even though I had been quite careful not to agitate it or thermally shock it. Still, I ended up with almost 300m weighing 160g of 2 ply subtly shaded red yarn. Now to decide what to do with it.

Put the kettle on

I've been wanting to try kettle dyeing for a while, and I'm nearly ready to start some more socks, so I had a go at kettle dyeing an undyed skein of sock yarn. It was fun but unpredictable. The first thing was to soak the yarn in a weak washing up liquid solution, while mixing up the dyes. I used five different shades of acid dyes in the red, pink and yellow part of the spectrum. Having given the yarn a rinse I squeezed out most of the water and put it in the pot with some hot water, (just enough to cover it) I added some vinegar at this point, to help the dye to stay where it was put. Then it's a case of adding one colour at a time, waiting until it's been soaked up before adding the next.





Afterwards it's a case of applying heat, in this case I brought it up to nearly boiling point for about 15 minutes. The results are a bit more pink than I wanted, but I like the randomness of it.


I'm just wondering if I should overdye the pinkest bits, because I don't know if I'm brave enough (I've never been someone who wears very bright colours) to wear socks made from this. But then you can't even see the socks when they're worn because they're covered by shoes and trouser legs. Oh well, if I don't like them, I can always dye the finished socks something darker. I'm really looking forward to finding out what they'll be like.