Ball winder and umbrella swift!

They came in the mail today. I've been religiously checking online to see where they were, without much change in the past couple of days. And low and behold, when I open the mailbox today, there they were!

I spent the next two hours trying to unravel the mess I made of my skein of silk hiro. Not much success there.

But I do have some blankets off the 60" loom!

Dark Pink and Dark Purple weft in uneven stripes

Solid grey weft which highlights the colours of the warp

E

New heddles!

I just received my new (to me) heddles in the mail!

                                

They will go on my 60" loom. I was going to buy extras for the other two looms while I was at it, but realized they have the same size heddles, so I should be fine. But the big loom has 12.5" heddles and as I mentioned in a previous post, for the current blankets I'm making, I had to construct makeshift heddles and it took FOREVER. So I say this was a good investment!

E

New purchases

So I decided the other day that it was time to invest in a ball winder and umbrella swift.

This is going to make my life easier this summer for sure (and in the future). I did a bunch of research and found what I think are good products and at decent prices. I hope they come soon though, because I tried to split the skein of silk hiro so I could dye it for the weft of my painted warp scarves, and the splitting didn't go so well. It's going to be a backward process, but I will have to wind it in to a ball, and try to get about half in the first ball - the skein is way too big for just one ball anyway. But once I ball it, I'll have to re-skein it so I can dye it. So the ball winder will definitely come in handy.

I also bought a bunch of heddles for my 60" loom. When I threaded the last project I did on that loom, I didn't have enough heddles and had to make some out of cotton. And it took FOREVER. There was probably 80ish heddles less than what I needed, so I decided buying more would be a wise move.

E

Warping

So I've almost finished warping the silk hiro scarves. They are all dyed, which turned out better than I had anticipated. I still have some weft to dye, but it's on its way!

I ended up using Navy, Violet and Island blue for one section. It is definitely more subtle than the other side. I used Saffron and Raspberry on the other side, but made sure they blended together. 

E

Silk hiro - dyeing the second scarf

Well, I'm happy to report that dyeing the second scarf went much better than the first. As I was doing the first, I realized I should have soaked out the silk. But since I'd already started, I didn't want to change half way through. So it took forever. I soaked out the second scarf and it took far less time to dye. Lesson learned. Now it's steaming. After that's done, I'll let it sit for awhile, rinse it out, let it dry and should be able to warp in a couple days!

Silk Hiro scarves part two

I've started working on the silk hiro scarves. I'm doing a hand dyed painted warp - two different colour ways.  I laid out the first scarve very nicely. That was all the space I had, so I'm doing them one at a time. 

I think I've taken on too much with this one. 

And I took my gloves off thinking everything was ok, but I was wrong. Blue hands for days. 

I Decided to steam one before attempting the other end of it. Probably not a good idea, but it is what is happening at this point.

What an eventful Saturday night.

E

Sample Silk Hiro

My sample is complete (from this post).

The colour of the warp is something I would definitely do again - but I should have dyed some weft before I started weaving. I ended up using undyed silk hiro. It's an ok look, but not what I wanted.

I used a threading called Gothic Cross. I started out doing the suggested treadling, but then I started to do some variations. I think it looks pretty neat and am going to definitely use it on the actual scarves.

It shrunk about 30%, so I've redone my warp calculation and should be fine. Fingers crossed!

E