Collection of interesting weaving videos!

 

Comparing paper, horn, and wooden tablets for weaving:  

A series on Baltic narrow band weaving for the absolute beginner.   This video is part of a series.  Part one introduces the concepts, part two warps the loom and sets it up, part three shows you the mechanics of weaving, and part four teaches how to read a pattern and do the picks.  The bonus part five teaches how to chart your own patterns, though I found it went way beyond the level where I understand it-- still learning, never woven Baltic pick.  Find parts four and five on the creator's channel, I did not link them here.

Beads are in my future!

 Holiday presents this year included a hothead propane torch, a rolling stainless steel table to clamp it to, and this wonderful book, Anglo-Saxon Beads 400 - 700 AD!

A Mostly Finished Band!

It is finally done! There is a lot of variability in the band, reflecting my various learning processes with warp tension and such. But I am happy with it! 

Now the question, to wet finish or not? I think I am going to, but first I will go to the store and get some of these shout color catchers to keep the dark blue yarn from bleeding into the lighter colors.   Then I will either tumble dry and iron, or hang up to dry straight.  Not sure which is better, and there are a LOT of opinions out there, still researching.

A little sewing

 I've had a to-do item for a while to make more garb.  I have only 3 or 4 outfits, and Long Egils this coming May will be 8 or 9 days.   This past week I made a couple more peplos garments, one from blue linen and one from a wine-colored lightweight felted wool.  

I found the wool at a local art and fabric supply store in their used fabric section for $10 and hoped it would be long enough for a peplos.  It was!  I should really bring a fabric tape into the store with me to measure things, someday I may remember that.

The Ripple Effect

I keep gradually letting the weave get looser until I suddenly notice that my centers aren't right up against each other anymore and then I tighten up.   It seems to be related to how close or far my heddle is from the working area, but maybe that's a false correlation?  

There are ripples in my woven band, but I hope they will not be super noticeable when it is in use.  I'm more consistent now, but still have to pay close attention.  I seem to be able to weave for about 40 minutes before I start losing focus and screwing up.  That's a great improvement over when I started, when 10 minutes was all I could do.  It's also kind of fun now, rather than a strain.

Saffron Update: First Harvest!

 I've had five flowers open of the eleven starts that came up.  Some starts seem to have more than one flower stalk, though, so it's unclear how many flowers I will get.  I didn't notice the first flower in time to harvest from it, alas.

I harvested the saffron and wasn't sure how to dry it.  I thought about just letting it air dry.  I found a research paper from University of Vermont that discussed an experiment with multiple ways of drying saffron at different temperatures.  The one that left the most active compounds remaining was drying at 210F / 100C for 7 to 10 minutes.  My toaster oven happily complied!

Now I have a dozen strands of home-grown saffron, and I can't wait to try cooking with them, and harvesting and drying more in the coming weeks!

Being completely wrong

After I got my warp untied from the front and traced it back into the heddle, I found that the problem was not in the heddling, but in how twisted the warp had gotten while tying it onto the front rod.  I remembered something I'd seen in my weaving exploration videos about separating a wide warp into subwarps and tying it on in smaller bundles.  

I did that to my warp, and now had threads that lined up, but were too far apart.  I managed to pull the three bundles more or less together, but the tension was completely random.  Now I remembered this video by Ellisif Gydasdottir where she gets some tension evening by doing four weaves of chunky yarn into the warp before starting her band in earnest.  The advice is for tablet weaving, but I figured it might work for plain weave as well.

Some plain red yarn to the rescue.  I did four beats and also pulled the warp more together, enough to start weaving my band.  So far, it's working! I have no idea if the lock weave I did at the beginning will work correctly given the mishegas of how this started, but I can always braid or backstitch it to lock it.  Forward!