Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Plan gone bad

I had this great plan for dishtowels with some mystery yarn from the stash. I thought it was cotton/linen of some sort. The burn test certainly looked like it. Perfect! I only have one pound. The wpi calculations said to sley at 18 epi for twill.



I had all the math worked out and this afternoon I set to wind the warp. The more I wound the more I knew it was not cotton less linen. I think it is some kind of rayon or who knows what. It has a sheen to it and it is a bit bumpy. The next surprise was that McMorran lied and I ended up with a warp about 3 inches narrower than what I thought. No big deal. Then I realized that 18 epi means 7 end floats almost half an inch! well that is not going to work with that draft less with the yarn. So now I have a warp nicely wound on the loom 351 ends, 3.5 yards long and I have no clue of what to weave with it! The weft is the same yarn, or it looks like it....I hope. Ten ounces on the warp, 6 ounces left for weft. I spent about an hour on the handweaving.net page looking for drafs, dug out a good part of my books and I am set blank. No clue what to do with it. At this point all I know is that it is a shawl or wide scarf but what structure? It is wound on an 8 shaft loom, that gives me more options but still. Any ideas?

4 comments:

Peg in South Carolina said...

You are having a rough time! I wonder if the McMorran balance can deal accurately with bumpy yarn? Chapter 4 of Shelp, "Eight Shafts: A Place to Begin" is on point twill and has all sorts of possibilities for tie-ups and treadlings.

Anonymous said...

Oh dear!

I don't think all is lost for your pattern- you can make a couple of small changes to the tie-up (or liftplan) and have a structurally sound fabric.

I put a modified draft on my flicker site (lnrskye)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lnrskye/3392309453/

L

Leigh said...

I don't have any ideas but I do commiserate! If it's bumpy, then you probably don't want too fancy a structure. I agree with Peg, perhaps a nice point twill?

Roberta said...

I don't have any suggestions about the warp, sorry. I did want to add my congratulations about the PhD. Is it related to medicine, or did you go off in an entirely new direction?