Fishing Sinkers & Film Cannisters: The Solution to Tablet Weaving Tension Problems

Several months ago, I began a project to make a thin tablet-woven strap that would serve as a neck band for a portable loupe.

After working about eight inches of the strap, I realized that I was running into severe trouble with the twisting and tangling of the warp threads.

I didn't run into this problem with my last tablet weaving project, because it was a symmetrical pattern. If your pattern has bilateral symmetry, you don't run into tangling and tension problems because you spin the cards one way for half the design, and then you spin the cards the opposite way for the other half, gradually un-doing all the twist you have put into the warp threads, and everything works out in the end.



But with an irregular double-faced pattern like the one I was using, the design is irregular. You twist cards this way and that to get the design you want, and you might never reverse some of them. The result is that the warp threads get progressively more and more tangled. And when some threads tangle one way, and other threads tangle another way, and others don't tangle at all, then they develop vastly different tensions, and you end up with some of your warp threads drooping way down while others are too taut.

All of this makes for a horrible-looking, raggedy and uneven weave, especially when it comes to your selvedges.

And my problems were exacerbated by the fact that I was using my rigid heddle loom to do my tablet weaving, when most normal people would just buy an inkle loom and that would probably be that.

After a great deal of Googling, I arrived at what turned out to be a great answer for me, which was suggested by a post on the Weaving Spirit blog. (Or actually it was suggested by a post on that blog plus some of the comments on that post.)



The cannisters deployed, with yarn ends
and fishing sinkers tucked inside

Instead of tying my warp threads to the back bar of my loom and winding them up and expecting them to stay constant, I used home-made weights to weigh down the warp threads and keep them evenly taut.



I got 11 empty plastic film canisters and 55 one-ounce fishing weights or "sinkers." Then, two by two, I took a pair of cards, untangled their warps, wound most of the unused portion of the warp threads into a butterfly, and then stuffed the butterfly plus five sinkers into a canister and fastened the top.

The result: much more even weave
and regular selvedges

This worked like a charm. It made the warp nice and taut evenly across the whole width of the strap. It was really easy to untangle the warp threads as they got tangled periodically, and just as easy to periodically let a little bit more yarn out of the cannisters when I needed to roll down my weaving. And my selvedges came out neater than ever.

Symmetry Op-Art Socks

Dimensions: Fits men's U.S. shoe sizes 9-10
Completed: July 2015

I made these socks using the pattern called "Symmetry" in Op-Art Socks by Stephanie van der Linden. This book is packed full of unique, colorful, and beautiful sock patterns, most of them based on the styles of various Op-Art artists like Victor Vasarely, Bridget Riley, and Josef Albers.

The finished socks

The pattern is written for Zitron Trekking Sport 4-ply yarn, but I couldn't find the colors they used anywhere online, so I used Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock hand-dyed yarn instead. Shepherd Sock has just about the same gauge and came in very similar colors to the ones used in the pattern.

I used (hand-dyed) in color 16ns (Charcoal) for the main black background and color 76 (Aslan) for the lighter variegated stripes. I knitted them on a US #1 needle.

I made one of the socks back in the winter of 2014-2015, and then put the project aside for months while working on other things; when I finished blocking the second sock in the summer of 2015, it was smaller than the first. I re-blocked it and tried to stretch it so it matched the first a little better, but this will forever be a lesson to me not to let my projects sit too long.

Made for a human...

 ...but cats like them too

Purchases from the 2015 Vermont Sheep & Woolcraft Fair

I got a big treat this month: on Saturday, October 3, I went up to Tunbridge, Vermont, to attend the 27th annual Vermont Sheep & Wool Festival.

The festival, which I'd gone to once before, has all the usual fun wool festival things like sheepdog herding demonstrations and small ruminant lectures, as well as pens full of sheep, cashmere & mohair goats, alpacas, angora rabbits, and llamas. And they have loads and loads of vendors of beautiful yarn.

Since everything at this festival is tempting, I decided this year to stay away from the roving and just look at the prepared yarn. And, in particular, yarn that was unique, created by hand by small farmers and artisans in small quantities. I especially love it when the vendors have spun wool from their own animals and can tell you the animals' names.
I came away with some great stuff. Here's what I bought:



Luigi's Locks from Yellow Dog Farm,
dyed an intense grassy green

A beautiful charcoal gray and pale green hand-spun mohair yarn, variegated in both texture and color, from Dillner Hillside Farm. Two of their cute tiny goats were in a pen right next to their vendor tent.

Green & gray hand-spun mohair
from the Dillner Hillside Farm, 
variegated in both color and texture

Five vegetable-dyed sampler yarns from Tidal Yarn that I plan to use to practice tapestry weaving. The owner of Tidal Yarn says she gets her yarn from small New England sheep farms and dyes much of it using plants she grows in her own garden.

A bouclé mohair yarn called "Luigi's Locks" from Yellow Dog Farm. The fleece was specifically from Luigi the Goat, whose picture graces the label of the yarn. It is a FANTASTIC color of grass green with little streaks of yellow that the owner said that she had just dyed that week specifically for the show.

A beautiful hand-spun combination of jewel-toned pink, burgundy, and lime green from Wiseacres Farm. The vendor said people did seem to like her "crazy mixes" (of which this was one).

I only wish I'd been able to have a little bit of everything. You can find a full vendor list here.


My haul from the 2015 VT Sheep & Wool Festival

Big E Natural Brown Alpaca Scarf

Dimensions: 5 1/4" wide by 70" long
Completed: December 2011

In the fall of 2011, I went to The Big E. (For the uninitiated and/or non-New-Englanders out there: The Big E is like a state fair, except that it includes all of the New England states.)

At the Big E, in the Mallary Complex, which is where all the sheep, goats, llamas, alpacas, and other fleecy animals are housed, there is a small store called the Fiber Nook. There they demonstrate spinning and weaving, and they have yarns and hand-made woolen goods for sale.

There at the Fiber Nook I bought one skein of a soft, worsted-weight alpaca yarn. It looks like it's the natural shade of whatever alpaca it was taken from.

It knitted up quickly into this beautiful, soft, natural brown, k1p1 rib scarf.

I have no idea who produced the yarn, since I lost the label shortly after I made the scarf. I went back in subsequent years to see if the yarn would still be there, but so far it has not.

So this is truly a one-of-a-kind accessory.

Swatch Yarn Has Arrived and Now I Need to Buckle Down

I just received the Cascade 220 yarn I bought for my TKGA masters program swatches. Very exciting.

Now I just have to get up the courage to make the first one. Who knew a simple garter stitch swatch would be so scary? Especially when it's going to be in one of these silly Easter egg colors?

Ultra Alpaca Fisherman's Cap

Completed: 2013

Dimensions: 18" diameter

Several years ago I was all eager to make myself a brick red sweater. I bought a couple skeins of different alpaca yarns I thought were good colors, and I had all these grand plans to make a bunch of sample swatches in fancy cable patterns, and then the sweater itself.

Once I came to grips with the fact that I most likely was never actually going to make the sweater, I figured I should go ahead and use up the sample skeins in smaller projects. One of the skeins I had lying around was Berroco's Ultra Alpaca yarn in color #6280 Mahogany Mix. It is a really soft worsted weight alpaca and wool yarn, perfect for a non-itchy fisherman's hat.  

This one is knit on #5 needles, with a gauge of 23 stitches and 32 rows = 4".

The finished hat with more accurate color

Good stitch clarity but inaccurate color!

Office Supplies

Office supplies for the HGA COE
and the TKGA MHK

I biked down to Staples and bought all of the office supplies I'm going to need for the handknitting and handweaving masters programs. It makes for quite an array.

The differences in the program instruction manuals are interesting. If I were to judge them based purely on the handbooks, the handweaving program seems a lot more organized and a lot more businesslike.

For one thing, every single item that you submit for the handweaving COE must only have your ID number on it; no names are allowed, so as not to bias the judges. They also give you a clear outline of the different sections and types of work you'll have to do for the program, and a list up front of all the materials you will need for the program.

The knitting program, on the other hand, requires you to put your name, address, email, and phone number on every single sample piece you submit. The instructions seem a bit hodgepodge; for example, the swatches themselves are described in one section and the information sheet you have to submit with your swatches is described in a different section. And the materials you need for your submission are sprinkled throughout the instructions, section by section, so you have to read through the entire thing to figure out all of what you need to gather.

A Great Leap Forward: Masters Programs

I did something rash a couple weeks ago. I bought the instruction packets for both the Master Hand Knitting Program from The Knitting Guild Association, and the Certificate of Excellence (Level I) from the Handweavers' Guild of America.

These are the two top master certificate programs in the national American guilds for these respective crafts. I realize it's a bit presumptuous of me to attempt to do both. I don't know if I'll be able to finish getting all the materials together for either or both programs in a timely manner, much less pass either one--but I'm very excited to try. My dream would be to finish the submissions for at least one of them by 2018.

Now I have to read through the packets and see what I need to get started.

Big Block Romney Mittens

Completed: Fall 2014
Dimensions: Women's Large or Men's Medium (8" around widest part of hand)

The finished mittens, palm side up

These mittens were a bold experiment for me, since I used a big ostentatious blocky pattern that was far outside my usual delicate and demure comfort zone. They're not one of my more successful products, but they went quickly and I know I benefited from the radical departure from my norm.

I made them using the Foxhill Farm yarn I had left over after finishing my Spartan Romney sweater. I had one skein of their natural Black Romney left, plus a skein of oatmeal-colored Romney in roughly the same gauge that I had bought from them at the same time.

The finished mittens, palm side down

I wound both skeins into two balls each, and then knitted the mittens by holding two strands of the same color together as one. The original wool was a heavy worsted weight, and the double strand ended up being roughly a super bulky gauge.

The pattern for the mittens--both the structure and the two-color design--came from The Mitten Book, which is a great little book chock-full of traditional Swedish mitten patterns.

Spartan Romney Pullover

Completed: Summer 2014

The finished sweater

Finished size: 41" chest diameter; 24" long;
                       18 1/2" sleeves (not set in)

The yarn for this sweater is a deep, rich, undyed, natural, 100% Black Romney 2-ply wool from Foxhill Farm in Lee, MA. What a pleasure it was to work with this wool. It is a bit scratchy, but the color is great and it is warm.

Note the fluid range of motion

There were only six skeins of it at the Massachusetts Sheep & Woolcraft Fair where I bought it, and the skeins added up to just over 1,100 yards. I was worried most of the time that I was making the sweater that I wouldn't have enough to finish it, but it ended up being almost a whole skein more than enough.

The sweater is patterned after the Spartan Pullover by Kristin Nicholas, with all stitch and row counts adjusted for my yarn's gauge (which was roughly a heavy worsted).

But, by request of the sweater's intended recipient, I gave it a regular crew neck instead of a v-neck. The crew neck is done in garter stitch, instead of ribbing, as are the cuffs and the bottom edge of the sweater.

Close-up of wool and garter stitch cuff

Happy Black Romney sheep

Ragtime Remix Placemats

Completed: 2015
Dimensions: four placemats, each 12.5" x 17" with 1.5" fringe at each end

I made these placemats using the Ragtime Remix pattern by Carol Reinhold. They are supposed to be woven on a four-shaft loom, so I warped my rigid heddle loom with three heddles so I could do the four-shaft pattern.

Placemat fabric, close-up

This pattern is great because the weft can be any combination of scrap fabric you happen to have lying around the house. I had an old red batik tablecloth that had a big bleach stain in the middle of it so I could no longer use it as a tablecloth, but the fabric was nice, so I used that as the main color for all four placemats. I used scraps from three other smaller pieces of fabric for contrasting color. I put the red in the same places in all four placemats, but changed up where I put the three contrasting fabrics.

The warp is 8/4 carpet warp from Maysville. I used two colors, red-brown and linen, and warped them randomly.

Fabric strips rolled into balls

Reinhold shows a neat technique for cutting the fabric into one long strip: you fold the fabric in half, and sew it together at the edge, and then cut the fabric with staggered diagonal cuts to make one big cylindrical loop. The technique is described with good explanatory pictures in the pattern.

The fabric scraps are supposed to be cut into strips 1.25" wide, but I found that my batik cloth was thick enough that it actually was the same size scrunched up as the other fabric scraps when it was 1" wide, so I made it  into 1" strips and the other colors into 1.25" strips.


This is the pattern I used for the colors:

6 picks with the red-brown warp
8 picks color A
2 picks color B
2 picks color A

The four placemats, just off the loom, with 3" spaces between

2 picks color C
5 picks color A
3 picks color D
6 picks color B
3 picks color D

5 picks color A
2 picks color C
2 picks color A
2 picks color B
8 picks color A
6 picks with the red-brown warp

Total: 50 picks of fabric scrap per placemat, plus 12 picks of the carpet warp

And this is the color sequence I used for each of the four placemats. Color A is always red.

Placemat 1

The finished placemats in action

Color B = blue plaid
Color C = yellow/green
Color D = dark blue

Placemat 2
Color B = yellow/green
Color C = dark blue
Color D = blue plaid

Placemat 3
Color B = dark blue
Color C = blue plaid
Color D = yellow/green

Placemat 4
Color B = blue plaid
Color C = dark blue
Color D = yellow/green

Malabrigo Purple-Green Variegated Tweed Scarf

Completed: January 2015
Dimensions: 8" wide by 65" long (with 4" fringe on each end)

The completed scarf,
all right-side up

Continuing the rigid-heddle-tweed scarf cavalcade, I made this scarf following the model of the navy variegated tweed scarf I made in late 2014.

I bought the yarn in a very nice yarn shop in Montpelier, VT called The Knitting Studio (which truly might be "Vermont's friendliest yarn shop.") The warp is one skein of Malabrigo worsted in color #239 (Saphire [sic] Magenta) and the weft is Cascade 220 worsted wool in color #2403 (Chocolate).

The Malabrigo is 100% merino wool and a relatively bulky gauge for weaving, so it turned out to be a little bit stiff and heavy for a scarf, but the colors are really beautiful. Again, my pictures don't do it justice; the green and magenta highlights in the warp look like jewels in the sunlight.

Wrong side on left,
right side on right

I also like the contrast between the weave design
and the color: the tweed is almost a mechanical, digital pattern, but the variegation in the yarn is organic and flowing.

Tweed Detail

Navy Variegated Tweed Scarf

Completed: 2014
Dimensions: 5 1/2" wide by 62" long (with 3" fringe at each end)

The finished scarf

I went to the Vermont Sheep and Wool Festival in 2013 and in the Fiber Stash stall I found a skein of a hand-dyed alpaca blend in variegated blues that I thought was one of the loveliest combinations of colors I had ever seen. Having forgotten to bring any cash, I had to borrow money from a friend to buy the skein.

Tweed pattern detail

I used the skein as the warp for a scarf, and used one skein of worsted-weight Malabrigo Arroyo in Prussian Blue as the weft, since it matched one of the colors in the variegated alpaca.

I made my scarf on a rigid heddle loom using two 10-dent heddles. I warped the loom for a three-shaft tweed (1-2-3 repeat), and wove it in a two-up, one-down staggered tweed pattern.

It turned out to be a lovely scarf, and the Malbrigo went perfectly with the hand-dyed yarn. Because I used the two-up, one-down tweed, one side is dominated by the Malbrigo blue and the other side is dominated by the hand-dyed yarn, but I think that makes for a nice effect when it's wound around somebody's neck. The pictures here show the warp pattern, but definitely do not do the colors justice.

The scarf in action

Crocheted Coasters with Jazz Yarn

Completed: 2007
Dimensions: seven coasters, each 3 1/4" in diameter

Sometimes I'm just a sucker for pretty yarn. I bought one single ball of Artful Yarns' Jazz yarn (in color "Billie") at a store back in 2003 or 2004, but didn't have a plan for it and didn't do anything with it for years.

Finally I decided something needed to be done with it, even if it was just to let me work with it.

I used a size G crochet hook and crocheted little single-crochet circles until the yarn was used up, and then felted them inside a pillow case in the washing machine in hot water.

After they were dried and flattened out, I used a spare length of Jamieson's shetland yarn in a light beige to embroider little stars in them. The stars came out much more awkwardly than I had meant them to, but I kind of think they work.

Shetland Tweed Sampler Scarf

Completed: Spring 2014
Finished Size: 6" wide by 57" long (plus 3" fringe at each end)

Finished scarf under observation

I have just gotten into weaving relatively recently. I took a beginner's weaving class at the 2013 Vermont Sheep & Wool Festival, and we all got to keep the small (14" x 14") frame looms we used in the class. After playing with that for a couple months, it was so much fun that I bought a small (16") rigid heddle loom.

Of course, because I like to make everything more complicated, eventually plain weave wasn't enough and pick-up sticks were too labor-intensive for the designs I wanted to do. So I bought two more heddles and the book Weaving with Three Rigid Heddles by David B. McKinney, so I could make three- and four-harness tweed patterns on my rigid heddle loom.

This scarf is my first attempt to do a real garment this way. 

The pattern is a pretty basic diamond tweed repeat using four harnesses (or, in my case, three heddles).

The warp is two balls of Jamieson Shetland Spindrift in mooskit. There are 72 ends (including 2 selvedge ends) and I used three 10-dent reeds.

The diamond tweed pattern

The weft is a random collection of six balls of Jamieson Shetland DK (in grouse, moorland, pine, osprey, willow, and sage) I had lying around for years after finishing a fair isle vest. I figured this would be a good way of using them up. Not all of them were used in the vest, and I wasn't sure how they were going to go together, but, hey, it's a sampler. This is the color repeat I used:

Tweed pattern detail

6 picks grouse
30 picks moorland
6 picks pine
30 picks osprey
6 picks willow
30 picks sage

I figure it is inevitable that someday I will end up with a sixteen-harness loom.

The scarf in action

Rainbow Orphan Scarf

Completed: 2014
Finished Size: 7" wide by 72" long

I made this scarf using a pattern called Orphan Scarf by Doris Chan. Her technique in this pattern is really simple; you basically just do rows of single crochet with very small gauge yarn with a very large hook. While you're working with it, it doesn't look like the spaces between the rows are very big, but once you've washed it and blocked it and stretched it out, the rows get really far apart.

She uses it in a number of patterns, including a set of curtains.

The finished product

I did have trouble with the ends, as they were firmer than the middle and tended to bow out wider than the body of the scarf. Maybe it's something about the way I cast on and finish off my crochet; or something in the blocking. If I was to use this technique again, I might not stretch it quite so far, and let it stay a bit more uniformly wide all over.

Detail of single-crochet loops

It's an excellent pattern if you want to try something with just one skein of laceweight yarn, which is what I had: a skein of about 400 yards of rainbow hand-dyed merino lace yarn I had bought at the Ann Arbor Art Fair in 2013.

Diamond-Motif Scarf with Yarn from the Kangaroo Dyer

Completed: 2008
Finished Size: 8" wide by 62" long

Finished scarf

I crocheted this scarf using yarn I won as a door prize at the 2007 Franklin County Fiber Twist festival in Greenfield, MA. (This festival is now known as the Fiber + Fashion event at the Little E).

Detail of crochet diamond motif

The yarn had no label on it, so I'm not sure what type of wool it was or how much of it I had or where it came from, but I think it is a merino sock yarn, and I'm guessing it was about 400 yards. I wasn't sure I'd have enough yarn to finish the scarf, but it turned out to be more than enough.

I do know it was hand-dyed by the Kangaroo Dyer, and that my photos on this page don't do it justice; it is really a nice variegated combination of autumnal colors, from ochre to burgundy to black.

I used a crochet pattern from Jojoland called simply "Cashmere Scarf," which doesn't really do the pattern justice either; it is a good-looking, well-proportioned, lacy but sturdy pattern of interlocking diamonds. I kept it for myself and it's been one of my totally unreproducible favorites for years.

Steamer Trunk Baby Henley Pullover

Completed: October 2014
Finished Size: fits a 0-to-6-month-old baby

Working a sweater from the top down
feels awkward at first.

I knitted this using Erica Kempf Broughton's Simple Baby Pullover pattern, which is a free pattern you can download from Ravelry.com.

It is a top-down pattern, and I'd never worked a sweater from the top down before, and I didn't have the right length #7 circular needle so the needle I made it on was enormously long, so it felt a little bit awkward while it was in progress, but it was interesting to see how it came together.

The finished product

The pattern is written for a Cascade Yarns worsted yarn, but, on the advice of Webs Yarn Store, I used Mrs. Crosby's Steamer Trunk yarn as a direct substitute with no change in gauge.

The sweater knits up very quickly with such a big yarn, and the roasted chestnut color I used had really nice color variegation. I had originally planned to put black buttons on the placket, but after seeing the color in person, I decided red would be better (not to mention more fun).

The superwash merino is also machine washable and dryable, which should certainly be a plus in a baby sweater.