Friday Roundup #6-19

Well this week was a bit up and down.

I completed the weaving at the weekend, but as I came towards the end, I could see I had miscalculated the length and would not be able to do the full repetition of the warp in the weft. And as I had done two pickup patterns, one end would now be a shorter section. Anyway, I made the best of a bad calculation and cut it from the loom after taking as close to the reed as I could, created the fringe and washed it. However, I misjudged the detergent and the machine ended up with too much foam. So I had to wait for that to drop and then rinse, which meant no softener. Ok, I thought, I’ll just tidy it up and then wash again with fabric softener. But after it dried and I was looking it over, I realised I had made an error on the pickup weave, duplicating a row. Just great! And I thought I had been careful.

I left it draped across two chairs and when I was working on Monday, and absentmindedly looking at another section, I noticed I had missed out two sections of pickup, shortening the pattern of diamonds. Aargh! So disappointing. I really thought it was going well.

It’s not a complete disaster as the colours are lovely, the weave closed up in the wash and you might not notice the mistakes in the pattern in wear. The plan was for this to be a bit of a wrap for a women to wear around the waist when at the pool or beachside on holiday. Now it’s shorter, fine for someone really slim. It will still make a decent wrap for the shoulders or around the neck in the summer, as it’s lighweight and 100% cotton. Heigh-ho; live and learn.

The thing with weaving is that it can be very quick to make something that might take a week in crochet or knitting. But if you go wrong, with knit and crochet you can quickly frog back a lot. But in weaving you have to reverse everything you have done. So in a pickup pattern, you have to do all that messing around with replicating the insertion of the pickup stick. In the example below, pickup A, that stick stays in at the back. But pickup stick B and C are inserted and removed twice to make the diamond. The more complex the pickup pattern, the more you have to do to weave or unpick.

There are shortcuts. You can make a heddle rod using a dowel or cane, and loops of smooth yarn wrapped around the warp of a pickup. Then, when you need that pickup, you just pull that cane up to activate the pattern for that pick of weft. I had done that for the start and ending pattern. But I left it in at the very back of the loom, as I knew I needed it later.

The great thing about weaving warp or weft floats is the difference you get between the front and back. Check it out if the photo below. The one of the left is the front with warp pickup. The one on the right is the back, the reverse of the warp pickup.

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Sometimes you may find yourself preferring the reverse more than the front. And when you do go wrong, it might lead to a different, but equally interesting pattern.

Back to knitting this weekend, possibly the start of the jumper, or maybe a hat. I will see what mood I am in.

Later.