That’s right–I’m betting I’ll stitch a mile sometime in the next while.  Not a short while, mind you, but it will happen.  I wish I had started measuring way back in the way back.

I am in the sweatshop as much as I can stand to be in the sweatshop.  I do need to go to work five days a week, and I’m not going to go as crazy as I normally do with the sewing, but I may extend the crazy sewing season so that the fabric I’ve bought doesn’t eat my studio.

The sweatshop, at this point, includes both my studio and the living room.  Back before Scott and I traded rooms, setting up a cutting table in my studio was not an option.  Now it’s an option, but it’s one that makes me batty.

So, this weekend’s tasks included some more fabric shopping (another 30 yards or so, though much will be saved for later), putting some finishing touches on the log cabin blanket, warping up my inkle loom to make a gift for a friend, washing and pressing about 60 yards of fabric, and cutting out a few garments.  I have much more cutting to do.  Cutting is the worst part, by far, and it occasionally pushes me to the edge.

I’ll assume you know what it looks like to do laundry.  I did really a lot of it over the weekend.  If you don’t know what it looks like to do laundry, don’t be silly enough to point that out.  We will raise a mob, and we will make you wash many many skivvies, Mr. Shirky-Pants.

First: the blanket received a new baby’s name:

Saxon was born to our friends Anna and Sean last week, after a period of reluctance.  Scott, who does not read Stephanie’s blog, wondered allowed at one point whether Saxon was waiting for his blanket to be finished before he’d come out.  I assured him that I neither want nor have that power over anyone’s labor, and that I would have added the name sooner, but Anna and Sean were exercising their parental rights to secrecy.  All is well now, Anna is recovering from a c-section, and Saxon is sure to take over the world with his blinding cuteness.
(I have to add a disclaimer–I really am excellent at embroidery.  This looks bad.  Embroidering on knits is a whole new chore for me.  I will improve.  I will self-flagellate.  I will write sentences if I must.  But I know Saxon and his folks will be happy with this as-is, so I will not dwell.)Update: The blanket has made it to NYC, safe from wool thieves.  They love it.  They, being normal, loving, sane people, had nothing negative to say about the embroidery, and instead said lovely things about generosity and beauty and snuggliness.  I did discourage their inclinations to turn the AC up really high so they could wrap Saxon up in his new blankie.  I don’t want the kid to be cooked (hear that Aes–I am arguing against cooking a baby–the treatment is working), particularly because, if he is cooked, I will be incapable of convincing him that the blanket I made is the best thing ever.

Right.  So.  Warping up an inkle loom.  First, grab the loom.  Mine is from the folks at Brush Creek Woolworks.  It’s rock maple.  This is one of the oldest types of loom in the world, and it basically allows the weaver to put the weaving down and go do other stuff from time to time without losing tension or otherwise causing problems with the weaving.  You can achieve the same results with a backstrap loom, no problem, buy your cats will see your weaving as prey, and you’ll feel pressured to weave the whole thing in one sitting.  I mean, I did.

Next, select the inkle-food.  It’s needs to be relatively strong stuff.  If you have weak or underspun fibers, consider card-weaving instead.

I’m making another all white inkle.  This is where an adult beverage is required.  I made the first for Richard a few years ago.  He asked me for one without ever intending for me to turn it into a terribly difficult task.  I made it very wide and with bratty yarn.  And he loves it, and repaid me by giving me a handmade repro helmet.  And he bragged on it so much that Drac asked for one.  Drac gets one because he asked me right after he gave me a delicious beverage and told me his wonderful wife was pregnant with their first child.  And also, he gave me one of my favorite strands of amber like seven years ago because he liked one of my songs.  That’s forethought.  That’s plotting.  Triksy, that guy.  Here, you see some really fat two-ply homespun from Williamsburg (the bitch of the bunch), some silk lace-weight I double-stranded, some Knit Picks white Wool of the Andes, and some Irish mule-spun that’s inaccessible from the US.

Inkles are warp-faced weaves.  So the way you warp up the loom sets the pattern, and if something isn’t right, you have to re-warp.  No two ways about it.  You’ll see what I mean  . . .

I normally start the design with a band of whatever I plan to use as weft.  That way, the little weft bumps blend in nicely.  In this instance, it’s the WotA.  Cheap, strong, basic.  This will just make a plain stripe.  Since I prefer symmetry, and most of the weavers in the ancient world preferred symmetry, I’ll warp up a pattern, put in one center strand, and then warp the mirror image of the pattern on the other side.

After the plain stripe, I start making checks.  You’ll notice some of the strands above are going over that bar, and some below.  That separates out the sheds.  If the top and bottom sheds are the same, you get long stripes.  If you alternate one yarn above and one below, you can make horizontal bars.  If you switch the top and the bottom yarns every few passes, you get checks.  Sensible stuff, really.

I add the heddles as I go, but lots of weavers don’t.  Heddles keep the sheds sliding past each other as you weave.  These are plastic heddles.  Plastic as in flexible, not plastic as in the stuff-that-makes-Lanea-foam-at-the-mouth.  Many looms use rigid heddles.  These heddles are just tied bits of crochet cotton that I loop over the upper shed strands

And then under the heddle bar

And hey presto, sheds are established.  This is a tabby weave: one upper, one lower, all the way across.

My original plan was to have one band of the fat homespun in the center of the pattern.  My original plan sucked.

See that–there’s no fixing that warble in the center with a shuttle, no matter how sharp.  And the thing is, I made the exact same mistake the last time I made a white inkle.  So I had to re-warp from the center out.  There was some inspired cursing at this point.  Bardic cursing.  If the inkle had intestines, they would have coiled up and blistered.  But rewarp I did, because I made a promise, dammit, and I keep my promises.  Onward!

Also, a lot of the yarn became mysteriously tangled when I went to get more coffee.  The cats made no comment.

The fix caused some loom-wide tension problems.  Luckily, I am a tool user.  And I buy burly skewers.

Once that was done, all I had to do was the rest of the hard work.  Weaving wool is more of a challenge than weaving, say, nice smooth mercerized cotton.  I’m also weaving something really wide for this loom.  And the loom hasn’t been tightened in a while.  It’s like I’m playing Civilization on Emperor level, but with inkles.

Normally you can open a shed by just using your shuttle to lift or lower the right set of strands.  Here, I have to separate the strands with my fingers each time I want to pass the shuttle through the warp.

And then I have to beat the hell out of the wool with the shuttle to make the weft line as clean as possible.

In the long run, though, I think it will be worth it.

Dude, I can see inkle for miiiiiiiles.

The pattern is set now, and working.  Band of plain, followed by sets of checks, followed by bands of thick and thin, and then the same in reverse.

Right.  So that little task took many hours, and it was interspersed with periods of washing, drying, and pressing.  Lots of pressing.
Lots and lots of pressing.

When I hefted that pile, I think it weighed about 25 pounds.  Hubba hubba.

I can stand to iron that much because, well, the crazy.  But also because I made myself a mammoth cutting and pressing table a few years back.  It’s a standard folding table, around 6′ by 3′ or 4′ I think.  I covered it in lots of batting and a few layers of tightly-attached fabric.  It saves my back and it keeps most of the pet hair off of the things I’m working on. 

Here: the first marks of the season.  This is some cranberry Onasberg.  You can’t tell from the photo, but it has a great texture and will be a nice, cool thing for someone to wear in the August heat.  Even better–this color is one that we know was produced way back in the way back.  Ahhhhhh.  Some red and brown linen have also gone under the knife, and some silk-wool check is saying some very provocative things.

Tonight: more cutting, more weaving, and some sewing.  Maybe I’ll even eat something.

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