Handwoven scarf, from the wool to finish

(Click on the photo to view at a larger size.)

Having decided red is a good colour for a scarf for my Mother, I went to Wingham wools and bought a collection of dyed merino tops. The rich shade they call "cherry red" became my starting point and reference for selecting the other shades.

I picked out a couple of reds darker than the cherry, then a pink, to balance the pink I chose pale and deep purples, and then the vibrant shocking pink seemed to add a highlight tone to set the others off, and having a touch of bluish tone it seemed to bridge the gap between reds and purples.

I didn't plan this carefully beforehand, I just had fun in the colour shed at Winghams, picking things up, comparing with the other colours and assembling a collection that seemed right.

I took 60g of cherry red, and then smaller amounts of the other colours, splitting each colour in half so each singles yarns would have the same proportions of the colours. For spinning, I pre-drafted two colours at a time, usually but not always cherry red plus one other.

Here's the start of the first bobbin (on a Timbertops spinning wheel).

... and this is what the full bobbin looked like -

Bobbin two went on a different lazy kate for plying, and I used my Ashford Traveller with a new jumbo bobbin and jumbo sliding hook flyer, which took the full length (nearly 200g) of plied yarn.

Looking at the picture above, on the left side of the lazy kate, you can see an odd dangling black thread, untidily tied in s bow. This is fine black elastic which I am using as a brake to prevent bobbin over-run (the situation where the bobbin spins freely unwinding yarn faster than it can be plied). It works. Any lazy kate can have a brake with this simple method. If you look again at the bobbin on the Timbertops built-in lazy kate, you will see I used the same there too.

Part way through plying -

I got the yarn spun, skeined, washed and hung up to dry. This is when I discovered that large skeins off jumbo bobbins take longer to dry! Whilst waiting (it took about 24 hours) I started to think about what to use for weft, and a weave pattern.

Originally I was going to use a different weft, I thought maybe a touch of orange with the cherry, or a deep red and cherry colour. I spun short samples and held them up against the skein, none were quite right. Then I looked at the great 200g skein and thought, well, there's enough yarn there already, and I know that the colours match.

After tea one evening, I sat down with my wool sample blanket and looked at the different patterns it offered. I wanted to be a little more adventurous this time, the scarves I wove early in 2009 used diagonal 2-2 twill and a simple wavy twill, but there are so many possibilities in weaving, what else might work? How about... square E20, 4 by 4 Broken Twill threading and a 2-2 twill and plain weave shaft lift pattern. This would enable the warp to be dominate in stripes, but the colours in the weft to show in between.

To determine the sett, I used this wooden square, wrapped threads around one way then thread a weft through with a needle, trying out plain weave and 2-2 twill.

The sett for the twill was working out at 12 epi, but tight. I decided to weave at 10 epi to get a looser structure that had enough flexibility that it could shrink when wet-finishing and still have a good handle and drape. I must say, I thought this would be o.k., but as I didn't have time to weave and wash a sample I wash a little nervous until the finished scarf came out of the washing water and looked right when it was hung-up to dry.

Just before we get to the scarf, here's the rich colour of the warp as I was setting up the loom.

...and the tiny amount of warp waste after I'd tied tassels both ends of the scarf, no more than 20cm total...

and the scarf!

Knitwear design

Surprise, surprise, another new book..(?) o.k. you already know, I collect books like nothing else...

This is a good one. The best bit is that having bought this book, there's a long list of other books I thought I might want that I can now say I don't need. I might borrow them from the library instead(!) but I have got myself a reference book that covers many different knitting techniques.

This book is splendid. Lots in it. Not too expensive, in fact, cheap for the range of knowledge and the beautiful clear instruction and photos. I am reading it steadily and it is giving me all sorts of ideas about things I could do in knitting. It's a book for anyone who wants to design any knitting, and the subject is colour. It probably says all you really need to know about colour and knitting.

It's very good on choosing colours to use together, knitting with different coloured yarns and multi-colour yarns and the effect stitch choices have, creating pattern effects in the colour, or random effects, and then special techniques: stranded knitting, intarsia, helix knitting, shadow knitting, mosaic knitting, twined knitting, double knitting (two layers at once), designing with modules (a.k.a patchwork knitting), entrelac. There's a nice "design workshop" section with basic garment design and most appropriately it ends up with finishing touches.

It is:

The Essential Guide to Color Knitting Techniques, by Margaret Radcliffe, pub. Storey Publishing in the U.S., 2008, ISBN 978-1-60342-040-2

Chocolate scarf

At the weekend I wove the next of my sequence of scarves on a Noro Kureyon Sock yarn warp. I am very, very pleased with the result. The weft yarn is Araucania Yarn, hand dyed, from Chile. I took the photo of the scarf in progress so you can see the colours in the warp which are cool shades of brown and grey and how the warm brown shades in the weft set it off. The weave pattern is a 4 shaft undulating twill from this book: However, the inspiration came from the undulating twills in the Janet Phillip's Sample Blanket which I wove last year. This blanket is not only a wonderful reference to look at when I am wondering what weave structure to use, but was also a tremendous learning experience as I discovered many new weave patterns. Here's the relevant section of the blanket: And here is my new scarf, off the loom and after washing vigourously in hot soapy water: The feel and drape of this weave is everything I hoped for, and I love the wavy lines. My selvedges are significant improved from the previous scarf, this I am sure is because I am getting used to winding on the warp carefully. I advanced the warp just one inch at a time, and I was only weaving a quarter - half inch before moving the stretcher. Last week I bought two more combinations of yarn because I don't want to stop weaving scarves just yet! One of my other on-going projects at the moment is spinning my way through a couple of coloured Ryeland fleece. Here's a bobbin full on the lazy kate of my Timbertops Leicester: Before spinning full bobbins I prepared a small skein to test out the behaviour of the yarn. I knitted swatches on three different needle sizes to see how it looks. This is the pillow slip full of wool yet to be spun: Isn't it pretty? The fleeces were supplied by Sandie Davison of Yorkshire Woollybacks. 

Storytime: Why I am a weaver - and colours for rugs

I had no knowledge of handweaving until 2005. It didn't exist in my world. I suppose I'd heard of it, I think I'd seen an odd loom in a museum, and I have a vague memory of visiting a village of artisans in France on a french exchange trip as a schoolchild where a handweaver sat at a loom weaving a rug.

I'd also only once seen a spinning wheel, in a museum at Ironbridge but what I remember most of that was that the lady in Welsh costume got up from her spinning wheel and gave us hot Welsh cakes to taste, straight from the griddle. Oh, so tasty!

Then in 2005 I was unexpectedly unemployed at then end of a University course. As I left University (first time) in a recession in the late 1980's I have previous experience of unemployment. The most remarkable thing about being unemployed is finding out how many hours there are in a day and in a week and then understanding that with no routine anymore you have to find your own way to organise your life. Looking for work and collecting unemployment benefit takes up a some of the hours. There are enough hours left to go out of your mind with boredom and anxiety - if you want to. I knew from the past that I needed to create some sort of structure and purpose for days / weeks in order to stay sane.

Then came an opportunity. We went to the Manifold Show - one of the traditional country / farming shows there are every summer in rural England. It poured with rain, everything was sodden, everyone wet through. Typical English summer. I remember admiring a few sheep in pens, admiring prize winning chickens and a slow tractor race. The rain came down in sheets. As it was being announced that the afternoon's show events were to be cancelled and the rain got heavier, we nipped into the nearest marquee. The rain thundered on to the canvas and wind whipped at the tent edges. Shelter from the weather was most welcome. We were wondering whether to go home. But in the farmost corner of the tent three very cheerful ladies were busy at spinning wheels. We wandered over. They had a display that taught me that these spinning wheels did not just look pretty, they produced yarn. The yarn could be dyed (yellow, from onion skins) and knitted into garments. O.K., you read this and it's just logical because you know about these things. I did not know about these things. I was virtually speechless with amazement.

I sat at a spinning wheel but was too nervous to try spinning the wool offered. I learnt that the spinners were members of a "Guild".

We went home. When I was warm and dry again I looked on the internet to find out about spinning and Guilds and spinning wheels. This was a Saturday evening. I found Chris's Spinndizzy resources page, and then the Loom Exchange. There were wheels advertised that looked like the one's we'd seen, it was called "Ashford Traditional". There was a wheel advertised that had the same phone code as us. That means it was within about 10 miles, and the next day, Sunday, was my birthday. What did I want for my birthday? That spinning wheel. We collected it next day. £90 for a wheel, handcarders, and a small bag of washed fleece.

The handcarders had a label on them saying "Wingham Woolworks" and a phone number. On Monday I phoned up and said, who are you, what do you do? They sold wool for spinners, and were just the other side of the Pennine hills, shop open Sundays and Mondays. The next Sunday I was there, in a barn full of amazing sights - all kinds of wool and other fibres, spinning wheels, etc. I bought some Jacob's wool and a booklet "Essentials of Handspinning" by Mabel Ross.

I had a useful talk with Ruth Gough (proprietor) who gave me some basic instruction and signed up to come back the next Tuesday for a day's lesson. This was the point where weaving came into my life. We were talking about uses for spun yarn. I hadn't knitted for years, obviously I needed to re-learn to use my yarn - but Ruth mentioned weaving. Being in South Yorkshire, which has a strong textile trade and tradition, she had learnt spinning and weaving at school. She picked up a copy of Marguerite Porter Davison's "A Handweaver's Pattern Book" and flicked through, saying you could weave these on a loom - and here's the one I wove for my A Level (a complicated overshot design). Again, I was amazed, too much to take in.

I went home and practiced starting and stopping the wheel for a few days, to the puzzlement of my boyfriend who thought the purpose was producing yarn. Then I got my Jacob's wool and Mabel Ross's instructions, and after several false starts produced some thick grey yarn. By the end of a day's lesson with Ruth, I had plied yarns in all sorts of wools and colours and a big glow of satisfaction. They said I was "a natural" and I was hooked. I was soon spending several hours a day at the wheel. I span every type of wool I could find, and put together a sample book with fleece and yarn and notes about the wool type and possible uses.

Weaving came a few months later. The nearest Guild to where I live was over an hour's drive away, that may not seem far if you are in the U.S., but the roads are narrow, hilly, and very twisty here and an hour's drive is hard work. At some times of year ice, wind and rain make the evening travel more difficult and even dangerous. Instead, I found the Online Guild of Weavers Spinners and Dyers, and after thinking about it for a few weeks, signed up. Oh happy day - I was among friends. They taught me to spin other fibres (cotton and silk) and gave lots of advice and encouragement. I tentatively asked for advice about getting a loom. I fancied one of those little rigid heddle looms, or a table loom. Boyfriend advised I'd soon be bored and should think bigger. I asked the Guild, they agreed with him, and so it was that my first loom was to be a 2nd hand 8 shaft, 10 treadle Toika Norjanna.

And - yes, pictures at last - here is my very first piece of weaving:

The warp was kindly prepared ready to go on the loom by it's previous owner, who also gave me a plan for tying up the treadles and threading the heddles. I was using plain weave, diagonal 2-2 twill and 3-1, 1-3 blocks. The coloured rug wools came from Texere Yarns at Bradford, mill ends from the carpet industry, 80% wool and 20% nylon.

The sample was on the loom a few weeks, as I wove a bit, thought a bit, selected different colours.

This is the finish of it, I show if here just below the start so you can see how much I'd learnt about controlling the weaving, it's so very tidy at this end, compared to the start.


Here's some shots of the bits in between. I had a lot of fun mixing colours in alternate rows, or three row repeats, to make speckled or graduated effects.


Colour influences? Below strawberries, raseberries, billberries, water, sky...


Moorland and grassland...

Random "what if?" stuff...

My mother came to stay, and I showed her, and she asked "so what is it for?" That's a good question, it's an odd sort of rug, six feet long and about 14" wide. It's my sampler. I roll it up and unroll it. I look at it in different places in different lights. I fold it in different places, to put different sections next to each other and see how they work or compare different effects. It is a design tool. And, rolled up, it's very comfortable to sit on on the stone steps at the front of our house, when the spring sunshine is warm but the stone slabs cold.

Having fun with sock yarns!

This is my second scarf woven with Noro Nureyon Sock yarn for warp and Trekking sock yarn in the weft. Set at 15 epi, woven on my Leclerc Voyageur loom. I'm really delighted with this scarf, it looks amazing with my favourite red jumper (seen in this badly lit photo).

I wore it to work and the reactions were very interesting. A couple of people were unreservedly amazed and impressed. A couple of others said although it looks superb they couldn't wear such a scarf because they don't like the feel of wool and think it scratchy. I could get around that by weaving similar colours in silk.

I think I should say a bit more about design. Before I started weaving the first of these scarves I spent a long time studying they many superb patterns in my Janet Phillip's sample blanket. I'm really looking forward to using some of the 500 patterns in my weaving. However, I realised that a simple diagonal twill was going to give better feel and drape to a fairly thick wool yarn.

The colour choice for this pink/orange scarf was inspired by Cally's work with similar hot colours. I'd never have thought of putting these kind of shades together if I hadn't seen how well they work for Cally and also got my colour sampler to refer to. I think the more one looks at things and works with different colour ideas the more an understanding builds up. Playing with colours is important, literally playing - like Cally's colouring book, or just sitting with the different coloured yarns in your stash and arranging them differently. So much that we dismiss as child's play is about building understanding of how things work.

Just a reminder of the yarns I used, note that the orange Trekking yarn has shade variations that give the scarf bands of different intensity in the weft (see above).


Next I picked up my green yarns, and I changed reed from a 15 dent to an 8 dent threaded at 16 epi. The slightly denser warp makes little difference, but the reed threaded 2 ends per dent was kinder to the warp. The 15 epi reed had rubbed against the warp yarns more and caused a little wear during the weaving.


This scarf had perfect looking selvedges on the loom -

which I attribute:
(a) to weighting the selvedge yarns behind the loom (they were not beamed with the warp, just looped up and weighted with a lead weight from the fishing shop, 4oz) and
(b) to a cute little Glimakra temple, see below.


However, when I took the scarf off the loom the selvedges looked a bit less perfect, in fact, a bit wavy. I was a bit surprised by this, I'd carefully moved the temple about every half inch woven. However, it doesn't detract at all from the scarf, maybe it is just a reminder that it this is handwoven.


This is a close up of the fabric. I like the effect of the intermittent short pink/purple and light green sections in the Trekking sock yarn used as weft, the effect is slightly like a tartan cloth.
p.s. the pictures of my scarves in this and my last-but-one post can be enlarged if you click on a photo.

Tabby and twill

This blanket is one of a small collection we have woven by Keith Stow, a weaver living in Sowerby Bridge, Yorkshire, who I understand finally retired about 3 years ago. I wish I'd bought more of his beautiful blankets! I also love wearing a couple of hooded jackets sewn up from a similar fabric to the blankets. All 100 per cent wool. The label he wove under was "Stows of Sowerby". I have an old "Craft Trail" booklet for the south Pennines with a page about the business. Keith Stow had worked as a spinning overlooker until he was made redundant in 1980. He and his wife were living in a farmhouse with a large barn, suitable for setting up his weaving business. It is my understanding from a conversation I had with the intermediary I bought the blankets from - at a Derbyshire crafts centre - that he started hand weaving, but the popularity of the blankets was such that it justified getting a large Italian mechanical loom, and in fact the craft booklet says he had three working looms. It was discovering these blankets - I think probably 8 years ago - that caused me first to look at a woven cloth and wonder about how it was designed and made. The Craft Trail booklet tells me that they are based on a blanket that Keith's wife, April, inherited from a Swiss grandfather. They are a bit different to anything I had ever seem before. They are woven in 4/4 diagonal twill and fulled. The weft colours are in bands, the blanket above has five different weft colours but an extraordinary number and range of colours in the warp. I think it probably that he used production line ends from local mills.

Colours - theories and practice

I've been meaning to get back to writing about colour, and hanging up multi-coloured Christmas lights in our front window on the evening of the winter solstice brought back many thoughts about colour.

There is a fashion for blue Christmas lights. A nearby town has a magnificent tall Christmas tree, it passes muster in daylight, but at night the sole decoration tiny blue lights leave it looking dingy, dull and mean. Not what I call Christmassy, no spirit of joy, of giving and sharing. It looks like they couldn't really be bothered (who are they? the councillors? some official with a small budget?). I don't name the town - it's local and I'm ashamed of it.

There is no doubt colour and colour choices are important. Everyone knows their own likes and dislikes for different colours in different places. I realised recently, when discussing colour samplers, that I have been building my own ideas about colour interactions steadily over many years, and I take what I know for granted.

Because my understanding of colour is in patterns in my mind, and because colour is a complex subject, I found to my surprise that I lacked words and phrases for talking about my views on colour.

So what could I say to someone else about colour? This is where I feel comfortable:

• I can talk a bit about rainbows and the spectrum colours when white light is split with a glass prism.
• I know the terms "warm" and "cool" and associate them with the colours of hot things and colours of cold things.
• I know that colour temperature relates to how "white" a light is and gives an indication of a tint towards yellow or blue.
• I know that colours look different in different lights.
• I know that in my box of drawing pastels, where each colour is available in 5 tints, no. 3 is pure pigment, 2 and 1 have white added and 4 and 5 have black added.
• I know that pigments in paints and dyes interact with each other differently to mixing colours of light.

That seems like a reasonable list now I write it down. But I didn't seem to be able to explain to other people how I choose colours and how I predict what combinations I decide will work together, and I was shaky on the details of the above - like how to explain why pigments behave as they do, what light temperature is about, what happens with different colours under different lights.

This set me off in two directions however, both seemed to involve buying more books! (I find it hard to ignore any excuse for another book.) I read a lot, learnt a lot, got a bit confused and then ended up about where I started!

I learnt that colour theory in relation to making colour choices seemed to take off at the end of the 19th century, and that modern "colour theory" crystallized with the Bauhaus movement and teaching. Since early 20th century, "colour theory" has been passed on often with little of the context or background for the theories. Some modern colour theory books present us only with a set rules and no reasoning. Personally I react against rules without reasons. I was born to ask "why" and remember getting into trouble on many occasions in my childhood for insisting on having "why" answered, and refusing to obey rules that had no whys!

Hunting through bibliographies and references to ever older texts on colour brought me to the purchase of two lovely old books.

Colour Matching on Textiles: a manual intended for the use of dyers, calico printers, and textile colour chemists, by David Paterson, published by Scott, Greenwood & Co., London, 1901,

and

Colour in Woven Design: being a treatise on the science and technology of textile colouring, by Roberts Beaumont, published by Whittaker & Co. of London and New York in 1912.

The first is a lovely old text book, written for those in the trades named in the title, and begins at the beginning - by looking at how the human eye perceives colours with full description of the parts of the eye and how the eye works. Chapter 1 is all about this, chapter 2 is about the qualities of different natural daylight sources (artificial light sources are not mentioned until chapter 8) Chap. 3 is on hues and purity of colour, other chapters are specifically about dye matching for textiles.

This book introduced the name of a man who seems to have been one of the first to try and develop rules about how different colours interact when used together: the French chemist M. E Chevreul.

Principles of the Harmony and Contrast of Colours and Their Application to the Arts, M.E. Chevreul, 2nd edition pub. 1855, Longman & Brown.
(Fairly recently republished in the U.S.)

It was Monsieur Chevreul, a chemist in charge of the dyeing department of the famous Gobelins tapestry workshops in France who seems to have been the first to examine why, in the words of David Patterson "a colour may appear rich and saturated in one pattern, and yet appear dull and wanting in vigour when put into another pattern with a different scheme of colouring". This seems to be the root of our modern colour wheel organised theory. I tracked down an early edition of this book at a second hand book shop. It was priced at £50 and not in good condition, so I did not buy, but I was interested to hold a copy of this book and see what it contained and how it was organised. M. Chevreul developed his theories of colour behaviour based on close examination, and it seems asking everyone who came near him to take a look at different colour combinations and say what they thought (reminded me of my optician asking which colour is brighter now, red or green, and now...?) His book ends with chapters applying his ideas to different arts, e.g. a chapter on weaving giving recommendations for ways to use colours in stripes in order to produce pleasing results.

By the time Roberts Beaumont writes in 1912 he describes different well known and recognised theories of colour, and this book is very much a practical handbook for textile designers. He deals with Theories of Colour, Attributes of Colour, Contrast and Harmony in the first three chapters, then following "Colour Standardisation" he is on to chapters about weaving cloth with stripes, checks, compound colourings, spotted effects, etc.

This is a similar approach to that of:
William Watson, in Textile Design and Colour, pub. Longmans, Green & Co. Ltd, my 6th edition dated 1954.

Meanwhile, another line in development of colour theories is beginning as Johannes Itten, born in 1888, started studied painting and colour formally in 1913. He joined the famous Bauhaus as a master and was there 1919 to 1923, developing a course on form and colour. Itten's major contribution to colour theory was:
The Art of Colour, by Johannes Itten, pub. 1944
I have before me now (from the local library) the abbreviated version of this work (condensed text of the above, without the original colour plates):
The Elements of Color, edited and with a forword and evaluation by Faber Birren, published by Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, 1970.
Reading this book, about complimentary colours, contrasts etc. I find that more recent books on colour theory seem to add nothing to what is here. If you want to study colour theory, this is probably about the best book. If you want to play with colours and see how they behave for yourself, then I think it is worthwhile also having:
Interaction of Color, by Josef Albers, published by Yale University Press, 1963
which provides a course to work through to study and learn about colour interactions by experience.
(I was able to get a copy of this through my local library also).

The only more recent book I think well worth a mention is:
Dyeing to Knit, by Elaine Eskesen, published by Down East Books, 2005, ISBN 0-89272-667-9 and ISBN 978-089272-667

Why don't I mention others? Because certain other authors use the colour wheel based theories as rigid rules without applying judgement and common sense and produce a lot of combinations which to me look like mud, or shades of grey. One particular author gives no bibliography and no history so it is as if she made it all up by herself. I mention no names, yes, she is famous and everyone else likes her and will jump up and protest at my words if I mention her name. So I don't. I just say, use your own eyes, your own common sense, decide for yourself and don't follow blindly.

Now I like Elaine Eskesen because she attributes the ideas in modern colour theory to their originators, quotes Chevereul, includes Ittens and the Faber Birren Elements of Colour in her bibliography so you know where her ideas come from. Then she adds something of her own, she explains ideas that have evolved through working for many years in using dyes and using dyed yarns. I like a section in the book where she has given some very different yarns she has dyed to famous knitters and they have knitted something and then comment on the yarn and the colours.

So should you go out and buy any of these? That's up to you, I'd say borrow them from a library or a friend, read them through, then move on. I think that understand colour theory ought to be at background level when you are designing. I would compare studying colour theory together with learning scales as part of learning to play a musical instrument, useful, but not an end in itself.

I like the way people put colours together by looking at a favourite picture, and saying "here are some colours I like to see together", or collecting a little pile of coloured objects, or coloured pieces of paper, cloth or yarns, or a coloured sketch of something they have seen, and then saying "I will use these colours".

Also, I like to read about Bonnie Tarses' amazing colour combinations, which always seem to work (she talks about it in WeaveCast episode 9) I think part of the secret of this is good quality yarn colours.

Oh, I nearly forgot to mention, Bernat Klein developed a theory of his own that the colours that suit a person are the colours to be found in the irises of their eyes. An interesting idea. I wonder, does it work for you, reader? Comments welcome! I neither strongly agree nor disagree with this, but I would say that for a person with chestnut to strawberry-blonde type red hair, as I have had (now fading) with very blue eyes, this doesn't quite work. My best colours are greens and autumn shades, but then I seem to recall he said somewhere that the red-haired are an exception to the rule.

Season's greetings to all.

The latest colour sampler

Here is a reminder of my latest warp colours:
I set out to weave a colour sample in more muted colours than I used in my first colour sampler in September, see below.

I spent a long time not getting started on this 2nd sampler, wondering how useful / important it was. Now it is done I am very pleased with it and feel it was well worth while. Not only did I get to explore how different colours with a lower degree of contrast to each other behave, I also used my bright yarns with this warp and was interested to see how they toned down.

This first picture shows the plain weave section in which the same colours were used in warp and weft:

The next shows the brighter yarns against this warp, again in plain weave:

..and to demonstrate more clearly the effect of the softer / duller warp colours on the bright yarns, here are two photos showing the same weft colours on the different warps:




I was running out of warp by the time I'd been through all my colours in first plain weave and then twill, but I made use of the final inches to weave horizontal pleats, sections of 1/3 twill alternating with 3/1. These turned out lovely and are I feel inspired to do some larger project in these colours & weave. Please note these photos were taken to show off the colours, not the weave, so I had pulled the pleats out and pressed them flat, but before I did this it really did hang in nice soft pleats.







A note on weaving pleats

Here is a link back to my first attempt at weaving pleats, a year ago in November 2007.

Since then, I have learnt more about pleats by talking to other weavers and by reading. I would especially like to recommend Anne Field's new book Collapse Weaves, because she looks into the "hows and whys" of creating textured weaves. It's a discursive book, not a pattern book. If you are already weaving and designing weaves and want to explore the possibilities of texture this book should be on your shelf - or in your hand, being read!

One reason why these pleats work better than my first attempt, in spite of the same 2/12 mercerised cotton yarn being used in both samples and this one using in warp and weft, is the sett. Last year I was working at 24 epi (ends per inch) and the cloth was loose and soft, then I increased to 36 and a finer weft. The finer weft worked and denser warp worked, but so did this latest sample at 30 epi. Once again, this shows what can be learnt by getting to know your yarn by weaving samples.

Here's a note to myself: when I try a new type or size of yarn, I should put on a sample warp and test out basic weave structures at different epi, and finish my samples by washing and ironing before planning any weave project.

Book details:
Collapse Weave: creating three-dimensional cloth, by Anne Field, pub A & C Black, London, 2008, ISBN 978-1-4081-0628-0, £19.99

the same book in the US is published Trafalgar Square Books (September 1, 2008), ISBN-10: 1570764042, $26.95.

Anne Field spent 3 years writing the book and over that time it became a bigger book than originally intended, because she had explored further and had more to say. Her definition of "collapse weave" is that:

"when taken from the loom and washed, the change from a rigid arrangement of threads on the loom to a cloth that bends, distorts and deviates from the usual linear movement of most other cloth is amazing".

Doesn't that make you want to read on?