A [insert adjective here] warp

Don’t jump to conclusions – so far all adjectives are appropriate for polite company.

My husband’s was “pretty!” as he wandered past. It’s Araucanía Ranco Multy from Chile, 75% wool, 25% polyamide, around 344 m/100gm. I wanted to try adapting Bonnie Tarses’s “almost ikat” technique to use the avl warping wheel. See Bonnie’s YouTube tutorial, and her blog. I combined the multi-coloured yarn in stripes with an almost-solid skein. I’ve been reading Lydia Van Gelder’s Ikat II – a beautiful book with great projects to guide experimenting with ikat. I’d like to try incorporating some elements or loose interpretations in my work, and this seemed a good place to start.

The yarn brings up another adjective – “bouncy”. It was sold as sock yarn and is spun quite soft and lofty. I did a couple of samples on my ashford table loom with no difficulties, but on my big noble floor loom it’s hard to get enough tension to form a shed without a lot of stretching. Plus I noticed a lot of fluff as I was threading and sleying, so I am dubious about “durable”, at least when used as a warp.

“Puzzling” refers to weft selection. In the photo there are 9 different colours of wool weft (Bendigo Woollen Mills Classic 2 ply). I want a slightly weft dominant fabric (trying to make the most of the shifting colour), in a twill (for drape). I like the idea of some secondary patterning, so I’m using herringbone twill threading and lift. (not exactly. It’s a straight 8 shaft twill with lifts that make it act like a 4 shaft herringbone threading). “Uncertain” relates to me – I don’t how much of the above is rubbish.

Which brings us to “stalled”. I’ve run out of weekend, plus I want to cut off and wet finish this first little bit. I did sample earlier, but a bit too small, with different colours plus at 15 and 20 ends per inch rather than the 18 epi which I’m actually using (since my 12 dpi table loom reed is busy elsewhere).

2 thoughts on “A [insert adjective here] warp

  1. Warp-y loveliness! I used Aracauna Ranco for a collapse weave on 8 shafts and it held up fine. I was using a much finer weft – both for the collapse and so that the color changes in the warp would dominate. It was threaded in a 3/1,1/3 twill. Good luck with the project – it really looks scrumptious!

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