Red warp

There has been warping, and even some weaving!

With my final assignment for A Creative Approach with my tutor and my course materials for my next module Understanding Art 1: Western Art on their way, there was a little window of time. I was poised to pounce – I bought an armful of various red yarns a while back in an end of year sale. At the time I was in the middle of design work for my final assignment and knew I would want a change of pace with no deep thought, no consideration of complex structure. Instead I wanted to work intuitively, glorying in colour.

Rummaging through my existing stash added more yarns to the pile. This photo was taken partway through the selection process. The colour isn’t accurate – I always have trouble photographing red – but hopefully you get the general idea. The selection was based on some mohair and wool yarns in the “Ladybug” colourway from Creative Yarns in New Zealand (www.creativeoutlet.co.nz). There’s a whole mix of fibre types, mostly cotton, wool and mohair with touches of silk and cashmere, in a range of textures and weights. In the front of this photo you may just be able to see the provisional use of the planned fabric – a pattern from the Saori pattern book Shitate no hon (scroll down towards the bottom of the page at curiousweaver.id.au/books) plus a little model in tissue paper to make sure I understood the design (the book is all in Japanese, with diagrams).

Continuing the spontaneous slash intuitive approach, I wound the warp with the yarns all in a mix, then dealt with questions of yarn size as I sleyed the reed at the table. My improvised cross-holder is at the front left – two clamps upside down on the table edge. To allow all this freedom I warped the loom front to back – a first. It was not without challenges. I don’t think I’ve used mohair in a warp before and hadn’t taken into account the loose fibres causing tangling between yarns. This combined with a rather delicate wool in my mix and resulted in 10 broken threads by the time the warp was on the loom (ouch! another first).

All that is now sorted, together with a couple of threading errors, and weaving begun. I’m starting with a fine mohair and it’s looking pretty open. I’ll sample a couple of different wefts, then cut off a short length and see if it holds together. Despite the learning curve it’s been fun – hands full of lovely yarns, happy and absorbed in my comfort zone of weaving. And that’s just what this warp is intended to be – a place of colour and fibre, touch, rhythm and comfort, just in case I need the occasional refuge while I venture into the academic world of Art History. I think it should make a good combination.