The Latest from the Loom

Posted on August 31, 2015 by Robin

In preparation for Fibershed’s Grow Your Jeans event I wove six shawls using locally grown Timm Ranch wool yarn. I showed photos of these before they were washed in this blog post. Quite a dramatic change. With the exception of the second blanket the weft is all the same as the warp, but naturally dyed. From left to right: Osage orange (exhaust), Jacob wool, osage orange, black walnut, pomegranate, not dyed. One shawl will be worn in the fashion show and they will all be for sale at Grow Your Jeans. After that they will be for sale at the Fibershed Marketplace website and at the Artery in Davis.More locally grown wool. These scarves are woven using Solano County Anderson Ranch wool. Not locally gown, but one of my best sellers–chenille scarves. You’ve seen this before but I hadn’t taken a photo with the magazine cover.Here’s is one of my photoshoot locations. Hard to find a smooth surface in the shade.

Friendship Baby Blankets & Fixing Weaving Errors

Posted on March 15, 2015 by Robin

I finished this project a couple of weeks ago but haven’t had time to share it. My friend, Irene of Cotton Clouds, is involved with The Natural Dye Project sponsored by Mayan Hands. She asked me to create a baby blanket out of the Friendship Towel Kit that she is selling to support the Guatemalan women in this project.The towel kit makes 4 towels using naturally dyed 8/2 cotton.I added Monte Cristo cotton boucle to the kit and came up with… …two baby blankets, each using Monte Cristo and 8/2 cotton in the weft but using different patterns. It is easy weaving but things don’t always go smoothly. I happened to look at the first blanket winding its way onto the cloth beam just before starting the second blanket and saw 7 warp threads that should have been woven into the blanket.Because of the texture of the boucle yarn I hadn’t noticed the error while weaving. Now I can see it but it wasn’t obvious when I wasn’t looking for it. Here is the problem. When threading the heddles I inadvertently used 7 heddles from the Shaft #5 when I should have used Shaft #4. This is a 4-shaft structure so #5 didn’t lift at all. It is an easy fix for the second blanket. Just tie Shaft # 5 up to each treadle in which Shaft #4 is engaged. That works.However, the only way to fix Blanket #1 was to needle weave all 7 threads in after it was off the loom. That should be easy (over-under-over;over-under-under), but it took hours because of the nature of the boucle yarn. Thank goodness it was only 7 threads.

After weaving the blankets aren’t done yet. Wet finishing is an important step of weaving. It allows the yarns to “bloom” and fills in the spaces that are there when the yarns are under tension. It turns a bunch of interlocked threads into cloth. It also results in shrinkage. See the difference in width in the strip that has not been washed and the finished blanket.

Here is a detail.

The final step is a photo session. No baby was available so I used one of my kids’ teddy bears.My old teddy bear (I won’t tell you how old) featured in some of the shots too.

You can purchase this kit from Cotton Clouds at this link.

Did a box of yarn explode in here?

Posted on April 30, 2014 by Robin

You may have seen this photo on Facebook (by the way if you didn’t see it on FB you can “like” Meridian Jacobs), but you didn’t see the rest.This is a stack of 19 blankets that I just finished. There is still warp on the loom, but I needed to get these off the loom (and I needed to give my shoulder a break–now it’s the right one giving me trouble). My daughter will choose one when she is here this week and the rest will go to The Artery for sale. They are also on my website.

So here is what some of them look like: Camo anyone?

This is what the cloth beam looks like while I’m weaving. Baby blanket yarn And here is the floor behind the loom.

Catching up in the Shop

Posted on February 11, 2014 by Robin

I spent the weekend demonstrating weaving at the Sacramento Weavers and Spinner Guild annual Open House. I knew that if I was going to spend two days there I needed to get something useful done. I wove two more of the scarf warps from the Box of Chenille to end the weekend with six new scarves. These are three from one warp.This is a bike that was parked outside the show. Baby blankets 849 Back at the shop I have been trying to get caught up on weaving jobs. This is part of a baby blanket warp. I cut these off before I finished all of the warp because I had someone waiting for three of them. I finally finished these cotton blankets that were on the loom a long time. Some are baby blanket size and some are larger for throws. The next project to finish is a custom king-sized blanket woven of yarn that is a blend of llama and wool. I finished getting this on the sectional beam last night and started threading it today. I hope that I can finish it by next week and move on to the throws for this customer.

A Few of the Week’s Accomplishments in the Shop

Posted on January 28, 2013 by Robin

Baby blankets still on the loom. Baby blankets off the loom and finished. I put on a 21 yard warp and wove 14 blankets. I hemmed some this time instead of leaving short fringe. I’ll be interested in seeing what buyers like best. The rest are shown on this page.

I taught several classes this week. This is WWW (Weekly Weaving Workshop), sometimes known as Wednesday Weavers Workshop, or Warped Women Weaving, or….It could go on. It is a drop-in class and we usually discuss any questions that people bring up about anything weaving and yarn related. (Some people come for a therapy session with friends.) Last week I said that I’d teach how to read weaving drafts. Those are the “recipes” for weaving patterns. This week we’ll look at drafts for “color and weave” effects.On Friday I taught a rigid heddle weaving class. This is Tanda with her beautiful new scarf woven of Jaggerspun Zephyr yarn on her rigid heddle loom.

On Saturday and Sunday I taught a spinning class. I can’t believe I didn’t take photos. That was followed by an interview about Fibershed for a well-known (in the fiber world) magazine. You’ll hear more about that when it’s published.

When I’m working in the shop or at the computer all day, instead of in the barn, I try to make sure I go for a walk or a bike ride with Rusty. That’s good for both of us. I’d probably get more exercise if I didn’t take my camera because I always get distracted by the view… …whether it’s close-up or……in the distance.

Three Looms Warped

Posted on July 7, 2011 by Robin

I have new projects on all three looms. That’s exciting!

This is a warp for 2 shawls. It is a mixed warp of cotton threads, a shiny slubby rayon thread, and Luna ribbon. I have already completed blue and purple shawls in my series of shawls for the Artery.

I know it’s 100+ degrees out but I’m getting a head start on the projects for the winter and I couldn’t wait to try out my new yarn. This is the newest Jacob yarn (1 ply black and 1 ply light gray)–not even labeled or on the website yet–and the project is a v-shawl.

I have been low on baby blankets for quite a while and while this warp may not help when someone needs a “boy blanket” it should give me several for girls–it’s 24 yards. Someone called today looked for a “neutral” blanket and I wonder if I weave with a blue thread if it could go for either. Here’s a small world experience. Yesterday I got an e-mail from a young woman New York who had been sent one of my baby blankets when she was a baby and her mother has been a regular customer ever since. The daughter now has a friend who is pregnant and wants to give one of the baby blankets. The call today was from the person who sent that first blanket to his niece in New York and now wants to send a blanket to Germany.)

Still weaving

Posted on May 23, 2010 by Robin

I haven’t written about weaving lately, but I’m still working at the loom. I have orders from 3 regular customers for 9 baby blankets. I just finished a warp with 10 blankets.

Last week I finished an order for wool throws. This customer had her yarn spun at Yolo Wool Mill and wanted 5 different blankets. Sometimes it is necessary to add a lot of spinning oil to the wool during processing. The yarn isn’t very appealing in that state, but woven blankets aren’t truly finished until they are ‘wet finished’. In wet finishing the oil is removed and the blanket is fulled. Take a look at the before and after photos of these blankets.

I calculated a sett of 5.5 epi. I used a 6-dent reed and left every 12th dent open. After I started weaving I worried that you would see that empty space in all 5 blankets and that would distract from the woven pattern. I didn’t need to worry. In the photo below you can sort of see that line, but when you see the blanket you focus on the diagonal twill and don’t even notice the vertical line.

Above is the before and after of another twill blanket.

Plain weave. Before fulling is above and after fulling is below.

This is one of my favorite weave structures. I was concerned about the finishing of this blanket. The yarn that I got from the mill was on cones and in skeins. The skeined yarn was so much oilier than the coned yarn it almost seemed to be a different batch. You can see the difference in the photo. In fact, there was so much tacky grease that I had to pull a length of yarn out of the shuttle with every pass or my end-feed shuttle would go flying off the loom (guess that’s because I have a fly-shuttle loom!) because the yarn wouldn’t feed out properly. I was relieved after I washed the blanket that there was no difference in the fulling of the two yarns.

New Baby Blankets

Posted on April 26, 2010 by Robin

I haven’t written much about weaving lately, but I’m getting a few things done. I have woven some baby blankets using SuperLamb. That’s the washable Merino wool by Jaggerspun that i am selling in the shop. It will be great for baby blankets–very soft and the added advantage of being machine washed and dried.

Here are some of the blankets still on the loom.

And here they are off the loom. These blankets are at The Artery right now.

More Color

Posted on September 1, 2009 by Robin

Saturday was Fiber Frolic at Meridian Jacobs. Colleen Simon (friend down the road) put this on and each teach two classes. Participants get to pick from two classes in the morning and two in the afternoon and lunch is provided.

In the morning Colleen taught minature sock knitting–it is the same as regular sock knitting, but many fewer stitches. While she was inside I was outside with the dyeing group. Good thing that this class was in the morning because the high temperature that day was 107!

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Look at the fiber and yarn that we dyed!

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We all went inside for the afternoon. I taught a Novelty Yarn class while Colleen taught Needlefelting. These are the butterflies that students made:

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On the weaving front–I finally finished a batch of baby blankets. Here is what they look like when they come off the loom:

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Not too impressive, huh? That’s 18 blankets. Here are some that are finished and ready for sale:

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I have sold 6 of the 18 blankets already so I’d better get busy with another warp!

The State Fair is going to get in the way of that though! That is coming up this weekend and I am still working on my display.

Weaving odds & ends

Posted on August 9, 2009 by Robin

I won’t say that I’m catching up with my things-to-weave list, but I’m plugging away at it. I have sold about half of the baby blankets on the PURPLE warp.

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but have enough left to put some on the website and maybe resurrect my etsy listings too. I have a new baby blanket warp on the loom ready to thread. Not everyone wants a purple blanket for a baby gift and that’s all I have right now!

Here’s a full-size blanket that I finally finished for a customer using her yarn.

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This is a blanket for another customer who sent me her Jacob wool.

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And here’s a funky bag. I’m experimenting with felting up some odds and ends of wool fabric to create bags. I think they’ll get better as I perfect it.

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I have taught a couple of weaving classes in the last few weeks as well. Here are the participants and their scarves:

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It’s sure nice now that I have room in my shop to have 5 people weaving at once!

Meridian Jacobs' Blog

Life on the farm and at the loom.

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