Loomlust Weaving Notes

Our shipment of Colcolastic yarn from Venne arrived; so I just had to try it to see how it works.

I was impressed with the minispool, in that it fit into my shuttle and saved me from having to wind bobbins. The Colcolastic thread consists of two threads - a regular cotton thread with the fine lycra thread wrapped around it. I thought I could see trouble on the horizon.

 

I decided to use the active yarn in my weft only, for my first attempt.  I warped the loom with 20/2 mercerized cotton in a twill pattern.

I wove alternate pics of 20/2 mercerized cotton (light green) and the Colcolastic thread (dark green). It was easy to weave, the Colcolastic behaved no differently than the regular cotton.

Taken off the loom, the sample looked rather unremarkable. The magic is in the water – as they say.   When the sample was wet finished, the Colcolastic yarn came to life. The resulting piece was about 30% smaller than the original sample and has a stretch similar to a tensor bandage.

Now I am intrigued. I need to try this same weave with different spacing. I think an inch or two of regular cotton with 5-6 pics of the Colcolastic should give me a very different result. And then, I need to try it in the warp.  I’ll let you know how this works out for me.

back to Weaving in the ZONE - Ronnie

If you are attending any of these events and would like to pre-order your yarn, we will have it pre-packaged and waiting for you.

 

Tuesday September 2, 2014
We will be attending the Etobicoke Handweavers and Spinners Guild meeting, at the Neilson Park Creative Centre.

http://www.neilsonparkcreativecentre.com/index.php?lang=en .

 

Saturday September 20, 2014
We will have a booth at the 5 Counties Seminar at Eden United Church, located at 3051 Battleford Road, Mississauga, Ontario

http://fivecounties2014.wordpress.com/

 

Saturday October 4, 2014
We will be at the Ontario Handweavers and Spinners - Central Region Seminar at Black Creek Pioneer Village

https://sites.google.com/site/burrhousefiberarts/home/ohs-central-region-seminar-1

Christmas holidays are over I hope everyone had a chance to get together with family and friends..

First off I would like to thank everyone for the positive feedback of our loomlust web site. It's much appreciated.
Our goal is to eventually fill all your weaving and fiber arts needs. Please be let us know if you have something you would like us to carry. We will see if we can fit it into our inventory plans.

Now my BIG ANNOUNCEMENT!

I have just placed our first order for Swedish yarn. Customers have been asking us for Swedish yarns. Weavers like to work with the high quality yarns which are hard to find in Canada. So we have decided to fill the gap.

Our first order coming in is16/2 linen. This should arrive early next week and I will post it soon after on our web site.

If there  is a Swedish yarn you have been dreaming to work with, call or email us and we will try to get it for you. I have access to Bockens and Borgs yarns.

Don't forget I can also get any of the quality yarns from Venne. Check out the Venne web site if there is something you would like to try. I can add it to my next order to Venne.

Keep the shuttle flying.

Ronnie & Ben

 

 

The cotton in the Ice Blue photo is 8/2 Cotton from UKI.
The colours are:
Bleached - KPBLE
Copen Blue - KP47
Deep Royal - KP51

This is it.  Day one. 

All the dreaming, and learning, and planning and work come to fruition today. 

The Loomlust online store is officially open. 

We are starting with baby steps and plan to grow as the market demands. 

We will use the blog to share our weaving adventures, aspirations and inevitable dogs (those nasty misbehaving threads) on the loom.

Today I have four floor looms on the go.  I am weaving a monks belt pattern (The Handweaver's Pattern Directory, Dixon, p 100) on one of the counterbalanced looms. I am planing to make Mug Cozies for Christmas.  I am using 8/2 cotton in a natural for the warp, (24 epi) and using a few different colours in the weft. I kept breaking threads at the beginning of the warp, and then seemed to get past that for a while.  Now I am nearing the end of the warp, and again the same threads are breaking. 

I can tell that the threads are being frayed by the heddles on other harnesses, but haven't been able to avoid the abrasion.  And I love the pattern, so I will just keep going and see if I can figure something out about the heddles before my next warp.

Here is a peek at the pattern that I am using. (Turquoise Weft and Blue weft...red is next)

  

What's on your loom?
Ronnie