Busy

This is a huge skein of rug wool (3.6kg) draped over my (closed/folded) warping mill. The yarn is unravelled and being wound onto my ball winder. It takes me about ten minutes to wind a "cheese" of approx. 135g. I've wound 16 so by my calculations I have another 13 to go.

This is an easy skein to unwind. But there are others which are more challenging ....

I ordered 20kg of rug wool from ebay. It is wonderfully cheap, amounting to less than £1.50 a kilo, and that is including the postage. It is Axminster rug yarn, 80 per cent British wool and 20 per cent nylon. Just right for my rug making projects.

Unfortunately it can be quite tricky to transform it into a state suitable for putting on a shuttle, and it is filling my house with fluff in the process. But at that price, who could complain!

And the colours are all lovely and useful. It felt like Christmas, opening the bags when they arrived - three full coal sacks. Hooray.

Rug number four

So


Here are the photos of my fourth rug. I did not have enough of any one colour to create the "windows" effect that had caught my attention in Peter Collingwood's book but I am still delighted with this bit of weaving. I had to incorporate some randomly sized and coloured stripes to ease the problem of quantity of the main colour, but I am happy with this addition to the design. Yippee.

Delighted as I certainly am, I have had enough of rug weaving for the present and am weaving some woollen scarves, which I shall show you presently.

Happy New Year

May 2009 be good to you, and may you be good to 2009 -

well I was going to show a picture of my latest finished rug but I'd not taken one so here is a photo of it in its infancy ...

My third rug

Here is the third rug I have woven, and the biggest, at 3' x 5'. I am truly delighted with it, after a few initial misgivings when it first came off the loom.

You can see both sides of the rug and a close-up. I have plaited the warp ends, after investing quite a bit of some trying out a woven edge and then undoing it all, preferring the plaits.

This rug is for my friend Elizabeth, to celebrate her first class honours degree in English literature from the Open University.

Rug update

The end is in sight now, I've got another fourteen inches to go. Then I shall have a 3' x 5' rug.

This picture is not very good, actually as the mustard and the lime both look the same whereas they are quite distinct from each other in reality.

The rug is using up a tremendous amount of weft. I am putting in thirty-two picks an inch, using two strands of Axminster rug wool at a time. So that is sixty-four strands an inch. It will be lovely and heavy and thick (hopefully!).

The reed is a metric one so it is a bit tricky to say what the sett is. I have threaded the warp alternately single and double in the heddles and the dents. At just over 36" there are 280 dents and 140 working ends. There are about 7.5 dents in every inch, or 3 for every centimetre, so my ends per inch works out at between 3 and 4.

I have used a floating selvedge of 3 warp ends. The warp is linen rug warp from Fibrecrafts and is a good beige colour that I think goes well with everything. In future I plan to use 100% Berber rug wool for the weft that I have dyed myself, but that will be a very big project!

Rug

This is what I am weaving at the moment. I am so very very happy with how it is turning out, I can hardly begin to tell you. The close up image is quite accurate in its colours.

This is being woven with advice from Peter Collingwood's rug book. It is based on a 3-shaft block weave. It has four blocks, threaded 123, etc 234 etc, 341 etc and 412 etc.

The blocks are either all colour A, all colour B, or vertical stripes of both colours. What fascinates me is that these blocks can be moved about according to the order of the weft colours A and B and according to the lifting of the shafts.

There are three ways to arrange the blocks if you want the first block to remain as colour A throughout, and this is the design I have started to put into my rug. I shall have about 10 inches of the first option, with green as colour A, and then I think I shall have some narrow horizontal stripes in maybe mustard and then red after which I shall probably have another 10 inches but this time with lime green as colour A and the second arrangement of the blocks. Then I shall put in some more horizontal stripes and I shall follow them with the third possible arrangement of the blocks and who knows I might choose red as my colour A.

What do you think? It is not as complicated as it sounds - you just have to read Peter Collingwood's instructions a few times, which are nice and clear and off you go.

The pale horizontal stripe in the photo is where the rug begins, it is a firm base of linen warp yarn for the weft and I shall most likely unpick it when the rug is finished and do a half-damascus edge followed by plaits. I wonder how long it will take me to finish.

Woven twill rug

Here is the finished rug, ta daa! - Fibinacci stripes of course.

Next rug.

This is a vivid, glowing blue. Doing my best.

Mat and dog.

Haven't finished doing the fringe, but it did get done.

First rug

I have nearly finished this, my first rug. It is on a linen 10/6 warp with a two-ply rug wool weft used two-fold. It is in a broken 2/2 twill - two colours ABABA repeat and I have managed to get about 31 picks per inch. I was happy with that because Peter Collingwood says to get up to 40 ppi at this setting but with a straight twill. The broken twill has more interlacements I believe, and I also think my warp is thicker than the one he was describing, so I'm calm.

I had no end of trouble, as usual, and at one point had to resort to re-tying all the ends (see picture) because the back stick was at an angle. The front and back sticks are galvanised metal water pipe that won't bend and are very heavy.

I'll tell you more later, but I'm going to try and finish this today. Must dash. Speak to you soon.