ivorivet
Ivorivet
Welcome! This is is a blog where I post about the stuff I make. I do a lot of cosplay and fiber arts, and Tumblr is one of the few social media sites left that doesn't make me want to crawl out of my skin.
If you have a question, send me an ask!
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Some updates on the weaving progress for my V盲vstuga class!
- Towels: 4 out of 4 woven and off the loom, not finished. They need a narrow woven band for a hanging loop which I haven't warped up yet.
- Blankets: 2 out of 2 woven, fringed, and fulled BABY. 馃憣 Completely done and they are so wonderfully squishy. The weaving took about half the time as getting the loom warped! I was kind of nervous about chucking them in the washing machine and dryer to fill them but I'm so glad I did.
- Tablecloths: Warped up on the table loom at home today, and about 90% of the first one of four is done. These are going pretty fast because of the plain weave. It's my first time using a temple (the wooden stretcher device that helps prevent draw-in from the weft) and ngl I am mad it took me this long to shell out for one.
I'm not 100% sure I love the color combo on this one. I would have liked the yellow stripes to pop a little more to compete with the blue, so I may change the colors up a bit on the other tablecloths.
Block weave damask squares: we are saving this 100% linen nightmare until the end because I don't want to deal with it right now
I'm aiming to get as much done of these as I possibly can before this coming Saturday. Not sure if I'll get the block weave done but I think I'll be able to get it warped and make at least one or two of the squares before I have to go to the live class.
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nyoooooom!!
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Yesterday I got the big wool blankets warped up on the loom at the studio. It looks like Lisa Frank barf and I love it. It took almost the whole weekend to warp and I only got about 20 minutes of actual weaving in before I had to leave. I wanna go back!!
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There was some interest in a previous post on how I've been doing my selvedges on my towels. This is my first project using a 100% linen warp so I am very much not an expert, but here's a little video about what I've been doing!
A couple of things:
- This is a cottolin warp and tow linen weft. Linen yarn has almost no elasticity and has a reputation for being a really fussy warp - the cotton/linen blend gives is just a little bit of stretch and so far it's behaved beautifully. I have the tension on the warp cranked up about as high as it can go on my table loom.
- Tbh once I got used to it, I honestly really love 100% linen as a weft. It's so wiry it has virtually no draw-in, which means my woven width is essentially the same as what I have threaded through the reed, even without using a temple. Once the towel is woven and wet finished, the linen will soften a lot. Right now the fabric feels VERY starched, which is great because that structure is helping me out.
- I had to chop this down a little bit to fit Tumblr's size requirements but I'm not really saying anything useful at the cut off end. 馃槄
#weaving#handweaving#linen#featuring the tippy taps of my dog and the whines of my cat who doesn't want to be near my dog
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I've made some towel progress but all my photos pretty much look the same because of how they roll into the front bar. But I have allllmost 2 out of 4 towels done. I didn't expect my last post about the selvedges to take off like it did but I will try to record a little video for those who asked!
Meanwhile I'm working on getting the wool blankets warped up on a wider loom at the weaving studio. I got the heddles threaded but didn't have enough time to check for any errors or get the reed sleyed. The sectional warping beam (with the pegs) was a bit weird for me but it seems to be working okay!
I'm going back tomorrow for a couple hours and really hoping that these blankets will weave up quickly. It's about a 5 yard warp for two blankets, using chunky yarn for the warp and the same yarn doubled up yarn for the weft.
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I started the towels today!
And holy moly I know my weaving isn't perfect but I am so excited about how much my selvedges have improved after only a short bit of mucking around. I got some really good advice on a fiber arts discord server and I am so!! excited!!! 馃槶
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Moooooore warping today. I took a day off to watch the eclipse so I didn't get a ton done. But I did pre-sley the reed for the hand towel project:
Then you flip the reed over and do some ninja stuff to transfer the lease sticks over to the other side of the reed:
And the last step I got to was tidying up the back loops and moving the reed to the front of the loom inside the beater bar. I didn't want to mess with winding it on because the tension on the threads seems to get thrown off fairly easily.
Here's a photo of the pre-sleyed reed at the front of the loom. I've got 4 ends in every other dent and my final sett for the actual weaving will be 2 ends per dent. It's interesting doing this with a reed instead of a raddle - it's a bit slow for me right now but it feels more secure and accident-proof this way. Tomorrow I'll bug my partner to help tension this thing as I wind it on.
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Towel warp is done today! I had a little bit of time to start warping my home loom as well. One of the techniques I'm learning from the class is to use a pre-sley reed, wind the warp on the back beam as it passes through the reed, then after the warp is wound on with the correct spacing you re-sley the reed with the appropriate pattern for weaving. The reed takes the place of a raddle, which I've always used when warping on this loom before. It's proving to be interesting so far!
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I'm taking an online basic weaving class with the goal of having most of the projects done by the end of April, when I'm scheduled to go take a live class from the same instructor. The basic class isn't a requirement but I'd like to have it done regardless. There are four projects:
- tablecloths (really more like square placemats) in cotton and cottolin x4
- hand towels in cottolin and tow linen x4
- throw blankets in wool x2
- some kind of damask block weave square in line linen x4, which I am saving for the end because I'm sure it will be a hateful little bastard
My materials for this arrived on Thursday so I've been prepping my warps so far. My loom at home is wide enough to do all the projects except the blanket, but by some extremely good luck there is actually a weaving studio very close by that will rent me some time on a wider loom. So the goal is to work on the blankets when I can get to the studio, and try to take care of the rest of the stuff at home.
I've got the warp done for the tablecloths, which will be white with blue stripes in the warp:
And the warp done for the damask squares, which theoretically should have been the easiest but also somehow wasn't and probably gave me a splinter while I was winding it?? LINEN.
And finally the warp for the blankets, which has to be done in two chains. It is DELIGHTFULLY squishy.
I'm hoping to get the towel warp measured out tomorrow and then I'll have everything ready to start going on looms.
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Book related yarn crimes!!
I will be in a Circle of Magic cosplay group with @pearlybae @knitfreakcosplay and aka.s.mel soon and because I am actively listening to the audiobooks and have no chill about spinning I wanted to make some props for us!
First is Sandry's yarn circle, which is described as being a beginner's first lumpy yarn with four distinct lumps, and also looped back on itself so you can't tell where the beginning is. Drafting huge lumps was a big pain in the butt because the size differential I wanted between the fat and skinny sections of the yarn meant that virtually no twist would get into the lumpy bits. (Could have made them smaller, but I feel like it would have made for a boring prop.) So when I started trying to join the ends of the yarn and even out the spacing between the lumps, the stupid lumps kept drafting out because that's how fiber behaves and the loop kept getting bigger and bigger. To get the loop to hang loosely without plying back on itself, I finger-felted the skinny parts with soap and water and then fried it with a flatiron for good measure.
The other prop is a spindle with some light-up yarn. It's just wool wrapped around some EL wire but I'm pretty pleased at how it turned out. And I got to use up some of the mountain of Icelandic thel wool I have to find something to make with, so win-win!
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More Nyx progress today! I detached her head wings from the head cast and added some parting lines with more foil. My hope is to use expanding foam to create a mold/shell, then split it apart along the parting lines and remove enough of the foil/tape sculpt to stick a couple layers of kobracast and more expanding foam inside to make a much lighter and resilient duplicate. I've made a lot of wig accessories with expanding foam but this is my first time using it as a mold - a lot of the other mold materials I have access to would be too heavy/expensive and might distort the sculpt if I layered them on too thick. I underestimated the amount of foam I need but it's not the worst thing in the world to let it cure for a day or two before I go to the store and buy more.
I also refined her top knot and shoulder moon a little bit, and started roughing out templates for her left glove and itty bitty bat wing. I'd like to make the base of her top knot out of expanding foam as well, as long as the thing I'm doing with the head wings pans out.
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Over in yarn land, I finished spinning some hand dyed merino from a local yarn store. They sold these teeny little 1 oz braids and I found three colorways that I thought would look good together in a 3-ply, so I got 2 of each. I neglected to take a photo of what the braids looked like before, but I did get pics of two of the three as they were being spun.
Tbh, I'm not as thrilled with the way they turned out as I expected? This particular dye method really smooshed out and blended the pops of color I saw on the braids a lot more than I expected during spinning. It's still fairly cohesive-looking yarn, but the process wasn't really as much fun as I expected and I was mostly just looking forward to getting this done and off my bobbins so I could make room for something else. I tried drafting thicker than my default yarn for this as well and was a little less worried about consistency. I don't really find merino the most engaging spin and the dye job on this probably made it harder to draft smoothly, so my hands cramped a lot more than they usually do.
Still, the skein looks pretty cool and I ended up getting about 220 yards and 5.5 oz out of it (lost some of the 6 to uneven plying). Maybe I'll get some interesting color patterns once it actually gets used in a project, whenever that may be.
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I've been trying really hard to get these wings symmetrical. They're not quite there but I think it's close enough I'm probably going to move on to the next step soon.
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Nyx has been on my cosplay list since 2020 and I have been gleefully swatching and buying supplies since then, but dreading actually starting the project. :( Her giant armor and wig are such a cool design, but are otherwise a really big logistical problem. How do I travel with a wig like this, how far will I be able to turn my head, how long will I be able to have this on my body before I hate it? I don't even really feel comfortable talking about it in more than hypotheticals because I'm genuinely not sure if it's gonna get done.
I spent a couple hours tonight roughing out the general shape of her wig and headgear. I'm really really grateful that my friends helped me do a head cast a few years ago, because trying this stuff on my own body would be too much to bother with. I was hoping I could use some old worbla scraps to help rough out her head wings, but in working with it again I'm remembering why I don't really like it that much. I'll probably replace it with more aluminum foil to get the general shape nailed down before I start breaking the wig down into modular pieces.
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I watched a video on wool storage a.few days ago and realized I really ought to at least wash the couple fleeces I have, rather than let them sit stinky in plastic bags with possible moisture problems.
I started on two fleeces, one was a very soft black Gotland lamb fleece with nice lock structure. The tag didn't say if it was skirted or not, but I'm guessing it was because I couldn't find anything worth throwing away, not even second cuts.
I've started using the utility sink my washing machine drains into for fleece processing, because it's really easy to add hot water and drain. I hope I don't get any clogs in this sink because of escaped wool bits.
I wasn't as careful about maintaining order in the locks during washing as I could have been and pretty much just chucked the whole fleece in at once. But the lock structure seems to have stayed mostly intact.
Next is a white Shetland fleece that I wish I had inspected more before I bought it. I had to throw away a lot due to tangles and poo, and what remained after has a lot of dandruff-looking stuff. Ideally I'd like to use this for some natural dyeing experiments and Viking reenactment stuff. For now I'm only scouring about a third of the fleece to see how it combs out - if I get useable sample yarn I'll process the rest.
Here it is before washing:
During, first and final rinses (I am still amazed by how thoroughly nasty the water gets):
And here it is, washed and drying:
There's still some dandruff remaining but not as much as there was before the wash. We'll see how it goes when it dries and I can comb it.
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Wedge has taken over the spot where I've been doing a lot of wool combing. We have straight up gone from cold war to just short of all out aggression over this chair
In his defense, he coordinates very well.
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TDF day 5! I finished unfucking the singles I spun a couple months ago and made a center pull ball for plying.
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