The Knots
Beautifully dyed and luscious and very harmless looking. This is the photo of my latest warp.
Fifteen metres of changing colours and moods looking ripe for warping and weaving. I don’t usually put on 15 metres and now I know why. As I nearly always hand paint my warps, this wider width combined with the long warp length has lead to a disasterous warp. I got greedy wanting to weave more than a couple of scarves on one run but the time spent in winding the warp is days.
What happened? It became knotted. Horribly knotted. Depressingly knotted…Maybe I should….give up. The dyeing process on long warps affects and disturbs the order of the warping process making the warp more uneven and unpredictable. It also doesn’t help that I’m warping two different types of yarns for the double weave. I may have to cut off each scarf as they are completed. More waste of the yarn I was trying to save.
What I should of done is wound a different warp for each of the two yarns which would have helped. This at least would absolutely ensure that each type of thread would be tensioned correctly throughout the weaving.
This next photo shows the state of the warp at the moment. Not a pretty sight. I’m combing and beaming, combing and beaming, but with great difficulty. I shouldn’t get myself into these situations but they just seem to arise despite my experience and knowledge. Sometimes a burning desire to create something overrides all sense. Patience, patience is that what this warp is teaching me.
Sometimes bad warps become good textiles and I’m hopeful that this will be the case here.
PS: If anyone is having problems with my comments could you email me at curiousweaver at yahoo dot com. Thanks.
OUCH! Now that looks painful. But darn pretty colors, I hope you can fix it. Good patience.
Oh my! That looks bad! how much of the warp do you have left? might it be possible to pull each thread out of the tangle separate? i know that sounds bad , i stood for six hours years ago and untangled my new horses tail that way. she had this beautiful long,thick ,wavy tail that had never been brushed out and was tangled into this dirty , hard clump.that was the first thing that came into my mind when i saw your picture of the warp.i didn’t want to cut it off,it takes years for a horse to grow a tail.so i pulled hundreds of hairs (about 5 feet each in lenght)separate.i saved most of the tail.i hope you can save all of your warp.i’d help you if i was close by.good luck
The longest painted warp I’ve done (an interleaved threading with one warp solid dyed and one painted) was 13.5 yards – much less than 15 meters. I beamed the two warps separately, which helped prevent tangling; also, both warps were the same – 60/2 silk – so they behaved much the same during beaming. I can certainly sympathize with your predicament! I’ll add my good wishes to your hopes for a successful outcome. The woven cloth will be beautiful, I’m sure.
Oh that is a sight I know and dread… How much of the 15m is on the “wrong” side of the knots? Not that I would suggest cutting it off, I’m one of those who would spend three days combing and beaming if I thought it would get me an extra six inches!
I actually winced when I got down to the messy picture. Ewww!!! I love a good, challenging tangle to undo, but this would make me think it’s not worth it – even hand painted as it is. I mean, which would take longer – untangling that mess, or redying another (shorter) warp?
How dreadful! I cannot imagine how awful you must feel. When you make your painted warps, how large do you make your bouts? Are they perhaps too wide? I know that in general, smaller bouts are much easier to control and result in more evenly tensioned warps and, with silk, definitely result in less tangling. I only wish I had a helpful suggestion for getting you out of this mess.
I hope you keep us updated with your progress on this one.
Oh wow, that looks bad. Admittedly, warps like that can be smoothed and woven off, but its alot of work to do so. I wish you luck and patience, but once it is beamed, it will surely be fabulous! Show us pics as you go…
Is static charge part of the problem? Would a fine water spray help, and using an ioniser near your loom? Could the problem be avoided another time by rewinding the warp (and so re-tensioning) after dyeing? – as I suggest this I think it could be tricky, but still might save time and trouble.
OUCH!
try to appease the loom gods by chanting a bad warp can become a good textile.
good luck
neki desu
Thats nothing a hair straightener could’nt fix!!
I sometimes think we are given warps like these once in awhile for us to prove to the world we can handle the hairy suff in life. Stay with it, I’m sure it will be all right on the night.
The power of positive thinking…
Cheers
Shirley
Try sectional warping next time!
If you have the studio space, you can sectional warp it onto the back beam… tie front ends onto a would-be front beam, then unwind from the beam, and paint it as it is held taught off coming off of the back beam…
I did similarly once with a 2 yard warp… 15 should work if you have the space or can do it in bits… but I used a non-mordanted light-reactive dye….