Tropical Twister

The Louet Hatbox Spinning Wheel is a compact, small travel wheel that spins great. The wheel was discontinued because reportedly it was too expensive to manufacture due to the curved wood case. I’ve spun out some orange wool blended with natural grey alpaca, “Seabreeze” fiber from Louet.

Tropical Twister

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Every two years, the Handweavers Guild of America “converges” on a city for the HGA’s International Fiber Arts Conference. Two years ago (2006), they met in Grand Rapids, Michigan. This year, 2008, they met in Tampa, Florida. To honor convergence, last year the Guild commissioned the creation of special yarn. The space-dyed yarn was dyed in colors of the tropics, brilliant pink, turquoise, green and orange. I plied the space-dyed convergence rayon singles with bright colored cotton for a tri-loom project.

I’m tall and wanted a generous shawl. Not satisfied with the available 7’ looms, I wanted an 8’ loom. Last summer, we were planning a vacation in the Smoky Mountains of North Carolina, so I had my summer project. I had my husband cut three pieces of wood molding to create the tri-loom and had him bolt the corners together so I could disassemble it to take it to the mountains where I could reassemble it. He devised a transportation device, utilizing a PVC pipe which he capped on each end, the “limbs” of the tri-loom rode to the mountains on the roof rack in style.

Once we got to the mountains, I began to hammer nails. Yes, I’m a fanatic … before the groceries were purchased, before the suitcases were stored, I was nailing. I carefully marked and nailed exactly the same number of nails across the top as were nailed into the other two sides of the triangle. When I started to weave, the threads became more and more angled; they weren’t straight up and down. I soon figured out that the ratio should be two to one; that is, two across the top for each along the adjoining sides. BUT, serendipity, it all worked out. When I first began to weave the shawl, I had found my weave very loose. I discovered that if I looped my yarn twice around the bottom nails for each time I looped the yarn around a top nail, I had a tight weave. (Twice the yarn and twice the work, but a very satisfactory result.)

I wanted the stripes to blend into one another. I recalled reading when I was looking at sock knitting patterns, that stripes are most pleasing to the eye when one uses stripes proportioned in additional adjoining numbers: 1, 1 (1 + 0), 2 (1 + 1), 3 (1+2), 5 (2+3), 8 (3 + 5), 13 (5 + 8), 21 (8 + 13), etc.

By the nature of tri-loom weaving technique, each pass creates both warp and weft. It moves from the bottom left side to the top of the triangle and down again; it then crosses the loom and loops on the next available lower right nail before going up to the top right and then reverses the process, ending on a nail on the lower left. This process creates two warp and two weft threads for each pass. Therefore, my widest stripe was 8 pairs of two. The next stripe of the same color on either side of the mentioned stripe was 5 pairs of two. The next stripe of the same color on either side was 3 pairs of two; then 2 pairs of two; then 1 pair of two and finally 1 pair of two. I overlapped the colors, placing the narrowest strip of one color next to the thickest stripe of another. I love the final results.

This is my Smoky Mountain Convergence Tri-loom Shawl. You’ll notice the leaf color changes in the photos. I worked on the shawl in the summer and had to wait ‘til fall to return to the mountains to finish the project. (P.S. My husband took pity on me and my struggles at nail driving and purchased for me in Ashville a beautiful cherry Hill Creek Fiber Studio 6’ 10” tri-loom. You’ll be seeing more tri-loom projects. Come on back to Seabreezespinners.com.)

This summer, I wore my Shawl as I wandered through Convergence. Yes, Florida in the summer but thanks to the air conditioning, it was freezing (at least to this Florida gal). A Convergence shawl with a tropical twist was just the thing.

The “hound” on the deck who kept me company is Lacy, my mostly border collie. I’ve been spinning “her” and I have a shawl half knitted. I’ll be posting techniques for “harvesting” dog hair and spinning cheingora in future posts.

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