The "Company Cake" Warp...
...or the realities of "performance" projects.
Before I explain myself (I do spend a LOT of time doing this, explaining myself), I want to thank those of you reading here AND those of you reading because you participated in on of my recent Zoom classes on weaving with two heddles. Thank you! While the classes have their moments, I do enjoy meeting with you, virtually, in a face-to-face situation and I love the support between the folks in the classes. It’s been another great experience!
The Company Cake
My mom graduated high school in 1947, which means her formative adulthood years were the 1950s. In that era (and on into the ‘70s and ‘80s), there was a social expectation that you would take food at various points of people’s lives. Someone at church has a baby? Take food. Someone dies? Take the family food. Or, better yet, help host the post-funeral pitch-in at the church for the funeral group. Someone is sick? Take them, or their family, food. There’s a group meeting at church? It’s going to be a pitch-in meal.
Food was social glue. It still is.
But there was always a sort of trepidation about taking food for others, especially baking. You might need to make a casserole on the spur of the moment, and you might be short of a certain ingredient. But, often, there’s a substitute that no one is going to notice. The casserole will “look” the same and, unless you used Brie instead of Mozzarella, most people aren’t going to notice or care. Cooking is an art, with a lot of leeway.
Baking, however, involves a certain level of chemistry, measuring, and specific ingredients. You simply can’t make snickerdoodles 1 without cream of tartar. It’s the only reason I keep this ingredient in my cabinet (I’ve never found another recipe that requires it.) And baking has this mysterious relationship with your environment. Sometimes the weather makes dough act oddly, or bread won’t rise (or rises too quickly). The ingredients can be off for some reason - the baking soda draws moisture, or you don’t have unsalted butter….2
Just when you need a food dish to take to a social event, suddenly a recipe you could make from memory and always comes out perfectly won’t look quite right. The cake sinks in the middle. The brownies won’t bake, then they are overbaked. The frosting is grainy. Whatever. Baking for YOUR family? Not a problem. Decide to take something to a get together, and imperfections (that are NOT just in your head or decorating) strike. It’s a law and my mother always said that it would happen - when you make something “for company,” it’s likely to be imperfect.
Now I’m hungry, and isn’t this newsletter about weaving and art?
Whenever we work with our hands, doing something creative, we bring to it whatever our own expectations are about the project, or the outcome, or the social circumstances.
This past week, I’ve had the “Company Cake” of warps.
It started like this. We’d been in the condo in Florida for a few days, unpacked, flew our daughter back to Texas, met up with our Florida friends, and it was time to think about making solid preparations for the Zoom classes. Step one was to assemble the loom stands and looms. And, because I had about a week before the first class, I decided to start on my next Little Looms project. It was a tricky warp on my 10” Ashford rigid heddle, but I was in the mood for that challenge and got it wound on. Nice!
Next I needed to warp my 24” loom for the class. The purpose here was to demonstrate weaving the actual Box of Chocolates towels on the full-project sized warp. I’m direct warping my loom (for the non-rigid heddle crowd, I’m tying my yarn onto the back beam, taking it through the heddles, and using a warping peg 106” away to measure my warp.) Here’s where I make a decision that turns out to be problematic - I decide to thread both heddles as I direct warp.
Now, that is NOT how the pattern is written. But I’ve done this a fair number of times and it has always gone well. It skips the threading step entirely and, since I understand how things are supposed to be threaded, it made sense to take the shortcut.
I got a warning about where things were going when I broke a warp thread while winding onto the back beam. That was the first punch the warp landed, but it was a soft one, easily dealt with, even if unexpected. What causes a thread to break while winding on, under minimal tension? I’m warping in different surroundings; perhaps I snagged the warp thread on that chair leg without noticing?
Then I start to overthink.3 That seldom goes well. I’m looking at my heddles and my threading sequences don’t “quite” match up with the pattern.4 The doubts creep in, “What if my students notice this?” along with, “Maybe I shouldn’t add to the confusion.”
The next day, I unthread everything and start rethreading according to the pattern. I’ve got the time - it’s not like I can really weave much on the project before the class. I get my heddles threaded and breath a sigh of relief. I tie-on and get things set up to start weaving the next day. I also warp my 16” Ashford; this is the loom I intend to demonstrate the threading on.
The following day, I begin weaving. There’s something really off on the tension. I’m looking at this warp and trying to figure out why it’s unhappy. I finally decide it’s because I didn’t have enough packing paper for the very last round of the wind-on to the back beam.5 I find some very thin paper from something we ordered and cut that to fit. It seems to do the trick
What could go wrong?
Well, fortunately for my class demonstration, nothing. I show them my floating selvedges; I explain about the broken warp thread and the extra S-hook hanging off the back to fix it. I demonstrate the heddle positions for weaving the Box of Chocolates pattern. I’m working the easiest pattern, and shift to the second pattern. It goes well. Whew!
After the class, I unweave and begin working on towel one in earnest. The goal was to weave towel one between the classes and demonstrate on towel #2 the next class. At this point, the loom has been warped for about a week. This week, however, the weather has been entirely NOT what is usual for SW Florida in January. One day it was wet, cool, cloudy, and humid. The next day it was dry, cool, and cloudy. The humidity shifts were what the warp didn’t like. Thread, even cotton, can get sticky on humid days. I started noticing that some thread just refused to play nicely. They weren’t “sagging” so much as just perpetually sticking (especially the shaft 3 threads, which are only threaded through slots and often share a slot with another shaft.) I pull out my smaller s-hooks6 and hang a few strategically where there’s a consistent problem.
And then… well, things just get weird.
I’m into the third pattern of the towel. The patterns progress from a simple straight-draw twill (1,2,3, repeat) to a six-step pattern, then a seven-step, and continuing. Somewhere in the seven-step pattern, a *really long* warp float shows up. Now, I’ve warned one entire class of students about how certain errors in warping can do bad things like cause the pattern to not weave properly or, in extreme scenarios, keep the heddles from actually lifting correctly. So, here I am with a 4” warp float - the result of a thread crossed between the two heddles.7 It took about 9” of weaving for it to show up.
Well, I think, at least I’m past the worst. In all honesty, I get on the floor and check the back of the fabric because, at this point, I have lost all trust (and I still need this warp for one more class.) Everything looks good! Deep breaths.
But wait, it gets even more weird…
I start weaving with the navy weft near the middle of the towel.
Suddenly, on the silver warp area, I see something odd. There is a line in the middle of the warp. A single line. A single line of 8/2 cotton thread.8
This should not be.
A little investigation reveals yet another warping issue. When threading, I managed to thread one half of my pair of threads in a hole; the other half went in the slot.
Lesson learned?
Actually, I see this as a teachable moment. (That, or a lesson in patience.)
Since I put this warp on - I measured it, I threaded it, I took string and *made a warp*9 - I am in control of it. Okay, admittedly, this was like controlling a cat on catnip… My point being, there was nothing that went wrong that patience and time couldn’t fix Actually, the fixes involved were pretty quick - less than five minutes each, for the most part. Few things that go wrong in our crafting can’t be solved as long as we approach it with confidence and patience - and an army of S hooks.
Epiphany number two, however, came after I started writing this post.
In the last newsletter, I mentioned roller coasters and riding them (and I had a blast!) BUT, I wear glasses. I have to wear glasses to see much of anything and, unfortunately, my glasses include a lot of special things in the lenses to correct abnormalities. A key one is prisms to correct a lazy eye. My glasses are *totally* screwed up. I noticed that one of the arms holding a nose piece is bent, so I’m not able to look through the lenses properly
It’s why I’ve been getting headaches at the end of each day.
It’s also why I keep making warp threading errors.10 My ability to line up things is impaired. While it’s frustrating, it also explains a LOT.
If I were at home, I’d take them in to my optometrist to fix the issue. But in Glasses R Us, they tend to say things like, “if this breaks, we aren’t responsible.” I get it, but it IS a concern, so I’ll struggle on. I don’t think just bending the arm back into place is the entire solution - there’s still the adjustment to have the prism line up correctly that needs some consideration.
Meanwhile, the towels will look great! I’ll share some quick photos of them when they are finished - this is the blue set, so they aren’t very chocolatey, but they are beautiful!
Usually the company cake tasted just fine, too, despite its imperfections.
This is the classic recipe I grew up with, if you’re unfamiliar with snickerdoodles. Please try some - they are amazing!
Salted butter doesn’t brown when melted or cooked, so baked goods look more appealing when made with unsalted butter. That was my big takeaway from the only cooking class I’ve taken as an adult.
Overthinking and art are usually NOT the best bedfellows and I will likely explore this more as it’s a place my head goes to on occasion.
Today, a week later, I’m 98% sure that it would have woven just fine. There’s usually more than one path to thread a pattern. But we will never know with this one.
I’m a firm believer in packing the back AND front beams with paper. I typically use brown paper sold on rolls as shipping paper (think brown paper packages, tied up with string.) I cut it slightly narrower than the width of my loom ACROSS the length of the roll - so no pieces are more than 24” (or the width of the roll) in length. If a piece tries to wind on unevenly, it usually doesn’t go so far off square in 24” that it’s unusable.
Denoted by the lower-case s…
The solution to this is to treat it like a broken warp thread. I mean, it *is* broken in that it’s not working properly. I threaded the new thread into the proper path before I cut the non-functioning thread. Again, insert S hooks here. Wind chimes come to mind at this point.
For the uninitiated, the pattern calls for a yarn, the size of which is referred to as 8/2, and it’s used doubled throughout. So every single strand of 8/2 should have a partner strand. No exceptions.
Do ponder this. When we take something like string and knit, crochet, weave, etc. (or back up a step and make something like string via spinning), we are creating something from next-to-nothing. It’s pretty powerful stuff!
Remember the “tricky warp” Little Looms project I started with? Yup, found a skipped hole on that warp after the fact. THAT error had me stumped for a while as I figured out a correction.
Let them eat cake! Your fixes were successful if not pretty and the towels are beautiful.
You did a great job pulling that warp out of the fire! It was a great class and I really enjoyed it. 😊👍🏼