Before having surgery and starting two weeks with my feet elevated, I took a set of five linen table runners off my loom. I wove the simple monkbelts pattern to learn the language of color and pattern within the weave structure. What happens if the squares are made long and thin, or short and squat? The long warp was a great opportunity to play at the loom, and to plan a large, more complex piece to come.
I hemmed the pieces, but they still need steaming to look their best, and some small defects remain to be fixed. I’ll post a rough detail shot from each piece for now, and full shots of the pieces later.
I used Norwegian wool for the pattern weft, either prydvevgarn or kunst garn. Those two brands are fairly interchangeable; the prydvev yarn is a bit heavier. With the kunst yarn I needed seven pattern shots to make the larger square in the pattern equal on all sides; the kunst yarn only needed six. I wove runner #1 to create a checkerboard effect with the large squares – simple, clean geometry.
The warp was #8 linen, slightly tow. The pattern weft in the first runner was a beautiful natural linen. Oddly, despite my best efforts and attention, little tiny loops would appear in the weft; you can see them as small dots in the red area in this photo. Stop that! When I tested the other two colors I have – the same off-white as the warp, and a bright white – no little loops sneaked in. I decided that in the future I will use the natural linen only for warp, where it is stretched so tight it can’t twist up. Also, the natural yarn must be infetisimally fatter than the other two colors, because the ground weave was a bit too loose, so that the unwoven portions between the bands are slightly transparent when held to the light.
Question: I wove it at 24 epi; how should I adjust the set to make the ground a bit tighter?