A Saga of Silk in the Gum: Chapter 1, Winding the Warp

Above photos: first, gossamer-weight silk on the cone; second, a detail of one strand of silk yarn; 

last, a microscopic look at the same yarn (about 100x).

Thanks to the valiant de-stashing efforts of a friend, I now own about 3 ounces of raw silk organzine, which has a grist of about 18,700 yards per pound. It's wonderful yarn because it's reeled silk -- a.k.a. thrown silk or raw silk -- meaning it came straight from the cocoon. A single strand of silk filament from one cocoon typically ranges from 2,000 to 5,000 feet long. And it's very strong.

Silk reeled straight from the cocoon is still "in the gum." When the silkworm spins a cocoon, the filament it creates is coated in sericin -- a gummy substance that makes each ever-so-fine strand adhere to others, in order to create a sturdy, solid cocoon. To make silk yarn, these filaments are gathered to create one strand of silk, which is plied with another strand to create silk yarn. It's a very delicate, laborious process.

Even after it's spun into yarn (such as the yarn on the cone shown at the beginning of this post), silk in the gum is not easy to handle, because of its tendency to twist back on itself. Also, the stiffness of the yarn causes challenges: If it's not under tension and it's on a cone, it unravels all over the place, fast. Elastic socks (cut into a tube) don't help much, in my view. Neither do "yarn bras" (otherwise recognized as the green plastic webs we put over wine bottles to keep them from breaking). I use them to store the yarn, but not when I'm winding a warp.

(A slight but necessary digression: Nearly all of the silk used by weavers today is degummed, so that it's silky and shiny and gorgeous. Further, nearly all of the silk used by weavers today is spun silk, which is made from fiber left over from the reeling process or from damaged or imperfect cocoons. Spun silk is not as strong as reeled silk -- because the filaments are much shorter -- and for that reason it's much fuzzier, so it often pills. I've sometimes resorted to a seam ripper to separate two warp yarns that were bound together by one of these pills, or "nits," as I call them.)

In contrast, despite how tricky it is to handle, reeled silk is a genuine treasure, creating fabric with a drape and hand that's hard to find with any other yarn. Plus, it takes dye beautifully.

Above: detail of a scarf I dyed and wove using degummed, reeled silk.

It's a 12-shaft Echo pattern I call "Pagoda." 

Reeled silk still in the gum is used to weave silk organza, a gauze-like fabric with a stiff hand and a matte finish. Above, a silk organza scarf shibori-dyed in black by Ana Lisa Hedstrom, which I was lucky enough to buy at the Conference of Northern California Weavers (CNCH) last year. 

Again, back to the story. I've got this fine silk yarn in the gum and I want to degum it after weaving, using a shibori-resist technique, so that portions of the woven fabric will be degummed (becoming soft and shiny and pliable, like silk Habotai) while the rest of the fabric will still be in the gum and stiff (like silk organza). The idea is to create contrasts in texture -- a dimensional fabric -- with lots of interesting pleats and bumps. 

Below is the pattern I plan to use. The red-colored ends in the drawdown show where I will add the shibori-resist yarns, yarns that I will pull tight and knot to create a sort of "package" of the fabric with tight accordion folds. When washed in soda ash and Orvus paste to remove the sericin (gum), the edges of the folds will be exposed to the solution while the interior of the folds will not. At least that's my theory. I'm going to weave up some small samples first, of course, because you never know. Best-laid plans and all...

You'll note that I've got red ends at the corners of the diamonds in both warp and weft. That's because I plan to sample it both ways: using warp tie-ups to create horizontal pleats and, for another sample, using weft tie-ups for vertical pleats. Once you draw the fabric in using these yarns (which have to be very strong or they'll break and ruin all that weaving), you will have a tight package of pleats ready for degumming. The pattern is #78120 from handweaving.net.

For the warp ends that I'll use as shibori ties, I plan on using this Nymo beading thread (shown below) because it Simply. Won't. Break. My fingers may hurt, but my shibori ties will be intact. Again, that's my plan.

But first I have to wind the warp. I called my friend, Deb Kaplan, a brilliant weaver from Boston, and asked her about winding the warp from cones -- knowing full well that it would be a challenge. She suggested I first wind the yarn onto spools, which I don't have so I substituted bobbins. She also suggested using a manual bobbin winder rather than an electric one, because a manual winder is slower, making it much easier to keep an even tension as I wind the bobbins.

You want the yarn to look like this as you wind it onto the bobbin.

Not like this. (Excuse the background. Weavers need stuff.)

To get just the right tension, you might want additionally to wind the yarn around a chair leg or anything rounded and handy. Here, I used part of a steel utility shelf.

Deb suggested I wind two ends at once in the warp cross, which I often do. Of course, winding the warp is the ultimate even-tension, straight-line-to-the-warping-reel kind of challenge. A creel would be helpful in this case, but alas, I don't have one, so a shoe box will have to do. (Final Sale, $31.73 at Macy's.)

Below, my shoebox creel with bobbins in place (with yarn coming forward from underneath the bobbin, hoping that gravity will also help tame it a bit). Ready to begin warping. 

Samples to come, probably a good couple of months from now, as I already have a warp on the loom....

 

Thanks for reading!

Bombyx Mori silkworms munching mulberry leaves, courtesy of Wikipedia

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Post script: My shoebox creel didn't work. The yarns unwound and got tangled all over the dowels. So I resorted to a simpler approach: I put my two bobbins in two plastic yogurt containers that I placed on the floor.

Believe it or not, the weight of the bobbins themselves created enough tension for me to successfully wind my warp. I did take care to divide the two ends of yarn with my fingers, to keep them from tangling.

It worked! Warp wound. More to come...

Now on Exhibit at the Handweaving Museum in Clayton, NY

 

I call this piece "Murmurations" because the intertwining curves remind me of the shape-shifting patterns of starlings.

Public domain, courtesy of Wikipedia

These formations in flight are called murmurations because of the soft fluttering sound of the birds' wings as they speed through the sky. I think it's a lovely word. But the real reason they do this is to elude predators, primarily hawks, before roosting. Imagine trying to catch just one starling among thousands flying in ever-changing patterns at top speed? Nature offers us astounding beauty and we admire it and honor it in the arts -- music, photography, dance, painting -- and yes, weaving.

"Murmurations" is about 2 yards long by 2 feet wide, woven on a 32-shaft Echo threading in alternating warp colors of royal blue and mint green 16/2 cotton. The weft is a single-ply silk noil of unknown grist, dyed in peacock colors, a variegated pattern that adds subtle interest to the cloth. (I've found that silk noil is often the perfect weft for Echo designs, as it nests in between the warps, almost hiding, yet adding an ever-so-important shading to the cloth.)

Here's the draft -- and there's a key point I want to make in this post for those who are interested in weaving parallel-threaded designs. (The colors in the Fiberworks drawdown are different from those in the final weaving because, as many of you know, what seems to work well in Fiberworks doesn't always translate well in the actual cloth.)

It's easier to get an idea of the threading when you look at a detail. 

Note that the threading itself looks a bit like a murmuration of starlings. That's because it's curved, of course, but it's also because of the unique interval between the two parallel threadings.

When I teach Echo designs, I always start with the basic rules -- one of which is that when you're threading with two parallel lines, each in a different color, they're separated by an interval of half of the number of shafts you're using. So an 8-shaft Echo pattern would have an interval of 4 between the two parallel lines, as in the photo below.

So, if you look at the first four warp ends, alternating in white and black, you'll see they are separated by an interval of 4 (again, because the design is on 8 shafts), starting with 8, 4, 7, 3, 6, 2, 5, and 1. Here's the full drawdown.

But if I change the interval from 4 to 5, note how the pattern changes.

The difference may be subtle, but when you're designing -- and playing with two warp colors, one weft color, different tieups, and different treadlings -- an unorthodox interval between your two parallel lines in the threading can make a significant difference. And sometimes a very pleasing one at that.

So that's part of how I developed my pattern for "Murmurations." I created an Echo design on 32 shafts, but instead of using an interval of 16 shafts (half the number of shafts I have) between the parallel lines, I played around a bit with different intervals and finally settled on an interval of 4. It helped create the illusion of the patterns that starlings make in flight.

But enough about weaving technique. Let me give you the details of the exhibit that includes "Murmurations" at the Handweaving Museum in Clayton, NY, which is part of the Thousand Islands Arts Center.

The show features the work of three weavers from the Weavers' Guild of Rochester: Mary McMahon, Ruth Manning, and me. It runs from April 23 through May 17, with a reception on the evening of May 9. Here's a sneak peak, just after we'd mounted all of the pieces, but before the identification cards were put up (I breezed through so as not to give it all away):

If I do say so myself, it's a great exhibit, well worth your time to visit -- whether you drive, walk, run, or fly!

This Color Doesn't Exist

Yes, but you're seeing it, right? 

Truth be told, our eyes perceive magenta but it really doesn't exist as a single wavelength of light in the visible spectrum. Magenta is a color our brains "create" by combining signals from red and blue light. It's essentially a made-up color.

Photo courtesy of Encyclopedia Britannica

Tell that to a rhododendron.

Why would I devote a blog post to the fact that magenta is not a real color? To underscore a larger point: that often, as weavers and as human beings, we perceive colors differently from what they truly are. To explain this succinctly: Our brains play tricks on us as they strive to interpret the color wavelengths that our eyes -- specifically, the cones in our retinas -- receive.

As many of you know, our eyes comprise photoreceptor cells known as rods and cones. They convert light into electrical signals that are transmitted to the brain. The rods are responsible for low-light vision. They are highly sensitive to light and detect shades of gray, providing peripheral vision and night vision. Our cones are responsible for color vision and fine details in bright light. (Little-known fact: Each of our eyes contains approximately 120 million rods and 6 million cones.)

Our perception of color arises from three types of cone cells in the retina, each sensitive to different wavelengths of light: red, green, and blue. They send signals to the brain that are then interpreted as colors.

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia

The operative word here is "interpreted." Again, our eyes receive wavelengths of color, which are transmitted to the brain as electrical signals which our brains have to interpret. These interpretations can be influenced and even altered in a number of ways. (Also, keep in mind that every individual's rods and cones are unique, adding another variable to our perception of color.)

These principles have been studied and elaborated upon by many scholars, artists, and scientists, of course, ever since Newton discovered the visible spectrum. One of the most famous books on color, The Interaction of Color, was written in 1963 by artist and Yale professor (and husband of Anni) Josef Albers. Pictured below is the cover of the 50th anniversary edition.

Albers teaches us, through exercises and text, how -- like magenta -- what we think we see is not always the real color. Here are a few of his thoughts on the subject:

"In visual perception a color is almost never seen as it really is -- as it physically is. This fact makes color the most relative medium in art.

"In order to use color effectively it is necessary to recognize that color deceives continually....

"First, it should be learned that one and the same color evokes innumerable readings. Instead of mechanically applying or merely implying laws and rules of color harmony, distinct color effects are produced -- through recognition of the interaction of color -- by making, for instance, two very different colors look alike, or nearly alike."*

I often summarize that last sentence by saying that colors seem to "bend" toward each other.

The takeaway from this post: color deceives continually! That's something weavers need to know: that one color, juxtaposed with another, or combined with several different colors, or viewed in a different light, can vary greatly to our eyes.

Reproduced from the award-winning knitting blog,

KDD&Co

Thanks for reading!

*For a deeper look at what Albers considered "the magic of color" -- and how his book gives us tools to unlock it -- visit "The Marginalian," a weekly newsletter devoted to books and the arts, divinely curated and written by Maria Popova. You can find Popova's discussion of the 50th anniversary edition of The Interaction of Color by clicking here. Further, the book is offered as an interactive digital edition by clicking here.

Some Notes from My New Lecture, 'You Can't Judge a Warp by Its Color'

 

When I teach workshops on Echo and Jin using a 4-color parallel threading, weavers will often say to me, "I don't like the colors in my warp." I jokingly answer, "You can't judge a warp by its color." I do mean this seriously, because your weft makes a big difference (owing to a principle of optical mixing known as "simultaneous contrast," which I'll discuss later), as does your pattern, as do the rods and cones in your eyes. 

I've created a new lecture with just this title, and in it I try to unwrap some of the mysteries of color in weaving, looking at color chords, color blending, our own rods and cones (which number in the millions) and how to develop a greater understanding of what colors to use in your own work. 

In this blog post, I'm looking at just one of the concepts in my talk -- but one that is of primary importance: the concept of "simultaneous contrast," a term seldom used today, but a concept very useful to weavers.

Above, in the first photo, you see my warp colors in 10/2 pearl cotton, based on a rectangle taken from Johannes Itten's publication, "The Color Star." If you're lucky enough to have one, it's enormously helpful as it presents 8 templates that can be rotated around his 12-point color star, providing all sorts of options for choosing hues and values for what he calls "color chords" that are harmonious and satisfying to the eye.

My warp colors were turquoise, bright green (not quite chartreuse), orange, and wine. All quite saturated, with the wine color being the darkest in value.

In the second photo, you see a 16-shaft design I call "Tesselations," which uses a 20/2 pearl cotton weft in olive green. To my eye, the turquoise now appears to be a lighter blue, the orange becomes more of a rust color, the green is now definitely chartreuse, and the wine color is now more of a purple.

What happened? Simply put, simultaneous contrast. 

Above: Two images from Josef Albers's classic book, The Interaction of Color, showing (in the first image) how the rust-colored square against a teal background becomes brown against a copper-colored background and (in the second example) how a raspberry-colored trapezoid appears light and pinker against a black background (at top) and appears darker and more raisin-colored against a dark adobe background.

Simultaneous contrast was discovered by French chemist M.E. Chevreul in 1839, after he was hired by the Gobelins tapestry studio to determine why their black dyes were not consistent. He analyzed their dyes and found that, in fact, they WERE consistent -- and he went a step further, developing what he called the"Law of the Simultaneous Contrast of Colours." 

Simply put, "this color placed next to that one is modified as follows," he wrote in 1854. He added in a review in 1855: "the purport of this law, is to point out the singular fact, that when two coloured objects, such for example as a red and a green ribbon, are place side by side, or so near each other as to be seen together, the quality and intensity of their respective colours do not appear the same as when each is looked at separately. Thus, the same red ribbon will have a different tint if seen side by side with a green, with a yellow, and with a blue ribbon, and these colours will in their turn be modified to the eye, by their juxtaposition with red. This is the Simultaneous Contrast of Color."

I like to put it simpler, by saying that colors bend toward each other. And this concept is particularly important in weaving, because of the pixelated nature of warp and weft appearing over and under the cloth.

Here's an example, a double-weave sample on 8 shafts using an Echo design. What colors do you see in this warp? If I were to guess, I would say mint green and magenta.

Wrong! The warp colors are cherry red and leaf green (shown below), which happen to be complements.

The colors in the warp change considerably because the weft, if you can detect it, is purple. The purple makes both the red and the green appear bluer.

To dig deeper into this concept, let's try the familiar trick of staring at a colored dot and then staring at a white background. First, focus your eyes for about 10 seconds on the dot in the center of the yellow circle. Then focus on the dot in the center of the white rectangle.

You see a hazy purple circle, right? Purple is the complement of yellow. This is central to the concept of simultaneous contrast. The cones in your retina become fatigued in staring at the yellow, leading to a temporary imbalance in which the opposing color (its complement) appears when you look away.

What does this afterimage effect have to do with color blending in weaving? Quoting from http://onlineartlessons.com: "The law of simultaneous contrast describes the phenomenon where two colors juxtaposed... will influence each other, causing each color to take on the hue of the complementary color of its... partner." 

I confess I have yet to figure out exactly how this works when I look at weaving samples or drawdowns. I don't see colors taking on the complement of their partner but rather I see them taking on an element of their partner, as in the example below. (Comments, thoughts, insights appreciated.)

In this partial drawdown of an Echo pattern I designed using Fiberworks, there appear to be two shades of green in the cloth. Yet there is only one shade of green in the weaving: a medium grass green in the weft. The warp is khaki and purple.

Why do the greens shift in the drawdown? Again, because of simultaneous contrast. Remember that weaving is, effectively, a pixelated method of creating patterns. So when a "pixel" of green weft is close to a "pixel" of purple warp, the green appears to be more like a teal blue. (I attribute this to the green taking on the blue shade in the purple.) And when the green weft is next to the khaki warp, it appears to be brighter green, taking on the yellow in the khaki warp. 

Weavers can use these effects to optimize color-blending in their work, particularly with parallel-threaded patterns. As in the drawdown above, three colors of yarn in the design produce four colors in the cloth, adding interest and richness to the overall piece.

But back to M.E. Chevreul at the Gobelins studio. As he began writing about his observations on how colors affect each other and how complements and simultaneous contrast can produce shifts in colors that add energy to a work of art, the Impressionists took note.

Above, Monet's "Impression, Sunrise" from 1874, with its complements of orange and blue, is credited with inspiring the name of the Impressionist movement. 

It took a chemist, analyzing color scientifically, to give artists a greater understanding of how colors can work to add energy, to soothe, to excite, and to dramatize their vision.

Van Gogh, Café Terrace at Night, 1888

Thanks for reading!

Open Registration for My Upcoming "One Warp, Many Structures" Zoom Workshop

 

Above: An Echo sample by Maryann Ariizumi of the Seattle Weavers Guild, woven 

on 12 shafts in my "One Warp" workshop. Photo courtesy of Maryann Ariizumi.

Thanks to the generosity of the Ann Arbor Fiber Arts Guild, we're opening up the registration to weavers everywhere (no exaggeration) to take my "One Warp, Many Structures: Explorations in Extended Parallel Threadings" 3-day workshop. (For a detailed description, click here and scroll down. To register, click on the two links at the top of the page. For further questions, please contact me at kovnatdenise[at]gmail.com.)

The workshop will be in the Eastern Time zone on three Saturdays: February 22, March 1, and March 8, with three Zoom sessions each day. The idea is that weavers can weave along at home and then join the teaching sessions where they will show their work online, ask questions, view my PowerPoints and presentations, and discuss issues, just as we would in any workshop. I ask weavers to upload photos of their work as they proceed, as this is a really useful tool for discussion.

We make extensive use of Google Drive, where you'll have access to loads of handouts, photos, WIFs, drawdowns for printing out, and reference material. Further, all of our sessions will be recorded and uploaded to YouTube, for those who want to review or miss a session. And, as always, I'm available via email or text or phone to answer questions.

My samples of an 8-shaft pattern called "Many Rivers," showing both sides 

of the double-weave variation of this particular threading.

Thanks to program chairs Carolyn Michaels and Trish Ritchie for their willingness to make this workshop available to weavers outside the Ann Arbor Guild. Hope to see you on Zoom in February!

What's (Almost) on the Loom Right Now?

 

Well, not quite on the loom yet, but this is what I'm aiming for. It's a 32-shaft Echo design I call "Murmurations" because it reminds me of those wonderful rounded forms made by starlings and other flocks of birds as they shape-shift aerobatically across the sky.

A murmuration of starlings (courtesy of Wiktionary)

If you're lucky enough to see one, you will marvel at the sight. As magical as they appear, there are practical reasons for the birds to create these ever-changing forms in flight: They serve to help protect them from predators like peregrine falcons. Like sheep, the starlings create safety in numbers -- and they keep moving as well. Even a peregrine falcon will have a hard time catching a single bird among the hundreds or even thousands in constant motion.

Anyhow, I like the pattern and I love weaving with Echo designs, because you can achieve so many different designs just by changing the tieup and treadling. Like this one in double weave (shown as a detail, because the overall design is really big.)

Or this, woven as Shadow Weave (well, sort of), again shown just as a detail because the design is so large.

So I'm rather excited to start weaving and see the results. (Side comment: A friend and I were talking about the differences between a weaving design as seen in Fiberworks versus how it turns out when it's woven. I see Fiberworks as a sort of "flight simulator" -- that is, it gives you a pretty good approximation of what you're going to get on the loom, but you never really know until you weave it up.) And the weft color makes a difference, of course. And the sett, and the beat...

Here are my warp colors, in 16/2 unmercerized cotton, to be set at 48 epi.

The colors don't show up really well in this photo. That's mint green on the left and royal blue on the right. So the weft for my first design (seen as the first photo in this post) will probably be a copper/rust color, serving as a complement to the blue and turning the mint green into more of a rusty gold.

This post is dedicated to good intentions, because my Megado loom isn't completely dressed yet. The warp is beamed, but now I have to thread some 1,200 ends.

View from the front

Rear view

So here's a toast to weaving in the new year, to challenging ourselves, to threading myriad numbers of heddles, and to keeping our fingers crossed that our designs will translate really well from Fiberworks to the loom!

And to weavers everywhere: Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Bright Solstice, Joyous Kwanzaa, and best wishes for any and every celebration at this time of year.

Thanks for reading!