Fungus, Fuchsia & Fifty
The fuchsia shawl is another experiment with the triple weave – this one using 2-block huck for the fuchsia side (thanks for the suggestion Laurie). There are also a few adventures in leno (thanks for the suggestion Georgia). The back side is plain weave. I used 20/2 wool for the outside and 10/2 bamboo for the unwoven interior threads. Here’s some interesting (to me . . .) info:
The huck does make a great, uniform open mesh that seems more stable than the loosely woven plain weave gauze. The surprise is that the huck doesn’t cause the back side plain weave to be woven unevenly – if anything it seems to keep the back-side beat very even – weird.
The interior threads are spaced, and you can decide if that makes them more or less dramatic – again – thanks for the suggestion Laurie.
The drape and hand is really nice.
The leno patterns look beautiful, but the draw-in is pretty severe. I made the leno bands very narrow because I was trying to mitigate the narrowing by putting in bands of plain weave. It didn’t really work – the leno segment narrows in an unsightly way. If you are interested in leno, it turns out (not surprisingly) that the fewer threads per twist group the less the draw-in. The greater number of threads that you are twisting over their neighbors the more tension you are creating on the weft which causes a lot of pull in from the sides. When I did 2 over 2 leno there was almost no draw -in, but the 4 over 4 created a super springily-narrow tube.
About the fungi – took a woods walk today and the fungus are among-us!
About Fifty – yikes – just turned and its all roses from here on out . . . right?
