Sponsored by TWIST - Tablet Weavers International Studies & Techniques Janis and all,
I'm getting a better grip on my tension issues. It's not the warp tension - it's the draw tension that's making it uneven. The tension across the warp is fairly even; my spreader is about a foot away from my cards, so the effect is not terribly pronounced. The ribbon wants to spread out and be quite a bit wider than I'm making it; it spreads out, and I'm reining it in by pulling at the edges with the weft, which makes the center loose and the sides tight. I did finally figure out that (a) starting out with it more perfectly even, helped make it more perfectly even throughout (thanks, Herveus!), and (b) I can adjust the spread, by pinching the fell at the selvedge in one hand, and pinching along the fell to spread the threads with the other, and (c) the areas with double-face work tend to spread out, whereas the areas without tend to stay more compact. I think the twisting pattern makes it want to spread more. Because I'm making this in short segments and untwisting all the built up twist between, I've got a clean start every five inches or so, where I can carefully adjust the distribution of threads without making a mess of them. It's frustrating having to do things again to get them right - but I think I've got 2 and possibly 3 good segments now, out of the 4 that I need - I'll do the birds again, and then see if I want to do the knotwork part again. I did the last name once, and had trouble with it spreading, but now I've got first and last names both in good form. I am amazed with the visual clarity of lettering at 75 tablets - you will definitely be able to read it from a ways! I've got several little chunks of this ribbon where I tried out pattern work, that I'm going to use for dyeing samples. I understand that the black will probably stay pretty much just black (which is what I want) - but it won't hurt my feelings if it gets a little bit of a golden tinge to it. Either way, the black parts will take a certain amount of golden color, because of being able to see the (currently) white parts through the weave. Michael ____________________________________________________________________________________ Don't pick lemons. See all the new 2007 cars at Yahoo! Autos. http://autos.yahoo.com/new_cars.html Send private reply to Michael <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ----------------------------------------------------------- To stop receiving tabletweaving (not tabletweaving-digest), send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: unsubscribe tabletweaving. To stop receiving tabletweaving-digest, see the end of a digest.
