Brad's Warped - Crazy yarns from a guy living on the fringe

It’s Been a While!

On September 28, 2022

The best intentions seem to somehow always get waylaid by something beyond our control.

I always meant for this to be a fairly steady blog, posting every few weeks. Well, It has now been 9 months. Due to things beyond our control, the first half of the year was murder at work, culminating with the doctor that Eric and I work for passing away. Once gone we were struggling to keep the practice open while it was sold, following the doctor’s final wishes.

Well, His estranged wife had other ideas. She had left him years before but stayed close for the money. After his death she descended like a vulture, making all of the employees’ lives hell. We had to ban her from the practice, get our HR company involved with their legal team, and it finally ended with her forcing everyone out of the practice, illegally withholding paychecks, stealing from the employees’ retirement plans, and accusing the employees of horrible things even though there is definitive proof that they never happened. Short story, we had to deal with the evilest, most vile person that we have ever met.

So Eric and I had a long vacation. We are now seeking other employment, possibly in different fields, we will see.

In the meantime, after the first 6 weeks of trying to get all of the illegal activities that the wife did reported to the proper authorities, we spent time delving into our various crafts.

Eric has been quilting like a madman and has now started his yearly task of embroidering his elephant ornaments (as seen in the Etsy store). He has started to incorporate goldwork into his creations and they look gorgeous! Now is the time to pick one up before the holidays!

I have been weaving, foraging into overshot and doubleweave, and loving both. Below are some pictures of both of our works.

Overshot “Autumn”
Overshot “Winter Shadows”
Overshot “Falling Leaves”
Doubleweave
Doubleweave Eiffel Tower
Backside of Doubleweave
Eric’s Elephants
Eric’s Elephants
Eric’s Elephants

And We’re Back!

By bradjrohr

On January 25, 2022

In Uncategorized

After an unplanned hiatus just before a planned one, I am back with a few new projects, some new yarns, and new items on the Etsy store!

Completely healed now from the appendix issue, the remodel now in our rearview mirror, and the holidays now firmly behind us, I am able to get back to weaving!

We had nearly every part of our house changed, but the best part is that kitchen. It is so nice to have a kitchen that is actually useable and cleanable (the slate tile countertops were HORRIBLE to keep clean). The previous post has the before, here is an after…

The first project off the loom for this year is two sets of towels using the turned taquito style from my September post. This time I wanted an old world or slightly “antique” look as opposed to the mid-century modern colors of the last set. Using shades of burgundy, pink, blue, and ivory I set the loom and really loved the outcome. For no particular reason, they made me happy, made me think of our trip to Paris, and I really like how they turned out. As soon as they are cut apart and hemmed they will be available in the store.

I am currently working on a commissioned scarf and I am so happy to do it! I won’t post on it right now but will show it off after the recipient has it.

The last thing that Eric and I did was to get some of our scarves up on the Etsy page. These beautiful scarves have been languishing as we tried to figure out what to do with them. Once I had the Etsy site up we decided to put them up on there.

Brioche Stitch Scarf Hand-Knit Luxury Scarf

$179 USD

Wool and Silk Hand Knit Scarf

$189 USD

Entrelac Scarf, Hand=Knit Wool Luxury Scarf

$159 USD

The Fall of Summer as Autumn Begins.

By bradjrohr

On October 10, 2021

In Uncategorized

I technically started my last project in August when it was still summer. We are now firmly into autumn and the project has been put on hold for two reasons.

Besides the appendix issues mentioned in the last post, We have also started a remodel. It began as only a kitchen remodel when we began planning over a year ago. It then morphed into getting new floors through the whole house, then new doors, then getting it all painted, fixtures…

It just grows…

And grows…

And grows.

Here are some before pictures of the kitchen followed by a few taken during the demo. Drywall is now up and hopefully cabinets next week! stay tuned for the final in the next few weeks.

So the weaving project that got interrupted was my first foray into weaving with wool. I had some wonderful Peruvian highland wool which I used for a warp. I went ahead and beamed on 7 yards, thinking that I could get 2-3 scarves and still have some warp to play with.

The first bit was using a variegated yarn with a long colorway that reminded me of wildflowers and a summer sunset. It was woven in a twill pattern and just looked beautiful when finished and fulled (fulling happens during the washing process; the water and slight agitation blooms the wool fibers making them soft and lofty).

After I took the twill scarf off the loom and retied the warp, I began to play with color and using Italian hemstitching as a decorative element. Usually, you will hemstitch the beginning and end of a project if it is not something that you want to machine hem.

The test…

And here is the actual process in progress.

The yarn for the weft is a merino and silk blend for the white and beige and more of the blue highland.

I got a little more than halfway done with this scarf before I went into the hospital for my surgery and when I got back and recuperated enough to weave, the loom had to be put away for the remodel. I cannot wait to get it back out and finish this scarf and get on to my next project, another scarf set, and some more towels for the Etsy store.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading this. I leave you this time with a picture of Perdita, she has been a trooper through all of the noise and desecration of her home.

/

End of Summer 2021

By bradjrohr

On September 26, 2021

In 8-shaft Weaving, Turned Taquete, Weaving

Being sick sucks…

So, as you all know, getting sick sucks. Over the past couple of years, I have had bouts with what I thought were ill-timed cases of stomach flu… those are the symptoms I had; stomach ache and fever.

A few weeks ago I had another and after running a high fever for several days. Not able to get into my doctor I called the telehealth line, they advised if it didn’t go away to go to urgent care or the ER. A day or so later it did indeed get better. Fast forward 3 weeks and I got the same thing… too soon for another stomach flu; the same thing, fever, and stomach ache.

I called my doctor and let them know that I thought maybe it was gall bladder or something and was able to get in the next day. After some poking and prodding, she said I needed to get to the ER right away and that they were going to call an ambulance.

After a horrible 23 hour ordeal in the ER, I was finally wheeled into surgery. It turns out that my appendix had perforated and leaked several weeks ago, caused a cyst, and I was lucky it hadn’t burst. I never had “traditional” appendicitis pains since my appendix apparently liked to travel and was hiding behind my colon… Good times!!

So now the weaving!

The second to last big project that I worked on this summer was from the May/June issue of Handwoven magazine. They are the turned taquete towels by Susan Poague. I loved the mid-century vibe that these had enhanced by the colors that she chose. I decided to use the same color palette the first time, believing that this was something that I would want to weave again.

I was right, these were so much fun to weave! After a few false starts with the threading and denting I was able to get started. I had enough for 5 full-length towels with enough left to play… and I came up with some marvelous alternate patterns.

The original pattern comes with circles, checks, and then a third treadling for circles that brought the underside to the top and back. These were all three wonderful patterns.

Circles
Circles Back to Front Alternate

I wanted to see if there was a way to get circles and squares in the same towel. and it is possible! I love the design of this and how pronounced hte squares and circles are.

When first weaving these, I noticed that some threads were just coupling oddly. After playing around and asking advice from some of the fabulous people on the weaving groups on Facebook, I realized that there was a super simple fix. By moving the threads one dent over and splitting them (they were wound on the warping mill 2 at a time), it made them all separate. More details are HERE

I ran through several other possible patterns, some of which are listed below.

First is the square within or “I” pattern

This next one has the “eye surrounded by waves. This was a stepping stone to one of my favorites.

I love the following one, I’m sure someone has come up with it before, but I am just imagining upholstery fabric made from this. I’ve called it Eye of Ra because, well, why not?

Note that there are a few different variations on the same theme. I am excited to try this again.

So that ended the turned taquete for now. I will definitely be re-warping this one for several other towels and possibly some yardage.

Summer 2021 Projects Part 2

By bradjrohr

On August 31, 2021

In 8-shaft Weaving, My take on the daily news, Twills, Weaving

The next set was direct from Jane Stafford’s online guild, season 5 Episode 1, Turned Twills. This was the first thing that I completed using all 8 shafts of the loom and I was so excited to see how using these color blocks could produce so many gorgeous effects. This was also the first time that I maxed out my looms warping capabilities. Maybe someone out there could tell me how to get more on, but 14 yards seems to be the maximum warp amount for the Ashford table loom, at least for 8/2 cotton.

So, 14 yards, 12 towels from the instructions, and then about 1.5 yards to play with. I had so much fun with this one that I warped it again (only 4 yards) in different colors to make towels for my SIL in Kansas.

And then the SIL towels…

Between towel sets, I also dabbled with a few of Jane Stafford’s practice pieces from this year which is the lace year. There is just so much that can be done with lace, and she primarily just shows what can be done with 4 shafts. Add 4 more and the possibilities are insane!

For the history books today, The war in Afghanistan is officially over. I have no idea what that means for the region, this country, or the world but we shall see. A major hurricane hit the Louisiana coast yesterday, exactly 16 years to the day as Katrina. New Orleans is entirely without power and it may be weeks before they get things back on for the majority of people.

And finally, the number of people with Covid continues to grow because of all of the FUCKING ASSHOLES who refuse to get vaccinated and wear masks. At this point, they deserve what they get. Yes, that is harsh but if they are that fucking stupid…

The next post will be looking at my second to last summer project and it was so much fun. It is the Turned Taquete towel weave from the May/June issue of Handwoven Magazine.

Summer 2021 Projects Part 1

By bradjrohr

On August 30, 2021

In 4-shaft Weaving, Twills, Weaving

Now that you know a little bit of history, let’s get down to what I have done with this loom this past summer.

I consider Winter and Spring of 2021 to be my “practice time” and seriously got down to putting things I had practiced and learned into something useful.

Towels are the obvious easy start since they are so useful, who doesn’t need a kitchen towel…

I started with Towels for Eric. We have tons of Fiestaware and he wanted towels to coordinate. These were a simple twill using 4 shafts and as you can see, not planned out too much as far as the stripes and twill placement… live and learn.

For the next project, I wanted to pull in some color. I had completed some gamps from Jane Stafford’s online guild and wanted to use a bit of what I learned there. The second set of towels were for my mom. These were just simple plain weave using color gradient as the feature. I used various blues, purples, and pinks to create subtle color shading. I also threw in twining a pink and green cottolin as a weft in one towel and was pleasantly surprised by the “shimmer” effect that it gave the towel. Unfortunately, I do not have any pictures of the finished towels… That will be rectified for all future towels 🙂

Picking colors
Warping
Beaming onto the loom
Started weaving
First towel
cottolin weft in green and pink
cotolin wefted towel
cottolin

Stay tuned for Part 2 of summer projects, the best is yet to come. Turned twill towels on 8 shafts and turned taquete!

Prepping for Weaving

By bradjrohr

On August 16, 2021

In 4-shaft Weaving, 8-shaft Weaving, Twills, Weaving

By the time I had ordered my loom I had already watched dozens of hours of videos on YouTube. I wanted to see different looms in action, see what could be made, etc. I settled on a table loom for the sole fact that I figured it would be easier to convince my husband that a small, foldable table loom would be a good idea to see if Weaving was really for me before I bought a thousands-dollar behemoth loom that would take over our living space. (to be fair he quilts so there is quilting stuff EVERYWHERE!)

So I settled on an Ashford 8-shaft 32″ table loom. It was a good price, looked great, great reviews…

Knowing that due to the pandemic, my loom would not arrive for 2-4 months, I wanted to assuage the wait by learning as much as I could so that I could get started right away. I had already watched the videos on how to put the loom together, Kelly Casanova made a great one that specifically showed the assembly of the Ashford loom.

While watching a video from Andy on his Curmudgeon Weaves channel, I heard him mention that Jane Stafford had an online guild. Now, I had watched videos that Jane had done for Louet and had actually watched her warping videos several times so I was excited at the prospect of more from her. I was amazed at the amount of information that she had for the online guild and how inexpensive the subscription was. I joined in the middle of year 4, so I binged the first 3 years for the next 2 months, watching several of the sections a couple of times. There is such a wealth of information and Jane is such a great presenter.

So by the time I received my loom, I had so much information teeming in my mind, once Eric and I go the loom put together, I wound a warp (gnashing my teeth because it looks so easy in all the videos and it wasn’t), got it wound on (a bit easier but still sweat-inducing), and got it wound on and with a whoosh of self-congratulations after having tied the warp on…

…I broke down because the shed wouldn’t open right, everything looked weird, I was devastated. I had prepped myself, walked through everything as I was doing it, I was such an idiot. Then, I noticed, I had not put the tie-on rod over the cloth beam, but under it. I did the first of many, many, many stupid mistakes. Once I retied the warp the feeling of elation came back and I was weaving!

Next time, my first real project.

How Warped Are You??

By bradjrohr

On August 11, 2021

In Uncategorized

EVERYONE this past year has been through their share of… well, total shit. Some people baked bread and learned how to feed and name their sourdough starters, some people became involved with political issues (that opened a ton of cans of worms), and some of us did all of those and more.

FOR ME, the pandemic made many changes and at first, they were manageable; work schedule changes, getting used to masks, having more time at home and making do with what we could get from online shopping, and only venturing out masked and gloved when absolutely necessary. I baked, cooked, started learning French, knit… worked a lot from home and spent a lot of time just wandering around the house, doing nothing… it was all so exhausting. The only bright spots of my days were constantly pissing off relatives on Facebook who were pro-trump and anti-democracy.

LATER in the year, my beloved mother-in-law was diagnosed with cancer and passed away just 3 short months later. As so many people learned, it sucks to take care of someone you love yet not be able to hold them, hug them, or be with them when they have to go to the hospital because asshole people in the rest of the country refused to be smart and mask when asked and a bad pandemic became the worst pandemic imaginable for this day and age.

I HAD to find a way to relieve my stress and later heartache. My husband and I consoled each other, but without being able to have the consolation of being with the rest of our family due to Covid restrictions and people just being douche-bags when it came to virus control. Having been a long-time knitter, spinner, crocheter, I felt that it was time to try one more thing that I have always wanted to do…weaving. In July of 2020, I broke down and bought an Ashford 8-shaft table loom…

…THUS the monster was born. Join me as I discuss my weaving, the weaving of others, maybe the occasional recipe, and other things in life. Don’t get offended, the page is mine and contains my thoughts and nothing is verboten.