19/08/2011

Sampling

This is a sample, woven on thrums from another project.

The sample is a cousin of the leaf scarves (in fact, it is the same threading).
This time I am thinking of towels for hand-drying crystal glasses (I do live in the "kingdom of crystal", after all ;-).
A glass towel should be very thin and flexible, and lint-free - this spells linen, to me, even though the sample has cotton warp.

However, I don't have more than 16 shafts - I can't make the "picture" wider.

Front and back - click to see it in real life-size.


This picture is larger-than-life:


What I can do is making the stem wider and the foot thicker.
I can also make the bowl taller - perhaps I could try for a tulip-shape?

This is not exactly the liftplan I used (sneaker net is down at the moment, due to heavy rain...)


Yesterday I also did something I've been thinking of for a long time (10 years?): I piled books onto the AVL treadle to lift 8 shafts. It took approximately 16 kilograms of encyclopedia for that to happen.
The sample above took 790 picks for ca 55 cm wet-finished cloth. That equals 12640 kilos (or 12 and-a-half tons, if you prefer).
Weaving on an AVL is not for the faint of right leg... but I already knew that. I just did not know exactly how much the lifting amounts to. No wonder there's a joke about AVL weavers and right leg development...
Question: can anybody think of a way to measure the force needed for the flying of shuttles? I haven't used the double box for a while, but I remember what happens every time I go back to the single box: I make the shuttle bounce almost half the way back...
Maybe I should tell my loom is 60".

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