Zinnia and friends

The identity of the plants that became the majority in the pot of "zinnias" soon may be revealed. Many tips seem about to bloom:

Or, they are more leaves. The zinnia at least is holding its ground. Interesting, how the deck railings have laid down a lovely checkered tablecloth.

And here is the mystery lettuce the next day. Maybe over the weekend it will be a flower.

I really came to talk about the future. The run of aqua towels is off the loom and cut apart for finishing. The next set of towels will be the always popular orange. The bobbins are wound.

Apparently I paid more attention to PBS and Covid19 and associated news than to the bobbins, and came up two bobbins short for the pound of thread. Normally I would wait until I'l emptied two bobbins, then fill them.

But sometime ago someone asked me how I maintained uniform selvages, and the bobbin is part of the answer, so instead of waiting on two LeClerc plastic bobbins to free up, I wound two wooden Harrisville bobbins to illustrate a point. Here they are.

I scrolled back through a year's worth of pictures and had trouble locating a really good picture of selvages. The picture of the aqua and this will have to do. On the loom is the left selvage, too, which is inferior to my right selvage. Oh well.

A uniform selvage happens when the bobbin thread laid each time is the same length, and it catches uniformly at each edge. Other operations by the weaver must be uniform, too. The tension of the warp must be kept fairly uniform. 

As you know some of the threads go up and some go down, and the shuttle of thread is passed through the opening, the shed. Here is my sequence:

Open the shed. *Throw the shuttle, leaving the proper arc of thread and sensing the tug of the thread stopping at the selvage. Beat the thread. Open the next shed. Return the beater. Repeat from * until you are ready to stop.

The beat is in the open shed, and the return of the beater when the next shed is opened clears the shed of any threads that cling together, so that the shed is open to throw the shuttle again. Everything else becomes part of the rhythm established, just like knitting or swinging an ax to split a log or a hammer to drive a chisel. 

Bobbins are very important. The LeClerc bobbins are plastic. There are other brands of plastic, and there are wood bobbins. They all unwind differently when thrown. The diameter of the hole in each varies, affecting the speed the bobbin unwinds. The bobbins themselves have different weights, affecting the speed they spin and unwind in the shuttle.

So, that's how I keep the selvages uniform. Practice. The good news was, I was a natural. And I put that down to the prior thirty some years of fiber work, knitting, spinning, sewing. Just like other skills, the fingers and brain are attuned and kick in.