Ply-Split Progression

Incorrect braid, but still pretty

I bought a ply-split project from Etsy a few days ago, a pdf pattern, and I’ve been dying to try it out, which is why I spent the better part of the day a couple of days ago making cord. The piece calls for 24 cords, in five different colors. Eight of one, and four each for the rest.

I used Scheepjes Catona for the cord. Since trying it out, it has rapidly become my go-to yarn. The colors are gorgeous, and the yarn is soft and strong. Love, love, love this yarn, and I wish it was more easily accessible here in the States. Shopping online is great, but nothing replaces viewing an item with your own eyes.

I didn’t realize how time-consuming the cordmaking would be. The battery-powered cordmaker can only do so much so quickly, unlike the drill-driven cordmaker I’ve seen in videos. But though my setup isn’t the best, the job got done.

What I’ve learned, though, is that I didn’t pay quite enough attention to detail as I thought with the cordmaking. Yup. I posted a pic in the Facebook group and asked if I’d done everything correctly, and it seems that though my cords are made with 4 strands, they are still 2-ply cords. Why? Because the four strands were to be twisted separately, then be twisted together. What yours truly did was twist two strands together, then twist all four.

Oops.

It would be the one time I post a video that I did it wrong, wouldn’t it?!

New cords, this time made properly!

I’m going to finish the pattern anyway, then try to make my cords correctly and do the pattern again. The piece I currently have is still pretty, if incorrect, and I figure since I can’t use those cords for anything else, I might as well finish what I started. It is giving me a feel for how to place the gripfid, which is a good thing. And I have gone back and made more cords, properly. I definitely need a better setup for cordmaking, and that means getting into the garage to find the other cordmaker. I’ll get there…eventually.

As much as I’m finding that I’m enjoying ply-split braiding, it also leaves me in a bit of a quandary, because Scheepjes Catona doesn’t come in huge skeins. So far, when I make cords, I use two four-yard lengths of yarn for one cord. If I need four cords of one color, that’s already sixteen yards used…that’s a significant amount of the skein. It means that if another project comes up, I will have to buy more yarn. Not that that is a hardship, mind, and a skein isn’t expensive at $3.85, but there are 109 colors in the Catona colorway. I’m trying to have at least one full skein of each color on hand, because I use Catona in weaving, crochet, and now ply-split braiding. Having multiple skeins of each color is going to get pricey quick, and having multiples would be the ideal situation. My wallet, however, is screaming at even the idea. Can you hear it? I think there might be tears…

Maybe what I should do is a destash trade kind of thing. I’ve been trying to get away from acrylic yarn, of which I have plenty. Maybe someone would trade away their Catona. Hmmm…

On the left, the new braid, with different colors, and proper cords

So that’s the quandary: I need a large amount of the Catona if I’m going to use it in those three crafts. Something I’ll have to work on.

Today, I started the same pattern over again, with different colors, proper cords, and there is a noticeable difference. I haven’t quite finished the first, incorrect one, but I really wanted to try doing it right. One mistake I made, right off the bat, is using black as the dominant color. I wanted to make the colors pop, and they do, but I didn’t stop to think about the fact that seeing the plies is really, really difficult. As in, I can’t work on this one in the living room. I need to be in the studio at my desk, with the magnifying light on. 

Once I got it going, I didn’t need the magnifier so much anymore, and I think I can thank the time I’ve spent on the other braid for that, getting a feel for where the fid needs to go. I’m beginning to be able to see it in this braid as well, and starting to go a little faster. It’s fun, and the pattern really isn’t hard. Once you’ve done a couple of repeats, you can look at it and know where you are and what you need to do next.

I don’t know what I’m going to do with these two braids, but I’m sure my children will have ideas of their own, and will claim them if I don’t have an instant answer to that question!

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Ply-Split Braiding

Ply-split keychain-become-choker

I haven’t felt like doing much weaving the past two days. Sciatica has been flaring up across my whole lower back, and the only way I’m actually comfortable is standing up or lying down. But I still needed to do something that involved yarn. Because, of course, right? Well, ply-split braiding is another one of those things that hit my radar when I learned to weave, and I really had an interest, but buying pre-made cord for it can get really expensive, really fast. So I watched videos on how to make my own cord, and years ago, I bought a battery-powered cord maker to attempt it, but the stupid thing and I could not get along, much like the previously mentioned dealgan. The cord I made was far too loose to work with, and I couldn’t figure out why. I blamed the cord maker, as everything I read and watched said it wasn’t an ideal way to make cord. I put it back in its box and put it away, and looked for the item that research had told me was the best way to go about making my own cords. It’s a cordmaker that attaches to a drill, and is also very pricey. As in close to $300. It took a few years before I finally bought one, only to realize I didn’t have the best setup to use it. Into my desk it went, until the day I had a better setup, and I bought a few hanks of pre-made cord. As I expected, it’s not really cost effective to buy it that way. For a tiny project, you can get away with it, especially if you’re only doing one project, but if you’re going to spend any significant amount of time doing this, you honestly need to make your own cord.

I still had some pre-made left, so yesterday I began to play with it. I started out to make a keychain, and it quickly decided to become a choker. A choker, I might add, that Aneira wasted no time in claiming. I let her have it. It looked better on her anyway.

I should explain what ply-split braiding actually is.

Made-by-me cords for ply-split braiding

The easiest explanation I can give you, seeing that I’m an utter novice, is you start with a number of four-ply cords, however many your project calls for, and a little item called a gripfid. From what I’ve seen, those are usually made from hollow metal knitting needles. The metal is removed from an area near the tip, exposing the hollow space. What you’re going to do is insert the gripfid, tip first, between the plies (plys?), so you will have two plies on top of the fid, and two beneath. You do this through all of your cords except the last one. That one, the end with the aglet is inserted into the hollow space of the fid, so it’s inside of it. Then you draw the fid back out the way it came, pulling that last cord through the others. Pretty cool. That last cord becomes your first now, and on your next pass, it’s the first one you split with the fid. That’s the simplest way I can explain it. I hope it makes sense.

Having the choker turn out so well led me to wanting to try another project, but I didn’t have enough cord, and I went looking for my expensive, never-been-used cordmaker, and discovered it’s not in the studio, which means it’s in the garage, somewhere amongst the boxes that we have yet to unpack. The cheaper, not-ideal cordmaker, however, was right in plain sight. So I shrugged my shoulders, and decided to give it the old college try again.

Would you believe that this time I finally figured it out and managed to make some decent cord?! I’m in shock. No, the battery-powered cordmaker isn’t ideal, but I’ve gotten it to work. Twelve more cords to go, and I’ll have enough for the next project.

I even did a video of making the cord, this time. I’ve never posted a video before, so we’ll see how this plays out. If it works, I would suggest playing it without the sound. I have no idea how to edit out the loud, annoying motor sound!

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Spindling

Spindlemania!

Today I managed three posts!!! Yes!!

Well, I can’t lie…the other two were done and sitting in my drafts, waiting…they weren’t all written today! But this one is. I’m still happily inkling along, but I wanted to show you some things that were new and interesting to me, and had to be tried. I came across one, I don’t remember where, and in looking for it, ran across the other.

As you can see in the picture, there are a slew of new spindles here. The purple one is a Peruvian chac-chac from Straddle Creek Spins. That one has a captured ring that is supposed to rattle as you spin…I have yet to manage to make it do so. The five to the right are from Mirkwood Arts. I am a proud fantasy geek, so just the shop name alone was enough to make me look. But all the spindles are aptly named as well (not by me, this time!!!). And naturally, there was a spindle club that I had to join, because what kind of geek would I be if I didn’t?! The first one to the right of the chac-chac is Fili, the next is Idril Celebrindal, then Legolas, then Bettina’s Rainbow (the only non-Tolkienesque spindle), and finally Haldir. They’re not pictured in order of receipt. They’re gorgeous supported spindles, and spin quite well!

The last two, to the left, are the ones I wanted to show you. The one with the fiber is called a txoatile, from the Basque area of Spain. It intrigued me because I’d never seen a spindle like it before, although it resembles a Turkish spindle, a bit. I’m still getting the hang of spinning with it; it doesn’t spin as easily as a drop spindle.

The one between it and the chac-chac is a Scottish dealgan, another one I hadn’t seen before, and therefore had to have (do you see a pattern forming here?). “Dealgan” is actually pronounced “Jelligan”. This is where you learn that all of the Irish and Scottish names we hear in the US are, for the most part, mispronounced. “Caitlin” is not pronounced “Kate Lynn”. It is pronounced “Kathleen”. “Aislynn” is not “Aze Lynn”, as I had thought, but “Ashlynn”. Pretty cool, right? So many names like that. Duncan? “Dhonncaidh”. If I’d had a son, that might have been his name, spelled exactly like that. Like I said, geek. So: jelligan, which I would never have tumbled to.

The dealgan and I are still having words with each other. There are videos about spinning each on YouTube, and I bought both from Muddy Duck Workshop. I’ll get the hang of them soon; they only arrived yesterday!

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Sidetracked

I came into the studio today with the sole purpose of trying a little harder to organize the area, but there are problems. One is just the sheer number of little items that pile up everywhere. It’s not the larger pieces of equipment; those are easy. It’s all of the little ones, particularly those of which you don’t have eight million of the same item. Take shuttles, for instance. If you just label a drawer for shuttles, you can toss all of them in there, and you’re done. But say you break them down according to the looms they’re for: rigid heddle, inkle, floor loom, etcetera. Well, the Flip only has one shuttle, and I’m not going to earmark a drawer for one shuttle. So it goes into the desk drawer, with the small box of miscellaneous clips, another of stitch markers, and so on. The top of my desk and the desk drawers are a mass of little things that don’t really have a place to call their own…yet.

Some things, you know will live on your desk forever because it’s the best place for them, things like pens and paper clips. The rest, you kind of have to make up as you go along. One of the things I’d like to make is a series of pockets to hang on the desk hutch, to hold the studio remote controls. Yes, there is a television, as well as a stereo in the studio. I don’t always want it to be quiet in here. Sometimes I want music, other times I put on movies…it depends on the day! The stereo has a remote, the tv has its own and the satellite remote, the DVD player under the tv has a remote, and the fan has a remote. On the desk, they take up a lot of space, but hanging pockets would take them out of the way and still keep them organized and accessible.

I’ve also got this rolling cart with ten drawers that has been awesome for me. I’ve ordered four more of them. Two are for the studio, the other two are for the kids to neaten up their bedrooms. Especially Bryony. We won’t discuss her room. If you have kids, you can already guess. If you don’t have kids, once upon a time you were one, so you still have a pretty good idea.

My other problem is my ability to be sidetracked by other projects. Today, it was the little mini inkle that got me, and then this blog post about being sidetracked lol!!

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Staying On Task

Tiny loom from Hard Maple Looms. It’s 7″ long by 4″ high and cute as a button!

The weavebrain is back to running amok. I currently have four looms under warp. Two are weaving the same design in different colors and yarn thicknesses. One is under a practice warp. And the last, a teeny little loom, is under an inkle warp. My last loom and my wooden heddles haven’t yet arrived, and I have no idea when they will. The Ukelele is coming from Windhaven, and they had a major flash flood, so the shop was under water. No telling when they’ll be able to resume work. That’s a horrible thing to have happen, especially now when there’s already so much going on in the world.

The heddles are coming from Latvia. They shipped on May 7th, but there’s no tracking number for them, so I have no idea where they are. Given the state of the world, they might have gone to Outer Mongolia, for all I know!

Staying on point is hard because I am seriously wanting to try my hand at Baltic pickup weaving, but I don’t have a loom free. At least, not one for that. Two of my three rigid heddles are free, but they don’t fit in my lap. I need to swing by WalMart and get a tv table of some sort. Maybe I’ll do that today. 

In other news, both kids will be moving on to their next grades. Aneira did well with homeschooling, and we’re looking into keeping her there until graduation. Bryony, not so much. And I am no teacher. Her passing had absolutely nothing to do with any help on my part. We spent more time fighting over her actually doing her work than cooperating to get it done, primarily because it is her contention that “help” means that a parent does all the reading and tells her which item to read to get the answer she needs. Naturally, that’s not happening!

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