A Study in Silk

Many, many years ago I bought a whole lot of embroidery silk through eBay. The goal was to do very fine and intricate weaves.

That was 4 years ago....

Like a lot of my purchases, they all sat gathering dust for a long time. It seems to be a pattern with me, that I buy something with the full intention of doing something with it. But nothing happens for years as I’ve put it aside until my current project is finished, forget about it in the meantime or find something else I want to do next, until I find it again years later, have a bit of moment of joy and memory and then decide to use it. Maybe this has something to do with me getting easily distracted or maybe it’s an autism related trait – who knows? Probably some kind of professional.

I’m lucky that my wife has cottoned onto my tendencies (See what I did there?) and challenges me when I say “I want to buy this” and will sometimes make the executive decision to stop me from buying something, or she makes sure I utilise the things I buy so I’m not spending money fruitlessly on things I don’t need or won’t use – one main example of this was the phase I went through not so long ago where I was convinced I was going to be the next best rug-tufter. I bought everything, spent a considerable amount of money on it; used it once and gave up. After that I’ve been on a very focussed needs must type of spending restriction – not a budget per se, just a weave focussed spending only. And I want to add, this was 100% introduced by myself, as I came to the conclusion that the propensity for “Money burning a hole in my pocket” was starting to become problematic and I knew I needed to make a change. My wife is very good at ensuring I keep to my word and don’t stray from the path, keeps my focussed on my weaving. And the rush of dopamine now comes from seeing a pattern emerge, finishing a weave and not from starting new hobby after new hobby.

Anyway, tangent over.

My wife challenged me to make her a choker. And, me being me, was happy to accept the task. I knew the cotton I used was probably not the best material to sit on someone’s throat and neck all day as it sometimes felt quite coarse. The wool was likely to cause excess sweating as wool does. So, I dug out the silk and decided to FINALLY use it.

This was quite an experience. Having never used silk before and this silk was extremely fine in comparison to anything I’d ever used before (60/2nm for those who understand or want to know). With Tablet weaving being heavily dependent on tension and my habit of over doing it. I was so nervous I would snap the thread. I also only had 50 meters of each colour, opposed to my usual 1600 meters. Every move and measurement had to be ruthlessly planned and precise to avoid needless wastage.

Despite running out of my border colour and needing to replace it with something else. The set up didn’t take long and was for the most part, without incident.

Upon starting the weave, I was surprised at how different everything felt. This was probably in part to how nervously I turned the tablets and beat the shuttle. But also when sliding the tablets I noticed how little resistance was put up by the material. And of course, I was astonished by how small the finished weave ended up.

I very quickly started to feel this would be my new favourite yarn type – if I could find it in the quantities I needed.

However, disaster (Sort of) struck. As you can probably notice from the pictures attached; silk as fine as this, has a inclination to bunch up and tangle along the sides without proper guidance when being pulled through the weave. Luckily, I noticed this fairly early on and corrected my technique to account for this. This does happen with other materials, just less often, and it’s an easy fix once the weave is finished to simply cut the bunches away.

The key part of all this is “When the weave is finished”, but me being me and having a lack of patience and a need to do things right now this second. Decided to cut off the bunches while the weave was still on the loom. Not paying attention to what my scissors were doing beyond the point where I was cutting – didn’t notice

that the ends of the scissors had gotten caught in the threads on another part of the weave – SNAP – or more accurately – SLICE. 3 or 4 threads were irreparably cut.

And that was the end of that.

But, I came away with a new appreciation for silk, a want to do more in silk and a hard learnt lesson to PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT I’M DOING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!