Crackles up close

Do you see the crackles?

 It's the threads that move around slightly and don't stay straight.  It's what gives this weave structure its name!  I think it's really cool, because it really catches your eye and adds to the design.

It's not very predictable though... not all of them move! 

More joy!

You can actually see some of the "crackles" forming already!!

This weave is just soooo exciting!!!  And it looks different at every angle!  I love it!!

The Secret Crackle Recipe

 Soak it all up... every ounce of it!

 

These colors just feel good!

The more, the merrier!

Ahh... 

Here is the secret recipe!

Start with a color run that goes in order, like red/orange/yellow.  And a treadle rotation, like 1-2-3-2.  Red will be your first color, and the first treadle. Orange will be the 2nd color, and the 2nd treadle. Yellow will be the 3rd color, and the 3rd treadle.  Work your way through the 3 color rotations for several rounds.  Drop the oldest color, so the red.  Add the youngest color, so green.  Put the orange now as color 1, yellow as color 2, and green as color 3.  Now do the next block sequence, or 2-3-4-3, so treadle 2 is always orange, treadle 3 is always yellow, treadle 4 is always green.  Treadle away, and now, drop the oldest color, so orange.  Add the youngest color, blue.  Yellow is now the first shot, green is the 2nd shot, and blue is the 3rd shot.  Now the treadles are 3-4-1-4.  So,  yellow is always treadle 3, green is always treadle 4, and blue is always treadle 1.  Just keep going through the whole rainbow... and beyond!  I have noticed that all the opposite colors replace the dropped colors, so if you are dropping purple, yellow will replace it.  If you drop green, pink will replace it.  It works every time!

Here is a re-posted sketch if you got lost in all the words:

Here it is with the blocks separated:

1. Notice on the right, when you are done with block A (or block #1), your oldest thread (purple) ends on treadle #1.
2. Then you start with the 2 remaining colors, pink first and then orange and add in yellow third.  Notice that they go in order: pink, orange, and then yellow.
3. When you are done with block #2, you are on treadle #2, and you drop the oldest color, so pink.
4. When you are on block #3, you begin with what you have left, so orange and yellow, and then add in green.  When you are done, you end on treadle #3 with the oldest color, so orange.
5. Get it?!  The "accidentals" happen in order too for the threading.  When you are on block A, or block #1, you add in an accidental on the first shaft.  
6. When you are threading block #2, you add an accidental to shaft #2, etc.

Here is the whole thing:

Crackle treadled as Summer and Winter

When I first tried the regular summer and winter weave structure, I loved it!  I loved it so much, I wrote a tutorial about it on the weavingtoday.com website in spring 2011!  You can view it here.

When I first saw in the texts the crackle treadled as summer and winter, I wasn't too impressed.  I was actually trying to avoid doing summer and winter with crackle, but this sample warp is so very long and I ran out of everything else I wanted to do with it already!  I mean, as a whole, this summer and winter in crackle sample still doesn't move me much:

I think it's those half filled in squares... I mean, what are they supposed to be?  They look clumsy, sloppy, and half-done in-between the full ones and empty ones.

But when you get really close...

I mean REALLY CLOSE, and look at the color interactions, it's a really great weave! 

I think I like crackle treadled as summer and winter more now than I did 15 minutes ago!

Maybe it will wash up nicely, too!

Here are some more summer and winter experiments!

12/2 treadled the same as above (1a 2b 2a 1b)

PS.  Some of these look curved, like a smile, because I have my floating threads under tension still and it's pulling it off balance!

12/2 treadled as 1a2b

8/2 weft treadled as 1a2b

This last crackle experiment is my most favorite sample of all the summer and winter samples!  I really like how balanced it feels, like there is a light square, med square, and dark square and it's balanced in each square.  I also like how it looks.  Oddly, this one also looks the most like one of the more traditional crackle weaves!

Traditional crackle? Overshot crackle?

I have been using two different crackle books as my reference through this crackle experiment.  They are both good books, but I don't like either of them whole-heartily.  Also, I don't necessarily recommend one over the other.  They are both equally confusing AND sometimes useful references!  One is written more like a combination of book reports (which is driving me crazy) and neither of them are written to just follow through from start to finish.  They are just written assuming you already have an understanding of the subject... and sometimes they contradict each other.

For example, take the explanation of "traditional".  One of the books claims that the first samples I produced were the traditional kind of crackle, while the other book calls it "Crackle in Italian-Manner".  I would like to claim that it doesn't really matter what it's called, but it bothers me to find these idiosyncrasies.  And then the sample I just finished might or might not have two names also!

Well, despite my irritations with the literature I have, here are some more examples.  These may or may not be the traditional way of treadling crackle!  One book calls this method traditional, another book calls it crackle woven as overshot.  So, whatever it's called, I did shafts 1-2 rotated with tabby wefts a & b for the first section, then shafts 2-3 rotated with tabby wefts a & b for the second section, etc.  

These have 8/4 pattern wefts mixed with 12/2 tabby wefts:

These samples only used 12/2:

(They aren't very square because I was running out of yarn and was too lazy to get up and put some more on the shuttle!  I figured, what's the point?  I get it, even like this!)

These samples are really making me wonder what I could do with some of my profile drafts that I have.  Would it look best with a profile draft that only has 2 squares?  Or would a 4, 6, or 8 profile draft be cool looking?  There are so many things that I want to try!

I think I am having a lot of fun this time around just trying out different ideas in my head that I have gathered from these books.  However, I feel that we, as weavers, are in real need of some simpler texts on crackle weave... maybe a book that says, "Thread your loom like this, weave like this, this, and this.  You should be noticing the following characteristics.  Now try this, this, and this."  If I were to write a book, I would take a much different approach than these texts.  I would start from the very, very beginning and work my way up, in an organized manner, with great pictures and great explanations.  Hmm... something to crunch on.

Two & One weft colors

This one is also with a sett of 25, and 2 weft colors that are the same size.  The purple is used as the tabby and the green is the pattern weft.

It doesn't do a whole lot for me... just kind of plain after that rainbow from yesterday!  I think a solid warp would look better.

This crackle experiment used only 1 color of thread, and it was the same size as the warp threads.

The colors look only ok.  Like the above pattern, I'm sure if it was a solid warp, it would look better .  You can vaguely make out the diagonal stair-step design. 

 

But the one thing it does have is a very interesting texture!  Like I said before though, with a solid warp, it might be able to be pulled off.

Or maybe a striped warp, like do one step in red, one step in orange, one in yellow, etc.

Tighter sett

Same colorway was the first crackle experiment, but now the sett is 25 instead of 20.  At first, I was packing it in too tight.  But once I loosened it up, I decided that I like it!  Now I just need to finish this sample and wash it so I can compare it to the first one.  The first one was a little loose, that is why I decided to tighten it up some.

Bigger rainbow weft sections

For this experiment, I went through 4 complete rotations of each color on the same warp, so I did a treadling pattern of A-B-C-D for each color sequence.  Then I would drop one color and add in the next color, so the first rotation was purple, red, orange for 4 treadling rotations, then I dropped the purple and had red, orange, and yellow, for 4 treadling rotations, etc.

 

For the next experiment, I want to figure out if a slightly tighter epi would work well.  The fabric I am currently weaving is kind of on the loose side, because I am not using a thicker yarn for weft, it is three strands that are all the same size.

I also want to use a weaving program to experiment with weft colors, like what would it look like if I had a rotation of 4 columns of red, 4 orange, 4 yellow, etc and threaded each of them as A-B-C-D.  Or what would it look like if I continued with 1 column of each color and just had more repeats, forward backwards forward (like ROYGBIV-IBGYOR vs. ROYGBIV-ROYGBIV).

I hope everyone had a great Christmas!  I'm very overly excited about the gift from my hubby!  He bought me a lazy kate from Paradise Fibers!!  I am so excited that my plies aren't going to be tangling up anymore while I spin them together!!!  I can't wait to "give it a spin"!

Here are a few other favorite gifts that we got this year:

a bamboo cutting board from my dad... it looks like woven wood!

Another sheep painting from my mom... I like how dark the background is and how the sheep really stands out. 

And this glass brick from my sister-in-law.  It's so beautiful, I want to leave it out all year long to enjoy!  It has spent the last few days plugged in and it's just a perfect amount of light for a relaxing evening!