Weaving with Lunatics

I have a thing about complete sets of materials, especially when they involve color. I have sets of colored pencils and pastels that I’ve never even used because I want them to be perfect in their entirety. Back in the 80’s I worked at a weaving shop in Portland, Oregon. I would spend hours arranging new yarns that came in according to color on the shelves, and then I wouldn’t want anyone to buy them because it would upset the order and create gaps in the spectrum.

Much of my weaving over the past four decades has had a focus on working in gradations of color. So when I first was introduced to Lunatic Fringe Yarns’ tubular spectrum of 20 colors how could I resist buying a set? And actually, you kind of need to have two sets - one to use and one to keep perfectly whole. A little over the top, more than a little OCD, I know, but I don’t have many vices, and this is a pretty healthy one, all things considered.

For a number of years I thought about offering a round robin workshop that focused on color interaction in doubleweave. But I always got bogged down in the logistics - I would want to determine which colors each the drafts should be set up in, but didn’t want to make students have to buy lots of different colors. I could have all the colors of yarn myself and then wind the warps to send out to students and travel with all those cones of yarn so that students could use them for their wefts. Okay, never mind…

Close to ten years ago I taught at a conference in Michigan and Michele Belson of Lunatic Fringe was down the hall from me in the dorm. I talked to her about the possibility of having custom kits made for a color workshop and she was completely willing to consider the idea. But still, coming up with different palettes and kits for a dozen or so different drafts felt pretty cumbersome, so the idea remained an abstract one.

Then three or four years ago I developed and started teaching my Double Rainbow workshop. Everyone weaves their own sampler on their own loom, and only needs six colors of yarn to arrive at 96 different color combinations. Blue, green, yellow, orange, red, purple - the three primary and three secondary colors. I let students choose any versions of those colors that they wanted. Some students were comfortable with picking their own colors, but some wanted me to give specific recommendations. I did that for a while, but then that got to be a bit much too. I got in touch with Michele and Katzy at Lunatic Fringe and we worked together to put colorways together for the workshop. We created three versions of the six colors in ready-to-go kits - Brights, Lights, and Jewel Tones - https://lunaticfringeyarns.com/?s=Double+Rainbow+collections.

Students love having the option of ordering one of the kits and having everything they need for the workshop. And we have just introduced a new colorway called Autumn Shades, inspired by the season we are in now.

After weaving many versions of Double Rainbow myself in various colorways and different fibers I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be fun to apply the same color rotation system to the 20 colors of the Tubular Spectrum?’. Yes, in fact it was beyond fun. When I showed Michele and Katzy what I had woven they asked me if I would like to use that as a basis for a project in their Master Weaver Kit series.

This became a double-duty warp that weaves up two shawls. They are both 8-shaft, 2-block designs, one in blocks of doubleweave in plain weave, and the other one becomes a single warp-faced layer woven in twill blocks just by changing the tie-up.

I’ve also explored weaving value studies in rotations of neutrals from their Grey Matters set. You can read two of my previous blogs, 90 Shades of Grey and 105 Tones of Grey to see some examples of what has come out of that.

Now, in the past couple months I’ve been playing with an idea that has been tempting me for some time. But I’m going to save that for my next blog. Stay tuned to see what happened when I went totally tubular…

* The first photo at the top of the page is mine. All the rest are from the Lunatic Fringe website. Many thanks to Michele and Katzy for allowing me to use their photos!