I finished my latest (and last!) sampler and quickly became bored with trying different twill-type-things so I had a play around with some other stuff I've been interested in as well.

Firstly I will say this: Please ignore my edges. I was :-)

Now, on to the pikkies!

From the left: Herringbone twill. Some of my books call this herringbone twill and some call this herringbone twill only if the zigzags are offset vertically. Either way, whatever I did looks pretty cool IMO :-)

Next there's the same twill with a point twill treadling. I think that's what you call it... Either way I think that one's terribly dull and if I did it again I'd use more shafts and fancy it up a whole bunch. Love the whole twill diamond patterning that goes on, but this simple version is dull as dishwater. As a small stripe it would be lovely in it's simplicity I suppose, but certainly not as an allover design.

Click here for a proper look

Next I scavenged some thrums from previous projects and used them to play with some ghiordes knots. Long ones with a few picks of tabby between, then short, thicker ones with only one pick between. Love the look, love the technique. It's slow if you want it to stand on end like the multicolour section, but it's really lush. If I was to do it again I'd put 2 picks between the rows of the multicolour section though because it's REALLY packed in tight. The multicolour yarn is aran weight, BTW.

Finally for the 1st image I tried some twill and plain weaves with a thick weft. I like the effect, but if I were to use a handpainted yarn like this again I think I'd want a warp with a lot more contrast, either a lot darker or a lot lighter. I think a contrasting colour (such as bright green) might make me nauseous :-P

Ok, I KNOW it would make me nauseous.

From the bottom up this time: More ghiordes knots! This time I used a bit over 1/2 inch of tabby between the rows of knots and I made the knots with 3 strands each. This is quicker to do than the one strand technique and a lot squishier to the touch. I think it would make great cushions or a nice floor rug. I ran out of blue wool scraps so I finished the row with some nasty pink acrylic just to see what effect that particular yarn would have. As I suspected, it's nasty. :-P

Above the knots is some weft chaining. This is another technique that I really enjoyed. I found the instructions for the ghiordes knots and weft chaining in "The techniques of rug weaving" by Peter Collingwood. It's full of knotting, looping, wrapping, and other fun techniques that you can use in a zillion ways other than just for rugs. You can usually find a copy on ebay for minimal $$ but Peter has also been kind enough to make his books available for free on the net, along with many other things at http://www.cs.arizona.edu/patterns/weaving/webdocs.html

At this point I got really bored with doing a sampler so I played wit using 4 strands of weft doing various things just to fill up the rest of the warp.

From the left: the herringbone twill thing

The 1st pick of the herringbone twill thing repeated over and over with a pick of tabby between each one (love this one)

The boring diamond thing (still boring and I'd be afraid of the long warp sections getting caught on things with this weight yarn)

I then started the boring diamond thing again, this time with a pick of tabby between each pick of diamond twill but it looked awful so I didn't do much.

Finally I finished with more weft chaining. I wouldn't do it with 4 strands of weft again because it was a pain keeping the tension on the various strands even, but I might try it with one really thick, very flexible weft, just to see what it would look like.

Well that's it for me with samplers! I'll definitely do samples for various projects, but the idea of doing another sampler just for the sake of playing around has lost it's shine.

Now I have to finish packing. Talk about boring :-P