A SILK AND LINEN RIBBON

Here’s the first finished project off of the New Loom. Usually, I sample like the dickens but here I just warped up and went. I am happy with what this is showing me. 

The finished piece measures about 4.25” wide at rest (it can be easily stretched to over 8” wide) and about 48” long (not counting the fob and fringe). The yarn is a silk/linen blend and quite fine, I would guess 30/2 or so (wraps per inch measured to over 45!). It is 2-ply and pretty stout for it’s fineness, but can be pulled apart without too much issue. 

The yarn has been ‘double-sleyed’ - you can see the component yarn is paired up in courses of interlinking. This helps to fill-in, and works with the other structural choices that I’ve made to flatten and widen the finished piece. 

You may notice that this piece is what I might call ‘counter-linked’. That is to say that every row is twisted in the opposite direction of the row before and after.

This choice achieves a couple of goals: The first is to structurally tame the aggregated structural twist that builds up with a classic interlinking pattern (this is easy to observe in pieces where all twists run the same direction, particularly when freshly taken off of tension). The piece, as I’ve photographed it, hasn’t been washed or blocked or otherwise finished; it came off the loom just like this. 

Another reason for counter-linking is to encourage the work to self-separate at rest. Again, we can take a piece of classic interlinking and note that the tendency is to self-collapse - remember that these interlinked structures are essentially a sheet of co-plied yarns, and when plied in the same direction the profile of each course of ply can snuggle very closely with its neighbors. Counter-linking row-by-row discourages this snuggling, creating a wider, flatter, outcome with a slightly crepe character. I like it. 

Diagrammatic view of classic interlinking, all of the twists run the same direction

Counterlinking: alternating rows of ‘Z’ and ‘S’ twist

(I should also note that this balance of twist can be met row-by-row, or side-by-side, or in a seemingly infinite number of oblique ways depending on goals, use, etc.)

I’ve finished with a split-ply fob on one end, and a somewhat indifferent braiding job at the other. This piece could easily be a head wrap, or a belt or girdle. All-in-all, a happy sample.