Myggtjäll and “Mosquito Netting”
Marcy Petrini
October, 2019
In a delightful essay in “End Notes” in the November/December 2018 issue of Handwoven, Lynn Tedder describes her affinity for huck and mentions a subset of huck lace, called Myggtjäll, which translates to mosquito netting in Swedish. The original description came from Mary Snider’s Lace and Lacey Weaves.
I had read Mary Snider’s book in 1986 when the new revision was published, but I didn’t make the connection to the 3-thread block of huck that I had woven.
Compare the drawdowns of huck lace on the left and that of Myggtjäll, the latter Lynn’s (note that there is a small error in the article: in the tie-up, treadle 2 & 3 are correct, but placed in the wrong position).
Click here for the full-sized draft (a PDF will open a new window)
The block threading and treadling are the same, except for the size, and plain weave can be woven across the width of the fabric and down its length in both cases.
I was taught that each block of huck and huck lace can be as wide and as long as we wish, as long as it starts and ends with the same shaft, thus making the block on odd number of threads; this maintains the plain weave treadling.
Thus, at a sett of 15 ends per inch, a block threaded 2, 3, 2, 3, 2 will have a 5-thread float which is ⅓” long; at a sett of 60 epi, a 21-thread block will also have approximately a ⅓’ long float. They are both huck lace.
One day, when making a table runner with fatter yarn, I decided that my huck lace would be better served if I reduced the threading to 3 threads for each block. I wove Myggtjäll and I didn’t even know it!
After reading Lynn Tedder’s article, I thought that it would be nice to include it in the Pictionary, especially since it’s not well known and who wouldn’t want to weave mosquito netting?
But my some thirty-year-old runner was showing its wear and tear, so I decided to weave a sample of Myggtjäll for the Pictionary. To see how the blocks behaved, and what other color interactions there may be, I threaded the selvages and block A in red, and block B in purple. I then wove sections of the sampler with red, purple and blue. Here is the drawdown followed by the fabrics.
Click here for the full-sized draft (a PDF will open a new window)
As I was weaving, I thought that it may be fun to go back and read what Mary Snider wrote; and here it is, she used a traditional pointed twill threading!
Click here for the full-sized draft (a PDF will open a new window)
Shaft 1 in the huck threading becomes shaft 3 and shaft 3 becomes 1 and there is our pointed twill!
But think of the options! On the same threading, we can weave the twill’s own treadling, a number of other twills, Myggtjäll, and the entire bumberet series!
An entry for Myggtjäll has been added to the Pictionary.
Happy Weaving!
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