Nothing on the loom!

Currently there is nothing on the loom...oh no... however there are several projects planned. After the shawls however, I felt like doing something else. So I picked up a set of Addi stainless steel needles that were a gift - and started knitting. Let me tell you, those needles had the project, albeit small and simple, simply fly off the needles because they were so nice to knit with. I used some leftover wool from the shawls to knit a pair of half mitts. My hand tend to get cold in between seasons and these allow me to still do things and keep warm. Especially useful I thought for the Ontario Alpaca show in April, where several of us are doing a fleece to shawl demo.

I've been spinning as well. The black shetland that I was considering using as singles has been plied. It's a nicer wool plied, so I'm considering using it for a cloak project, once I get enough spun. It's soft but it has been really hard to spin completely evenly as the little vm bits keep breaking my spinning rhythm. Even when I pick them all out of the rovings before I spin, they seem to jump back into the wool. Plying made it just a nice yarn, so all is good. I may spin it a tad thicker though so it spins up faster and makes the cloak a bit warmer. Mainly so it spins up faster. This last skein took an awfully long time to spin, but it's really, really fine.

Tomorrow a friend is coming over and we're going to play with the pot of madder roots which have been overwintering in the garage. They are still happy but I think they should be used soon and my friend wanted to learn how to dye. It should be a fun day.

Project updates

The checky shawl is done. It is hanging to dry in this photo. It was 95 in x 24 in off the loom. I'd made it extra long, knowing that there was a lot of stretch in the yarn and it would shrink back once I was done. Well, after twisting the fringes, I let it sit overnight and tossed it in the washer on the handwash cycle this morning. It is now 84 in x 21 in. This is a good size for a shawl. I'm still not fond of twisting fringes, but it does make the ends look nice and finished. I've gotten 5 shawls when I expected 4 from this project and I'm happy about that. A blue one is already spoken for and one of the red ones will be a gift. I think I may actually keep one for myself as well.

I've also got the first bobbin of the black shetland off the wheel. I put it into a centre pull ball as I was going to ply it. However, there wasn't one break while winding it off and I wasn't horribly gentle with it. I'm thinking that this might be strong enough to weave with. I do have a small project in mind which the black shetland would work well for, but I'm not certain. Instead, I'm going to just spin it into singles and store in centre pull balls for a few weeks until I decide. The light coloured flecks are the bits of VM left in the roving that I wasn't able to get out when picking before I spun or during spinning.

Now, I'd like to introduce you to Star, a moorit shetland lamb fleece. I've started picking and washing it. It is a nice fleece, greasy but not overly so, although alot of it is a tad on the short side. It is part of the project I'm working on to make a shawl for Tammy of Kalwa Taure Shetlands. The moorit coloured sheep I've seen tend to be a lovely chocolate brown. This one is no exception, though I couldn't get the colour accurate in the photo, even with some playing around in GIMP. The difference is that this fleece has lovely sun faded tips. Some people don't like that and I've heard that people even cut them off. In this fleece though, it adds some lovely character to the fibre.

I checked the forgotten madder vat. It is lovely and dark red in colour. Leaving it in the garage for most of the winter seems to not have harmed it at all. Nothing sciencey project growing in ti either! Yay!

5th shawl update

It took a while to actually decide on a pattern and then changed slightly while half way through winding the warp, when I realized that I needed use less green and more of another colour. I think now, I could have added a second stripe of yellow into the pattern, based on how much yarn I have left. However, weave a checky pattern is a pain in the patootie. I'm using 2 boat shuttles and a stick shuttle. They need to be switched every few shots; either after 4, 6 or 12 threads. It is time consuming to do so. While I could have knocked off one of the solid coloured weft shawls in only a few hours at the loom, this one is forcing me to slow down and enjoy the process. This isn't such a bad thing really.

While I do have a few more projects in the wings, nothing is tugging at me insisting it be done right away. Those that are trying to tug aren't actually weaving projects. There is a ton of spinning, a couple of garments to make from commercial fabric and some dyeing. I've got a bunch of lac that I just re-found in my dye storage bin and a pot of madder which has been sitting in my garage most of the winter. I'm almost afraid to check it. I'd covered it and set it in an out of the way spot when we had people coming over and forgot about it. The lac is a dye vat I've wanted to try for a while, but I need to do more research into how to extract all the red colours. It's supposed to be a very strong, stable red dye. What I have are the bits of lac right off the tree, which I have just found out are the dead femael bodies of the lac bugs, piled on one another after they've laid their eggs... uggh.

I even almost considered doing another logwood dye vat - which last time started off lurid purple - stayed lurid purple until it finally faded somewhat to a purply grey and then wouldn't exhuast at all. I had purple yarn, purple roving, purple fleece everywhere - it was quite the interesting experience verging on the horrendous.

4 shawls done...

The final two shawls are done. Well, I thought they would be the last ones of this set. I'd worked out how much yarn I'd need and then bought a tiny bit extra to make sure I didn't run short. Turns out I have enough extra to make a 5th shawl. It will be some sort of checky pattern in order to use up the leftovers. Right now the poser is do I have enough for something like a plaid checky pattern or do I go for random stripes and checks?
Anyway, here is the last shawl from the project. It's the same commercially spun and dyed Romney wool. The weft is grey and the warp is dark red. Sett this time is 12 whereas the last basket weave shawl was done with a dual coloured warp and a set of 9 - being paired with a tabby project. I can't say which I like better for weave structure/sett. The blue one is fulled more and a tad heavier. The red one, with the closer sett, still drapes nicely although I didn't full it as much. I stuck it in the washer on the handwash cycle and meant to check it after a few minutes. However, I forgot and ended up not getting the shawls out until the end of the cycle. They were lovely, soft and drapey, which was nice as I hadn't liked the hand of them at all when they were first off the loom.
I was rather tired of twisting fringes last night. Thankgoodness for that little fringe twister gadget. It does save the fingertips, that's for certain.
Now to figure out what to do with 4 more shawls!

Shawl project update

Today I reminded myself why I always wear my hair either in a braid or clipped into a bun. I was under the loom this morning, tying up the treadles when wham, I realized that my hair was loose and I was in the process of tangling it into both the treadle loops and clips at the same time. I've managed to spin my hair into yarn I was spinning on a drop spindle and both of my wheels. I've also woven it into a project and caught it while sewing, both by machine and hand. At least it doesn't happen very often :)

So shawl 3 of the set of at 4 is on the loom. The first was the basket weave, then this one in tabby. The drape of the basket weave is nice, despite it being fulled. It is also fairly soft and heavier. The tabby weave one is lighter and a tad larger, because the weave structure doesn't pull in as much when it's off the loom. The red one is in a chevron or herringbone pattern. All of these are a simple straight threading. With a sudden increase in people wanting to view our house I decided that a simple patterning would be easiest to do.
Plus it meant I could get this red shawl on the go in time for a friend to visit for a weaving lesson. Today's lesson was the joys of hemstitching, what a floating selvedge is and when you might need it and wet finishing. I'm absolutely thrilled at what pretty scarves she and her husband have been making and how quickly and fearlessly they are progressing. It's great!

Last night I presented a program at my local Weaver's guild on An Overview of Anglo-Scandinavian Textiles. Earlier in the day while I was adding more last touches to my materials, I had one of those moments when you've been confident that you know lots about something and you suddenly realize that although what you know, you know well, it's only a few drops in the bucket. Of course I started getting very nervous so I packed everything away and went to the loom to relax.

Of course the program went well and the guild members were very enthusiastic and seemed to enjoy it. It was really fun and awesome to present what inspires me to a group that understands the terms and techniques. The only problem was that my warp weighted loom decided at that particular moment to tell the whole world that the wood had dried a bit and wasn't quite as sturdy as it should have been. I don't really need it to see action again until April, so I've a month and a bit to figure out how to fix it up.

Off the loom and out of the oven

Happy Groundhog's Day! The poor beast has seen his shadow so 6 more weeks of winter is forecast. However today is a lovely sunny day and I certainly can't complain about that.
Both the blue and grey wool shawls are off the loom. One of them is wet finished, the other not yet done as I haven't got the fringes twisted yet. The size off the loom was 24in x 82 inches. After wet finishing the final size is 20 in x 80 in.

My daughter is getting married in August and has decided that I will be making the wedding cake. This has turned into a wonderful learning together project. Last night we made our first cake covered in fondant - Once we get that down pat, we'll figure out how to do tiers and decorate. Then it's to find the right colours for popsicle pink and tropical lime green, which are her wedding colours. Right now, it's white fondant with barney purple stars. Luckily she has offered to take any undesired cake projects into work with her as donations to her staff room. That could be a lot of cake decoration experiments to try to dispose of.

Next projects in no particular order - 2 more wool shawls for the loom, a couple of costuming projects, dependant on finding the correct bin in storage or finding a good fabric sale, planning for 3 non- reenactment crowd classes on natural dyeing and medieval textiles and the spinning of some fleece for a cloak for hubby. There is also about 8 bags of raw fleece hiding in the van waiting to be cleaned, carded and spun. Poor hubby gets to commute an hour each way with it. I've not yet figured out where to surreptitiously hide that much fleece in the house and not leave the place smelling like a sheep barn. Somehow I don't think that would be a good lasting image for prospective house buyers. With regards to the 8 bags of fleece, a friend and sheep farmer, from whom I get most of my fleeces 'cause they are gorgeous and well cared for commented on all the fleece, that I wouldn't be getting any of hers. My husband just chuckled at that and said "right" ... not sure if that was good or bad... but I've got 2 lovely silvery coloured fleeces reserved for the spring.

Linen's off and the Wool's on!

Phew, the linen singles are off the loom. The resulting two pieces of fabric are washed, dried and pressed, waiting to be turned into towels and samples. I will admit that I was happy to finish the project. Linen is seductive in it's possibilities, but I can't afford the quality threads that call to me - and the rougher #10 singles just didn't cut it in the end. Still, they are nice bits of cloth and it was a very good learning experience. It really isn't conduicive to that soft, warm cuddly feel when it's on the loom though - more like burlap.

On Saturday a friend and I went to Headwater Wool in Orangeville. Karen was looking for a unique yarn. Unfortunately terminology got in the way of a successful shopping trip for her as I hadn't realized how chunky a yarn she was looking for. However, I happily spent more money than I'd anticipated and now have a lovely new stash of romney wool yarn to play with. Right now on the loom is a simple tabby weave but I'm playing with colour. This one is definately a tad fussy to weave, with colour changes every 4 rows, but it's pettable and yummy. It was fast to wind the warp, fast to dress the loom and if it's taking longer than I expected to weave, it's probably because I'm petting the wool far much. The colours are natural grey and two shades of blue. The blue, while chemically dyed, are woady looking colours. Hopefully this project will turn into shawls as there should be enough yarn to weave two of them. If I planned it correctly, there will be enough yarn left from this trip to make another couple in a different pattern and colour as well. Shawls are a good way to ward off the winter chill!