I've been digging in the garden. I've moved a few plants to a friends place to hold for the winter, just in case we do actually sell the house. In reality, they'll do really well there as the spot gets lots of sunshine, is sheltered from the wind, gets lots of snow cover and is very fertile loam, being a 35 year old pig manure pile. It is well composted. The bloodwort, a dyer's greenweed are currently there. As well, I scattered a bunch of woad seeds for spring harvest. I'm going to move my madder bed there soon as well. Mainly though, I'm just pulling all the weeds and cutting back stalks for the winter and to make the garden space look tidy.

I feel like I've hardly accomplished anything over the past week, although the house is ready to list, or at least ready to call in a realtor and see what they think. It's been the most stressful house selling/ moving I've ever done and we're not even there yet, probably because we didn't initiate it and were woefully unprepared for this.

With the blue diamond twill sitting and aging until I get the energy, time and space to do something with it, I dressed the loom with what I thought would be a fast and easy project. Who'd of thunk that a simple pair of wickelbander (wicklebander?) would take so much effort? First I'd planned this project and bought the yarn in June. Then I let it sit until I knew I needed a fast project. I started researching it and that part has been totally fascinating - there are a number of properties which seem to come to light in the few number of fragments and pieces found. They're pretty much all 2/2 twill in a vertical broken herringbone pattern. Dyes used are orchil, woad, madder and some yellow and brown. They are mainly solid colours but a few have different coloured warps and wefts. The patterns can be inconsistent, switching directions at seemingly random numbers. One fabric bit has 3 selvedges, so perhaps evidence of the warp weighted loom as textiles woven on a warp weighted loom will indeed have 3 selvedges.
I had first threaded the pattern in the heddles, making a lovely horizontal herringbone. I had to un-weave, rethread and go to it again. Now I've a lovely vertical herringbone. It's a broken pattern, developed simply by skipping a shaft when switching directions. The rusty orange red, which I'd purchased at night and shoved in my cupboard, turned out to be the absolutely perfect deep madder red.
I've learned so much with this project and it's only just started. Edges - very different when you don't have the momentum of a boat shuttle. Beating - learning how to gently beat 'cause this project really needed a lighter hand. Counting for patterns - yea, right! hehehe I can see why the patterns could be somewhat irregular. Warp tension - it makes a huge difference in the fabric density and the edges as well. It sure was quick to dress the loom though - only a couple of hours, another added for the re-threading.
The Dyer's Knotweed has finally bloomed - when it's too late in the season for pollinators and we're having frosts - go figure that one.

Diamond Twill - done!

Yesterday I thought I only had about 1/2 yard left to weave on the diamond twill. No problem I thought. I started in the morning and ended up finishing by mid-afternoon. Obviously, I had a lot more than 1/2 yard left on the loom. When I took it off the loom, it was horrible. A twill like that should drape and be soft. This one was hard, stiff and crunchy! It practically stood up on end - yes, almost 9 yards of it standing by itself was pretty scary.
However, what comes off the loom isn't necessarily the finished product. I wasn't panicking quite yet. First you need to wet finish the fabric. That may mean soaking gently or in this case, popping it in the washer on the handwash cycle with a good glop of laundry soap and letting her go for 15 minutes. I took the fabric out of the washer and the smell of wet wool was wonderful. I'm guessing my wool/silk blend, didn't have alot of silk by the looks of the fulling process. The fabric though is wonderful. It is soft and drapey. It is really what I had hoped for with this project. There is about 8.5 yards of it right now. I took it from the washer to the ironing board and ironed it mainly dry. Funny thing that ironing the wool yardage will really finish the process.
This is all good since I had a bit of a scare when my ancient loom literally fell apart while weaving. Seems a couple of internal screws fell out. I found one and hubby the other so we had a quick repair session which very nicely put the loom back to square. This was after the screw holding the treadles fell off as well. It was an adventure to say the least but the outcome is good. Now the only problem is what to do with all this yummy yardage?

The next project is chevron twill wicklebander for hubby. I don't know that it will be any faster a project, except for dressing the loom as I'll have to use a small shuttle for this one. I hope I didn't pack them all! The yarn will be 12/2 merino in a commercially dyed madder rusy orange colour. 7 yards of 3 inch wide chevron twill coming up!

Distractions, distractions.. tsk, tsk

I should be finishing things up around the house. But I got cold, had to turn on the heat and got distracted while warming up. A huge cup of tea and a couple of projects which are more interesting than packing and cleaning will do that to me. Between things I should have been doing more of this week, I dressed the loom with a project I'd started before I wove the madder red wool. I'd wound off the warp and was about ready to dress the loom when I set it aside for the madder. Luckily, I thought about it before I bundled the chained warp into a plastic bag. I remembered to put in the worksheet I make up for each project I do, so I had all the necessary details at my fingertips.

It only took 3 days of sporadic playing at the loom to get it ready to weave and despite the broken diamond twill - from a Coppergate sample, being a tad fussy to treadle - two breaks with the same foot treadling in succession. Sorry it won't mean anything to non-weavers, but it does mean that it's fussier to weave than a solid walking pattern.
My first test sample was with the same weft and warp threads. Unfortuantely the marled thread for both warp and weft showed no pattern at all and I couldn't even find the 2 crossed threads that I knew I had. After changing to a darker thread, the pattern showed beautifully. While not common, different warp and weft coloured fabrics were found in early period and hey, why go to the trouble of a fancy weave structure if you can't see it? I should have over 8 yards of this fabric -a wool/silk blend.

I also present a lovely skein of tussah silk, dyed in the exhaust pot of madder from the red dress. I dyed it in roving form and the roving dried in what looked to be a matted, clumpy mess. However, when I put it to the wheel, it just opened up and loosened immediately. It was a dream to spin. I think all that flax must have worn off any rough bits on my hands. It plied up beautifully and now I'm trying to figure out what to do with this skein of 2 ply silk.

Madder, linen and cats, Oh My!

Last Sunday I was part of a Guelph Handweavers and Spinners Guild sheep to shawl team at the Drumbo Fall Fair. The guild fielded two teams. GHS team A came first while we came in 2nd, by only 1/2 point. The first place team scored 88.5 and we scored 88. We were pretty happy. The team is an amazing group of gals and it's so much fun to work with them. It was a great day and a really nice break.

Between scrubbing and packing extra stuff away, I actually got some more fun time in. I cut the madder dyed tabby woven fabric up. That was a pain as I didn't have quite enough for the pattern I'd wanted to use and had to set the pieces of a regular T-tunic several times before I could fit them on the fabric. I could have done an apron dress with ample fabric to spare, but it's too late now. It cut beautifully and I had almost nothing left over. I did save some of one selvedge edge as it is so nice and straight.
It's half sewn together already, however the cat has decided that he likes the madder dyed wool. I've put other wool pieces down for him, commercial wools, but he's having nothing to do with them, my cat of descerning tastes.
In between times, as the fairy tale goes, I've been spinning straw into gold or spinning flax. I've tried both line or flax strick and tow flax or flax top. Both required more spin than I'd expected. I wet spun them - don't use too much water, just dampen your fingers or you glue a whole fat bit together, which you don't want. Interestingly enough, I wasn't able to fill a bobbin as the flax doesn't spread out to fill gaps in the bobbin as wool does. It just piled on top of each thread, so I wound off at half a bobbin full. I got about 250yds - 360 yds per half bobbin, so that is pretty good. I have enough spun to use for the weft of a good sized tea towel. I'm out of flax fibre though and I want to spin more ... bwa ha ha ha ha... It's quite satisfying to spin flax that I can actually use for weaving more than a sample bit. The skeins are quite fine, pretty even and not many more little ends sticking out than the commercial linen singles I have. By the third bobbin, it was actually really nice.

Updating the Blues

The final vat of Dyer's Knotweed is finished. What fun that was and talk about a learning experience. Did you know you can leave the vat overnight and reactivate it in the morning? I figured that one out on the 2nd vat this past week. If I'd tried that for the first vat, I'd have had much more fibre dyed. As it was, I was hunting down all sorts of end bits of fibre to dye blue as all my fibre is packed away. So the total dyed with my 12 surviving Dyer's Knotweed plants - including one vat which definately didn't work was over 1130 grams - over a kilo of wool dyed. The breakdown was 762 grams of merino roving - then I ran out and had to change to yarn. The yarn was 310 grams of wool skeins from various breeds, mainly shetland -white and fawn with some Finnsheep and Bluefaced Leicester, plus another 60 grams of alpaca. You can see on the pictures of the skeins that the alpaca and the one on the right are from the final dye bath, which was definatley exhausting at that time. I tried and tried but couldn't get them any darker.

In between all this I was packing up the clutter in the house because hubby has been offered a job with a contractual requirement to move closer, quickly. This means our house will soon be up for sale.

Since my next two projects on the loom have to wait until I get the loom moved upstairs to my studio - apparently buyer's can't understand a loom being in the diningroom, I've been spinning. I was trying to finish off spinning the urine vat samples, when a couple of small ziplocks of flax fibres dropped into my lap. I realized that one of the next guild meetings was to discuss samples we'd spun from last year's meeting topics. Well, the artifical and new fibres I hated - and hid so I'd never have to look at them. The lace spinning was awesome and I had samples spun within a week of the meeting. The flax meeting I'd missed due to illness and was handed the samples at a later date. I didn't do what they wanted! I looked at my little ziplock bags which were obviously fibres to be blended - flax/soy - flax and something else. I dumped the blends - not for me at this time and just spun the flax straight. After I did the flax tow, I did the strick or line flax. Then I dug through and found some more line flax. Then I realized that I had another packet of line flax I'd set aside during packing and that hubby had packed my really nice, high quality pale flax and my distaff! So I'm using the towel technique, which works amazingly well and I've half a bobbin of linen singles spun. It's callous forming and I know I should stop and get my blue samples finished but I'll blame it on the cat. He only drinks out of the dripping tap and I've found out that he will also drink out of the fingerbowl I'm using to dampen the spun flax before I wind it on. I can't have a thirsty kitty now, can I?

Dyer's Knotweed Blues

I've realized that we're getting close to the end of our growing season. We could have a real frost anytime soon. So, not wanting to waste what I've grown and needing a diversion I've been harvesting the rest of the Dyer's Knotweed - polygonum tinctorium. I'm quite put out that the last bit of seed seems to have been misplaced in the clearing out of my studio as this stuff is now producing lots of pigment! Beautiful blues and lots of it.

It's a slightly different technique than processing woad, only in that you need to cook the leaves slowly to 160F before you can strain the leaves and oxidize the dye liquor. It is supposed to foam up like woad, but mine hasn't at all. This is the 3rd batch I've done this week and hopefully I'll have enough blue fibre to actually do something with, not just sample skeins.

I've only a few more indigotin urine fermentation vat samples to spin - wonderful colours and well worth the odours :) Spinning samples seems so fast and productive as you get the skein done in one evening! I've even remembered to label all the skeins - bonus!

More pretty colours!

The UK dye samples are done. The Madder root and Weld were from Kentwell and the Dyer's Greenweed was harvested from the wild. Funny thing is that the colours are pretty much exactly what I have gotten with Canadian grown plants. Yay - huge amount of excitment as the colour correlations spanning across continents is very good news to someone who is interested in European archaeological textiles and reconstruction or experimental archaeology.

I'm in the middle of trying to use up my Dyer's Knotweed. I did a first experiment in August and had a rather pretty but pale ice blue colour. Because we could have frost anytime now, I just started picking leaves. I had about 600 grams of them. I followed Rita Buchanan's recipe from A Dyer's Garden and so far I seem to be having great results.

It is a bit different than working with woad. Woad foams up wildly and the blue pigment dances on the top of the foam. My two experiments with Dyer's Knotweed show nearly no foam whatsoever. I ended up using my stick blender to add air and only realized I was oxidizing pigment when the darned thing turned blue! No, I don't think it will come out but it is only used to make soap. The recipe said that 8 ounces of leaves would dye 2-4 ounces of wool. I put in 58 grams of wool and it dyed it a lovely blue - I then added more wool and it dyed it the same lovely blue. I've added more and more fibre and it's still dyeing it. I'm using merino roving and I'm running low. I'm betting I have enough of this blue fibre to actually do something with though, instead of just spinning samples!

Look what I found in the garden today! Woo Hoo - the apples are ripe! I had almost forgotten about them in the rush of the past few weeks but they practically glowed beside the white Rose of Sharon. Aren't they beautiful though?