Flax and Wool

 With spinning up what I'd hoped was enough linen thread for the warp, I decided that I'd better get around to scouring it.  It was dark, harsh and a rough feeling thread.  I used the recipe from Linen: From Flax Seed to Woven Cloth by Linda Heinrich, which uses Soda Ash and dish washing up soap.  It worked well the last time I tried it.   I weighed up what I needed, using about 3/4 the amount of soap and soda ash because I was going to do at least two scouring baths anyway.  My pot was only so big and I had my imagination run wild with visions of all that dish soap, bubbling up, over the pot and onto the floor.    I figured that was reason enough to do a 3/4 recipe the first time and do it a second time if needed.

I did indeed do a second scouring bath.  After cooking it for a couple of hours, it was lighter, but I wondered how much lighter it would get with a second bath.  Really, the scouring time is minimal, since I really can't justify adding the time I spent doing other things while the pot simmered.  It is just the time to measure the chemicals, set up the bath and check on it periodically.    The second bath made a huge difference.  Not only was the linen lighter, but it was much softer.  If I'd taken the time to whack it while drying, it would have been softer still. 
The threads were all curly and kinky though, since they are singles.  Heinrich says in her book, to give the skeins a good snap after scouring.  It was an amazing transformation.  The skeins went from curly and impossibly messing looking, to smooth, flat and lovely.  It was the a wonderful moment when this happened.  I'm sure that was when I went from enjoying spinning flax to loving spinning flax.  It was pure magic!  I love fibre moments like that.  It makes all the effort so very worthwhile.

After drying, I wound some of the skeins into cakes so that I could wind the warp.  Today I did a bit more research and changed my mind about sizing the warp.  I wasn't going to bother with it as the warp threads are plenty strong.  However, a perusal over some old documents suggested that sizing would keep the singles from getting hairy, keeping them smoother.  It's another short time project so I decided to mix up some double strength gelatin and bite the bullet on drying time.  I'd wanted to start dressing the loom today because tomorrow is planned to be another Maple sap boiling day.  None the less, the warp has been soaked in sizing and is now drying.

I also finished up spinning a skein of the brown wool for the weft.   There are 530 yards of yarn in this skein.  Combined with the tan wool singles, there should theoretically be enough.  I know there won't be though as a) wool stretches on the niddy noddy, making counts overly generous sometimes and b) I'll weave as much as the loom waste as I can, so as waste as little of the handspun weft as possible, since I didn't put a dummy warp on the loom for this project.

For fun, I tossed off a dye vat of a sunny yellow-orange colour and dyed up a skein of 2 ply sock yarn.  I'm pretty sure this is Blue Faced Leicester and nylon, that I spun up a couple of years ago.  It's been sitting here, waiting, because, well, I'm a much better spinner now and my 3 ply sock yarns are nicer.  But I didn't want to waste it, so it's now dyed and into the sock yarn stash.   

Scouring and Bleaching Linen

The costuming department at the heritage village requires all interpreters to have their hair covered.   While by the late 1900's day caps weren't really worn in a lot of places, it does keep costuming consistent and hides the modern hairstyles.  I don't mind at all, though it does mean some sewing.  While there are quite acceptable day caps available in the costume department, it's a trip to one end of the park to another and another 15 or 20 minutes of time.  Since I already drive almost an hour, I decided that I
need to make my own day caps.  I've not been able to find the types of fine cottons that many of the extant day and morning caps were made from, nor any acceptable substitutes locally.  I do have a soft, white cotton  that I can use but I only bought a half yard and I think the pattern I was given takes a little more than that.  It's not really an economical use of the fabric, so is probably a modern pattern which makes up to look like a period pattern, rather than a true 19th c. pattern.  However, it looks nice enough, so I'm using it for now.  I do have a good deal of natural linen gauze in the stash though.  This could be perfect if I could get it to bleach out light enough.

  I decided now was the perfect time to do a bit of an experiment in linen scouring and bleaching.   I'd
tried bleaching this particular linen gauze before but got really yellow results.  I didn't however scour the linen first.  According the the book Linen, From Flax Seed to Woven Cloth, all natural linen handspun threads should be scoured before using.  It's supposed to remove those yellow particles, lighten up the linen threads as well as soften them.  I just happened to have the ingredients on hand, soap and sodium carbonate.   I mixed up a triple batch and put it in a scrupulously clean dye pot. I simmered it for over an hour and let it cool.  There was a noticeable lighter in colour.  The water was a horrible, murky, chocolate brown colour.

 There were suggestions for a number of different methods to keep whitening the linen.  These included laying the fabric over fresh snow to bleach, keeping it moist and on the grass - not happening in January, in this part of the world, and finally more modern chemical methods using hydrogen peroxide, chlorine bleach etc.   I put water in the washer, added a bit of oxygen pre-soak and let the linen gauze sit for an hour, agitating once in a while in order to keep the fabric from having too many fold lines.  Then I added about 1/2 cup of house hold bleach and kept the same soaking routine for another hour and a half.  After running the fabric through the entire wash cycle with 2 rinses, I'm quite happy with the results.   This time, no yellow at all!.  The yardage is a bit lighter than the photo shows.  It's almost a half-white colour and will work just fine.    I just wish I'd used a little more yardarge as there was a good bit of shrinkage