hand spun – Felting and Fiber Studio

Weaving with my stash

April 27, 2023 heirloom51 Comments 9 comments

So, what are you going to do with all this – stuff? Its a valid question posed by my grandson. He’s helping me clear out the house and storage spaces and there really is a lot of ‘stuff’ to deal with. Time to get weaving.

I chose a warp that had a khaki base made up of lots of different fall colours so it could handle loads of different colours in the rest of the warp. Colours don’t have to ‘match’ when weaving. The don’t have to match ever come to think of it. This is the colour palette I chose.

This warp was longer than usual because I wanted to attach any subsequent hand spun warps to the wastage. Wastage can be very expensive and finding a way to minimize this loss is good economics. My plan is to have a yard/meter of extra fiber at the end of the weaving that I can tie the new warp onto. This will save me wastage of a meter/yard per warp. The only wastage will be a few inches at the beginning and end of each new warp until that extra yard is all used up.

The colours look great and the yardage I was able to get from my hand spun was really surprising, kind of shocking actually. Really looking forward to getting started on the threading and weaving.

When making a warp a cross is introduced on purpose to keep the threads separate. This cross is maintained throughout the threading process; it protects the warp from turning into a tangled mess. The oldest and simplest way to do this is by inserting sticks on either side of the cross, tying them securely in place and getting on to the next step of threading the loom. This time I chose to thread from front to back of the loom. Starting by threading through the reed – the metal comb installed in the beater – and then threading the threads through the four different harnesses. Each thread has a specific spot on the loom where it fits. Its a bit like programming a computer by hand, really by hand.

The threads were sett at 10 ends per inch which might be a bit snug, but it looks good and once the scarf is finish it should be soft and snuggly.

When a thread broke I was not surprised, it’s almost inevitable, especially with the irregularities of hand spun, so I did a repair by pinning a thread in place, threading it through the reed and it’s spot on the harness. Then it was weighted in the back of the loom with a small weight. I use clip on table cloth weights for picnic table cloths. Once the damaged thread is woven in a sufficient length the true thread can be brought forward, pinned in place, woven for a little distance, then the weight removed from the patching thread. This patching thread can be cut.

If you look at the purple stripe, everything looks fine. The scarf is done, the length is just what I wanted and then I spotted it. A whopper of a mistake that will set me back a little on my plans to reuse this warp, save time, blah, blah.

I have been weaving a very simple tabby, over-under, super basic. It’s deceptive because its very difficult to get an even look to such a basic weave. The threads had to be pulled into position, not beaten. This way they would make nice little squares when the scarf was washed and fulled (hopefully).

Then I spotted the threading error, nearly at the end of all this fussing around drats.

Not the end of the world, just a bit disappointing. I’ll have to rethread about half the loom, and be more careful this time! Oh, and fix that single green thread that has errors all the way down the middle of the scarf.

So…what do you DO with that stuff??

March 30, 2021 heirloom51 Comments 17 comments

Spinners who participate at demonstrations hear this question all the time. After washing, dyeing, carding/combing then spinning the most delicious yarn in the world, we have to do more? Isn’t this enough? Apparently there is an expectation that all our lovely yarn has to be used for something else. For years that wasn’t my problem; that was left to the devices of much more talented weavers, knitters, felters and other fiber artists. This was when we had fiber festivals and gathers of like minded people who could touch yarn and evaluate the grist for their next project. To my great surprise, I can spin a lot of yarn in a year.

During one of the relaxed periods of lock-down I was able to buy a lovely little loom. It was a Leclerc Mira, 27 inch, four harness, sectional beam. This little button came with all the bells and whistles – warping mill, bobbin rack with bobbins, electric bobbin winder, skein winder, shuttles, extra heddles, reeds, counter, the list keeps going and going. I was truly blessed to find this loom. It did come unassembled without instructions. That is a crucial bit of information. User manuals are easily found on-line with very good information. Kudo’s to Leclerc for providing customers throughout the ages all the information they need to maintain and care for these lovely machines.

This is some of the Cotswold I used for the scarves

Like most of the world we were in lock-down of one sort or another, but at one point both my son’s were allowed to be in my home as long as I wasn’t, so they took the opportunity to come and set up the little darling for me. Well, that was the intention. The reality ended up with an attempt to sort out the messy meccano set called a loom, define the parts, try to read instructions, etc. that ended with one of them saying “nuts to this, I’m going to start supper and clean the bathroom”. When I got home, supper was on the brew, the loo was clean and one son was struggling with a partially assembled machine. We finished it together. Pear is a shape, and it is not a good one when skittering around under a small loom. Skitter may not be an accurate description either, but you get the idea. I’m too old for this sort of activity.

Cotswold is one of my favourite breeds and I had a lovely selection available for my first try after a long break from weaving. Several decades ago my then sister in law coerced me into taking weaving and spinning at the local college. I loved it, she did not. Once coming to this area, I was competent enough to be hired as a production weaver for a local artisan. We used sectional beams for warping and I prefer them to using a reel. The only draw-back for a sectional beam is the need to have individual bobbins for each thread. So if you are weaving at 10 threads per inch you will need 10 bobbins with enough yardage for the length and width of your warp. I really needed to crack out my math skills again. Thankfully, all the Cotswold I had spun, had yardage marked on the skeins, so I was confident that I had enough to use. I was going to make scarves for my sons.

I measured and did math and wound bobbins, redid the math; worried that I hadn’t done the math properly, so redid it and finally took the plunge.

The weave pattern was a very basic twill. I just wanted to get back to learning how to do a full loom set-up again. The bonus would be having something useful to show for it at the end of the process. The idea of purchasing fiber to do this also seemed a little weird since my house was getting full of spun yarn.

Taking the plunge and using my own hand spun was a significant eye opening experience. The wool I chose was just too rough for the final product of scarves. My sons are kind and tell me the scarves are warm and snuggly and all sorts of appropriate compliments, but the material feels a bit like kevlar.

I am now more aware of producing fiber with an end purpose in mind, not necessarily for me, but for other people as well. If I design the yarn with intent for an end use, I can explain to someone else what it will be good for. Some hand spun is not as good for weaving as it is for knitting, and some hand spun should never be used for scarves!