Mountain fibrework

During our recent week in the mountains (a cabin just north of Linden/Front Royal - tucked in beside the GR Thompson State Wildlife Management Area - which contains a section of the Appalachian Trail) we spent some of our time carding and spinning.  All CF wool which had been washed, so Anne flick carded the locks and then ran them through the drum carder.  The resultant batts were beautiful to spin, and I was able to produce a little over 300 yards of two ply fine/sport weight yarn.  Anne also had her second go on the spinning wheel and produced a reasonable skein (far better than my first attempts).

Spinning in the living room (from upstairs)

Anne producing yet another batt (and my one, at that stage, skein)

Top to bottom: batts, skeins, flicked wool, washed locks

The final tally - 301 yards

I'm going to look into knitting some of this wool (and maybe add in some of the blue dyed, but as yet unspun batts) into a hat or two.  If I keep the colors similar to the scarves they could go as a set.

Finished weaving

Well actually I finished weaving the scarves nearly two weeks ago, but a few things have occurred in the meantime. 

Prep for my wedding, the wedding, then a week away in the mountains on our honeymoon.  Great times and never too far away from spinning/weaving: we had some family around for dinner the night before the wedding and they saw the CF#1 scarves on the loom and loved them, Anne wore the merino hand spun/woven scarf at the party after the wedding with many favorable comments, and we took some CF to the mountain cabin and managed to card/spin quite a lot (later blog).

So the three CF scarves were finally removed from the loom, ready to have the fringes sewn (I'm stitching these ones rather than knotting - which I think works better for the shorter fringes I have chosen).

I took the scarves and some wool and a needle with us to the cabin and then for the life of me couldn't remember the recommended stitch pattern, so they remained in the bag until we arrive back home this weekend.

I've started the stitching process, and should finish within a couple of days (given the fairly long list of other chores I have :-)

No. 1 scarf - first end.

Some spinning

I have been playing catch up yesterday and today - making the final yards of two-ply to complete the third scarf.  I might have had enough, but wanted to make sure, so I am combining the spun (blue) yarn and the left over white which should be enough.

I will have to darken the skeins of blue to get a match with the existing dark blue - as it is just a shade or two lighter.

The two blue skeins ready to be dyed a darker blue.

As well as completing the blue skeins this morning I tried out some even finer spinning - the white to the right of the blue yarn is 4 yards of 3 ply.

Trial, 2 and 3 ply

Trying this out came after some mental exercise (Ok and pen and paper) to work out how much wool is needed for a kilt, and what sort of weight it would need to be.  Typically up to 40 ends per inch in the finest - and around 30-35 in heavier would seem reasonable.  That, incidentally works out to around 17,000 yards for a 9 yard kilt (give or take a bit).  So the photo above shows, on the left 2-ply at 40 wraps per inch, and to the right 3-ply 30 wpi. Both from the same singles.

So technically it is possible - however, the time factor would be the killer.  I hate to think how long it would take to spin and ply 17,000 yards.

A quick check on-line shows that I could by enough pre-dyed laceweight wool for around $150.  That might be easier! :-)

Half way

 The weaving is going very smoothly and I'm already half way through the second scarf (of three I plan to make).  The stripes are staying relatively consistent, with the only real difference happening when I hit some thinner wool - which is a spinning problem that I'm not going to try to counter.  Even the thinner wool (currently the dark blue) comes out fairly 'square' - or close enough to it.

Current sample

 I also took some time last night to spin some already dyed CF wool from the batts Anne had dyed a little while back.  It's just another way of producing yarn for the current weaving and is a lot faster than waiting until I spin skeins of white wool and then dyeing them.  There's enough wool for a skein or two of the dark and light blue.

Spinning blue singles - prior to plying

Weaving progress

Amongst the 'to do' list for today was to weave until I ran out of the originally dyed wool  - that's done and I have 26 inches of the first scarf woven.  The recently dyed wool was washed this morning and will be ready to be wound onto bobbins later this afternoon so I will have another weaving session tonight.

Other 'chores' now are to try and tidy up the weaving room a little and move the various wool/yarn associated 'things' that are spread around the house into the one room, allowing us to move about in the spare room a little!!  I'd also like to get the carder out and try some carding of CF wool with some other fibers and see how it comes out.

Progress

Weaving CF#1

Finally have everything set up and weaving underway to complete Clun Forest project #1

The loom dressing took a little longer as I had to re-sley the reed to a larger number of threads per inch to make the warp/weft more balanced.  That done, and the addition of floating selvedges - something I have not done before - I was able to do a few 'stripes' to see what it will look like.

Tied up and with floating selvedges

The weights at the back of the loom

The final pattern (version 'E'!)

So now along with more weaving - to complete the three scarves - I'll also be spinning up more of the three-ply colour-mix.  Should keep me busy for a while...