Lots of weaving

Anne and I have been working on the guild project and the new rug over the last few nights. Plus a little bit of spinning (Clun Forest) to supplement the yarn needed for the guild ikat project.

Progress on the guild project is going well - Anne is racing ahead with the guild towel project and apart from a broken warp thread all is going well.

Guild project - half way through

I managed to get the upright loom dressed ready to make a kilim style rug and have managed to sort out a relatively good/consistent pattern which will have the basic white-ish background and a stripe with blue (changing from dark to light and then back) in the center.

The rug stripe

The plan will be to repeat the stripe (zig-zag) 4 times and then finish off with more grey (which also wraps up the side on this rug).

But in the meantime - it's off on holiday for a week, and begin work on these projects on return.

Guild weaving project

At the weekend meeting we found out that the weaver who took the loom after me, to weave her trial dish towel, was unable to because of other things taking up her time.  That meant that the loom came back with my towel as the last one.  We took the opportunity to bring the loom back home and give Anne a chance to try some advanced multi-shaft weaving.

We were able to find some quite nice purple colour - to contrast with the orange that I used.

Anne picked a design that is about 4 times as complicated as the one I did, and has raced ahead and finished about 4 inches in her first session (quickly identifying some of the many problems you can encounter when undertaking these sort of projects).

Notwithstanding - all problems overcome - and excellent results already.  It will be a spectacular towel when it is finished.

Anne's towel at the top.

With two projects on the go (the rug and now the towel) Anne will be busy - and time for me to do some spinning catch-up.

Guild project 2

At the weaving part of the guild meeting this weekend we began a project to try out ikat weaving.  Anyone familiar with the term will know it is a method of preparing warp or weft with dyes that when woven will form some sort of pattern.  Very complicated versions are made in Indonesia/India/Middle Eastern countries (and no doubt more), but we are aiming a lot lower than that, and given the skill and knowledge of the leader for this project, probably very simple indeed.  Somehow I was volunteered for the job, I think because I had suggested it might be interesting to try, and I had just read the guild library book on the topic.

So with some work on the days leading up to the meeting to find some useful background information (photocopies made & attributed) and the construction of a 'shifting' device I began the task.  First job was to work out the 'maths'.  Everyone had a go at the Steve method - the way I work out the amount of yarn needed for the project, and a bit different for others to tackle.  To their credit everyone worked through the problem and we quickly identified that the amount of 2-ply I had made wouldn't be enough for a luxury scarf for everyone, so the plan b will be to adjust the size down to something that will use about 300 yards each, and call it an ikat sampler :-)

How long was that piece of string?

There were some great examples of ikat brought along, and also one member brought along her laptop with some great videos of ikat preparation.

Shifting device in the foreground, and working out amount of wool using a McMorran yarn balance

The calculations done, we divided up the yarn and all will go away and wind their warp yarn onto their warping frame.  Next month we will tie on some resist and dye the warp.  If time permits we will have a go at putting a stripe on some weft yarn to make our weft and warp ikat sampler.

Demonstration of what we might do with the weft yarn

One of the examples - useful for showing 'shifted' warp.

Everyone contributed useful tips and helpful thoughts - this project is likely to run for the next two meetings, so if the enthusiasm stays high, and I don't confuse matters too much,  I'm confident we'll get some great results.

Lichen Dyeing

At the guild meeting on Saturday afternoon we were lucky enough to participate in a 'group dye-in'.  One or two members of the guild had brought their 'stash' of lichen.  This had all been collected over many years and many years ago when it was permissable to collect the lichen that had fallen off trees - I believe Beech - at quite high altitudes.  I should have noted the name down, but think it might have been Pseudocyphellaria coronata (sticta coronata) as a quick google brought up a description of using it to dye with.

A simple process of adding water to a large pot - adding the bag of lichen (which is re-used for years) and bringing the water to a simmer and adding the clean wool.  10 minutes later taken out of the brown-ish water the wool is now a dark shade of purple!!  And after a quick rinse (no colour comes out though) the wool is ready to dry and use.

We were all allowed to dye up to 2 oz.  Anne and I tried a 2 oz batt of Clun Forest.  It turned out superbly. (The pictures, taken with my phone, do not do it justice)

Some lichen dyed Clun Forest batt, ready for spinning

After drying overnight, I divided the batt into three and quickly spun it into thin singles ready to ply.

Partially spun singles

The result was a just under 2 oz skein of 3 ply in a rich purple.  There are slight variations (nothing like in the pictures - that's the camera) which in the 3-ply form a nice subtle graduated mix across the whole skein.  I also had slightly different amounts on the three bobbins so kept going until all the purple was gone (I had started on top of some Clun Forest white singles) making some nice purple and white yarn.  Good for a feature somewhere.

The finished skein

After seeing how simple this is, we will be researching to find something similar in the US.  Noting an article on lichens in NZ it is good to see that very few of them grow exclusively here, so there is a good chance we will find something the same in TN somewhere!