Washing Day

Today was set aside for the wool scouring (washing) trial that I have undertaken for one of the Knoxville guild members.  I have samples of Coopworth and Ramboulet that came from fleeces she bought and is interested in getting washed/carded and potentially spun.  I said I would do a trial with the methods we used on the Clun Forest wool (which successfully cleaned some fairly dirty wool).

Both wool types are verging on that 'fairly dirty' category that generally precludes them from commercial/small scale wool processing, without heavy extra fees.  If I can clean the wool to an acceptable state without adding too much to our process I can take on the larger job of washing the fleeces and charge accordingly.

The testing set up for the Coopworth wool

The first trial was with Power Scour at 140 degrees for 15 minutes using the recommended 2% mix.  It also had a second wash at 1%.  This was followed by a plain rinse and final rinse (with 2.5ml white vinegar).  The first wash really removed a lot of the grease and dirt, the second not a lot more so in the second trial I didn't include a second wash.  The locks remained fairly matted at the tips which contained the majority of the dirt and vegetable matter (VM) so I took the second batch and ran it through the picker first (a Kaydessa Lil' Dynamo) to open up the matted wool.

Wash water after the first wash.

 In the end the wash has managed to get a lot of the dirt out and remove most if not all of the grease (I like a little bit left, but if all is removed, some oil can be re-introduced before spinning if necessary).  For both the locks and the picked wool the carding process will be needed to remove much of the remaining VM.  Then finally when spun the last can be removed.  I will have to let the wool dry before trying the carding, but I am starting to think that this wool is a bit passed the simple processable stage.

Clean picked wool

Clean wool locks

Along with a pause to spray the weeds on the drive, meet the propane delivery man who came to fill up our tank before winter, and assembling some shelves for the computer room - it has been a busy day!!

Carding and Spinning demo

At the weaving guild meeting this month I volunteered to set up a spinning demo and to help with the carding by doing some hand carding (there is already someone doing drum carding).  This will be for a day long event at R&M Yarns (https://www.rmyarns.com/) which is where the guild meet each month. The fiber arts festival (from the web site click on the tab labelled R&M Fiber Art Festival) is a chance to educate the visitors on the process of taking fiber and turning it into products so will follow the sheep to shawl type of order with demonstrations of each step. 

As it has been a while since I used the hand carders I have been busy checking every book I have and video I can find to ensure that what I am demonstrating is reasonable correctly. 

Carded rolag.

The practice is coming along - and it's not as if I don't have enough raw material to use (the Clun Forest mountain never seems to diminish in any way!!).  Once made into rolags I also have to practice my woolen spinning using the long backward draw - something I have also done very little of, but as with the carding seems to be getting better with practice.

Woolen spun Clun Forest on the Ashford.

I have the spinning guild meeting in Knoxville this Saturday so I will take the carders/rolags up with me and ask for tips from some of the experiences spinners. This month is also a 'show and tell' so will take some other Clun Forest products along including some batts to sell.  I also have to finish the cleaning and prep of the wool samples I took away from last meeting.

Cushion weaving finished

Yesterday I removed the finished weaving from the loom and quickly finished both ends by stitching in the tabby weave.  While that worked perfectly it does indicate fairly conclusively that I really will need glasses fairly soon.

Finishing the ends

With the ends finished I threw the cloth in the washing machine with some other washing on a hot cycle.  It came out well but with a significant final shrinkage.  On the loom the warp was 21 inches wide through the reed, it drew in to about 20 1/4 inches at the fell line (using weighted hooks as my temple as I don't have a temple this wide), then once woven it drew in to 191/2 inches.  Off the loom the warp drew in to 19 1/2 inches from the woven 21 inches. So the final 17 x 17 squares I have show a total change with shrinkage of about 20%

Finished, washed squares read to be cut up.

The twill weave is not quite at 45 degrees so for the actual cushions I will change the sett from 21 back to 19 which should fix that.

Close up of the pattern.

Next job requires a sewing machine and some supplies (zips, foam). I didn't bring my sewing machine from NZ although I could have run it via my transformer which is plenty powerful enough, but decided to look into something over here.  Ideally we will find a second hand machine somewhere - something for basic sewing, and then look out for one later that can handle industrial/heavy duty sewing for the yurt project (some way of as yet).

Weaving on the Macomber

The time came to move all the wool and boxes from around the Macomber so I could start a project on it.  What you can't see in the photo below is the bags of wool are now in/around/over the upright loom - so for the moment I can weave on one or the other until I can sort and store the spare wool/yarn.

It should be noted that I did manage to uncover the Leclerc Dorothy, but more on that later.

Dressing the Macomber

The project is one we have had 'on the books' for a while.  We bought a nice oak table and chairs soon after arriving here and use them in the kitchen (four of the chairs, and other rooms; the other two).  While they are fairly comfortable they do really need a small cushion on the seat.  Simple to weave I said, and here we are 6 months later and I'm just now starting!!

I decided to do three cushions as a test using some of the blue cotton I had in my stash.  The final cushions will match the colour scheme we have planned for the kitchen.  It is 8/4 cotton which I would normally use for rug warp yarn, but I hope will give us a nice firm and hard wearing cushion material.  The hand woven will only be on one side with some plain cloth on the other - where the zip will be.  We will stuff them with a small sheet of foam and some of our 'reject but washed' Clun Forest short locks.

It was a pretty straight forward task to dress the loom with the 440 ends, in a point twill design, taking just on a day

Heddles threaded and reed sleyed.

 I had planned to put a twined border at either end, but I soon discovered that fiddling with twining at 21 epi is not fun, so that will have to wait for another project. The weaving is racing along with over half the weaving done in two sessions yesterday interrupted by a trip to the recycle centre in Cleveland.

Progress on the cushion covers.

The other weaving was on the Dorothy.  I had heard that the reflective properties of 'Z' and 'S' twist wool yarns would be visible in weaving, so set out to see what that would actually produce.  Previous blogs have noted the spinning of skeins of both yarn types (from Clun Forest of course).  I set up the Dorothy with a small test run using stripes of both yarns in the warp and then wove with the same sized stripes in the weft.  The best result would have been obvious 'squares' where the 'Z' or 'S' overlapped or opposed. 

As it turned out my home spun yarn turned out a little finer than my initial calculations and I didn't end up with a perfectly balanced cloth.  I will need to do a second test but with the set just a little smaller so that the weft and warp are perfectly balanced.  As it is there is definite 'striping' across the weft as seen in the picture below.  More to follow on this one.

Z/S twist sample.

Wool Processing

I went to the monthly meeting of the Tennessee Valley Handspinners Guild (www.tnvalleyhandspinners.com) yesterday and took on a trial to wash some wool for one of the members who had bought two fleeces at a wool and sheep show some time back. 

The two types of wool (Ramboulet and Coopworth) are totally different and both are fairly dirty/full of vegetable matter (vm) so she hadn't got too far with preparation.  I was telling her about our method for the Clun Forest and said I'd give some samples a go to see what it would do for these two types respectively.

The samples and sample locks from each

The first trial I did was to take a few locks of each and run it through exactly the same cycle as we used on the Clun Forest. This cleaned up the wool to a degree, but didn't remove too much of the vm.  I took the washed locks of each and in the case of the Ramboulet, I flicked the locks open with a flick carder, and for the Coopworth I used my combs.  In both cases this removed almost all of the vm.

The flicked Ramboulet and combed (top) Coopworth

I did a little bit of spinning - the Coopworth was a breeze, but the Ramboulet from the flicked locks was a pain to keep consistent (given I was spinning it very finely).  I'll need to try some different carding techniques on it.

Coopworth 2 ply fine and medium

Ramboulet 2 ply fine

The next effort will be another small sample using 'Power Scour' instead of straight detergent, then perhaps two washes instead of one, and finally fine tuning the water temperature, which according to documentation should be different for both.  Once I have the best parameters I'll wash the approximate 8 oz of each and see how it turns out.