Post Olympic Marathon

As I may have mentioned - the placemats I am weaving are for 3 weddings that are only a week away now!!  The back order linen arrived and so the first job was to dye enough yarn for all the stripes.  A fairly straight forward task, but very time consuming.  Over two days we prepared and painted the yarn needed for the remaining stripes.

Wound bobbin of 'stripe' yarn

In parallel I began weaving - with one more completed last night and then this morning the marathon began.  It will take me two days to weave all the placemats - I had estimated about an hour a placemat (16+ inches), but of course that doesn't take into account broken threads, coffe breaks and getting up to stretch regularly (I had to).  So averaged out over the day it took about an hour and a half for each placemat, although I suspect the earlier ones took longer as once I had backed off the tension a little bit the warp threads stopped breaking - which isn't rocket science.  Higher tension made keeping the selvedge neater easier, so the sacrifice is that the selvedge is now a little less 'straight', but still within a reasonable tolerance :-)

6 placemats done today, with the already woven 3, leaves 5 to do tomorrow, unless I get motivated and do one more tonight.  We'll see.

9 placemats done.

The plan for tomorrow is: weave, remove from loom, sew ends (either side of the blue cut mark in the above photo), cut, 'finish' (wet), hem, relax (!).

Piles of sliver

Back in the production mode today.  The next set of Right Side of the Bed Rugs that will go on the Macomber after I finish the placmats require about 500 yards of 2ply.  Allowing a little extra.  We did not have a figure when we started the first set, rather I just spun more wool when needed.  Now by counting back using the two completed rugs we can work it out a lot more precisely.

All up, to make the yarn, I need 6.0 oz of wool, so this morning I stretched out a number of batts into sliver ready to spin.

All 6.0 oz of sliver ready to spin

The advantage in making sliver is it removes almost every bit of left over vegetable matter that didn't come out in either the flick opening or the drum carding.  The picture looks like a lot of wool, but the bulk is ALL air.

I've also done all the calculations for the alpaca scarves - that will be in a later blog.

Finished (times 2.5)

I've completed quite a few outstanding projects in this past week.

The first was the final spinning of the Alpaca roving that I had bought in Taupo New Zealand back in 2011.  642 grams in two 'colours': Cairo and Chocolate - I'm guessing that was the names of the Alpacas.  That has spun into just under 2000 yards of 2 ply equalling 636 grams - I lost a little :-)

12 skeins ready for weaving

The second was to finish off the scarves on the Leclerc Dorothy.  These are now being knotted to completely finish them.

3 scarves

The one to the far right (single colour) is for Isabel - she's already seen it via Skype and likes it.  We'll post it home shortly. The other two (striped) will end up as gifts.

The third 'finish' is in the wool washing department. Anne ran a who bag through the wash and has done the final sort of the last bag of Clun Forest.  Once that is done it is all washed and can be stored away until such time as we need it for the next project.

Drying on the rack above the dining room table

We ate off the coffee table for a night while the wool dried.  The locks were sorted into the longest (for combing) and the rest (for drum carding).

Indigo workshop

Anne was able to attend a two day workshop indigo, from preparation to actual dyeing techniques.  Needless to say we took the opportunity to dye some Clun Forest wool (batts and skeins of two ply).  Anne also used cloth ranging from samples to pillow cases to socks to experiment with different resist/tying techniques.

As it comes out of the dye pot (green) then reacts with oxygen to turn deep blue

Batts hanging to dry after washing

Results of various experiments (note the socks :-)

We'll have to find a use for the collection of blue wool - not sure what, but it could certainly go into more 'Right Side of the Bed Rugs' or be combined/blended into more yarn.

Batts and yarn ready to go...

Placemat progress

I finished the first two placemats fairly quickly - it really only takes about an hour to complete one, but on each placemat I managed to 'skip' one or two weft shots and didn't notice for an inch or so (it typically off-sets the pattern by about a thread or two!). No choice but to 'un-weave' back to the mistake and then re-weave.  That added another 30 minutes each time.  I'm certainly learning to take more care to a) track the treadling a little more carefully and b) stop (when I do stop) at the same place in the pattern so I know where to start again.

Placemat #2

The thread in the photo is the end of 'fixing' a broken warp thread - the first time it has happened to me, but given that this is the first time I have woven with linen, not really surprising!  It will have to be sewn in and trimmed, but did work out painless in the end (after a little research).

I'm now just doing some stripes and awaiting the arrival of the rest of the linen so I can get stuck into the next 14! Current task is to finish the spinning of the Alpaca ready for the scarves on the Leclerc Dorothy.

CoIP Dyeing

Another first for dyeing - up until now we have only worked with indigo (the Clun Forest scarf was our first indigo and since then Anne has done a class in indigo dyeing (we now have a LOT of CF wool in dark blue)).  For the place mats I need stripes that will be a mix of colours to match the theme - in this case colours of Ireland.  I chose Kelly green (that was easy) forest green, gray, navy blue and sky blue.  The dyes are from Dharma Trading Co and are the fiber reactive dye range for natural fibers (I'm using linen). The instructions couldn't have been clearer and the procedure seemed pretty straight forward.  I chose to sensitize the material (the yarn) first and paint on the dyes.  That needed a little bit of thickening and adding all the appropriate amounts of dye per colour (some need more to get the brighter/darker colours).

All went well for the test stripe.

The dye factory

Note: the vodka bottle contained the thickened chemical solution to mix the dyes in NOT refreshment during the process.  The test stripe (1 inch of weft yarn) is on the white block, wrapped in glad wrap while the dye fixes.

24 hours later and after washing out the left over dye (very little) and drying it was time to try the weaving.

The test stripe

The measurement was not precise enough and the painted pattern 'smeared' across the stripe, but as it had started as a fairly random set of colour 'blobs and streaks' that didn't really impact too much.  I'll work on a more precise measurement before the stripes on the first mat, but keeping with the fairly random allocation of colours.  In the photo above the blue line is the cut mark at the start of the first real place mat, and the green marks at the selvedge were for marking the warp to enable me to measure the true width of a weft shot.

I'll be doing a production run of stripes over the weekend and will weave what linen I have on hand.  I should have enough for a set of four and then I have to wait for the back order of another cone to complete the rest.  It will be interesting to see what the next 'lot' is like - a small contrast with the warp would enhance that pattern even more, so oddly I'm hoping for a difference in the same product (which is possible between batches).

Colours of Ireland Placemats (CoIP)

Spent most of the day dressing the Macomber loom with the linen warp.  On Saturday I spent an hour or so untangling the last couple of feet of warp after winding it on - it managed to wrap itself in knots (sort of) and required some dedicated unraveling from the lease sticks out.  With that done it was a relatively easy (but long) process to complete the dressing.

The first few inches will be purely experimental - using the new temple, and getting a feel for the linen which, so far, will be the finest yarn I have used on this loom.  The non-elastic nature doesn't seem a problem. the sheds are forming nicely and the sett seems pretty spot on.

the first couple of inches

The pattern looks fairly good on the white on white warp/weft - it will really jump out when I put the stripe in.  Still waiting for the dyes for that - they should be arriving early in the week.  I also need the other cone of linen (on back order) to complete the 18 place mats I have planned.

Also have one more scarf on the Dorothy loom and two or three skeins of alpaca to spin - I think I'll be busy enough.