10 January 2012
Reflections of last summer

When winter weather settles in like a dark blanket, it's nice to bask in thoughts of summer. The scent of sun-warmed flowers is hard to conjure in January, but thoughts of friendship and nice times past can brighten the dark days almost as well.

Fibre folk are lovely people. Vendors at conferences have ready smiles and a nice sense of the absurd (left). Friendships spring up when you least expect them... and they last.

Last summer's ANWG conference (the Association of Northwest Guilds) took place in Salem, Oregon, and it was a great chance to get back in touch with a lot of fibre friends. I was working in the Vendor Hall with my friend Shirley and her husband, Peter, and we visited with most of the people there -- both vendors and attendees.

There were some surprises. :-)

When I'm in the Pacific Northwest there are always people I want to call or see -- usually more than my calendar will allow. Last summer I knew I'd be in Salem and really wanted to get in touch with Connie and Steve of the SpindleWood Company -- they're located in Monmouth, a nice town not too far away....

To my great delight, Connie found me! Here we are (right), Shirley, me and Connie -- and in the photo I'm holding one of the reasons that we're all smiling so happily.

Here's a full-face view of the lovely happy-maker (left). Isn't it beautiful?? It was a complete surprise, ordered especially for me by my good spindle-spinning friend in Germany (thank you, my friend!). Like all SpindleWood spindles, it's absolutely flawless.

In the hand, the wood finish is like satin. The whorl on this spindle is irresistibly smooth -- it's impossible to hold it without running your fingertips around and around that lovely circular track on top. I don't know that I've ever encountered such a touchable spindle.

The tapered shaft is smooth and beautifully shaped (look at the elegant detail, right). Touching the spindle to launch it into motion or to wind on is an unending delight -- just delicious!

And, of course, it's perfect for silk. :-) It spins smoothly, steadily and naturally at the optimal speed, with enough weight to be stable, enough momentum to spin without interruption, impeccable balance -- lovely, lovely, lovely.

The best part, though, is the friendship that goes into every part of it: the relationship of the maker and the wood, the reciprocal respect of those who do things with their hands, a shared delight in excellence, the pleasure of giving pleasure.

I spin with gratitude and heart-warming appreciation.
If that's not the best way to dispel the winter blues, I don't know what is.

End notes, for inquiring minds

♦  The SpindleWood Company has a website (here) where you can learn more about Steve and Connie, their beautiful spindles, their nostepinnes, and much more.

♦  The silks appearing in the spindle photos are all tussah, dyed in my kitchen. The first is Lilac; the second is a lovely grey-green that I call North Sea. Lilac is available on the Silk Fibre page, and North Sea will appear there also -- as soon as I convince myself it really is a repeatable colour.

07 January 2012
The 13th day of Christmas

Sometimes you find yourself in a state of Grace. You don't know why, you can't be sure just how it started -- it simply is, and you're in the middle of it, and everything is very, very right.

When Big Guy (the miracle cat) moved in with us just over a year ago, we were sure we were doing kitty hospice. He was old and sick. He had FIV, was missing most of his teeth, had a dull coat and couldn't hear. He was a nice cat, though, and he'd had a pretty rough time living outside. We figured that if we could make his final month or two comfortable, it would be well worth it.

He embraced apartment life with gusto. Everything about it suited him: the soft chairs, the new cat food, the conversations, even the other cat (who took her time about it but finally decided he was all right). My husband (already a big fan) announced after less than a week that Big Guy was "the most huggable cat who ever lived".

Big Guy thrived on contact and rapidly worked his way right into our hearts. He followed the visual arts, gazing at screensavers, watching films, enjoying sports on TV. He was exceptionally fond of weaving. He was Internet-savvy and engaged in light programming. He thoroughly enjoyed our brief vacation in September, standing up tall to marvel in fascination as scenery slipped quickly past the car windows. What we did, he did. What he did, we did.

He'd been young and wild when we first met him nearly 20 years ago. He moved in with us when the world was covered in snow. He generously rewarded us with a full year of his calm, patient sweetness and his Yul Brynner walk.

We learned a lot from this lovable, world-worn guy. Family. Love. That's what's important. A state of grace.

Good night, sweet prince;
And flocks of angels sing thee to thy rest.

03 January 2012
The new-born year opens its eyes

A new year is full of promise. It's like a fresh notebook: all the pages are clean and crisp, and who knows what marvels they may eventually contain? Anything's possible!

My new year begins with a touch of redecoration (left).
I understand that most people don't have a belt-and-disc sander in the living room -- but I now do, and it makes me happy the same way a fresh notebook does. Many good things will come of this. Most importantly, the process of making new spindles will get easier.

The new Squared Circle spindles are more popular than I'd imagined they would be, and much to my surprise, I needed to make my Making process more efficient. Rather desperately.

(Isn't that grand??)

Meanwhile, in another part of the apartment, a different kind of work is afoot (right). This is another Crackle weave structure, arranged in patterns of stars and trees. Here in the dark of winter, I wanted to combine strong contrast with a hint of sparkle -- so on the ecru warp, two pattern wefts work together: ultra-deep navy and black with twinkly lurex. They combine to act as one thick yarn and bring out their pattern lines with firmness and texture.

The sharp-eyed reader will notice that on the loom, the weaving shows visible reed marks. They are much more pronounced in the body of the cloth than they were in the header, which I'd woven with finer wefts. Unfortunately, the marks don't all disappear in the wash. ...Since taking this photo I've started alternating pattern picks with tabby, inserting a fine weft shot between each thick shot of pattern; and it looks as though that will help.

On the loom, the sparkle is amazing. I know it comes from one of the weft threads; but it seems to hover above the web, shifting as I change position, gleaming like light on ice crystals. It's a lovely effect, very difficult to photograph -- but you can get an idea with the photo at left.

And what will this be, this length of cloth patterned with ultra-deep navy and sparkles?? It was a web without a purpose when I started -- but now I think it will be a table runner. The cloth is rather heavy and not suitable for a garment, and though it could be pressed into service as cushion covers, I think it would be much nicer as a length of pattern cascading end-to-end on the dining table.

In any case, it's absolutely wonderful to be weaving again -- full-width cloth, not just bands! More woven projects will follow as the winter progresses. I won't be stopping -- it's too perfect a pleasure, watching patterns form under my hands. :-)

30 December 2011
New Year's Eve Eve

The year 2011 is taking its last waltz across the calendar page, and my thoughts turn to weaving and spinning, present and future.

Even though this website has been quiet pretty much all year, my workspace has been groping its way toward order and light -- timidly, but with a patient steadiness. As I tame each little zone of chaos, a sensation of Plenty wraps its fuzzy arms around me.

I have a pretty incredible stash. :-)

(For the sake of truthfulness, let me quickly point out that chaos still has the upper hand around here. The pools of orderliness are small -- but I can see them, all shining with potential.)

One little zone of chaos stubbornly resisted my efforts to tame it. Its focus was a mixed bag of silk fibres, all dyed in beautiful colours, all quirky, all purchased because I desperately wanted to be at home spinning (instead of "away" -- if you've ever spent considerable time on the road you'll know what this is like), and also because I was hungry for texture and knew these silks would deliver it.

After shifting the bag from Point A to Point B and back again, I finally concluded the best way to deal with the stuff was to spin it!

The dyed hankies (right) were the first to come out of the bag. They're a strong purple mixed with an opinionated pink. They'd been dyed in a large batch, so their edges weren't as distinct as hankie edges sometimes are; but they could still be pulled into layers, as you can see in the photo.

Spinning hankies is a treat. My favourite way is to spin them with a medium-weight spindle -- it's fast enough to be satisfying, but slow enough so your hands don't get tired as you pull the long fibres out into an amazing, elongated, beautiful drafting zone. This time, alas, I grabbed a rather heavy spindle for the job -- and spinning was less than the joy-filled experience I'd imagined. That's a shame. Silk is made for total pleasure. Something clearly had to be done....

After transferring the yarn onto the bobbin of a wheel (left), the world became a better place. ...And I love the yarn!

Yarn spun from silk hankies is very hard to photograph. It has bumps and matte areas, and it also has lengths and lengths of high-sheen magic. Those lovely variations and contrasts delight the eye, but the camera seems oblivious to their charms. If you click on the photo for a bigger view, you can at least get a sense of this yarn. High sheen, yes. Occasional matte nubbles, yes. It's really amazing.

Next to come out of the bag?? Dyed cocoons (right). They may look messy, but they're really quite interesting. They were degummed (and divested of their pupae!), then dyed in a batch, where they tangled themselves in stray fibres from other cocoons and took on colour in varying intensities.

If you lift a handful, you get a long mass of them. They hang together like elements of an incredible boa, all silk bobbles and knots.

I found them irresistible and bought masses in three colours: red-orange, a rich bordeaux, and a foresty green. They're fun just to touch -- but it turns out they spin pretty well, too!

If you think about hankies and caps, they're nothing but stretched cocoons -- so (I figured), why not take cocoons themselves and stretch them as part of the drafting process? If they're degummed, it should work.... And it does (left).

A medium-weight spindle is perfect for the job. Drafting-and-stretching requires careful attention, because some of the fibres on the outsides of the cocoons (and on their innermost surfaces) are short -- so the fibres available to you range from spitwad-like neps to short tangles to long (incredibly long) mats. They do draft, though -- and the yarn is very pleasing!

This yarn has less of a sheen than the hankie yarn, but it is strong and has a lovely texture. It's lightweight and pleasant to touch. It may end up being woven -- it, and its nubbly silken siblings. ;-)

End notes, for inquiring minds

♦  The silks shown here (both hankies and cocoons) were dyed by Jean Oliver, a master dyer living in the north of England. Trading as Oliver Twists, she and her company attend a number of shows as vendors and also do mail order. She has no website, but you can click here for contact information and descriptions of her work.

♦  The spindle shown above was made by Ken Ledbetter, a well-respected spindle maker in the States, and purchased from the Handweavers Studio in London. Click here to see the Handweavers' catalogue and learn more about their shop. They're something of a legend in the UK -- not just a valuable supplier, but also an excellent resource centre.

24 December 2011
Christmas Eve -- in a flaxen mood

Happy Christmas, everyone!

It's a quiet day here, and the house is filled with the smell of ginger cookies. :-) The sky is grey, but not too dark, and the temperature is cool without being cold. The heaters are all working just fine. All is well. ...In short, it's a perfect day for more reflection.

Big Guy (the miracle cat!) has spent a good amount of this year working diligently as my weaving supervisor. He's more interested in his heating pad just now -- but he was recently in charge of a linen project, which you can see in the background of this action shot (left).

This was back when the weather was a good deal warmer than it is now. It started with flax, a spindle and a waterpot; but by the time I'd decided what I wanted to do with the yarn, it had become a spinning-wheel and loom project as well.

The linen singles (right) seemed like the perfect material for an airy, lacey band. Never mind that it had been spun from flax roving (which I have lots of) instead of flax line (which I prefer!) -- it looked pretty good, so I threw caution to the wind: as a singles, it became both warp and weft.

(Side note for my non-spinning friends: the reason the two kinds of flax make different yarns has everything to do with the length of their fibres. Flax line is nearly-full-length fibre, with each fibre in the mass measuring 2 to 3 feet from tip to toe. You spin flax line from a distaff -- a device whose job is to hold the fibre so you can pull off what you want, and only what you want, as you spin. Flax roving, on the other hand, is made of fibres that have been either mega-processed or cut down to a specific length. Each of its fibres is between 2 and 5 inches long, and you spin it without a distaff. Alas, the yarn it makes is weaker and more subject to abrasion -- all because it's made from shorter fibres.)

Because I knew this linen singles would be fragile, I decided the best kind of loom to use would be one which could be used with "minimalist" sheds, so the yarns wouldn't be stressed too much by the action of weaving. I decided to use one of my own heddles, placed inside the framework of a Cricket loom (left, as seen from the back) -- my heddle would be kind to the yarns, and the Cricket would provide a tidy way of storing (and protecting) the warps until it was time to use them.

The good news: the warping process went easily, with no snags or hitches. The not-so-good news: the yarn was, indeed, fragile. Even after dressing, the warps had a tendency to occasionally sigh and let go (you can see a temporary warp repair in the photo -- a little knot).

But oh, was it ever worth it! The finished woven band is about 6 inches wide and more than 3 meters long. It's firm, but not stiff, and lightweight without being fragile. It's solid and open at the same time, a pragmatic kind of lace.

In this detail view of the in-progress weaving (right), you can see the two woven lace patterns: Brooks Bouquet (top) and Leno (below), separated by stripes of plainweave.

It looks pleasant enough in this detail photo -- but when you see a full length of the stuff, all laid out as one long piece, it's pretty darned spectacular (if I do say so myself). It's going to be part of a garment early next year -- perhaps the focal point of an understated linen jacket....

Big Guy is a good supervisor. I couldn't have done it without him.

May he continue to prosper so we can do more wonderful things together!

End notes, for inquiring minds

♦  For a more complete presentation of this project, take a look at the write-up on Weavolution, here. Click on the larger photo at the top to open it in a slideshow-like window and see the photos that follow.

♦  If you're interested in weaving, but don't yet know about Weavolution -- here's the chance to get into a Good Thing! It's a nice online community, created specifically for weavers. Everything is visible to visitors (in case you want to just peek in the windows), but you need to join if you want to post something. Joining is free-of-charge and won't result in any kind of spam. Really, it's a great thing. Click here to open the entry page.

♦  Brooks Bouquet and Leno are documented in a large number of weaving books. Here's a quick sampling of titles (this is absolutely not a complete list!):
     — The Weaver's Idea Book, by Jane Patrick
     — Hands-On Rigid Heddle Weaving, by Betty Davenport
     — The Art of Weaving, by Else Regensteiner
     — Linen - Handspinning and Weaving, by Patricia Baines
     — Many of the new books available to rigid heddle weavers

♦  The Cricket Loom is a compact rigid heddle loom (cute as a bug!) made by the Schacht Spindle Company of Colorado. It's available from many, many dealers. For more information about it, click here.

21 December 2011
Suddenly Solstice

Here we are at the winter solstice, a time for calm reflection -- and as I reflect, it's quite clear I haven't been opening this window into my workroom much these past months. In case you've wondered, I haven't been whisked onto another plane of existence, nor have I been sitting around doing nothing. I've just been... quiet.

It's not that it's been a bad year. It's just been a non-verbal one.

This lovely spinner (left) is one of the many things I didn't pop in here to tell you about. She was waiting quietly in one of the stalls at "Les Puces", the Paris flea market -- and I simply couldn't leave her there. I was in love.

This tile was probably originally mounted near a fireplace or stove, and most likely in a building that was more humble than palatial. The dealer told me it had been dated to the 18th century -- which means the colourful picture was painted onto the clay at about the time of the French Revolution (and the American Revolution as well). ...Whether that's true or not is an interesting question.

For the most important clue about its age, look at what the spinner is doing: she's equipped with a spindle and a long distaff, and her hand is to her mouth.

Why that curious gesture? Is she puzzled by something? ...No, not at all!  It's because she's spinning flax!!

Okay, it's true, she might be spinning hemp rather than flax; but in both cases, the smoothest thread requires the spinner to moisten the yarn as the fibres spiral into place. We modern spinners usually dip our fingers into a water pot of some kind to moisten them -- but from time immemorial the handiest source of moisture has always been right there in the mouth. Think about that: it's a built-in water pot, and you never leave home without it. ;-)

Such a gesture would be painted only by someone who saw it so often that it was simply known to be integral to the spinning process.

The picture provides other interesting bits of information, too. Her spindle is the whorl-less style that bulges in the middle and tapers to a point at both ends. Similar spindles were widely used throughout northern Europe, and they were still used in the most rural parts of France at the start of the 20th century. These old French spindles from my own collection (right) show something of the variety these spindles can have, without straying from that characteristic shape.

The distaff shown on the tile is quite long, which was typical of distaffs in France -- and it was so well appreciated by French spinners that they often kept using long distaffs even after switching from spindles to wheels. It's hard to see just how the fibre on the distaff is arranged, but it seems to ripple in parallel with the distaff shaft, with the fibre mass gathered into a rough cone shape and protected by a "coat" of cloth. That cloth wrapping would shield the fibre from wind and rain and also keep it tidy for spinning as long as possible.

Looking at these details, and the form of her dress, I see nothing to refute the dealer's claim of this tile's age.

There will be more flax spinning in my near future (projects that have been interrupted and postponed for too long), and I will try her method of wrapping the top of the distaff with a piece of cloth. Besides offering protection, it may give extra control in drafting, too -- well worth an experiment.

In any case -- it's a fascinating little tile. The colours are enchanting.

But it's her gesture of moistening the fingers that made me fall in love. :-)

Are you looking for something that used to be on this page?
Take a stroll through the Archives!