More Winter Weaving

"I feel within an impulse , perhaps that divine impulse which has moved all races- in all ages and in all climes, to record in enduring form the emotions that stir within." C. Valentine Kirby ~This is a continuation of my Winter Weaving post ( December 29, 2008 ). I wrote about warping ( threading ) my loom. I put 10 yards of warp on the loom. That is, 10 yards of weaving possibilities. I planned to weave one table runner and several segments of fabric to make small purses. With one plain colored warp, there are still endless possibilities for the finished product ! I am weaving a simple weave only, nothing fancy requiring a lot of concentration. ~This segment of woven fabric is done in some of my home grown wool that has been dyed and spun into 2 ply yarn. I combined it with some of the pink Jacob / angora wool I did a post on earlier. The pink, cotton candy looking wool. You can see threads of pink throughout this piece of fabric. ~Here is a segment of a lot of the pink, woven in with some of the novelty yarns I have collected. ~This is the table-runner. The weft ( that is the back and forth weaving ) is comprised completely of my hand spun Jacob wool, with a bit of the pink angora / Jacob spun in. This is a deliberately variegated and random pattern, or lack of pattern.

~Here is the finished table runner, before being washed and blocked. I am going to show more of this weaving in tomorrow's post. I had a lot of fun experimenting with my weaving and will be setting aside time for many more weaving projects this year. ~ Vision of Piers The Ploughman (1360) "Cloth that cometh fro the weving is not comely to were Till it be fulled under foot or in fulling stokkes washen wel with water and with teasels cracched Y-touked and y-tented and under taillours hands."

Blessings: to work with my hands, to spin and weave the wool of my sheep

Recipe For Yarn

~Let's make yarn! You will need to start with a sheep.~

~When the wool is long enough, shear the sheep, removing the wool. ~

~Place the wool on a skirting table. This is my skirting table made of PVC pipe and the top is chicken wire secured all around the PVC frame. The wool fleece that was removed from the sheep is placed cut side down on this table letting loose debris, dirt, and 2nd cuts ( very short useless pieces of the fleece) fall through to the ground below. ~If you have spotted sheep like I do, you sort the wool into bags, shown here ( above ) in a laundry sorter. I separate the wool fleece into bags of black, white, and everything else....that is the wool that is so interspersed with both the black and the white that it is not worth the effort to separate the colors. This gives me the gray wool I find very attractive and also use for my dyed yarns and rug wool batts. ~The wool then needs to be washed. Here is my supervisor, Hawk. He has personally stuck his nose into every bag of wool several times and he has given the wool an enthusiastic tail wags up! I will wash the wool in my spare bathroom bathtub. (below) I fill a big bin with dawn dish soap and hot water, being very careful NOT to allow water to run onto the wool itself. I am not making felt here you know. Here I am washing fleece in two bins in the tub...I do have a lot of wool to wash. ~I keep repeating this process, placing the wool in hot , soapy water , then I cover the bin with the lid to keep it soaking in hot water for as long as possible. I then drain the water off while holding the wool in the bins with my hands and run more water and repeat until the water runs pretty clean. After the 2nd rinse I do not add any Dawn soap....it depends on how dirty your fleeces are, and you can be the judge of that.You can see in the picture that the 2 bins are in my tub, and one bin is full of white wool, the other is the 'everything else' bin.

~The wool now needs to dry. Hubby and I bought an amazing drying rack at IKEA! Very affordable and it makes me very happy because I now do not have to layer plastic and towels all over the floor to dry wool. The wool is placed on a drying rack in our spare bedroom, over the furnace vent and in front of a sunny window.~

~Another view of the drying rack covered in wet wool , in front of the sunny window in the spare bedroom.( below )~

~The dry wool is then picked, which means it is pulled apart to then be able to run it through the fine tooth carder , or brushes, and then it is carded into batts. Below are batts of gray ( everything else wool), white and black.~

~Then I spin my batts of wool into yarn. See, you can do it , really!~

~Later I will show you how I weave my wool yarn into fabric for all kinds of projects.~ Blessings: sheep, wool, spinning wheels, the joy of time spent spinning wool

Baa Baa Pink Sheep, with Spots !

~Time for another spot on wool...you know, the stuff that my spotted sheep produce . Well, to get the wool to make all the woolly stuff , like yarn, felt, rugs.....well, I start with these. (below) My spotted, Jacob sheep. They're kind of cute aren't they ?~I am going to show you how I combine fibers to make batts of wool for spinning into yarn or felting. I start with the gray wool, shown below. The gray wool is the black and white wool of my sheep, combined . You know, black and white mixed make...gray ! I dyed some of my gray wool pink. I will be carding ( combing or brushing ) the dyed pink wool with some Angora fiber. The Angora is from a goat, a very pretty, long haired goat. Here you can see the original gray fleece, next to some of the pink fleece and some white Angora. ~Here are batts of dyed pink wool,(the pink rolls of fiber that look like cotton candy) sitting next to my little drum carder. The carder will comb or brush together the Angora and the pink wool. ~Close up of the wool being rolled through the carder. I laid strands of the Angora on top of the pink wool and rolled them together through my drum carder. It is fun. I still think it is like magic to take the wool from my spotted sheep and turn it into amazing batts , just waiting for me to create yarns and rugs and woven fabrics.

~See the flat batt of wool I have loosened from the back of the carder ?~

~I roll the batts of wool off at the back. Look at the batts of wool piled up beside the drum carder. The possibilities are as limited as my imagination...and that is not too limited. I have ideas and plans for this pink wool. ~Pink and lustrous and just waiting for me. This wool calls me from afar. The Angora adds the luster that the Jacob alone does not have. ~I felted a bit of this wool tonight. This is my first time felting and I will write more about that process at a later date. Then, I began to spin my pink wool.....I think after I spin up a bit of it I will weave it into a funky, pretty fabric that I have planned to make into..... ~.....more little purses! Won't they be nice ? I already have some Chinese fabric for lining, and beads and buttons to decorate the purses. ~ I am so happy and blessed to have the opportunity to create things using the wool of my sheep. Do you have outlets for your creativity ? Does your heart sing when you are happily busy expressing yourself in some special way unique to you ? Cooking, sewing, knitting, writing, gardening, painting, photography ? "Creative work is play. It is free speculation using materials of one's chosen form." Stephen Nachmanovitch