I joined a team for this year’s Tour de Fleece event. This is a spinning event that always runs at the same time as the Tour de France. It’s a chance to set yourself a goal and spin along with others, watching their progress, celebrating the completion of their goals, proudly showing off your own work, and learning a heck of a lot about the spinning of all kinds of fiber along the way. There are prizes but I would say that not all that many people are interested in or motivated by that particular aspect. I have made two attempts to play along in a team in the past and have never lasted more than a week, I am embarrassed to say. I got bored!
I enjoy the quietness of spinning in this re-purposed wooden mortar compared to on the pretty plate that a friend gave me. The sound of the metal shaft of the takli against the plate got on my nerves after a while! Still, I treasure the lovely plate and am sure I will find another use for it.
This year, I am trying to spin all the Sea Island cotton that I was given by my friend Betty. I spin a little on my takli spindle after breakfast every day. I feel very motivated and I think it’s because I have specific uses in mind for this cotton thread. That, and the fact that I am pretty new to spinning cotton and am constantly learning, make it more interesting. I also don’t have that nagging need to get as much weaving done as I possibly can, as I used to do, when I would have to drop everything to prepare workshop materials and pack to leave for an extended trip away. Don’t get me wrong…I LOVED those trips away.
This is all pre Tour de Fleece product.
Life has slowed down. I pretend that I am one of those lucky people that go away to escape distractions so that they can spend an extended amount of time focusing on their art. They choose a peaceful or exotic place and do an artist’s residency, drawing inspiration from their new natural and cultural surroundings. That’s me, except that I get to do it in the comfort of my own home and draw inspiration from the internet, lol. I followed along during the several weeks that a Facebook acquaintance recently spent painting in the Shetland Islands on such a residency.
The projects that I have in mind for the spun cotton thread are also “firsts” which I think is another motivating factor. While I spin, my mind runs through the steps that I will take to get those projects off the ground. I try to imagine all the things that could possibly go wrong in the hope that I can avoid them. I am pretty sure that all this will have me sticking with the Tour de Fleece for its entire duration this time. I write down the steps for the new projects in my Weaver’s Journal only to erase or amend them the following day when I figure out a better way.
I had come to the conclusion that I cared very little for the process of spinning and that I am one hundred percent motivated by the product. Now I am not so sure. I have a dismantled Ashford Traditional wheel in my closet that would enable me to spin a whole lot faster, yet I ignore it and stick with my takli for cotton and my good ol’ Cusco drop spindle for wool and alpaca. They somehow just seem to be more “me”. I guess that there are some aspects of the process that I really love after all. I am certainly not purely after finished product as I had once thought.
I had the experience of buying raw cotton, de-seeding it, fluffing it by hand, and then beating it on a sack of grain to prepare it for spinning when I stayed with a family of spinners and weavers in coastal Ecuador. I do understand that all of that is really the most essential part of the process. Being given a large coil of beautifully prepared Sea island sliver to spin is not quite the same, is it?
A photo of one of my prints from Ecuador, 2007. De-seeding the cotton was a typical evening activity in which all family members participated.
Beating the natural brown cotton that the locals call “mico” on a sack of grain.
The method for spinning cotton in this part of coastal Ecuador involves a horizontally held spindle and a distaff. In this picture Luz (R.I.P) uses two fingers to draft while the others regulate the movement of the twist into the drafted area.
As a clumsy beginner, I found it very difficult to get a good rate of spin from the horizontally-held spindle and the positioning and action of the drafting fingers was tough too! I have since been spoiled by the takli.
Afternoons and evenings are for weaving and this is what has been keeping me occupied in my “artist’s residency”. The weaving part of the Finnweave piece with its foliage pattern is finished . I have yet to wet-finish it. If this works as something that I can use to keep my neck covered, I will be pleased. As I mentioned in a past post, I don’t really enjoy wearing the scarves that I have woven. The length and ends and fringe annoy me. I just want something that I can button around my neck (I love the pieces that I knitted that I can just stretch and pull over my head but that doesn’t work so well for woven cloth).
This is the view as I peek over the edge of my bed in the morning. As soon as my feet hit the floor, I am in my weaving studio.
My sampling paid off (it always does). It enabled me to maintain the eight-inch width effortlessly the whole way. This is something that I find challenging when doing a balanced structure without a reed. The sett varies, though! The warp threads between the motifs get a bit a crowded sometimes but then open up again as the positions of the motifs change. I learned from a previous project not to weave motifs in columns because of that crowding problem. I am interested to see how things change after wet-finishing.
I find the pick-up super easy in this technique. Once the first row of a motif has been woven, there’s no more counting to do . It’s very easy to see exactly which threads need to be selected for subsequent rows.
I got the basic idea for the irregular leaf shapes from one of Svetlana Rogatykh’s crochet patterns. The lines in her designs are particularly suitable for Finnweave. The proportions, however, will be quite different and need adjustment. I just took her idea of irregular leaf shapes and went on my own from there. I think that any shape pretty much works. I don’t think that there’s a single “leaf” shape there that actually looks like a leaf on its own. I added butterflies along the way to connect the two layers of the double weave and chose to make them solid rather than outlined shapes. The poor butterflies are flitting about looking for something colorful in that flower-less garden.
Finished and still on the loom. I wove a length that I thought would work well wrapped around my neck, and then some. One thing I didn’t do in my sampling was take before and after wet-finishing measurements. Hopefully not too much of it will be wasted.
And so, while I continue spinning cotton, another project has come to mind. I am really enjoying this exercise of picking through my stash and coming up with projects as opposed to coming up with projects and then shopping for yarn. Years ago, I bought a cone of 20/2 white UKI cotton. I have just finished scouring a good amount of it (I learned the hard way some years ago, that this needed to be done before attempting to dye it) and am planning a warp-ikat project. I want to use the finished fabric to construct something this time…so, no wall hangings, scarves or neck wraps…there will be cutting and hand-sewing involved. Maybe I have become cocky after my successful bag project! It’s been many years since I created an ikat piece with cotton.
The last ikat I did in this same 20/2 cotton became a drawstring bag for my Kindle.
My goodness, the water was soupy after scouring the UKI cotton. Any of you that have UKI in your stash will know about the spinning oil that it carries. I suppose all thread has it but I seem to be more aware of its presence in this particular brand.
Now I have to come up with the motif that I want to create in ikat. I am hoping to use two colors.
In my last post, I said that I was gong to talk more about the backstrap loom in this one. I got carried away talking about other stuff. Let’s see if I can manage it next time 🙂
I am a “cheap spindler” in much the same way as I am a cheap drunk…it doesn’t take much to make me happy! Don’t waste the good wine on me. I do not have a refined palate. So, it is little wonder that I am content to use my humble Cusco drop spindle when I get the urge to spin. I just don’t have a refined palate for spinning tools.
The Cusco spindle was the second one I ever got, the first being from San Pedro de Atacama in northern Chile. The Cusco one that I got in 1996, being more robust, became my constant travel companion. It was practical. Although I have collected many more spindles on my weaving safaris since then, this Cusco one is the one I always use while the others hang on the wall as souvenirs of places I have been and people I have met.
The very first spinning that I did for weaving on my backstrap loom was with some extremely dry, brittle, and filthy llama fiber that I had bought from a farmer while wandering about the back roads of Uyuni in the Bolivian highlands. I cleaned and prepared it. The dust and dirt would have me wheezing and my skin would crawl and eyes run every time I opened the bags to get more. It made for good spinning training. I gave the fiber a tremendous amount of twist because at that time I believed that this was the only way hand-spun yarn could possibly stand up to the abrasion of warp-faced weaving. I have since learned that this is not so.
The natural colors of the llama I spun. I was always amazed at how nice it looked when woven. Warp-faced structures are very forgiving in that way.
And here, dyed with coca leaves, spearmint leaves and cochineal.
The first time I was given prepared alpaca to spin by my friend Janet, I decided that I simply couldn’t put all that heavy amount of twist into that beautiful fiber. With a bit of extra care in the way I handled it on my backstrap loom, it made lovely warp.
Prior to that experience, I had spun wool while still living in the Chilean Patagonia in the mid 1990s. I had brought some alpaca back from my first trip to Peru but had made a mess of it. That had me turning to sheep. There were sheep galore down there and I was given a fleece. So, I got experience washing and carding it and my first project was knitting! I can hardy believe it as I can barely knit. But I designed a pattern and fumbled my way through knitting the front of a vest. I wove the back panel in balanced plain weave on my Navajo-style vertical loom…without a reed. I probably didn’t even know that reeds existed back then. The knitting yarn was spun on the Cusco drop spindle and the yarn for the weaving on an Ashford Traditional wheel that my boyfriend at the time had brought back from the Falkland Islands. Spinning yarn that worked well for this knitting and weaving was a complete fluke. I really had very little idea about what I was doing.
Parts of the vest with a triple cross-knit looped edging. The brown part is the woven back. the multi-colored thing on the side is part of a woven bag also edged with the cross-knit looping stitch.
I really enjoy reading the online group forums about spinners and their spindles. The participants’ love and enthusiasm for their tools is wonderful….I totally get it but I just don’t share it. Some of the spindles they show are beautiful pieces of craftsmanship and I love seeing them. But when it comes down to it, I just want to get the job done.
It seems that when it comes to spinning I am totally product oriented which is kind of strange as it is quite the opposite when I weave. I just want to get this stuff done so I can go weave with it. In weaving I am all about enjoying the process. I probably would not have been willing to devote any time to spinning if not for the pandemic. The combination of needing to keep my hands busy during Zoom sessions as well as a dwindling stash has had me happily spinning up all the wool I could find in my closet. Now I am making a start on the cotton. There’s still some alpaca lurking in there.
And as with my favored Cusco spindle for wool, I have taken the takli that Elizabeth gave me in Australia as my one and only tool for cotton. It is all I feel the need for right now. It makes for quiet, comfortable, and fuss-free Zoom spinning.
My slow-growing hand-spun cotton stash.
My collection of spindles that I have gathered in my travels includes a few that are used for cotton. Here are two from Guatemala and one that I bought from my Guaraní teacher here in Santa Cruz. The whorl on that one is a piece cut from the sole of a sandal.
And of course, there is the horizontally-held spindle that is used by my teachers in coastal Ecuador.
The cotton is draped on a wooden stand called the “rueca” for spinning. It has a notch cut into its top which grabs the cotton and allows the spinner to draw out the fibers under tension. A small basket is woven from plantain fiber underneath on which the spindle sits when not in use. This is a miniature version of the rueca which I made with my teachers’ help so that I could take an example back with me to Bolivia. I need to place something in the little basket to weigh it down because it is so small and light. The typical spindle can be seen at right with its wooden whorl. More often now you will see people using yo-yo halves and metal wheels as whorls.
Here are some tiny whorls from coastal Ecuador that the family had found while ploughing their fields. There were close to forty of them sitting in a bowl on a shelf, just like that.
The cotton sliver that I have been spinning was given to me by my friend Betty. One day while breaking off a length from the bundle in the closet to continue spinning, a label fell out which identified it as the Sea Island variety bought from a place called Straw into Gold. Judging from the yellowed state of the label and the fact that it had been typewriter-written, I am guessing that it was bought quite a long time ago. I had been becoming increasingly pleased with my progress spinning cotton but am less so now after having read a little about this variety of cotton online. Apparently it is known for its particularly long staple which makes it one of the easiest varieties to spin. Darn! It seems that I have started at the wrong end of the learning process. Considering how I struggled through the preparation and spinning of that ugly llama fiber all those years ago as well as going to the trouble of washing and carding the fleece I had been given in Chile, it seems like cheating to be picking up this beautifully prepared long-staple cotton as my (almost) first-ever cotton-spinning experience. I wonder if it will feel like going back to square one when I finish this and then start on the other varieties that I have. My very first experience had been in coastal Ecuador where I got to work almost from scratch, de-seeding, teasing apart, and fluffing up the cotton. It was difficult spinning it on the horizontally-held spindles compared to what I do now with the takli. Unfortunately, I didn’t spend much time on it while there, being much more interested in the weaving part of the process. My teachers already had plenty of spun singles that they doubled for warp so that I could learn how they weave their double-pocket saddle bags and hammocks. We would pass time in the evenings on cotton preparation.
My first attempts in Ecuador
I put in a little practice when I got back home but the loom soon called me away…
But now to the present. After finishing my big bag project, I took a few days off to spin cotton and think about what should be next on my loom.
The finishing touch on the bag project…magnet clasps for the flap and mouth of the bag. I had spare fabric to which I could first attach them.
I decided that I wasn’t quite done with the three-color pebble yet and that I should weave a study in color transitions. Upgrading my camera strap gave me a product to justify the use of my hand-spun for this study. I dyed some of it a rust color so that I would have three colors that would work well together in all possible arrangements.
Small quantities of hand spun wool for the camera strap plus some hand spun cotton singles ready to be boiled.
I got totally absorbed in working on the color transitions and different color alignments and thus forgot that I needed to start weaving the hummingbirds upside down at the half-way point so that they would be the right way up when the strap was worn. Oh well. That’s what happens when the things that are important for the final product get lost in the process.
In the picture above, I was testing shapes for the tabs which I would later cut from leather. I have an old home-made leather backstrap that was just the right color and was willing to sacrifice it for this project. I couldn’t get anyone in the street market to sell me just a tiny off-cut of leather and the available colors weren’t quite right in any case. Hand-stitching the leather was fun.
I used the existing strap hardware otherwise I am not sure how on earth I would have attached the strap. There’s a special kind of clip that I have never seen elsewhere that goes through a tiny hole on the side of the camera.
And here I am wearing the strap with its upside-down hummers on one side! and my “Ta-da!” face.
What’s next? I have started a sample for a wool Finnweave cowl. I am using 20/2 wool and need to see if the proportions of the motifs in my weaving with this material match those of the figures on my chart. But first I had to go through that annoying confusion of trying to figure out Finnweave all over again. You make notes from the last project but they are never thorough enough because you stupidly assume that some things are just too obvious to bother writing down. Not so! This time I will get it right and make sure I write down every single detail.
The other purpose of this sample is as a width gauge. This 20/2 wool is a fair bit thicker than the 20/2 cotton that I have been using for Finnweave lately. I have to get used to the difference between the cotton and wool. Cotton, naturally, gives a much sharper image and the hairiness of the wool makes it easier to produce skips in the lower layer of the double weave.
The other project idea that is waiting its turn is a very, very simple double-ikat pattern using my hand-spun cotton. I would hate to waste this lovely Sea Island cotton on a failed double-ikat experiment but I am so curious to see if I can manage to make it work. I will just have to keep reminding myself to keep it simple.
I don’t have any finished projects to show you in this post. That’s because I have been too busy learning new stuff. It’s not anything that most people will get excited about because it is what experienced cotton spinners, sewers and “conventional” loom weavers will consider really elementary stuff. But it’s all new to me and I am having a blast learning and using it.
First of all there’s the cotton spinning. I just finished spinning up a tiny ball of what I will call version 4 and am telling myself to stop there and weave a sample. I wove two samples with version 3 in the kind of sheer open weave that has drawn me to trying to spin and weave with my own hand-spun cotton singles.
This is what I wove with a Guatemalan spinner’s hand-spun cotton. I would like to do more of this with my own hand-spun.
I boiled version 3 to set the twist but found that it was still a bit too lively when I wove my samples. I can only assume that I am putting in way too much twist which boiling simply cannot settle. Hence, version 4.
Above, you can see version 3 woven without a reed on the left and with a reed on the right. Neither is as sheer as I would like it to be. In version 3 I experimented with different thicknesses of inlay. The thickest one wins. The finer ones virtually disappeared after washing and pressing. So, I will be trying a more open sett next time and hoping that I have less wobble in the weft shots.
It’s a bit of a head-scratcher as I spun this natural brown cotton several years ago and used it as singles in a similar sheer-cloth experiment. I didn’t boil the cotton singles yet it behaved so differently when woven. Perhaps the brown cotton just has different characteristics. There’s so much to learn! I saw a post on Facebook the other day where someone had made a study to find which breed of sheep has the best wool for knitting cables. How amazing to have learned so much about the unique characteristics of all those different kinds of wool. Why should cotton be any different?
My hand-spun brown cotton,
In weaving news, I have been weaving with my finest bamboo reed which I believe has 23 dents to the inch (makes me crazy trying to count those things!). This is nothing new. I have used my bamboo reeds a few times in the past including the time that I used it for the original sheer cloth experiment with the Guatemalan spinner’s hand-spun. What was new to me was doubling threads in dents. Elementary stuff, right? But new to me!
My improvised threading hook.
I first tried a bent piece of wire as a threading hook which was very tedious and I was willing to persevere with it until online weaving friends suggested cutting a hard plastic card. Those with experience will immediately understand why a wire hook is not ideal…elementary stuff, right? I would happily buy a proper hook if only I could find one here. I can’t say that I am big fan of reed-threading. ‘Use one of those annoying shopping cards”, someone said. I don’t have a single one but managed to dig up this card from one of my visits to Australia.
I like the view through the reed and the swirl pattern optical illusion that creates. It gives me ideas for ikat patterns.
I am using doubled 20/2 cotton and, after sampling, found that it needed to be sett at 27 for tabby. That meant that I needed to double some of the doubled 20/2 cotton in some dents. Elementary stuff, but I had never done this before. I know that floor loom weavers do this all the time. Yes, I understand why and I understand that the each thread in the pair will be in a different heddle and performing a different role in the structure of the cloth. What I was never able to fully understand is how two threads that are supposed to be separated can remain so when with every beat of the reed, they are being squeezed back together again. How does that not show up in the cloth? Well, I did it and yes, of course it works. When I held the cloth up in front of the window I could make out evenly spaced stripes. I guess that is evidence of the dent sharing but I wouldn’t say that it is at all noticeable when just looking at the cloth in normal conditions.
It’s ridiculous how excited I am about this “new experience” :-).
Doubled 20/2 cotton tabby in a color called Old Gold. I lightly tacked down a doubled hem before wet-finishing.
Finnweave in 20/2 cotton
If you have read my most recent posts you will know about the bag project which grew from the fact that I had woven a strap in a 3-color reversible pebble weave structure.
This gold cloth is part of that project. Using the gold thread that I was given by my friend Betty is a stash-busting project by someone who does not typically accumulate stash. Betty gave me a large cone of luscious Old Gold and a much smaller one of black. The went together beautifully for a Finnweave cowl that I wove.
Pieces of the bag project coming together.
But now I am pretty much out of the black thread and with nothing else in my stash to combine with the gold, I decided to use it to weave the lining for the bag. Let’s get one thing straight first…I am pretty much always looking for a reason/excuse to weave. I don’t need any of this stuff. I just like to weave, especially if it gives me the opportunity to learn something new. With dwindling stash, long drawn-out projects are good value. So, I decided to weave the lining which no one will see once it’s inside the bag except me. Yet, I know that I will feel very happy every time I open the bag and that glow of gold greets me. This also gives me a chance to learn about “drop-in” linings….elementary stuff for sewers…totally new to me! Also, I have only ever cut my own dense warp-faced cloth. Cutting into this tabby will also be a new experience.
I also wove a wrist cuff in Finnweave using the gold and black 20/2 cotton. I love being able to wear and carry small samples of the structures and techniques I use this way.
And I have been able to add “fusible interfacing” to my Spanish vocabulary (entretela adhesiva) and enjoy the excuse to poke around the little hole-in-the-wall fabric shops and stalls in one of the nearby street markets. It’s always amusing getting the vague directions to the right stall from the various vendors who don’t carry the item in question…a vague wave of the arm accompanied by más allá, al frente, or a la vuelta. Finally, one gentleman, seeing the look on my face after having already received several no hay responses and a half dozen directions that had led me nowhere, told me to go to the store with the red pick-up truck parked outside. Bingo!
An intermesh strip of cloth which will be the sides of the bag. It sits on top of the Old Gold lining.
It was also interesting to learn from renowned weaver Bonnie Tarses via a Facebook post that she likes to use doubled warp and weft in tabby because it makes for cloth that is more supple. And there…I learned another “something new”(after I had already woven the cloth). Bonnie kindly gave me permission to share her photo of the beautiful tabby cloth that she has just taken off the loom in doubled 8/2 cotton warp and weft.
Bonnie Tarses
And so, it’s back to boiling my hand-spun cotton singles and hand-stitching this bag together. Both activities are a combination of online research, video classes on cotton spinning and a good ol’ dose of “make it work”.
Why “Bubble, Bubble”? Because I seem to have spent more time at the pot dyeing yarn and boiling my hand spun cotton than anything else these last days. And that’s okay. I can stand there stirring and thinking about what I am going to weave, or continue with the Bananagrams game that is always in progress nearby. I kept a careful watch over the cotton because I am notorious for letting things boil dry. I don’t know how many times I have stepped away from rice, beans or quinoa on the stove to weave “just a few rows” only to be alerted to a dry pot by the smell of something burning. The pencil cups that I showed in my last post have been working out well for holding these samples of my newbie hand-spun cotton singles under tension. I got a few suggestions from Facebook friends for alternatives when I start producing larger quantities….mostly involving pvc pipe.
I put my juggling balls into the cups to weigh them down and then set them on the window sill to dry. The wind was so strong yesterday that I had to go down the three flights of stairs twice to retrieve everything from the garden below. Versions 2 and 3 seem to to be similar enough to use in a piece of sample weaving. I am not ready to go with the sheer-cloth-and-sizing idea yet. I am thinking of using these samples in my finest reed to weave some balanced plain-weave, something along the lines of this silk sample that I wove some time ago….
I’d like to weave in some tufts of very lightly twisted colored cotton into the cloth now and then. I have a few shades of natural brown and a bit of green. I saw a lovely scarf on Instagram that had been created like that with tufts of wool.
That’s taking second place on the to-do list because I am first weaving fabric for the bag to accompany the three-color pebble strap that I recently finished. It’s funny that this whole project has sprung out of the desire to weave something in the reversible three-color pebble structure and use it in something that would allow both faces to be seen. A bag strap is what I came up with. And so, here comes the bag fabric.
I over-dyed some pale green yarn to this dark blue, hadn’t thought through the project properly at all, and ran out while creating the warp. So then I had to over-dye some pale yellow to finish the warp and have enough for the sides and separate flap. Of course, I can’t expect for a minute to be able to create the same shade of blue when over-dyeing yellow instead of green but this is what happens when you are working with diminishing stash. You either have to plan more carefully around the quantities that you have or just go making it up as you go along! I am usually much more in tune (to the extreme!) with the former of the two strategies and it is interesting finding myself being fairly content with this more carefree approach this time.
I found out when I dyed cotton black for the scarf project above, when it was already too late, that not all blacks are alike. You can probably make out the two strips of darker black in the cloth. They could have been placed at the two selvedges if only I had noticed earlier. What chance do I have, then, of perfectly replicating blue on two different base colors? At least this time I was aware that there was going to be a difference and I placed strips of the “new” blue on the left and right edges of the warp to balance things out. I am weaving in warp-faced plain weave and will add a hummingbird and a flower motif in supplementary weft to one lower corner of the front of the bag and perhaps another pairing in the center of the back. The cloth needs to be fairly “quiet” because the strap is so lively.
I christened the Weaver’s Journal that I had covered with my woven cloth. I haven’t even tried to make my notes neat and pretty because I knew that the effort would not last long at all. Besides, I kind of like my scribblings. 🙂
I haven’t made notes in the Dyer’s Notebook yet because my latest dyeing has been of the more desperate never-to-be-repeated variety.
My Weaver’s Journal covered with cloth in 30/2 silk and patterned with supplementary weft.
This kind of stash scrounging reminds me of when I weaving Navajo-style tapestry pieces in southern Chile in the mid 1990s. I had brought back some Wilde and Woolly wool from the States and topped up my stash some months later via mail order. The rich “Ganado Red” color that I had ordered didn’t arrive. Instead, I got this kind of dusty pink. It worked out okay. I gave this piece to my brother when he visited here and he keeps it under glass on his dining table.
The way the diamond pattern was meant to be aligned.
After that, I decided that I wouldn’t order more yarn by post and that I would only buy in person. I wove several pieces and eventually the bottom of the yarn barrel was in sight with no plans to travel to the States. I had to get into “make-do” mode with whatever I could scrape together. I didn’t want to stop weaving.
Joanne Hall had written a book on tapestry weaving. I had a used copy and I loved some of the Mexican patterns that she had included. The main motif of intertwined black and white lines was meant to be woven as a diamond shape sitting within a square. The square was supposed to be positioned with horizontal top and bottom and vertical sides surrounding the diamond motif….that is, not like I had woven it on the loom.
Because I didn’t have enough of any one color to weave the whole surrounding square, I had to swivel the pattern 45 degrees. And I didn’t have enough yarn to be able to weave the two inner motifs in the same colors. It didn’t look like the picture in the book and I just wasn’t crazy about it when it was done. When I moved to Bolivia, it got left behind in Chile hanging on the wall of the little cottage in which I had lived. I wonder where it is now. Of course, I wish I had it now. What you see here are photos of the only photo I have of it.
The way I had to align it on the loom.
I remember tapping away at a calculator to plan out this piece so that the pattern would fit into the four-selvedged limits and use just the right amount of yarn. My boyfriend at the time asked me if that was how the Navajo weavers plan their pieces….with a calculator…lol. I had obviously put more thought into planning this around my available yarn quantities than my current bag project!
And then I threw almost all the left- over bits and pieces into a pot, dyed them red and wove one last piece….another odd piece with, naturally, multiple shades of red. I got to use the Navajo saddle-blanket structure at the top and bottom of this four-selvedged piece before running out of the tan color and then filled the center with plain weft-faced pattern. Sound familiar? Here I am in 2022 doing the same thing with dye to make the most of my supplies. I like the challenge. I like just making do with what I have on hand.
The twined edging tassels in the corners were sewn down to make the piece less interesting to my cat (who had chewed off the tassels on one of my other pieces as well as a chunk of corner!)
From the archives! 1996 and weaving with my backstrap warp attached to the bottom of the Navajo-style vertical frame.
Of course, it didn’t matter in the end that I had run out of tapestry wool yarn for weft because shortly after all this I went to Peru for the first time and it all became about warp-faced weaving on backstrap looms when I returned, using locally available cotton and the high-twist wool singles that I had been using for warp for my Navajo-style pieces. It all got used! My Navajo-style loom was only used as the anchor point for the end of my backstrap-loom warps after that, except for a couple of quite wide warp-faced pieces which I wasn’t yet ready to handle on a backstrap loom.
Now I am looking at a tiny amount of powder at the bottom of my pot of red-blue dye. My friend Mog had given me some of her supply the last time I was in Australia and it’s almost all gone now. That’s okay. I had a good run with it in some fun projects mixing it to get a variety of blues….
I enjoyed creating different intensities of blue on 30/2 silk for this book cover project.
More fun with dyeing blue on this 60/2 silk ikat warp.
I still have a good amount of a green-blue (again, thank you, Mog) as well as a teal, so who knows what might come of that.
I am reminded that I have credit with Southwest Airlines that expires in September and an empty Traveler’s Diary. But everything is still so unclear and confusing, isn’t it? In the meantime, I am trying to coax my book-writing mojo back into existence. I made a good start but a tripod-fail let me down. I finally got a new one…no excuses now! Please check out the eight books I have published so far at Taproot Video. They’re available as PDFs to download as well as in the form of spiral-bound books. Here are a few…
My relationship with Time seems to be changing. I know that I am not the only one who got lost during these last two strange years, overcome by the feeling that time was speeding by… weeks and months merging into a hazy uneventful blob. Even now I struggle to separate 2020 from 2021. But I just recently realized that the passage of time is slowing down for me and starting to resemble something like normal, something recognizable from the pre-pandemic days. The calendar map that I have always carried in my mind’s eye is starting to reappear.
I resist the urge to go back and try to account, in terms of productivity, for the 24 months that have passed since we first went into lock-down here in Bolivia. Today marks the anniversary of the confirmation of the first known Covid case here. That any of us achieved anything meaningful at all is cause for celebration. And now I am talking as if it is all over. Of course, I know it isn’t, but there is definitely a change in my state of mind.
Three-panel wall hanging: Textile Trails
On the theme of Time, I am reminded of a question that I am very often asked when I show my woven work….. “How long did it take to weave that?”
I am trying very hard to think back to a time before I started weaving to see if perhaps I would have asked this question myself to a craftsperson and what might have motivated me to do so. Would it be because I was thinking of trying to make the object myself and needed to see if the time involved was worth my effort? Or perhaps I would want to know if the asking price for the object reflected the amount of time that had gone into creating it.
In any case, I find it a very difficult question to answer. How long does it take?…As long as it takes! I honestly don’t keep track. I don’t sell my work and so I need not consider time in order to fairly price an item. I am not weaving to a deadline. There is usually no exhibit for which the work has to be completed…the three pieces above were an exception as I had woven them for an exhibit at the ANWG conference in 2015. I would probably have to go back to my blog posts if I wanted to give an accurate answer in terms of the number of weeks on which I worked on a project. However, I would be at a complete loss when it came to the total number of hours.
I met a craftsperson some years ago and witnessed his response to the question…
“How long did it take to make that?”
His response:
A l i f e t i m e
I can only imagine that he very rightly considers that a lifetime of his accumulated knowledge, experience, skill and inspiration went into this and every piece that he has completed. I love his response.
So, I am willing to pour as much time and effort as is required into every piece I weave. There have been a couple of times, though, when I just wanted to get the thing done! One such time was when I had volunteered to weave six lanyards for a conference. The long piece of half-inch band with its small repeated motif did not excite me at all when the time came to weave it. I installed eleven sets of string heddles to move it along. I didn’t have to do any pick-up and that rather unique experience suddenly made the project very interesting as I came up with ways to remember which heddle came next in the sequence.
What I don’t like, is making silly mistakes and wasting time. Okay, I will admit that a mistake is always a learning experience and valuable for that reason but sometimes you just turn around and do the same old thing again!
A circular warp for a cotton scarf
Like the time I was using a coil rod for the first time on a circular warp many years ago. The coil rod (sometimes called rolling stick) is the uppermost stick in this cotton circular warp and I was using it because it seemed like an important part of a circular warp set-up. At the time, I didn’t fully understand its purpose. One of my aims for using it in this project was to figure that out. While trying to move the rod as weaving progressed, I mishandled and broke the coil rod. I did it once…I learned something. I did it a second time…I cursed…but then I learned some more. The third time I broke it, it got flung to other side of the room and I continued without it. It was then that I started understanding its purpose because it was very much aware that it was a different experience weaving without it. And so I was happy to sit patiently and install it once again.
(Note that I am talking about circular warps here. I do, however, continue to use the coil rod on both circular and single-plane warps if I am doing plain weave with cotton or silk (materials that have little to no stretch). I have written a lot about this tool in blog posts over the years. If you are interested in learning more, you could start here.)
Maybe this is something that we don’t consider when we ask the craftsperson how long it took to complete the project. Do we want them to include the time used to fix “oopsies”? After all, the fixing of the oopsies adds to that lifetime of experience about which my craftsman friend was speaking.
The first six inches of this warp were woven and unwoven twice before I found just the right weight of material for the supplemental patterning weft.
While the amount of time needed to weave a piece is not important to me, I am always interested in learning about techniques that weavers have developed to help make the whole process more efficient, like the use of multiple string heddles and pattern storage sticks, for example. However, there is one thing that I have always been a bit stubborn about and that is the use of sizing.
In weaving, sizing is a substance that is used to coat warp threads that are hairy or “sticky”, or have other characteristics that make it difficult to achieve clean sheds. Basically, it smooths the threads. I resist using it purely because of the “ick” factor. That is, I hate to think of the mess of dunking my warp into a bath of starchy goo and I don’t think I would enjoy the feel of the stiffened coated threads as I weave. Keep in mind that my hands are usually in almost constant contact with the threads as I weave pick-up patterns. Of course, it all washes off in the end and you are left with the original softness of the yarn but yech, I just don’t like the sound of it. I prefer to stay away from the sizing and just adjust my loom-operating methods instead.
Adapting my methods to the materials in use: I was able to weave with Knit Picks Palette….a soft, loosely-plied wool and create a four-selvedged piece.
My approach when working with sticky materials is to adapt the way I operate the loom…take a lot of care when opening sheds by working the threads in sections, using my finger tips to help release the grip a thread may have on its neighbors. I advance the warp more often so that sticks and heddles are not sitting on and abrading any one section for too long, causing it to shed and pill. Yes, it does slow things down but, as I said, I am not in any hurry. I suspect that using a sized warp on a floor loom is a different experience in that the weaver isn’t necessarily handling the warp threads during the weaving part of the process.
Another way to avoid using sizing might be to add extra twist to commercial wool yarn to make it smoother. My weaving teachers here create relatively smooth hand-spun yarn by using a high amount of twist. They also add twist to the synthetic thread that they buy in the market. This kind of yarn creates a certain kind of cloth. The thing is that I don’t always want that kind of cloth.
Two wool lap-size blankets that I wove using Mora yarn. It’s worsted spun which helps somewhat with the stickiness issue. I didn’t add any extra twist.
My latest project has been with mill-spun wool singles….sticky stuff. I could get a tiny heddle shed which I would then proceed to open further with my fingers. I didn’t want to use sizing. I didn’t want to ply it or add extra twist. I love the way it feels. The supplementary weft is my own plied hand-spun wool.
From the 27-inch warp I got 21 1/2 inches of cloth and my string heddles came up remarkably clean.
I always love the way the back of these supplementary-weft patterned pieces look.
There was a small amount of curl in the cloth at its opposing corners. Folding it to make a pouch for my phone and edging it with a patterned tubular band took care of that.
The fresh warp in the above photo was for a small closure tab. I used my plied hand-spun for that. I used a dense structure of three-span floats (intermesh) to produce a sturdy band…hence the two sets of string heddles.
The finished pouch.
I wet-finished the small piece on the right under the sword. The warp threads shifted slightly closer together, I took measurements, but I didn’t notice any real difference in the feel of the cloth. I didn’t wet-finish the pouch piece as I was a little concerned about color run in the supplementary weft. I had bought that roving already colored. As the supplementary weft is tightly wedged between the two layers of warp in several places, I don’t think that even a color-catcher cloth would stop the color from bleeding onto the grey wool. If wet-finishing had made a significant difference to the way the cloth felt, I may have reconsidered.
I hope that I get a chance to show this, the first of many projects in the mill-spun wool singles, to the farming couple whose sheep provided the fleece. My original plan had been to use this yarn for a shoulder bag project. I would dye the yarn to match the three-color strap that I had already woven…
I used my plied hand-spun wool for this strap. I don’t feel that I was heavy-handed in the amount of twist I used. The strap lies perfectly flat and the yarn was beautiful to weave with.
However, now that I have seen the cloth that this yarn produces, I can’t bring myself to dye it. I love all the subtle color variations from this blend of natural white and black. I’ll be using it as is perhaps for a pillow cover and will add color with supplementary weft instead.
So, I will turn once again to my Mora yarn for the bag project. I over-dyed a pale green color that I didn’t particularly like to get a dark blue that is close to the strap color. It will be mostly plain blue and with a very narrow strip of three-color pattern in the center. I have used Mora for a bag project before and know that it performs well on the loom as well as with use.
Fabric for a bag with built-in pocket woven with Mora wool.
If you are curious about the Mora yarn, here it is. It’s 20/2 worsted spun and I know that both Vavstuga and Eugene Textile Center carry it in the USA.
One skein of Mora goes a long way. It gives me material to work with for dyeing with cochineal for other projects. It’s taken two years but I finally got some alum. Just before the pandemic I had been out and about looking everywhere for the “precious” stuff…precious only because I suddenly could not find it anywhere. The usual pharmaceutical supply stores weren’t carrying it any more. The little hardware stalls in the market (there are dozens of them) didn’t have it. I tried the Mennonite market because I know that they can and pickle but they told me to go to the pharmaceutical places. The little McCormick jars of alum are not available here either. I am guessing that the Mennonite folk have a massive supply of it at home and are possibly not yet aware of it no longer being available. My friend Dorinda sent me some from Cochabamba a couple of weeks ago.
I have used cochineal in the past to dye my hand spun llama yarn. With an alum mordant I get the crimson color you see in this image.
The stones you see are a mineral that goes by the Quechua name millu. Dorinda sent it along as a bonus. It is not something that is required for dyeing with cochineal but she thought that I might enjoy experimenting with it. In the co-op, they use it to darken colors. It is also sold as a home remedy and it is in those stalls that it is found in the street markets. Now that I know what it is, I will most likely be able to find some here in Santa Cruz although I suspect that the amount Dorinda sent me will go a long way. Maybe I will also dye some silk with cochineal for an ikat project.
These are all time-consuming processes. I am not concerned about the amount of time it takes. If you have ever tried ikat, you will know what I mean by time-consuming. Slow processes are just perfect for someone who is working with dwindling stash!
When I told a friend of mine about having finally got hold of some alum via Cochabamba, he took on the challenge of hunting it down in Santa Cruz and came up with this in a very upmarket store of natural vegan-friendly cosmetics. One large chunk came contained in a cloth bag inside a fancy carry bag as if it were something terribly precious…and yes, the price was precious. The accompanying card shows someone applying it to their armpits. So I guess supplies, at least here in Santa Cruz, have been entirely diverted to the cosmetics industry.
Another “slow” project is my learning to spin cotton on a takli spindle. Version One didn’t have enough twist. Version Two had…you guessed it… what I suspected was too much twist. Version Three, which is in progress, is bound to have some other problem. And on it goes. I love the little takli spindle! And Joan Ruane’s video class on it has been so good. I’ll never forget the time I was with Joan at the Mannings. I had set up a backstrap loom and she had wanted to see what that was all about. I was doing pick-up and her reaction was “Oh my god, it’s slower than tapestry!” This from a woman who spins her own cotton for weaving! She made me laugh. I guess we all have our own feelings about Time.
As for Version Two with it’s crazy amount of twist, I decided to see if it was possible to set the twist on my singles (because that’s how I want to eventually use this thread…as singles) and did some reading about that. I have Stephanie Gaustad’s book on cotton, flax and hemp and there are also online resources about simmering and immersion. The trickiest part was having to immerse the thread under tension. My solution for that is a bit wacky. It worked for these small samples.
The thread went into the pot tightly wound around these metal mesh pencil caddies. I do want to use this thread as singles so that I can once again try to weave something approximating the sheer cotton cloth that is woven in the Alta Verapaz region of Guatemala. I want the thread to be finer than the hand-spun that I used last time in this piece…
Woven with hand-spun cotton singles that I had bought in Guatemala.
And this is where that icky topic of sizing comes back into it. I will probably give in and size the thread. I wove the above piece using a bamboo reed to maintain sett. The weavers in Alta Verapaz don’t use one and I am curious to know if the stiffening of the thread from the sizing is one of the factors that enables them to maintain the sett without the aid of the reed. I stress ONE of the factors because, of course, their supremely high level of skill gathered from years and years of work is going to be the main contributing factor. In videos, I have been able to hear the sound of their picking stick on the threads. The weavers are in the habit of slowly scraping the pick along the warp threads from selvedge to selvedge right at the weaving line as if, I am guessing, to encourage the threads to remain separated and not drift into warp dominant positions. That sound is not one that I would expect to hear from naked hand-spun cotton. The sizing that is used gives the threads a coating that produces that sound. Perhaps I will need to use sound as my guide when I try this myself.
All time-consuming stuff. But I am not here to just consume time. Hopefully, I will be using it to continue learning. When I recently explained to someone my plans for my own hand-spun cotton, they asked how long it would take before I would be ready to start the weaving. I sensibly replied….years.
