Category: wool

Backstrap Weaving – Seasons

Daylight Savings is over and we continue what feels like a rapid slide into cooler temperatures here in the Blue Mountains. I welcome snuggling under multiple layers on these cold nights but don’t care much for having to climb out from under them in the morning. We didn’t have Daylight Savings time in Bolivia and I was surprised by how long it took for my stomach to adapt! I kept finding myself restless at 11:30am with my stomach complaining that it hadn’t yet been filled. I still do a large cooked lunch in the way to which I’d become accustomed in South America. And that post-lunch drowsiness is hard to kick too. I can’t blame the tropical heat for it any more.

With the cooling temperatures came the rolling down of shirt sleeves and the layering of coats. I’d have to put away all my wrist cuffs for a while.

In their place out came my woven scarves and neck gaiters that I’ve been accumulating all these years. It was never cold enough in Bolivia to wear them. Sometimes I’d take them traveling to the northern hemisphere spring and fall only to drag them out of a packed bag looking like pieces of crumpled rag and too ugly to wear.

The fall temperatures here have been perfect for wearing things like this light cotton scarf that I wove about eight years ago and never ever got to wear.

I wove this with handspun cotton singles that I’d bought in Guatemala back in 2008. I used my bamboo reed to achieve the sheer open look and used the same cotton as supplementary weft to weave in patterns. It’s a style that I had been wanting to try ever since I bought a sample from the Coban area of Guatemala.

I enjoy my woven book cover in naturally dyed silk even more now that I am actually living amongst these colors. I was very spoiled by being able to visit Vermont on the Columbus Day weekend many years ago and experience the fall colors there. It’s nowhere near as stunning here but it feels special because I’m living it rather than just visiting.

This little book along with others that I made is now settled in my new home next to books about textiles from this side of the world, places that perhaps I’ll be able to visit some day.

I finally finished the project in which I used my Bolivian teachers’ handspun wool. That project traveled through an entire year of seasons with me and I named the resulting bag Four Seasons in One Bag. The wool went from the sheep of the central Bolivian highlands, washed in mountain streams, into the hands and spindles of my weaving friends and teachers.

I’m pretty sure that the wool was spun during the October spinning event in 2024 in which my teachers and other ladies in the community compete for prizes to see who can spin the most wool. I bought three balls of the doubled singles and dyed some of it with indigo while I was up in the highlands visiting with Maxima during my last Bolivian summer.

It traveled with me to Australia where I spent some of the winter and spring dyeing it with Australian plant materials. The following summer, I moved here to my new home in the Blue Mountains and started the long task of plying.

While I love spinning with a drop spindle, I can’t say the same for plying. I find it downright tedious and I just wanted the task to finish. I’d ply at my craft group gatherings, on the train, at the Arts Society gatherings, at the spinning and weaving group….it just seemed to go on and on.

When I had just about finished all that plying, an Ashford Wee Peggy spinning wheel together with a bunch of accessories became available on Marketplace at a bargain price and I was able to buy it. There it sits waiting to be spruced up a bit until I next need to ply. Perhaps I’ll use it for spinning too. Who knows. The wheel came with lots of bobbins, a niddy noddy (I’ve never owned one), hand carders (I’d had to leave mine behind in Bolivia), a flicking tool and even an apron. A friend at my spinning group has supplied me with a new spring and hooks to replace rusty ones.

I managed to squeeze in some time at the loom between hiking trips. It took two attempts to wind a warp to my liking from all those fabulous natural dye colors but I had to face the fact that I just wouldn’t be able to get them all into the one piece.
Four seasons motifs in progress. The heddle arrangement may look awkward but it works well. I had seen weavers in Bolivia use similar arrangements for their double weave pieces.

Here’s the finished cloth…

The figures as well as the colors are meant to represent the four seasons. The yarn I had dyed with cochineal just didn’t belong here. It can wait along with the greens for another project.

Once I’d decided that this cloth would be a bag, I set about weaving a strap….

I didn’t want to use the handspun wool as weft for either of these pieces and used instead some unidentified soft and very loosely spun ”stuff’ that a friend had given me. It worked well except for the fact that it was somewhat slippery and wanted every now and then to slip out of the shed at the edges rather than lie there snugly. I’d had that very same experience with luscious alpaca yarn that I’d spun once upon a time.

Then came the usual dilemma of deciding which face of the fabric I preferred. The bag would be lined and so one of the two faces would never be seen again. I knew which face I had decided would be the “good” one. The problem was that when I asked others for an opinion, they always chose the other! I stuck with my original plan, though.

The two faces.
I somehow always find myself on the floor at the planning stage. I didn’t have a choice in Bolivia but I’m in a bigger place now with table space. I still end up on the floor.

I rounded off the flap of the bag…always scary cutting into the cloth…and covered and protected the raw edge with coil stitches. The sides then had to be woven, lining attached and everything sewn together…the most challenging part for me.

Here ‘s the completed bag being displayed at the Blackheath Arts Society members’ Easter exhibition. It was so much fun seeing it out there on display!

I managed to also get it in at the last minute, thanks to a kind friend from my spinning group, to the Hawkesbury Show where it won a blue ribbon. I was never able to enter shows like these when I lived in Bolivia and I am very excited about this ribbon!

A buddy from my craft group went to the show and surprised me with this photo while she was there….

So, you will have gathered that my hand and shoulder are now allowing me to be busy at the loom. The one-year anniversary of my accident has passed and things are improving. My wrist at the carpal tunnel level is still clogged and blocked by scar tissue which I don’t believe will ever stretch. My hand is a block of wood first thing in the morning but here I am typing, weaving, spinning cotton and plying. My shoulder is thawing very slowly and my range of reach out to the side to pass shuttle and insert sword is improving.

I am, however, in easy reach of all of this beauty and I just have to ask myself every day what I have done to deserve it!

I’m in a couple of hiking groups and get to go out at least twice a week.

I wonder if some Blue Mountains scenery and colors will start creeping into my work. I have a long-ish list of things I want to weave, some of which I spent a great deal of time designing last year when I couldn’t weave at all. I remember starting out charting with my left hand and the great deal of concentration that was required to fill within the lines!

I’ve actually started sampling for that large project now that I’ve decided on the thread that I will use. I need to get an ends per inch reading and also make sure that the proportions of the woven figures match those of my charted ones.

The “real” project will be much wider than this.

I started off the year weaving various narrow items just to make sure that I didn’t overdo things, Last year I had jumped back into weaving too early and messed up my shoulder as a result.

The Canberra Guild of Spinners and Weavers asked me to weave bookmarks/award ribbons for their AGM. This seemed like a great way to start the year even though they weren’t due until March. It’s extremely rare for me to take on commissioned work but the guild folk had made it easier by choosing and providing the yarn and being very specific about the layout. I got to choose the patterns and I had a lot of fun with that. I used the structure that I call Andean Pebble Weave.

I wove a name tag for myself once again in the structure that I call Andean Pebble Weave which produces a quirky style of lettering. The lettering on the award ribbons is less so because the letters are capitals and well spaced. I have joined so many new groups up here that it is a struggle to remember names. At least this tag will help them to identify me and then I can embarrass myself by not being able to identify them in return!

I live above the Aboriginal Health Services office and one day while chatting with the ladies, I admired their lanyards with their indigenous art print. The next thing I knew, one had been popped into my mail box. So, I replied with a woven keyfob. I love these kinds of exchanges.

I had no trouble at all finding a place to set myself up for weaving on my backstrap loom. The previous resident left one of those huge Ikea book cases with 25 cube spaces. I have it filled now with cubes holding pretty much everything I brought over with me from Bolivia. I place C clamps on the edge of the lower shelves and can place my warp beam behind them. It’s a good sturdy anchor point.

Here I sit weaving with some of my late mother’s treasured possessions. She would have had to make the tough decisions about what to take and what to leave behind, just as I had when leaving Bolivia, when she left India in 1962 to come and live in Australia. These things had been in storage waiting for me since my mum died in 2013.There’s a biscuit tin with images of places of interest in Bombay, a pressed tin trinket tray with images of Hindu deities and her sewing basket…all selected by her as being too precious to leave behind. I love that I am able to have them here near me as I weave.

And…one more thing I wove….I converted the pouch I’d made from my handspun llama yarn into a phone carrying pouch for my hikes by weaving and adding a strap…

Between weaving and hiking and other activities, I try to turn this flat, which had been left in a somewhat shabby state, into a cosy home. This town of Katoomba in which I live is Op Shop heaven and I have acquired most of my things there or via Marketplace. Op Shop is the Australian term for a thrift or charity store. There have been a few flat-pack furniture purchases too. Assembling them on my own made me feel like I was playing a game of Twister.

Would you believe I got these Indonesian ikat pieces at a local op shop for the equivalent of US$ 3.50 each?!

I couldn’t believe that after having admired the Indonesian ikat textiles for so many years, particularly the ones from Sumba, that I should run across these in an op shop?!

Next on the agenda is dyeing with lichen. A friend gave me a jar of lichen that she had collected from fallen branches on the coast. It’s been soaking in a mix of cloudy ammonia and water for almost two weeks now and the color it’s releasing is amazing. I still have some of the Bolivian wool left. I just have to wash it and then give this color a go. I hope to find lichen locally that will perhaps produce other colors although I doubt that anything could be quite as astounding as this.

This photo was taken after one week. It has developed even further since.

The sun is streaming in through my sunroom windows and I feel so guilty for being indoors on such an utterly gorgeous day. But at the same time, I have been feeling bad for having neglected my blog for so long.

I want to thank everyone for making purchases before Taproot Video closed at the end of March. I really appreciate your support and hope to have the PDFs back up for sale elsewhere soon. I thought that launching a new publication would be a good way to introduce my new point of sale but I don’t see that happening quite quickly enough. Hopefully it won’t be too much longer before I have my publications available for sale once more. The flurry of purchases at the end of Taproot Video will help keep me afloat until then.

For those who don’t see my blog banner on their particular device, here’s what it says….Stay tuned.

Backstrap Weaving – My Books!

My Books, My Books, My Books…..I have been researching my options for a new home for my books between settling into my new home, finding new community, rehabbing my frozen shoulder and wrist, which is all stuck up with scar tissue again and, and, and…..!!!. So….I haven’t settled on anything yet…. but am getting close!

If you have no idea of what I am talking about, you may have somehow missed the announcement emails that the folks at Taproot Video, who sell my books, have been sending to their entire customer base these last months telling everyone that the website will be closing on March 31, 2026.

No need to panic if you’re hearing this for the first time.

If you’ve purchased one of my books in PDF form and downloaded it to your device, there’s nothing you need to do. If you haven’t yet downloaded it/them, you need to do so before the website closes. You have until March 31.

If you’ve purchased the PDFs that come with supplemental video clips, you don’t need to do anything either. You will continue to have access to the videos by clicking on the link to the folder of clps that you’ll find in the chapter titled Videos. Access to the clips will continue after the Taproot Video website closes.

There are four titles that come with clips:

  • Andean Pebble Weave on Inkle Looms
  • Warp-faced Double Weave on Inkle Looms
  • The Eye-pattern Tubular Band and Other Decorative Finishing Techniques
  • The Eye-pattern Tubular Band of the Peruvian and Boliviain Highlands

ACTION NEEDED FOR THE FOLLOWING:

If you purchased a printed copy of one of my books that comes with supplementary video clips (‘those listed above), you will need to download the clips to your device before March 31 if you haven’t already done so.

Access to these clips is provided via a link on the Taproot Video website. Naturally, that link will no longer be available to you after the site closes. So, if you haven’t downloaded the clips yet, please go to taprootvideo.com and…..

  • Log in.
  • Click on the Purchased Items tab.
  • Click on the title of book you purchased. That will take you to a page with the link to the folder of videos.
  • Clck on the link.
  • Download the videos to your device.

These instructions are also outlined in the books themselves in the chapter titled VIDEOS.

There are only two or three titles now at Taproot Video that have remaining copies of the printed books. I won’t be selling printed books again after Taproot Video closes. My books in PDF form will soon be available elsewhere and I’ll let you know as soon as that’s up and running.

In the meantime, yes, I have been weaving! And so, I ‘ll finish this quick post by showing you what I’ve been up to using the handspun wool I purchased from my Bolivian weaving friends in the highlands in January last year. You may remember that we dyed some of it with indigo while I was there. I dyed the rest in Australia last year with local plants. I love that my new community of friends in my transition home up on the mid north coast contributed so much to that project with their contributions of mango leaves, silver dollar eucalyptus leaves, local info on where to find a peppercorn tree, onion skins and rusty nails for my iron water.

This a celebration of connections made in what I’ve left behind and where I now find myself. The images depict the four seasons considering that now that I live in a place that truly experiences all four. We had two at best in my tropical home in Bolivia! I’m going to make this into a bag so I can carry those connected memories with me.

Bye-bye Taproot Video and thank you.. Thank you to all those who have purchased my publications over the years and supported me through following my blog as well as leaving me kind comments and reviews here and on my other social media pages.The blog will continue. I have a lot saved up to post! You’ll be hearing again from me soon.

Backstrap Weaving – Putting it All Together.

This post is about the second expandable folder that I’ve been working on….the weaving, the stitching, the ironing and the gluing. I’m posting all this as much for my own future reference as for the folks who have asked me for an explanation. I have written my notes in my weaving book but there aren’t accompanying photos as there are here. If the process doesn’t interest you, I hope that you will at least enjoy scrolling through and seeing the photos in this post.

The folder is only 99% finished because my box of random buttons that I’ve picked up here and there over the years is now living in Australia. Silly me hadn’t thought far enough ahead to select one or two to bring back to Bolivia with me for this project. I’ve never actually been button hunting here in Santa Cruz. Who knows what I might discover.

The button-and-loop closure that I used for the first folder. I’d like to use two such closures on the new folder, one on each of the plain weave side panels, as this second folder is going to be quite stuffed full of charts.

What did I learn from this project?…..that the cotton fabric I bought for the stitched shibori project that I planned to combine with my woven cloth shrinks a heck of a lot in the hot dye bath. I had to adjust my overall folder design to accommodate that. I’ll keep that in mind for future projects.

In my last post I showed you how different the two faces of this cloth turned out…both attractive in their own way. I eventually decided on using this bolder face for the folder project.
First things first…finish the main pattern fabric. At this point I was celebrating passing halfway.

Next came the weaving of the plain-weave side panels. I chose to weave these separately as the wool singles are particularly grabby in plain weave and I need to operate the loom in a certain way to minimize the amount of abrasion. The sheds are much easier to open when I work with warp floats in the pattern area and so I find that it’s an overall smoother and more efficient operation to just weave the plain and patterned areas separately.

I prefer to weave the two strips separately rather than as one long band which I then cut in two. That saves me having to set up to accommodate the longer warp in my limited weaving space. It does result in a bit more waste, though.

The woven pieces were then ready to assemble into one wide piece for the folder.

Just as I had done for the first folder, I joined the three panels using the cross-knit-loop stitch that my Vietnamese backstrap loom teachers use to join panels for skirts and blankets.

I hemmed the completed piece and lined it with my stitched shibori fabric. I also inserted two pieces of stiff card between the woven fabric and the lining….one for each half…..and added a line of sewing across the center of the piece as well, thus keeping the two cardboard pieces separate. I stitch by hand and I love doing this kind of straightforward stitching. At this point I discovered that the amount of stitched shibori fabric that remained was not going to be enough for my original construction plan. Well, we just have to adjust and make it work, don’t we?

These will be the fan-folded pieces that make the expandable sides of the folder. I use two for each side…one for each half… and join the two halves together as the very last step of the process.

The sides of my first folder extend all the way from bottom to top…

You can see the line in the middle of the fan-folds where the two halves are eventually glued together.

In order to fit the full height of the folder I needed 11″ of length for each piece of shibori fabric. I only had enough fabric for 9 1/2″. It’s more than enough to contain the sheets of charting paper that will be housed within the folder so it’s not a big deal…still, I think the side panels look much nicer if they can extend all the way to the top of the folder. It’s hard to believe that the cotton cloth shrank so much in the dye bath. I’m wondering if I perhaps failed to take into account seam allowance when I originally measured out the cloth. I didn’t take notes!

I ironed fusible interfacing onto the reverse of the four stitched shibori pieces and then created the fan folds. This cotton cloth is quite a bit heavier than the fabric that I used on the first folder and I had to coax it into holding nice crisp folds. It really didn’t want to.

And now, this is where it all starts to get a bit fiddly and I’m afraid that my photos aren’t great. I hope that my descriptions don’t sound as clumsy to you as they do to me!

The four fan-folded pieces are then sewn to the inside of the folder. The first folded section in each is sewn down flat along the the edges of the folder. That piece of cardboard is only there for the photo to help distinguish the folded pieces from the background lining cloth.

And now, out comes the iron and things get even fiddlier! I have a burn on the inside of my wrist to prove it. The next step is about inserting the cardboard dividers. Here’s a photo of the sides and dividers in position in the finished folder….

Think of the side pieces as being folded into a series of valleys and mountains. The dividers extend across the folder from mountain peak to mountain peak. There are two mountain peaks on each half of each side.

I wouldn’t be at all surprised if you come up with a much better way to do this which will have me slapping my forehead, but this worked well for my first folder and I haven’t since been able to come up with another option.

I cut five pieces of stiff card (8″ tall) and twenty 8 x 1 1/2″ strips of heavy fusible interfacing. I ironed about two thirds of the width of each interfacing strip to the two edges of each card, one to the upper face and one to the lower.

I hope this photo gives you the idea. This isn’t the tricky part, by the way!

My cardboard divider pieces now look like they are edged with an “open jaw” of interfacing ready to clamp down on and enclose something. They need to be ironed onto the fan folds so that they grip the mountain peaks. Yep, that’s the fiddly bit. For the most part it works really well, especially if you manage to keep your body parts out of the way of the iron. I used Wellbond glue for any parts that weren’t quite within reach of the iron. It’s good stuff and works really well. However, I prefer risking the iron to the mess of the glue. Plus the glue requires a much longer “cure” time than the ironed interfacing.

This process will utilize four of the five pieces of card. The fifth gets inserted at the end when you join the two halves of the side panels together. I used the Wellbond glue for this and could then sit back and give it the required amount of time to cure before placing my pile of pattern charts into their new home.

You can see the center join which forms another mountain. The interfacing tabs on the last cardboard divider are glued in and sandwiched between the two sections.
All I need to do now is braid some loops and find two nice silver buttons.

That just about finished off my supply of Petaluma wool. I have some left to use in my next venture into dyeing with cochineal which could well be my next project. I’ll be able to weave a (very) little something with it. If not that, I’ll weave cotton ikat cloth, using my handspun, and make another stitched shibori project for a wallet.

And here’s a reminder that Dorinda is in the States and will be able to mail orders of beautiful cloth and products created by my weaving teacher, Maxima, and the other ladies in the co-op they operate in the central Bolivian highlands. She can do this until December 6. The pieces ae made from the weavers’ own hand-spun and naturally-dyed wool. Take a look at the gorgeous range of colors they are able to create from local dye plants and cochineal. Finished products are available as well as just the cloth on its own for you to use in your own sewing projects. These are snippets of pieces that I have bought over the years.

You can contact Dorinda directly at dkdutcher@hotmail.com or via the PAZA Bolivia blog. I hope you’ll consider making a purchase for yourself or friends for this holiday season. And many thanks to those who have already done so. Dorinda keeps me updated!

Backstrap Weaving – Expanding Skills

It’s just a short one this time to show my most recent finished product.

One panel of three that I wove for this project using wool singles in a three-color version of the structure I call Andean Pebble Weave..

I really enjoyed weaving this piece but I think I enjoyed even more figuring out how to use this fabric to make the expandable folder for my pattern charts.

I had woven more grey fabric to add to the sides of this central panel….

Then came the decorative stitching to connect the three pieces. I chose the “quietest” of the various stitches that I’ve been shown by my Bolivian teachers. This particular stitch is used as an edging by my Bolivian teachers. I was also taught it in Peru by the gentleman who taught me sling braiding. He uses it to edge the cradle section of the sling. I stitched it flat in this case in the way my backstrap loom teachers from Vietnam use it. They use cotton. I used wool which I think is more forgiving in that it is better at disguising inaccuracies.

This stitch can be found in some embroidery books as Van Dyke Stitch.

I lined the piece and inserted sturdy card between the layers. I had an old calendar from 2012 with sturdy card pages that my sister-in-law had made for me using photos of my weavings. It’s made with such high quality materials that I’ve been keeping it until the years can roll around and match 2012 so that I can use it again. Well, it’s too bad because now it’s been cut up for this project. The fact that I had written lots of notes on the calendar back in 2012, making it less re-usable, helped me make the decision to sacrifice it.

Then came time to construct the expandable innards and figure out how, once constructed, I was going to stitch it into the folder. There was a lot of back-and-forthing on this.

In the end, I stitched part of it in and then went building the rest in two halves. I glued them together in the final step. Still, it was fiddly and quite awkward at times….but fun! The center fold in the fabric fan is where the two halves were joined. Here it is finished…

I used cotton lining fabric…you may recognize this fabric from some of my other recent projects. I don’t have a fabric stash and it was just pure luck that this print with its little red and green flowers and leaves suited this project so nicely.

The dividers within the folder are made from the same cut-up calendar. There are six pockets and they are currently holding my supply of blank charts. I haven’t yet sorted through my drawn pattern charts and I’ve actually decided that they need a folder of their own…..that’s how much I enjoyed this project! Plus it gives me another excuse to weave something.

A button and braided loop have completed the project.

And so, in preparation for the next folder project, I’ve dyed more of my Petaluma wool singles yarn and am currently deciding on the pattern. I’ll spend time on that. All the number crunching has been done. I already know all the measurements… what size to cut the dividers and the strips of adhesive interfacing that hold them in place, for example, the ideal warp length and width and the number of ends per inch I need in both plain weave and warp-float pattern to achieve that width.

Speaking of width and expandable projects….I’ll include a photo here a little further down the page that I took back when I was weaving the paisley fabric for the larger of my two box-like purses. This is to give you some tips on how to prevent having the width of your cloth expand as you progress.

I always weave a sample when I am about to use new-to-me yarn or if I am going to use a known yarn in a new structure. I get it all figured out and write the ends-per-inch numbers in my notebook so that once I have the warp on the loom I know how to distribute the threads to get the correct width. In warp-faced weaving there is no reed or other implement to hold the threads in a fixed spacing.

Distributing the threads evenly across the beams takes me some time and a lot of measuring and even so, sometimes I don’t get it quite right. I might find that a supplementary-weft motif on the right-hand side of the cloth is more robust than the same one on the left. The overall width of the cloth might be correct but the threads are sitting just that little bit closer together on the left than they are on the right. It can be tough to manage with hundreds of ends of very fine thread! This experience leads me to appreciate even more the skill of backstrap-loom weavers in traditional weaving cultures when I look at the cloth they produce.

The leaves on this piece varied according to how closely the warp threads were spaced in different areas. It’s just one of the challenges of doing warp-faced weaving on a backstrap loom.

The distribution of threads will depend on the kind of structure to be woven. Naturally, threads will be more closely spaced in a section of warp-float pattern than in a plain warp-faced section, for example. If you’ve figured from your sample that fifty ends give you an inch, it’s not enough to check that a section of fifty ends measures an inch. You don’t want twenty-five of those ends to give you three-eighths of an inch and the rest five-eighths. I fiddle around with this a lot before I throw the first shot of weft. This next picture shows how one can easily be tricked about width if you haven’t first woven a sample and done the math.

Outside of my sampling notes, the way the threads lie along the cross sticks is the best indication of how wide this warp wants to be. But even so, the figures in my notebook will more often than not tell me that I need to spread the threads even more before I can start weaving. I have to trust those figures even though my eyes are telling me otherwise.

In the photo I am settling all the warp threads neatly along the beam. The section on the right has been settled, thread by thread, so that none are overlapping. This enables me to create the neatest possible selvedge. You can see that the groups on the left clearly haven’t been settled yet. Once I have made my heddles, those cross sticks are removed and that width reference is lost. See how much narrower the first section of threads is along the beam where pairs of threads are positioned one above the other rather than side by side as they are along the cross sticks. Without having woven a sample and made notes, or noted the width on the cross sticks, one can be tricked into thinking that this is the correct width for that section.

Maintaining width from start to finish.

Of course, I could start weaving the cloth at that narrower width. It would be a very tight warp-faced fabric compared to what I naturally weave and I’ll be fighting with it the whole way if I want to be able to maintain it. The width will want to expaaaaaand. Knowing what width the fabric wants to be in YOUR hands is the key. It will vary from person to person. In short…..I find it so very important to weave a sample first!

This next folder project will put an end not only to the supply of card from the calendar but also the stash of Petaluma wool. The stash bust is going very well! What’s next on the list?….maybe my handspun cotton singles?

Backstrap Weaving – One Method doesn’t Fit All.

Does one backstrap loom operating method fit all? Definitely not, especially when working with sticky, sticky, mill-spun singles wool. Give it a shot of hairspray some people will say, or coat it in sizing. My reaction is “yuck” (mind you, I’ve never tried it!). My hands are right in there in amongst the threads in the kind of pick-up patterning I do and I like to feel the natural fiber rather than a starchy stiffness or chemical coating.

The process is more meaningful to me than the finished product and I would rather slow down and adapt my method for operating the loom than coat the threads with stuff. (I’m quite sure I’ll try it one of these days, though, as I get further along with weaving with my own handspun cotton singles and will then take all this back).

I don’t want to limit myself to only the smoothest and friendliest of materials that are deemed suitable for warp-faced weaving on a backstrap loom. And so I will occasionally jump in and make the sticky stuff work. I guess in a way I enjoy the challenge as well as the feel of the finished product. Of course much depends on the intended use of the finished product.

This is the mill-spun wool singles yarn that I bought from a farmer while weaving with friends in Petaluma, California.

I have used this wool in three small projects in plain warp-faced weaving so far. It has stood up well in the weaving process and with use. I had yet to use it in any kind of denser warp-float structures, let alone in the three-color structure that I was planning. I figured that I could weave a sample to see how it behaved and then decide if I wanted to take it on for a larger project. I was confident that I could make it work. It just depended on how much work I had to put into making it work. Working with yarn like this usually involves slowing down and gently coaxing unwilling threads to release their sticky hairy grip on their neighbors so that you can get something that resembles a clear shed without damaging the yarn.

Two of the plain-weave projects that I’ve completed with this wool….a travel documents pouch on the left and mobile phone case on the right.

What made things a little trickier was the fact that I dyed some of the yarn. In the hot water the singles sort of poofed up (surely there’s a technical term for this) and didn’t recover when they dried. The un-dyed yarn looked thin and wiry next to it.

I wove a narrow sample in the three-color structure and decided that it would be doable in a wider project. Surprisingly, the threads in the tiny plain-weave borders were ones that complained most with that alarming rasping and tearing sound that they make as their entwined hairy fingers are torn apart. It all sounds very violent, doesn’t it?! But in reality it all has to be done very gently. In the warp-float section, there were far fewer complaints but I still had to work to clear sheds.

I sampled both the reversible and non-reversible versions of the three-color technique and also played with different weights of wool weft. Using the same yarn as weft gave me the best result.

There was a lot of pick-up to be done in my much larger planned pattern flanked by a lot more plain weave. Because operating the loom for the wide plain-weave borders required slower more gentle operation of the loom, I decided to just weave the pattern on its own and to add the sides as separate pieces. That way I could just place all my focus on the pick-up.

Taming the mill-spun singles into a three-color pattern in the structure that I call Andean Pebble Weave.

I’ve woven this three-color structure several times before using Tencel, tapestry wool and my own plied handspun wool and have achieved nice crisp images. The hairiness of the singles yarn gives a much more rustic look to the figures. It grows on you and I love the way it feels.

Using 8/2 Tencel in the same structure.

I had set up my warp with two sets of string heddles and once I had figured out my method for working them with this extra sticky stuff, I was on my way and enjoying seeing the pattern emerge. It’s always good to have multiple ways of adjusting basic methods to suit the kind of material with which you are working.

I didn’t do a whole lot of color flipping on this one, unlike the hummingbird camera strap that I wove in my own handspun. I just flipped to outline some leaves in red rather than white in one part. This wasn’t the kind of design in which I could regularly flip the background color.

The camera strap in which I could play with changing the background color, the hummingbird outline color and filler color. It was a bit brain bending but fun.
A little further along with some cloth already rolled up.

One thing that I always try to do when weaving with wool is advance the warp as often as possible so that the heddles and rods are not abrading one spot for too long.

And here it is finished….

Next came the grey side pieces….

Now to decide on whether to join the three pieces without overlapping them using one of the decorative stitches that I’ve learned from my teachers here, or join them with the tiniest of seams.
The heddles from the two warps remained pretty much fluff-free. The one on the left is from the pattern warp and is discolored. I’m guessing that a fine film of fluff has discolored it.
This little pouch for my pin loom is made up of three pieces joined together with a tiny seam. The center is a piece I wove from my own handspun llama yarn that I was rescuing from an old project. I added sides made from the mill-spun wool singles.
A subtle joining stitch in cotton connecting two panels that don’t overlap. I’d woven a very long band on a circular warp and Karen-style backstrap loom that had been given to me. I cut the band into five pieces and joined them to make a table square.
The completed table square.
The stitch can be decorative as well as functional when worked in a contrasting color. I used it to join the panels of this wool lap blanket that I wove.
Another kind of stitch that my Vietnamese backstrap weaving teachers use. I used it to connect two bands and make a tool bag.
Sometimes the joining stitch can be one of the main features. I used this stitch which was shown to me by one of my teachers in the Bolivian highlands to join two cotton panels that I had woven. Maxima stitches it in many bright and lively colors.
Picture courtesy of PAZA Bolivia shows Maxima’s carrying cloth with its colorful joining stitches.

So, what is this project supposed to be? It will hopefully be the cover for a folder that holds my pattern charts. I just have to figure out how to construct the folder. I want it to have multiple pockets for the various categories of structures and it may need to be expandable.

While I figure that out, I’ll start washing my handspun cotton singles as I have a project in mind for them and I might start preparing the handspun wool I recently got in the market for some cochineal dyeing. We have a run of really high temperatures coming up and I can’t say that I’m keen on having the stove on for these tasks. I don’t have air conditioning. But never mind, there’s always plenty of other fiber-y things to do.

Natural brown handspun cotton singles waiting to be washed. I use these metal mesh pencil cups to hold the thread under tension in the pot.

I’ll just pop in a photo here of the box purse that I was making in my last post. I didn’t show a photo of the open box with its contents. It’s so handy…I love it.

I’m going to leave you with a couple of short videos I took of weavers in Peru working with wide wool warps on their backstrap looms. You will see that some time and effort needs to put into opening the shed-rod shed with the particular kind of warp material they are using. Its not just a matter of drawing the shed rod forward to the heddles and then sliding the two together. The threads don’t smoothly rise and pop through to the other side as you often see happening in the hands of some backstrap loom weavers on Youtube who are using other kinds of friendlier warp material. Those of us who are privileged to be able to work with all kinds of warp materials soon find out that there isn’t just one single method that fits all.