Tag Archives: handspun yarn

Weaving and Other Woolly Things

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I’ve been  checking things off my endless list.

Make buttons. DSC_0944There are over 150 buttons here.DSC_0965Weave more products to take to Fibershed’s Grow Your Jeans event on October 3. DSC_0773This are four shawls using very soft wool from Anderson Ranch.

Deal with sheepskins. I got one batch in and one batch out. At first I got four boxes with 29 sheepskins that were not mine. Those went back to the tannery. DSC_1113Yesterday I got the boxes with my 30 sheepskins and I photographed them for my website (although they aren’t there yet). Not artsy photos, but I  need to show the size and the color and this is how it has worked best for me. In addition I shipped off 42 more sheepskins and am keeping my fingers crossed that I get them back before December. That’s a pretty big investment and I need to be able to sell them before Christmas.

Weave a blanket for a customer using her handspun yarn that she sent me last year. I hate having things hanging over my head. When I was finally ready to get to it I opened the box that I though held her wool. Nope–there was something else in that box. Then I almost panicked wondering if it was possible that her yarn had ended up out in the big yard/estate sale that I had over Labor Day. Fortunately that was not the case.

DSC_0744 I had spent a lot of time thinking about how best to use this yarn. One worry was that using yarns that are very different is likely to result in tension issues and different elasticity in the finished piece (showing up as ruffly places where it should be smooth and flat). I’m glad that I waited to plan this blanket because one of the last emails that I had from the spinner had the word “gradient” in it. That gave me the inspiration for how to wind the warp and weave it.

DSC_0761 I made a gradient from the darkest brown all the way to white in the warp and then I wove with the same pattern. This is double width so this photo shows only the half that goes from dark to mid-brown. The lighter half is underneath. After weaving and unfolding the blanket…

DSC_0887 …this is what you get. This is not a very good photo but I just don’t have a good place to take a photo of a full size blanket spread out. I am really pleased with this piece and am inspired to do some more like it.

One last thing. At Spinners Night Out one of the spinners said that her husband had made a discovery in his bowl of popcorn:popcorn sheep

Close to Home…Post #5 – Mom’s Yarn

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I’ve been writing posts about my show at The Artery in Davis. Here is a link to the first post  that explains the concept.Mom with sheepI used this photo in the show but had a hard time deciding between it and the one below both taken probably in the 1970’s at our place in Cotati, CA where I grew up. Mom and lambHere is the story:

Everyone I know who is a weaver has a yarn stash and I am no exception. My stash includes what I like to think of as “archival” yarns that were spun by my mom years ago. Over the years the odd ball of my own handspun yarn has ended up in the stash that I have accumulated.

Most of the yarn mom spun was from sheep that were the descendants of my brother’s  4-H project (I raised dairy cows and didn’t do anything with sheep back then) and many years later from my flock of sheep. Mom took up the hobby of spinning in the 1970’s as an adjunct to her expert knitting passion. These yarns reflect the lumpy, bumpy style of that era as that was the type of yarn she liked to use in her knitting and later in weaving.

The blankets in this show that are labeled with yarn from “My Mom” are woven by me using these yarns for warp and one of my current yarns for the weft. Pillows and organizers labeled “My Mom” use her handwoven fabric scraps left over from constructing jackets, vests, or blankets.

Mom's yarn Two throws, above and below. All of these blankets have Mom’s yarn as the warp. The challenge with weaving something like this is that all the yarns are of different grist, amount of twist, and elasticity. That can cause waviness (or seersucker effect) in the woven piece. By using small amounts in each place instead of big bands I can minimize the effect, but it doesn’t all go away. There wasn’t enough of any one for weft so I used other yarn for the weft yarns–either my Jacob yarn or other yarn featured in the show.Mom's yarn

Mom's yarnThe next two blankets, above and below.Mom's yarn Mom's yarn Mom's yarn for blankets This is the batch of yarns from which I worked. Not that Mom didn’t spin in color, but for most of the pieces of the show I was trying to stick true to the “local” aspect of source of yarn and dye.Uses fabric leftover from weaving mom's yarn blanket This is a pillow in the show with Mom’s yarn in the warp. This fabric was leftover from a blanket I wove for Katie when she lived in VT. See this post for a photo of that blanket.Pillow with mom's handspun fabricMom also did some weaving. This is fabric that Mom wove of her handspun yarn and I think she used some for a vest for my brother or maybe my uncle.

There will be more blankets to come using more of this yarn.

Three Days of Weaving Classes

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I taught a Chenille Scarf class for the Hangtown Fiber Guild in Placerville on Friday and Saturday. Eight weavers and eight very different scarves. Each is beautiful. You can’t go wrong with chenille. IMG_0093  IMG_0096 Most of the chenille scarves are plain weave, but Joni used clasped weft (that’s where the purple and blue meet in a diagonal line) to create interest in part of the scarf.IMG_0099 IMG_0100 IMG_0102 IMG_0103 IMG_0105 IMG_0106 (1)  Today I taught the second day of the new Spin to Weave class here at the farm.  In the first session a few weeks ago spinners, most of whom had never woven before, had a crash course in weaving terminology and warping technique. They came today with handspun yarn and a sense of adventure.IMG_0109 This is dyed angora warp with a gray weft.IMG_0111 Amy used her yarn from space-dyed fiber from Fiber Confections for warp and a commercial wool weft. The idea was to choose a weft that did not detract from the warp. This one is perfect!IMG_0114 Chris warped with a Jaggerspun Merino yarn and wove a twill with her handspun yarn.IMG_0116This photo doesn’t do Alison’s warp justice. The true color is purple and blue so I’ll have to get a daylight photo later. She warped 18″ wide at 15 epi in her handspun silk. We chose Jaggerspun Zephyr, a fine wool/silk blend for weft.

 

Community Cloth Celebration

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I have posted before about Rebecca Burgess’s Fibershed project. Rebecca made a personal commitment that for a year she would wear only clothes that originated within 150 miles of her front door. Think about it. That’s not an easy task. This project is still ongoing, but yesterday there was a celebration of the project and of  Community Cloth , an effort to build the first farm-based cotton mill in the U.S. To have a viable “Fibershed” there must be a source of fine threads so that we can create cloth for t-shirts, jeans, and “regular” clothes, not just the kind of garments that most of us think of when we knit or weave. It is exciting that it is happening right here in northern California on Sally Fox’s organic cotton farm.

I drove over to Point Reyes Station with 3 friends. Here are some photos of our evening.

The event was held at Toby’s Feed Barn, originally a feed store and still a feed store, but also an event center and gift shop. Chris and Diane and I wandered around town for a little while before the event officially started.

There was great music all evening.

I provided a blanket and a lambskin for the silent auction.

Diane, Chris, and Shelby enjoying before-dinner beverages.

When it was announced that those people wearing their own hand-made garments would be first in line at the food table we all put our outerwear back on.

Check out this bicycle-powered drum carder. The power-source for the new mill will be the sun, not bicycles!

The highlight of the evening was the fashion show. Models wore clothing created by local designers from local fibers for Rebecca’s Fibershed project as well as many natural-colored cotton garments sewn from Sally’s cotton fabric stash. This is the sweater knit from Meridian Jacobs 2-ply yarn. Note the straw-bale runway!

This model is wearing natural-colored cotton garments. The slide show in the background was going on throughout the event. Paige Greene is a fabulous photographer and she, being the daughter-in-law of a fiber grower, has documented the project from it’s inception.

Those are my rams looking on as another model passes by.

Great event, great friends, and you know what is really great? There is so much enthusiasm, especially from people younger than me. I want to keep producing fiber, teaching about fiber, weaving, but not only do I not have time to adequately market my products, I don’t have the energy  to think about it or the expertise to do it successfully.  There are people out there who appreciate what people like me are doing and want to help!

State Fair-Day 2

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This is Day 2 for the sheep show at the State Fair, but a couple of my ewes have been there longer. Mary lambed there a few days ago with this nice ram lamb.

Stephanie is also at the fair waiting to kid.

The longhorns are always at the fair white the sheep are there. There are not as many as previous years and that’s too bad. They’re sure fun to see.

I have been staying at my sheep area all day  because I have a large display and am competing for awards for that. So today I took my drum carder and my electric spinner. I also took a bag of odds and ends that I’ve been waiting to send to the mill to blend with other wool. I decided that I’d do it at the fair. So this is what I’m starting with. It includes all the little bits and pieces that are left over from classes, samples from breeders, old dye projects, etc. There is mohair, Angora bunny, alpaca, silk, glitz, and a huge variety of wool.

These are some of the carded batts. I started spinning it tonight at the fair. I think I’ll ply it with a gray yarn and weave a blanket.

More photos tomorrow.

Two busy weekends

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I spent the last two days in Placerville teaching Weave a V-Shawl to the Hangtown Fiber Guild. Here are the results:

shawl front-w

Ladies,  please turn around.

shawl back-w

These are the warps for shawls not quite finished:

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warp2-w

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Quite a variety of shawls!

Last weekend was Lambtown in Dixon, CA. The fiber building was so busy that I barely got outside to snap a few photos. The sheep-to-shawl contest was one of the most popular events. Teams come with looms already warped and they need to prepare and spin the yarn and weave the shawls during the contest. This year the fiber for the weft was Jacob wool from my flock. It got great reviews from the spinners.  Here is the winning shawl woven by the Silverado Guild from Napa:

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And a close-up:

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The Del Oro Guild got second place:

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I didn’t get photos of the other shawls, but I did get one of Hangtown Guild’s portrayal of their theme of  “Au Naturel”:

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There is a new use for all that roving that you don’t have time to spin! Hangtown always does it with a sense of humor!

One last photo taken at Lambtown:

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Do I want to swap out my sheep for a flock of these  cuties? Hmmm…what is a group of chincillas called? Covey–no, that’s quail. Warren–isn’t that where rabbits live? Crowd? How about Cloud?

Handspun & handwoven Christmas present

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I flew to Texas Christmas night to see my daughter, Katie. I spent the previous 2 days working on her Christmas present, after finally finishing all the weaving orders that I needed to get out before Christmas. Katie used to join our spinning nights and was a participant in Sheep-to-Shawl competitions. This is back  when she was in junior high and she’s a junior in college now. When she cleaned out her closet the last time she was home Katie gave me a box of her handspun yarn that she was never going to use. This included singles, 2-ply, slubby “beginner” yarn, thin yarn, thick yarn, and everything from Angora bunny to Navajo churro, all in a variety of colors.  I decided to weave her a blanket using her yarn. I wish I had a good photo of the pile of yarn before I started. I used about 20 different yarns, winding them in random order.

Randomly threaded warp using Katie's handspun yarn.

Randomly threaded warp using Katie's handspun yarn.

I wove the blanket using one of my mill-spun singles Jacob yarn in a dark gray.
Weaving the blanket

Weaving the blanket

Close-up of finished blanket

Close-up of finished blanket

Finished blanket

Finished blanket

I don’t have a photo of Katie with her blanket. I need to get her to send one. The blanket turned out better than I could have hoped for. It is soft and has a wonderful hand.  This has inspired me to weave more like this!