Not sure where the time went

The past few weeks have been mostly taken up with fighting off, hopefully, the last 2 colds of the Winter.  There hasn’t been time or energy for much weaving although I did finish another run of scarves in a basketweave variation.  I used a plain black weft and a few different 8 ply knitting yarns, some with random colour changes, some with long repeats.  My original idea was to have a widely spaced warp threaded in a straight draw but a few inches in I could see that it wasn’t going to work.  I thought about how I could save the warp already on the loom.   I knew I could sley it more closely but then of course it would be too narrow.  Taking a deep breath, I wound 2 more sections to make up a reasonable width, unwound the original warp off the back beam leaving it still threaded, added the 2 new sections, one on either side, and wound it all back on to the back beam.  I’m sure I’d read about this as a solution but had never tried it.  Much to my surprise it went back on to the back beam with no problems and by the time I’d finished the 5 scarves, I’d forgotten the warp’s inauspicious beginning.

So here they are, 2 were in a wool/acrylic/ viscose mix mostly green but with small amounts of lots of other colours, one of these went straight to my scarf collection. 

One was a plain violet 70/30 wool/soy fibre mix. 

The next was the same yarn but I was able to use up the remains of a few skeins in related colours. 

The last was a pure wool roving type yarn with long colour repeats. 

These scarves were easy weaving, probably a good thing as I didn’t need a challenging project.

A friend and I spent a weekend with another friend who lives near Geelong and we went to check out the Scarf festival at the National Wool Museum.  It’s an annual event but this was the first time I’d been.  There were a few woven scarves, including a few by weavers I know, but most were knitted or crocheted.  I’m not sure what the entry criteria were but I guess I’ll find out as I left my contact details for information about the 2015  Festival.  I hadn’t been to the Wool Museum for a long time and they’ve done a great job documenting and displaying the textile history of the area.  There was a thriving wool and textile industry in Geelong in the past but unfortunately it’s all gone offshore, mostly to China.  No more mill ends for us and more importantly no jobs for the people who used to work in the industry.

As well as the scarves there was a great exhibition – Vanished into Stitches - by Ruth Marshall, an Australian artist who lives in New York and knits animal pelts.

Here's a copy the cover of the 'Teacher's Guide' (school was never like that for me) I borrowed from the gallery website to give an idea of the amazing work Ruth does. It's well worth a look at the link or in person if you're in Geelong or passing through, open until December 7 so there's still plenty of time. 

Of course, there are always new projects in the pipeline but they're ones which have to stay under wraps for the next few weeks, more about them later  

Helen

Is there such a thing as a man's scarf?

The first run of herringbone unisex scarves turned out so well that I decided to do a second run on a different warp - navy blue and silver grey this time instead of the original red and charcoal grey.  I finished them this week and decided to test them on the models at work - usually known as 'the girls and the boy'.  He is particularly life like and has been known to frighten staff who see his reflection in the mirror and think that there's someone there.  The first scarf had a jade weft and looks great on both my models.  

The second had a navy weft with multi-coloured slubs, not pure wool but it still feels soft.

The third had a red weft, one strand of wool I'd dyed for a project long forgotten and one stand from the nearest cone of red wool.

The fourth had a denim blue weft from a bargain cone I found at a sale at a workshop, would work well with any colour of denim.

 The fifth and final one had the same silver grey in the weft as in the warp and by that time I was getting a little tired of all that herringbone so I reversed it every 16 picks to make blocks of herringbone.  They look like little crystals, perhaps ice crystals, and it's cold enough today for there to be ice crystals inside as well as out.  

And what was the verdict on the scarves - I think I've worked out that taking photos at work is easier than doing it at home.  There's a good place on the bench which faces South, there are plenty of drapes in the window dressing cupboard and there are models who don't complain. As far as men's, women's, and unisex scarves are concerned, I suspect it's hard to make a scarf that could only be worn by a man, these certainly seem to work well on my male and female models - and none of them complained.  

However, I did make the herringbone scarves so that there would be something on our stall at the Hawthorn Craft Market for men, so I had a look at the unfinished treasures to see if there was anything else for women and found 2 almost finished wraps I’d made last year.
They’re a combination of wool and multicoloured handspun, one a rainbow and one is shades of green and rose, wide but light, just the thing to keep out the Winter chill, so I finished them and added them to our stock for tomorrow.

Helen 

A weekend in the country

I got away from work early on Saturday and made good time to Bendigo where the first thing I saw was one of their historic trams, decorated for the occasion by yarn bombers with particularly nice crocheted bunting.  No pictures unfortunately as I was driving and the traffic needed my full attention. There was just enough time to visit the factory shop at Bendigo Woollen Mills before they closed.  They do a good job with mail order but it’s not like being able to touch the yarns and of course, sometimes there are bargains.

It was a beautiful day and the sun was shining even though it was cold. 

The wattles are just starting to bloom, a sure sign that Spring is just around the corner.

I spent Saturday night with a family friend who despite advancing years is still managing on 4 acres.

Next morning I got to the Sheep Show at the showgrounds just in time for the woolcraft parade, here are just a couple of examples of the very creative garments on display

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After the parade I worked my way around the vendors to see what was on offer.  I had a couple of gift vouchers I’d won as prizes at earlier shows.  I remembered to bring them from home but then left them in the car so I made my choices first and then went back to the car park, fortunately not too far away, to get them and do more shopping to add to the yarn from the mill.  It was a modest pile, some yarn, a couple of rovings and another temple so now I can cover every width from about 400 mm to the full width of the loom.

There were sheep,

shearing

and sheep dog trials

And of course there was the woolcraft display where I found that both of my entries had been placed second in their classes.

By early afternoon, I’d seen everything I needed to see at the sheep show and went downtown to see the newly opened exhibition at the gallery – all sorts of underwear dating from around 1600 to the present and yes Queen Victoria’s knickers were there as well.  After that I went back and collected my jacket and scarf and headed for home, about 2 hours away

Helen

Preparing for the Sheep Show 2014 – it’s that time of year again

One of  the most important events for the local spinning and weaving community, to say nothing of the farmers and the wool industry,  is the annual Australian Sheep and Wool Show, held in Bendigo towards the end of July each year.

It’s like  an agricultural show or a county fair but just concentrates on everything to do with sheep, and a few alpacas and other fibre animals included for good measure.  For everyone involved in creating textiles there are competitions, and opportunities to top up the stash from the vendors and to actually touch equipment from interstate suppliers.  For the producers there are fleece and meat competitions, ram sales and displays of all sorts of farm equipment – I wonder what a lot of it does.

It’s held at the Prince of Wales Showgrounds in Bendigo, guaranteed to be freezing cold in the middle of winter.  Preparation for a visit starts with important decisions about warm and very comfortable footwear as well as the number of layers.  Actually preparation should start well before this when the Woolcraft competition schedule arrives in the mail.  There’s the will I/won’t I enter debate and if the answer is ‘yes’, then which classes.  I had several metres of hand woven fabric just asking to be made into a garment so ‘Handwoven garment’ was definitely a possibility.  Entries were due about the same time as the bad cold I had recently, the one where I wasn’t even interested in lifting a shuttle.  I assumed that eventually I’d be lifting a shuttle again, added ‘Handwoven article’ to the entry form and sent it off.

I had an idea for a double weave scarf but couldn’t quite work out the details, so I settled for 8 shaft Summer and Winter.  I had plenty of black 2/22 wool for the warp and tabby weft and fancied a dyed weft with long repeats.  I’ve seen the blanks for dyeing knitted on knitting machines, but as I don’t have access to a knitting machine, decided it should work with a mechanical knitting nancy which I do have.  I did the maths, worked out that I would need around 50 gm of yarn made into 30 metres of knitted cord and started knitting.  It gets quite twisted in long lengths so I ended up knitting on the upstairs landing and letting the cord fall into the stairwell to untwist.  Then I set up the laundry for dyeing, and dyed the knitted cord.  Each section of colour wove about 3 inches of the scarf and the pattern repeats were about 4 inches, I even managed to get both ends of the scarf to match.  The changes of colour weren’t quite as gradual as I had planned but it still worked well.

  I’m providing a home for a friend’s slightly larger but not full sized knitting machine while she moves house, I’m hoping that it will make better blanks.

For the ‘garment’ I used the green fabric from an earlier post, something that had languished on the loom for months.  


I fancied something with a Japanese flavour and settled on a hanten with a kimono collar, drafted the pattern with Garment Designer.  At the start I wasn’t quite sure how I would finish the edges but it all fell into place with a wide mitred band around the fronts and lower edge and a matching edge on the sleeves.  I attached the lining around the back neck and along the inside of the front bands and used the kimono collar to cover the raw edges.  The fabric was a little bit fragile for tailoring as I found out when I joined the first 2 seams together and then tried, unsuccessfully to serge the edges.  After that I serged first and then joined the seams without any further dramas. 

I was pretty happy with the end result but there was no time for proper photography, just a quick press and I delivered it to a friend who was able to deliver it to Bendigo.

As  well as the Sheep Show I’m spending Saturday night with an old family friend who lives nearby and if there’s time on Sunday I’ll try to get to the exhibition which is opening on Saturday at the Bendigo Art Gallery – Undressed: 350 years of underwear in fashion, including I believe a pair of Queen Victoria’s knickers.  It should be an interesting weekend.

A little maintenance

I started writing this post a few weeks ago, but life – in the form of a really nasty head cold – intervened and it was all I could do to get to work and home again.  I knew I’d been under the weather when I realised that I hadn’t lifted a shuttle in weeks.

Last post I wrote that my loom needed new cords and then for good measure my sewing machine and serger both needed new globes.  I suspect my 1975 Elna which has made everything from underwear to tents is only on its third globe.  It’s not that it hasn’t been used, it’s been used most weeks and has never missed a beat.  I think it’s because changing the globe is such a challenge that it trains me to turn the light off as soon as I’ve finished sewing.  I managed to get the old globe out with some difficulty and then managed to buy a close – 15 watt – but not exact – 25 watt – replacement.

Getting the new globe in wasn’t going well as it’s a very restricted space and even my small hands were not small enough.  Of course it took me a while to admit defeat and consult the book and I had forgotten the important step of putting a screwdriver in the hole on the top of the machine to push the whole lamp housing down.  Once I did that and after several more attempts, the globe eventually clicked into place.  It will take quite a while to forget how hard it was and by then I will have been re-trained to turn the light off when not needed.  Fortunately the Bernina serger has a screw in globe and went in without any drama.

The 4 shaft loom now has new cords and a rub down with furniture oil.  Getting the cords around the pulleys, 4 for each shaft, is a pain although this time I used venetian blind cord and it was much easier than the heavy cord I was replacing.  I sealed the ends of the new cord on the gas jet on the stove and they were firm enough on the ends and still flexible on the rest of the cord that I could work them round the pulleys.  Last time with the heavier cord I had to thread the curved upholstery needle with some strong yarn and sew it to the cord, thread the needle and the attached yarn round the pulley and then guide the cord through the rest of the pulleys.  It took ages and a few days after I finished we had very heavy rain, so heavy that the drains blocked, water went into the ceiling and the plaster sheets started to come down.  That was bad enough but the wet insulation all over the newly refurbished loom just added insult to injury.

Here it is with new cords and a good rub down with furniture oil, I do hope there are no storms on the way.  It was made here in Melbourne in the 1970s but it looks surprisingly like the Dorset loom, the predecessor of the Schacht's Baby Wolf, on Weavolution.  I can’t say it’s a copy but I do wonder if there was a common ancestor somewhere.

I decided to put just one last warp on the loom before I replaced the cords.  I had a bag of mixed yarns, one of those treasures from a workshop, a guild meeting or live in course where someone had cleaned out their studio and made up bags of leftovers to be sold for a worthy cause such as guild funds or scholarships to help textile students attend the event.  All the yarns were in shades of pale aqua and I knew I would have plenty in similar colours at home to add to the mix.  There was enough for warp for 4 scarves and weft for one, some of the recycled wool and silk from the wardrobe clear out was the next weft and I bought a couple of balls of knitting yarn for the other  two.  

As I wove them they reminded me a lot of the glaciers I’d seen on the West coast of New Zealand on a trip years ago.  So here are my 4 plain weave glacier scarves, whipped up from a mystery bag of leftover yarns, a few yarns from the stash and a couple of balls of knitting yarn, and all posing in front of the village of miniature china houses at the back of the kitchen bench.

Below, from left to right the wefts were mohair from the mystery bag, sage green knitting yarn, blue recycled 60/40 wool silk and pale aqua baby acrylic and wool.

Time to get ready for the Hawthorn Craft Market on Sunday, at least we’re inside, it’s no fun being outside in the middle of a Melbourne winter. 

Sometimes I think the loom is smarter than I am

A couple of years ago I replaced the old cords on my 4 shaft loom with good strong loom cord.  Maybe it wasn’t as strong as I thought, or maybe it’s just been used a lot but now the cords have started breaking in the middle of projects and rather than doing it properly and replacing all the cords again, I just do a cord transplant, inserting a short length and being careful to avoid the pulleys.  On Saturday night I was busy weaving some scarves, 3 done and the fourth half done. Early next morning we were due at the local Hawthorn craft market and I had the delusion that I would just finish the 4^th scarf, wet finish all 4 and in my spare time finish the hems on the remaining tea towels.  It was only 10.30 pm, plenty of good weaving time left before bedtime and the wet finished scarves could dry overnight.  The loom clearly had other ideas and snapped a cord.  I admitted defeat, had more sense than to fix the cord which is best done lying on the hard wooden floor with poor lighting.  I cut off the 3 finished scarves and wet finished them, hemmed the tea towels and went to bed at a reasonable hour. 

We had a good day at the market, more sales than usual and Gayle brought her small 4 shaft floor loom with her.   She got to work on some wrist warmers, at the same time demonstrating just what is involved making something handwoven.  We managed to set up the loom in the limited available space without encroaching too much on our fellow stall holders and we were surprised how much interest there was.  Sales of the charcoal and white tea towels were brisk and there are now only 6 left.

I didn’t quite meet my aim of making 15 different tea towels but I did manage 14 tea towels and a bread cloth before I ran out of warp.  

Here are towels 6 to 14 and the bread cloth: 

6 had elongated crosses,

7 just stripes,

8 long rectangles,

9 medium rectangles with squares within squares,

10 squares within squares alternating with plain log cabin squares,

11 stripes with small squares set closely,

12 crosses (and not sure what happened at one end which I’d hemmed before I noticed the mistake so that’s one for my tea towel drawer),

13 narrow columns with horizontal bars,

14 stripes with narrow horizontal bars

and finally the bread cloth,

same pattern as towel 1 from the previous post but using slubby yarns in grey/green and cream as I’d used all the charcoal cotolin after towel 13.

When I looked at our stock in the market bag I realised that there was very little to offer to our male customers so the next project after the tea towels was to make some scarves to appeal to men.  I set up for a simple herringbone in dark grey and red random stripes in fine wool.  The first had a camel weft, the second medium to dark blue and third red.  The last two were in silver grey and in black and they’re all a little longer than usual.

They have a great handle and drape but I’m not sure that they will only appeal to men, suspect that unisex might be a better description. 

 

Our next outing will be an expedition to Cross Pollination in Colac at the end of June and our next regular Hawthorn market is the first Sunday in July

The morning after the market I fixed the cord in a few minutes and got back to the 4^th scarf, I hope I will be able to find time to fix the cords properly before I end up with another new project on the loom

Helen