Island Weavings

Spin 'til you drop

2012-02-16T07:07:00.000-08:00

Spin. Sip. Spin.Sip. Repeat.

Tools of the trade: spindle, Ashford
Joy, Schacht Sidekick, Lendrum,
Indian Head and traditional Ashford

It has taken me a day (so far) to recover from a spinning retreat. Day one, go to work, go to lunch meeting, drive south, find the Lake Cowichan Education Centre, set up spinning wheel and spin, spin, spin, followed by dinner, then spin, spin, spin, sleep. Day 2, wake up, have breakfast, spin spin spin, eat lunch, spin spin spin, eat dinner, spin spin spin. Sleep. Day 3 eat, spin spin spin, eat, spin. Pack up and go home to spin.
I was amazed to watch Amy, who had just purchased her first wheel less than 24hr earlier. With only some spindling experience (for a total of less than 250 grams of fibre) behind her, she had jumped into the deep end, bought a wheel and signed up for an intensive spinning retreat. I mean, supposed she found she hated spinning in the second hour. What would she have done then? Something inside her must be driving her. By day 2, with a healthy 4 hours of spinning wheel experience under her belt, Amy was where I was at after a years' worth of spinning. By day 3, she was where I was at after 2.5 years of spinning! She was a natural! She was incredible. She was an inspiration.
And I was able to spin up three more homework assignments. Yes!

Knitting - Notes to self

2012-02-10T07:17:00.000-08:00

What I learned and need to remember for my second and future knitting projects:

It takes 223 rows to start to understand what effect the knit, purls, increases, decreases, produce in a 10 row lace repeat pattern. Note to self: get recognizing the effects down to 10 rows.
If there is a border, do not, do not assume you have to do a YO. Note to self: Good, you are now recognizing what YO means. It is not part of K3 unless it says K3, YO!
Never leave home without stitch markers. Note to self: Use them!
Always use a life line for every start of the repeat pattern. Note to self: consider using one every second row.
Yes, you will notice the 5 rows of purls instead of 5 rows of knit, that I did in the first 3 inches and did not rip out and correct', Note to self: correct mistakes when they happen, even if you haven't even put in the first 10 row lifeline.
Read the whole pattern before beginning. Note to self: print the WHOLE pattern instructions, not just the chart and carry it with you, even to the bathroom. Read it. Again and again.
2 ply yarn is just that, a yarn made from 2 singles plied together. Keep the plies together in the same stitch. Note to self: you are a spinner. You should know this.

And I haven't even finished my first project!

A project for Cuba

2012-02-05T16:15:00.000-08:00

January brought a quick trip to Cuba. This was a pure R & R trip. With only seven days, the idea was to sit on a beach. Oh, sure, I admit to having a weak, ill-thought out plan to find the bee hummingbird (the smallest hummingbird in the world) but once I saw the beach, that quest was put away for another trip. We did manage to drag ourselves to Havana for a short day where I found a group of women learning to knit, but then it was back to the beach and a couple of novels.

A group of women knitting in
downtown Havana

With hours of flights and just as many getting to the airport and sitting waiting for the plane, I decided I needed a project and since I am behind in my spinning homework, I thought it wise to pick a project that would get me a little further ahead in my homework. For my major project this year, I have to spin a yarn and then knit or weave it into something. From start (preparing the fleece) to finish (a usable product), the project should take 50 hours. I have so far spent 25 hours sampling (1 hour), cleaning and teasing fleece (8hrs), blending and carding (4hrs) fibres (40% mohair, 40% alpaca and 20% silk), preparing skeins for dying (2 hrs), mordanting (1 hr) and dying the skeins (4 hrs), plus 1 hour on calculations. This was to be for a woven scarf, but at the end of all this work, my weft which was to be a soft pink turned into a rather gaudy, vibrant, purple. I had enough purple for a scarf in itself. I was still happy with the yarn a soft 2 ply suitable for weaving or knitting lace. So if the planned weft was too harsh to go with the soft, subtle colours of the warp, then knitting would be a good alternative, except I can't knit anything more complicated than knit and purl and even then my knitting is questionable. This I decided was the perfect time to learn how to knit and knit lace at that.

My first lace knit project.

So I 'googled' beginner knit lace and found this pattern from Knitty.com. Perfect. The description says it is good for beginners. that's all the time I had to read before printing the chart, downloading a 'How to Knit ' app for the I-phone (complete with how-to videos, and packaging my purple yarn off I went to Cuba.

From Knitty.com

I want to point out a couple of items of interest in my photo of my WIP (Work in progress). First, note the turquoise thingy, it is a Knit Kit, advertised as 'never lose your knit knacks ever again'. I bought it from Knotty by Nature on my way to the airport, and am so glad I did. It has a row counter, crochet hooks for those darned stitches you drop by accident, stitch markers, tape measure and even scissors apparently approved for air travel (personally, I think it is because they fold so cleverly that the x-ray machine can't see the sharp pointy bits). If you are a knitter, never leave home without it. The second thing I want to point out, is if you look closely about an inch below my needle is a blue yarn sewn into the knitting. It's called a lifeline and it is. My knitting has improved but I tore apart the first 3 inches probably a dozen times, and even now, with a seasoned 164 rows behind me, I knit three rows ahead and often rip five rows back. The lifeline allows me to rip back to the start of my ten row repeat pattern. Every ten rows I use the handy dandy darning needle which came withe the Knit Kit and darn through the row. Then when I have to rip out a few rows to get back on track, I can rip away right back to the lifeline without having any lost/dropped stitches.
On getting back home, I went back to Knitty.com to re-read everything and that's when I realized this wasn't actually a 'beginner's' beginner's project, it was for advanced beginners who are ready to tackle something more difficult. As the instructions say 'So, once you've knit this scarf you can knit just about any lace pattern.'
And it is true ....I think.

Reward time

2012-01-31T19:06:00.000-08:00

My spinning has hit a new high! It's payback time. Reward time. In the last couple of weeks photos of my hand spun yarn, turned into objects have appeared. No longer are my spinning attempts orphans, sitting in the back room waiting for someone to bring them to life. They have. At least two objects of beauty have been created. First, on materfamilias's blog is a picture of her beautiful daughter wearing a cowl made from my hand-spun yarn! The yarn, the cowl, the daughter -- all gorgeous. I am lucky to have such a becoming young woman model the cowl.
On the right was the yarn before being knit. This was a special yarn, designed to reflect a poem to respond to P.K. Page's poem, but that's an old post over here.

I also received a photo by another friend whose daughter spun the yarn into booties for a friend's baby. They are sooo cute.

What's on the wheel

2012-01-18T07:10:00.000-08:00

I love my new wheel (Ashford Joy WITH a Woolee Winder -- I am sure there will be a post on that later). I especially appreciated it's smoothness when I got stuck in TwistsPerInch (TPI - for those non-technical and hence, sane readers). The problem was too much information, not enough understanding and conflicting formulas in my mind. The homework assignment was to spin ten yards of a plied yarn at 15 TPI. Sounds easy but it ain't! To make a long story short, in my frustration at not succeeding in this seemingly simple assignment, I said 'bugger it, I just want to spin and picked up a beautiful roving from Hummingbird Fibre Arts, consisting of Romney wool, mohair and silk and spun my frustration away'.
But now I am stuck on a totally different problem. How best to ply this wonderful roving (on the bobbin on the right)? In order to keep the varigated colours vibrant, I don't want to ply it with itself as the colours will mute each other. I could navajo ply it but that would result in a beautiful 3 ply and I am aiming for a 2ply. So I had my mother pick up some pink tone soft and silky merino/silk roving from the Loom at Whippletree (on the bobbin and wound into a ball on the left). It too is beautiful but do I want to mix them together (the pink/blue sample in the foreground) ? Decisions, decisions. I think I will spin up a few bobbins before I decide. Perhaps by then I will have figured out how to spin a 15TPI plies yarn.

Distaff Day 2012

2012-01-15T16:15:00.000-08:00

On the twelfth day of Christmas, the spinners pick up the distaffs (stick to hold the flax as it is being spun) and return to spinning. To celebrate the return to spinning, the Tzuhalem Spinners and Weavers Guild host an annual Distaff Day. Five of us went down to Duncan for the day and spun and chatted the day away. When I was younger, I would never have thought I would enjoy spending a day spinning with 50 other women.

Kool-aid coloured hats

A clever use of various left-over yarns.

Here's some photos of some of the show and tell items.

New Year, new wheel

2012-01-01T01:55:00.000-08:00

The twin Miss 2011's

I ended the year with dye day and started the New Year with a new wheel. I think that bodes well. A bit symbolic.
Dye day was exciting. Heather and I dyed while Nora, the knitwear designer and my mother (hi Mom) kept us company. We had three pots with mordants, each mordant (copper, iron, and alum) created a different shade or colour from the dye. We used Brazilwood for the dye and after dying, we used four different modifiers (acidic acid, alkaline, iron and copper) to get even more variety in colour and shades.

The two in the picture above are not Nora or my Mom, they are two Miss 2011 twin effigies. This is my tradition, to create an effigy every New Years. She attends the parties (3 this year) on New Years eve and people write down on a small piece of paper what they do not want to take with them into the New Year. The paper is stuffed down the front of Miss 2011 and at the stroke of midnight the effigy is burned taking with it the papers which holds the unwanted secrets of the participants.
Miss 2011 was in demand and needed to be at two parties at the same time, hence the twins. They are no more.

And to start the New year off is my new Ashford Joy. I wanted something shorter than my Lendrum but sturdier than my Louet Victoria and I think this is it. Let's see what she spins in 2012.

2011-12-27T11:41:00.000-08:00

Keith, the ferry captain

When it rains it pours, and it comes down in clumps. Today it was raining boats and batteries. First my scale for weighing fibre needed a new battery, so it was out of use. Then my electric assist BionX bike battery was declared dead. They costs a fortune so I may have to revert to old fashioned muscle power all the way (think hills, think mountains. Uggg). Then we went to town in the boat to visit friends and when we returned to the marina to come back the boat would not start. Battery problems. So we had to take the ferry.
We got to the ferry passenger waiting room with 30 minutes to kill. Three people dressed for the Arctic, were there, carrying large plastic garbage bags full of something heavy. Turns out they had sunk only an hour or so ago. They were in an open 16ft boat heading over to the island and it was a bit rough out. I suspect the boat might have been a bit overloaded, so when they took water over the transom, the pump couldn't keep up and they took on more and more water, quicker and quicker. Two of them were just here for a week from Toronto (they came, they sunk, they left). The water came up so quick that the woman barely had time to dial 911 saying 'we're going down'. Luckily there was a boat nearby who heard their yells and hauled them in. Interestingly, the woman made the rescuer save her cell phone before she was pulled from the water.
Other passengers waiting for the ferry had already heard the news on CBC. News does travel very fast.
By the time we all heard the story, the ferry was 30 minutes late. We phoned only to be told the ferry would be an hour late as it had had a collision with another boat who had been speeding across the harbour with no lights on.
It wasn't until the next day when a neighbour told us the whole story. A friend had stopped by to ask for a ride around the island to look for his truck. Apparently there had been a party and he couldn't remember where he had left his truck. He mentioned a few people who had been at the party and it included he driver of the lightless boat as well as the driver of the sunken boat. Must have been quite the party!

Coast Salish Blankets - a Mass Spec Update

2011-12-17T09:52:00.000-08:00

Salish robe, 1838-1842, Wilkes Expedition,
from the Smithsonian collection, #E2124-0

Big news in the Coast Salish weaving world. Researchers from York University analyzed nine Salish textiles (blankets, trump lines) at the Smithsonian to try to determine what fibres were used. They used a mass spectometry technique (a way to identify molecules by their mass) to solve the question 'is there dog hair in the blankets?'
This question has been nagging at those interested in these blankets for a long time. It is a weird question. We have Coast Salish oral history telling us this is so. We have written logs/diaries by early explorers like Capt. Vancouver, also saying dog wool was used. We have artists who wrote and even painted what was probably a wool dog (Paul Kane). But we still want 'proof'. Interesting that 'proof' has a hierarchy, which I suspect goes something like this: artwork somewhere at the bottom, then oral history, written diaries and logs, official documents, and then there is scientific 'proof' at the top. And even scientific proof has hierarchies depending on what is trying to be proven. 'Proof' has layers. One layer of proof builds upon another until you have the full story of the 'ultimate truth'. Different layers take a weak proof like a myth and builds onto it. Each layer builds more certainty in the proof. Add more layers, and the myth solidifies until you have an irrefutable fact. More proof makes it more solid, like a textile.

Salish robe, from the
Smithsonian collection,E1891-A

With the wool dog fibre, the proof story goes something like this:

Oral history tells of the wool dog and it's wool being used in blankets and robes..
Early explorers (Capt. Vancouver) records the use of dog wool in textiles.
Early artists (Paul Kane) painted a dog that could be a wool dog and wrote of wool dogs, but artists license means this in not 'proof that the dog existed or looked like what Paul Kane sketched or painted'.
Eye-balling the fibre in Salish blankets show at least two different fibres, but many animals, like the Mtn Goat have an outer coat and a downy coat. So even if there are two different types of fibre, it doesn't prove that they belong to two different animals.
Scanning electron microscope (SEM) was used to look at fibre magnified to see differences, but it wasn't reliable for fibres that are very old as fibres can wear. A new fibre will easily show the scales on the outside but old fibres rub and wear down those scales, so it isn't conclusive when looking at the outside of the fibre. And even if the old fibre was in really good shape, we need a wool dog fibre as the baseline to compare with. How can we identify a wool dog fibre if we don't know what one looked like in the first place? No wool dog, no proof.
Carbon isotope analysis - This research showed that some fibres came from an animal that ate a diet of marine food. Wool dogs were fed salmon, but carbon isotope analysis can only prove that the animal did eat marine food but can not 'prove' that the marine food was salmon, nor that animal eating the marine food is a dog. See this blog for more info.
1997, Osteometry (analyzing the bones) showed that there were two species of dog in the Pacific Northwest coast. This helped prove that there was intentional breeding to keep the two species apart. Why would they want to? There must have been a benefit in keeping the breeds pure, but what that reason was we can only surmise it was for the wool of one of the species. A forensic artist used the bones to sketch out what the dog could look like and there is a resemblance to the Paul Kane sketch and painting. But that doesn't prove it.
Scanning electron microscope (SEM) analysis - split hairs. Someone came up with the idea that if SEM wasn't reliable for old worn fibres, then what about the inside of the fibre? Split the hair and then magnify it. Lo and behold, it turns out that the inner hair tells a lot and is very useful for telling fibres apart. But, you still need to know what a wool dog fibre looks like in the first place.
Then, in 2006 in a dusty drawer somewhere in the Smithsonian, someone finds Mutton, a wool dog' or at least what is left of Mutton -- his pelt, which had been donated to the museum sometime. We now have a wool dog fibre! We have the baseline to compare old robes and blankets with.
Back to SEM and now we can compare a Mtn Goat fibre with a wool dog fibre. Check out the picture in this blog posting.
DNA analysis has been used to identify DNA in a Salish Blanket as being from a dog. Other blankets showed DNA from a Mtn. Goat. So DNA can be used to identify fibres in textiles. We are still waiting to hear more about this ongoing research at the Smithsonian.
Mass spectometry - identifies dog hair in the textiles and this is the research that was recently announced.

Yes, there now seems to be 'scientific proof that dog hair was used in some Salish blankets. Or put another way, there is now 'scientific proof' that what people said, saw and wrote about did indeed exist. And, we now have a host of techniques that can be used to help identify dog hair being used in blankets.

Click here to see all my posts on the wool dog and Salish blankets.

Here are a couple of books you might be interested in:
Working with Wool, a Coast Salish Legacy . Although it looks at the history of the Cowichan Sweaters, it covers the history of the wool too.

And Paula Gustafson's Salish Weaving . Although it is out-of-print, it is currently the best book available on the history of Coast Salish weaving. I am awaiting eagerly Leslie Tupper's book which I believe should be close to being available.

The commute home

2011-12-15T21:13:00.000-08:00

Walking home.

Walking along the waterfront

View from the boat

View from the golf cart.

This is my wordless Wednesday posting, albeit a day late.

Spider Silk

2011-12-10T11:10:00.001-08:00

Photo by Victor Patel, Wikipedia

I am always amazed that beings other than humans can spin and not only spin but their spinning is the envy of other beings, enough that those beings covet the spinning and use it. Take moths and silk. Bugs, yes bugs, make silk and we humans have learned how to unwind the moth's cocoon and use the silk threads. Or birds, like hummingbirds, who use spider silk to help hold together their nests of moss. It's right out of a fairy tale, nests made of spiders silk and moss! Or take us humans, we too can use the spider silk. Humans have used spider silk for gloves (a short-lived fashion in France), making fishing lines, lures (Solomon Islands), nets (Asia) and even bandages. and recently works of woven art. See my earlier blog about the Golden Orb spider and the incredible weaving made from it. Here's a video of it:

And check out this TedTalk below to find out more about spiders and spider silk:

Shetland wool - It's a first!

2011-12-05T21:39:00.000-08:00

Shetland wool has now received protected status. Just as Champagne, or Feta and Camembert Cheese is protected, ie. you can't sell products using those names, unless of course, you have produced them in those geographic areas that hold the right to use those names. So Shetland wool is the first non-food item to be protected in the EU.
More good news to the Shetland Islanders who are finally making more money from shearing their sheep than it costs to shear them.

see earlier blog about the Shetlands.

Not perfect but close enough to 1 TPI

Speaking of Shetland wool, I have an assignment to spin a 2-ply yarn at 1 Twist Per Inch. Sounds easy. It wasn't! I finally achieved something close to that using a lovely Shetland combed top that I bought from Jamieson and Smith Woolbrokers in Lerwick in the Shetland Islands. This is a beautiful wool, a pleasure to spin and knowing the fineness one can spin this, it was, in a way, a shame to spin it so thick. But, I was pleased with how it came out. Now I just wished I had purchased more. But you can order it online here.

In the light of day

2011-11-26T08:31:00.001-08:00

It was a dark and stormy night. The wind came from an unusual direction, sou'west. In the pitch black all I could see was white caps breaking and spray hitting the windshield. The waves got bigger closer to the protected gap between the islands. The wind now blew directly between. White caps where calm waters prevail.
It was hard to dock with waves breaking along the dock. With a head lamp on I managed to find extra lines to tie our boat more securely to the dock and then to Tom's boat and checked the lines on Cathy and Roger's. Then wobbled my way along the heaving dock and up the ramp and was happy to get home.
Half an hour later Roger phoned 'the dock is gone!'.
The coast guard was called and came to find the dock broken in two. The end with the boats was fine and near where it usually floated being anchored with new chain but the shore end had split, jacknifed and was blown down to the next dock. The ramp now rested one end on shore and the other below the water.
I suppose I should have used those extra lines on the dock rather than the boats.

Off the wheel

2011-11-26T08:14:00.001-08:00

Every now and then I get the urge to just spin. No thought to Twists Per Inch (TPI), nor Wraps Per Inch (WPI), no counting of Treadles (#T), just using a standard wheel Ratio (R), say 8:1,using a Length of Draft (L) as feels natural, no formulas written down like:
TPI=Ratio*#T/L or
R=L*TPI/#T or
L=R*#T/TPI

None of that! I just want brainless spinning. Spinning for pleasure. And pleasure comes from colour and feel. So it was only natural to go straight for my stash of Hummingbird Fibre and spin up a blend of 60%Island grown organic Romney wool, 20% Silk and 20% Mohair.
Ahhhh!

Scarf project

2011-11-19T11:45:00.001-08:00

2.25 wool/llama scarves

I am still learning to weave, but more importantly, I am learning more about fibre. How does different fibre structures react in a weaving? And why you "full" a weaving as part of the finishing. To demonstrate.....I decided to play with various blends of white wool and black llama and create a scarf that used different percentage blends that would give various shades of gray. I wanted a scarf for my husband, hence it needed to be ‘manly’ and the shades of greys produced for the blends looked very suitable. I decided to warp enough for weaving two or three scarves (the first hint that indecision or impreciseness doesn't always work).
Preparation: I carded washed wool and llama separately and created a series of batts of each fibre. I then blended the fibres in different percentages in the drum carder and ran them through twice again to get homogenous blends. I created a variety of llama/wool blends: 80/20; 70/30; 66/33; 50/50; 33/66; 30/70 and 20/80 for the warp. I used the 50/50 blend for the weft.
Spinning: I sampled spinning yarns at different ratios and settled on 6:1 ratio using a semi-worsted backward draft. I counted the treadling which was 8 out and 2 in, producing: WPI of 12; TPI of 2.25; & Twist Angle 25˚.Weaving: The different blends were used in the warp on my 4 shaft Leclerc Artisan loom. The first scarf was done as a plain weave. The second scarf was done as a 1:3 twill but I forgot to hook up my peddles correctly hence, ended up with 1:3 on one side and 3:1 on the other. I did not have enough warp for a third scarf but there was enough warp for me to do a sample and try the twill again, this time hooking up the treadles correctly and was able to weave 14 inches. This became a neck cowling rather than a sample as I think it had the nicest handle before fulling. This was my favorite and I really regretted not having enough warp to do that third scarf!

Finishing: The scarves were taken off the loom and then the fringes were twisted and knotted. Mistakes in the weaving were fixed. The scarves were then taken to a friend, Norah Curtis, who is a sweater designer and also designs the wool fabric for the sweaters. She is an expert at fulling fabric.I did worry about the different blends shrinking/fulling at different rates. I expected them too but was not sure about how much difference would occur and how much it might impact the scarves but Norah and I checked every minute to see what was happening and were ready to pull them out of the wash if needed.Norah has a top load washing machine and we filled it with hot water 38˚-40˚ with Dawn dishwashing soap. Norah looked the fabric and said 3 -4 minutes would probably do it but we still checked every minute. We turned the washer on to slow and set the one minute timer. At the one minute mark we stopped the machine and squeezed the scarves to check them. At 4 minutes we decided they were ready. We removed the scarves, drained the washer and put the scarves back in for a rinse and spin cycles. They came out beautifully.The final finishing was to let them hang to dry, then steam them as they lay flat and then left them to dry.We measured the two scarves and the neck cowls before fulling and after:

Twill before fulling

Left: Twill before fulling

Twill after fulling

Right: after fulling

Plain weave before fulling

Plain weave after fulling

Left: Plain weave before fulling

Right: Plain weave after fulling

Neck Cowl before fulling

Left: Neck Cowl twill before fulling

Right: Neck Cowl twill after fulling

Neck Cowl twill after fulling

Crazy Crochet

2011-11-09T21:28:00.000-08:00

Seventeen Evergreen - Polarity Song from Lucky Number Music on Vimeo.

Wordless Wednesday

2011-11-09T19:24:00.000-08:00

Last wednesday

Last Wednesday

Today

Pit cookout

2011-11-06T14:21:00.000-08:00

Root veggies waiting to be steamed. Squash
and onions (ok, not roots), potatoes, yams,
and sweet potatoes,

Last weekend friend Trudy (longtime nickname 'Carbon'...for reasons you will soon understand) had a pit cookout. This is a method for steaming root vegetables that the Pacific Northwest First Nations used. Nancy Turner, an Ethnobotanist and neighbour, couldn't make it but she sent instructions which went something like this:

Adding the veggies

Dig a pit two feet deep, line it with rocks and build a fire in it.
When the rocks are red hot, remove the fire and wood.
Place a wood pole about 6" diameter into the middle.
Cover rocks with dirt, then layer salal and sword ferns, 2" deep.
Place veggies on the greenery, add more slal and sword fern.
Cover everything with a wet burlap or old cotton pillowcases, or cedar mat.
Remove the wood pole and pour two litres of water into the hole left by the wood pole.
Quickly shovel the dirt onto the burlap to stop the steam from escaping.
Go for a walk for and hour or two.

Removing dirt and burlap

It worked and the veggies were wonderful! The salal and swordfern added, a je n'est sais pas, a little smokey, a little woodsy, and a lot of flavour!

The cooked to perfection veggies

After the successful dinner, Trudy sent out an email 'And in the lost and found department: Found, one gray wool hat. Lost, one wireless home phone.
Did you look in the pit? replied one attendee.
Apparently, they had. A cell phone dialed and they put their ears to the pit, but alas, no ringing.
It wasn't until the next day, the pit was dug out again, and there was the phone.

A problem gift

2011-10-27T20:09:00.000-07:00

Suffolk lock being identified.

Someone gave me a fleece sample, a lock of fleece washed and another still dirty, with a promise that if I liked it, I could have the whole fleece. A gift. A friend of theirs had had it in storage for a few years, was downsizing and they apparently knew a good fleece.
I certainly liked that lock and used another gift - the recently published book Fleece and Fibre Sourcebook by Deborah Robson and Carol Ekarius ...(I highly recommend it!) to identify the type of fleece. The blunt tip, the boxy lock, the fuzzy down-style crimp and knowing the local farmers penchant for certain meat sheep was a giveaway, and the book seemed to confirm that it was indeed from a Suffolk sheep.

Suffolk is not a glamorous fleece, not rare, not special, yet it has a nice loft, is satisfying to spin and makes for a good versatile fibre to have hanging around the wool stash. It would make a good addition by itself for yarn or being useful for blends to add loft to a yarn. It's great for everyday things like mittens, sweaters, socks. So I eagerly said, "yes please. I like it." Visions of lofty yarns danced before me.

Moths!

And so a big garbage bag was delivered to me in town. The bag had been ripped open a bit at the top so I looked in...and then took a closer look...and then put my glasses on and took an even closer look. Moths! Lots of them. Apparently dead but did I dare take this fleece over to the island, into my house into my wool stash? Did they lay eggs before they died? Does dead ones on the top indicate live ones down below?
I have heard horror stories about moth invasions where someone's whole wool stash was ruined (readers may remember moths were the reason Trudy's sweater was in her freezer -see that blog post). A vision of this fleece in a freezer...my Mom's, since mine is way too small. I shook my head.
Another vision appeared, of a cloud of small moths flitting in and out of my cupboards, dancing around me, chomping up my stash. I couldn't take the risk. I knew I would regret throwing it out, but I also knew if I did bring in a moth invasion I might have a bigger regret. So I tossed it. Sigh.

Stuck in silk

2011-10-19T08:19:00.000-07:00

This is some of my tahkli-spun silk drying. I emphasize that it is only 'some', a small portion of my spun silk stash. And that stash gets bigger by the week. I can't seem to stop spinning silk. I know this may seem weird, or weak, perhaps perverse to the silk uninitiated, and they may think I just need more resolve, more backbone. But I have good excuses.
First, it is silk. SILK! Silk, as in lustrous, rich, shimmering, smooth silk!
Then there is the awe factor. On the one hand it evokes the luxurious image, on the other hand, you are spinning worm spit. Really. Insect fibres. A protein used to cocoon a silk worm until it metamorphs into a silk moth. Just think about that! Amazing. If you want blow-by-blow instructions on how to raise your own silk moths and harvest the silk, go here.

Bombyx, or cultivated silk.
SEM Photo by Dave Lewis

Then there is the colour. Silk has vibrant colour. Even without dye, silk has rich depth in colour. Even white, cultivated silk, has more white, if that is possible, more absence of colour. The silk made from wild moths, such as Muga or Tussah have either a golden or honey colour. It shimmers, with or without colour. And that shimmering is due to the structure of the silk. One long continuous fibre, which means less fuzzy ends to break up the light reflection and the structure of the fibre itself has reflective properties. The Scanning Electron Microscope image to the right shows the structure. Compare the smooth silk fibrewith a Dorset sheep fibre which has layer upon layer of cells which make up the 2-3" long fibre.

Dorset sheep.
SEM Photo byDave Lewis

And lastly, I have been spinning on my small Tahkli spindle. It is perfect for silk because each flick of the fingers, has that spindle spinning so fast and for so long, that it gives a high twist to the silk. And the Tahkli spindle fits into a purse or backpack. In other words, I carry it with me all the time, ready to pull it out of the bag at a moments notice and start spinning at airports, in cars, on ferries, at work, while camping, where ever I am. As a famous anthropologist Ed Franquemont, pointed out, when asked what is faster, a spindle or a spinning wheel?:

My Tahkli spinning kit.

" A wheel is faster by the hour, and a spindle faster by the week."
And so, with Tahkli spindle in my bag, I am fated to keep spinning silk.

Salt Spring Island Applefest

2011-10-08T20:53:00.000-07:00

Fullford Hall - full of apples

Last weekend was Applefest on Salts Spring Island, so we jumped into the VW Van which somehow seemed just so right for going to this event, after all, someone once said that Salt Spring Island answers the question, where have all the hippies gone? Hippies and yuppies. Gumboots and the well heeled. A bumper sticker reflects the cultures 'To hell with world peace, use your turn signals'.
First stop Ganges where we picked up tickets to the event and a map which showed all the farms and food related hot-spots on the island to visit. We timed it just right-- being 5 minutes late for the Crofton-Vesuvius ferry, or, to put it another way, 55 minutes early for the next ferry, we were first on and first off, and hence, first in line at the ticket booth. It seemed that the whole ferry load of cars were headed to the same place.

Briony doing an apple portrait

Next stop, Fulford Hall, apple-central. The whole centre of the hall had tables loaded with apples, hundreds of varieties, most with descriptive notes emphasizing their best use (dessert, pies, eating, storage, etc.). I stopped in front of a plate of five perfectly formed, but with skin like russet potatoes, apples with a sign 'Winner of the Fall 2011 Fair'. There was an older man to the right of me and another to the left. They too, were looking at the same plate in puzzlement.
'That's a pretty ugly apple' declared the one on the right.
'Yeah', said the left nodding.
I looked up at a woman who was on the organizing side of the table and asked ' What is it about this apple that makes it a winner?' I was expecting to hear it had a taste out-of-this-world.
She looked a little embarrassed and hummmed and hawed and suggested 'Weelll, they get judged on a point system and uniformity is important and all five apples look like perfect replicas, so maybe they won based on their clone-like appearance.' She looked slightly doubtful.
Right and left sides turned to look at me and both raised their eyebrows. They weren't buying it.
I looked it up later, to find this is an apple that dares to be different. A diamond in the rough. A niche apple for the discerning apple lover who appreciate its sweet nutty flavour. A good Salt Spring Island apple and to think we had been very doubtful.
'Along the walls were tables selling a variety of things every apple-lover needed: seeds; mason bee homes; pomegranate, lime, and other heat-loving trees (these islands are known for their Mediterranean-like climate....in good years); apple pies; balms and lotions; and there, in one corner was Briony, friend, professor, artist, writer, raconteur, tv personality, activist, Lady Godiva, Ms April (I think it was) in the Nude Woman's 2001 Save-SaltSpring-from-clear-cutting Calendar; painting portraits of apples-just bring your favorite apple--for $5. What a deal! There was a lineup of proud apple owners waiting their turn.

Goat milk ice cream

Map in hand, we headed next to a couple of organic farms and toured their gardens, and sampled their apples, buying two sweet varieties, Arlete, a sweet golden-delicious-related dessert apple developed in Switzerland and Wynachee (if I remember correctly), small but sweet.
Next, a visit to Salt Spring Island Cheese Company, where we tasted at least six different goat cheeses and then had another round of tasting and narrowed it down to two types: Blue Juliette a soft, mild blue and Montana, a mild hard sheep's milk cheese with a touch of goat milk to make it silkier. We also picked up a jug of fresh pressed pear and apple juice and goat milk ice cream cones.
Next stop was the Salt Spring Island Bread Company where we picked up a loaf of whole wheat nut. This has to be the most beautifully situated bakery. Perched on top of a moss and arbutus covered hill overlooking the southern Straits. This logically led to Ruckles Park where we had a picnic, admired the apple trees and the scenery.
And, you fibre friends might be wondering, just where is the fibre. Well, there were sheep everywhere, and I saw fleeces sticking out beneath the rafters at two farms. And, as luck would have it, it was also the Salt Spring \island Guild show at Arts Spring. There was lots of inspiration there. Two things stood out for me, a incredibly intricate black silk scarf and a blanket or throw spun and woven by Lorrie Irwin (probably from her own sheep) and dyed in gorgeous colours by Cheryl Wiebe. Of course I took my spindle and spun up some silk.

Spinning in the fall of life

2011-10-02T19:40:00.000-07:00

An incredible colour and fleece roving
by Jeanette of Hummingbird Fibre Arts

I confess to not blogging much lately. I have been too busy relaxing and contemplating life...or to be more precise...the end of life. At first it was hitting one of those major milestone birthdays where you realize more than half your life has gone by. So one naturally starts thinking mid-life and while maybe not about crises, but, well, you know, thoughts. And the nearer I get to retirement, the more I worry about not being around to spend my pension. What a pity that would be!
Then came black Thursday when someone who had been a very good friend, died; another was diagnosed with cancer; another started chemo; a friend's partner died; a friend was in a bad car accident; and another was taken to hospital in great pain.

So....these are all part of the reason we spent an outrageous sum of money on a 35 year old VW camper van. We have had two before and sold both because of the expense of upkeep. Well to hell with the expense. One needs to enjoy life while one can.

Hence, a lot of weekend camping and travelling. First adventure, off to Port Renfrew via the what is being called, the Pacific Marine Circle Route. From Lake Cowichan, down the logging road which is now paved the whole way to Port Renfrew and returning via Jordan River, Sooke and Victoria.

Pacheenacht White Sand beach. Photo from
http://www.britishcolumbia.com/regions/towns/?townid=41

I didn't want to think about spinning, I just wanted to spin. No homework spinning. Just rewarding spinning. I took Little Louie (aka Louet Victoria) which was perfect for spinning in the van. For fibre, I took Jeannette's (Hummingbird Fibre) designer roving: 43% wool (Romney?), 27% Alpaca and 20% Tussah silk. I know, that only adds up to 90%. I figure the other 10% is magic. We camped in the sand at the Pacheedaht First Nations campsite where I spun up 256 meters feeling productive and rewarded by the colours in the fibre, autumn muted golds and pinks.
Well worth the time and the money....for everything.

A West Coast Basket

2011-09-20T20:50:00.000-07:00

The collective work of the whole class.

I seem to have been bitten by the basket bug. I am supposed to be focusing on spinning, but rationalized learning basketry to find out more about west coast fibres that were used in spinning and weaving. Things like spinning cedar bark. SO, this basket making is just a waypoint on my route. A pleasant foray, I must admit.

This workshop, taught once again by Joan Carrigan (see also the post below on the Cat's Head Basket) was a study in Pacific Northwest materials and techniques. We used red cedar for the framework, yellow cedar for a bit of twining, willow and wild cherry bark, and bear grass and scrirpus americanus -- sedges have edges.
Techniques included plain over-and-under weaving, also twill, plaiting, twining, reverse twining and using twining to give different effects. To top it off, (pun intended) we did a tricky rim using a technique Joan had learned from the Lummi First Nation in Puget Sound.

A living willow fence. Photo from the Vegetable Gardener.

Joan told us a funny story about a famous aging rock star, a living woven willow fence and a basketry mentor she has in France. While studying with him, he took her to the estate of this rock start where he was employed to create and care for a living woven willow fence for this famous rock star. After ten years, the basketry/fence mentor suggested to the aging rock star that the fence be taken down and started from scratch again as the fence was getting too overgrown and showing its age. At which the aging rock star, in a dead-pan, not-to-be-argued-with voice replied ' Aren't we all'. And that was the end of that conversation.

A Cat's Head Basket

2011-09-06T19:46:00.000-07:00

A lack of blog posts doesn't mean a lack of things to blog about, just a lack of time. Take this post for example, you'll see I have been busy with something a little different.
I branched out (pardon the pun) into a slightly different branch of the fibre world and took a course in basketry from Joan Carrigan on Saltspring Island.
Joan is a very accomplished basketry artist. Check out her web site to see her gallery of works and see her workshop list.
What fun we had! A group of six of us met and worked side-by-side for the day on these Cat's Head baskets. Cat's head is from the shape of the basket when held upside down. It looks like a cat's head with each corner like ears on a round head.

We used red cedar for the main structure and used willow bark to weave a twill pattern onto and through the cedar. Yellow cedar was used to twine the edges together with a couple of rows of waxed linen thread to accent the rim. And just look at the finished baskets. So inspired, I have signed up for another one in a week.

From there to here

2011-08-17T20:08:00.000-07:00

There. Glasgow train station

Here. Ruxton Island, Salish Sea

Paddling in the Shetlands

From there to here in 24 hours. Travelling is fun but when you live in such a beautiful spot, it's wonderful to return home.

Highlights:

canoeing in the Shetland Islands
seeing the tall ships in the Orkney's and Shetlands
seeing puffins
watching my mother eat haggis vol au vent
watching my 82 year old father riding a skateboard on his stomach coming out of a 5,000 year old iron age burial chamber
learning to spin on a tahkli in the car while being driven all over Scotland
Salisbury Cathedral
examining a Coast Salish blanket in the Perth Museum
seeing a feather cape in the Pitt River Museum in Oxford
coming home to summer in the Gulf Islands

Paisley - The Shawl, the museum

2011-08-11T22:00:00.000-07:00

Photo from Spurlock Museum

If one is staying at Paisley, which is where the Glasgow International Airport is located, and if one is passionate about beautiful fabrics, then you must visit the Paisley Museum to find out about the famous Paisley shawls.
Paisley is, or was, a mill town. According to our taxi driver, in its heyday, the two main mills (Coates-as in J. & P. Coats and Anchor threads) employeed 40,000 people. Now they employ a mostly volunteer force to keep the Thread Mill museum open 2 days a week. One of the mills has been turned mostly into flats. The Coats mills still operates but on a much reduced basis.
I had hoped to visit the Paisley Thread Museum, the Anchor Mill and the Sma' Shot Cottage, a weaving history cottage, but these were only open on Wednesdays and Saturdays and this was a Tuesday. Sigh. But the Town Museum had some beautiful shawls and weaving equipment on display.
The weavers in Paisley based their designs on fabrics that came from Asia. So they did not design the original Paisley shawls. Other mills were doing the same thing and producing copies of Eastern patterns, but in Paisley, they produced the shawls cheaper and quicker than other mills, hence they became more popular and more famous. I thought it interesting that the museum pointed out that Paisley weavers were notoriously argumentative and British politicians always has a wary eye out for revolutionary actions emanating from Paisley.

The museum weaving expert was on holiday but we were allowed in to the weaving room to look at the equipment. Pretty impressive. There were a couple of Jacquard looms set up. These looms used some of the fist computer concepts - the use of punch cards to control which warp threads were to be raised and which lowered. This meant one could design complex and intricate patters -- voila, the Paisley patterns.

The shawl grew in popularity as the fashion trended to larger shawls and the design could be shown off by covering a woman's back from neck to ankle. It was the bustle that killed the shawl. The whole idea of a skirt bustle was to highlight the rear and covering shawls were not wanted. So ended the power of Paisley. It left me wondering how a town goes about finding jobs for 40,000 out-of-work people? And why didn't the tourist trade try to capitalize on that history? I was all pumped up to buy a Paisley shawl but pickings were slim.

The Cotswolds

2011-08-01T13:10:00.000-07:00

The Cotswolds sheep has what I think is a rich looking fleece with long, lustrous locks of curly ringlets. It is classified as a coarse fibre, but that just means it has a larger diameter than, say, Merino which is a fine fibre. But coarse is a description, not a comment on quality. A better description is that it is a longwool, and that, it is, measuring 6 - 12" in staple length. The locks are often sold as Santa Claus beard. If you are making something that needs to be hard wearing, a rug, or a tough outdoorsy jacket, then you want a fibre like a Cotswold. But other, more, interesting things can be made. According to Wikipedia, the fibre was often a substitute for linen and was spun and woven very finely along with strands of gold to make rich garments for priests and Kings. And check out this wedding dress done by this shepherdess in an article by the Daily Mirror.

Wedding dress of Cotswold locks.
Photo by Jon Corken of the Daily Mirror

Cotswold is also known as poor mans mohair because of it's luster. So let's forget the 'coarse' description.
If the locks are prepared in true worsted fashion, that is: hand combed so that all the fibres are parallel and any nips, noils (tangles), and short fibres removed; and then spun carefully also in worsted fashion by smoothing down the fibres and making sure you spin from the cut end to the tip end so that all the tips point in the same direction, then the lustre will be maximized and those who suffer itchiness from wool will find this preparation much nicer to wear. A woman I know who teaches spinning and who did her Master Spinners research project on spinning for tapestry yarns, found that just by altering the tips to ends or end to tip or plying one with the other or plying all tips to end, the fibre could produce a variety of lustre or yarns that reflect light differently, hence one colour, say blue, spun in various preparations gave her enough reflection variation that she could use it for the ocean and have it showing different patterns of reflected light, just like water will do.
So there we were in the Cotswolds, coming back from an unsucessful trip to Oxford Pit River Museum where the Coast Salish Blanket I had hoped to see had been removed from display for an unknown period but I digress. So there we were on our way back to my brother's place, when we saw the sign for The Wool Church in Northleach, and did a quick detour.
When the British economy was built on wool, it was the Cotswold sheep that provided riches to the wool merchants and tax revenues to the King..

Baa Baa black sheep,
Have you any wool?

Yes sir, yes sir,

Three bags full.
One for the Master,
one for the Dame,
and one for the little boy
who lives down the lane.

Children s nursery rhyme from mid 1700's, and was also the first song
to be digitally recorded and played on a computer.

John Fortey, Died 1458

And it was here in this church that some of the wealthy merchants and their families are buried with brass plaques memorials, with their image, some with their wive and some including small pictures of their children.
Take John Fortey, woolman of Northleach who died in 1458 and left $300 pounds, a magnificent sum in those days, to the church. His brass, which is five feet long depicts his image and tells you who and what he is: with one foot on a Cotswold sheep and the other resting on a bag of wool.
But that was then, now, sheep are being raised mostly for their meat and that does not bode well for the many rare breeds of sheep found around the world...although: on Saltspring Island, where a friend raised sheep for meat and some wool for herself, now has switched to wool sheep since the new abattoir laws in BC which means it is now more expensive to take sheep off the island to officially approved and licensed abattoirs .

John Fortey's feet: one on a Cotrswold sheep
and the other on a bag of wool

So while the slow local food movement takes a step back on Saltspring Island, on one farm at least, the wool sheep gains. And on the Shetland islands where Shetland sheep are raised, they have lately been left to 'rue' that is to naturally shed their fleece. Since paying for shearing cost more than they could get for their fleece, it wasn't worth shearing. But lately, the price of wool has risen and now the sheep are getting shorn and the farmers are making some money on wool.
So maybe the wool fortunes will return to the Cotswolds.

Small brass of a sheep and a bag of wool

Knitting Mecca

2011-07-29T14:35:00.000-07:00

Fair Isle knitting on display in the Shetlands

If I were a knitting fanatic or, I suppose, a serious knitter, or just a good knitter, which I am not, but if I were, then knitting mecca would be the northern Scottish Islands: the Shetland Islands, Fair Island. Think Shetland lace, wedding ring shawls, FairIsle Knitting with multi colours And, of course, knitting meccas need fibre, lots of it, and spinning techniques designed to use the best characteristics inherent in that fibre. So knitters and spinners should head north to those islands.

Knitted lace, with wool spun thinner
than thread

The Shetland Museum is a modern museum where many objects, too many to display, are also accessible in pull out drawers or pull-out wall displays. The museum, thoughtfully, provides lightweight plastic stools, useful when you just need to sit and gaze in awe for hours at a lace-knit bodice, a FairIsle vest, or try to see the ply in the cobweb yarn.

Cathy's shawl based on a
design of a shawl over
100 years old.

We quickly connected with a visiting spinner and weaver from California and joined her in an impromptu textile talk by two of the staff, appropriately sporting FairIsle vests as part of their uniforms.
Cathy show us a lace shawl she knitted for Cushla to wear at her daughter's wedding in New Zealand. See the picture to the right. Cathy made up the pattern based on a 100 year old shawl on display. No pattern, she just thought it through.
While in the Orkneys we also stopped in the small textile museum run by the Shetlands Islands Spinners, Weavers and Dyers Guild. A small museum but someone is always there to demonstrate spinning or knitting or just to chat with you. They have a small collection of knitting and woven goods on display. Well worth the visit.
They told us the best quality lace knitting is done by the women of Unst. So off we went to Unst, one of the smallest and most northerly Shetland Islands. There we found another small museum with some exquisite knitting on display and for sale but the best pieces knitted with cobweb yarn had already been sold, leaving the very fine lace weight (and I had previously thought that was the finest until I saw the cobweb yarn). Next door was a wonderful boat museum with a varietuy of small open boats and related gear on show.

Unst bus shelter

While on Unst and having done some advance reading before leaving home, I knew to look for the Unst bus shelter, the most northerly bus shelter in the UK. Apparently the locals decorate it and each year pick a new theme and given the Tall Ships event in the islands, they picked a pirate theme. We almost blinked and missed it but here it is.
Only a couple days after we had been, BBC did a 3 minute video on a Day-in-the-Life of the Unst Bus Shelter The bus shelter even has it's own web site.
There isn't much on Unst but what there is is impressive.

Quest for Puffins

2011-07-23T10:44:00.000-07:00

Up to now, I have only ever seen one puffin, and that was only a fleeting glance as it flew over us when we were kayaking off the west coast north of Tofino. To see puffins, in the wild, up close, has been a quest of mine for years.
When we first moved to Protection Island, 20 years ago I happened to read a book that mentioned puffins nesting on the shores of Protection Island in Georgia Strait. I immediately launched a puffin finding expedition looking for puffins or at the least, puffin indicators. Nada. I circumnavigated the island and found not even a feather. Later, I discovered that another Protection Island existed on the American side of the strait of Georgia. It was there that puffins could be found. Not here.
I mentioned this failed search to a friend and neighbor, Margaret, who, in a former life, made radio documentaries for the BBC. She told me of a documentary she did about puffins in Iceland on the island of Westmann Islands. There the puffins nest on cliffs above the village of Heimaey. At fledging time, the young puffs waddle to the edge of the cliffs and hurl themselves off. The idea being to join the puffin pack waiting for them at sea. Inevitably, the little tykes would take a wrong turn or catch a wrong wind current or think a street light is the moon, and end up in the streets of the village below the cliffs Not an entirely unexpected occurrence and generations of young children would be sent out into to scour the streets with cardboard boxes, plopping wayward little puffs into their container. When the boxes were full, the children would trudge up to the top of the cliffs, face the right direction and fling the puffins back out into space, this time in the right direction, then race back down the cliff to collect another box full and repeat the performance until the streets were cleared of birds and the nearby seas were full of them.
I had hoped to see, if not this performance, at least a puffin or two when visiting Iceland a couple of years ago. Nada. Not even a feather. Although we did see puffins on the menu at a few restaurants but that wasn't quite the same thing.

Old Man of Hoy - puffin country.

So now I am back in puffin country. The Island of Hoy, near the Ol' Man of Hoy (a stone stack off the cliffs) in the Orkney Islands, is the place to spot them. So I stood on the deck of the ferry as we passed by and sure enough, there were sea birds to be seen. I am absolutely positive, well, almost, pretty sure, well, I think I saw one chubby little guy fly past. But, it could have been a gull.

So I missed a good view of puffins in the Orkney's but then we headed north by ferry to the Shetlands. Once there (and that's a story for another blog) we went down to the southern tip, to Sumburgh Head and there they were! Lots. Many just a few feet from our feet. Puffin city central.
A man there told me about the puffin cam, so now you too can see them live by clicking here: Live Puffin Cam.

The Ronnies

2011-07-20T15:46:00.000-07:00

North Ronaldsey seaweed eating sheep.
Photo by Ian Caldwell

When I travel, I like to have a quest, an aim, something to search for on the trip. A ràison d'detre, so to speak. For the Orkney Islands the quest was to find some fleece from a North Rhonaldsay sheep. These rare breed sheep are rather unique in the world as they have evolved to be able to survive on eating seaweed. Not just as a side dish or in a pinch, but they really live on it. They have developed special bacteria to break down the seaweed into a usable carbohydrate. Recently, in an attempt to create a few flocks and protect the DNA pool, some Ronnies (aka Rolies) were sent to mainland Scotland and England. Mysteriously, they started to die. It turned out that there is so little copper in seaweed that the North Ronaldsay sheep have developed super absorbency of copper. So when they moved inland and ate normal amounts of copper, they died from copper poisoning. Once identified, it was easy to treat. Interestingly, after two generations, the sheep adapted again and could handle normal intakes of copper.

Photo by Teresa at Isle of Auskerry

Our schedule did not quite allow or me to fly from Mainland Orkney Island to North Ronaldsey, so I was disapointed and very envious when I received en email from another spinner from the Qualicum Guild who had the week before I arrived, gone to North Ronaldsay (population 60), saw the sheep, met the one woman crusader who has established a fibre mill on the island, had a tour, met knitters and spinners and had a wonderful time on a knitting tour! I emailed Karen and she emailed me some tips on where to find some fleece on the main island.

Tall ships at Stromness, the Orkneys

Not only did I find some fleece, beautiful light brown roving, thanks to Karen, but by accident I ran into another woman who keeps North Ronaldsay sheep on a different island. We happened to be in the Orkneys for the Tall Ships races and the town of Stromness where the main street had been turned into a Fair as part of the welcoming of the tall ships.
And there, at a booth at the fair was fleece! Rugs. Stone slate spindles. Yarn. And Teresa. Teresa who, with her husband and three sons, live on the remote Isle of Auskerry (click on this link to read all about her life on this hauntingly beautiful island). Remember, this is where the North Atlantic meets the Norwegian and North Seas. The wind blows here. It blows gales. And often. This means you, and the sheep, have to be pretty self-sufficient. If you leave the island, you may not be able to get back for weeks...and vice versa.
Teresa has over, I think she said 300 Ewes and 600 lambs. This is the 2nd largest flock in the UK!

North Ronaldsay fibre. Very fine down
fibres with longer guard hair fibres.

Teresa sells the tanned fleece hides (very soft) and yarns she has spun. This is a beautifully soft fleece. The down is a fine fine down, about 28 microns thick. That is a medium wool and kid mohair grade. It feels silky. Silky in the way seaweed feels silky. Or in Scotch brogue, It has a fine hand. She also sells the fleece and her products over the Internet. The wool throws she has woven by hand are warm and silky. So support this rare breed and buy some of her products: http://isleofauskerry.com/

A taste of Scotland

2011-07-19T10:33:00.000-07:00

Dunrobin Castle

Food is high on my bucket list. Many of my quests are quests for food (or fibre, or, come to think of it, food with fibre). So far, on this trip I can add these foods to my life list:

blood pudding (ugg)
sticky toffee puddin (yummm)
fish and chips (okay, I have had this before but not in Scotland) (good)
fudge (yumm)
chicken stuffed with haggis (tasty)
whiskey (so far, Highlands is the smoothest)
cullen skink soup (Finnan haddie, potatoes and onion -- filling)

Owl at Dunrobin garden

The big non-food quest for this trip is fleece from North Ronaldsey Island in the Orkney's. These are sheep that survive by feeding on seaweed. Surely a seaweed diet must make for some interesting fibre!

Hedgehog at Black Isle

First night was spent in a B&B far from the maddening crowd in the hills of the Black Isle, which isn't black, nor is it an island. Go figure.

Little Louie

2011-07-17T11:46:00.000-07:00

Meet Little Louie, my new love. It wasn't love at first sight, but I must admit to being, well, on the look out, so to speak. I love my Lendrum, but it is getting old (30 years) and only has one foot treadle, while all the young ones have two. And Little Louie is small, cute, only 14.25" tall . and weighing in at 8 lbs. Louie comes with his own suit, a bag custom fit with pockets for all his bobbins and bits. And get this, Little Louie, in his suit, just happens to fit within the airline carry-on limits! He is born to travel!
He also comes with 3 ratios 6:1, 8.5:1 and 13:1. Sweet. But what I really love about him is his engineering smarts. The bobbin fits to the frame by a clever metal rod and magnets. So it is very easy to pull it off and change the bobbin or to pack him up for travel. The foot treadle to wheel attachment pulls off a centre bolt and a lever is pulled to allow the frame and wheel to collapse down to the treadles. The flyer metal rod then fits into a hole under the treadle and everything is ready for the suit. Nifty!
So when I saw a class mate at Olds, using the Louet Victoria and I commented on it, she let me know she had two and one was for sale. I hummed and hawed but realized I needed one, bought it and renamed it Little Louie. And then it happened. I used Little Louie for only an hour or two when I realized what a darling he was and how lucky I was to have met up with him. And then I read Abby's review. Yes, THE Abby Franqemont has one and she too loves hers. You can read about her love affair with her Victoria here.

Spindle kit. 3 spindles support bowl

I was very tempted to pack Little Louie with me to take to Scotland. Very tempted. After all, he fits in carry-on luggage. But 4 people in a small rental car with luggage and needed room for purchases, i decided to take my have-spindle-will-travel kit.
I can fit 3 spindles: drop, takhi and russian support spindle, plus fibre, plus a support bowl (the lid is actually a wooden support bowl turned upside down that fits perfectly as a lid.

Spindles, bowl and a selection of silk to spin.

Paddling, Packing and Spinning

2011-07-11T22:31:00.000-07:00

A breast cancer survivor team
heading out to race

It was a busy busy weekend. The big Nanaimo Dragon Boat Festival was on, which had 78 dragon boat teams competing in races all weekend. We had four races, two on Saturday and two on Sunday. It was busy busy busy with me dashing back home between races to do laundry in preparation for packing and clean the house in preparation for the house sitters. But it was all great fun (the races, not so much the laundry and cleaning).
On top of all this, I was trying to finish a few spinning projects and organize spinning homework and pack up some spinning projects to take with me.

On the spindle: gray Alpaca from Koksilah Farms.
Off the wheel: Romney wool, silk and mohair blend.
Off the wheel: white Alpaca, wool and nylon blend
On the wheel: white Suffolk cross wool
In the packed bags: silk hankies, tussah silk roving, and ginned and pima cotton.

Racoon Invasion. Again

2011-07-08T21:19:00.000-07:00

This is a raccoon's view of what is left of eleven ravaged 70% Dark Chocolate bars and a bag of cat nibbles (most of which were left on the carpet). This is what was what remained after a raccoon broke in and attacked my chocolate bar stash. Who knows how many he ate. This theft was not an easy feat. The raccoon had to figure out how to get one of his claws delicately wedged under the magnetic cat door and carefully pull the bottom of the hinged door towards the outdoors. Then it had to sneak under the door, past the cat (that was probably easy) through the living room, past the kitchen, through the dining room into the hallway, then rise up on his hind legs, stretch and somehow be able to grab onto the round slippery door knob and turn it while at the same time pulling the door towards him while balancing on two rear legs. Once in the laundry room, he had to figure out how to hop up 3.5 feet onto the top of the clothes dryer, reach above that and grab onto the small carton of chocolate bars (let's ignore the fact that I have a store of chocolate bars) and open the bars and peel off the tinfoil. Let's think about that. This raccoon not only has a highly sensitive nose, but he ignored all the kitchen food smells and honed in on the chocolate bars which are wrapped in tinfoil, then paper and in a cardboard carton (okay, I admit it, it was a carton of chocolate bars), and down at the other end of the house in a laundry room! That is some nose and a gourmet one at that. The cat door has now been blocked off. I just hope that raccoon is suffering from constipation.

Fondle this fibre!

2011-07-05T22:07:00.000-07:00

From top clockwise: Gray alpaca on spindle
and 2ply, cream alpaca with cashmere and silk,
alpaca with nylon and wool.

At the Olds Fibre Week (last week of June, first few days of July) Alpaca Canada donated sample bags of Alpaca for the spinners to spin and samples of alpaca yarn for the knitters and weavers to use. Ooooooooh what beautiful fibre! This is fondle fibre. You just want to put one of those sample bags in your pocket to carry around all day to fondle ... or, as Jacey Boggs suggests (check out her blog, she is hilarious) .... I think it was Jacey ... if not it could have been Jacey...in any event, someone like Jacey, suggested that there are certain fibres, and alpaca is one of them, that you just want to stuff into your bra and fondle or squeeze a breast or both, all day.

See the softness.

I spun some Kensigton Prairie Farm roving which was light fawn coloured 85% Alpaca and 15% Tussah silk. Exquisite! And the samples from Alpaca Farms Koksilah on Vancouver Island (I will be visiting this farm!) and Graycott Alpacas in Ontario were so silky and luxurious to spin. They were so soft and felt so good I did them all on a spindle to stretch out the fondle time.
Twisted Sisters Fibre Mill donated some rovings of an alpaca blend with wool and nylon. See the picture and you will get an idea of how the addition of wool adds loft. Sounds like a perfect sock yarn.

The alpaca/wool/nylon blend on the left
and the silky suri alpaca on the right

My Mother (Mom are you reading this?) offered to knit my niece, a pair of socks and let her pick the yarn. She picked a heathered blue alpaca yarn. Mother was horrified thinking these socks would wear out in weeks being made with such delicate yarn. So I checked out the characteristics of alpaca and was surprised to find it is 10 times stronger than wool, more shrink resistant, softer, smoother and with little or no lanolin it is perfect for those who suffer wool allergies. They should be perfect socks.
And should they ever wear out, well, they will be good bra stuffing.

Olds Fibre Week

2011-06-30T07:30:00.000-07:00

Nunu felted peacock dress.

One of the things about being at Fibre Week at Olds, is meeting such interesting and creative folk. Last night I was sitting watching the fashion show (check out the nuno felting peacock dress) and a few seats down there was Syvia Harding knitting another fabulous shawl (check out her lace designs). Down a row was Carol Balogh who has some great knit kits available at her online store Nature's Knit-ch(click here to see some of them) And Barb Brown (one of the guest speakers at Sock Summit 2011), a very gentle soul and well known for knitting knee highs, was there with her book Knitting Knee-Highs, plus the socks in the book! One could findle them. Here's Barb's web site: Wild Geese Fibres.

I also met Caroline Sommerfield, a master of support spindling. If you aren't sure what support spindles are, check her web Ancient Arts Fibre and her book Spinning Exotic Fibres with Russian and Tibetan Spindles. Caroline it turns out also knitted a couple of the socks in Barb's book. It was sandle weather that day, so I did not bother to check out what socks she was wearing on her feet. I took Caroline's advice and bought a Russian spindle or, as Caroline puts it 'I liberated a spindle for the sake of the people'. This woman is persuasive if not downright subversive by converting every passerby into a spindler. The spindle is a walnut one (feels 'right' in my hand and is made by Dick Carney in Kamloops. To go with it, I bought a bowl with an ironwood centre made by Jim Leslie of Calgary. The bowl will fit on my lap.
With a trip to Scotland, the Orkney and Shetland Islands coming up, and support spindle homework on my list, I justified these purchases as I will have something light and portable to take with me. She also sells fibre and I bought a mixture of Lllamam, mohair and merino but I was sorely tempted to get some mixtures of yak, bison and silk but ran out of cash. I am not too worried, there is always the online store.

Elizabeth aka Zemmie (Ravelry)
with her handknit traditional Shetland shawl

Putting the shawl through
her grandmother's wedding ring

Speaking of the Shetland Islands, Elizabeth from North Vancouver, who was in my Level 1 Master Spinners course in Victoria, was there wearing a hand knit shawl she had done in traditional Shetland-style. A true Shetland Island shawl is made from Shetland sheep wool (go figure) and must be spun so fine, that the whole shawl will slip through your wedding ring. I guess maidens are not good enough spinners. It must take years of spinning experience to accomplish yarn that is only a few fibres in diameter.

Note to self: Read Course Supply List at least two months in advance.

2011-06-26T08:28:00.000-07:00

Spinning in front of Mt Rundle

So there I was, the night before we leave for year 3 of the Master spinners course. I had not packed, nor finished my homework when I read the list and start throwing things into bags. Scissors, check. Niddy noddy, check. Lazy Kate, check. Dye pot, check. Gloves, check. 25 skeins, 10 meters each of hand spun, tied off and labeled ready for the dye pot Monday morning. 25 skeins! Holy cow. That's 250 meters! And it is needed for first thing Monday morning.

23 skeins drying in the motel washroom

According to homework assignment #38 - Calculating time needed to spin-- that is about 250 minutes for a 2 ply, or just over 4 hours of spinning. It will take a day and a half of driving to get there which will give me a day to spin, but I have to finish my homework, re-paginate everything and double check all the assignments, as well as checking out the fleece judging. That cuts it pretty fine for spinning 250 meters.
So I spun in the car, I spun in the motel in Revelstoke. I spun with the spindle in the car from Kamloops to Banff. I spun while admiring Mt Rundle. I spun from Stony Plain to Olds. I spun in Olds. I spun up all the mohair roving I brought. All 230 meters. Yes, that is right, I am 20 meters short!

Homework - D-Day is coming

2011-06-18T09:25:00.000-07:00

Starting with this

Today is Friday. This means I have only 7, seven, s*e*v*e*n, 7, as in one week, 7 days left, that is seven working days, to complete my homework before heading back to Olds College for Fibre Week to start my level 3 Master Spinners course.

To do

There are two problems with this.
First, I work. And I am away on Sunday. Away, as in 'away from my spinning wheel'. And I am the steers person for a dragon boat team (i.e. I steer and if I don't turn up 22 paddlers will beat me with their paddles) and we have 3 evening practices in the next week. This means I really only have Saturday and 2 evenings in which to finish my homework! You may well ask what the heck I am doing right now spending time telling you this when I should be doing homework. That, is a good question.

Second, this means I only have 7 days before I get assigned another YEARS worth of homework! And the whole darn thing starts all over again.

Done!

NOT Art yarn

2011-06-12T22:49:00.000-07:00

Jacey Boggs, wearing a beehive
coil-to-be

I spent the weekend on Quadra island with an inspiring instructor -- Jacey Boggs, and 11 other students. We were there to learn 'hardcore and softcore' spinning, which is another name for textured yarns and is NOT another name for Art Yarn. Jacey rues the day when she coined the term 'Art Yarn'. The term was originally meant for yarn with integrity, yarn with structure, yarn that is usable and not just something to put on the mantelpiece. But that meaning has been lost and the term is now being used for yarn that is pretty to look at but not much good for making anything. For two days we learned how to create yarns with structure, with integrity. We learned how to make textured yarns, interesting, beautiful to look at, fun and usable yarns.

Stephanie's beehive coils.

We used some wonderful fibres. A beautiful hand painted merino top (sponsored by SpringtreeRoad) which we used for thick and thin yarn and for coils and an incredible batt from Sayra of Atomic Blue. You have not seen batts until you've seen these! Check out their products with the links embedded.

AtomicBlue batt and yarn samples.
Much more vivid in real life.

Jacey has a book coming out this fall (December?) on making textured yarns --Spin Art: Mastering the Craft of Spinning Textured Yarn. I think this will be one of 'those' books that will have a tremendous impact on spinning. It will take spinning to a whole new level. I suspect it will generate a lot of buzz and a lot of new spinners. Keep an eye on her blog for this and for her new DVD (her current DVD covers this workshop). Heck, check her blog anyway. She's one of those special people that will inspire you and leave you envious of all her energy.

Michelle getting a kick out
of being loaded into a tiny boat
and kidnapped.

I came away from the workshop just as energized (v. 1. to make energetic, vigorous or active. 2. another word for overspun kinky single yarn ) as the yarns we made. I also came home with Michelle, my soon to be Master Spinner Level 3 instructor! I have her tucked away in the guest cabin known as the Hilton. Yes. My own private spinning instructor. I may not let her off the island.

Canadian Museum of Civilization

2011-05-31T22:16:00.000-07:00

Canadian Museum of Civilization

Salish blanket at SFU Museum
of Archaeology & Ethnology

Last week I was lucky enough to meet with one of the Curators of Ethnology at the Canadian Museum of Ethnology who gave me a tour of the back rooms where the Coast Salish Textiles are stored.

Coast Salish blanket at SFU
Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology

It was amazing to see so many in one place. I was allowed to photograph them but copyright of the objects only allows me to use the photos for educational/research use not for posting on my blog, hence I found a few others which I can post. The one on the top right shows the more Interior Salish style blanket, very close woven, with many colours. To me, this style rivals the famous Navajo blanket. These should be just as highly valued as the Navajo blanket is. I suspect the only reasons these blankets are not, is because they are not as well known.
The one below it shows the Coast Salish style - mostly white, often with a red stripe woven into it. In this case the red strip is actually a strip of commercially woven fabric.

Chief George and his daughter 1902
wearing Salish woven coats.

The Coast Salish blanket is typically woven in a twill pattern and sometimes, the added stripes or plaids are done in a plain weave. The Interior Salish usually use a twined weave where the weft yarn completely covers the warp yarn. I am using the terms Coast Salish and Interior Salish very loosely. Where does one group end and one begin? Even within one group, there are different First Nations. They may share a similar language but they each may have their own unique culture, history and protocols. With weaving, the techniques will cross these artificial boundaries, so it is difficult to say that a particular style blanket would only be made by one group. Chief Joe Capilano's blanket (click this link to view it) is interesting because it contains both techniques, the bulky Coast Salish twill style, bordered by the finely twined Interior Salish style.

The Perth Blanket

The blanket next on my list to see is one of the oldest and rarest it is known as the Perth blanket, as it is in the Perth Museum in Scotland. More on this one in July when I plan on seeing this blanket in person.

Questions I have about these blankets and spinning -

what techniques are used to spin the yarn? The yarn in the Coast Salish style is quite different than that of the Interior Salish style.

Did they use different methods? Thigh, spindle, toss or roll?

Different fibres?

Different size whorls?

S or Z twist?

By the way, the Canadian Museum of Civilization is a work of art in itself. The building was designed by architect Douglas Cardinal, a Canadian. Check out his website for some inspiring photographs of his work: http://www.djcarchitect.com/

THE Hill - The centre from which Canada revolves

2011-05-19T22:19:00.000-07:00

A rodent - marmot?

I am in Ottawa for a few days, so I tried to make the most of it. By coincidence the city had just installed Bixi's - bicycles for rent. When hoofing it back to the hotel I came across them and was inspired to rent one. $5 for 24hrs. A cheap way to circle round THE hill. I immediately headed across the river to the Canadian Museum of Civilization (scouting the route for a visit there, with the curator who specializes in Coast Salish textiles, the next day - more on this later), along the river bank, back across the river, along THE Hill, up along the locks and parked the bike back in its stall.Interestingly, I saw more wildlife (of the animal variety) than I expected. First ducks in the locks (not sure how they get out since they need a flight path of a certain length and those locks look short), some sort of a rodent (parliament must be inundated with them), a family of Canadian (well, this IS the capital) Geese and a bloody big fish that surprised many passer-bys.

The Bixi bike was great fun. Since you can park it in any Bixi location, I ended up picking up another one the next morning (remember, $5 for 24hrs!) for my visit to the Canadian Museum of Civilization, parking it there, and picked up another one for the return trip.
I had time for a visit to the National archives where I came across a monument with a thought provoking quote which is a good way to end this posting:

Tierra the wonderdog

2011-05-14T12:23:00.000-07:00

Tierra and her brood of eight - less than 8 hours old.

Readers of this blog (all three of you, plus my mother) will remember Tierra, the kayaking wonderdog who was stolen and rescued by accident (click here to read that story). For those who are new to Tierra, she is a labradoodle who has some of the best doggie adventures as part of the mis-adventures of her owner Trudy, including kayaking to town and back everyday--although I am not sure if this is classified as an adventure, it being a daily activity.

Tierra and her many foster parents.

Tierra has always LOVED little toys that squeek. To Trudy, this was an indication that Tierra was destined to be a mother, so a date was arranged with a distinguished poodle. At a party at Trudy's, three of her close friends wondered about this pregnancy and knowing Trudy, we just KNEW that something would go awry. The question was what. A sense of joint ownership of Tierra made us try to predict and prevent any possible hiccups in this process. The question was raised 'how long is a dog pregnancy?'. Page 25 of a convenient doggy breeding book told us....' the average dog pregnancy is 63 days, although they can be anywhere between 58 and 68 days.' I looked at Denise and laughingly suggested that Trudy would probably be away at the critical moment. When Denise mentioned it was a distinct possibility as Trudy was going to be on a boat in the Queen Charlottes sometime in May, we knew this was the hiccup. Trudy, passing by with a tray of cheese and crackers pooh-poohed that suggestion. She would be home on day 61 a few days ahead of the due date and Ian would care for Tierra until she got home. I looked at Denise and Denise looked at me and we knew!

Today is day 58 and look at these beautiful puppies. They are perfect all eight of them! Trudy, as far as we know is somewhere off the coast out of cell and email range.

Spins with wolf

2011-05-03T19:49:00.000-07:00

Samoyed dog on the left and
wolf on the right

I recently had an opportunity to spin both wolf and dog (Samoyed) hair at a workshop with Judith McKenzie. I will do a separate post for the dog hair as there is so much to say about it and for now focus on the wonderful wolf fibre. The wolf was a dream to spin. You would think wolf has more rigid hairs and hence a rougher feel to it but the down from its coat is so soft it gives it a silky softness and it has a halo like mohair. The dog in comparison is soft as well but has a firmer feel and lacks the silkiness of wolf.
Interestingly, wolf doesn't smell like, well, like wolf. Dog, on the other hand, smells like dog. One wants to make sure that smell is vanquished completely from the fibre long before being caught out in the rain wearing a dog sweater.

Wolf on the top and dog on the bottom

Judith and her wolf spinning friend Debi (who was also in the workshop) had collaborated on a chock-full-of-information-for-the-wolf-wannabe-spinner-in-all-of-us article on spinning wolf for Spin-off magazine (Fall 2009) and the whole class benefited from their incredible knowledge. Here's the short version: make a cloud of fluffy fibre; spin semi-woollen; wash vigorously to bloom and lock the fibre; luxuriate in the softness.
Where does one get wolf to spin? Well, I suppose you could hope to find natural shedding of their winter coat out in the wilds, but it is a better bet to try zoos, captive wolf sanctuaries, owners of wolf/dog crosses and ambassador wolf programs. Check out this story about an ambassador wolf.

Island Rainbow

2011-04-30T18:39:00.000-07:00

An amazing rainbow this week. It covered Protection Island. Of course it was even better than this picture portrays.

Tribal Textiles

2011-04-24T12:45:00.000-07:00

Judith's tribal rugs from Africa

I've just come back from a wonderful 4 day workshop on Tribal Textiles taught by Judith McKenzie. Judith taught me spinning 25 years ago, so it was a wonderful way to reconnect up with her. So much to spin, so much to tell. It will take me a few postings to even begin to convey what was covered and the sense of adventure that went along with it.
It was held in the dead centre of vampire country apparently. One needs to be a female teenager or a vampire devotee to understand that the small town of Forks, Washington is the setting for the Twilight Series of books and movies about vampires, werewolves and teenage angst.

Amy and Judith at the treaty line
(between the werewolves and the vampires).

Vampires aside, we spent the four days learning from First Nations (Makah, Quileute, Salish), touring the Makah Museum at Neah Bay and behind the scenes at their storage facility, hiking to Cape Flattery, walking the beaches at La Push,working with cedar, Salish weaving and coiling, spinning, spinning and spinning, and, on one occasion howling at the moon.
Here's a list of fibres we spun or wove:
Texas mohair/wool - thigh spinning, Hemp, Hemp and feathers, hemp and down, Dog hair, Dog hair and feathers, dog hair and down, Wolf/wool, Bison/silk, Bison/wool, Cotton, and Cedar.
I'll try to do each one justice in later postings.

Play and Kumihimo

2011-04-13T20:55:00.000-07:00

Alison Irwin's 'O is for Ocelot' Kumihimo braids.

When I think of the word play, I think of it having two purposes. There is playful play, where you play around with something trying to learn 'it', to understand 'it', to be able to do 'it' (say, learning to play the piano). There there is the powerful play, where you know 'it' so well, you have complete mastery and control that you can play with 'it', make 'it' do whatever you want (like composing new songs).

My first sample, showing various geometric
patterns, from the tip: a spiral, rake, dark
diamonds and lightning

I especially love it when someone takes a craft or an art form and plays with it, gets to know it, tries this with it, tries that with it, really understand it and is able to create new forms, new uses, new functions, new knowledge of 'it'. The 'it' in this case Kumihimo and the player is Alison Irwin who taught a group of us her Eight 'n Eight Kumihimo workshop - eight light threads and eight dark threads used to make 'Kongo Gumi' (hollow round) braids. A day inspiring me to want to play.

The Coast Salish Spindle

2011-04-07T21:04:00.000-07:00

Coast Salish whorls at the Royal BC Museum

I have been spending some time investigating the Coast Salish Spindle with the idea of having a friend make me one and thought I would share some of what I have found.

The Coast Salish spindle was used mainly by the Coast Salishof Vancouver Island (e.g. Snuneymuxw , Quwutsun, Tsartlip) and the mainland Coast Salish (e.g. Musqueam, Yale, Spuzzum). The Coast Salish Spindle is distinguished from other spindles, not only due to its size: the spindle shaft usually measures 90-120 cms (35-48”) and the whorl is commonly 18-20 cms (7-8”), but also due to its method of use –tossing into the air (more on this in a later blog...once I have had a chance to figure out how that worked).

The whorl, often made from Maple wood (have you ever seen those beautiful Maple trees in Cowichan Bay?), is placed either midway up the shaft or between half-way and two thirds down the shaft. The shaft is tapered with the larger end at the bottom. The whorl is often decorated by incised carving on one side of the whorl, the side facing down towards the spinner. The upper side of the whorl is sometimes flat or slightly concave. On many whorls the centre shaft hole is thicker than the surrounding wood, tapering down to a thinner outer edge of the whorl.

Salish spindle on display at the Royal BC Museum

The Salish spindle was used for spinning goat wool mixed with dog hair from the Salish Wool Dog. The yarn created was a thick yarn used for blankets. Later the spindle was used for yarns used in the Cowichan sweater industry.

There are a few things about this spindle that I find intriguing: its size; the way it is held; the method of tossing and turning; the use of a tension ring to add the tension to the drafting process. Intriguing enough to try to recreate one and to try it out. I will let you know how it works.
Edited to suggest a great book on the history of Salish Wool and sweaters:

Working with Wool, a Coast Salish Legacy . Although it looks at the history of the Cowichan Sweaters, it covers the history of the wool too.

The Crazy 8 Race

2011-03-20T11:09:00.000-07:00

It was one of those wild, wonderful, west coast days. The Nanaimo Outrigger Crazy 8 Race, so named because the race makes a figure 8 around Newcastle and Protection Islands. Crazy, because you have to be just a little bit crazy to be racing in waters that can give you hypothermia in under 30 minutes. Crazy because, after all it is winter and even though this is the 'balmy' west coast, we are still in Canada and not Hawaii. Crazy because you never know what March brings.

Stellar sea lions watching the race

And crazy because this year the herring fishing season was open. Crazy because half the race was right where the fishing fleet was fishing. Crazy because the herring were spawning and crazy because where the herring are is where eagles, Stellar sea lions, seals, gulls and great rafts of sea birds can be found in one crazy feeding frenzy.

Outrigger making its way between the fleet

Crazy because the races had to find their way between: large fish boat;, smaller herring skiffs; anchored freighters; fish nets lurking just below the surface; rafts of sea lions; bobbing seals; and through flocks of birds. And the noise! Gulls crying, eagles calling and sea lions growling and belching! And crazy because I was piloting the safety boat, trying to stay ahead of the outriggers, out of their way, not run them over, keeping them all in sight, and, like them, avoiding the wildlife (one large sea lion jumped out of the water and almost landed on the bow of the boat!) and the fleet, and taking pictures at the same time. Crazy! Slideshow here.

It's all in the diet

2011-03-18T22:02:00.000-07:00

A couple of years ago I visited two abalone farms. Abalone are endangered species in Canada so it is difficult to farm them as you need to distinguish a wild abalone from a farmed one. The researchers at these farms had found a way to distinguish a live farmed abalone from a wild one by creating stripes on its shell. For a few weeks (or was it months?) they would feed them a particular plankton which created a yellow tinge to the shell as it grew. Then they would change the feed to a plankton that created a reddish tinge. Over the year this switching created red and yellow stripes on the shell. Seemed like a good solution. The problem was that one can't tell the providence of an abalone that has been separated from it's shell. End of the farms.

Image: Dr Natalia C. Tansil from New Scientist

You are what you eat.
Which brings us to a news item this week--silkworms. Various types of silkworms produces different shades of silk from white to a golden tan. The cocoons are reeled and spun and the resulting fibre is dyed. Some of these dye process produce terrible by-products and often harm the environment. But recently researchers have found that by feeding the worms mulberry leaves (their normal diet) that had been dyed, in their last four days before they cocoon themselves, that when they spin their cocoon with their silk, the silk takes on the colour of the dye. This supposedly will reduce the need to dye the silk...although it means they have to dye the mulberry, so I am not so sure we have solved something, just switched what is dyed. But the idea is interesting. Apparently they are now considering adding other compounds to the diet, things like antibacterial components for creating the silk that is used in medical procedures, like suturing. Hmmm, pink stitches.

Salish Style Indian Head Spinner

2011-03-06T20:56:00.000-08:00

Annie's spinner from the 70's
from when she lived on a farm in the
Cowichan Valley

I recently dug out an old spinning wheel? head? I had stored in the laundry room and am going to oil it, replace the scotch tension brake and recondition the belt on my Singer treadle, the engine for this wheel? head? I bought it in the late 70's early 80's. At the time I lived in a 600 sq ft house with only two power outlets which explains why I had a Singer treadle machine and a need for small items. The Indian Head spinner could be easily put away when not in use and the sewing machine could be lifted out of the treadle case and the Indian Head spinner would fit in its place.
This spinning wheel has a variety of names: Indian Head Spinner, Country Spinner, Salish Spinner, and Cowichan Spinner. They were popular with the Vancouver Island Coast Salish spinners especially in the 60's and 70's, and were instrumental for spinning the yarn for Cowichan Sweaters.

My spinner attached to the Singer treadle.
The Singer has been taken off and
can be seen on the floor

Some consisted of just the 'head' like mine (on the right) which mounted onto a Singer treadle sewing machine. Others were permanently mounted onto the Singer or Singer-like treadle, others were crafted as one unit (like Annie's on the left) and in the 70's Ashford took this one step further and started producing the Ashford Country Spinner as did Clemes and Clemes.
This is not a machine for spinning fine yarns. Forget the Scottish ring shawl yarns- those shawls that are spun so fine they can be slipped through a wedding ring. This is for thick yarns. Not necessarily dense but bulky. Everything is oversized: the bobbin, the hooks and even the orifice. This makes it perfect for spinning art yarns, thick yarns, rug yarns and for plying. It's currently having a revitalization as modern spinners are looking for exactly this type of wheel to add 'things' to the yarn. Crazy weird 'things' like miniature skull heads, beads, buttons, feathers, eye balls, etc.
Traditionally, fibre was pre-drafted into a rough roving, or, in more modern times, roving was bought. But in either case you pre-drafted a pile in preparation for the spinning.
These spinners are fast. They whip the fibre onto the bobbin. There is a Scottish tension but be prepared to have the yarn drawn in quickly. I heard a story of a Coast Salish woman who was producing yarn very, very quickly, so quickly dust and bits of farmland were causing a cloud of dirt, dust and debris around the spinner and she had to wear a mask to avoid the cloud and flying bits.

Since this is such a polpular post, I have edited to add some resources.
Here are a couple of books you might be interested in:
Working with Wool, a Coast Salish Legacy . Although it looks at the history of the Cowichan Sweaters, it covers the history of the wool too.

And for children,Yetsa's Sweater a child learn's how a Cowichan Sweater is made.

Alpaca - are calling

2011-02-20T19:25:00.000-08:00

The Alpaca stars are lining up and calling me. First, I heard a fascinating modern-day story about the olden days in Peru and it centres on the Alpaca. Twenty years ago, Jane Wheeler, an archaezoologist (read about her and the history of the organization she started--Conopa) was asked to investigate some mummified alpacas who had been buried with reverence and honour. Why? What was special about these alpacas? I believe that at the time of her study, alapacas were raised for primarily for meat and wool was a bit of a by-product, useful of course but not so much for the value of the wool compared to what their meat provided. Their fibre, was somewhat coarse, and according to one article, was only suitable for rugs. But the mummified alpaca had the finest, softest hair, much finer than the modern day alpaca.
It appears that in history, alpacas were treasured and bred for their fine fibre, elevating alpaca as the backbone of the economy. The Spaniards, when they arrived, destroyed alpacas and hence the economy. When the alpacas lost their worth, they lost their breeding programs and the fibres lost their fineness. Along comes Jane, her discovery, and her resolve to bring back the economy, the fine fibre, and all of a sudden after hundreds of years, an alpaca revival begins. A fascinating story. Read more of it here: http://discovermagazine.com/2001/apr/featalpaca/?searchterm=alpaca
Next, I read about an indigenous weaving conference to be held in Peru. A Gathering of the Weavers (it also included other textile arts) of the Americas/Tinkuy de Tejedores de las Americas held in Cusco Peru in November 2010. This event was spearheaded by Nilda Callanoupo Alvarez, a leader in supporting traditional textiles in the Andes. More information on the hosting organization can be found here http://andeantextilearts.org What an opportunity to see people from all over the America's, mostly indigenous weavers, gathered in one place sharing their knowledge. In hindsight, I realized I should have just quit work and gone. Alas, I was foolish and stayed. But here is an interesting account of one woman's trip, blogger, author, inspirer-er, student and teacher of indigenous weaving techniques, Laverne Waddington on her blog Backstrap Weaving.
Another coincidence. At the Duncan Distaff Day, I met a woman who volunteered for a month helping organize the hanging of the textiles which would be on display at the conference. She had met Nilda years ago at a weaving convention and Nilda had asked her to come and help. She shared her photo album with me and the colours in every photo was spectacular!
And even more coincidences. A very good friend returned from a holiday in Peru, and by coincidence was in Cusco, the town the conference was in. She is not a fibre nut but kindly bought me an Andean drop spindle in the market and some Alpaca to spin. And another whose graduate student was in the very same area, working with a weavers co-op also brought me a gift of Andean weaving done with superfine Alpaca yarns.

Photos by Laverne Waddington from her blog at
http://backstrapweaving.wordpress.com/2010/11/12/
backstrap-weaving-tinkuy-de-tejedores-2010/

Recently, SpinOff magazine created an interactive magazine called SpinKnit. The magazine contains articles, interviews, and a ton of multimedia: slideshows, photos, and videos. Their first issue has a great section on Spinning and Knitting in the Andes and another section on Alpacas and Vicunas. The 'e-mag' can be purchased for just under $15 but be aware of the humongous file size, weighing in around 500 meg! This is fine if you have a high speed connection but don't even try if you are on dial-up. The video below shows one of the videos from that issue: Andean women spinning.

And to round all this up, it has culminated in an Alpaca Spinning workshop I just took, but this blog is getting far too long, so I will save the workshop for another blog.

The Commute

2011-02-14T20:21:00.000-08:00

Ferry crossing to Salt Spring Island

Sat 8:40 am.

I am sitting in the car on the ferry to Salt Spring Island, on my way to the Alpaca spinning workshop on Salt Spring Island, thinking about this five-stage, four modes of transportation (golf cart, car, boat and ferry boat) trip and it struck me that it would make an interesting blog. Besides, I have nothing else to do having forgotten my spindle. Dumb, dumb, dumb. In any case here is my day so far.

6:30 am. As I sit at home sipping a wake-up latte, girding myself for the trek, I can hear the rain and the pine cones hitting the window. It is still dark out and I check the marine forecast. Southeast (bad) winds 20 (not so bad) knots to 30 (bad) knot winds. Pine cone bombs tells me it is closer to 30knots. I am glad the drum carder, wool, and spinning accessories (enough to fill a suitcase) are already loaded in the car and all I need to take today is my lunch, backpack, and spinning wheel. I grab them and as the sky just starts to brighten, I jump into the electric golf cart and silently cross the island.

7:15 am. As I carry my gear to the dock where my boat is, I can hear the wind in the cedars whooshing and madly shaking the branches. Small cedar twigs drop around me. All of a sudden I remember a cougar was sighted this week on Newcastle Island (as well as on campus) and then I look over at Newcastle, a mere 200 ft away and think hmmm, cougars swam there from Vancouver Island, a bigger swim than from Newcastle to the island I am on, and in addition to deer, the attraction on this island are cats, dogs, and, um, humans. Heck, a cougar could saunter over at low tide, no swimming required. I jump and look behind me as a noise startles me and my heart races. It is only more twigs and cones hitting the dirt. The rain has stopped temporarily as I jump into the boat. It's a bit dark under the canvas and I can't see too much. I sniff, checking for fresh mink or otter droppings. Another sniff. Nothing fresh, just the old stale mink musk smell from last weeks visit from a mink. I can safely put my spinning wheel down on the floor without worrying about it carrying the foul smell all weekend.

The wind is protected here but still wind cat's paws are rippling the water. The dock and boat are bouncing at odds with each other, from waves that roll in through the gap between the islands.

I check the gas. We have two tanks. Today is not a good day to run out or to have to switch tanks in the middle of the harbour where you are most exposed. There is enough in one tank but I leave the full spare tank exposed to remind me to switch for the return journey.

I start the engine, push away from the dock and consider my route. Should I go in the troughs or angle the trip to have the waves 3/4 on my port rear? This would require going 1/4 into the waves and then zigging 90degrees to go with the waves for the second half of the crossing. This would be bouncy for the first half and smooth surfing for the second half as long as I adjust the engine speed to that of the waves. The white caps are coming more ESE that SE so I decide to ride the troughs between the waves, a more direct route.

View from Vancouver Island side looking
at Newcastle Island in the storm

I enter the open harbour and find a trough to follow, keeping an eye out for floating logs, deadheads, anchor lines of boats and abandoned bouys half sunk and hard to see in the waves. I know the approximate location of two bouys, so I keep a close eye to avoid them. If I catch a line in the prop here, I could end up powerless and the ESE winds would push me onto the rocks at Newcastle and the rumoured new home of a cougar.

I make it across the most open area without a hitch. Two dozen double crested cormorants fly low over the boat as I turn down the channel to the yacht club where we moor. I glide into the covered moorage, tie the boat up, and carry my wheel to the car for the 40 drive to Crofton and the ferry to Salt Spring to continue my commute.

All quiet on the western front

2011-02-11T21:12:00.000-08:00

Spinning in Hawai'i

The pink Royal Hawaiian Hotel
with hallways lined with orchids

You may have noticed a lack of postings lately and there is a very good reason for this as you can see in the picture. We went to Hawai'i for a week where, I confess I did not do much. Very little spinning but what I did do, was done in a very picturesque setting on the lanai of the condo. I wonder if the hotter, sunnier it is, then the more the urge to fondle fibre diminishes? Or was it just plain laziness?

A banyan tree where the pigeons roosted in nooks and crannies.

Seen very close to the surfing hangout 'The Pipeline',
A cat colony with their chicken friends all going for a walk.

I saw a few things that struck me as unusual and interesting and managed to take a few pictures which I have included here.
Now I have to get serious again about my homework, but first, I am off for a weekend of learning how to spin Alpaca and Llama on Salt Spring Island.

Pomp and Ceremony

2011-01-30T18:16:00.000-08:00

From the left: Dr. Richard Umeek Atleo, Chief Shawn A-in-chut Atleo,
moi, Dr Nancy Turner, Dr. Ralph Nilson.
In front is the paddle that Chief Atleo presented to VIU
when he was installed as chancellor. It is a steering paddle,
which helps guide us during important journeys.
It is now part of our convocation ceremonies.

This was a busy week, being convocation week and I had the pleasure of introducing Dr. Nancy Turner to the audience as the Honorary recipient of a Doctorate of Science. Nancy is one of the world's top ethnobotanists. She has worked with First Nations Elders and cultural specialists for over 40 years, helping to preserve and bring to the broader world their traditional knowledge about plants and their ecosystems, their management and enhancement. Her CV is 60 pages long and she has been recognized with many awards (Member of the Order of Canada, Order of BC, ....the list goes on and on). She is an incredibly humble person who acknowledges those who taught her and shared their knowledge with her. I know who to ask when I have a question about native plants or things like, which plant was used by First Nations to dye wool yellow, or black? She was a great inspiration for those students who were graduating and to the rest of us. Here's a news release about her.

Victoria Inspiration

2011-01-26T19:34:00.000-08:00

Jean Betts showing her splendid coat
made from many scraps of various textiles
she has woven.

I attended the Victoria Weavers and Spinners Guild on Thursday having heard that one of their best weavers, Jean Betts was giving a presentation on some of her recent work. I had to be in Victoria to do some research anyway so I added this to the schedule and come away inspired. Jean recently took a workshop with Dorothy Field, poet, writer, artist, intellectual extraordinaire. Here's a documentary about Dorothy.
The workshop was intended to push the artist and extend their creativity and Jean felt she was able to do that. She has woven for years and getting bored with the same old same old and this was a chance to try new things. Her theme was reuse, reinvent, recycle and rejuvenate. Napkins from Value Village were dyed, textiles, cut and added, Japanese rice wax resist, stitches adding details..well, you get the idea and the pictures tell the story. Jean discusses the workshop in more detail on her blog OneSmallStitch

Jean also showed a book on 'Boro' a Japanese word meaning rags. Impoverished people in the 19th and 20th Century patched and patched and re-patched their clothes creating beautiful textiles. They are now collectable and sell for a lot of money. Do a google for "Japanese boro" and you will find some interesting images and information about boro.

Knitting from the heart, err, colon.

2011-01-21T18:29:00.000-08:00

untitled (heart lungs)
2007
knitted human hair
courtesy, private collection, sydney
photographs: danny kildare

You have to admire this knitting! I mean, look at it. First, the idea of knitting underwear is a little far out but a, well, an intestine, a colon, lungs even, now that is different! And after the shock of the idea comes the realization that these objects d'art are knitted (stocking stitch if you are curious) with ...better sit down for this... human hair. Artist Helen Pynor even confesses 'It's an act of madness'.

Underneath 2007
knitted human hair, courtesy, private collection, paris
Photo: danny kildare

Thinking about the women who wove their lives into the Afghanistan rugs (see the blog of Dec 26th) certainly connects you in a much more meaningful way to their work, but think about knitting the hair of many women into something. say a colon, is a whole new level of meaning between the shorn women and the knitter. Read more about Helen Pynor at her website: http://helenpynor.com

Distaff Day in Duncan

2011-01-10T20:42:00.000-08:00

Pat's home grown linen and Iris leaf
place mats done for the Salt Spring 100 mile
fibre challenge

Apparently, the first day after the Twelfth Day of Christmas (January 6th) is known as Saint Distaff Day (January 7th). A distaff is the tool spinners use to hold long fibres, usually flax/linen, while the fibres are spun. Distaff Day is the day spinners would pick up the distaff and start spinning again after the holidays. Consider that in the hey day of St Distaff's Day, i.e. when most people knew what a distaff was, most women were occupied with spinning. Hence, Distaff Day is the perfect excuse for a bunch of spinners to congregate and spin and spin and spin.

Yarns dyed by local mushrooms

Anna's lace twist socks

The Tzuhalem Weavers and Spinners Guild host a spin-in on this day which was attended by people from Deep Bay to Victoria. A gathering of spinners. Never, in my early years, did I ever imagine that I would be found spinning all day with a group of women. But it was fun! We went around the room, each person introducing themselves and doing a show and tell, followed by spinning, then pot-luck lunch, then spinning and chatting. Such a good way to meet people. For others it was a great way to reconnect.
What St. Distaff Day has to do with a saint, I have no idea. There doesn't seem to have been a saint called Distaff or a saint associated with Distaff Day...although many women are unacknowledged saints.

The Victoria Guild contingent,
4 women, 4 spinning wheels and a ton of fibre.

New Year, Old Spindle

2011-01-02T17:58:00.000-08:00

Spindle whorl found at L'Anse aux Meadows,
Newfoundland.
Image from: http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/whorl2461.jpg

This spindle is a most unusual spindle, one that tells a story and proves a story. The picture on the left is the Norse spindle whorl found at L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland. This is the oldest spindle whorl to be found in Canada and is over 1,000 years old. According to two Icelandic sagas that talk about the Viking settlement at Vinland (now proven to be L’Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland), this spindle probably belonged to Gudrid (aka The Far Traveller), wife of Karlsefni, and mother of Snorri, the first European baby to be born in North America, and my great-great (27 times great) grandmother.
In 1960, Helge Ingstad and his wife Anne Stine Moe, an archaeologist looked for and found the Vinland of the sagas in Newfoundland. The site also proved that the Norse people had been to North America 500 years before Columbus. It was the whorl (along with a knitting needle) that helped confirm that this location was indeed the Norse settlement that until then had been the Vinland of two Icelandic sagas. The Greenland Saga and Eric the Red Saga, which both spoke of Gudrid having lived in Vinland twice and the second time for three years where she gave birth to Snorri. At that time, only women spun hence the whorl indicated that a Norse woman had been there. Gudrid was not the only woman to have been in Vinland, from the sagas we know that Freydis also lived there for one of the voyages. She too most likely spun, but since Fredis had a reputation of being ferocious and a bit unlady-like, I like to think that this whorl belonged to Gudrid.
The whorl is made from soapstone and is very similar to the ones seen at the National Museum of Iceland in the picture here.

Icelandic spindles in the Icelandic National Museum

Eva Anderson in her dissertation research on Viking era textile production confirmed that the whorl weight and diameter of the whorl determines the rate and duration of the spin, the amount of tension and hence, the fineness or thickness of the yarn spun. Often various whorl sizes would be found close together in Norse archaeological sites which reflect the variety of spindle tools needed for the variety of textiles produced. From Norse archaeological sites, whorl weights range from 4-100 grams with 5-29 g being typical. Whorl diameters range between 5-45 mm and the height of stone whorls is 5-20 mm, with a 7-12 mm hole.

The shafts of that era were almost always thinner at both ends and thickening in the middle. Shafts would typically be 98-215 mm in length, with diameters from 5-13 mm, with 7-8 mm diameter most common (Andersson, 1999).

In the museum (see the picture above) the spindles are displayed with the whorl at the top, but they were probably used as bottom weighted whorls.

Yes Mum. This is MY blog

2010-12-28T09:06:00.000-08:00

Mother,
from the book by Judy Olausen

Almost a year ago, I put a bookmark/favorite shortcut on my parents computer to my blog. I figured it was a good way for them to see what is going on and keep in touch with me. I thought this would be of interest because 1) I am their daughter and 2) my mother also dusted off her spinning wheel and loom after letting them languish for 20 years and fibre is once again addictive. I must admit she didn't seem as enthralled as I thought she might be, mothers always being enthusiastic about the creative attempts of their offspring. But I passed it off to a boring blog post that day. That or an honest response to 'oh no, not another self-promoting or let-it-all-hang-out-there diary/blog'.
My mother phoned yesterday to say, with surprise in her voice, that's YOUR blog. Yes, Mum, this is MY blog. Bored while waiting for a web page to load, she decided to try the bookmark thinking it might be more interesting than a s.l.o.w.l.y l.o.a.d.i.n.g. page. Of course this was before she actually realized it was a link to MY blog. I guess my readership hit numbers will now double.
P.S. I always like to include a photo, so I thought of a wonderful book that came out in 2000, Mother by Judy Olausen, in which her photographs depict her mother as the quintessential mother of the pre-women's liberation era. The cover photo here is titled 'Mother as Coffee Table'.

Afghanistan, rugs and Christmas

2010-12-26T23:10:00.000-08:00

I received an email from my brother recently who is now in Afghanistan and there, in all that chaos, he had the time to read my blog ---he's probably reading it right now. Imagine that. Hello Bro'!--and inspired by fibre, he sent along a link to an article about the rugs of Afghanistan which had a lovely quote which he quoted and I in turn quote him quoting the article. "Read this: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/seema-jilani/the-carpets-of-afghanista_b_718812.html - I especially like her description of what to do with an Afghan carpet:

The rug is not just for you to place in your living room, or to be trampled upon by high heels at a cocktail party while people swirl martinis. Women have sewn their lives into it. They have whispered about their husbands, gossiped about in-laws, and exchanged riveting hopes and dreams while their fingers diligently worked the loom. Take your shoes off and don't tread heavily. Respect their stories."

Spinning on the ferry as we came through Active Pass
to Victoria

Doesn't that make you think twice when stepping on a carpet?! And imagine thinking about rugs and weaving while serving in Afghanistan.

Christmas travel spinning

Here, we visited a our families over Christmas, we took the ferry to Vancouver to have Christmas Eve with the in-laws' then the ferry to Victoria to have Christmas dinner with my family. With so many ferry rides and the time spent in the car gave me productive homework time.
We missed my brother (and his family, who are in England), at Christmas and we watched the Canadian troops celebrating Christmas in Afghanistan on the news. We didn't see him but then, maybe he was busy reading this blog.

Homework - am I there yet? NO

2010-12-23T20:47:00.000-08:00

Homework, as far as the eye can see...

I have been busy lately...and stuck in the colour wheel assignment ...but I have lost track of where I am and how far I have to go. Let me sum it up...a looooong way! As panic is starting to set in, I thought I better get on top of where I was so I stacked everything up on table, organized the assignments into three categories: Finished (i use that term loosely), halfway there and still to do. Then I counted: 9 items done, 9 half way done and 22 still to go!
And this is just the actual spinning, then there are the written assignments, the 10 book reviews and the spinning major 25hour project.
Then I figured out how many days to go -- 109 days. Well, that's not so bad. It's still possible. Maybe I will have time for Christmas baking.

On the left: done; Centre: half done; Right: kits waiting for action.

Lost in a colour wheel

2010-12-18T12:35:00.000-08:00

You might be wondering where I am with my Master Spinners homework. Well, I am stuck in a viscous circle - the twelve colour wheel circle. It is not hard, nor boring, nor tedious, it is just taking time. The assignment: Create a colour wheel. It requires weighing each colour, then blending colours equally by weight, then spinning them and finally create a colour wheel. Here's how it works: take three primary colour merino roving - yellow, blue and red. Blend each of the primary colours with another primary to get three more colors, eg. red + blue = violet. Keep in mind that the new blend has to be homogeneous - blended very carefully, striped colours will be rejected. So I card very careful using the drum carder, running the new blend through the drum 3 - 4 times. Then take the new colour (or, figure out the correct portions of the primary colours that produced the new colour and add to it to et the new colour - you can see where this is getting confusing) and blend with the primary on each side eg. violet + blue = violet/blue, violet+red= ...hey wait a minute, what does that make and where is it? Excuse me while I card more wool....

Fur, hair and wool - what's it all about?

2010-12-12T19:16:00.000-08:00

What's the difference between fur, wool and hair? This is a question that has been bugging me for a long time, so I tried to find out the answer. Let me tell you right up front that I didn't find a simple answer. The following is what I have gleamed but please post a comment if you can add any clarity to this question.
Some of this confusion seems to be a matter of word usage, as they are all the same protein (keratin), so technically they are all hair. However, some features that help distinguish the usage of terms: The thickness for example. Hair has lower density with 500 follicles/sq inch although not all are active at the same time, so let's say @100-200 follicles per sq inch should define hair. Sheep wool on the other hand, have up to 60,000 follicles/sq inch (Merino) and if the density is high, like a sea otter which has one of the highest densities at 800,000 per sq inch, the hair is referred to as fur.
Another characteristic that some use to distinguish between terms is the growth pattern. Fur grows to a certain length then stops, while wool and hair keeps on growing. Although, this all depends on species and genetics, but generally this seems a good separator. Fur tends to have a major shedding time annually. Only the primitive sheep (eg. Soay, Orkney, Hebridean) and the so called 'hair' sheep breeds (eg.Saint Croix, West African, Wiltshire Horn) shed annually.

Churro sheep wool. SEM
Photo by Dave Lewis and the Ohio
Agriculture Research and Development Center in Wooster

Wool tends to be the term for sheep fleece. Some sheep have kemp (thick hairs) in amongst the wool usually in is found in certain breeds of sheep and certain locations (eg. rear end), other sheep and Llamas have double coats with longer guard-type hairs designed to shed water and shorter insulating down fur (eg. Icelandic, Navajo Churro) for warmth.

Alpaca.
Photo by Dave Lewis and the Ohio
Agriculture Research and Development Center in Wooster

And then there is the more technical characteristics, like the cellular structure. The hair shaft is made of cuticle cells (keritine) that form scales, overlapping each other and pointing towards the tip. The cells form a protective coating around the cortex (inner area). In the fine merino wool, the cells are one layer thick while human hair can be 10 layers thick. This cellular structure is different for each type of hair (eg. eyelashes, whiskers, hair) from different animals. The scanning electron microscope photos here show some of the different structures. Look at the difference between human hair, churro sheep and angora rabbit in the pictures here. But, it doesn't help much in distinguishing hair from fur from wool.

Alpaca Light microscope photo
showing the medulation (dark areas).
Photo by Dave Lewis and the Ohio
Agriculture Research and Development Center in Wooster

Inside the hair shaft is the cortex. This is the middle of the hair/wool/fur. If the centre of the cortex is hollow we call the core 'medulla' or a medulated hair. The inner core can be a consistently hollow core, or contain sections which are hollow. This medulation can provide insulation, hence hairs with no medulation hold heat less well than medulated hairs. Alpacas and Llamas have medulated hairs while sheep do not, hence Alpaca wool is a better insulator than wool.

Angora. Note the very interesting V-shape cell structure
SEM Photo by Dave Lewis and the Ohio
Agriculture Research and Development Center in Wooster

So why is this interesting? For a few reasons. The structure of a fibre creates its characteristics for: heat retention; strength, elasticity, felting tendency, light reflection, etc. And also because I want to be able to analyze a fibre and have a way to figure out if it is Mountain Goat or sheep wool or from the Coast Salish wool dog.

Minus 36 degrees

2010-11-29T21:30:00.000-08:00

View from down town Saskatoon to the Bessborough Hotel

We interrupt this blog with a quick visit to Saskatoon where the temperature was -36 degrees. So cold I didn't even feel it. And into this cold I went on a horse-drawn sleigh ride in the moonlight. It was wonderful. Quick but worth every second. Highlights:

the sleigh ride
meeting a whip cracking champion (see upcoming post)
watching two friends volunteer to hold a paper ribbon between their teeth while the whip cracker split the ribbon in half, time and time again until the ribbon was a mere 3 inches between them.
a successful food quest in search of a real Ukrainian dinner. We found it at ' A Touch of Ukraine' where we had three types of perogies (okay, two types and what we think was a deep fried third), cabbage rolls and borscht.
and, another first in public spinning, this time in Saskatoon, Calgary and Vancouver airports....Rats. I should have taken a picture.
oh and a pitch fork BBQ - 4 steaks to each tine and the pitchfork was dunked into a vat of boiling oil. Steaks done in two minutes. Pictures to come.

Transcending the Material

2010-11-13T15:11:00.000-08:00

Photo by Ben Cuevas from his
installation 'Transcending the material'.

Every once in a while I get deeply inspired by some unique knitting project. Inspired enough to make me want to pick up some knitting needles and knit madly, furiously, intensely. Knit until I feel I really and truly understand knitting, that I know it so well that I can create my own patterns. So well, that I can eclipse and exceed the pattern, not needing any pattern, not even my own. I would rise above and go beyond being just a good knitter. I would triumph over tricky stitches. I will see something in my mind's eye and using my own stitches, my own designs, make knitting do anything I want. I could control it and knit anything I want. I would transcend the material.

Photo by Ben Cuevas of a
closer view of his skeleton.

Photo by Ben Cuevas showing the knitted
detail of the hand.

Recently, I came across someone who had reached that pinnacle of knitting, Ben Cuevas, philosopher, artist, knitter.
Check out his installation available on his blog. And, here is an interview with him.
Ben Cuevas interview, 2010 Wassaic Artist Resident from The Wassaic Project on Vimeo.

November Light

2010-11-08T19:05:00.000-08:00

Dawn at work

View from my office

I interrupt the homework blitz to show you a few pictures of things that caught my attention in the exquisite light that has been making things glow around here lately. I suppose it is due to the lateness of the year, the low angle of the sun, the lack of cloud cover, rain, drizzle, fog, low lying cloud and general greyness that is usually common here in November.

Colour on campus

Light at the end of the day.

One left foot

2010-10-31T16:44:00.000-07:00

One twisted ankle

Did I mention I signed up for a 'Learn to Run' class? Yup, they teach this. And there is a lot to learn (where to land on your foot for example) and a lot of homework (practise)! It's a great way to become a runner. I know this because I have taken the course before and had worked up to running 13 minutes, then a 2 minute walk and repeat the sequence. It got me through a 5k run in a respectable time. But that was a few years ago a a few pounds lighter.
Well, this time I failed. Flunked out. We got to the midterm and I had worked up to be running a full three continuous minutes, then a two minute walk and was feeling pretty good about this progress when I found a pothole, at the 30 minute mark, in the side walk and down I went. I limped back to work (this being a lunch time activity) where the first aid people bandaged me up, gave me a cold pack and strict instructions to keep it elevated as much as possible for the first 48hours. Apparently early care means an early heal (no pun intended).
I do not mind being housebound or couch bound, but here is the problem. My right foot is the sprained one and my spinning wheel is a single right-foot treadle. What's the good of being house and couch-bound with 36 more spinning homework kits awaiting and with only one left foot?

Alpaca and black walnut dyed wool, drum carded
(on the left), combed (in the middle) and being
dizzed into fine tops which were rolled until
ready to spin (on the right)

I returned to the guest bedroom aka the wool stash and without awaking Priscila the spirit, the-fleece-less-sheep-that-rules-the-guest-bedroom-wool-stash, dug into the homework bag that held the kits still to be blended, combed, carded and dizzed and spent today seated in the sunroom aka the production studio and carded, belnded, combed and dizzed a few more kits, so at least I felt I was making some progress. Back on the couch, I resorted back to the spindle and am now working on a blend of silk and mohair. Very deluxe. But I am getting ahead of the next post.
Count down: 150 days to go (using revised deadline date of March 31)

Adams River Sockeye Boondoggle and Kit #19

2010-10-28T19:14:00.000-07:00

Sockeye salmon heading up the Adams River

Dead fish lining the shores of
Shuswap Lake

The river ran red. Really. This is the BIG BIG BIG year for the Adams River Sockeye salmon run. For some reason, every four years, there is a bumper year for sockeye returning fish--after their first year, spent in fresh water, the little tykes head down river and spend the next three years in the ocean before returning to their birth place. So a big year is every 4th year and this was a 4th year. Despite predictions from some quarters of a crash, this year was the biggest year since 1913, 34.5 MILLION FISH!. Compare that to last years 1 million fish. This was BIG BIG. Once in a lifetime. So we had to go see it. Click here to see my slide show.

Spinning Kit# in the van

We've been to the last 4th year run and 8 years before, and they were impressive, so I didn't know how this could be even more impressive. It wasn't that we saw more fish swimming up river- maybe we did but I never counted--but what we saw was more dead fish. After they spawn they die. It's their destiny. So while the line of fish kept going up river, those that spawned and died, floated back down the river and lined the shores of Shuswap Lake. The mouth of the river was thick with dead fish. Now think about this. 34.5 million fish all spawning then dying and littering the shore. That adds up to a lot of dead fish with decaying, rotting flesh. The smell was, well, it smelt. Bearable but the smell did linger with us for hours. .....hmmm, I better have someone with a sensitive nose, check the aroma of kit # 19 - fine grade fleece wool spun and prepared worsted-style, spun in the van on the way there and carried in my pack while viewing and sidestepping dead fish.
Count: 4 down 36 to go

Day 3 and 4, Kit #38

2010-10-23T22:51:00.000-07:00

Spinning in the car - not while I drove.

Okay, Kit #38 is supposed to be at the finish line, or at in sight of it but I panicked. I was worried about all the travelling I had coming up in the next week and thinking I would be a week behind with only 1, maybe 2 kits completed.
I was off to Victoria to meet with a curator at the BC Museum to look at historical photos of Coast Salish spinning (but that's another story) and then to go to the Victoria Hand Weavers and Spinners Guild meeting, which meant that I wouldn't have time to spin. Eureka, I would take my spindle and the Kit (#38) that required a 10 yard sample of a 2 ply yarn done with a drop spindle. I could spindle at the Guild meeting, and while the other half drove, I could spindle in the car. And this gives me a good idea. For all those trips, I will select some other kits that would be suitable to use the spindle. One big headache solved.
Which brings me back to Kit #38, a blend of beige llama blended with a Frieson x Suffolk cross both of which had a similar length staple and I had dyed the wool with Black Walnuts to get that ho-hum beige. The mix is a very nice, soft camel coloured yarn.
Time: 1.5 hours driving, 1 hour in a meeting, 1 hour plying in the car, in the dark using a flashlight! = 3.5 hours (including coffee stops)
Count: 3 down, 37 to go.

Homework - Kit #1 True Woollen

2010-10-22T22:02:00.000-07:00

Kit #1, Merino, prepared and spun woollen

Arrrghhh. I didn't enjoy Kit #1 (which I did second) until I got into the groove which was about at the 90% done mark but before then I was fighting it. The assignment: spin 10 yards of a fine fleece (I used Merino) using a true woollen preparation and true woolllen spinning technique. Simple. HA!
After spending 4 months trying to get integrity into my yarn by spinning a true worsted, I had forgotten how to loosen up and spin an easy-as-pie woollen. Adding to my frustration was the idea lurking in the back of my mind that I would run out of Merino so I had to make this work. What rubbish. Think about it. There are an estimated 100 million sheep just in Australia and the majority of them are Merino. There is lots of Merino fleece to be had if I needed more, so why let that fear worry me. I finally put that thought out of my mind. Once I got into the hang of easy-as-pie woollen long draw, it worked, there was evenness in the yarn. When I plied it back on itself to test what it would look like...by gawd, it looked good. So I kept going and then plied the two bobbins into one yarn and got 20 meters with fleece to spare. Not much but some, at least enough for the assignment but I have to admit, I didn't think that my plying was even. But right now I am feeling...good enough. Move on to something nicer, something more pleasing and relaxing to spin.
Time to prepare, spin, curse, ply, wash: 2 hours
Count: 2 down 38 to go.

Homework - Kit #2 - Adding Memory

2010-10-21T06:37:00.000-07:00

Black llama blended
with white wool and integrity!

Memory...wouldn't it be great to be able to add memory. I gave my father a memory stick on his 80th, what every ageing person needs -- more memory. Who would have thought that some fibres have no memory. They forget what they are supposed to be, how to hold their shape, how to return to their original state. Wool however, does have memory. Wear a wool sweater, and it holds it shape. If it does stretch, say at the elbows, wash it, lay it out to dry and it bounces back to it's original shape. Llama on the other hand doesn't have memory. Llama is beautiful, soft, warm, strong but draping clothes will stretch. Sleeves will get longer.
For garments made with inelesatic fibres that will hang, you need to blend in some wool to give it a bit of bounce and bounce-back memory.
Which brings me to my homework where I decided to start with Kit #2, an exercise to mix two fibres, one without memory and one with. I chose some black silky llama and added 38% white wool to get a dark gray with some bounce. It was wonderful to spin. It glided out of my hand in a continuous smooth flow of fibres. I didn't have to do much work at all. And damn it, if it didn't have integrity!
Timing:
60 minutes to blend it = 60
40 minutes for each bobbin = 80 minutes plus 60 = 140 plus
20 minutes to ply it = 160 minutes plus
20 minutes to write up my notes = 180 minutes = 3 hours!
And then I have to figure out a way to mount a 10 yard sample skein, plus a lock of each original fibre and a sample of the blend before spinning. Say another 15 minutes.
That means I have to speed up or double up on the amount I do. This is going to be a tight, tight schedule! I either have to spin smaller amounts, and keep to the 10 yard requirements or make the most of some samples and make enough that the extra can be incorporated into my major project at the end. Inspired by this kit, I have an idea already for the project - a woven scarf made a various shades of gray.
1 down, 39 kits and 179 days to go.