Flax to linen

[Photo: Tow and line linen]

I have been spinning linen...or flax? I guess I have been spinning flax and at some magical Rumplestilkskinian moment the flax turns into linen. And like the captive maiden's spinning, mine too turned into gold!

[Picture from Franz Eugen Köhle'sr,
Köhler's Medizinal-Pflanzen 1897]

I didn't think I would enjoy spinning flax but I do. There is something about the neat, tidy, golden threads that tugs at your ancestral memories. It is comforting. Well...maybe not comforting in the same way that spinning wool is comforting, but linen satisfies. I don't know why, I am just reporting how it effects me. And satisfying is the way I feel after spinning flax into gold linen.

"The life of a flax plant is 100 days of thought..."

Be Linen

[Photo:Flax stem cross-section
Photo: Ryan R. McKenzie]

So here are a few things I learned along the way. Flax is a plant and the fibre comes from the inner bark or bast of the stem, so the fibres are, at the longest, the length of the plant, maybe around 2 feet. To make a long story short, during the processing of separating the fibre from the plant, you can end up with a pile of short fibres (the tow) and a pile of long fibres (the line). Okay, okay linen spinners, I know, I know, I am over simplifying, but we have to keep up the interest of non-spinners. If you want to know more about the very interesting processing of flax, check out this beautiful video 'Be Linen' video. I digress...

Each of these types of fibres can be spun. The tow will produce a fuzzy yarn and the line...oh, the line flax, sigh, will produce a beautiful golden yarn. There are a variety of spinning techniques from using the classical distaff to accordion folding of the fibres. Each method is designed o allow only a few threads to draft out into the yarn yet also allowing those threads to grab their following threads to keep a continuous line of yarn forming as you spin. Then, you can spin wet or dry. Wet spun will smooth the yarn and give it a higher gloss, and dry spun allows more frizz to show. Then we can get more technical and spin with water or spit. Yes, spit, as in drool, saliva. I haven't seen proof of this, but rumour has it that saliva works on the flax enzymes, making the fibres glue together, while water helps control the flax and makes it softer, easier to spin and creates a smoother yarn, but doesn't create the glue.  

But here's the thing...you can blend linen with wool, or cotton, or silk or....who would have thought? Endless possibilities!

EDITED Dec 31, to add 2 more pictures.

Spinning a cloud of camel down

[Photo:Spinning camel down
in Egmont]

The opportunity: to see the Sunshine Coast. 
The assignment: to spin camel--camel down, camel down/silk blends and camel hair and compare them. 
The resources: Spin-Off Fall 2007; hand carded punis of camel down, some with silk.
I usually mix up the two types of camel: Bactrian (2 humps from China and Mongolia) and Dromedary (1 hump from the Middle East), but I finally figured out a way to keep them straight in my mind. 'B' turned on it's side gives you 2 humps, just like the Bactrian camel.'D' turned on it's side gives you one hump, just like the Dromedary camel. Alice, the camel only had one hump, just like the Dromedary camel. There's 'a town called Alice' in Australia (also the title of a very good book by Neville Shute) where domesticated Dromedary camels have gone walkabout. Given the environmental differences between the deserts of Middle East/Australia (hot hot hot) and Mongolia (cold cold cold), which beast probably has a soft warm undercoat?  Yup, the B's, those 2 humped Bactrians.
I was given some of that Bactrian camel down, a soft carded light tan roving or top with 2" fibres. True luxurious fibres. Almost to good to spin on samples. To supplement that I bought what I can only describe as a cloud of camel down with shorter (about 3/4 to 1") length, but still very fine fibres.  I hand carded the cloud and rolled it into punis.
After spinning a few yards of the 100% down I found my spinning groove by using a point-of-contact (ie let the twist enter the drafting zone) short (around 1") backward draw.  The singles looked tight but I planned on plying them enough to open the yarn up and then have the yarn 'bloom' with a good finishing wash.
I'll include the final yarn in a post with the other samples.

Reward time

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.

Off the wheel

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

[Photo: 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:

[Photo:Twill before fulling]

Left: Twill before fulling

[Photo: Twill after fulling ]

Right: after fulling 

[Photo: Plain weave before
fulling]

[Photo: Plain weave after fulling]

Left: Plain weave before fulling

Right:  Plain weave after fulling

[Photo: Neck Cowl before
fulling]

Left: Neck Cowl twill before fulling

Right: Neck Cowl twill after fulling

[Photo: Neck Cowl twill after fulling]

Tribal Textiles

[Photo: 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.

[Photo: 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.

Navajo Ply

The Masters Spinners program expects you to be able to teach, hence an assignment to teach a 5 minute lesson.  Mine was to be Navajo Plying on a spindle.  Last year when I bought my first spindle from Knotty by Nature, Stephanie showed me how to Navajo Ply on the spindle.  It was too much for me to contemplate so early in the game but I stored the idea away and then a few weeks ago decided it was time to learn it.  With trial and lots of error and lots of help from Google and Youtube, I managed to be able to do a few small skeins.  So when each of the class members had to pick a topic and spindles was one of the areas, I volunteered to organize my learnings and pass them on.  So here's some notes and pictures and links to help others.


What is Navajo Ply?
It's a type of 3 ply which resembles a chain stitch but plied. Think of a chained warp, or a crochet chain stitch.


Why would you Navajo Ply?

1. It is good for colour separation in striped roving/top. Creates areas of clear colour.     It allows you to maintain colour continuity, just make sure you spin your color stretch in your single about 3 times as long as you want the stripe to be in your finished yarn. Eg. For a 12” solid colour stretch, make sure your single has 36”- 40” of solid colour. In the photo you can see the colour separation in the Navajo Ply (at the bottom, subtle but it does show colour separation) whereas the regular 3-ply above it, mixes the stands of colour.

2. You can do it on a spindle where you ply a single section, then Navajo ply it, then make another single section, ply it etc. No need for first doing the single, then taking it off the spindle while you do another single so that you can start your plying.  You can do it all on the same spindle without taking your yarn off.The yarn is complete, no need for handling it again.


How do you Navajo Ply on a spindle?
a. Spin a single three feet long (or a longish comfortable length). Spin Z
b. Fold it in thirds and it makes a loop at the spindle end.
c. Put that loop under the hook and spin the spindle in the opposite direction. Spin S
d. When you get to the end by your hand, unhook the yarn and test for balance.  If too tight, hook it back on and unspin for a twist or two and test for balance again.
e. When you are happy with the balance, wind the yarn on.
f. Pull the single through the loop to create a new loop and then put the single under the hook.
g. Spin another length of singles Z-twist, but now wind it between your thumb and elbow to hold it while you create the new loop.
h. Repeat from C – G.


Resources
It's much easier to see it being done.  Here's a video on YouTube:

Quadra Island Spinner's and Weaver's Retreat

This was another first for me. My first Spinners AND Weaver's Retreat and my second foray into the world of the fibre sisterhood. Who knew that you could go away to a fantastic location which included: island; eagles; petroglyphs; a First Nation owned lodge with art everywhere; hot tubs; good food, workshops, a fashion show, talks, show and tell, wine and women, spinning and knitting away and having a great time. I mentioned my amazement to a friend who looked at me and said, 'well, of course we need it. It feeds our soul.' She was right. You come away inspired, you have learned something new, a nagging weaving/knitting/spinning problem has been solved, you have met new friends, connected with old ones, you come away with project ideas, you've laughed and you have revived. I guess that is what retreats are for. My friend paused and still peering at me over her glasses with a particularly sharp and loaded piercing look, as if she had seen a hollow empty, echoing soul desperately needing filling, continued on 'And it is about time that you joined in!'

Socks to Dye For

I don't knit. Well hardly ever. When I do knit, it usually ends in a 3/4s done project or a mass of knotted fibres heaped into a bag for years as if expecting a fibre fairy to find it, fix it and finish it ... fabulously. Once in a while something gets completed and a poor soul has to live with my project. The last one was felted slippers for my father. Even after felting they are still size 22. Not exactly something that at age 80 his size 9's will ever grow into. 
So I am not sure how on earth I ended up in a socks-to-dye-for workshop. Socks for pete's sake! With heels and toes! But wait. I am getting ahead of myself. I never promised to actually knit socks, although the thought is festering in my mind. The inspiration came from the idea of dying the yarn to knit the socks. It's not your average dye job. The white yarn for the socks is knit two strands together into a long rectangular block which is then dyed. There is enough yarn in the block to unravel and re-knit into two socks, guaranteeing that each sock will have the exact same dye job. I even bought the sock blank already knitted. My now dyed sock blank just needs a sock knitter, someone with a knack of knowing how to turn a heel, and once I have found a sock knitter, then I'll re-post this blog entry and add the finished product. In the meantime, the picture above is the dyed sock blank...dyed in manly colours.
Posting date has been back dated for when it should have been posted.

A New Year

The Easter Lilies are blooming again and that means spring is here! It also means winter has gone by and I still haven't finished what is on my loom. I'm not sure why I haven't finished it. It was in the back room and I thought by moving the loom (it is only 24" wide and has a stand) into the living room that I would weave at least a little bit almost every day. I mean, there is no way I could ignore it with it sitting right there. But it is amazing how something becomes part of the unseen everyday environment. The background furniture. It isn't that I don't like the fabric, I do. I like the subtle harmony of the various blues, the different textures (ribbon, mohair, bamboo and wool). Maybe I am worried about the finishing, the fulling of the fabric. It would make a nice scarf weight, but I am hoping to make a jacket or a light sweater but I need to finish it with some fulling to pull all the threads together into a finished fabric that has a bit more substance and that will require a bit of testing with some swatches. So there it sits. 

The Original Knot Yarn

I was recently inspired by Materfamilias in a talk she and a collaborator gave about the creative process. They had been paired off in an experiment to see what would emerge if you put two academics who didn't know each other and who came from different disciplines. She spoke about knitting and how the two collaborators discovered common threads and ideas. Being an academic enthralled with Canadian literature, she naturally spoke about P.K. Page who had recently passed away and how P.K. was also a keen knitter and had written some poetry about knitting...to wit:

Knitter's Prayer

Unknit me --

all those blistering strange small intricate stitches --

shell stitch, moss stitch, pearl and all too plain;

unknit me to the very first row of ribbing,

let only the original simple knot remain.

Then let us start again.

' Materfamilias pointed out that the original simple knot could also refer to the umbilical cord knot. All these thoughts came together in my mind with another question 'What creative product would I come up with given their thoughts?' And a personal challenge was born....what if I designed a yarn based on this talk? What would it look like?  

With yarn, you can play with colour, the fibre or a mixture of fibres, the diameter, and the structure (single, two ply or specialty structure). I decided that the yarn would need to start with the colour of red (blood), fade to white (life) and then darken to black (death). I would use a mixture of fibres to represent the many creative thoughts that went into this. I dyed wool that went from red, white to black and then spun it thick and thin for the core. Black alpaca mixed with recycled threads of multi-coloured silk to represent the many threads of thoughts coming together. These were plied together with extra twist and strands of coloured mohair to represent many different life events. Then spun a grey alpaca with a grey/blue cultivated silk to give it a tone and plied it with the already plied yarn in the opposite direction encase the yarn. So what do you think?

Spinner's Prayer

Knit me --

The original knot 
starts the thought.

Blood red, our life begins,
wool white, wool black
a balanced spin.

Many threads, random caught.

spun worsted and woolen, 
slubbed and thin,

paired and plied and 
plied again,

entwined, encased 
and wrapped.

Knit me a life to spin.

Yarn bombing

I have been meaning to post this picture for a long time.  This is a bicycle that has been 'yarn bombed' outside of the Knotty-by-Nature yarn store in Victoria (great fibre store by the way). This is kinda like a knitted tea cosy but think bigger scale. Yarn bombing is taking the world by storm, stitch by stitch.  A friend had his truck yarn bombed and came back to find little knitted accessories hanging from the tailgate, the antenna, mirror, etc.  Cute in a devilish kinda way.  Anyway, the Vancouver Island University light poles got yarn bombed last week and unfortunately my camera battery died so I don't have proof that one light pole was dressed as a flasher in a grey knit sweater (moss stitch, with a cable or two) from which a pink sock-like appendage protruding.  That may be providence that I couldn't capture that image, but I did manage to capture the seaweed being circled by fish and the snake that slivered around a pole and captured one of the campus bunnies it its mouth.

Last week on Saltspring Island I saw a book on yarn bombing ' Yarn Bombing - Improving the urban landscape one stitch at a time and see that the two women from Vancouver (I just realized I am almost at the epicentre of this knit revolution) have a blog dedicated to recording yarn bombing activity around the world.  Some where I read an article about subversive knitting in Paris (of course).  Social knitworking where twitters twitknit a pub or cafe and knitters descend upon that location, armed with yarn and needles, ready to knit up a storm, usually on a public object like a mail box, tree or statue.  One never knows where or when, but wired knitters have learned to be prepared at a moments notice to do their bit and warm up the world.

The oldest known fibers in the world

The oldest known spun fibers in the world has been found in a cave and they are dyed black, grey, turquoise and pink AND they are over 30,000 years old! Here's an article on it.

Image of microscopic fiber samples courtesy of Science/AAAS

Coast Salish Woven Fabrics - More questions than answers

Salish Weaving

I am curious to know more about traditional Coast Salish woven fabrics, especially those collected pre 1830s. Coast Salish weavings can be incredibly complex. Techniques include twining (double, simple, three-strand), openwork, overlay, tapestry and twill. Some of the patterns were very intricate and made of fibres from dog wool/hair, nettle and mountain goat wool. There is even reference to one that included down. 
Paula Gustafson in her book Salish Weaving writes that she has examined most of the blankets in North American museums and has only seen one of dog hair. So how come so many descriptions and records of wool dogs by some of the early explorers of the area? And where are all these rugs, blankets and other fabrics made from dog hair?

Grant Keddie, from the Royal BC Museum tells me that UVic is getting an electron microscope and there is an expert there is working on analyzing the hairs to try and figure out if they are goat, dog or a mixture. He suggests it is time to re-examine some of these treasures using newer technologies to help solve some of these mysteries. Grant has been interested in the wool dogs for a long time (see Keddie, 1993, Prehistoric Dogs of B.C. Wolves in Sheep Clothing, the Midden, 25 (1)3-5, February. Grant is currently researching the history and use of Coast Salish spindle whorls. He also tells me that Susan Crockford is the local authority on doggie DNA and included archaeoloigal material from RBCM collection and Tatlan Bear dogs in her research. Check out her books and publications. And here is an article on the wool dog.

Some of my questions:

• What was the Salish wool dog? What did it look like? There is one painting by Paul Kane but is it an accurate likeness? Were wool dogs found up and down the coast of North America? Is there similar breed still in existence? What type of fibre was it? How long, how thick and how much crimp did it have?
• Many of the blankets were made from mountain goat wool. I don't think mountain goat existed on Vancouver Island, so they must have traded for it. So how common was weaving if the wool came from dogs or mountain goats. Was there enough wool to make this a common activity or a rare activity? If it was common, well, that's a lot of mountain goat and a lot of trade. Was there enough mountain goats? Or was dog wool more common? If weaving wasn't common, then that could explain why there was such value placed on blankets. But then, what was the common fabric?
• Where did the dye colours red, blue and black come from?  Yellows, tans. browns, oranges, greens come from a variety of possibilities (eg. wolf moss, oregon grape roots, alder bark) but a good black (salty mud?), blue or red (can alder bark really get the traditional reds?) is hard to come by.

Feel free to post any answers.
Speaking of the Royal BC Museum, they have a great exhibit which opens on Nov 20th. S’abadeb – The Gifts: Pacific Coast Salish Art and Artists. 

Edited to add a couple of related books.

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 .

Spider silk

Photo and article at Wired.com

1million spiders, 70 people, 4 years, 80 million feet of silk = an amazing piece of fabric. Check out this article from Wired: 1 million Spiders Make Golden Silk for Rare Cloth

And here is a CBC interview an interview with Nicolas Godley, the man that milked the spiders and wove that tapestry of spider silk.
http://www.cbc.ca/mrl3/8752/asithappens/20090929-aih-1.wmv

And, another article along with a video interviewing the visionary behind the spiders.

Nettles and Alpaca

Last weekend started with a conference on First Nations Traditional Foods.  Talks on Friday, then feasting and playing the bones game Friday night.  Spotted at the display was a dried plant with long stems, dried and looking like hay.  This was dried nettle. Wound onto a short stick, was line, somewhat like fishing line.    Saturday was a traditional food fair at the Snuneymuxw Long House.  Abe, who was studying First Nations root gardens, was cooking up a meal.  Potatoes done in a cedar box of water, heated by placing red hot stomes into the water.  The fire was removed from the pit to make way for ferns and salal which was quickly laid in the pit, vegetables added, more ferns and salal, a bucket of water, burlap and covered with a foot of dirt.  Abe removed the cooked potatoes with a handmade ladle, made of wood, twine made of young willow bark and nettle. 

Someone else had told me earlier that the Saanich First Nations used willow for their reef fish nets.  Judith MacKenzie McCuin (who taught me how to spin years ago) writes about indigenous use of nettles in the introduction of her new book The Intentional Spinner .

lipobibliophobia - the fear of being somewhere without a book.

Sunday, a bike trip along the old Cowichan Valley railway.



But first a stop at Pacific Sun Alpacas (by lucky co-incidence, just about on the trail) to buy some fleece. A very friendly and enthusistic owner who, of course, is a spinner, shows me how to sort a fleece.  I buy a sample--the neck fleece of Lumina, a cream-coloured alpaca-- to take home and try.  I'll bring it back and she will help me card it into rovings with her new carding machine.  Lipofibrephobia.  I buy a couple of bags of rovings to keep me spinning.