Textile Week day 1

Day 1 was get-to-know-Washington and I started with the Eastern Market. Part farmers market (the local white peaches were mouth watering good), part flea market (costume jewelry is big), part flash back to the 70's (incense, leather goods) and part international (Mali mud cloth clothes, Indian scarves and shawls). But of most interest to me was a little shop next door to the Eastern Market, 'Woven History' - Silk Road Tribal and Village Rugs.
The small, wrought iron fenced front garden was draped in colourful carpets from Turkey, Nepal, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbeckistan and half a dozen other ---stans.  Inside, carpets were stacked along 2 walls and in every corner.  Camel bridles, saddles, blankets and decoration hung on the walls, there were even shoes made from hand-woven fabrics.  I tried every pair on, hoping that the size 12 mens, or the size 6 women's might be a mistake and fit me, but alas, not one pair fit.  I felt like Cinderella, except I was looking for two woven shoes.  It was too much to take in one one visit so I plan to go back and find out more about the hand spinning that goes into all the rugs.

Textiles - full immersion

I have been blog absent for a few reasons. There was the usual summer R&R where the brain went on holiday and then the business of the university fall term starting up.  But a main reason/excuse is because I was preparing for a trip to Washington DC for a week of fibre. Three appointments with two museum research centers, a one day workshop on SouthWestern Textile Identification and Analysis and the 3day Textile Society Of America biennial symposium.
All this involved much research into collections databases, emails to collections managers, travel arrangements, scheduling and juggling appointments, etc. Then, a day before leaving I received a pre-reading list! I did a lot of reading on the airplane and have more to do.
You know when they tell you to turn off your electronic devices on planes because you will cause the engines to come to a full stop and the plane will crash and everyone will die a horrible death?  Hogwash.  Or so I thought until I sent a quick message just before take-off.  Well the engines stopped.  All of them.  It was a good thing we were still on the ground.  They had to get a mechanic in to do a reboot (of the engines, not my Blackberry).  I am not sure it was my email that did it but just in case, from now on I will be sure to turn my cell phone off until we are safely in the air.
So I arrived save and sound 9pm last night to find I made a mistake on the hotel reservation and only reserved for the last 3 days and the hotel was full! Luckily the one across the street had a room and at a very good price. Tomorrow is a free exploring day.

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.

Peaceful spinning

[Photo: Heading back down the
dock at sunset]

Spinning is relaxing, meditative,peaceful. I suppose that is why I do it. The sound of the wheel is like a heartbeat, woosh, woosh, and the feel of a double treadle gently messaging each leg reinforces the beat.
The other evening we held a spin-in on the island and I went to town to pick up a boatload of spinners and returned to tie up at a friend's dock. We sat in the warm evening sun spinning on her deck, spinning, chatting, enjoying the company, and looking at this view. What a relaxing way to spend a summer evening!

Stories worth hearing

[Photo:Sofa without a blanket]

Every now and then you meet someone and they tell you a stop-in-your-tracks story. Here's one I think is worth passing on. We were talking about weaving and that bought up a special woven blanket that a friend Brian had acquired from his father. Brian (not his real name) made an interesting observation that it is blankets that made a house a home. Even a tarp strung up for a cover from the elements with a blanket thrown on the ground, made that tent a home.  
Brian grew up in India where his father was a missionary. While there, his father met a very poor Pakistani blanket weaver. As was customary, Brian's father bargained with him and bought two beautiful blankets. Later, Brian was given one and he loves it. It is woven in a very complicated pattern and after all these years, it is still as beautiful as the day his father bought it. Where ever Brian lived, the blanket made his home a home.  

[Photo:Sofa with blanket.
More homey?]

When his father was on his death bed, he had one regret about his whole life. Just one. After all those years, he wished he had not bargained with the weaver. He wished he had paid the full price.

Lost .... and found at sea

Photo, design and
decoration by Laura Landry.

Readers of the blog will wonder where on earth I have been. Well, I have been up to my eyeballs spinning trying desperately to finish all my assignments for the year. D-day (driving-day) to get to Olds Alberta for year 4 class arrived and I still hadn't finished all my homework for year 3 of the Master Spinner program. The last homework assignment (spin embroidery yarns and embroider a 3 x 3" sampler) wasn't done. The thread had been spun for months but that doggone embroidery had still to be done. I embroidered for 1,000 kilometers, followed by two evenings before it got done. So on day three, tada, of level 4 class, I handed it in. Whew!
I returned home with a suitcase full of fibre and an armload of assignment instructions for the coming year. I have been back six days and still haven't had time to unpack everything. It was the Nanaimo Dragon Boat Festival all weekend and I was on the water all weekend. 
While I was away, our team, the Vancouver Island Ancient Mariners, posted a new bra on the Newcastle Channel 'bra pole'. I don't know what the original purpose of the pile was, but some years ago, it was decided that it should be decorated by bras, so dragon boaters, while out practicing add their mark. Note the miniature graduation cap on the left cup. Nice touch!

This years festival theme was the 60's, so we went as ourselves...hippies. We paired up again this year with Seventh Wave, a fantastic team from Vancouver who went Mondrian and British. Check them out.

Lost in TPI land

Followers of this blog may wonder where I have been for the past month. Well, I have been in TPI land, or TPI hell which is more accurate. TPI=Twist per Inch. 
The assignment: spin 10 yards of yarn at 1 twist per inch. Sounds easy right. HA! Sounds simple. Deceptively simple. Deviously straight forward. Wrong! Anything but! At 1 TPI (count the bumps along the edge of a yarn in a one inch length and divide by the number of singles making the yarn - more on this frustrating formula later) most yarns tend to fall apart. It requires a very grabby fibre but after a few frustrating failed attempts I dug out my shetland roving bought at THE Jamieson's in the Orkney Islands. Sigh, such beautiful special fibre and it seemed a waste to just throw a lot of it away in attempting this sample. But after a while I was able to do it. On to the next assignment: spin ten yards at 2 TPI. A few attempts to achieve precisely (well, I have the marker doesn't look too closely) 2TPI and on the the next assignment. Spin 4TPI. Then 8TPI, 12 and 15 TPI.  
Somewhere between 8 and 12 TPI I realized I did not know how to count TPI. Seems silly, given my formula above but when your attempts to achieve these assignments, especially the higher TPIs do not work, then you start to question everything. Ergo: how do you count bumps? Just the bumps on one side of the yarn, or both sides of the yarn. One side it turns out is correct. But then somewhere between 12 and 15 TPI I forgot to divide by the number of plies. It seemed impossible to spin at 30 bumps per inch but 15 bumps more doable. At this pint I was producing unusable yarn with so much twist one couldn't use it for anything but a rats nest. Hence I was questioning all the instructions. They didn't work.
Then there are the questionable formulas to figure out how much twist to put into each single (this involves length of draft or fibre between you and the wheel, your wheel ratio (how many twists each time the wheel goes around) and how many times you let the wheel turn per draft. I double checked the formulas, yes, they were correct. Then how come my yarn turns into a hopelessly tangled twisted knot? This went on for, I am ashamed to admit this, but 3 months of cursing and spinning junk! So that is where I have been. TPI hell.
The solution turned out to be all in the fibre. Selecting the right fibres for the job was critical. Spinning to the crimp (think curls, waves, in a fibre) worked for the medium TPIs but at the extreme end, one needed to think and select carefully. Silk, for example is much easier to spin at 15 TPI than wool. Take my word for it.