Uggg. What's wrong with this picture...nothing...except

I am not really a weaver, but I have to do something with the ever growing spinning stash I am building up. Besides, the major project for Master Spinners Level 5 is to make something in either linen or cotton that takes 50 hours. First, I chose linen. It is a pleasure to spin. Cotton, well, it's okay, but heck, it is cheap enough to buy already spun. Flax on the other hand, shines, has an earthy smell, and satisfies.
I have now spent, hmmm, well over 30 hours spinning flax. I have spun dew retted, water retted, tow, line and bleached flax. I have spun it Z and spun it S. I have a stack of flax now spun into lovely linen yarns.
With all that linen I decided to weave 3 tea towels. Why do one? With all the work it takes to warp a loom, you really have to make more than one thing at a time. So I spent, hmm, another 8 hours putting on a dummy warp. Why spend tall those hours on just 3 finished products, I figured I would save oodles of time by using a dummy warp and then leaving it on after my 3 tea towels and then I can just add a new warp and skip the having to put the yarns through the heddles and slaying the reed each time. Besides it would save 18 inches of wasted yarns.
So I just spent , oh, umm, about another 4 hours sleying the reed when, almost finished I realized I had the wrong reed on! I am aiming for 20 ends per inch and I stupidly used a 5 dent reed, and ended up with 10 ends per inch not 20. It was going so well. You would have thought I would have figured out there was something wrong hours ago. But no, it was only when I thought, hmm, this tea towel sure is wide. So like my knitting adventures, it is three steps forward and two back.

A Coast Salish Blanket hidden in Alaska

While wandering the exhibits, my husband heard what he thought was an announcement about a Salish blanket and rushed over to me. I hadn't heard it so we headed to the front desk to inquire. It turned out a staff member had radioed another asking if they had seen the Salish blanket and that is what he heard. It seemed my earlier email had started a hunt for a lost Salish blanket. Apparently neither museum could find it! I said I was the one who had stared the panic. They were most helpful and apologetic for misplacing the blanket and they kindly showed me all the pictures they had on file. When we finished, somewhat disappointed but appeased by the photos and conversations, we followed the suggestion of the woman at the front desk and headed across the parking lot, into the State building up to the 8th floor where I logged into the internet. Surprisingly (and most fortuitously) an email from the curator 'Come back, we found the blanket!' So back we went and had a wonderful time looking closely at Judge Wickersham's blanket.

In a summer post, I had promised to tell you about a special find in Alaska. It is a relatively unknown Coast Salish blanket once owned by Judge Wickersham. He lived in Washington State, purchased the blanket somewhere there (more on this next year as I follow an interesting lead) and took it with him when he moved to Alaska.  And there it remains, in the Wickersham House Museum...although that isn't where I saw it and that is part of the story of fortuitous luck.
I found out about the blanket from another Salish blanket researcher, Elaine Humphrey, an expert in microscopes. Elain has been investigating the fibre contents of Salish blankets using Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) - a fancy microscope for extreme close-ups (see my SEM post). She had been to see the blanket and collect some fibres from it. Most interestingly, there is a small patch of black fibres which when she put under the SEM, turned out to be human hair. There is just a little of this fibre in the blanket. Think about it. Was it the weaver's hair? The spinner's hair? The original owner's hair? Was the blanket dedicated to someone? I would love to know the hidden story behind it.

[Mark Kaarremaa Photo:
Close up detail
showing black hair fibre
next to the blue triangle]

I was already booked on a cruise to Alaska but somehow had the mistaken impression that the Wickersham House Museum was in Fairbanks and that would involve a plane trip from the Alaskan Coast to Fairbanks, not something I could fit in for this trip. I happened to be talking with Elaine the week before the trip when I mentioned this and she exclaimed " Fairbanks! No. The blanket is in Juneau." I practically ran home and phoned one of the state curators who was kind enough to start arranging with the Wickersham House a visit for me.
The day before leaving on the cruise I received an email. It seems the blanket had apparently been moved from the State museum back to the Wickersham House but we hadn't quite connected with the curator there to view it. I hoped that by the time the ship got to Juneau, we had arranged for a viewing.
Internet connectivity is on cruise ships is terrible! It should be inexpensive and a decent speed. It isn't. If you can send emails for free from 30,000 feet above the earth, then surely you can send from sea level??? To make a long story short, we arrived in Juneau and no word from the curator. I assumed that I just hadn't given them enough time. None-the-less, we decided to visit both Museums.

[Photo: Judge Wickersham's
blanket hanging on the wall.]

Cruise ships do not advertise things like local museums. It is a shame. The State Museum in Alaska (see earlier post) is well worth a visit! We entered, paid a minimal fee and the woman at the desk gave us some good hints on where to go next ( cross the road, through the parking lot, into the State Building, take the elevator,get off at the 8th floor for a good view, stop by the library where there is internet service, go out the far door from the 8th floor out to the upper street and then head for Wickersham Museum). We hoped we could remember all that but in the meantime looked around the incredible exhibits. 

Judge Wickersham was bigger than life. Statesman, author, Judge, pioneer, keeper of the peace in the gold rush. He was on the first team of white men to climb Mt McKinley. And wrote 43 diaries in which he recorded life. It is heart wrenching to read his entry about loosing his son. His diaries from 1900 until his death 1939 can be found here.

[Photo: Judge Wickersham]  

The picture at the top is the blanket as of 2013. Note the hole. There is another hole a bit smaller in the lower right just out of the photo. The Judge apparently liked to sit on the blanket on his chair, so the holes line up when folded and also lined up with his tush. Note the picture at the bottom of the blanket on the wall taken before 1940. It is hard to see if this size photo but click the link to see the full image and you will notice it has been folded. The stripe in the middle is really the right edge of the blanket but has been folded in to, I suspect, hide the two holes. Interestingly the blanket also hides the full story of the black hair.

Iron Age Sweater

[Photo: MUSEUM OF CULTURAL HISTORY, UNIVERSITY OF OSLO/PHOTO: MARIANNE VEDELER]

An interesting news item. An iron age sweater made somewhere between 230 and 390 A.D, which makes it one of the oldest sweaters known. It was found on a rocky hillside revealed by a melting glacier in Norway. The owner, probably male (apparently, it would fit a slim 5'9" man) probably stopped to enjoy the view, perhaps the sun was shinning and he took the sweater off and put it next to him. Maybe something disturbed him. Whatever happened, he left it there.  The photo of it lying on the rocks shows how hard it was to distinguish between the sweater and the rocks. 

[Photo: Marianne Vedeler] The sweater
was found 6,500 ft up Lendbren glacier.

I imagine he was kicking himself for days after for losing it. Perhaps he tried to retrace his route and never did find it. Or something prevented him from returning. 
Almost 2,000 years later someone stumbles across it. Suppose it was you that found it. How would you feel? Finding something so personal and in such good condition builds a bridge connecting you to him across all those years. I would clutch it and look around for him, thinking perhaps it was only a moment or two since he left it, maybe at most a few weeks if it was wet. But forever after, I would harbour the idea of time travel. Maybe it was me, the finder who scared him off!

The sweater was woven in diamond twill, a common design in those days. The closeup picture seems to show the warp is S-twist (spun z) and the weft is the opposite Z-twist (spun s). It makes me wonder why? Any weavers out there who could shed light on the advantages of S warp and Z weft?

Beattle bombing

[Photo by VW]

This is a first. Marthe and Magnus Schwarz, an imaginative couple from Northern Germany spent 7 months and 40kg of yarn to yarn bomb their VW Beattle. They see this as a sweater outfit which makes one wonder if another outfit is in the works?

Spinning. All the way to Alaska

'Eltaa' (shaman's spiritual powers)
by Kathleen Carlo, 2005

In July, I had an opportunity to go on a cruise to Alaska with my parents. This is a perfect trip for people who don't have a lot of 'travel energy' (not me! My parents).  They loved it and so did we. this was the year to do it, July was the calmest month for the seas, hardly any wind or waves for the whole trip. The food was fantastic which was offset by the best view on board being from the treadmills in the gym!

My wheel after being fixed
(note the large white
outline of the 'scar'.

I decided to bring my 'Joy', spinning wheel. The rooms are small but there was enough space to entertain two couples sipping daily rituals of gin and tonic and doing a little spinning before sitting down to a late dinner.
However, let this be a warning to others contemplating taking their wheel --carry the wheel on and off the ship yourself. Don't leave it to baggage handlers. I stupidly let them take it thinking the padded bag and the fact that the boat was only 100 yards away would be protection enough. No. When I unzipped the bag there was a horrendous dent in the wheel. Luckily this did not affect the way the wheel operated, but it would need repair before moisture worked its way into the scarred wood causing it to expand and possibly warp the wheel making it unusable. I have a clever brother-in-law who was able to fix it in time for me to take it on another trip the following week.

Back to Alaska...While the glaciers in Glacier Bay were beautiful, and the scenery wild and wonderful, it was the museums that held treasures for me. It is strange that on the cruise, they promoted and advertised 'adventure' activities - take a train to see the Yukon Trail Railway; charter a helicopter to see the glaciers; take a 2 hour float plane ride; ride a dog sled; hike the wilderness; zipline through the rain-forest, etc. etc. Not a word about the local museums. Some people enjoy hair raising, heart pounding outdoor adventures. I do. But a beautifully made textile makes my heart pound and the hair on my neck stand up too!
We lucked into a few things, a couple of which I will do special posts on later (one being a somewhat unknown Coast Salish Blanket).
The Alaska State Museum has an exhibit of Ravenstail weavings. Wow. This is an awesome exhibit, dance aprons, tunics and leggings. Ravenstail weaving is worth a separate post. For now, here's a teaser.

Oh, I did manage to spin 200 meters of plied linen and spin up samples for three assignments: fake cashmere (rayon) and wool blend; soy; and corn silk, between the G&T's and the meals.

Spinning right from the source

This is too good. Spinning wool right from a Shetland sheep. This beats the traditional sheep-to-shawl competitions and demos.

Hiatus

 

A beautiful BFL fleece.  Inspiring.

 

I often read blogs on a regular basis to find that sooner or later the posts spread out,become sporadic and then come to an end or perhaps just a long pause between posts.  Has that happened here?  We shall see.  So for now, I am attempting to use the new technology and somewhat limited apps to get back to blogging.  So my next few (dozen?) posts will be catchup posts.