Blending board adventures.

About a year ago I bought an Ashford blending board and had a dabble with making arty rolags with it and I wasn't that impressed. In fact I had decided to sell it and left it in my work room under a table. However I have watched a couple of classes over the internet which has changed my mind! Both of these are by Esther Rodgers, one is a Craftsy class and the other is an Interweave DVD. I am now hooked! My latest project uses an assortment of hand dyed locks from a range of fleeces. Some are longer and some are a bit coarser but all are the remnants of other projects or colours that I decided not to use at that time.

 I split them in to locks, flicked them out a bit and blended them a couple of times on the board. Then I pulled off a roving as Esther demonstrated and I ended up with a huge ball of multi-coloured roving. I then spun a lofty singles yarn which I am using as a weft in my Saori weaving.

 

 

I have lots of ideas for more colourways and I am currently blending some naturally dyed tops with added sparkly bits/silk and some alpaca. I am so glad to have found a use for my blending board as they are not cheap to buy and I can also find a use for all those odd bits of wool.

Woolfest 2015

Well another Woolfest has been and gone for another year.

The weather turned wet and windy for set-up day but by the second day of the show the weather was lovely and sunny. But we awoke on Sunday morning to very blustery weather with lashing rain, not nice for a long trip down the motorway. As usual there were lots of lovely sheep on display again, here is a sample.

Some of the local Herdwick sheep.

 



  Portlands.

 

And the undoubted stars of the show were these Valais Blacknose sheep which are originally from the Valais region of Switzerland. This breed was introduced with stock imported from Switzerland a couple of years ago and I believe there are now over 400 of them in Britain. I have managed to buy a Valais fleece recently which I will post about sometime soon. Usually the alpacas get all the attention but this year it was these cuties, the pen was constantly surrounded by people and it took several visits before I could get in close enough. And there is always a stack of inspiration! Meet the two "Get Weaving" ladies Sarah and Elisabeth.

 

 

Their range of clothing patterns is really fantastic and I am busy weaving fabric from my hand spun to make the dress that Sarah is wearing (on the left). I also have plans afoot to spin some Cotswold fleece that I am dyeing at the moment to make the weft yarn for a skirt from one of their patterns. I also found time to visit The Saori Shed and meet Kim, the lady I bought my saori loom from.

 

 

So much lovely stuff to inspire you!

 

 

It is always nice to have the chance to chat with the visitors spreading the word about weaving and catching up with our customers who come to our stand and show us the projects they have completed using the yarn they have bought from us. My next show with Helen won't be until September but I shall have plenty of time, I hope, to finish weaving my fabric and maybe even get it sewn up!

 

What's Been Keeping Me Busy Lately?

I thought that it was about time I did a post about what I have been up to in the weeks since my last epistle. The weather here at Deerfold has, on the whole, been wet and gloomy so the spring tidy up in the garden has been very sporadic to say the least. Most of the old dry growth from last season has been cleared away ready to burn and the snowdrops could eventually be seen in all their glory. This has given me extra time in my loom room before the gardening really needs to be done. Here is a glimpse of the creative chaos at the moment!

 

With my recent discovery of Saori weaving I have at last found a use for spinning some of the novelty yarns - I won't call my efforts "art yarns"- and so I spent a few happy hours playing with bits of fibre hence the messy room. With a vague idea of weaving some fabric in a cheerful spring colour way I made lots of batts from leftover merino tops, bits of silk, some white alpaca and of course some sparkles!

 

 

This is the start of the yellow pile and I also did pale greens and then did a few really dark blues for a change.

 

 

So far I have done quite a few bobbins of a really nice, soft core spun yarn which I'm hoping to use in weaving a shawl or wrap soon.

 

 

I have also been busy weaving. Last year I decided to make a tablecloth for our kitchen table but couldn't decide what design to do - dithering again. I did know that I wanted it to be in greens and blues to go with the blue Aga we have. After cutting my previous weaving project off the loom I started straight away making a warp from cotton, cottolin and other varieties of cotton and linen yarns mostly leftovers from projects or gleaned from Ebay all in greens and blues.

 

 

Here it is in progress.

 

And finished!

 

 

 

I'm quite pleased with the end result and I have already got an idea for another one but maybe this time I won't weave such wide panels. The fabric has a lovely drape to it and would make a nice tunic top to go with my blue linen trousers this summer. My next warp is already on the loom and yesterday I heard from Kim at The Saori Shed that my Saori loom has arrived and I'm hoping that it will be with me before too long!

Further Adventures in Saori Weaving

Since my last post I have been busy at my loom playing with yarn and what a jolly time I've had! It is amazing how many balls of yarn I have collected over the years, some my own hand spun and some left over from knitting or weaving projects. I decided to heap them in to piles of four main colour groups and use that as a starting point and go from there. I had set my loom up with a black 18/2 wool warp sett at 20 epi and threaded in a Rosepath twill using four shafts. I wasn't thinking of a finished project but just wanted to play with colours and textures and create a sampler for future ideas. I began with the largest heap which was blues/purples/pinks.

 

The yarns I used were a mixture of some hand dyed and hand spun yarns that I did over 20 years ago, some commercially spun mohair loop yarn, wool roving and fleece. I used the Rosepath Twill to help the thicker yarns show up and after washing it helped with the texture too. Then I moved on to the greens and yellows.

 

 

Then I moved on to reds/oranges/gingers.

 

 

And finally I tried natural greys and whites.

 

 

During the weaving of these samplers I played around with the many weaving techniques suggested in the Saori book such as clasped weft with 2 and 3 colours, inlay, looping the yarn with a knitting pin or just pulling it out as well as using locks of fleece or snippets of yarn to add texture. After a fairly rigorous hand wash I was pleased to see that the locks of fleece had felted enough to stay in the cloth but not so much that they lost the fleecey look. I must say that I enjoyed the whole thing immensely. Two more Saori books have arrived in the post and I am now weaving some Saori cloth to make a skirt with. Having been very sceptical about this form of weaving before I can know understand why people do it......it's fun and liberating! My big fault is that I dither. The number of times I have gone into my workroom with ideas for projects but came away feeling frustrated that I couldn't decide what to do first and felt like putting all my stuff in a huge pile and burning it! Choices of what yarn, what pattern, what colour, have I got enough yarn etc. etc. etc. But with this form of weaving I just played and I think that is sometimes difficult to do especially when you have been brought up as a child not to waste anything. Everything you make has to "be" something. Why have I got a humungous pile of "stuff" if I never do anything with it? I also think that the Saori idea will help with my more traditional style of weaving and that I will not get too indecisive in future. We will have to see!

 

New Year Catch Up....... new books, new techniques and a new feline friend.

Where does the time go? We are already well into the new year and it has been ages since I felt inclined to blog. Not that there has been much to share....the usual pre-Christmas stuff after a few weeks of getting all the outside jobs done before the weather closed in. So far the winter has been mild and wet with more than the usual gales. However, last week we did get a day of snow ( all of 2 inches!) but I did get out and about and take some photos.

 

 

By the next morning most of the snow near us had melted leaving only the distant hills covered in white.

I have recently started an online Tapestry Weaving class with Rebecca Mezoff . I have attempted tapestry weaving quite a few times over the years since I started spinning but I never got very far. I suspect this was due in part to the equipment as we were shown how using a simple wooden frame and basically string for warp! This is my sample so far.

 

 

I'm using a Mirrix tapestry loom borrowed from my friend Helen and I have eventually got the hang of it as it is quite fiddly to set up. I'm using 12/6 seine twine for warp as recommended by Rebecca and the weft yarn is from Weavers Bazaar although my aim ( if I like tapestry by the end of the course!) is to spin my own yarn and use that.

The other new-to-me technique is Saori weaving. Now, don't get me wrong, I still love "traditional" weaving, I'm a big fan of twills and overshot and one day I WILL weave that overshot coverlet! But last year at Wonderwool Wales I saw a stand demonstrating the Saori style or freestyle weaving. I have my doubts that a lot of this type of weaving will not stand any use and I dread to think what it will look like if it ever goes near a washing machine! But I'm very attracted to the use of colour and texture and after quite a bit of dithering I have eventually bought the book!

 

 

It does have some great ideas to make your own clothes and the instructions for setting the loom up are very comprehensive, so if you were a new weaver and followed this book you would be set on the right track. I also go along with the philosophy behind the Saori technique but I still think some of the weaving looks a bit slap-dash or shoddy. So I have set up my loom with a black lambswool warp sett at 20 epi and threaded in a Rosepath Twill  to play with yarns and colour and not to worry about patterns too much.

 

 

 I have pulled out lots of yarn from my HUGE stash and got stuck in! A lot of the yarn is some of my hand spun and I worked out that it must be nearly 20 years since I spun it up, so it's about time I used it!

I'm not thinking about what to make with the finished fabric as I just want to enjoy the weaving at the moment, but I would like to make some of my own clothes to wear to the fibre shows this year. To this end I purchased a couple of interesting books recently and it is my intention to use them as guides to sewing my own clothes from my hand woven fabric as I still break into a cold sweat at the idea of dressmaking after an unhappy time sewing at school. I only have to think of paper dress patterns and the vision of Mrs Hodby rises before my eyes!

 

The first book ( on the left) is "Weave, Knit, Wear" by Judith Shangold. It's packed with ideas for clothes that can be woven on a Rigid Heddle loom but can also by used by multi-shaft weavers too.

 

 

The second book is "Get Weaving" by Sarah Howard and Elisabeth Kendrick which is also aimed at the RH weaver but would also give a multi-shaft weaver some simple ideas for making clothes.

 

 

 

And finally meet Humphrey our new feline friend....

 

 

Humphrey has been staying with us since about September when he would sit with us in the garden. After a couple of days his owners (neighbours) called around to see if we had their cat. They took him back home three times during the week but Humphrey came back the next day. It appears that they had got a couple of new kittens and as one had got older he had taken a strong dislike to Humphrey causing him to leave home. He has settled in well with us as you can see, taking pride of place on the sofa, my side of the sofa where I sit at my spinning wheel I might add, and has even charmed the men of the house (and they are tough nuts to crack!)