Wool combs again: the less scary version

It's time to admit it, I haven't used the wool combs my MWAS (Man With A Shed) made me. I'm intimidated by their sheer weight. I don't have his upper body strength, and it's hard work for me to stand and swing a kilo or so of wood and ironware about. I'm not Peter Teal. I'm probably not even Mrs Teal.

But fortunately MWAS had another brilliant, and far more girl-friendly, idea. He went round the hairdressers in town and returned with a selection of Afro combs. Afro hair, I presume, needs careful handling to tame the crimp with the minimum of tangling, much like Romney fleece.

I use these combs the way my good friend Linda taught me to use her Viking minicombs. You load a half-dozen locks, butt end nearest the comb, on the spikes and push them down. Then you hold this in one hand, gently swinging at the tips with the other comb held at 90 degrees. Almost all of the fleece will transfer from one comb to the other over in five or 6 swings. What doesn't transfer over is tangled or too short: pull it off the comb and bin it. Repeat about four times, until what is left on the combs looks fine and even. Now pull that off into roving (through a diz if you feel like it) and wind the roving round your hand into a nest.

The only downside (well, apart from possible RSI) is that these combs don't fit a lot on them. They make 5g "mini-nests" whereas with proper woolcombs, I read, 10g nests are possible. Still, it's a good low-cost option, that I can let my kids use without fearing that they will stab themselves or each other with them.

Knitting for the homeless

About a year ago, a member of my local Guild of Weavers, Spinners and Dyers organised a charity crafting day in aid of the homeless. It was great fun, by the way, and whoever organised it, I'd be up for another one any time!

Anyway, there was a man from the charity (to my shame I have forgotten which charity it was, except it was Northampton-based) who gave us a very interesting talk. He said that hypothermia was a real killer for people sleeping rough, because many are new to the streets and not prepared for the night cold. He said that, if you wanted to save their lives, it could be as simple as giving out woolly hats and flasks of hot soup.

I volunteered on the spot to knit some hats. I was learning to spin, how hard could it be? Well, it turned out that my spinning at the time too uneven. My knitting skills were pre-intermediate, and I couldn't compensate for the wildly varying thickness of this overspun, underplied yarn. So the hats didn't get knitted, and I felt a bit of a fraud.

A year later and my daughter has joined the Church. She asked me very sweetly what I would be giving up for Lent. I don't have a lot of really evil vices, certainly none that it would be easy to give up for a month. After a day or so of puzzling the question I replied "I'm not giving up anything! I'm going to knit the homeless a dozen hats!" After all, my spinning is now quite even now, I can spin faster than I can knit so I have a stash of yarn that wants busting. I have even learned to knit in the round. Time to finally put my needles where my mouth is.

Then I started wondering: what kind of hats do homeless people want? The kind that a) stop them from freezing to death and b) don't attract muggers. Because homeless people get mugged. They get mugged quite a lot. Are you shocked by that? I was shocked. As if being homeless and penniless isn't bad enough, there are people prepared to rough you up and nick your knitwear.

Very warm and largely unattractive knitwear seems to be called for. My stash yarn being mostly double knitting weight, I opted to double it and call it "chunky", which I would normally knit with 6 mm needles. I knit it with 5 mm needles, partly because I don't own 6 mm circulars, and partly because that would give a firm fabric. Firm knitted fabrics are more wind and rain proof than drapey ones, which must be a consideration if you are sleeping rough.

I'm knitting watchcaps (the Canadians call them "toques"), which want a bit of stretch. I don't know many stitch patterns, but I googled "thermal knitting" and found a waffle stitch tutorial. Waffle stitch looks warm and should have a bit of stretch in both directions. It's simple and looks rather attractive. Waffle stitch it is then.

How big is the average homeless person's head? I started off making hats to fit me because, well, my head is always to hand for reference. Then it occurred to me that a large proportion of the short-term homeless are ex-army. Blokes with big heads? My husband has a big head, and so he became my next hat model.

What about teenagers? Many rough sleepers are teenagers who have been kicked out of the house following a domestic tiff and have nowhere to sleep until things calm down and they can go back home. Fortunately I own a couple of teenagers, so they became hat models too.

As long as I knit top down, and stop knitting when my hat fits a family member and looks warm, yet mildly silly (think of your Grandma's tea-cosy) then I figure it's good enough to be seen on the streets of Northampton. Each hat took about 120g of yarn, and had a turn-up of about 3 inches over the ears, so that's a considerable thick layer of wool over the ears. With the turn-up turned down, they have a bit of a balaclava vibe going on. If I were sleeping rough, I would want to sleep in one of these hats.

It turned out, at 120g per hat for a dozen hats, that was more yarn than was in my stash. I've some good jumper yarn that I'm rather proud of, but I draw the line at using that to knit hats. I didn't think this one through properly.

Fortunately I have a stash of fleeces that also needs busting. I selected some Cheviot, some Dorset and some White Faced Woodland, carded up some rolags and got spinning. After months of spinning double knitting it's not easy to spin thicker. After a couple of days of frustration I achieved a woollen spun aran weight 2 ply, which is thinner than I was hoping for. I googled "why is it hard to spin thick?" and found a tutoral by Abby Franquemont which advised me to make it into 3-ply if I wanted bulky, spongy yarn. 3-plied yarn is naturally spongier than 2-ply yarn, provided the fibre has lots of "sproing" in it. Well, I guess the thicker and spongier the yarn, the warmer the hat will be. And my fibre certainly has "sproing". So I'll try making a 3-ply yarn next, and hope to finally match the "chunky" fabric I created by knitting with two strands together of my double knitting.

The first hats were somewhat strange, badly proportioned with poorly thought-out stitch patterns, while I was working out my style. My family chuckled indulgently. Six hats later they are starting to steal hats out of the pile, announcing that they will go nicely with their favourite jackets. I take this as high praise. My hats look so warm and stylish that my teenagers are prepared to be seen out in public with them, despite the risk of meeting a homeless person wearing exactly the same hat.

Making a Yeti

Did I say I had too much long wool? It turns out, I have too little long wool. Far, far too little. How can three or four big buckets full possibly be too little, I hear you ask. Because my husband (the MWAS, the Man With A Shed) is making a Yeti costume. Out of fleece.

Yetis, it turns out, are Doctor Who monsters from about the 1970s. They are big, hairy, shambling beasts. To be more technical about it, they are actors shambling about in big, hairy costumes. Presumably back in the 20th century they used synthetic fabrics, so I dread to think how uncomfortable it was for those poor guys in the costumes.

My MWAS, as a new and keen cosplayer (translation: someone who dresses up as a Doctor Who character for fun) wants to be a Yeti. Since I have convinced him that wool-based fabrics are the best fabrics on the planet, or at least the best ones we can afford, he wants to make the costume out of fleece. He has watched me peg-looming a rug out of washed, but otherwise unprocessed, Romney, Herdwick abd Leicester Long wool and thought: "My word, that looks a lot like Yeti fur!"

He asked me if I had any fleece I could spare, and naively I pointed out the four buckets. He used them all, even the rather nice bits of Romney I'd been saving for.....y'know, something. Then he asked me for more.

"How much more?" I asked nervously.

"About five times as much!" was the answer. "And if possible, a bit felty and sort of brown. Like a Yeti."

A dining table full of Yeti pelt.

Blimey! I pride myself on being able to source fairly cheap fleece, but even so, it doesn't grow on trees. (I Googled it. Turns out it grows on sheep.) This could be one costly Yeti costume. Not to mention bulky, heavy, and hot.

This did not sound like a good idea. Nevertheless, I believe in standing by my MWAS no matter how crazy he is, so I contacted the lovely people who supply my Romney and asked if they had any felty, brown fleece going really cheap.

They explained to me the concept of belly wool, and that by virtue of growing fairly close to the ground on an outdoors-living animal, it's pretty gross. They offered me 15 kilos for postage only, and I jumped at it.

The postage was paid, and the fleece arrived. Holy ovine excrement, it smelled! It sat in our sitting room for four days before I insisted it went up the loft, in hessian sacks. We kept a third of it out, picked it over for twigs, short bits, bits that were more mud than fleece, and anything generally unpleasant. Then we threw it into a bucket of water and left it to soak in the garden.

I tried washing it all for my MWAS, but after a week my sinuses rebelled and I decided to teach him how to wash it for himself. I broke it down into the following easy-to-remember steps:

Put a large plastic bucket in the sink.

Fill with water, as hot as you can get.

Squeeze in washing-up liquid, while chanting "Great Cthulhu's tentacles!" (this is about a 1-second squeeze, which experiment has shown to be the ideal amount for this quantity of fleece)

Add a laundry bag, a third to a half filled with a large double handful of your soaked fleece. It's probably about half a pound, dry weight. Of course, at this stage it isn't dry any more. It is cold, wet, muddy and smelly. Did I mention the need for an apron? You'll wish now that you had worn an apron.

Note the time. Go and do something in another room. You will want to escape the smell.

15 minutes later, come back. Pull out the bag of fleece (erg!). Pour away the water (erg erg!) Refill the bucket with hot water.

Add washing-up liquid, this time chanting "Cthulhu lives!" This will give you a smaller quantity of detergent for the second wash. Go away for another 15 minutes.

Come back. Now you are on the rinses. Hot water only, no detergent. 15 minutes each or thereabouts.

Repeat rinses until the water is....not clean, because life's too short and this belly fleece is FUNKY. Just until the water is clean enough that you would wash your muddy feet in it, if you had to. Imagine a camping holiday in Wales, with a shortage of hot water. THAT clean.

Spin the fleece in the spinner. If you haven't got a spinner, this bit is tricky. Luckily, we have a spin dryer and it isn't.

Spread the fleece out to dry on a wire rack, or in our case, the guinea pigs cage. The guinea pigs are used to it by now.

My MWAS has, so far, managed to wash...er, no fleece, that's NONE, all by himself. Eventually he will run out of clean fleece, and I will watch with interest to see what he does then.

Washing lambswool

 As I have mentioned in previous posts, I have lost several kilos of long-stapled wool due to careless washing. I don't think I'm felting it with unnecessary agitation (after all I've washed BFL/ Leicester longwool lambswool with no felting). Rather, I'm soaking and washing it without picking it, so the wool is dense and matted in the hot soapy water. It doesn't wash the mud out very well, not does it dry very well like that, so it's often still slightly damp when it goes into plastic buckets for storage. Six months later I have musty smelling, muddy fleece that doesn't want to be picked and flicked.

Lamsbwool locks before washing

A week ago I bought a lovely soft, white Romney lamb's fleece and was determined not to make the same mistake again. I thought of spinning it all up in the grease, and tried spinning a skein. It spun up well, and washed up nicely, but after washing was still creamy coloured and smelled more sheepy than I really like. I'm used to my skeins being white and clean, and I don't really want to sacrifice that for the sake of skipping a wash.

Moreover, I realise that wool "in the grease" has a shelf life of only a couple of months, before the waxes harden, the fibres stiffen and discolour, and the moths get the munchies. Since I put effort into buying fleeces as soon as possible after shearing for freshness, it seems counterproductive to then let the fleece go rancid and stale in my loft.

Is there a special technique for washing adult or lamb's long-stapled fleeces? I found the blog of one spinner who flicks each lock, then individually sews each one into a mesh bag before washing. Others wash their unpicked locks, half a dozen at a time, in roasting pans. I wanted a method that was unfussy yet reliable.

Theorising that my main mistake in the past had been the compactness of the fibre, not water temperature, type or quantity of detergent used, agitation etc, I decided to separate the fleece into individual locks at the start. This fleece is very open and it is easy to do this. There is also very little mud and vegetable matter, which there was plenty of in the fleeces I'd had problems with.

Fleece in small batches in laundry bags

I divided the locks into two piles, one pile I left unflicked, and the other pile I flicked. Then both piles were split into handfuls, about the volume and weight of a bra, each handful was put into a separate laundry bag, and soaked in cold water. The unflicked locks had an overnight soak, the flicked ones only about 20 - 30 minutes.

Then I boiled the kettle, and made a cup of tea.

Then I boiled the kettle again, and put about 5 litres of too-hot-for-hands water into a plastic trug. I added a 2-second squeeze of Bio-D (unscented, eco-friendly washing-up liquid) to the water, swished it around (ouch!) then put the fleece in.

Then I drank the tea.

Two rinses of equally hot water later, and the water was clear and clean. The fleece went into my laundry spinner to spin, and came out not at all felted.

The unflicked locks after washing

Probably unsurprisingly, the unflicked locks came out with dirt still in the tips, while the flicked locks came out snowy white and shiny, like underwear in a laundry commercial. I need to wait for the locks to dry and flick them for a true comparison (is that dirt going to flick out easily or not?), but I have to say, so far this method of washing flicked locks in small batches to allow plenty of spreading out space looks like a good one.

It uses more hot water than I am used to using, but I don't see there's any way round that. If I was abusing the fleece by washing too much of it at a time, then washing less of it at a time is going to take more of my time and hot water. The kettle doesn't like being boiled repeatedly, and often stops working for five minutes to cool down. I have a tea urn however, and tomorrow I'll get it out and see if that makes the process run more smoothly.

The flicked locks after washing

My main concern now is: how much space is it going to take to store it? Up until now I have squashed and stuffed washed fleece into buckets, at least 1.5 kg in a 40L bucket. Come to think about it, maybe the squashing process itself is to blame for the felting. The BFL / Leicester lambswool that I washed successfully never made it into a bucket. It's been in more or less constant use for sock yarn, so it's been in a pillowcase in the bathroom since June.

I have 3 kg (unwashed weight) of fleece, let's say 2 or 2.5kg after washing. In its compact, unwashed state it wouldn't quite fit into a 40L bucket. I was thinking that after washing it would take up two buckets. But if I store it flicked and washed, how many then? Three? Four? And will it felt in the bucket?

If anyone has any experience they would like to share with me, I would be very grateful. I really don't want to open a bucket in 6 months time and find a musty mess.

Spinning Romney

As part of my January long wool destash, I have dug out a grey Romney ewe fleece I bought last year and am spinning for weaving warp.

This Romney is probably my favourite long wool. It is shiny, it is crimpy, the softest parts are silvery and sweater soft. The medium parts are mid-grey and jacket soft, and the firmest parts are slate grey and rugged (or maybe rug-ish). Unfortunately I didn't wash it very carefully, so a couple of kilos are felty, musty-smelling and muddy. Peg-loom food, in fact. But the rest is fine, and these are big fleeces, so there is a lot of it.

My first Romney shawl. Also looks good on aliens.

The first thing I made from this fleece when I bought it was a shawl. Then I felt silly because, what idiot would make a shawl out of long wool? Shawls are supposed to be gossamer-thin, and soft as thistle down. This shawl has a certain scrunch to its handle. I ended up having to crochet an edge in softer wool because it was a little too rough against my neck.

Still, I love it. It is warm and easy to throw on first thing in the morning. Moreover, it will take a lot of abuse and still stay cheerful. Including being worn by small boys being cybermen and daleks that are feeling a bit chilly. I wouldn't like to see a wedding ring shawl have to struggle for survival in our household.





So now I'm spinning it again, for weaving this time.

Romney locks, before and after flick-carding.

The the locks are four or five inches long and the lock structure is very well defined. The locks look like huge silver shrimp. I could comb them but readers of my blog have seen the size of my home-made combs, and frankly I don't feel  strong enough. So I've been flicking the locks and then spinning from the nose end. It is easy to grab a lock and flick it. You end up with over a gramme of parallel, long fibres per lock, and hardly any waste.Once I have a gorilla tub full, then I spin.

I've been trying to spin the way Sara Lamb advocates in her book and videos, Spining to Weave. I hold the flicked lock in my right hand, and pull gently back, while letting the twist run over my open left hand and into the drafting triangle. It's not easy, I am a natural gripper and tugger. But she says it causes fewer hand problems, and I'm all for not getting arthritis from excessive fibre-tugging.

Romney warps, on a Romney and Leicester peg-loom rug.

Once I have spun up two bobbins, I ply them together, with quite a lot of twist. The skeins certainly won't be hanging straight, and I shall have to wash them and hang them to dry to calm the twist down. (I tought I could skip the washing step when making weaving yarn, but Sara Lamb advises against it, unless you really enjoy fighting with energised yarn while warping).

The resulting yarn is about double knitting thickness, and so strong that I can't snap it by tugging on it with my hands.

The next weaving project is another peg loom rug, using unspun Romney locks (the felted, musty-smelling ones) as weft. When it's done I'll give it a good wash, which will hopefully full it and remove the mud and  must. I hope.

After that, I'm thinking of spinning some weft, either Romney lambswool or White Faced Woodland or maybe some downs wool I have in a bucket up the loft.  That could be dyed heather colours, which might mix well with the silver grey of the warp. I want to to weave a study, warm shawl with it, and take it camping.

My MWAS (Man With A Shed) wants to take us all camping to the Scottish Highlands this year. Bring it on, I say. I need mountain air and North Sea breezes to give my woollen wear a thorough weather testing!

Peg-loom weaving a rug

I have a peg loom. Of course I have a peg loom. My MWOS (Man With Own Shed) has woodworking tools, and bits of dowel are easy to saw up, so I got a peg loom quite early on in my spinning and weaving journey. (I get spinning and weaving tools in the order that he feels like making them, as opposed to the order I need or can use them. Not that I'm complaining.)

I also have crazy amounts of badly washed and therefore badly felted longwool to use up. It sounds like time for a rug.


I tried making a rug some months ago, out of a Zwartbles I was keen to see the back of. The only trouble is, Zwartbles is very reluctant to felt, and as the staple length was about 3", a bit of felting was necessary to keep it all in one piece. It was lovely and fluffy, but it didn't stay in one piece, so it's now insulating the worm bin.

This time, I have taken some advice from my favourite Viking crafter, Linda. Her advice is: pack the wefts together good and tight, then chuck it all in the washing maching on a 40 degree delicates cycle. This I did. It shrunk to about half size, but has formed a pleasant fleecy mat, good for sitting on.

It's not a fireside rug though, which I what I was hoping for. So I put another warp on the peg loom, having made a proper warp chain, on the warping board, for the first time.

Home made warping board.

I co-opted my daughter to pull the locks into strips of roving, while I wove them round the pegs. That makes the operation quick (and fun, because we watched cartoons together while we worked). I can fill the pegs up and empty them twice in a sitting. I figure that, if I fill the pegs up 12 to 16 times, then don't pack the weft together quite so hard before felting, I might get a rug-sized....er, rug. It'll be only about a week's work, which seems crazy fast compared to knitting.

Romney locks on a homespun longwool warp

 

 

So far the warp seems to be holding up to the strain. It's Leicester long wool, two-plied. I think my MWAS must have spun it, judging from all the knots in it (I rarely knot yarn). It was rather under-plied, so I ran it through my wheel again on the slowest whorl, just to be on the safe side. MWAS uses a wheel that he made himself, a Dodec, and while he claims to get on with it just fine, it doesn't really lend itself to precise calculations of twist.

The Dodec II, called the Reydec for musical reasons.

I'll post later with pictures of the finished rug. If it turns out to be a rug. Fingers crossed!

Warps and beads

We had a busy day today. It was our first Certificate of Acheivement in handspinning study group meeting of 2015 and we decided to start as we mean to go on by....er.....doing hardly any spinning.

We played with my new fleece picker (The Claw), the woolcombs and the hackle, all homemade over the Christmas holidays by Mike. We also ate biscuits and cake and Swedish chocoloate sweeties. The woolcombs were pronounced useable but very heavy. the Claw was pronounced awesome, and the biscuits, cake and Swedish sweeties were pronounced very tasty.

Linda showed Mike how to wind and secure a warp chain, a skill that has so far eluded him. Mike has tangled up several warp chains, wasting a lot of wool and getting very grumpy indeed. Linda showed us that it really is surprisingly quick and easy. The trick, it turns out, is in the winding and tying up of the Weaver's Cross.

Winding a linen warp on the homemade board.

Once you have that secured, you just need a few ties along the length of the warp, then you can take it off the warping board and chain it (think crochet chain). Once chained it is compact and tangle-free.

We still don't know how to put the warp chain on the rigid heddle loom. I've looked on YouTube but all the videos for warping rigid heddle looms use the direct warping technique. I've found videos for warping four-shaft table looms. It seems to involve a few more sticks than our loom currently has, and quite a lot of string. Linda couldn't show us that part because we already have a warp on the loom. I guess it'll have to wait until our next study group meeting.

The only bit of proper spinning we managed was a beaded yarn. We threaded some little seed beads onto silk thread, then spun a Shetland single with the beaded silk thread wrapped round it. This gives you a sort of plied yarn, but one of the plies is already plied, so it has zero spin twist, while the other ply has spin twist. It seems to me that it breaks all the rules of spinning.

Silver beads on a silk thread, spun with a Shetland single.

It would look better if the Shetland were blue.I can see that this technique has all sorts of possibilities. Luckily my daughter is a bead hoarder so I have plenty to play with!