20 April: Dyeing

This fine weather is just right for doing a bit of dyeing and hanging yarn and fibre up to dry. So that was what I did yesterday morning.

Here's the result -

It's all BFL - some tops bought fairly recently, plus 3 skeins of undyed yarn that must have been spun some time last year. Apart from trying out 2 new dye shades (Maize and Alfalfa), I chose to do shades of orange and purple, mixing different dyes for each piece. The coffee colour was a lurid pinky-purple, rather over-modified with a bit too much browny-yellow. It'll spin in with the purples OK though, just adding to the variety.

7 April: Two more bands

These little bands are quite addictive!  For the first of these two, I spun some dark navy and some cherry red from a parcel of lucky-dip mixed wool fibre from World of Wool. The design was adapted from a band by Laverne Waddington, which she got from a Russian band.

I thought there were no mistakes in the weaving until I turned the finished band over - and found a couple of misplaced warps which didn't show on the front.

But the second band has no weaving mistakes that I can see! It's one of the designs in Sue Foulkes' book Sami Band Weaving, and I love the asymmetric pattern. This one is done in handspun natural coloured wools (Shetland and "black" Wensleydale)  with an accent of dyed green Shetland.

There's a slight snag in that the pattern section, with its warp floats, is woven a little more tightly than the spotted border, so the band forms a gentle spiral.  Firm steam pressing will probably sort that out.

Now I really must get back to knitting the sock that was cast on a week ago.

29 March: Two very different woven bands

Filled with enthusiasm from the weekend workshop, I have  been weaving a couple of bands on my backstrap with rigid heddle.

First was a wide plain woven band, using some very textured early spinning, to see how wide a band the heddle would make. It came out 2.5 to 3 inches wide (variable tension control!), and 69 inches long.

Then one in finer yarns, crochet threads, in one of the patterns in Sue Foulkes' book about Sami band weaving; this is a pattern that looks good on both sides. This one is 47 inches long and 0.75 inches wide.

Here they are -

And Happy Birthday brother!

9 March: Another rigid heddle

This rigid heddle is made from a heddle intended for an Ashford Knitter's Loom - a 40 cm heddle cut in half. This gives the facility to use up to 59 threads, and the large holes will allow thick or lumpy (sorry, textured) threads to pass through.

This time I measured the warp before weaving, then measured the finished band and the amount of waste at each end. The chosen pattern was a simple 5 pattern thread design, but this time with rather more fancy borders. 57 threads altogether, came out just over 2 inches wide.

The advantage of the rigid heddles over the inkle loom is that you can start warping in the middle, and then add borders afterwards, and it's much easier to change threads when warping than on the inkle loom.  Plus, of course, the length can be anything you want, as long as you can keep the warp tidy. On the down side, tension is more variable, and wastage is more.

There's quite a few pieces added to the backstrap kit now, and the original bag is not big enough for them all. The need for a larger bag could be tied in with the large number of woven bands hanging over the cupboard door. Perhaps another light-bulb moment?

November 8: More yarn

The batts that were dyed recently are now yarn. They were carded together in pairs, spun and then the different coloured singles plyed together to produce interesting coloured yarn -


The resulting colours were not exactly as might have been predicted from the original batt colours; a demonstration of how much colours affect each other when put together! There's a skein of undyed yarn from the same fleeces, and yes, all of them are full of slubs and nepps, or "texture".

Anyway, that was so much fun that I've done another batch, slightly deeper colours this time -

They will sit for a while to be contemplated before a decision is made about colour combinations.

28 August: Wild Yarn

The Wild Fibre was plyed with the pale yellow single. There wasn't enough of the yellow, so the rest was plyed with a black Shetland single left over from the other batch of Wild Fibre. Here's the result -


There's a total of 183 gms of yarn there - what shall become of it?

There was another bag of fibre, which was plyed with black Shetland, producing this somewhat quieter yarn -


- of which there is 156 gms. Interesting to spin, and definitely a welcome change.

28 June: Lake District part 2 - Woolfest

One of the reasons for our week in the Lake District was to visit Woolfest for a little stocking up on fibre and fibre-related items.


I collected my new inkle loom from Michael Williams - isn't it gorgeous? Really substantial, made from oak and maple.

There is the usual assortment of sock yarn, undyed and dyed from the Yarn Yard (I wound it into balls when we got home), some batts and "wild fibre" from Wingham, and some plain white fibre from P & M to blend it into, a lucet with bobbin from Ziggy Rytka (who was later spotted playing a hurdy-gurdy in the music area), a circular knitting needle, some buttons, and a book.

Oh, and 2 Shetland fleeces, straight from the sheep-owner. After my adverse experience with fleece when a novice spinner, I have avoided it and used prepared fibres, but these fleeces are so lovely that I decided it was time to have another try.

Then yesterday I was demonstrating spinning at an event which included sheep-shearing, and seem to have come home with a further 2 and a half fleeces - the half because 2 of us liked that particular grey colour. The grey and one black one are Shetland and the other black one is Hebridean.

The rest of today I shall be in the garden, combing and spinning fleece.

27 June: Lake District

The weather was glorious in the Lake District all week, with farmers making hay in every valley.
We were staying near Tarn Hows, so that was part of our first day's walking -


Another day we walked from Hawkshead over Latterbarrow to Lake Windermere, then returned up through the woods of Claife and across fields. This peaceful-looking lunch spot was actually beside a path popular with walkers and cyclists.


This was near Coniston - again, admiring the fells from the valley below -


Another walk in the woods, another attack by clegs; this time Grizedale Forest, with its sculptures.


See how it comes back round to sheep and wool again? Of course, Friday was spent at the Woolfest in Cockermouth, where I collected my Michael Williams inkle loom, and bought a quantity of tools and fibre, including 2 Shetland fleeces! Dipping a toe into fleece preparation again, this time with a bit more idea of what I'm doing.

6 June: Back to the wool

A few more inkle bands have been woven - here are two of them in use securing my carders -


Recent spinning has included a bag of wool/linen , which was not very easy to spin, but which has an interesting texture. It has now been dyed and wound into balls, ready for making into something or other.


More spinning, this time a bag of Jamieson and Smith's Shetland fibre in a range of 14 different shades. About 25 gms in each little skein, about 20 w.p.i.

And then yesterday was spent demonstrating spinning with the Guild at a local Medieval Fair - a sure sign of summer. Unfortunately, I have no photos.

30 April: A cunning plan

There are now lots of inkles piled up in my playroom workroom.

So it seemed a good idea to make something from them. Like a bag. After fiddling about with ways of constructing a bag without having to hem too many ends, I worked out a sort of spiral, which forms a lop-sided tube; still needed to join the long sides together, and several ways of finishing the ends were considered before I chose to hem the narrow end at the bottom, and finish the top end by passing the cut threads through the weaving and braiding them on the front.

I had to cut the narrow inkle and stitch it to make the loops, though.


The bag is about 8" wide and 7" high with the top folded over. And at last I found a use for a boxwood acorn cut off a roller blind over 30 years ago - I knew it would come in handy one day!

The idea is that the sash will be simply knotted round me, and the bag is big enough for the essentials, while the clip can take keys if needed. The sash could also be knotted shorter, to make it a shoulder-bag or an across-the-body bag. Will the theory work out in practice?

23 April: Inkling on

- which sounds like something P.G.Wodehouse might have written.

The guild library last week yielded a small book called "Inkle Weaving" by Lavinia Bradley. It has a slightly different approach from my other books on the topic. One was to use up all those short bits of yarn that get thrown into a bag as too big to throw away, but too small to make anything with. They are simply knotted together and used to warp up the inkle loom - the knots get woven into the band, and an interesting texture and colour results -

The chapter titled "Bolivian Pebble Weave" looked interesting. The technique is illustrated by a typically South American Navajo design (!), which I wove in handspun BFL .

The suggestion in the book was that the technique could be adapted to produce more English designs like Christmas trees, horses and dogs.

I tried making up a meander-type design, but I don't think it's successful, either in the sugared-almond colours of BFL, or in the sludge colours of sock yarn -


Then, using the "Baltic-style" warping (one thick pattern thread followed by two thin background threads), I wove some handspun Shetland into a chevron pattern inkle which I love -


To make the pattern threads thicker, I needed 2 strands of yarn; as there was only one ball of each colour, I put a blue strand and a green strand together. It was dead easy to weave, the yarn was good to work with, and the finished band is very satisfying. There may be more.

(What do I mean, "may"?)

11 April: Inkle exploration

The low-tech weaving has shifted into inkle-weaving. (For those with no inkling about that, an inkle is a narrow woven band, in the shoe-lace to cummerbund width range.)


The pink and grey wool one at the top is woven to a design by Laverne at Backstrap Weaving - she took the pattern from a yurt band and wove it on her backstrap loom; my version was done on an inkle loom.

The lavender and gray interlaced pattern is another one woven in my handspun wool on the inkle loom.

The pile sample was woven on my backstrap loom, with a warp of handspun linen and pile knotted on in rug wool. Different spacings and pile lengths were explored, before I decided that life is probably too short to go any further with this. At least it shows it can be done on a backstrap loom.

The green and cream interlaced pattern one is done in cotton in 2 thicknesses. This pattern needed a lot of concentration, and even after unpicking several bits (and several times too!), there are mistakes in the weaving.

The bottom band is woven on the inkle loom in mill-spun Shetland wool (spun in Shetland), and was an attempt to finish up a bagful of leftover small skeins. The warp threads clung to each other, and opening every shed was an effort, but the finished band is worth it - lovely subtle colours and a solid feel, and at over 2 inches wide and 6 feet 3 inches long, a useful size. In fact I like it so much, I think I'll go and make another one.

13 January: Spindle spinning

Today we have mostly black ice, so I spent the morning playing spinning with a hand spindle.

I have tried before, and know why it's called a "drop spindle", but I have a new book with improved instructions. It took all morning, but I did produce 2 (very) small skeins of yarn, about as much as I can spin in ten minutes on my wheel.


Probably Corriedale wasn't the best fibre to start with, but it was all I had to hand. There are issues to be resolved, like how to keep the fibre under control while drafting, and leaving the centre-pull ball on the nostepinne while plying, but on the whole I was pleased.

It's called Curate's Egg yarn.

17 December: A rug - and yet another hat

Winter time is just right for making a rug - thick and heavy spread over your lap as you work. Even after my attempts to use up all my stash of rug wool, there was an awful lot left; perhaps something to do with my carrying home an enormous bag full of old Durham Carpets yarn from the Guild one day. They acquired a lot of carpet yarn when the factory closed, and I liked some of the colours.

It's made by hooking lengths of wool into knots on rug canvas, using a latchet hook. Each knot is worked individually. There are 23 rows of 6 sections, and each section is 20 stitches wide and 5 rows deep. Each knot has 2 strands of wool, which have to be cut from the ball or cone. It took nearly 3 weeks to make (not a lot worth watching on TV lately).

The design is simple, based on a couple of carpets seen recently. One was sampler in John Lewis, showing all the available colours in one carpet range, and the other was seen in a shop window in York when we were having coffee in the cafe opposite. My version is 3 feet each way.


There's another hat, too. This one is the Joined Up Thinking hat - it needed a lot of thought (and many pages of squared paper) to work out how the design would carry into the top shaping.


It's come out rather small, though.

26 June: Woolfest

Exhausted after a trip to Woolfest today; that's me and my cash reserves.

But I have the fibre I need to spin up and finish DH's jersey, which has been on hold for a few weeks: some superwash BFL for a possible project: 3 hanks of Yarn Yard sock yarn: some Landscape dye samples: a couple of crochet hooks: a bag of pot-luck mixed buttons: a copy of Annemor Sundbo's book Invisible Threads in Knitting: and a Kromski rigid heddle loom.

How long have I been resisting weaving? Must. Not. Start. Weaving. As. Well. And there's enough knitting projects lined up to keep me busy for several more years.

Oh well, perhaps I can give up sleep.

Which reminds me - there will be karmic consequences for the driver of the van that pulled out in front of us as we were coming home, forcing DH to brake hard and swerve. It woke me out of a nice little nap.

7 January: ABC Wednesday - Y

Yarn, of course! My passion is spinning and dyeing my own yarn, so that I have lots to choose from when I knit. Not only wool, sometimes silk, soy, Tencel, even recycled plastic bottle fibre; but mostly wool.

Some of this recently dyed Shetland is my current jersey-in-progress -


This dyed BFL fibre (that's fleece from the Blue Faced Leicester breed of sheep) was spun and knitted up into a big warm shawl -


Most of this yarn, the purple merino and silk, and the tweedy grey mixed wool and silk, are destined for a jacket which is in the planning stage, and may be the next project on the needles -


And this is my current yarn and fibre storage system, 5 folding crates, with associated bags -


And, as the fibre supply is a bit low, an order for more has just been posted - I may need another crate!

29 February: Leap/spring

It's blowing a gale again today, but the last couple of days have had a hint of spring about them. Visiting a friend, I walked past the pond at the dli museum. (Durham Light Infantry, no longer in existence)


The tiny daffodils are out in the garden, and leaves starting to open on the philadelphus, and the day lilies are shooting out of the ground. Primulas are out, and the birds in the garden are now sometimes in pairs.

And there's another freshly-dyed skein of sock yarn , intended for DH, but it's come out a really good blue, and I quite fancy it myself. But of course, blue is not a colour I wear , and there are skeins of Violet, Blackcurrant, and Roaring Tiger still waiting in the stash.....

30 January: Greens

Yesterday's occupation was dyeing some fibre and sock yarn, trying to get a good green colour.


Green is always a rather awkward colour to get right; you know, of course, that blue and yellow mixed make green, but yellows vary and so do blues. And then there's the added problem that the colour of the dye liquid isn't always quite the same as the colour the wool takes, and then again it's wet when you're doing it, and it changes a bit when it dries.

All this is waffle to explain why none of these is quite what I was after!

The best one turns out to be the bright one on the right of the picture, which horrified me when I first saw it. It's got some jade dye in it, which is very strong - only needs a small dab (that's the technical term).

The fibre was done in the microwave, but the sock yarn went in a pan on the stove. The skein seemed to be tied properly in two places, but when it was being rinsed, I realised that the ties had come loose, and the whole skein was falling apart. What fun, trying to get that tangle sorted out. I'm going to try and wind it into a ball now, so excuse any cursing you may hear.

30 November: More spinning

Some more of the fibre dyed last week is now yarn.


This is one of the two 125gm skeins spun from some of the brighter shades dyed last week. After trying several combinations of colours together, I decided on the violet, turquoise, jade, charcoal, and blue. I spun a bit from each colour in turn, so that the sequence was the same on each bobbin, but the amounts were slightly different. Then when plyed, the colours come together in different combinations.

Still on the woolly theme, I am now on Ravelry, as stitchwort.

16 November: Birthday, Knitting, Tag

Happy Birthday, Son!

One of the current knitting projects is a scarf, in the pattern Here and There Cables by Norah Gaughan, from the book Scarf Style.


The scarf illustrated in the book is knitted from much thicker yarn, in a variegated pale green. My version is in hand-spun black Wensleydale yarn, about 17 w.p.i., so is much narrower. The wool is sensationally soft, and much, much nicer than white Wensleydale. And of course, it isn't really black - more of a dark brown.

This stitch pattern attracted me because it is the same on both sides, and initially I couldn't see how it was done. It turns out to be remarkably simple, with the cabling on every 7th row, so it makes ideal work for TV watching (if any programmes appeal), or to take along to a Guild workshop day, where much chat occurs.

Tagged again by Granny J - this time it's 7 Things About Me.

1 - I have never read any of Jane Austen's novels.

2- I enjoy train journeys, apart from the stations and the other passengers.

3 - Maps fascinate me.

4 - 25 years in County Durham have failed to eradicate my southern accent.

5 - I would never make a mathematician

6 - I still don't know what I want to do when I grow up.

All passing readers are invited to pick up this tag and give us their own 7 Things.