What is it about color?

I wove the fabric shown below from yarn reclaimed from old sweaters, lots and lots of them.

Seemingly, the more colors there are to choose from, the more delight one feels in the weaving.

Freeform Construction

Yarn stashes breed experiments.

"What if I plyed some border leicester with that blue shetland I just unravelled?" "How would it look if I knit it into a mitered square?"

The months go by, texture, pattern, and color abound, and the stacks of samples grow taller.

The best part is joining swatches together into pillows, sweaters, or blankets. Patterns are out. Collage is in!

Pillow cover made from swatches

Sweater "freeformed" from sample swatches

Samples of "mosaic" knitting

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Show and Tell

Yarn lovers attend workshops, fiber festivals, and knit nights for various reasons. One is to simply find out who might have done something they hadn't thought of yet. Bringing completed projects to share is referred to as "show and tell."

The following might be typical offerings:

Pillow cover (13" x 13") -- Nantucket hooking on burlap. Made from various short lengths of over-dyed, re-spun wool yarn. ("Nantucket" means I used yarn in the hooking process, which traditionally required strips of fabric.)

Cotton rug (diameter 38") knitted on large needles to incorporate 4 - 5 yarns at a time, which enables mixing color. To get the 12 colors, I had to unravel parts of 48 different-colored cotton sweaters.  Petal shaping utilizes short-row technique.

Weft-faced mat (9" x 20") woven on a floor loom. This experiment involved unraveling bits of 15 wool sweaters. The warp (taken from a cotton sweater) can be seen in the knotted fringes.

Nantucket hooking on burlap using re-engineered yarn

Short-row rug in cotton, diameter 38"

Weft-faced mat in wool, cotton warp

Knotting a Carpet

The next time a hand-knotted oriental rug presents itself, take a look at the underside and consider weaving such a treasure.

If you were born into a weaving family, like Zeynep Deneri (shown below), your elders would teach you. (This Turkish girl's picture comes from Marla Mallett's book, Woven Structures.)

Were you a Persian nomad, like the heroine of Mohsen Makhmalbaf's film, Gabbeh (1996), you would depict your life story in the carpets you wove.

Through such glimpses, I have come to love the idea of women knotting carpets of original design in handspun wool. Emmett Eiland's excellent blog suggests that this may be "an idealized model of some distant time." To be sure, the world is not at all what it was when Mallett and Makhmalbaf wrote.

In spite of which, throwing common sense to the wind, I found some classes (thanks to Madrona Fiber Arts) and wove a small (14" x 19") knotted pile carpet depicting my two favorite dogs. It took me 18 months. Based on that quite convoluted experience, I can wholeheartedly suggest: Dive into this 3,000 year old craft if you wish. Learning awaits.

Zeynep Deneri's first rug

Two dogs under the stars, front side

Two dogs under the stars, back side

Loom being warped, with oriental carpet in background

What is in a Name?

"Zarasbunda" is the name of a song sung in olden days to encourage and bless a child's learning to spin wool. (The title is usually spelled "Sarasponda," but I went with the archaic Dutch spelling.)

I hope that referring to this lively, multi-part song evokes the pleasure found when women gather to make textile goods by hand. We learn from and admire one another's work. We chat. The more proficient ones help others. Big tasks are tackled by the group (e.g., quilting bees.) One can bask in the satisfaction of a job well done. To me, it all feels like coming home.

Such work may be said to have three layers of meaning:

1)  It is collaborative. The making goes better in a group. And it is a chance to gather with like-minded folk. What an essential need this fills!

2)  Each project expresses the maker's own inspiration and sense of beauty. The gathering may become a forum for originality and self-expression.

3)  For many people down through the ages, clothing, rugs, quilts, and linens were hand-made rather than purchased. Spinning and weaving literally kept one's family warm. Perhaps women retain the need to do such purposeful work.

In this blog, I would like to explore a variety of venues where women gather to make beautiful and useful items.

Detail of a well-used knotted pile rug (maker unknown)

Detail of a hand-pieced quilt (maker unknown)

Dyed Locks and Giant Yarn

One can start many projects with Border Leicester locks dyed in various colors. Once dyed, the tightly curled structure of each lock has to be picked apart so that the fiber lies in a more open web.

To make pre-felt, I lay out sheets of wet, soapy web and agitate the bundle just enough for the fibers to begin locking together.

Once dry, you can cut the pre-felt into shapes and arrange contrasting colors in decorative patterns. A second round of agitation yields a shrunken version of the original image, sturdy enough for years of use.

Wetting and agitating long strips of fiber instead of flat sheets makes a pre-felt "snake." This can be treated as yarn and knitted into a thick, soft rug. Christien Meindertsma has some amazing examples of giant yarn projects on her website.

Dyed locks before and after "picking"

Pre-felt ready to be cut into design elements

Felting shrinks the pre-felt (seen on right) significantly

Strips of webbing make a pre-felt "snake" (seen on right)

A Visit to Distracted Acres

Every September, I buy wool at the Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival's parking lot sale, where local farmers sell whole, unprocessed fleeces.

Today I got to visit some of the sheep, themselves, at an open house held by Distracted Acres, a Yamhill County farm.

Visitors viewed recently-shorn moms, plenty of lambs, and a felting demonstration, while enjoying conversation and home cooking.

My day was complete when I met an elderly Border Leicester ewe who holds the special status of "retiree."

Border Leicester ewe

Texel lamb

Happy flock

Texel mom

Border Leicester ewe with treats in mind

Old Clothes Warm Toes

My new blog, Zarasbunda, will look at ways one can enjoy textile arts on a micro-budget. Previous posts have depicted handspinning wool and unraveling old sweaters to acquire knitting yarn.

Discarded clothing can be another source for stash-building. At garage sales, keep an eye out for colorful, outmoded fashions. And Goodwill "outlets" sell unwanted textiles by the pound.

reclaimed-fabric rug woven on a bicycle wheel

Reclaimed fabric and balls of cut strips

Once you've got your treasures home, wash them, cut into strips, and "go nuts." Crocheting, weaving, twining, or knitting the strips will produce a rug-weight fabric pleasing to your toes as well as your eyes.

 Rug, runner, and bag woven and crocheted from fabric

Detail of knitting incorporating red long johns

Pillow cover made by twining strips of fabric

More Than the Sum

After "rescuing" abandoned sweaters from Goodwill bins, I unravel them to build up my stash of yarn.

One out-of-date sweater by itself can seem dingy and off-putting, but one can add such yarns together so that their sum forms an interesting product.

"Tree of Life" latch-hooked  in linen, cotton, and wool

Detail of "rail fence" blanket in wool

Detail of blanket in cotton and wool

Sweater parts ready to be skeined on the niddy-noddy

Yarns reclaimed from old sweaters

A Gleam in the Eye

Finished blanket

Blanket detail

Undyed Locks

Dyed locks

In 2004 I began attending classes in textile arts and handcrafts. After eight years I am still in love with the meaning and delight such gatherings offer to participants.

Creating and experimenting are easiest when one has an abundant stash; i.e., lots of colors and textures to play with. Fiber and fabric can be expensive, so I have added a "harvesting and reclaiming" hobby that continues to offer surprises and opportunities for invention. By visiting Goodwill bins, as well as "flock and fiber" festivals, I can obtain textile raw materials for $1.50 - $2.50 per pound. Add a pot of dye, plus carding and blending, and one can acquire an exciting stash.

This blog is about making beautiful and useful items from materials that might otherwise have gone to waste. I invite you to travel with me from "the gleam in an artist's eye" through the procuring, weaving, and stitching of materials. We shall finish by seeing a colorful blanket ready to warm someone's night. Other, similar, stories will end with a quilt on a gallery wall, or a dramatic, original rug gracing a kitchen floor.

Drop spindles and carded wool

Dyed, spun, and ready to knit