Irresistible carder waste

Having converted all the dyed locks in the house into carded batts, the question is:  What to do with the beautiful wool rejected by the drum carder? (Short or tangled fibers stay on the feed roll rather than going onto the drum to be part of a batt.)

Instead of discarding this "waste fiber," I put it in a box so it can be admired!

Here is a perfect example of the weaver's-eyes-are-bigger-than-her_stomach dilema. Delicious colors. Plenty of imagination to picture finished yarns and fabric you could make with the colors. Never mind that one has ten times more great ideas than time in which to execute them. The colors are irresistible...

Carder waste made into roving for spinning, with previous experiment shown above

The irresistible question:  How will this stuff look once it's spun?

A box of fleece that wouldn't go through the drum carder -- hence the hand cards!

Off-loom weaving

While downsizing the stuff in the house, forgotten items keep surfacing:  Tapestry done on a cardboard- box-loom. Two rugs woven using a bicycle wheel.

One pillow has a tablet-woven band around the edge. Tablet weaving is also called "card weaving," as the warp is threaded through holes in a pack of cards. To open the shed, you rotate the pack -- no loom required!

Experts disagree as to whether tablet weaving began to be used in the 6th century BC or somewhat later. It has definitely been in use for over 1,000 years. Quite a few excellent books have been written on this fascinating technique. It has great potential for making elaborate graphical designs.

Detail of a tapestry done on a cardboard-box-loom

Rag rug woven on a bicycle wheel loom

Crocheted pillow with multi-colored tablet-woven edge

Another rug woven on a bicycle wheel

What color is next?

Surely we are going to have some hot weather eventually?

When it comes, there is fleece waiting to be dyed. I thought it would be interesting to lay out samples of every batch of dyed fleece currently on hand to see which colors need filling out.

Seems greens, blues and crimson could use more variety.

Bits of batts awaiting spinning

Oranges and purples with hand cards

Reds and purples already dyed, plus undyed white locks (center)

Batts and Bins

Goal for the last seven years:  Make woven art from dyed wool. Really branch out and explore. Do lots of trial and error and improvising with color. Change plans as often as new ideas arise.

Well!  Productive though the time has been, "stash overload" has definitely outstripped any hopes of "using up the wool." A dozen dyed fleeces choked the garage. (A fleece weighs around five pounds.) A "wall of yarn" dominated the master bedroom. Time for a change!

I've spent this month putting the yarn in compact bins and converting many of the fleeces into carded batts. How nice to have the bedroom and garage liberated! Of course, the waste from picking and carding has become grounds for yet another series of experiments...

Bulky, bulky fleece

The solution to bulk -- my trusty drum carder

Carded batts

Off the wall and into tubs

The bare wall of the garage, unencumbered by "stash"

Textiles are for Improvising

I recently viewed dozens of improvisational quilts that remind me of lively, perfectly-balanced abstract paintings. The blocks at times may reference traditional patterning, but the makers assert, "we put in something of our own," and "the inspiration comes from within." The work was done very quickly and has a fluent, rather than a fussed-over look.

The beauty of such quilts has inspired me to change my plan for the two "nine-patch" mosaic-knitted blankets mentioned in earlier posts. It will be much more fun to make one large blanket, and to let a more wild design reveal itself as new blocks are created.

This is how the first of the two 40" square blankets would have looked if I'd stuck to my plan.

Mosaic elements planned for a second blanket will instead be part of a single, large blanket.

Some small (2" square) elements could be used to balance the larger squares.