Skirting Batts and Drafting Snakes

I'm working on a series of rugs using naturally colored fleece -- caramel, grey, white, and dark brown.

The rugs are of similar size (about 23" x 42") but each one weighs more than the last. (2 lb, 11 oz; 1 lb, 9 oz; and 1 lb, 2 oz). The differences in weight come from compressing the weft more and more with each weaving.

A series of woven fleece rugs - the most recent, heaviest one is on the left. The lightest one, woven on a harness loom, is on the far right. The latter weighs a great deal less than the other two.

"Skirting" is a term for removing undesirable locks from a nice fleece before selling it. Skirted locks are too short, too crimpy, too coarse, or otherwise unsuitable for serious spinning. For my rugs, however, skirted locks are useful.  Since I'm not spinning them (but, rather, rolling them into "snakes"), length and uniformity are not an issue.

Some of the locks that will be made into snakes. They come from a sheep's face, belly, and britch or are the result of a six-month shearing. A spinner might find them substandard, but they are fine for making a felted rug.

A "batt" is a sheet of carded fiber that comes off the drum carder. My batts weigh between 1 and 2 ounces each. The carder aligns the fibers for easy drafting. Carding is also a quick way to blend several colors. One pass through the carder gives a variegated look. Several passes would give a smooth blend.

 1 and 3/4 ounce batt of brown and white fibers, mixed

The carded batt can be torn into strips which can then be drafted into a "snake," the rope-like ball of drafted fiber seen below. It takes about 20 minutes to produce an 8 yard, 1 3/4 ounce "snake" from a carded batt.

The 8 yard snake has been compressed by rolling loose batting between my hands. No water required! Not quite felt, but sturdy enough to weave into a pre-felt rug.

From about 3 dozen of these unspun, pre-felt snakes, I can weave a fleece rug. I made the first one on a harness loom. (See the lightweight rug with the brightly colored fringe in the picture at the top of the page.) I wove the other two rugs on a peg loom, shown below. You wind the snakes around the pegs, then pull the warp through the weft.

On a peg loom, the weft (the horizontal element of a weaving) slides down the warp (vertical element) as weaving progresses.

The last stage of rug making will be to put the rug in the bathtub, add soapy water, and walk on it until tired. (I've tried skipping the wet-felting stage, but the weft tends to "halo." Loose ends of fiber stick out all over the rug.) Wet felting helps the fibers stay flat on the rug, even when subjected to plenty of foot traffic.

Pendleton selvedge plus Nantucket hooking = rug

22" x 36" rug woven and hooked from leftover materials

Spring Cleaning yielded a variety of leftover materials from which to weave a small rug:

 - Green, blue, yellow, and orange warp I'd dyed and spun from a BFL fleece

 - Black and orange Pendleton selvedge

 - Bulky art yarn I'd spun for hooking (from dyed Shetland and Romney locks)

 - Odds and ends of reclaimed bulky sweater yarn plied with various turquoise and magenta singles

Loom: Glimakra Victoria
Warp:  4 ends per inch
Weft: Pendleton selvedge and sweater yarn
Draft: plain weave
Weight of finished rug:  1 lb, 2 oz

Nantucket hooking creates patterns using bulky handspun rather than the more traditional strips of wool fabric favored by serious makers of hooked rugs

The magenta areas are weft-faced simple weave without hooked embellishments. Black and orange is Pendleton selvedge. Diamonds and triangles are hooked into the sweater yarn bands of weaving.

Pipe-woven Rug

I found an article on cutting drinking straws into short lengths, threading warp threads through them, and wrapping weft around the straws. This works if you use small lengths of PVC pipe, too. I used an unraveled sweater for the warp (see brown fringe along the long sides of the rug).

  Eight strips of weaving sewn together  = 27" x 51"   -   loom made from seven chunks of water pipe  -  weft is  sweater yarn I unraveled from Goodwill discards  -  total weight = 3 lbs, 10 oz

Spinning to Match Reclaimed Yarn

One of the swatches mentioned in the February 23 post has emerged as a sweater design. Unfortunately, there isn't enough of the light green yarn (reclaimed by unraveling a Goodwill sweater) to complete the project. Some dyed batts, a drum carder (for blending two shades of yellow-green), a spinning wheel, and voila, I have yarn to match the unraveled lot.

Left to right are:  unraveled yarn, matching handspun (made today), sweater sleeve, and sweater back

Two shades of dyed fleece were blended to make yarn on lower right. In upper right:  reclaimed yarn to match

Last of the Scottish Blackface

Several years ago I bought a couple of Scottish Blackface fleeces that turned out to be a bit too coarse and brittle for making clothing. They felted nicely, though. The last of the dyed locks surfaced when we cleaned the garage last month -- I've spun them up to be plyed with a few odds and ends of unravelled sweaters.

Also, the Churro sweater started earlier in the month is done. I've wearing it for morning walks. It will be a good pattern to follow for upcoming work -- the armholes and sleeve caps make a comfortable fit.

Bobbins of Scottish Blackface wool for rug-making

Finished sweater of Navajo Churro wool

Garage Cleaning

Old Goodwill sweaters (unraveled) and bags of dyed fleece have emerged from the garage. The sweater yarn needed a bit of perking up, so I spun a variety of blues, purples, and browns in order to knit some sample swatches for a new jacket. The best thing about fiber arts is experimenting with color.

At top and right are plain yarns taken from old Goodwill sweaters. In center is dyed fleece for experimental skein.

Yarn spun to brighten up the unraveled Goodwill sweaters, which are plain blue

Handspun skein and carded batts

Churro sweater

A churro fleece I'd stored several years ago began to felt "on the shelf." (Fleece can felt simply from changes in humidity combined with too-tight packiaging.) I rescued most of it and made a bulky thick-and-thin yarn (30 oz total) which will soon be a completed pullover. What a pleasure to go to one's roving stash, pick out a few colors, and invent some yarn!

The rescued churro fleece (white strands) knitted up at about 2 sts per inch

Roving to be plyed with churro singles

One skein weighing 4 5/8 oz

Partially completed elements of the sweater:  front, back, sleeve

Noren, felt snakes, and a mobile

Some leftovers from my watercolor class have become a noren (Japanese door curtain) and a mobile. Also dug out some mustard-colored roving and felted it to make a hanger for some cloth pouches. (The latter will hold index cards for a research project I'm doing.)

felted "snakes" support cloth pouches which will hold index cards for a research project

A noren hangs in the doorway of a closet in order to use the "see-through" paintings I made for class -- I have to look through them in order to walk through the doorway.

mobile made out of two-sided paintings

opposite sides of the paintings in above mobile

Fleece lore and painting idea

Alpaca! It's soft, it's dense and drapey, it's exotic, and it comes in lush, natural colors. For Christmas I'm sending my mother-in-law an alpaca scarf. I added some Navajo Churro and some Jacob (both are Heritage breeds) to the yarns I spun for the contrasting stripes. The body of the scarf is naturally-colored alpaca blended with some Border Leicester lamb. Peggy's great-granddaughter carded some of the wool for the pink stripe. This was great fun to make and took a surprising volume of fleece -- 8 ounces -- alpaca has quite a dense "hand."

The decorative painting below is the endpaper from an Hena Khan book -- Mehrdokht Amini is the illustrator. I shot it to capture material for an upcoming project --  no reference to the scarf project, just wanted to capture it before taking it back to the library.

Handspun and dyed (by me) alpaca scarf. Alpaca is from Sherwood, a neighboring city.

Bits of five different fleeces went into the scarf -- all are uncommon breeds raised by Willamette Valley shepherdesses.

Kitchen rugs and musicians draft

Last month I made a composition draft for a painting of musicians -- it was to be part of the mask project. May not get to painting it for a while, so have documented it here.

The kitchen rug project begun last April has been coming along nicely -- almost have four rugs completed -- see below.

Still under construction

Whole Earth beings

More images from participatory Water Media mask assignment:

Whole Earth mask assignment

My art teacher invited me to submit a mask for her Water Media class. The project expanded! Soon there was a "whole earth" backdrop (which one viewer said looked like a "mask" of earth expanded to reveal what's really going on beneath the familiar facade). The submission became a participatory installation in which class members discussed controversial social and environmental topics, then mounted images on the backdrop.

"Earth" backdrop

This pair of images (see below) is more of a socially controversial topic than the other, environmentally themed ones

Fossils added to round blanket

The blanket I started two years ago is finished. (See Into The Woods 10-14-2012 and Pithy Circle 11-10-2012)

The yarn-hungry process of knitting a 5' diameter circle made the various colors accumulate in narrow bands which reminded me of layers of rock "telling" geological time. So the embellishments represent organisms from various parts of the fossil record:  agnathans, bryozoans, crinoids, gastropods, a shonisaurus, a dragonfly, a gingko leaf, a sea star, and a trace fossil. Mother turtle occupies the center of the circle.

circular blanket can also be worn as a shawl -- note armholes near turtle image

Shonisaurus may have been 50' long!

an Agnathan

a Crinoid

center of circular blanket embellished with turtle figure

Spring Term Watercolor, 5

Top view of assemblage for watercolor class final

Side view of assemblage

Assemblage representing feudal fortifications enclosing a broadcast tower

Adjoining assemblage for watercolor final -- figures in the sky stand for information dissemination via the internet

The whole class participated in placing the village's houses on the "internet" landscape

Again, the feudal castles which surround broadcast tower image