Hand: spun, dyed, woven cap!

 I managed to use Madcap pattern to make a nice cap for my husband out of an old wooden jacket which had well woven fabric from Donegal:

Then I got a mind worm : could I make another cap from scratch i.e. from dyed fleece, hands-on and woven on a rigid heddle ?

I had to try.

Spinning, dying, weaving went well but then it cam to cutting out the pattern!!

Would all my work end up a a misshapen heap for loose fibres??

Decidec to apply thin fabric stabiliser (Vilene I believe) and machine sew around the pattern pieces and then zigzag beside the seam before cutting it out. Glad to say it worked!!

It is lined with a navy blue cotton.

The dyes used were acid Landscape dyes.

Very Mary Quand (for those who can remember that far back).

Here's buddy wearing one"

Some photos from the finer prep, dying, spinning, weaving for this cap:

The weft followed the same pattern as the warp in a plain weave.

The dyes used were Landscape Citrus,  Tanbark and Sky.

Connie et al 2024

ABOUT CONNIE TWIRLIESTICK

Hi

I'm Connie - a red/white Border collie.

I've got massive herding drive but only got that satisfaction for a few of my early years.

To avoid an existential crisis, I turned my skills to honing wooden sticks and branches through the art of chewing in order to make them suitable for twirling over my shoulder.

I like a challenge - the bigger the better

GoldenFleece fibers and how I used them

 I sent away for (to me) luxury fibres from Golden Fleece Studios In Netherlands via their Etsy shop : www.etsy.com/shop/GoldenFleeceStudio.

First I got hand-dyed Merino?Bamboo 60/40:

Love this and lovely to spin.

Spun into a medium weight yarn with two plys. 

This got knitted into the body of a vest with my own sheeps' yarn for the rib (I like the firmness of the coarser diners in ribs):

I have been living in this vest for over a month now, with a long-armed T-shirt underneath.

I has been cod at times and I find only animal fibres really keep me warm (well old bones etc).

However, my poor vest cannot take all of the responsibility so I fancy knitting a second one.

SO, back to the Golden Fleece Studio for more luscious fibres. A necessity makes it so much easier to justify indulging an addiction ;) 0.

This time another blend - 

I got three of them this time.

All spun now and drying (well hopefully the dripping has stopped).

Malachi... drying

DAU fibers dring

Will knit soon I hope.

But in the meantime, the temptress sent me a sample of another blend. Grrr - this has all the colours I love most - so....

Plan to spin this on a drop spindle and ply with some cotton thread.

No rest for the addicted!

Gene Machine doodie

 I (and hubby) joke about "doodies".

Doodie is short for do-di-do-di; do-di-do-di as in signature tune for "The Twilight Zone".

That theme tune implies something creepy and unpredictable - possibly supernatural.

 Not being into "wooh" science and the like, I have, of course, criteria for what constitutes a Doodie.

Example - my first acknowledged Doodie wa as follows:

Alone one evening - family all away, I suddenly got an urge to locate a vinyl record of "Dark Side of The Moon" . Firstly, I knew next to nothing about it, just a vague idea of one of the songs and not even sure it was on that record. Second, I wasn't sure there was such a vinyl in the house nor where my husband might store things. Thirdly -- for what!?? Fourthly, I can count on one hand the number of times I have initiated a musical recording of any kind. 

Anyway,  after a search, I found and played it. It felt good. Big deal.

However a day later there was nothing but stuff about about the album and Pink Floyd on radio, on TV. 

Called this a "doodie". 

Broadly, criteria are: it seems to appear out of nowhere, it is unattached to usual affiliated things, it comes up within a couple of days after entering the noggin unbidden.

Things such as "I was just thinking of you and now you have phoned me" do not count! Loads of readily accessible reasons for such a coincidence. 

There have been several such episodes since. Husbands tries to shoe-horn some of his coincidences into the category but rarely succeeds (ha ha) - mostly just regular coincidences that can be explained as "just thinking of ya" types of coincidences.

Today, I was rummaging in my FO's (Finished Objects) that hang about in trunks and drawers when I fetched out perhaps my biggest Doodie.

In October 2019 I was taken with the idea of knitting a rug based on the relationship between RNA bases and the proteins they represent. A brilliant young woman had made a chart to illustrate this - 

I have her name somewhere and must add it ASAP. 

Anyway I wanted to convert this into a knitted rug with Dark Blue as Guanine; Light Blue as Adenine; Dark Green as Cytocine and Yellow as Uracil then other colours for amino acids.

Not my best work - but when I finished it towards the end of December little did I know just how much talk about RNA was on its way. Yes it violated the time criteria i.e. the chatter on the media about RNA came some time after my initial inkling of making such a thing but still - it fills the creepy criteria to such a degree that I'm allowing it in.

Krokbragt experiments

 I love the look of Scandinavian woven fabrics with their colourful warm appearance and repeat patterns.

I have only a rigid heddle but read it was possible to copy this type of weaving with such a handle.

I set about experimenting with it.

First I had to spin some fleece into an aran weight yarn.

Below is a fleece I had in the attic save from my former flock Texel cross sheep

Next I had to dye the yarn in several colours.

I have acid dyed such a Eurolana and Landscape dyes in the cupboard so choose some primary colours to use.

Also added citric acid:

Used the stove top method.

Got a set of yarns to work with:

Before getting on with an attempt at even a small rug, I set about sampling with lots of different patterns using left-over yarns in different colours.

The idea is produce three sheds - two on the slot/gap warps and one on the hole warps. This means, when the heddle is in the up position (all the holes and their respective warps raised ) the hole warps are accompanied by half of the slot wars and any weft placed in that shed cover just the other half of the shoot warps. Then with he heddle again in the up position, the previously unaided slot warps are also raised and any yarn in the shed formed cover just the other half of the slot wefts. Then the heddle is placed in the down position, all the hole warps are down and all the slot warps are up and any yarn in that shed covers ll the hole warps. A bit of a head wrecker!!

To accomplish this, the heddle is placed down and all the slot warps are up. A pickup stick is placed under every second warp behind the heddle. One can pick up all the other warps with another stick but this will not work while weaving as the second stick will interfere with the first so unless you want to replace the second pickup stick every second pick, a thread heddle is needed.

This is not hard, just fiddly to make all the threads - but quite doable.

Here is my little sampler one behind the heddle.

I didn't bother sticking it down with painters tape as it was such a small one but later, when I set up the full  width of the loom, I certainly did.

Some snaps of the samples I made:

A weight to help with the sewing at the end.

When satisfied with the procedure, I quit and used the samples to make a quiver to hold my weaving sticks:

I love the various patters. but My edged are a bit bad so it is good I had a strip of knitted cord to run all around it.

Now, I set up the whole loom - so had to make 38 strings to loop around a dowel rod and tape in place.

This is the beginning:

And so it will progress - slowly I'm sure and will be updated