The year is unfolding in tough & unexpected ways. As we work hard to adjust, meet these challenges, I have been pressed out of regular posting as just one result. By Eastertime, I wanted to pivot and weave something beautiful.
Out came Sarah Jordan’s stunning handspun merino/tencel that I won from her summer 2015 Shawl for All knit-along.
Four years ago! The KAL was hosted in Sarah’s Ravelry group, Knit/Wit Designs Fans and this was not just a happy prize but a real honour to have Sarah’s yarn.
Close examining with a yarn wrap & Ashenhurst calculation led me to a sett of 16 ends per inch. Sarah’s yarn is 3,154 yards per pound. The plan was simple – to warp along plain weave lines for a finer (4,480 YPP) wool weft and weave a 3-shaft point twill structure.
There was enough to wind a 3-yard long warp, go 14.5″ wide in the reed, and proceed to sample wefts but carefully!
The weft experiments in the header led me to the 2/16 light grey lambswool from WEBS. The draft itself is from “Linen Heirlooms” by Constance Gallagher, p. 54 taken from a 19th century linen cloth.
Erica de Ruiter’s voice is what carried me through to using this draft, however:
Three-shaft twills have a better drape than plain weave but their structure is slightly tighter, and they have less take-up than four-shaft twills, thus producing a lighter weight fabric (see “Weaving on 3 Shafts“, page 5).
That was convincing enough for napkins let alone this handspun project, and I was well & sold on the idea.
This below is the face of the cloth as I wove it. After wet finishing the wool weft has receded to the reverse leaving the beautiful warp colourway dominant on one side.
The fringe buckled when I finished the scarf before twisting. Ty strongly suggested that I should not trim the ends. They are scraggly but soft!
One small detail is that I threaded the full 12-end repeats, and this gave double shaft 1 ends that I wove in the same way (tromp as writ). It modifies the twill to a little basket, and that probably has helped the drape. It gave the weaving a good rhythm for this small motif.
Cutting Sarah’s yarn was harder than cutting mine but I am glad that I braved the process!
Weekend before last, N & Ty took me to visit the Fibre Garden in Jordan, Ontario. After lunch at the local cafe, I fell in love with the Inn on the Twenty’s window boxes.
Spinning is getting a lot of love right now – the tv-room is crowded with my wheels & spindle projects are also moving forward. The Falkland wool top that I got from the Fibre Garden is already improved with Logwood. The kitchen is a crowded mess but purple!
The darker purple fibre will hopefully play well with my recently (May 3rd) finished sequence of Blink from the 2019 Female Heroes Fiber Club + Paint It Black by Sheepy Time Knits.
Mandie’s club continues to delight. That I also got to cook-up Logwood dye liquor is a wonderful bonus!
Spinning, weaving, even prep work is happening thanks to walks that I have started to take after dropping Ty off at school. There’s been fatigue, crowded thoughts, and the walks help a treat.
Should my mojo for sharing ‘impossible yarn’ production that takes place around here, I would like to explain about this ongoing 4-strand cable idea from the Olde English Babydoll Southdown fleece.
For now we have these rolags that were a delight to spin against prevailing ideas that I hear being (wrongly, strongly & ever so cutely) offered to new spinners as our placeholder.
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