Handwoven Alpaca and Wool Scarf: Spreading the Warp

Spreading the warp together.

While the boys sort small change, looking for the Northern Mariana Islands U.S. quarter to put in their coin collection, I grab the tail of this moment for a little post about the everlasting scarf.

Everlasting in that it's everlastingly under construction :}

Christopher and I are learning harness weaving together, the same way that we spin alpaca and wool together. He's just about as interested as I am. Unexpected and fascinating, since he's 7 years old and otherwise spends his days whenever possible with a basketball, football, soccer ball, baseball, or bouncy ball in his hands. He's a pragmatic, careful learner and enjoys process and practice. To say that I'm happy to have such a sweet companion on the fiber journey is an understatement...

Spreading the Warp

In Swedish methods of setting up a loom the reed is used not only to beat back the yarn into place as new cloth, but is also an aid to spreading out the warp threads to the right width when setting up the warp threads on the loom.

The chained warp threads are temporarily set on top of the loom and each pair of threads is sleyed (pulled) through the reed at a predetermined distance apart so that it can be threaded onto the apron rod at the back of the loom.

Our sleying hook? A bent metal paper clip. More homemade tools :}

Christopher sleys the warp through the reed as part of spreading it.

Detail man.

Warp spread and ready to thread onto the apron rod.

Worried about the warp slipping back through the reed? Thread a string through it :}

That's all for this time. This afternoon we may get a chance to work on it some more, but the boys are each designing a board game for school, and we need to run around some, and I have June's Vacation Bible School work to do...already!

Next up, I hope: the Vernet project -- Bernhardt stays!

Hand-cleaned, handspun, handwoven Alpaca and wool scarf: measuring and chaining warp

Ladybug: "Where does this yarn go and
what happens if I pull on it with my teeth?"
[No picture available of disaster
averted.]

Weaving = math + mechanics + art + time x patience / more or less

If creating yarn is a multi-step process, weaving it is that times 5. Holy cats, what a lot of steps. They say that if you only like actual weaving you had better like measuring warp and "dressing" the loom with it, too, for many times you'll spend more time preparing the loom than weaving on it. 

Good thing that's true for me so far. I like winding, and rewinding, and pulling and coaxing string. Of course, I've only got as far as measuring out the warp and readying it to be put on the loom, and a multitude of steps await on the loom itself: getting all the warp on there and through the wee slots in the reed and the wee holes in the correct harnesses, and all tied up and tensioned evenly. Ai, yi! 

One of the slowing factors, aside from teaching myself, is that I am working on a shoestring (ahem) with ad hoc tools. It's good to learn  -- by tangles, slowness, failures, and banging up against physical impossibilities -- why tools designed in one of several ways are sensible. Besides, you get to fiddle around and invent, and that's just plain fun.

The loom is the little pine thing dwarfed by the big pine thing.
Yes, there is a tiny homemade Tinkertoy loom next to it.
That's toy the boys and I made. It works!

Because I am weaving on a Swedish Glimakra loom (the 1970s-vintage Pysslingen above), it seemed fitting to take The Big Book of Weaving, also from Sweden, as a guide. For those who may be curious, the ways the Scandinavians tend to dress their looms differ a bit from the way it's often done in America. There are assumptions that one is using string heddles, not metal ones, and that parts of the loom can be broken down and removed for easier setup. The simple but subtle mechanics of these looms are so beautifully worked out...

Oh, that large pine 19th century clothes press? Ultimate source unknown, but found it locally a few weeks back. It might not be American: so many things are imported and exported. It's rather beaten up: original button drawer knobs gone, cupboard handle gone, back of the cornice looks as if it's been left in the rain or chewed by mice, it's water-stained in front, and inside, boards are shrunken with time. No matter. It is happy and cozy and sturdy. It will hold all the toys as well as the television, doesn't mind if small basketballs and small children bump it, and will be a good foundation piece for one of the boys down the road. I love pine. Cherry is warm and handsome and very local to where I grew up and here in Kentucky, walnut is tough, poplar is useful, butternut and fruitwoods are rare lovelies, old mohogany is serious. Pine is softer than these, softer in color, softer in surface, but oh, so good.

Here are pictures, as much to document for my fuzzy brain as to entertain you, showing what is going on.

Measuring Out the Yarn

The warp, a commercial alpaca-wool blend. My handspun is not strong enough to be warp. It would break. It's in a skein measuring 110 yards -- all I will need for the scarf's longways warp threads -- tied at intervals with kitchen string to keep it in order.

First, last November, we measuring out the total yardage with a Tinkertoy skein holder Noah and I made and a skein winder Dad and I made of scrap lumber measuring exactly one yard per turn around the four arms.

Skein holder and 1-yard skein winder. Collapsible into pieces.
Yes, that's a different breakfront cupboardin the background.
That one has gone upstairs to the master bedroom,
and a new-to-us pine one is now downstairs. Both 19th century,
but only the cherry one from Kentucky.

Christopher and I did the measuring together.

Now that Christmastide is over and the new year begun, it's time to measure again and this time, get the warp in order.

 The skein ends are tied together with a visible knot so it's easy to find the ends.

The skein has to be unwound. It will be divided in half, and wound on two spools because the warping method I use measures out warp for the loom with two strings of yarn, called ends, at a time. It's easier to keep tension even with a pair of ends and saves time measuring.

Here is the skein on the big Tinkertoy skein holder. How to get it onto two spools? One at a time.

First, measure out half the yardage needed, on the skein winder. Cut the yarn, pull off the new skein carefully, then do it again with the second half.

Now to get the skeins onto spools since skeins tangle easily and don't unwind an even rate of tension -- as me how I know.

Wind, wind. Yawn, cramp. This is too slow. Egad. No go.

A bit of tinkering with Tinkertoys later, we have a weighted arm to hold the spool, and a handle taped onto the spool to speed winding. Push your finger against the handle and it turns, winding the spool, while your other hand guides the yarn so it winds evenly. An already wound spool waits on the table.

Measuring the Yarn for the Loom With Warping Pegs

If you have cash and space, you purchase a warping board, which looks like a square window frame with giant pegs stuck in it all around, or better, a warping mill, which is simply a reel made to stand and spin upright. I have neither, so it's warping pegs for me.

Each warp thread is measured out to the length it will be on the loom. The yarn goes from one peg, at the left, to the other end, around an intermediary peg in a figure-8 pattern called the lease cross. It's that crossing of yarns that keeps the warp in line.

You can only have a warp as long as your longest clampable surface -- the pegs have to be clamped in place to hold tension, so you generally can't weave a very long length.

The yarns have to stay perfectly evenly tensioned and one yarn cannot cross over another yarn except at the lease cross. That means that the spools should unwind below the pegs -- on the floor for me, because your fingers have to be able to pull the yarns evenly and also guide them over the pegs in the proper pattern. Ask me why I know this.

The warping pegs have to be in a straight line, or one side of the warp threads will be longer than the other. Um, yeah, I learned that, too.

Also I learned that it's easiest if you are going to measure out two ends at a time and they go there and back again to the end peg, that it's best to measure everything divisible by four for the whole warp part of the project. If you want clean measurements. Just saying :}

When you have measured out all your warp on the pegs, for goodness' sake please tie nice, tight bows with kitchen string around the end peg...

...the middle of the warp on both sides...

...and at the lease cross and both sides of it. See the cross in the picture?

Then I took the warp off the loom and "chained" it: formed it into a crocheted chain using my hands as the crochet hook. No picture because I had no hands available.  Also because it required a visit to a YouTube video to learn how (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQ1qNeSYBxs). Desperately needed moving visuals :}

So there we are to date. Now I have to clean a rusty reed that guides the warp in the loom and also serves to beat the weft into position as it's woven. Then we can start actually dressing the loom. When, I wonder?

Next up, the last of November 1811's journal journey.

Weaving Handspun Yarn: Increasing Fascination, Research Extension

Measuring out 50 yards on the homemade skein winder.

Christopher and I spin together. Now we are weaving together. Months ago we made yarn from Tuesday the alpaca's so-soft-you-bury-your-face-in-it hair. Since his brother has a woolen scarf I knit for him, Christopher has been agitating for one too, and we've agreed to learn to weave it together.

Will it be finished by Christmas? Since we must learn to size the yarn with starch or a milk solution, measure out the warp threads on warping pegs, and then dress a harness loom with them -- a process with 20 pages worth of steps in my big Swedish weaving book -- weave the scarf, and then finish and full the resulting fabric, probably not. Maybe by Easter and lambing time? Who knows? Doesn't matter. It's experimenting with this most ancient and respected craft that is the point right now. Later Christopher can enjoy wearing the piece of heaven that is partly the work of his own 7-year-old self.

From Tuesday's back to Christopher's neck, our hands, using tools so ancient some of their sources are lost in time, will have touched each step. To this day I have never felt such happiness and satisfaction with anything I have ever sewn or produced. This is getting to the source of things.

Christopher unskeins the commercial wool/alpaca yarn from the homemade skein unwinder, while I continue
measuring out a total of 110 yards for the scarf warp (lengthwise) threads.

Here's the loom. It's a Swedish loom, a Glimåkra Pysslingen table loom on legs from the 1970s. Like most Swedish and Finnish looms, it's ingenious and to my eyes, handsome. You'll be seeing it on and off as time passes.

Glimåkra Pysslingen loom, up close, along with skeins of the fluffy, chunky handspun
alpaca Christopher and I have produced.

Little note: you might recall the trim loom. It's in use. It's got cotton warped on it now, and I am about a third of the way through making a petticoat tape. A nifty, handsome machine and good way to begin to understand weaving movements. Plus make trim. But when? Again, who knows. Whenever the path winds there.

You Know Why I Spin, But Why Weave, Not Knit?

First, my knitting is poor. Garter stitch is fine, purling okay, but any combination beyond knit and purl and it's all too easy to get confused. This brain has a hard time with numbers anyway. Dates, sums, prices, equations, they get turned around in my mind so easily, mixed up together in jumbles. Long experience has taught me that all number sequences and calculations must be written down, then checked to make sure they weren't garbled even during their writing. Knitting sequences? Germs of frustration.

Then, weaving has appealed since a high-school-era class in a sunny old room introduced me to the big harness looms and the amazing things they can accomplish. Now is the time to return to that magic, even though it involves hordes of potential calculations and our loom is by no means large. At least those can be written down in logical order. I can avoid patterns made by complicated harness sequences and keep to the simplest weave structures while turning to manual warp-by-warp inlay techniques for figures and patterns beyond stripes and checks.

At the last, like many costumers, trying to find modern equivalents to or substitutes for historical fabrics has led naturally to curiosity about them.

• What were the fibers like when the original garments were made? 
• Were the silk worms the same species as raised today? Who raised them? 
• Who herded the sheep for the wool and what did the sheep look like, smell like, act like? 
• Where did the fine Indian muslins sold in Europe and the Americas come from? What plants, animals, and minerals were developed into paints and dyes?
• What tools and machines made the yarns and threads and fabric and who developed them and used them?
• What is calendaring, and is it true that the "scroop" of late 19th century silk depended on treating the silk yarns to a bath in caustic soda? How is brocade made?
• What linen thread counts are good for shifts? What weaves look nice in a wool petticoat?
• How was reeled silk produced in the 18th century? What about the 19th? How about now?
• If England made American colonists buy so much of their wool, how come spinning wheels from the era are common? Who used them and what for?
• When was ninon silk invented and why was it apparently named after Ninon l'Enclos?
• What happened to fabric after it was reduced to rags, and what's the difference between mungo and shoddy?

Questions like these have bedeviled me for years. The answers have a great deal to do with what fabrics and designs were popular and where, and how people constructed and wore clothing, and they impacted fashion designs more than we costumers tend to think about.

So, as I've learned to spin Americas-style with a handspindle and now to weave, bedtime reading matter has been mostly historical accounts of the dawn of sheepherding, of spinning, of weaving among the Egyptians, of the English wool industry, and of revent ideas about how Medieval spinning in Europe may have been accomplished. I've eaten up books about spinning on wheels and spindles, and have read and reread Learning to Weave, a bible among American weavers, and The Big Book of Weaving, another bible recently translated from Swedish and my favorite reference so far, probably because the Swedish and Finnish looms are such clever, elegant structures almost entirely constructed of wood and cord, and capable of producing amazingly fine fabrics.

Booky, bloggy, wiki knowledge hasn't been the only benefit of all the reading and experimentation. When I read letters like those from Anna Briggs' accounts of spinning, weavers, and fabric conservation in American Grit: A Woman's Letters from the Ohio Frontier, her descriptions and concerns have made much, much more visceral sense than they once did. Same for My Dearest Friend: Letters of Abigail and John Adams. Books like Rural Pennsylvania Clothing: Being a Study of the Wearing Apparel of the German and English Inhabitants, take on a different feel when I can begin to visualize some of the decisions the makers made when constructing clothing. Concepts become tangible and are tested, the sense of time shifts, resources are appreciated more, and the skills within bone and muscle and empathy in the mind and soul develop, even if just a little bit.

By the way, I am far from alone in this. There are historically minded spinners and weavers all over, in the United States associated with institutions like Colonial Williamsburg, tiny firms and larger companies like Thistle Hill Weavers or Devere Yarns or Pallia Mittelalter Hautnah in the U.K. Reenactor and SCA folks too, many of them in Europe and a number of them sharing their experiences on sites and blogs: Arachne's Blog and In deme jare Christi in Sweden, 15thcenturyspinning in Australia, Medieval Silkwork, in the Netherlands, and Hibernaatiopesäke in Finland, or Odette's Obsessions here in the States.

As Christopher and I make his scarf, and I consider a fun and modern rya-knot-woven pillow for the den, and perhaps a linsey-woolsey petticoat someday, it's good not only to enjoy the process, but to begin to feel and experience physical, mental and emotional movements made generation after generation after generation since people became people, and to begin to glimpse how the arts we are practicing are so closely meshed with with not just fashion, but with so much of the rest of life.

It is such fun getting down into the roots of it all.

A Finished Tape from the Tape Loom, and Spinning Wool...What Are We Up To?

It's done, the first handwoven tape from the tape loom -- actually an English trim loom -- and I report that making it was a pleasure.

J. K. Seidel, who made my loom, prewarped it for me and started a tape so that I could learn from the already woven bit. The pattern is reminiscent of the American flag, and is just right for the boys to use as lanyards, bows for their stuffed animals, or ginormous bookmarks.

Weaving these tapes does take a little thought and care; beating the just-woven row at an angle or not keeping an even tension on the warp threads will cause the result to lean and the width of the tape to vary. It's also good to be on the watch for feline paws; Muffin has become expert at nabbing the finished end of my work.

Nevertheless, after awhile the fingers do learn their work and you can chat or, as I do, monitor the boys as they do their homework, while weaving. It's a meditative, peaceful activity, and it doesn't mind interruptions.

Here we are, at the end of the warp threads: they are knotted to a narrow brass bar. The ribbon tucked into the loom is used as a strap to keep the loom stationary during weaving.

Here's a sample of the tape in the process of being pawed, and then test-chewed, by Muffin. You can see small variations in the width of the tape. The pattern is achieved by the warp threads pretty much alone. The warp on a trim loom is all pulled together and held that way by the turns of the weft through the outer threads of the warp. There is nothing to keep the warp threads spaced out so that the weft shows. Thus the warp is all one sees, except at the very edges of the tape. The result is a very strong, durable fabric.

So, what next? Another tape, natuerlich, but this one using a fine linen thread, probably a 20/2 thread suitable for fine weaving, or maybe a 16/2 thread. Note: the higher the first number, the finer the thread; the second number refers to the number of plies in the finished thread. A "1" means there is no plying and the thread is straight from being spun. It's not too strong and thus not right for tapes. A "2" means 2-ply, and that can be used in fine linen weaving.

A Tape to Close a Petticoat...and Where the Costuming Hobby Is Heading

Ah, you say, so that's it. You're weaving tapes for a period costume. Well, so I am. These next tapes will be the ties for a late 1760s-early 1770s petticoat, and the two under petticoats that support them. I've got the design well in hand for the gown to go over them, and Hallie Larkin's 18th century English gown pattern to construct it with. The cap and the handkerchief for the ensemble are done. I'll be writing more about the ensemble as the months pass.

At this juncture in my experiments with period dressmaking, I am interested in the bones of the textiles that make up an ensemble. It's as if I started costuming, years ago, at the top of a tree, all fascinated by fluff and flutter among the leaves and blossoms. Then I turned to the construction, how the branches and the trunk created the tree's shape. Now I am interested in the bark and sapwood, the heartwood and the sap itself, the fibers and fluids that form the tree and make it live and grow.

Why are tapes strong? How does linen thread feel? Why is it so "crunchy" when it's first woven, and how is it softened up? How are patterns made? What about color? These are the questions this next project asks.

Other Bone-sy Projects: Spinning and Indigo Dyeing

Detail of one of the spinning wheels Dad and Letitia gave me.

Couldn't I leave well enough alone with the tapes? No, no. Weaving and spinning go together; they are the backbone of women's work throughout recorded and pre-recorded history. If I am going to weave anything, and handle thread, I should understand how the threads got the way they did and why they act the way they do. Enter spinning.

Learning to spin, I begin to understand fibers, and how over the ages humanity has learned to take advantage of each fiber's nature to make yarn and threads durable, shiny, soft, tough, cushy-cozy, and mirror-smooth. I learn about twist, and how it affects everything that is woven or knitted or knotted.

Will I use the spun thread? Of course: off it goes into tapes, at least.

Actually, there's another, simpler reason for testing out spinning. I have a spinning wheel, and another arriving next week, both gifts from my parents, and two drop spindles. Really now, should they sit as decor to be dusted? That would be a shame. The wheels want to be used, and when I see friends Jane and Caroline spinning, the urge to join in is so strong.

The rest of that spinning wheel. You see why it's wanting to be loved and used? It's pretty in a cozy sort of way.

Simplest of all, I HAVE to learn. I've been tapped to help with our church's Vacation Bible School this summer. One of the responsibilities includes demonstrating drop spinning. Not knowing diddly squat, since a short spinning class when I was a teenager hardly counts, my friend Jane and I had a lesson a few weeks back from a professional spinner (what a nifty person!), with more to come, and now am practicing up for this summer, so the resulting yarn won't fall apart immediately, like last year's did :}

An eastern European drop spindle. Am slowly filling it with wool yarn spun from
some handsome creamy wool "top". Some of the yarn is nice, some
is pretty slubby.

Fruits of the spin: a fuzzy slub and some decent yarn.

Then there's indigo. Jane wants to dye with indigo again, as she did years ago, and I started hopping up and down, begging to be able to help her. So, yay! Sometime before it gets to hot out we're going to set up the process outdoors, and I'll dye enough linen for a petticoat, plus a bit extra for some throw pillow backs. From all I've read, it's a strange and fascinating process, and reminds us just how involved the creation of non-bleedy colors can be.

So there we are, a nice big bunch of different skills to mess with. I wonder where they will lead, these paths?

(By the way, I haven't forgotten about the cap and what I learned from its construction. The post is mostly written, but needs editing and for some reason, I just can't seem to get going on it.)

Reproduction 18th Century English Trim Loom and Muffin Kitty

Toy? Or not? Mmm, probably a toy.

No more than a few minutes after I'd started weaving on this new 18th century style English trim loom, Miss Blueberry Muffin discovered its string. We had a neat couple of minutes together as she explored play possibilities.

Wait, what's this? Is this a tape loom I have here? Why, yes it is. It arrived last Tuesday, during the Big Delightful Snow Storm and the Boys' Endless Week Off from School.

Specifically, the loom is an English trim loom, modeled after one at Colonial Williamsburg. If you look carefully at some of the photos of the mantuamakers at the Margaret Hunter Shop, you will see them working on a quite similar loom, making floss fringe trims. 

Sarah Woodyard of Colonial Williamsburg uses a tape loom to make
floss fringe trim.

Tape and trim looms show up sometimes in art. When John Singleton Copley painted Thomas and Sarah Mifflin in 1773, he pictured her weaving fringe on a trim loom.

By John Singleton Copley, American, 1738 - 1815 (1738 - 1815) (American), via Wikimedia Commons

You can make regular fringe on them too, narrow gimp and other passementerie trims for dress and household. Of course, you can make the ubiquitous tapes that anchored 18th century dress as well as household items: apron strings, cap ties, petticoat ties, bindings, garters, ties for bags, loops for doors, anything that needed a strong tape. 

I first saw a tape loom years ago and was instantly fascinated. There are lots of kinds of tape looms, some of them quite ancient, and the Scandinavians wove gorgeous tapes on them with handsome patterns. They produce a product with a warp face...that is, it's the warp you see, the up-and-down threads, not the side-to-side weft threads. By picking up particular warp threads, you can build the pretty patterns.

This loom is handmade, gorgeously so, by Jonathan K. Seidel. It's made of walnut, and shows all the fine details of a careful craftsman: the tiny wire than helps keep the little drawer closed, the brass rod on the warp reel, the subtle shaping and the fine finish of the walnut case, and even the little shaped felt feet on the loom's underside. It's a work of art and I am glad he signed it, for I hope to pass it down to the next generation.

Getting this loom has been quietly in planning for it for some two years, ever since getting the idea that I wanted to hand sew an 18th century sack gown, complete with homemade floss fringe and gimp trims, and all tapes used inside the gown also homemade. Learning to weave on it is just one more step in the long, multi-year journey that this project is becoming.

Weaving tapes is relaxing, and slow, but it does take practice to make an even tape. Consistency in tension and how the threads are held is key, and I have yet to master it. Mr. Seidel prepared the loom with a partly woven tape to get me started, and provided clear, full directions for both "dressing" the loom and plain weaving. 

If you look at the rows towards the top, you'll see that they're wider than those near my fingers. Why? Because I haven't figured out even weaving yet.

Mmm, play, please?

Got it!

So sorry, didn't mean to snag your tights. You'll forgive and pet, right? (But of course.)

So, forward! Yes, I owe you a post on the cap-seaming process, but also a report on the plans for the entire ensemble, and the steps to take along the way.

Want more kitty cat fun? See Miss Blueberry Muffin's cousin Miss Felicity, the Dreamstress' feline friend in New Zealand as she tests thread in "Thread Inspector".