Over, under, through

It's been almost a month since I updated, but that doesn't mean nothing has been happening.  I've got the loom up and running, and am working my way through the various permutations I laid out.  It's just going reasonably well, which doesn't make for dramatic blog posts.

At the moment, I'm working with the worsted warp, in 5-6 inch chunks.  So far, I have

• White worsted/same weft: tabby
• White worsted/same weft: twill
• White worsted/woolen weft: tabby
• White worsted/woolen weft: twill

Which is basically one complete unit to process.

The next likely phase will be to do the same with grey worsted weft in tabby and twill, and find another woolen weft of about the right size.  Right now, I'm using some pre-wound quills I inherited from my grandmother.  I'm not sure what they're made of, but since they have to be from before 2000, I'm reasonably comfortable they're not superwash.  After that, I'm tempted to be done with this warp because I'm not convinced that I want to do all the processing on this piece, because the records indicate that part of the point of using worsted yarn was not needing to do nearly as much finishing.  And besides, I've run out of white worsted. So I may do one more full set in grey weft, so I can have one that's just basically washed and another that's fulled and brushed and everything, to contrast.  But there are a lot more interesting possibilities later, when I get to singles and woolen/worsted effects. Plus, then I can use the extra warp ends for selvedges for the more tender warps to come.

Speaking of said tender warps, I have found a whole big skein of a fairly fine medium brown woolen singles, to I think that's likely to become fodder for future experiments, and I'm also working on the spinning side of things.  Thus far, due to holidays and things, I've mostly just cleared some art batt backlog, but yesterday I did start attempting some fine drop spinning and wound of a bunch of very fine stuff from some unknown time ago, which I think that once I size it, I may be brave enough to warp with.  It's going to be a shock, because it is teeny and I haven't woven with my handspun before, but it held together well as I wound it onto the niddy noddy, so I'm cautiously optimistic.  But I may need to review some weaving technique books beforehand, to build up my confidence.

The other thing is that I need to start doing more S-spinning, because I think almost all of my handspun is Z and one of the goals is to play with S/Z effects.  I still think this will be fun, or at least educational.  Hopefully that survives contact with the enem... er, finer warps.  But so far, so good.

In which Saraidh indulges in some spinning nerdery

There are two key sets of terms that I've been throwing around without really getting into them, and it's about time to address that.   First, woolen and worsted.  Second, S and Z twist.  We'll start with the twist, because that's easy.

Spinning is basically a matter of adding twist to a bundle of fibers to make them stronger and so they stay together.  When you do that, you immediately have to make a decision about which way you're twisting the fibers, because if you alternate the twist comes undone and everything falls apart.  Bad plan.  Most handspinners naturally spin Z, which is what happens when you spin the spindle or the wheel clockwise, which is a very natural motion for right-handed people, but either is possible.  It's called that because the twist in the resulting yarn angles to the right, like the diagonal in the letter Z.  Spinning S means you're spinning counterclockwise, with the resulting twist angling left, like the middle of the letter S. 

Machines, on the other hand, don't care, and as far as I've been able to tell, basically all commercial yarns available today are plied (two or more strands twisted together) or S spun. The vast majority of people won't notice or care.  However, it means that there are a number of possible weaving and other textile effects that show up historically that basically don't ever happen in modern weaving.  For example, there is a subtle visible difference between weaving where the warp is Z spun singles and the weft is S spun singles, and there are also examples of using S and Z spun yarns to create specialized plaids by making both warp and weft stripes. So one of the things that I'm hoping to do with this project is to explore not just the extended processing (fulling, brushing, shearing) but also to work with things like that where the yarns basically don't exist unless you make them. 

The other important terms are woolen and worsted.  They're basically two ends of a spectrum of how to process wool into yarn. On the one end is worsted, where the yarn is combed, basically just the way it sounds - with large combs,  so that you get only the longest pieces very well organized and smooth, and then it is spun with the fingers held closed to make it as smooth as possible.  This is comparatively rare and the sort of thing that suits are made of these days. The other end of the spectrum is woolen yarn, which is carded, which uses all the wool including the short bits, and the spinner's hand is more open, all of which results in a fuzzier, softer, loftier yarn.  If you visualize a knitting yarn, it's almost certainly woolen spun. 

A lot of yarn is also kind of intermediate or semi-woolen/semi-worsted/semi-whatever, so by and large the categorization is kind of confusing and the distinction tends to not mean as much modernly.

So for this project, what I want to work towards is that most common type of 14th century English broadcloth, which is a worsted Z-spun warp and a woolen S-spun weft, and then show the effect of all the different levels of processing.  But since we're doing all this, ideally I also want to compare what happens with a Z/Z fabric and S/S.  Also in the ideal world, it would be best to drop spin the warp while wheel spinning the woolen weft is acceptable.

Time to dress

I haven't reported back in a while, but things are progressing. Thus far, I've wound off the white worsted warp, sized it with gelatin and started dressing the loom. I didn't end up oiling the yarn, mostly due to forgetting a critical moment, but I don't think it's going to be a problem.  Maybe next time.

I did end up deciding to go with a 4 yard length.  If I wanted to do all possible variations of all the samples, I probably would want 5, but this is the commercial worsted, so it's not actually supposed to need as much finishing as the woolen pieces, and I'm thinking that there's not a lot of point in doing all the processing of all the twills.  The vast majority of the period woolens seem to be worsted warp, woolen weft in tabby, because all the processing seriously obscures the weave, so why bother?  But I am kind of curious if the twill will make any difference in the finished product, so I will probably do at least one twill with everything.  However,  we have the opportunity to do an unusual set of experiments, which is to play with S/Z combinations in the warp and weft, because this project has access to two handspinners and now that I have a spinning group 1-2 time per week I'm getting a LOT more spinning done, so we can put out a good deal of "to order" yarn for ourselves to play with.  And in fact we're plotting a fiber processing day soon with intent to crank through a whole lot of the washed fleeces we have on hand and get them ready for all the spinning before the weather really turns.   

I have some leftover white warp that I'll use for some of the samples and the rest of the worsted/worsted will be in white/grey.  I haven't decided on a woolen yarn yet for the worsted/woolen samples, because the Jaggerspun is going to be way too small.  However, odds are very good that I have something in the stash that will work if I do a little digging.

I haven't tried sizing before, so lacking more specific guidance, I dumped a (very expired) packet of gelatin into a bowl, poured some boiling water over it and then dunked the warp chain in, and let it hang dry.  I also used the same gelatin to size a friend's vastly more delicate linen warp, where it made a much more noticable difference than in the sturdy and coarse worsted warp. 

Contrary to usual recommended practice, I generally dress the loom front-to-back, mostly because of 1) habit and 2) the way my room is set up.  The table loom is up against a wall, so it's most convenient to get at from the front, plus working all the stuff through the loom from the front means that you're guaranteeing that it's all gone through the heddle and reed by the time the warp is wound on, which is both good and bad.  In this case, I have extremely sturdy warp, so the extra stress of going through it twice isn't a problem, but when we get to delicate handspun singles I'll have a lot more incentive to dress back-to-front. 

Note to myself for next time - if you're doing 90 ends with a twill pattern, remember that 88 is divisible by 4 and leave floating selvedges. However, since this is very preliminary I don't actually care enough to re-thread it all to move those two ends to either size instead of just the left.

So where things stand now is that I have the warp sleyed and threaded into the heddles, so the next step is going to be to wind on.  Unfortunately, the first step there is going to have to be to find a wrench, because the one that lives by the loom seems to have gone walkabout, and the bolt holding the ratchet on the brake is almost stuck, so tools are needed to loosen it up so I can wind the warp on when I get home tonight. 

While I was googling the proper term (dog? pawl? ratchet? one of those...) I came across a conversion kit for a friction brake, and I think I neeeeeeds it, because weaving is decidedly slow when you can only weave 4 inches before you have to get up and advance the warp, so that one thing could increase my productivity immensely, as well as improve my habits, because advancing frequently is definitely recommended, and that's more likely to happen if I don't have to get up.  So kit improvements could go a long way to making that more pleasant.  I will have to ask my carpenter husband what he thinks...

Looking at what I've posted so far, it looks like it about time I went back for that explanation of spinning terms that I promised a while ago, because this all makes perfect sense to me, but understanding it depends on a lot of vocabulary that probably is completely foreign to anybody who isn't already pretty deeply immersed in yarn terminology. So that'll probably be the next post. In the meantime, here's a useful glossary.

The journey begins

Yesterday, the yarn arrived, so things are about to get a lot less theoretical. I suppose I should mention what I ordered, hm?

After some reading, I ended up going with a mini-cone each natural and a grey in both Jaggerspun 2/20 and Halcyon's worsted warp.  Now that they've arrived I'm happy to say that I'm pleased with the results.  The 2/20 is a more woolen style yarn, and it's a reasonable weight for period fabrics, if (as I understand other people's summaries of their research, since I haven't gotten to this level of detail yet) a little bit on the coarser side.  So that's good practice for working with that weight of yarn before we get to handspun singles, which will be a whole other level of adventure.  And the worsted, while heavier, makes me happy that I can experiment with worsted yarns, again, before we move on to the precious handspun.  Plus,  heavier yarn is also more forgiving.

After doing some math, I think I'm going to end up with a 4 yard warp of the 2/20.   I didn't do the worsted calculations until after I'd ordered the mini-cones, so I was a little startled by how much heavier this warp is than the Jaggerspun and how much difference that makes in the calculations but at 10 ends per inch (EPI), but I can still get 12 5 inch square blocks to work with. 

For the record, while I can do the math by hand, I really like the Weavolution Weaving Calculator for being able to fiddle with the numbers. 

Other useful tools I've found after much time in the wilderness are reed substitution charts, because it turns out that 1) there are better methods than eyeballing to figure out sett (density of the warp in the reed) and the fact that I only have 15 dent per inch (DPI) reeds, does not actually limit me only to multiples of 15 for the sett.  I mention this mostly because I only figured it out after an embarassingly long time of not really getting what all those numbers in the yarn descriptions meant.

So tonight, I think I start winding warp chains and working on the pre-treatment.  I'm currently pondering adding oil, because in period they used a lot of oil per pound of fiber, and sizing.  I'm leaning toward sizing with gelatin, because while using starch as sizing is period, reports are that it's also very dusty, and my house does not need more dust, so I'm willing to compromise on that specific detail, especially during test runs of the test run.

More to come...

Return of the prodigal

I'd like to offer the traditional blog greeting these days, which is something along the lines of "Sorry I haven't updated in so long..." but in my case, this blog started off as a way to share updates about a group project, and since that project wrapped up I haven't had a lot of stuff to share, so I'm only mildly repentant.

However, I'm about to start a new project, so I decided to come back here to track progress and share what I learn as we go.

I want to make proper English broadcloth.  I've wanted to make a reproduction textile for ages, but haven't had the momentum.  However, my best friend recently pitched the same idea and it's a lot more fun as a collaboration than solo, so I have leapt on the concept with rather embarassing levels of enthusiasm. But also, she's a better spinner than I am, and I'm more of a weaver, so combining forces is perfect, because left to my own devices, I mostly look at the spinning specifications and get overwhelmed, but the weaving looks interesting and people seem to neglect the fulling, brushing and shearing pretty universally, so that's my area. Yay, division of labor. So while she's plotting the spinning I'm going to work up some weaving samples on my own to get the processing party started.

I started researching, and promptly discovered I'd been harboring some major confusion about terminology.  The super high-grade woolen fabrics that get talked about?  Aren't worsteds, they're woolens.

Which probably makes zero sense if you aren't aware of the woolen/worsted distinction.  It's complicated, but the short version is that there are sort of two paths for handling wool, woolen and worsted. The results of the worsted path is a fine, hard and shiny yarn with very little loft or bounce.  Woolen processing results in yarn that is airier, looser and bouncier.  They both have their benefits and drawbacks.

I'm pretty sure that the reason for my confusion is that modernly, worsteds are generally considered higher grade because they're the sort of thing that high-end suits are made out of, and they're also rarer, so having them is a bigger deal.

But in the medieval context, that's reversed.  Worsted spinning was very common because drop spinning produced it easily*, and fabric made with woolen spun yarn was more sumptuous because of several levels of additional processing that weren't necessary when working with worsteds, because the fabric was essentially almost ready as soon as it was washed. And it was reading that that made the pullchain on the lightbulb click...


*This is where I am not going into a whole digression into spinning techniques.  Yet.

See, when you read about medieval woolens, what you're reading about is a fabric that was made with woolen style yarn that was then felted until it reduced size by over 50%, stretched back out on hooks (this is where the "on tenterhooks" expression comes from, I suspect) to maybe 75% of original size and make it smooth and not rippled, then brushed with teasles to bring up the nap, sheared to cut off the extra fuzziness, and then napped and sheared again and eventually dyed.  All that extra work means that you've got a super smooth and shiny fabric that's practically waterproof. It's also, by the way, the fabric that the word "scarlet" comes from, because  as a major luxury good, it got dyed with the finest dyes, which was so often the kermes red that the word for the fabric gradually morphed into the word for the color.  This was a big deal luxury good.

The project I have in mind is to weave a series of samples in worsted and woolen yarns and 3 different weaves, and then subject them to all the other processing.  I'll leave one with normal wet finishing, full another, full and brush a third and full, brush and shear a fourth, so that I can illustrate what each step looks like along the way.  I think it'll be a really cool project.  I also have been realizing that while I'm only talking about 5" square samples, that means I'm still talking about around 5 yards of weaving to cover all the variations, unless I decide maybe I don't need to do all of them.  Like, after doing that reading, it sounds like doing the full treatment on a worsted/worsted sample isn't necessary, but since worsted warp/woolen weft was very common that that's one I should focus on, and I suspect that the heavily felted nature of the end fabric means it's not worth bothering with anything fancier than tabby or a very basic twill.  But the point of the exercise is to experiment and see which processes produce what effects.

I don't have a lot of the processing equipment, so I'm expecting to improvise a good deal.  Sadly, I don't have several strapping journeyman fullers to foot-full all that fabric for days on end, so my washing machine is likely to get pressed into service.  I don't have tenterhooks, but I bet I can rig up something akin to an embroidery frame to hold it taut to dry.  I don't have a frame to hold teasles, or enough teasles to do the job, but I do have hand carders (which were explictly forbidden from being used for that purpose for fear that the metal teeth would damage the fabric, but I'll risk it).  Shearing, at least, should be straightforward.

I have plans!  Many, many plans!  Now I just have to wait for the yarns to arrive...

Pillow's Progress

The pillow project is still underway.  No actual knitting has occured beyond the initial swatch though.  My first impression was that I just didn't feel like I could do the whole project from the three wee charts in Rutt's book, so I've been taking them and putting them in Excel.  This is looking like a good choice.  Mucking around with how it's supposed to look and counting of every block means I'm that much more familiar with the pattern before I even take up needles, and I can make lots of mistakes first where they're incredibly easy to fix en masse.  Like, for example, noticing that the border pattern is set up so the "pointy side" always points in, so I need to think about three other orientations for it. 

I've almost finished the eagles/fleurs side, though I should go back and adjust head directions, and I've started the chrysanthemum/castles side, which is already proving to be a pain since it seems like some of the sections are biggest than others in ways that somehow don't impact the pieces below it.  I doubt this is actually the case, but I haven't figured out what's causing it, so I will presumably continue to bang my head against it for a while.  Woo.

About the time I was reaching maximum frustration with clicking on little boxes, I took a break and made a few steps in the color department.  I could buy what looks like the right colored yarn and be done with it, but I have white silk in the proper gauge on hand (20/2 weaving yarn), and I have a good variety of dyestuffs that ought to get used.  So on Sunday afternoon, I grabbed as many onion skins as I could fit into our biggest regular pot, soaked and heated them for 45 minutes, strained off the liquid and then soaked about 100 yds of silk in it for 15-20 minutes.  According to the books it should give a clear yellow, but the liquid was quite orange and previous results have also been orange, so I wasn't surprised to get a lovely reddish yellow brown. 

The funny thing is that according to the Piecework picture, it's actually a pretty good match for the background color, so now I need to make another attempt at a clear yellow.  Weirdly, I don't know that I have any yellow dyes on hand except for the Jacquard acid dyes we used for the copes.  I haven't decided what I'm doing about that.

Semi-related is that I finally read the saffron section in the Scottish dye book, and they say it was unlikely at best that the Scots actually used saffron to dye their "saffron shirts", at least not exclusively, with the possible exception of a short period in the 1500s.  Not sure what this is going to do for my WW plans.  It may just encourage me to go with a pale linen and not mess around with yellows that neither flatter my complexion nor showcase my group's heraldry.

New project - silk cushion

The current Piecework magazine has an article which includes a picture of a knit Spanish cushion from around 1275 which has an alternating pattern of eagles and fleur-de-lys. It's about 36 cm/14 in square. I haven't been able to find any mention of what it's made of, but since it was found in a prince's tomb, silk seems reasonable. Mistress Leyla was kind enough to point out that it's charted in Rutt's History of Hand Knitting. So I pulled the book off my shelf, and indeed it was, and it includes not just the picture I was originally considering charting, but also the reverse side, which has a completely different and to my mind more interesting pattern of castles and flowers. (And also swastikas, which meant something rather different before the Third Reich.)

Rutt says that the cushion is currently dark brown and straw yellow, but speculates that it was originally crimson and golden-yellow. I happen to have cones of bright red and burgundy 20/2 silk on hand. I also have 60/2 in bright red.

Unfortunately, the yellow I have is tencel. But I have 20/2 white silk. Ilya points out that if I dyed the white with onion skins I would a) use onion skins, which he has been saving for me for ages and b) have yellow silk in the right size and not have to order it. Heh. So I'm considering that, possibly as a plan for tomorrow. And when I think about it, I think the bright red is a better cochineal red, so I'm inclined to go with that rather than the duller red.

I did a small sample in the burgundy/yellow combination and I'm pretty pleased with it.



In the meantime, I swatched the 60/2 silk and have determined that knitting with it makes me cross eyed, the needles are too big and it's so small I make errors in just straight stockinette, in the round, no less. Besides all of which, the original knitting is reportedly "dense", and this very much isn't. (That's probably one of the causes of the errors anyway.) So unless I get an Ott light with magnifier, that is Not Happening.

The plan that's taking shape in my head is that I'm going to do a smaller trial version that has all the motifs - border, front and back in the red silk/yellow tencel to get a feel for the project, and then decide if I'm going to do a replica with the understanding that it will be scaled up or if I'm going to do one that's the specified size, but with fewer repeats. I'm of course leaning towards the former. Also, I'm pretty sure I'm going to replace the swastikas with something less controversial. I have difficulty believing that any A&S judge wouldn't respect my reason for doing something else, especially if I replaced it with something with some logical connection to the time/place/work. Crosses are obvious, and since it was found in a monastery, may be the best approach. In my head, the goal is to have this ready for the A&S competition at Gulf Wars next year.

That's the plan, so we'll see how it works out in practice...