Weaving with 100% British Wool - handspun

With the latest YarnMaker at the printers (due to be published next week) I had time for some weaving last weekend.

I have a huge stash of handspun yarns. Most of these were spun in 2006.  The wools that went into the blanket include Black Welsh Mountain, Grey Welsh Mountain, Manx Loaghtan, Shetland, Jacob. Some were spun fairly thick like an aran weight yarn, others like a fine sock wool.  There was a good mix of colour, yarn weights and texture.

This photo shows the warp yarns ready to wind onto the cloth beam of my Ashford Knitters Loom, with a 10 dpi reed.

I found that I like using the Glimakra rug shuttle as it passes through the shed without friction.

Here is the new blanket when cut off the loom, before washing in hot and cold water to full the fabric, after which the loose ends and the tassels were trimmed.

Janet Phillips' sample blanket - in wool

I have woven Janet Phillips' sample blanket again!

I wondered why I was doing this, I thought of other things I could weave, but there's no getting away from it. The sample blanket in linen was very different from the same in cotton, and the only way to learn about these weave structures in wool and be able to compare the way it behaves to the way the other fibres work, was to wind the warp, thread up and weave. I'm certainly getting good value from Janet's book, Designing Woven Fabrics.

I am delighted that I pushed myself to do this. One of the things that is very different in wool, is that because it shrinks more the weaves with floats get wonderful bobble textures, and the effect in these woollen tweed yarns is like moss and wood. The Shetland wool yarns came from Fairfield Yarns, they are not repeatable as they are mill ends, but both Fairfield Yarns and Uppingham Yarns may have this type of yarn in stock and will send samples. It isn't a soft yarn, but would be great for upholstery or outer clothing such as a jacket or a lined skirt.

It's worth mentioning that I left out the wavy twill threading for the linen and wool samplers, as in the original cotton it was threaded in a different warp yarn half the size of the rest of the warp threads. However, there is still a wavy section in the treadle sequence.

I took a few of these close up photos, to give you an idea of what it's like. Many of the sections not photographed have very subtle classic tweed fabric look, differently lovely but harder to show in a photo.

Now, getting back to technical stuff, I left some bits out of telling you about weaving the linen sample blanket. It was the first time of my using a new method for tensioning the warp whilst winding on. I often see recommendations of Kati Reeder Meek's method for "Warping with a Trapeeze" and other people use different means of stretching the warp out width ways and length ways to get good even tension.

As I have a sloping ceiling, and limited space around the loom, the best way for me to do this seemed to be to get the warp to the front of the loom, and then wrap in around the front beam, and up and over the castle.

Stage one, to the front of the loom.

Then up and over...

View from the back beam (if you look closely you can see the raddle on the top of the back beam)

My lease sticks were in place just before the back beam.

And behind the loom I held all the warp on one hand, and wound on with the other. Actually, I held the warp with my right hand because the beam winder is on my left, but I couldn't photograph this as my camera is only useable one handed with the right hand (o.k., I could have fetched the tripod, but I didn't bother).

Of course when most of the warp was wound on, it wasn't long enough to reach up and over, so I reverted to my old method.

It worked very well, and I had no tension problems at all. Linen is much less difficult to handle than I expected, but then I was mindful of the need to look after it well thoughout the preparation, and I should point out that this Finish Toika loom, with it's solid construction, is ideal for working with a high warp tension - recommended for linen. Also, I wound the warp careful, used lots of warp ties, and wound it on to the loom with care.

Everything I learnt while handling the linen was then applied when I returned to the more familiar woolen warp, including careful use of a temple, edged on 2 cm at a time. This is a great help with the sample blanket particularly because all those different weave structures have different tension. I never wove such neat edges before, and I was able to weave right to the limit of the warp. From the front, I stopped this close to the heddles,

...while at the back the apron rod was up to the shaft cords,

Loom waste was down to 50 cm by the time I'd cut off carefully at the front and tied tassels both ends. Here is the sequence of photos I took to show untying from the front apron rod, carefully removing excess weft before the start of the blanket, and overhand knotting the tassels.

Finished project.

I took all three of the sample blankets along to the Cheshire Guild's Friendship Day, it was a great ice-breaker in a room full of people I'd not met before, when I got these out several weavers, and would-be weavers, introduced themselves and came over to look at and feel the blankets.

My second jumper

Here's a picture of me in the second jumper knitted to my own pattern:

Sorry about lack of smile for the camera! I was a bit anxious about whether I had got the set up right - I was using the camera's self-timer setting and had to guess the focusing. The camera was on a book shelf pointing in roughly the right direction and I just hoped for the best. It worked - what a super camera! I'm using a Canon 350D (digital SLR) which has all sorts of features - every now and again I go back to the instruction book and learn a new one.

About the jumper: it's knitted in Twilleys Freedom spirit and I drew up the pattern myself. I finished the first jumper in this pattern and wool in April, and to celebrate I started another straight away. It got put on one side over the summer while I knitted socks and baby things, but as the weather turned cold I realised that I shall be wanting warm woolies soon. I knitted up the second sleeve and the collar in a couple of weeks.

The wonderful book from which I learnt how to design a knitting pattern is Montse Stanley's Knitting - Your own designs for a perfect fit, published by David & Charles, England, 1982, ISBN 0-7153 8227 6. This book is absurdly cheap second hand in the UK, see abebooks.co.uk, or Scottish Fibres who are offering a copy in good condition for £3. Go on someone, follow my link and snatch it up, it's a treasure!! It's about knitting technique, different stitches, but above all, pattern designing made straightforward so you can D.I.Y.

In the background of the photo, as I'm sure you noticed(!) is my loom and the latest colour samplers.

Something else I've been up to recently is washing fleece. I was given a couple of sacks of Jacob's (possibly equivalent to 3 sorted fleeces). Doesn't it look lovely? And all now ready to card and spin.... it feels medium soft, has a very distinct and tight crimp, no lustre at all, a bit finer than the Shetland wool which is a usual favourite of mine.


A tip I was given when I bought my special Timbertops spinning wheel from the Williamson's last year was that Ann separates the out the colours of a Jacob's fleece, cards them separately, then combines the colours again as she spins. This gives a beautiful marled yarn.

I have about 3 x the amount of fleece, in the above photo.


Note the very useful plastic trays from the local organic grocer. His supplier doesn't take the trays back, so he's pleased if anyone can make use of them. They are very good for drying wool, easy to carry, and ventilated as it's an open structure.

We also use them in the garden, for organising pots of seeds, shifting pots of plants about, and sometimes for temporary planting of things that need more space than an ordinary plant pot.

I've got a lot of spinning to do on the dark nights ahead - I still haven't spun the Wensleydale and Ryeland fleeces that I washed last year.

Wools from rare sheep breeds

I recently ordered a book and a new weaving shuttle from Scottish Fibres, and, because I like to try out different wools to see what they are like for spinning, I ordered 100g of Gotland , 200g white North Ronaldsay and 100g of black North Ronaldsay. The North Ronaldsay is very special, as the sheep live on the island they are named for, and a major part of their diet is seaweed. Attempts to keep them away from their island home have failed, because these sheep have adapted to filter out the high levels of iodine in seaweed. Take them away from this food source, and they are unable to absorb enough iodine from other less intense sources.

Here is the wool, in the box it arrived in (it was one of those lovely moments like finding the sugar mouse, 10p coin, and the satsuma in the toe of your Christmas stocking...) do you see the lustre of that grey Gotland? It's silky soft. The North Ronaldsay is so, so woolly soft. It seems to be carded, not combed, has a short staple and spins a lovely soft, bouncy woolen yarn with a few little neps.

Here's a close up of the Gotland, showing the range of colour in this "grey", from light and silvery to odd black fibres, it is more than plain grey, I think you can see this in the photo of the yarn I have spun. It is soft enough to wear next to skin, finer textured than many of the other lustorous wools.





A favourite reference book, "In Sheeps Clothing", by Nola and Jane Fournier, (pub. Interweave Press) warns that it felts easily, so this might be something to bear in mind when using the yarn. Maybe I should have a go at one of those garments where you knit slightly oversize and then deliberately felt? Would it loose it's sheen? Best way to find out is probably to knit a sample square and put it through the wash.

So, today I have been spinning yarn from the white North Ronaldsay on my efficient double treadle Timbertops Leceister wheel, and on my older single treadle Timbertops wheel I've been spinning fine yarn again, this time from grey Shetland wool. I have have to concentrate hard to spin fine at the moment. The aim for a lace yarn is 12 strands of fibre in the singles, and then to decrease, but at present I'm comfortable at about 22 strands - I say about because I wasn't using a magnifying glass when I squinted at the end of the yarn and tried to count!

I am being very careful now to watch how much twist goes into the wool. I discovered that half-an-inch is a bit less than I though it was... hence I was calculating wrong and that maybe why the yarn didn't work out right when I plied.

This is a handicap with having grown up with two systems of measurement. The official switch from imperial to metric happened when I had already had about 4 years in school. I think I am familiar with cm and inch - but in truth I am slightly confused as I swap back and forth between them. The Mabel Ross lap apron with marked measurements (see my previous post) is very useful.

Here's a little picture of the North Ronaldsay on the bobbin to end, and a link to Cally's blog, as she is also enjoying spinning this special wool.