Those Who Can...

It's been one of those days when it seems that the entire world is now populated with people that haven't the vaguest idea of what they're talking about. I normally go through life nearly oblivious to these well-meaning souls, usually with nothing more than a slightly pained smile and that most useful of comments, "Well, bless their hearts..." Usually these poor benighted beings avoid me like a form of plague--I can be intimidating under most circumstances, and downright forbidding if I haven't had any coffee. However, the moon must be in just that phase when they all decide it's time to come out of the woodwork--or wherever else they hide hang out--and tell me exactly how to walk, talk, think, or do things. This is not a recipe for happiness: I spend most of my time telling people what to do, not the other way round.

H.L. Mencken once said, "Those who can--do. Those who can't--teach." I think it's time to update that old saw to: "Those who can--do; those who can't--complain interminably on social networking sites." The past 24 hours has been filled with comments by people complaining that they can't: a) travel where they wish; b) have the fiber they wish; or c) do a type of fiber art. An example: someone complains vociferously about how difficult/tiring/time-consuming it is to comb locks with mini-combs. Other posters join in, commiserating on how simply awful it is to use tiny combs to comb ten pounds of fleece. Finally, your intrepid blogger does what needs to be done: gently suggests that it might be best to use big bad English combs for combing the fleece, as that's what they were designed to do. At this point, the excuses begin. English combs are expensive; they are, but so is a spinning wheel, a drum carder, and we aren't even going to talk about the price of a new floor loom. English combs are dangerous, with all those long, sharp tines; so is a 10" French chef knife, and I don't hear anyone complaining about using one of those. English combs are too big and hurt my hands; have you considered doing some hand/wrist exercises? What is not being said: I'd rather use the wrong tools, spend time complaining to others, and then blame my less than satisfactory results on the tools. Poor tools--they were only doing what they were designed to do.

I'm also being plagued by the "ukants": people who say, "You can't do that." "Can't" is a word rarely found in my general vocabulary. There are very few things I can't do; as my dear mother frequently says, "I could probably do brain surgery, given the right training and tools," and I've usually followed that same philosophy. When someone says "can't," if they're lucky, they'll get "The Look"--that sideways over-the-glasses look that teachers give students who are about to do something stupid/wrong/illegal. If they aren't lucky, they may be treated to a "gentle" explanation--in excrutiating detail--of exactly how I will go about doing just what they said I couldn't do, followed up by my giving them several suggestions on what they can do (jump in a lake, kiss a pig, you get the idea).

The latest target of the ukants is my good old Gilmore loom. It's big, it's heavy, it's old, it's noisy, and it weaves like nobody's business. A lot of thread has passed over the warp and breast beams of that loom (it's not dated, but the consensus is that it's from around 1940) in the last 69 years, and it's still going strong. You can imagine my surprise when I was informed that my loom was all wrong--the shafts are too low and there's no way it could possibly make a shed for weaving a rug. Huh? I've woven rugs on it for years--it weaves very nice rugs. Oh no, say the ukants, you have to get a big Swedish loom with a big overhead beater that makes giant sheds to properly weave rugs. Huh? I don't have the room for a big Swedish loom with a big overhead beater, and why do I need a gigantic shed anyway? I weave rugs with ski shuttles that are 1 1/4 inches tall--I need 3 inches, max.

I suspect that some of this pushing back against the ukants (besides being naturally obstinate) is that I didn't learn to weave in a formal setting. I learned to weave the way I learned to knit, to crochet, to sew, to cook, and to make terrific jams and jellies: by learning at the knee of another, asking questions when I didn't understand, and supplementing with a lot of reading. Older weavers, some of whom had been weaving when my loom was new, were patient and generous with their time and knowledge, and answered a child's endless questions on the whys and hows of weaving. It turns out, I have an affinity for the loom and its workings: I can't explain how I know when a warp is tensioned properly, or why I rarely use a temple and still have nearly perfect selvages any more than I can explain how I know when a conserve is cooked enough and is ready for the jars. The knowledge is in my hands and fingers. The ukants, trained in their formal textile labs and classrooms to always do "this" and never do "that," don't grasp that there are others for whom "that" is just what they need to do. For the ukants, the loom is a noisy piece of equipment; for some of us, it's the music of a centuries-old song of labor and love and beauty.

Spin Journal #12B: Romney

While at Black Sheep this year, I got a wild idea for a new project: a ruanna woven from handspun Romney. Finding weft was not a problem--I still have more than 5 pounds of black Romney I purchased several years ago. The weft though, especially given my love for working with stripes, was going to require some thought. At 4:15 a.m. on Sunday morning (right after the rain and the screaming that the wheels were outside in the rain), I had an epiphany--buy a small white Romney fleece, dye the locks, and spin the warp to make stripes. As soon as everything opened up on Sunday morning, I ran over to the wool barn (getting drenched in another shower in the process), found a small bright-white Romney fleece, and carted my little fleece back to camp. It was small enough that when we packed the car, I put it in the almost empty spare wheel well under the rear deck.

When I got the Romney home, the first order of business was to get the locks separated and into nylon netting for washing and dyeing. I'm a firm believer that nylon netting is the most useful fiber prep tool around, because it gives one the ability to both wash and dye locks with a minimum of fuss. The only downside to using nylon netting is the time involved in laying out the locks (tips all going the same way), and wrapping them in the netting. It's not a quick process, especially as I take the time to pick out any second cuts or large pieces of VM. However, I just put on my iPod and get to work, laying out locks, and once three layers of locks were in place, stitching the bags closed. It took the better part of two days to prep the entire 3.87-pound fleece.

Once that was done, it was time to wash. I washed in my usual way (for information on how to do this, see this blog post), but with one difference: rather than rolling each bag into a roll, I found they got cleaner if I simply folded them in half and pinned them to the top of the laundry bag. With three per bag, I had everything enclosed in three laundry bags. Once washed, dried, and weighed, I put the nylon net bags of locks into a large pot of water to stay wet until I was ready to dye them.

Dyeing the locks was also a pretty straight-forward process, once I determined the formulas for the colors I wanted. Most of the colors were plain Jacquard acid dyes, twice the weight of the locks I was dyeing. Two colors needed some "tweaking:" Purple, which ended up a 50/50 mixture of Violet and Lilac, and Green, a 50/50 mixture of the old Robin & Russ Handweavers Dye in Hunter Green and Jacquard's Chartreuse. Dyeing went well, except for the Green: for some reason, the Robin & Russ dye didn't strike (penetrate the fiber), and the locks came out too light. Those will have to revisit the dye pot in the next few days. However, all the other colors came out well.

Next: Combing the locks.

Weave Journal #1: Worms

We need a new runner on the stairs. The current runner is one of those "buy it by the foot" nylon pseudo-Chinese carpeting that used to be sold at home improvement centers, and was in place when we bought the house in early 1994. I think the runner may date from when the house was remodeled, in 1981. It's "woven" in shades of mauve and tan, and after 15-28 years of service, it's looking pretty shabby.

I am perfectly capable of weaving a rug. I've done it before, I have the equipment--a good loom with a heavy beater--and I have the time this summer to complete the project. This is a perfect opportunity to weave a rug with Pendleton "worms."

Pendleton Woolen Mill makes some of the nicest wool fabrics and blankets around. I have one of their "Glacier National Park" (aka "candy stripe") blankets, and it's the blanket that I sleep under whenever I go camping. The process for making these blankets is pretty straightforward, and they're finished with a neat serged binding. As part of this binding process, 1/4" to 1/2" of each side of the blanket is trimmed off, making these long strips known as "worms." Pendleton figured out pretty quickly that people were buying the trimmings for weaving rag rugs, so they box them up and sell them, 50 cents a pound plus shipping to wherever you are. I called them on Tuesday morning and ordered a 25-pound box of worms. Our friendly UPS man lugged a huge box up the stairs and dropped it on our porch this afternoon. I had my worms.

Getting the worms was just the first step. Pendleton doesn't make just blankets; they make a variety of different types and weights of woolen fabrics. An order of worms contains everything from the trimmings pile, so the worms have to be separated by weight and color. Fortunately, it's not difficult, as the worms are not thoroughly mixed together, but it is time-consuming to empty a 25-pound box and bag up the separated contents. My box was about 1/3 trimmings from the lightweight blanket fabrics in cream, taupe, and chocolate brown, about 1/3 trimmings from the unfulled wool/cotton blankets, and about 1/3 trimmings from their legendary National Park blankets. I sorted everything, and it appears I may have enough of the heavy trimmings for at least one of the stair runners (there are two--above the landing and below the landing). The cream, taupe, and brown worms will go into various dyepots and will become another rug.

...Three Bags Full

The big reason to travel to Eugene every June for the Black Sheep Gathering is to partake of the great Wool Show and Sale. This year, I missed the judging, as I was either in class (Friday) or frantically shopping in between classes (Saturday morning). This year's judging was done by Mark Eidman, and from what his clerk staff has reported, it was tough--this year's fleeces were exceptionally fine.

People were also in a mood to buy. Every year, there is a room off the main Wool Show space for Class 00--For Sale Only fleeces. It can be a good place to pick up a decent fleece for a bargain price, as these fleeces are not part of the regular Wool Show and aren't judged. I trotted across the parking lot on Friday afternoon to check on what was in the Sale Room. I expected to find a good number (50 or so) fleeces; I found a lot of nearly empty tables and half a dozen marginal fleeces. When I asked the exhausted-looking women "manning" the Sale Room, they told me it had been like a scene from the Oklahoma land rush: 100+ fleeces sold in less than 6 hours.

I knew I had one fleece--the incomparable BLX, waiting patiently for me to pick it up. Thank heavens I had been able to secure it before the show! I met up with Liz Hubbard of Hub Corriedales and picked up my lovely baby. This year's fleece rivals last year in length and crimp; only the weight is less (6 pounds instead of 10+ pounds). I lugged the box back to camp and locked it in the car--nobody was going to get my precious!

However, one fleece was not going to be enough. I really wanted a charcoal gray fine wool fleece, and since the Sale Room was empty, I was going to have to pin my hopes on the Wool Sale itself. When the viewing time came on Saturday afternoon, I started looking for good charcoal gray fleeces. I found one, started to examine it, when someone said, "You seem to have picked up an entourage." Sure enough, people were starting to follow me around to see which fleeces I was selecting. I actually had to bare my teeth and snarl, "This isn't a field trip--go away!" I wandered away, and once I knew I was alone again, I "casually" found exactly what I was looking for--a glorious dark charcoal merino fleece from Nebo-Rock Ranch, with a blue ribbon on top of the fleece in the bag. Once outside waiting for the sale to begin, I explained to my "runner" that she needed to quickly walk over to that fleece while I walked over to my second choice; if I saw that she had gotten it, I would come over to her to claim that fleece. Our plan worked like clockwork, and within a few minutes of the start of the sale, I had my fleece.

Sometime the right fleece for a project simply pops up. I was satisfied with both my fleeces, and was starting to think about what I could do with them, and with the other fleeces I'm still working my way through. I have a particularly nice black Romney from Ace in the Hole Ranch that I bought at Lambtown in 2007; it's washed, and I've been slowly combing and spinning it. Early Sunday morning (at 4:15 a.m. to be exact), I had an epiphany and knew what I needed to do with that fleece--weave a ruanna. However, I needed a small, good, white Romney fleece to dye for warp. Sunday morning I trotted back over to the Wool Sale (and got caught in a rain shower), thinking that if I found a small, good, white Romney for a good price, I'd have my warp. Romney sheep are not small animals and they do not produce small fleeces--8-10 pounds is more normal for them. However, I found a lovely bright-white Romney fleece that hadn't placed because it was "too small" (3.87 pounds). Perfect! It was less than $35. Even better! I had my small, good, white Romney at a good price.

Good-bye God, I'm Going to Black Sheep (Again)

June rolls around and two things happen: school finishes for the year, and the entire fiber-related community (that matters) makes the pilgrimage to Eugene to spend three days ogling fleece, rovings, tops, yarns, dyes, and loads of spinning equipment. It's time for the annual Black Sheep Gathering!

This year, I drove. Normally, I take the train. It's simple: get on the train in Martinez at 11:00 on Wednesday night, wake up near Mount Shasta on Thursday morning, have breakfast and lunch on the train, attempt to take over the lounge car with spinners and knitters, and generally have a good time before arriving in Eugene around 1:00 in the afternoon. Then, it's just drag the gear out to the fairgrounds and get camp set up. However, I really wanted to try making the drive, both because I can take a bunch of extra stuff, and because this year both Betsy and Jane were going to go along with me. If three go, the costs of driving up there, getting a hotel room, and eating out should still be cheaper than traveling by train, right?

I will not miss Black Sheep, barring something truly serious (e.g., major hospitalization), so when Betsy called on Tuesday around lunchtime to say she finally heard from the company she's been trying to get an interview with and she couldn't go, I started to shift gears to take my own car and just Jane and I going up there. No problem, I can handle this, I just need to finish cleaning the disgustingly dirty house so it's fairly reasonable when Jane gets here to spend the night before leaving.

At 6:30 p.m., the 100-year-old plumbing in the upstairs bathroom finally gasped its last and sprung a leak. Fortunately, it's a leak in the drain portion, so I didn't have water squirting everywhere, but I had water pouring onto the floor every time I turned on the shower...and it was past the time I could call the plumber. I am still going to Black Sheep--plumbing or no plumbing. I called Jane and let her know the plumbing situation ("Shower at home--the dodgy bathroom plumbing has gone sideways and we're not sticking around waiting for a plumber tomorrow."), grab some towels and the world's fastest shower (<60 style="font-weight: bold;">Rain Sounds Like Popcorn on a Nylon Tent

Chained to the Sewing Machine

After a very long time, I am willingly "chained to the sewing machine," finishing clothes to wear to the Pacific Primitive Rendezvous. After several years, the organizers of the rendezvous have very kindly decided to hold the event in Northern California, about three hours from home. Since they've been so considerate, I'm returning the favor by attending this year.

For those unfamiliar with rendezvous and other Fur Trade Era fun, a rendezvous is a late-18th/early-19th century historical event that attempts to recreate the big rendezvous of the Fur Trade Era (1831-1842). These events included shooting events, a lot of shopping (the purpose was to sell the pelts collected and buy supplies for the upcoming year), and a great deal of drinking and swapping lies. The present-day rendezvous continue in that tradition. The Pacific Primitive runs for about 7 days, and I'm planning on attending the first 3 days before returning home, repacking the car, and traveling up to Eugene (Oregon) for this year's Black Sheep Gathering.

I haven't been to a rendezvous in 15 years. I haven't even done very much reenacting in the past few years. As a result, I need clothes. Since the clothes I need aren't exactly something that comes off the rack at Kohl's, I have to make them myself. This isn't difficult--I've been sewing for more than 40 years--but does require some organization, always a tough thing at this time of year. I need two new skirts and probably new underpinnings, so I have some work to do.

The skirts are important (I can't run around without a skirt--it simply isn't done), so they're first on the list. I have some hand-dyed green linen for one skirt, but I need some red fabric for a second skirt. Fortunately, Hancock's had 5 yards of perfect dark cherry-red cotton and I had a 50% off coupon. Score one skirt! I hustled back home with my booty and washed it while I excavated the sewing room.

The problem with not sewing on a regular basis is that the sewing room becomes a place to store things I really should put away. I stacked things in there when we painted the studio in March, and now it was time to get them out of there. After several hours, I had a functioning sewing room again, the ironing board was set up, and I was ready to start knocking out skirts.

The skirts are classic Californio skirts: 3 tiers of gathers, simple waistband. I tore the linen into strips the width I needed, sewed the tiers, and gathered them. Ugh--gathering that much fabric (the bottom hem is about 150 inches) is a pain! However, I finally got everything gathered and sewn together before I called it a night. The next morning, I tackled the second skirt. I wasn't looking forward to repeating the gathering, and remembered that I had a ruffler for one of my sewing machines. The problem? Figuring out which machine it worked with. My Viking was ruled out pretty quickly, as was the Pfaff 230. I thought it might fit on the old White Dressmaker, but it didn't. Becoming desperate, I moved everything off the cabinet of my tried and true Kenmore, and tried the ruffler on it. Success! I ruffled the strips and sewed the second skirt in a few hours.

I handsew my hems and waistbands. I don't need to--I have a machine that does beautiful machine-sewn hems--but every time I do, I can hear my mother saying, "It would look better if you did that by hand." OK, Mom--I'll do it by hand. Handsewing hems in these skirts is time-consuming, but not tedious. I have a lot of British TV on the computer in the studio, so I just clamped my sewing bird onto my work table and sewed the hems and waistbands while watching episodes of Doctor Who and Torchwood. The skirts just need buttonholes in the waistbands and buttons sewn on, and they're finished.

It's been surprisingly pleasant to sew costumes again, so I've begun planning the next big ensemble: a 1880s (2nd Bustle) walking outfit, out of striped cotton upholstery fabric and brick red cotton velvet. The goal is to get it finished (along with a complete set of new underpinnings) in time to wear it to the Great Dickens Christmas Fair in December. If I start it this summer, I just might have it finished in time!

Fomenting Weavolution

Nine months ago, a small group of women decided that the fiberarts world needed a social networking site. Ravelry, created in April, 2007, was growing by leaps and bounds (350,000+ members as of this date), but Ravelry was designed for knitters and crocheters, not weavers and spinners. In spite of gentle noodging by Ravelers that spin and weave, the site couldn't do certain things, such as accommodate weaving drafts or catalog the mountains of fiber, thread, and yarn spinners and weavers quickly attract. Tien, Claudia, and Allison, weavers all, began work on the site, which is now--after eight months of raising money and design work--nearly ready to launch.

A few weeks ago, Tien put out the call for people to start helping get the site ready for the world. The technical end was almost completed: it was time to debug and load content (a fancy tech word for "data") before asking victims volunteers to try out the new site. I'm either a glutton for punishment, or have a secret desire to abandon my comfy world of academia for the insanity of high-tech (or both): I volunteered to help out, as did about a dozen other people.

The best way to clean up and prep a site for launch is to "divide and conquer": everybody takes on a portion of the site as their responsibility, and starts making notes on what is broken, what needs tweaking, and what content is needed to make the site attractive to users. I snagged

• Looms and their manufacturers
  
• Groups
• Forums

Groups and Forums aren't too difficult--sort out the problems, decide how the two are linked together, and write a short "help" guide for people trying to create or join groups or post messages on a forum. Looms and their manufacturers is quite another story, however.

Weaving is a task that requires technology, even if that technology might appear to be nothing more than a bundle of sticks and strings, or something so small you can hold it in the palm of your hand. One of the features built into the site is the ability to catalog looms owned by a weaver, so all the information they need, such as the type of loom, who built it, and its size, is at one's fingertips. Weavers need this feature because we don't have just one loom: we collect equipment and tools the way a knitter collects knitting needles. An inventory of my own collection of looms revealed

• 1 floor loom (my beloved Gilmore X-frame)
• 2 inkle looms (1 floor, 1 lap)
  
• 1 Navajo loom
• 1 tapestry loom
• 6 frame looms (2x2, 4x4, 2x4, (2) 4x6, 12x16)

and this list doesn't include the rigid heddle loom I'd like to buy, nor the Gilmore Gem I'd kill for to put in the studio for weaving samples, nor the Macomber I'd like to own if money and space were no object, nor the top-of-the-line AVL CompuDobby I'd make space for because I love technology, and an almost completely automated flyshuttle loom that can weave nearly anything just sounds so very cool.

So, inventories are necessary, but to build inventories, you need data--lots of data--on the looms and their manufacturers. I didn't realize until I started on this project how many companies manufactured looms during the 19th and 20th centuries. There are currently about two dozen loom manufacturers, ranging from tiny handheld portable looms to big industrial-sized looms. That's not too bad, and I gathered all the contact information in a couple hours. The real job began when I started to list the looms made by companies no longer in business. There were scores of loom manufacturers, most of them very tiny, that produced looms for farms and small weaving shops between 1880 and World War II and beyond. Many of these looms are still in use in homes, studios, and schools today, and will eventually end up in someone's inventory on Weavolution. I've put out the call for information on most of the weaving-related listservs, and I'm getting a lot of names; now I have to dig for more information, and load all this data in before the site moves to Alpha testing on Saturday.