The Cat Who Plays With String

Floating Back to the Blog...

2011-04-03T22:45:00.000+01:00

Hi everyone,

I know this blog has been silent for a bit more than a year now, a year in which many exciting things happened, including being a "Princess" in the SCA for six months. But most of it was not fiber related, oh I got some things done like an Icelandic Sweater for the husband and the endless socks I'm always making for me; but after a short flurry of doing things for our "court garb," not much really happened fiber wise until a few weeks ago.

However, I am now back in the swing and have woven the basic material for a Viking "front cloth" (to wear in front of an apron dress), fabric for a couple of bags, and am setting up an Etsy store which will encourage this blog to stay more current, since that is a major way people share news about their shops and current projects.

While the shop itself already exists, there is nothing in it yet, but I will post here as soon as there are products there for sale. I have to finish the bags (which are a fast wedding gift) and then get some new trim woven for the shop before there will be much to see.

I've also just managed to re-locate the family camera, so hopefully some actual shots of projects in process may go as early as tomorrow.

So, stay tuned to this site, new articles should be appearing shortly...below is a photo of how things looked about eight months ago when my husband had just won the Principality Tourney. The overshot front cloth was woven by me as was the trim, our house-mate designed and cast the silver crowns (though he didn't know then how soon we would be wearing them lol!).

Sagadis

Weaving Finished on the Shawl

2010-01-27T22:59:00.000Z

Weaving part finished on the shawl this afternoon about three o'clock. Plain weave, even double plain weave goes pretty fast if the warp tension is good and the yarn is heavy-duty and rather thick rug yarn. I will have to weave in quite a few ends with a needle, but I can do that inside the nice comfy office.

I realized I had about 1/2 a yard of warp left, so I'm now doing a 2/2 twill and alternating the rust/red and orange/gold blocks in hopes of getting enough 20 inch wide fabric to make a hat to go with everything else. I remembered that if I just re-tied the harnesses from the double-weave tie-up to twill, the threading would work for either. I put two sticks in-between the end of the shawl and before the start of the twill bit. That should leave a nice space for cutting them apart and hemming before the water finishing.

I may decide to partly felt the twill, if I have enough fabric which it looks like I will. Viking hats just need the four triangles, and if the fabric is wide enough to get seven inches plus seam allowance on both sides of the fabric, I won't really need all that much. Might even be enough left for a small pouch or something. Just depends on how long the loom keeps weaving.

One of the advantages of the Baby Wolf looms is the extra long cords attached to the warping beams that let you start weaving sooner and keep going longer than on many older looms. I think most modern looms have something similar but a lot of the old ones do not.

Anyway, hopefully more photos in a day or two. Meanwhile, another from the first day of weaving...

And since a couple of folks asked me this on Face Book, yes the weaving will be a lot tighter after it is washed, also I will be weaving in all the odd ends that stick out at the sides. This is what is called a "Weft Faced" Weave because in order to weave double-wide cloth, the warp threads end up being farther apart than they would be otherwise. I have tried double threading with this yarn, but it is too thick and the loom just won't move. But, since what I want is a loose and draping shawl effect, the very loose weave works fine. However, I thought it was too loose for the hat, which is one reason I switched to twill weave for the last bit.

Hopefully a picture of that in a day or two.

Starting New Shawl project

2010-01-26T21:43:00.000Z

Well, after a couple of months doing many other things, it is back to weaving time. For now, I am working on a second Osberg style shawl, this time in the more appealing colors of rust and burnt orange for the warp and the addition of red and gold silk with the weft.

I have huge amounts of the burnt orange, and only a small amount of the rust, so I am using the rust every few rows for a small stripe, that turns the pattern into a light plaid effect.

Because my loom is a narrow four harness, I needed to use double weave in order to make a wide shawl. This also meant using a plain weave pattern and a low thread count, with the heavy rug yarn. The photo shows the wide gaps between the treads, those will close up when I wash and slightly felt the shawl/blanket but it will still be a pretty open weave.

I really like how the silk perks up the pattern, you can't really see it in photos, but in real life it catches the light well.

Here is a photo of the work in progress. More to follow....from
The Cat Who Plays With String...

My main website is working and updated

2009-09-20T03:12:00.000+01:00

Just a very quick post as its 3am here in Ireland to let everyone know that my old website, www.disastercat.com has now been revised and updated. Not everything is sorted yet, but there are links to my webshots pages, Barn Cat FAQ's etc. I hope to be adding craft and weaving pages in the near future.

Now that, that is done and the guys are in the states for the Irish Trade fair, I can hope to get some weaving done. I already have an order waiting, so I really need to get out there and get started. As soon as I finish putting up a few more pears and tomatoes...

See ya back here soon and at the main website!

Sagadis (who is also Disaster Cat)

Not weaving for a few days

2009-09-14T22:47:00.001+01:00

Hi fellow fiber friends and fellow travelers,
I writing to let folks know that last week this blog was quiet while I quickly knitting up a back up gift for the failed wedding shawls that I suspect will now be a first annaversary present.

Now, the blog continues to be quiet because well... the wedding was a lot of fun. I've been married for 15 years and did not know that DH could dance. He did not know I knew how to jitter bug, neither of us thought about our current ages when he tried to lift me up in the air or the fact we had not practiced this little trick...er...a because we had never danced together...

Well, DH is fine and I will be, in a few days I hope. Nothing serious, but if I move to fast this kitty's tail feels almost as bad as when I had surgery...Note to self - I am no longer 18 and some moves are just not wise without practice...lol

Anyway, I can't even really sit up to knit, much less weave for a few days. However I have discovered a new use for those round "neck" pillows (hint they are also very soft for the other sort of cheek when you can't sit down on chairs).

I'm hoping to get back to at least knitting or simple fiber work in a few days and have something to report on. If this keeps up very long, I will start going over some of my past projects. Like this past Summer's St. John's Wart dying experiment.

In fact, I may do that as soon as tomorrow - so stay tuned...

Sagadis

Rainy Day Warps

2009-09-02T21:40:00.000+01:00

Well, I spent most of this afternoon, either oiling the loom and smashing my watch in the process. *Note to self, do not wear a badly fitting loose watch while crawling around the floor under peddles, you may slip and smash the watch face. Since I never really like that five euro watch anyway, it was only a problem in that it also stopped running. So I may have to retrieve one of the missing alarm clocks from the guys, until I can find another cheap one. I'm very hard on watches so buying a good one is hardly to the point.

Anyway, todays weather was terrible, I mean even by Irish standards. Lashing, cold rain making it a good day to be inside the weaving room. I turned on the heat for the first time this Summer to keep the place dry and it was the other reason I oiled the loom down with olive oil. Doing so every few weeks is a good idea anyway, but in this climate mold can form even on wood, so I wanted to keep it oiled if I can't keep it totally dry.

Meanwhile, I rushed through the Oseberg shawl because the couple I have had a year to make shawls for is getting married in two weeks! Time flies when your doing other projects, I don't have to have them done by the wedding but I would like to try. At the very least a picture of the work in progress if the family jewelry business gets too heavy a work load for perfection.

I have the nice royal blue yarn that I tried first to knit into a lace Faro style shawl as shown in yesterdays post, only this one was a modern design with a fancy lace border which try as I might, I could not figure out. I suspect the book and not me after many wasted hours of trying. Then I when the couple saw my brown shawl they loved it. Problem solved save for a few details.

The royal blue yearn is not as heavy as the shawl, but heavier than most of what I have. I have learned the bride likes darker blues best but is happy with royal blue. So, I am making the warp out of my usual weaving size yarn in dark black and going to do a "weft faced" weave which will mostly show the blue and the black as a highlight in the back. Once again, I can only do the wide shawls in plain weave, so the shawl will be very loose. To make it a bit tighter I changed to a 15 per inch dent reed, which when used as double cloth will give about 7 warps to the inch. Pretty loose but hopefully lovely in a shawl.

The uncertainty factor is one reason I did not do what most weavers would probably have done, which was to combine both shawls on one warp. Instead, I'm doing them one at a time which means more time wasted warping, but also less wastage if the results just don't work out or are too loose. I think they will be fine, but I want to be careful just in case. The groom is happy with blue, black or gray so if I run out of the blue yarn (of which I am pretty sure there is enough for one shawl) so I'm covered there. I can always do his as a mix of black and gray plain weave. Meanwhile, one item at a time...

So, despite being very careful I still ended up with a few more warp threads than I wanted, I doubled the edges to make them stronger and then chained up the last ones, I'll just have to pull them out while I warp the loom which will hopefully be tomorrow.

Tonight I managed to get everything through the reed, for weavers who know what I'm talking about, I warp front to back. That's backwards from the more usual way but is easier if you are warping by yourself. In fact, I learned this from the book Warping All by Yourself by Gay Garrett, now out of print but worth looking for if you want to save your back and that of your friends.

The photo from the front covers shows what I was doing tonight after I counted out the warp. Tomorrow I'll be sticking the threads through the headdles which thankfully for this project is an easy pattern of 4,3,2,1. There are lots of complicated ones, but plain weave is pretty easy.

Anyway, that was enough accomplished for one day, I'll leave everyone with a photo not of what I'm working on now but on previous experiments. This is an example of such a more complicated pattern woven for a 1480's table runner. By the high middle ages, people were just starting to decorate their tables with more than white linen in Northern Europe. This is a very old pattern and may even go back to the Roman period but can be documented to the High Middle Ages. It looks like tiny flowers done this way and the use of metallic threads make it look very posh, which was the idea since the person it was a gift for has a "persona" of very high status.

Until next time, may your threads not tangle, at least not unless you want them too!

Oseberg Shawl or Blanket

2009-09-01T02:05:00.000+01:00

Oseberg Tapestry

For several years I have been wondering about the shawls the ladies are wearing in one of the only tapestries we have that survived from the Viking eara until the present day. I knew they were sort of pointed in the back, but I'd only seen a couple of web photos and never gotten a chance to look at them carefully.

Then my husband showed me his entire book in Danish that had many lovely water colors made from the original tapestry back when it was first found in the tomb of a Viking Queen, and excavated by Anne Ingstad. There were many pictures of men, women, carts, ships etc., but the one thing that stood out to me was the while the men were in various types of dress, including horizontal striped trousers that would make any hippy proud;

Oseberg Tapestry

the women were all wearing these huge shawls. Not only that, but the embroderer had taken great care to show details of complex patterns on some, other more plain, but all in any color you could get with a dye pot.

My first thought was, "I guess these shawls must have been the in thing at the Royal Court that year," the second was that "these shawls are so much a part of a ladies wardrobe that it has become the symbol that makes sure the viewer knows they are looking at a female figure." Then, I also noted that one of the finds found on the bodies of both ladies buried in their Viking ship (they were laid to rest with many of their fiber toos as well as other important and precious objects) were the remnants of what looked like "blankets," to the archeologists. Unlike most Viking Cloth, they had a very low thread count, that's weaving speak for number of threads in an inch. If most Viking Cloth had at least 20 strings of warp yarn per inch, these swatches had about half that or even less. This indicated cloth that was spun big and woven big, in otherwords the way anyone would weave who wanted a warm, comfy, drapy, shawl or blanket. I then wondered:

Could the "blankets" covering the two women for their final journey be their lovely shawls?

That would not stop them from doubling as blankets, for generations the Scots have used their plaids both as garments and sleeping rolls. Were these Northern Ladies perhaps doing something similar? And, how did they get a piece of woven cloth to hang down to a point like that? In the Faoe Islands, they still wear a similar long pointed shawl, but it is a knitted double triangle. I've made some of these but they don't look quite the same as those pictured above. A grandchild of the original woven ones perhaps, but not the same.

Faroe Shawl

Then a friend of mine realized that you could have a very long piece of rectangular cloth and get it to hang that way. Thus began my attempts to weave a piece of fabric that would look and drape like the Osberg Shawls. I had wads of rug yarn from a friend who had collected it over a decade ago when the last rug factory had closed in Ireland. It was a big larger even in the Viking yarns, but the effect should be close, big yarn and woven loosely.

My first attempt, became my lovely and currently favorite piece of clothing which is a brown shawl with nice borders on it. But, it was far two short and only had a hint of the correct drape. It looks best folded into a triangle and worn over my shoulders. Lovely to wear with mundane skirt or garb, but not quite what I wanted.

So, for my second try, I decided to warp an entire three yards on and see what happened. The next issue I faced was that because my loom has only four harnesses and is only 26 inches wide, the only way I could make a shawl that wide was in what is called "double weave." That's a way to weave the double width of your loom, but if you have a four harness loom, you can not make double wide items in "Viking" Twill. You have to do plain old up and down weaving (in and out and in and out). The Vikings did do plain weave but they mostly worked their wool in twills. Also, with twills it is much easier to get the sorts of complex patterns the tapestry seemed to show for many of the shawls. So, I would have to get creative on the colors if I wanted a pattern in plain weave. Finally, I had used up most of the brown wool and was left with mostly light blue, rose and a bit of beige.

Oh my, how to avoid a Viking Baby Blanket? The bits of brown seemed to help when I laid the yarns together. So, I crossed my fingers and did a 52 inch warp with a E.P.I. (weaving speak for threads per inch) of 5, using stripes of various colors, including natural white. That's when I discovered that I had almost no natural white left anywhere in the house, not even homespun! Oh well, I figured, at worst I'll have a blanket the cat can sleep on.

But as I worked the different horizontal stripes over the vertical ones, an amazing thing happened. The resulting Plaid looked GOOD. It was still hard to tell with the fabric on the loom, but once off I was pretty stunned. It was lovely, not really my colors at all but really lovely and it looked nothing like a baby blanket.

Then I put it on and surprise! The effect is EXACTLY like the shawls being warn in the pictures. I could even have made mine a tiny bit longer, because even at my 4'8", I have to drop it a bit low to cover my behind and have it drop properly to the knees. But it does work and I can wear it.

My guess is that the Viking Ladies were weaving their shawls at least a yard longer possibly two to get the same effect on a person of average height. They may also have been weaving up to 60 inches wide, but with a warp weight loom you can go as wide as you want, sometimes two women would work the same loom to get really wide fabrics. You can't do that on a modern loom, the best you can do is double cloth like I did.

In any case, that was todays project, and I'm very happy. I finished the shawl it is now washed, and fulled (stuck in hot dryer for five minutes to shrink the fibers together you only do this ONCE). The photos are before fulling but the effect is still pretty much the same. The very heavy rug yarn does not full or shrink all that much.

So, today we have one very happy cat who plays with string and now Kitty Can Has Shawl!

Long Rainy Afternoon

2009-08-30T21:19:00.000+01:00

Now I'm really getting frustrated, this is try number three to post and save this blog which now is going to be really short. The program refused the last two tries. Mostly I was just reporting that I finished both pieces of trim today and did some work on the plain weave blanket on the Baby Wolf 4 Shaft Loom.

Since I had no pictures of today's trim, I am trying to post a picture of the trim I made for the movie 1066, since some of the trim I'm making for this order is based on it. These pieces were for the large actor playing "Tank Man" on Stamford bridge, big trim for a big man...

Testing to see if I can add a photo

2009-08-29T22:28:00.000+01:00

Well, after a very discouraging afternoon at the tablet weaving loom (I simply could not get a pattern to reproduce but I did get something I think the customer will be OK with) I've come back in and decide to play with this a bit more. I added a bunch of photos to an "album" which seems to exist somewhere in Google land but does not really show up on the blog (yet anyway). I also tried several times to add google webtools, carefully following the instructions to be rejected each time as unverified. It seems that even though I have the blog from Google and have signed up with them, they can not verify me as the owner of the site I'm signed in with. Nor, will their might web tool accept an exact cut and paste of their own code as verfication. So either I am missing something obvious and/or the webtools installation is not quite as "easy" as it looks. For now I shall stick to the very simpled editor that comes with the blog, until I can find someone who knows more than I do.

Meanwhile, on to the photo experiment, lets see if I can insert something here:

OK second try worked better if a bit large, this is me spinning flax at an Irish castle a few years ago.

OK and that's me looking very tired but dressed in hand woven Viking Apron that had just won Kingdom

A & S for textiles about two year ago.

On the whole this looks like it works, so I'll finish playing for now and post. Then I'll go visit a certain tiny Calico Kitten who didn't want to come back in when it got dark tonight and ran away from Mommy and Daddy. After about an hour, she decided that alone and in the dark without supper was not really as much fun as she thought and yowled at the front door. Parents, I'm not suggesting you do this with your smalls when they refuse to come in for supper but it does seem to work for cats, try at your own risk- lol

Disa catching the bath tub plug at about age six weeks.

Starting a Fiber Blog

2009-08-29T14:14:00.000+01:00

Well, I've been reading several fiber blogs for awhile now and found them pretty helpful, so I thought I'd start one of my own. I will probably also drop in tidbits about life here at Kilmurry House in rural Ireland, the barn cats, my husband, Astaru, etc...but I suspect the main focus will be on weaving, spinning, knitting etc. I've tried blogging before, of a less focused kind, but found that to be a bit hard to keep up. Sort of like being a columnist without a pay check. I figure I can do that here if the issue get serious enough but I don't have to come up with something witty everyday. Just chat about my latest projects with others.

I can also plug great sites like weavolution http://www.weavolution.com/node/937 Which is a forum for handweavers. Since I'm also in the SCA and interested in survival stuff, I suspect there may be a certain amount of side information on history and making stuff from scratch. I also love to cook so I may through in the occasional recipe etc. Living in a rural area of Ireland, as an ex-pat American it can be interesting to try making things like tamales from scratch, or going in search of a washing machine large enough to hold more than a couple of tea towels.

But for now, my goal is just to keep up with what I'm up to fiber wise. Right now that means finishing a wool blanket on the Baby Wolf loom, some tablet weaving (which I sell via www.vikingladytraders.com) and continuing to wash out fleeces. Hopefully, more detail to follow on this and other projects during the next few days.