nemo ignorat

hand working

I know, for most of you this is old news. You all had your own thoughts about this topic many times over. But some things take a while to mature.

Yesterday, I was talking with a friend about crafts, DIY in general and sewing in special, and we were musing about working by hand in contrast to working with a machine. Although I actually own several sewing machines, I rarely ever use them.  (1 treadle, 1 hand cranked, 1 simple electric from India with only straight stiches and 1 40 year old Husqvarna, more like a tractor under the sewing machines, most of them with very personal stories behind them.) I learned sewing on machines when I was in school (around 10 or so) and later my mother insisted I take a sewing class when I was around 14. Mother and I had very different approaches to teaching, learning and crafting in general.

But I think, it is good that I learned sewing properly it helped me later when I started making my own clothes. My father taught me how to repair things. He was the one who taught me how to sew on a button. And I think it is good that I learned that too. 

Later on, mother's machine approach to crafting lost me. She had a knitting machine, the treadle machine was hers and she had an electric as soon as she could afford it. (My parents loved machines. They had an electric bread cutter, one of those fancy kneading/mixer/etc. kitchen appliances, automatic bread maker, they even had an egg cooker and electric knives and can openers and juicer and what not. The amount of kitchen machinery alone was mind boggling. Add to this the whole DIY shebang my father had and you can imagine, they needed a rather large house.) For a time, making her work easier with machines even made sense. After the war, she earned money by sewing shirts and dresses for other people. So she needed a productive method to work. (That was were the treadle machine came in. Electricity was rare in the late 40s, early 50s and she got it on food stamps she collected from the whole family.) She had two children (my brother, I came way later.) a husband and her parents to look after, cloth and feed. So everything that helped her getting things done faster was good. 

But later, when there were only my parents and me left (my grand parents were dead and my brothers moved out), she still favoured machines over everything else. She even had a rotary iron. (Our cat just loved to sleep on the still warm, freshly pressed bed sheets.) 

Me on the other hand always favoured doing things by hand. Yes, I learned how to use the machines and for a while I've sewn on the treadle, and I even used the Husqvarna for another while. (I got the Husqvarna in trade for a sofa from my flat mate's  mother who was a craft teacher in school.) I do have a washing machine and thank all Gods of Invention that someone came up with that thing. Hubby has a tendency to machines as well. So for a while we shared our kitchen space with one of those coffee makers (where you fill in whole beans and water and push a button to make real espresso). Over time I got rid of some of the machines again (except the washing machine). I have one of those espresso makers (the ones you put on the oven), a hand cranked bread cutter (hubby insisted on some kind of help, he is hopeless with a bread knife) and when push comes to shove, I choose to do tasks by hand. 

I always thought this was because I don't like the noise those machines make. They are all so incredibly loud. But - and here I resume my tale from the beginning of the entry - when I talked with my friend about sewing by hand and kntting by hand and favouring the spindle over the spinning wheel, I realised it was not the noise.

Yes, the noise is one factor but my main reason not to use machines is because I feel I am only handling a machine not sewing or knitting or spinning. When I sew by hand, my main goal is sewing. I sit whereever I like and I have a needle and thread and the stuff I want to sew. When I have a long straight seam, I like the help of a third hand but lacking a piece of furniture where I can attach it, I can use my feet to keep the seam straight and tight. I can even pin a piece of fabric to my trousers and tighten the seam this way. In short, I don't need anything else but the bare necessities. But when I sew on the machine, I am glued to one place which needs to be ideal. It needs an electric outlet, more space, should not be too high or too low and so on and basically I am just the machinist. Yes, this is oversimplifying the task of sewing on a machine but still, it is more about the machine than the sewing. 

But nevertheless, since I do have all those machines (the sewing machines, the spinning wheels, even my mother's knitting machine) I always think I should use them. Be more productive. I could do so much more than by hand. 

This talk yesterday made me realise that all this huffing and hemming about the machine assortement in my house is unnecessary. I now had over 40 years time to get not only aquainted with them but befriend them, make use of them, in short, be the machinist. And I didn't. When I think about sewing or knitting or spinning, I take my needles or my spindle and begin. Just like that. So maybe it is time to part from some of the machines. Find them a new home where they will be used.

I am a hand crafter. I will always prefer manual tools over machines. I am not running aroung naked, even hubby has enough clothes to wear and we are not freezing in bed because the next quilt takes a whole longer. I am a hand crafter, I can take my time and do things the way I feel best. 

spinning

Spinning is a craft I tend to when I really need to slow down. Stitching and sewing is slow as well but more purposeful than spinning. (And I tend to fall into a kind of addicted trance with sewing and stiching which is stressful in itself.) With spinning I just make yarn. And when I begin at the beginning and wash and card and comb the fibre as well, things begin to really slow down. So this is what I mostly do these days. OK, I also had some students here for indigo dyeing, I build several high raised beds and planted some tomatoes and salad and such, but craft wise it was mostly washing fleece, picking, and so on.

I  showed you the combed and carded Bentheimer Landschaf  a while ago. Well, I decided to stick with combing but combing is made easier when you just card it beforehand, so I use my picker, fluff the fibre, card them on the hand cards and then comb them on my small handheld combs. After two spindles worth of thicker yarn, I thought really thin yarn might be nicer and now I stick to the thin yarn. Once plied, I hope it will still be strong enough for weaving. I'm thinking of some tablet woven bands. But I'll see.

We have really nice weather, so I just use the picker in my backyard. 

And as a contrast fibre, when I feel like something different, I spin cashmere on my supported spindle. Different fibre, different technique.  The cashmere is still from a bag full of Scottish cashmere I bought many years ago. Until about a decade ago, cashmere goats where raised in Scottland as well. They had a huge cottage industry build around it but when import restrictions on Chinese cashmere fell they couldn't compete with the cheap competition. (Which in turn lead to a higher demand for even cheaper cashmere in China, which lead to impoverished farmers, destroyed environment and more and more low quality cashmere flooding the market. But that's another story.)

Bentheimer Landschaf taking for a spin

All over Germany (and in some other countries as well) there are so called Nutztier-Archen (livestock arcs; farms with endangered farming animals, old livestock races that are deemed non-profitable for industrialised farmingand are in danger of dying out which would be catastrophic for biodiversity). From one of them I got some fleece last year. Mostly Bentheimer Landschaf and some mixed fleece. 

While sorting through my mum's stuff, I used her kitchen to sort and clean the fleece. And yesterday, I felt like taking some of it for a spin. This is the nicest thing about my new situation. I can just sit all day (or mostly all day there are still DH and Dog) and do just one thing. No jumping from one taks to another while taking care of mum, pushing some of my work inside of that insane schedule. This freedom takes some time to getting used to but when I just let go and allow myself this freedom, it is rather nice and relaxing. 

So I spun some of the white Bentheimer fleece from the fleece, I carded some and then I got out the mini combs and combed it. 

 

from the fleece, carded and combed (from l to r)

Combing is the best preparation. The visible difference is hardly to detect but you feel the difference. The combed skein is very soft compared to the others. Mind you, The old Bentheimer landrace is an almost dual coated fleece with 37 micron. This is not Australian Merino but a more robust, durable wool. You can knit durable socks from it or maybe some outdoor sweater. 

 

I then went on to the mixed fleece with much more guardhair but an even softer undercoat. 

 

my mini combs with the picked guardhair on top and the softer undercoat below

 

Waste not want not, so I spun the guardhair as well.

 

the skein below is from the undercoat only with the above skein only from the guardhair. This is about 10 - 15% guardhair to undercoat.

  

 

the undercoat skein

 Even with the very soft undercoat we're still not talking Merino ;o)

and in comparison the guardhair

All yarns from (almost) dual coated landraces are rather hairy and nothing for acrylic or super soft Merino spoiled skin. I like them because they are durable, have character and they are unpretentious. 

Fibre preparation with the mini combs takes time. But I'm not running around naked so I have the time to prepare and spin the fibre. When there is enough yarn finished, I will decide what to do with it. Hopefully, it will be enough for a vest or waistcoat. 

and the tools

more basics

I'm getting the hang of it and I'm very confident to get some basic wardrobe done this year.

During the latest cold spell and monsoon (you cannot call this rain we had lately just rain, it poured, it came down in buckets, it didn't stop until all the clouds were empty) I felt like hurrying a bit with the needle killing sweater. I did, I finished it and it became a tunic. You could call it a mini as well but no way I'd be wearing it without trousers. Not me.

I admit, it looks a bit weird but it wears well which is the most important thing.

The yarn is handspun, the coloured bits are naturally dyed and the grey is wool from some British sheep I didn't remember because I couldn't find the label anymore.

Next is another basic top. This time I used my favourite top pattern. One I made for myself several years ago and which I used already for some linen tops. I based the pattern on the parts from other tops that fitted me best. Like the neckline from one and the arm hole shape from another. Most top patterns are either to wide in the arm hole so that you reveil too much or they are too narrow and uncomfortable. Same with the neckline. So I combined whatever was best into one pattern.

I extended the pattern to keep more of the dyed fabric. It is a silk bourette jersey tube I dyed with cocheneal during my last class to show a simple resist pattern and I'm really looking forward wearing it.The blue spots at the bottom are some contaminations from logwood that happened during drying. But I like it. It looks a bit weird.

BTW Peggy: sewing jersey is really simple as long as you do it by hand. I really hate sewing it by machine. The machine makes it all very complicated but by hand it is much like any other fabric.

what now?

Well, I plied the two spindles just for fun to see how it works. I plied the thread from one spindle with some commercial silk thread and then plied it with itself which means, I got a 4ply cabled yarn now. And I did the same with the other spindle.

It is still rather thin. Very thin. I mean, it weighs nearly nothing and is soft like a cloud but it is very, very, very thin.

I still have like tons (actually it's about 10 oz) of this cashmere and in the end I will have a lot of very, very, very thin yarn. This was not what I signed up for. What now? What do I with very, very, very thin cashmere/silk yarn? I don't knit lace. (Imagine her voice raising a bit in desperation.)

But it's so lovely and soft, she said in a dreamy voice. And much too wonderful just to be admired. Get over myself and begin knitting lace? Well, at least the spinning is relaxing and rather nice. 

wordless

Russian spindles and Schottish cashmere

spindles

As I wrote before, due to some really mindless planning on my side, I'm a bit swamped this month by workshops.

supported spindles work a bit different from suspended spindles and I am absolutely intrigued by them. The whole concept is slow. And still they can be quite productive.Well, not productive in the 'I spin 1 pound of wool in a day'-sense but that is not their goal. With a supported spindle I spin thin yarn, very deliberately, purposfully and slow. It is a much more complex spinning process than suspended spindles and still ... I don't know how to say it otherwise, it is quite calm. There is not this sense of urgency in it that I have when I spin with my suspended spindles. Maybe because your spindle hand is continuously touching the spindle, twiddling it and in a freindly way fondling the fibres and yarn.

And as always with such a basic tool like a spindle, it can be as intricately made as humanly possible and as simple as a twig.

sorting

Yesterday, I somehow ended up with sorting through my stash of naturally dyed fabrics.

some of my stash

I'm thinking a lot about concentrating lately. I was always fascinated by textiles and textile crafts. But when I came back to crafting it all began with spinning so many years ago now. Spindle spinning that is. And I still love it and all its possibilities but over the last decade dyeing moved more and more in the foreground. Dyeing as a pasttime, dyeing as science and lately dyeing as an art form.

I feel as a dyer. I am a dyer. And a dyer of fabrics not so much as a dyer of fibres. Especially not wool fibres.

violets

And sewing. My crafter's sense moves more and more to fabrics and sewing.

Which means, I have kilos of wool fibres, yarn and all that too much. Way too much. I should let go. I don't think, I will ever stop spinning. But my aim is to have only so many fibres at home as I will need for a handful of projects. No, I'm not kidding myself by aiming too high and a goal of having only the fibres for one project at home. A little bit of fibre stash is good for me ;o)

For now, I'm sorting my fabrics. Wellness for a crafter's soul.

orange and green

When it comes to natural dyeing, it is always an experiment for me. You might say, natural dyeing is my field of constantly what iffing. So it happened quite naturally when I read a paragraph in an old book about Navajo weavers:

The author describes how he observed the spinners as they dyed one colour by using

“the large, fleshy root of a plant which, as I have never yet seen it in fruit or flower, I am unable to determine. The fresh root is crushed to a soft paste on the metate, and, for a mordant, the amolgen [naturally in a plant occuring alum] is added while the grinding is going on. The cold paste is then rubbed between the hand into the wool. If the wool does not seem to take the color readily a little water is dashed on the mixture of wool and paste, and the whole is very slightly warmed. The entire process does not occupy over an hour and the result is a color much like that now known as “old gold”.”

(Dr. Washington Matthews. Navajo Weavers. Smithonian Institution. Washington. 1884; available through Project Gutenberg p.4)

When I dyed my hair with henna a few days ago, I had some henna paste left. So I took some small handspun skeins (I keep around for dye experiments) and knead the henna paste into the skeins. The paste had the consistency of wasabi and was still warm. And there were some tea leaves in the paste as well to act as mordant on the hair. I left the skeins in a plastic bag for about 2 hours and when I showered to get the henna out of my hair, I washed the skeins under the shower as well.

Next time, I will try it with some fabric.And some more henna. It was only about 2 table spoons paste left.

The dye seems as fast as it can be. From what I know about Navajo and their surroundings, water is a rare commodity. So the technique itself was no great surprise to me. But it is the first time I've read about it somewhere. I have another book about Navajo weaving and some dyeing is described there as well but not this technique.

Over the last 2 weeks our internet and landline connection was more than unreliable. Our mayor is very fond of prestige projectsand so he was able to make us into a huge beta testing zone for fibre glass connection. Volunteering households (and yes, we volunteered, getting faster internet without extra cost was tempting enough) were connected to the new fibre glass backbone over the past year and 2 weeks ago the technicians came and connected our house. But as beta testing goes, what can go wrong goes wrong and so first the new router burned through and since we are the first in Germany to get the new connection new routers are only available through a central distributer and this took some time and then we lost our landline for a few days. In short, after the first 2 days without internet I was so fed up of not being able to get to my emails that I went and got myself a tablet. (To be honest, I was looking for a reason to get one a long time ago, so all this internet trouble just gave me what I was looking for anyways *g*)

Such a table is nice but it needs a cover and a cover is nothing you go out and buy when you can sew one yourself ;o)

a hole to see the night sky through

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.

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getting a real nice green from natural dyes is still a hit and miss with me. But those two are really nice.

As always, it is not completely finished yet, more like a work in progress but functional already and that's what counts. The tablet is a Samsung Galaxy so I thought a 'Hole to see the Night Sky through' (with a nod to the great Yoko Ono) was appropriate. And - as always - I still ponder about the closure. It will come to me, I know that.

hope and necessity

hope

There they are, the early signs. I know it still will be a while but the roses are curiously experimenting with the first warmer days already. Always a good sign.

 

necessity

 

I already mentioned the new sweater which is now finished. The light was ugly (a dull gray), the true colours are leaning more to the brown than gray. The yarn is Blue Faced Leicester Humbug (which means a mix of different natural colours) with silk, spun about 3 years ago. The pattern is one of those generic top down raglans with 7/8 arms. Nothing fancy. It wears well, which is the most important thing. And this time, I even remembered to add a true round neck by adding some short rows to the back. This I learned from another top down raglan I knit about a year ago. Same style with the same turtleneck and it puckers a lot in front because I didn't add the short rows.

Its name comes from the actual necessity I had for a new sweater. My old one are beginning to fray around the edges. They are still well and warm for every day, outdoors and the woods but I wouldn't want to wear them anywhere else.

Like DebG I'm thinking about what a basic wardrobe should contain and how the single items should be made. Since I'm not really good at planning or sticking to a plan, I like top down patterns. I can try it on any time and I actually see how far the yarn will go and if I might add some other yarn for the bottom. Which usually looks better than adding some at the top.

I have no actual length but the yarn worked well in needle size 2.5 (which is about US 1 or UK 13) and I have to admit, I got a taste for it. Right now, I'm swatching for a tank top in size 2 (US 0 or UK 14). Up to now, my prefered needle size was around 3 or 3.5. 2.5 was reserved for socks. But I like the different drape of the thinner yarn very much.There is lots of potential.

 

an unexpected house guest

Since yesterday, this gentle giant is staying with us. His owner is a friend of mine and I had to take her to the hospital yesterday morning with a ruptured appendix. Thankfully, a few hours of emergency surgery later and she was (almost) fine again. But her DH is on business trip on the other side of the world so our already slightly cramped house became a bit more stuffed. As you can see, one of his favourite spots is the kitchen. Works well for me and the others so I don't complain. At least we only have this one hospital so I can visit her and mum in one go ;o)