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The knowledge of the hand

“I have a Norwegian crossbred whole-year fleece of excellent quality. Do you want one or two kilos?” The phone call came a year ago from Kia, a wool classifier and the person who has taught me the most about wool. “Well, I really have no room for more wool, but I may be able to squeeze in one kilo” I answered. “Do you want one or two kilos?”, Kia persisted. I realized that she really wanted me to make this fleece justice. What Kia considers a high quality fleece is a high quality fleece, so I replied that I would love two kilos. “Great, I’ll send it straight away!”.

From grease to yes please

So I have two kilos of extra beautiful Norwegian crossbred wool. The staples are around 12 cm and creamy white. More than wavy, less than crimpy.

Raw fleece with greasy and almost solidified tips.
Raw fleece with greasy and almost solidified tips.

When I got the fleece the tips were solidified by greasy lanolin. I imagined the sheep having skipped about in a Norwegian mountain, coastal climate rain pushing the lanolin out into the tips, creating a concentrated paste of grease.

Clean fleece
Clean fleece after a fermented suint bath.

After having admired my new bundle of fluff I soaked it in a fermented suint bath. The grease in the tips disappeared like magic. Apart from the tips the fleece was actually quite clean from the beginning, just the odd seed or piece of grass. I saw no hay or straw so don’t think the sheep had been stabled over the winter.

Two staples of wool, the leftmost white and clean, the rightmost yellow and dirty.
Raw fleece to the right, soaked in fermented suint bath to the left.

The knowledge of the hand

I decided to make this wool a long time spinning project. I got the fleece around the time I started my fascination of Andean spinning and weaving, and I realized the fleece would be perfect for hand teasing and spinning on Andean pushkas. The technique is slow and gives me the opportunity to grasp the knowledge of the hand.

A minimum of tools

All through this project I use a minimum of tools. I tease the wool by hand and spin with a simple hand carved Andean pushka. The method is slow, at least the way I do it.

When I tease the wool I get to know it. I get to know how to tease it to its best advantage, the direction and angle of pulling the fibers apart. I feel the structure of the staples and the individual fibers. When I tease I feel how the fibers stick together and how they separate. I can spot every nepp, tangle and weak fiber. During the teasing phase I get a feeling of how how the wool drafts. My hands learn the length of the fibers and its bounce.

A handful of unprocessed wool, a hand teased top and spindle spun singles.
Three stages โ€“ a handful of unprocessed wool, a hand teased top and spindle spun singles.

Time is knowledge

In a project like this the wool goes through my hands many times. One handful of fiber takes between 20 and 30 minutes to hand tease into a top. This is 20 to 30 minutes of opportunity to get to know the fiber, in the preparation phase alone. I open up each staple, arrange the teased wool into a top, draft through the top, double it, draft again and so on until I have a top with decently aligned and fully separated fibers.

Every time my hands interact with the fiber they learn something new about it. The knowledge of the hand is one of my most important tools when I spin.

A suspended spindle with the sea in the background.
With a simple tool you have the opportunity to learn more โ€“ through your body and through time. The knowledge of the hand is my most important tool.

You can move lots of mechanics from your body to the tools โ€“ processing, speed, tension and twisting of the fiber. In a way it saves you time. But it also takes away time spent with the wool. Time is actually of the essence here โ€“ time spent with the wool in all its stages.

A bedtime story

Most of the time I spin this project in bed before I go to sleep. It is a lovely way to end the day. I either tease or spin, let my thoughts come and go and find balance at the end of the day.

A two kilo pile of wool is a lot. To avoid strain from spinning I spin half of it clockwise and half counterclockwise. That way both my hands will learn and get to know the wool and the spinning as spinning hand and as fiber hand.

I spin this wool with a very low twist. The simple reason for this is that that is how I have learned from watching the Andean spinning workshop. The singles for weaving yarns are spun very loosely and given a high ply twist. I haven’t figured out why yet. One reason can be that it is easier to handle the singles when they have a low twist (that is my experience and quite painful lesson).

Spinning with such a low twist requires a slow tool and a slow technique. I don’t think I would have been able to spin with such a low twist on a spinning wheel, or a faster spindle for that matter. And when I spin the low twist singles on the pushka I have time to test the yarn for strength for every stretch of yarn I spin.

A spindle full of plied yarn on a chopping block.
Around 50 grams of plied yarn on a 20 gram spindle

I feel lucky to be able to spend all this time with this wool. There are so many aspects in these evening moments that I am so grateful for. Practicing, learning and finding a peace of mind. When I am done for the night I shake the tiny bits of vegetable matter out of the duvet and go to sleep in balance and at peace. During the night my brain processes what my hands have learned.

Learning by doing

Someone can tell me the dos and don’ts of a craft. I can understand it intellectually. But I won’t truly get it until I feel it โ€“ the knowledge of the hand key here.

A recent example is when I took a course in backstrap weaving. The teacher said it was important to use a yarn that wouldn’t stick, preferably cotton. I wanted to learn backstrap weaving to weave with my handspun yarns. I knew some of the yarns I had chosen would be too sticky. But what did too sticky mean? How would it feel? What would too sticky lead to? Where was my stickiness limit?

I tried different yarns in different degrees of stickiness. I learned when it would be too much trouble to manually separate the warp threads for each shed. In some cases I learned that sticky wool would pull fibers out of the yarn, leading to thinning warp threads and eventually breakage. I understood this before, intellectually. But it wasn’t until my hands felt and experienced the effect that I truly understood. The knowledge of the hand teaches me so much more than understanding something I read or hear from someone. My hands need to feel experience and understand the cause and effect.

A skein of creamy white yarn on a flat stone surface.
Slow is my favourite way to quality.

The funny thing is that I can take this knowledge back to my brain again โ€“ by writing about this process I can verbalize it and understand it in more depth. So thank you dear readers for encouraging me to write!

Textile plans

I am spinning this yarn into a weaving yarn, half of the skeins z-plied and half s-plied. I plan to dye the skeins in a variety of colours and use in backstrap weaving projects.

One of my first projects will be a case for all the backstrap loom sticks I have carved lately. I suddenly got an urge to carve sticks and couldn’t stop. I carve in maple which is lovely to work with this time of year. The bark comes of and the knife moves through the wood like butter.

Hand carved sticks of different sizes on a pile of wood chips.
Some of the backstrap loom sticks I have been carving lately. Of course they need a backstrap woven case!

It will take a while before I get to that stage, though. I have spun six skeins thus far, around 250 grams. There is a lot of wool left. I will have many hours to deepen the knowledge of the hand.

Five skeins of white yarn and a spindle full of plied yarn.
Six skeins spun, plenty left to learn from.

In the end I did manage to squeeze the two kilo fleece into my fleece storage. I already knew there would be room in my heart for it. A big thank you goes from my heart and my hands to you Kia!

Next weekend I’m going on my annual wool journey with my wool traveling club. A bit more distanced than we are used to, though. I may not find the time to blog, but there will be a new blog post in two weeks, hopefully telling you about the wool journey (which I’ll be getting to by bike this year!).

Stay safe and happy spinning!

You can follow me in several social media:

  • This blog is my main channel. This is where I write posts about spinning, but also where I explain a bit more about videos I release. Sometimes I make videos that are on the blog only. Subscribe or make an rss feed to be sure not to miss any posts.
  • My youtube channel is where I release a lot of my videos. Subscribe to be sure not to miss anything!
  • I have a facebook page where I link to all my blog posts, you are welcome to follow me there.
  • I run an online spinning school, welcome to join a course! You can also check out my course page for courses in Sweden.
  • On Patreon you can get early access to new videos and other Patreon only benefits. The contributions from my patrons is an important way to cover the costs, time and energy I put into the videos and blog posts I create. Shooting and editing a 3 minute video takes about 5 hours. Writing a blog post around 3. You can read more about my Patreon page here.
  • Follow me on Instagram.  I announce new blog posts, share images from behind the scenes and post lots of woolliness.
  • In all the social media I offer, you are more than welcome to contact me. Interacting with you helps me make better content. My private Facebook page, however, will remain private.
  • I support Centro de textiles tradicionales del Cusco, a group of talented textile artists in Cusco, Peru who dedicate their work to the empowerment of weavers through the revitalization and sustainable practice of Peruvian ancestral textiles in the Cusco region. Please consider supporting their work by donating to their causes.
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A fleece meditation

“I have a fleece from my young ewe Elin that I think you should have”, said Claudia, a shepherdess of Swedish Gestrike sheep. This happens every now and then. One of the advantages of being known in the spinning world is that shepherdesses trust me with their fleeces and they are curious of what I make of them. In this post I dive deep into the fibers in a fleece meditation.

The ladies and the elements

Claudia and I have met a few times since then but life has happened and the fleece stayed with Claudia. A global crisis came in the way. Eventually and with a little (or a lot) help from a friend Claudia managed to get the fleece to me. Claudia’s friend Kristina โ€“ also a spinner โ€“ was going to Stockholm where she studies and Claudia asked me if I could meet Kristina outside her school. Of course, I said. The bike ride would do me good.

So, we settled on a Tuesday in the end of April. I imagined a lovely bike ride through town, crisp birch leaves and cherry blossom edging the bike path and the fresh spring air welcoming my face in its midst. As it turned out, it was one of the most dramatic days of spring, weather wise โ€“ grinning rain, hail and icy winds had Stockholm in a firm grip, playing with its tousled inhabitants. The birches and the cherry trees were still there of course, but not in the atmosphere I had imagined. Still, a fleece was waiting for me and there wasn’t much I could do.

Embracing the hail as good as I could muster I hopped on the bike and pedaled my way in to town in sheer determination. I met Kristina, chatted for a while and went home with the fleece in the bike bag. An hour and 17 kilometers after I had left home I was back again. A bit cold, a bit wet, but richer in fleece and fresh air.

A raw fleece in dirty black and white.
The raw fleece from the Gestrike ewe Elin forms the beginning of a fleece meditation.

A bath

The fleece of the Gestrike sheep Elin is now in our house, filling the house with the soft smell of sheep and the promise of hours of gentle touch, creative work and new experiences.

Before I put Elin in the washtub I balanced her on the scales. 1,7 kilos, quite a large fleece for a Swedish heritage breed. I assumed some of the weight would wash out with the soaking water.

Soak

I filled the washtub with warm water in the bathroom โ€“ it is still a bit too cold to soak wool outdoors. As I gently pressed the sticky fleece down into the tub the water streamed up from underneath, found its path between the fibers, pressing the abruptly awoken dirt out of the staples and into the gushing water, creating reddish brown whirls which slowly shaped echoes of the locks.

A girl should have her privacy in the bath, so I left her in the tub for around fifteen minutes. When I came back I could hardly see her anymore. Gone was the clear water and the brown whirls. All that was left was a luke warm sea the colour of yesterday’s coffee with a few floating islands of wet wool lurking by the surface like frogs waiting for juicy flies. Between the islands were accumulations of soapy foam created by the union of the salty suint and the warm water.

Rinse

I gently squeezed the water out of the heavy water-saturated wool mass and filled the tub with fresh water. I repeated the process three more times, brown whirls fading slightly for each new soak. By the third rinse the water was clear and the wet locks distinctly visible in the tub, black and white staples shining like herrings in a school.

Spin-dry

After another squeeze I moved the shapeless wad into the washing machine to spin-dry it. Fifteen minutes later I opened the drum and was presented a bursting cloud of wool all the way up to the edge. Gone was the pile of sticky staples. Instead I saw before me an airy muchness of creative prospectives, inviting me to explore them.

A clean fleece in black and white.
Elin’s fleece is now clean an a lot lighter.

When I weighed the fleece again I was shocked of the number the pointer stayed at โ€“ 1,2 kilos. Gone were 500 grams of lanolin, sweat salts and short bits of fiber. My fleece was freed of half a kilo of gunk that I happily donated to the garden beds as fertilizer. My heart sings of the prospect of a flax harvest invigourated by dirty wool soak.

The fibers

Most of the staples had proud, gently waved outercoat, collected like the straws in a paint brush and air-filled hoopskirt undercoat, ready to embrace anyone who needed their warmth.

Black and white wool staples.
A few members of the Elin dance company.

Outercoat

The fibers are bundled up together to bring protection to the sheep. Some of the strands are long, proud and glistening, aspiring for length to protect the sheep from rain. I close my eyes and imagine the clusters of outercoat almost taking aim at the falling drops, competing about being the team to lead the wet intruder away from the body they have been set to protect.

Separated wool staples.
Dissected staples of Elin’s fleece โ€“ a whole staple, outercoat and undercoat.

Undercoat

Other fibers are fine, winding their way through the fiber collective, changing directions unpredictably, forming a billowing multitude of soft warmth to keep the wind and cold at bay. Together with air they fulfill their task with gentle determination.

Kemp

A third kind of fiber can be seen occasionally. Black, brittle and sprawly. This is the kemp, the oddball in the family. The kemp works with the other fibers, keeping the staple upright for additional protection against the elements and allowing more air to enter their fibery togetherness.

A microscope picture of wool fibers.
Strong and straight outercoat, fine and winding undercoat and coarse and brittle kemp, all working together to create the best conditions possible for the sheep.

The fibers look and work differently, yet in cooperation to protect the sheep they once grew on.

A fleece meditation: If I were a sheep

If I think of myself as the sheep the fibers are assigned to protect, how would I arrange them to do the same for me? How would I take advantage of their respective characteristics to create a garment that is for me what the fleece was to the sheep?

A staple of wool.
A fleece meditation.

Look at this picture for a moment. Long and strong outercoat, soft and warm undercoat. That means something. These fibers can be prepared, spun and arranged to their advantage and to give me the best protection. Soft, winding undercoat carefully carded into a pillowy rolag, kemp occasionally peaking out. Long and strong outercoat combed parallel into a bird’s nest.

A combed top and a rolag.
The beginning of the journey to a new textile. Outercoat and undercoat separated and processed.

When I close my eyes and feel a staple of Elin’s carefully selected wool in my hands I sense the different characteristics of the fibers. I envision a woven textile. In my mind I see the strong outercoat fibers as warp and the soft undercoat as weft.

Two shuttles with yarn. One light and airy, one dark and sleek.
Warp and weft. Separated but still together.

A dream of twill

I see twill. Fine singles, winding their way across the fabric. On one side the outercoat dominates โ€“ three over, one under โ€“ protecting me from the falling rain. The other side soft from the undercoat, keeping me warm and safe, kemp making sure there is room for air. Perhaps the fabric is slightly fulled to protect me even further. The two sides have different superpowers and different colours.

A woven twill sample.
A baby swatch, full of possibilities, waiting to grow into a mature fabric.

Claudia tells me that one of her ewes has a lot less outercoat than the rest of the flock. This sheep prefers to stay protected under a spruce when it rains while the downpour doesn’t bother her sisters. I want to be able to stand in the rain like the sheep, protected from the elements by an ingenious design that has worked for millennia.

A white wool staple with tips pointing in different directions.
The processing of Elin’s fleece could go in many different directions.

Eventhough the fibers in my textile would be disassembled and put together again in just one of many fashions, they would still work together. Their novel composition for a two-legged creature would still serve the same purpose: To keep me protected.

Meanwhile, Elin is generously growing a new fleece that shields her and that can be harvested again.

Stay safe and happy spinning!

You can follow me in several social media:

  • This blog is my main channel. This is where I write posts about spinning, but also where I explain a bit more about videos I release. Sometimes I make videos that are on the blog only. Subscribe or make an rss feed to be sure not to miss any posts.
  • My youtube channel is where I release a lot of my videos. Subscribe to be sure not to miss anything!
  • I have a facebook page where I link to all my blog posts, you are welcome to follow me there.
  • I run an online spinning school, welcome to join a course! You can also check out my course page for courses in Sweden.
  • On Patreon you can get early access to new videos and other Patreon only benefits. The contributions from my patrons is an important way to cover the costs, time and energy I put into the videos and blog posts I create. Shooting and editing a 3 minute video takes about 5 hours. Writing a blog post around 3. You can read more about my Patreon page here.
  • Follow me on Instagram.  I announce new blog posts, share images from behind the scenes and post lots of woolliness.
  • In all the social media I offer, you are more than welcome to contact me. Interacting with you helps me make better content. My private Facebook page, however, will remain private.
  • I support Centro de textiles tradicionales del Cusco, a group of talented textile artists in Cusco, Peru who dedicate their work to the empowerment of weavers through the revitalization and sustainable practice of Peruvian ancestral textiles in the Cusco region. Please consider supporting their work by donating to their causes.
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Come together

The corona virus has the world in its grip and we all need to do what we can to keep our risk groups safe and make sure the health care workers can do their job. Many initiatives are made and lots of creative solutions are figured out to make us able to come together in new ways.

Spin together apart

Lots of spinners have regular spin meetings where you can share ideas and inspire each other. Many of these have been cancelled due to the restrictions because of the virus. At the same time, I have seen so many initiatives to digital spin meetings across the world. In this I think both regular guild spinners and spinners who haven’t had a spinning guild or meeting in their community have found their way to digital meetings. Perhaps more spinners meet regularly now than before, only from their own living rooms.

A spinning workshop

One such example is the spinning workshop in Hรถlรถ, Sweden. They usually meet every Tuesday in an old church school and spin together. Several of them are risk group and the spinning meetings in the church school has taken a break. But the virus doesn’t stop the spinners from having their meetings. Now they meet online instead. The spinners who are in a risk group can come together apart without subjecting themselves to the virus. Others who have a long way to go to come to the church school can save the time it takes to get there and still enjoy the company and the discussions.

Spinning in the news

The new digital spinning workshop made such an impression that Swedish national media reported from the meetings. Here is a lovely clip and an article from Dagens Nyheter, of the largest newspapers in Sweden. They visited Lena and her Dalapรคls sheep one Tuesday in lambing season.

The week after the newspaper had visited I joined the digital meeting. As it turned out, reporters from Swedish national television were visiting Lena to make another clip. It was aired in a live show raising money for those who have suffered the most in the corona crisis. You can watch it here. The clip starts at 49:25 (you can see me for about half a second). In the clip Lena tells us that they immediately closed down the meetings when the restrictions came. Now the digital spinning meetings are a success. People who belong to risk groups can safely go to the digital spinning workshops and join their spinning community. Lena tells us that when they go back to meeting in person again they will still bring a computer to open a digital opportunity for those who can’t come.

A digital Q&A

Once a month I host a Q&A for some of my patrons. They can send questions ahead or ask during the Q&A. The sessions have so far been directly in the chat, but in my last Q&A I decided to make it in video.

The first problem was to find a time that suited my patrons and me. Some are in the U.S. and Canada, some in Europe and some in Australia and New Zealand. There was no way I would be able to find a time when all could be present during daytime. So I scheduled two sessions, one in the morning and one in the afternoon.

Seven people from across the globe came to the sessions, one was present at both of them. We had a lovely time together. We could all see and hear each other. This was the first time I have seen some of my most faithful followers. One of them was my very first patron who has supported me for over two years and one was brand new.

Josefin Waltin smilling at the camera. She is wearing knit-in ear phones.
A video Q&A for my patrons.

Seeing each other made it easier to interact. People could ask questions and show what they meant. They could also bring things to discuss. One patron brought some fleece that she wanted to know how to process, another brought a spindle she asked my opinion of.

Another good thing was that I didn’t have to answer all the questions โ€“ all of the participants had experiences to share that was very helpful. I think we can develop these sessions to something very rewarding and useful.

The Q&As are for the higher tier patrons only. If you want to become a patron you can check out my Patreon page. Whether you do or not, I hope it inspires you to start or join digital spinning meetings in one way or another.

A course in corona times

In January I published a post about my rya chair pads. I had woven seven chair pads from my handspun stash on my rigid heddle loom.

Seven woven squares with rya knots. They are in different patterns and colours โ€“ striped, plain, zebra skin, cow skin and a heart.
Rya chair pads in my handspun yarn (none of them rya yarn).

Shortly after, my friend Lena (above) called me. The spinning workshop has a rya theme this year. They try to learn as much as they can about different aspects of rya. Rya is a Swedish sheep breed, a wool type (not necessarily from the rya breed) and a knotting technique (originally from rya wool type but not necessarily today). Lena wanted me to teach a class for them in the rya technique. The thing is, Lena and several of the members of the spinning workshop are weavers. I don’t consider myself a weaver. I consider myself a beginner at weaving and I don’t deserve the title weaver yet. But Lena argued that it was just because I wasn’t an experienced weaver that I was interesting as a teacher in the technique โ€“ you don’t need to know how to weave monk’s belt to make rya knots.

Digital rya knots

As the course date came closer I got increasingly worried about the course. I knew some of the spinners in the group are in risk groups. But since they had such success with the digital spinning meetings cancelling was no option โ€“ they wanted me to teach the course digitally.

So, for the past few weeks I have tried to plan a course that I was supposed to teach on site. I had planned to bring my chair pads and show them, and Lena was supposed to help non-weavers set up their warps. I imagined a creative zone with brilliant minds where we would inspire each other to try new ideas. We soon realized that we could still do most of these things in a digital course.

Wonder warps

Lena warped at home and delivered mini looms to the church school for the participants to come and get. I found a way to make a large demo warp that hopefully will help the participants see the technique.

This is how it works:

  • The loom bars at the top and bottom are my actual loom bars from my backstrap loom.
  • The six skeins of handspun yarn are the warp threads. Since they are looped I can actually make sheds.
  • I used a handspun and hand woven band as the weft.
  • The woven scarf is my rya knot.
  • The display is hung on a camera tripod.
A rya demo.
A pretty much hand made rya demo for digital teaching.

I am very proud of this arrangement and hope it will be a useful tool in the course.

A sample band

I also made a sample band to show how you can achieve big variations with small changes. I set up the warp on my backstrap loom and just played and had fun with the knots. For pedagogical reasons I used different colours for different purposes โ€“ the warp is brown, the weft white and most of the knots green.

A woven band with rya knots in different arrangements.
A sample band for the digital rya course. All the yarn comes from my handspun stash.

Apart from the rya demo, the rya chair pads and the sample band to show I will also have a Keynote presentation with close-up photos to show the participants.

The course is tomorrow and I hope we will all learn a lot from this experience. If you have been following me for a while you know I make lots of videos and webinars and also online video courses. But this will be the first time I teach live.

Possibilities of video

As a teacher I know how much I can give my students in an on-site course. We can talk face to face, cuddle with yarn, feel structures and pick up non-verbal signals. I can also see from a distance when I need to guide a student. But when the option to an on-site course is no course at all a digital solution is a powerful tool.

The same goes for spinning and guild meetings โ€“ we can still meet, just in a different format. And people who wouldn’t have been able to come to a spinning meeting at all suddenly has the opportunity to join one near or far. We are all neighbours online.

In the situation we are in it seems even more important to come together for comfort and a sense of togetherness. We are all in the same boat and we need to navigate it together in a new direction.

Stay safe and happy spinning!

You can follow me in several social media:

  • This blog is my main channel. This is where I write posts about spinning, but also where I explain a bit more about videos I release. Sometimes I make videos that are on the blog only. Subscribe or make an rss feed to be sure not to miss any posts.
  • My youtube channel is where I release a lot of my videos. Subscribe to be sure not to miss anything!
  • I have a facebook page where I link to all my blog posts, you are welcome to follow me there.
  • I run an online spinning school, welcome to join a course! You can also check out my course page for courses in Sweden.
  • On Patreon you can get early access to new videos and other Patreon only benefits. The contributions from my patrons is an important way to cover the costs, time and energy I put into the videos and blog posts I create. Shooting and editing a 3 minute video takes about 5 hours. Writing a blog post around 3. You can read more about my Patreon page here.
  • Follow me on Instagram.  I announce new blog posts, share images from behind the scenes and post lots of woolliness.
  • In all the social media I offer, you are more than welcome to contact me. Interacting with you helps me make better content. My private Facebook page, however, will remain private.
  • I support Centro de textiles tradicionales del Cusco, a group of talented textile artists in Cusco, Peru who dedicate their work to the empowerment of weavers through the revitalization and sustainable practice of Peruvian ancestral textiles in the Cusco region. Please consider supporting their work by donating to their causes.
Posted on

Weaving bag

Last week I wrote about my adventures with backstrap weaving and the online course in backstrap weaving I have been taking this spring. In this post I present the final assignment in the course โ€“ a woven bag.

Weaving a weaving bag

The assignment for the fifth and last module in the course was to weave a bag made of a warp-faced strap and a balance weave cloth to fold into the body and flap of the bag.

A smiling woman wearing a shoulder bag across her torso. The bag is blue and has fringes.
I’m very happy with my finished weaving bag. Dan was equally happy with the evening light. Photo by Dan Waltin.

The yarn I used was a 2-plied worsted yarn from combed tops of a Norwegian crossbred, NKS. I spun the yarn a few years ago and it has been waiting for a project ever since. Before I warped I dyed three skeins of the six I had.

A weaving bag to fit all the necessary weaving equipment.

Strap

Weaving the strap for the weaving bag went well. The yarn was sleek and didn’t stick, only a bit towards the end of the weave. If I had spun this yarn today and with weaving in mind I would probably have spun it with higher twist.

A backstrap loom outdoors. The project is a blue strap.
The strap is warp-faced.

Body

The instructions for the body of the weaving bag was to weave it balanced. I had done this in a previous project, but that was only 10 cm wide. This one was 23 cm wide, the widest I have woven on a backstrap loom. But I was determined to get it right and proper and after having lashed on I was very happy with the set-up.

A Backstrap Loom outdoors. The project is a wide balance weave in three sections โ€“ the edges in blue and the middle in white.
A mid section in white by necessity turned out pretty nicely.

Dyed and undyed

As I was calculating the meterage and the warping I quickly realized that I would need more yarn than I had dyed. Given the fact that dyeing is not my best skill, I didn’t dare to dye the three remaining skeins. Chances were that I would end up with a completely different colour.

One could argue that I should have dyed all six skeins at once, which I obviously hadn’t. The reason for this was that the skeins were a bit different and I picked the tree that looked most alike. And had I dyed all six skeins at once they would have been too bulky for the dyeing pot and the dye would have turned out uneven. So my solution was to add an undyed section in the mid third of the body of the bag.

Having the three sections actually helped me keep track of the warp threads and the spacing between them. The job of lashing on all the 99 warp pairs got a bit easier when I thought of them as 3×33 instead.

Heddles

I used my handspun Vรคrmland outercoat yarn for the heddles for the strap. This was part of my contribution to the advanced category in the 2019 Swedish spinning championships.

A skein of yarn. 2-plied in natural white, grey and brown. The yarn is sleek and silky.
2-plied Vรคrmland outercoat for heddles for the strap.

The yarn worked quite well, but there was a little warp fuzz. It could be because I had reused the yarn several times for heddles. I am new at heddle making as well, so I try to analyze and learn every time.

I didn’t have enough of the Vรคrmland heddle yarn for the width of the body of the bag. Instead I used my contribution to the intermediate category of the same championships โ€“ a cable spun yarn from Gute lamb. Very strong, round and sleek.

A light grey silky yarn.
Cable-plied Gute lamb’s wool for heddles for the body of the bag.

The cable-plied yarn worked wonderfully as heddle yarn. It was originally spun as a sock yarn โ€“ combed, worsted spun, cable plied and with high twist. These properties worked very well for a heddle yarn.

A warp on a backstrap loom.
A long row of Gute heddles for my balanced weave.

I actually like making the heddles! Holding the heddle yarn, making lots heddles of equal size, watching the individual loops add to the long row of heddles, it really sings to me. It is a feeling of empowerment โ€“ I can make sticks and loops turn into a working loom together with myself and a tree!

Fringe

I am not a fringe fan on clothing and accessories. It is a bit too late -70’s/early -80’s for me. Remember the T-shirts with beaded sleeve fringe? I was about ten back then and I’m not particularly keen on going back. But weaving all the way to the end of the warp is an advanced and time-consuming technique that I may learn in time.

A woman wearing a woven shoulder bag.
The weaving bag fringe! Photo by Dan Waltin

Meanwhile, I have to choose between hemming and fringing. This project said fringe and so I fringed. I chose to twist my fringe to protect the yarn from wear.

Assembling

The assembling of the weaving bag is quite easy. The strap has a double function as sides of the bag. The body is folded to make out the front, bottom, back and flap.

Seams

I sewed the strap onto the body with a figure-8 seam that worked very well. The technique doesn’t require any seam allowance and is perfect for stitching selvedges together. The seam is sturdy but still discrete.

Close-up of a woven bag. The fabric is seamed together with a subtle seam.
A figure-8 seam to assemble the bag. The technique is simple โ€“ sew up through the left piece, over the edge and up through the right piece in a tight figure-8 pattern.

A decorative seam

I am very fascinated by the Andean spinning and weaving culture. To honor the textiles Andean weavers typically spend at least as much time decorating the woven textiles as they do weaving them. I wanted to do this too and decided to add a decorative seam on the bag opening.

This was the part where I had lashed on, the first few rows I wove on the body part or the third selvedge. When I looked at this selvedge it looked wavy and sloppy. I usually tell my students that your mistakes are a map of what you have learned. In this case, my map told me that I hadn’t beaten the first few rows closely enough to the loom bar.

Close-up of the opening of a bag. The edge is decorated with a seam in blue and white yarn.
My first try on a single-row Kumpay stitch to decorate and protect the bag opening.

In my vanity I thought that a decorative seam would cover the sloppiness of the edge, but of course it didn’t. But it is still a pretty seam that also protects the edge of the bag. I chose what I believe is a single-row Kumpay stitch with two colours.

Decadent rose lining

When I planned the project I suspected that the weaving bag would be somewhat sloppy without lining. Lately I have bought lots of small pieces of vintage fabrics from the Swedish e-bay for this very purpose. I seem to have fallen for bold 70’s motifs and, to my own surprise, roses. I do not like rose patterns. It is too Laura Ashley for my taste (back in the -80’s again). But I firmly believe that the hidden innards of a bag should be allowed to be a bit decadent, don’t you?

Sewing the lining with decadent roses.

I chose a study rosy rose fabric in cotton and linen from my e-bayed stash that worked well with the blue in the bag. I added two pockets in the lining โ€“ one on the side to fit emergency sticks and one in the center for pencils. There is plenty of room for other necessities like band locks, yarn, a backstrap and a bottle of water.

The inside of a bag. The bag is lined with a rosy woven fabric and contains weaving sticks and other weaving supplies.
The hidden innards of the bag is lined with decadent pink roses.

Before I stitched the lining onto the bag I added a piece of wool needle punch felt at the bottom of the lining to make the bottom of the bag a bit more stable and defined.

Happy beginner

When I started the bag project I felt confident โ€“ I knew what to do when and why. I know what parts I need to build the loom and I know how to operate the loom with my body movements. I know how to fix things when they go wrong. This has given me a lot of weaving confidence, in backstrap weaving as well as my rigid heddle loom.

I love being able to build my loom for every new project. I love being part of the loom. It helps me understand what I can do with it and how.

I am definitely an early beginner, but an independent one. After my first few projects I have the knowledge, skills and tools to realize a baby idea and create a textile at my level. I own my weaving.

Centro de textiles tradicionales del Cusco, Peru

Centro de textiles tradicionales del Cusco is a non-profit organization focusing on the empowerment of weavers through revitalization and sustainable practice of Peruvian ancestral textiles in the Cusco region. I support these talented textile artists. Please consider supporting them too. In these uncertain times they need financial support more than ever as they depend largely on tourism.

Happy weaving!

You can follow me in several social media:

  • Thisย blogย is my main channel. This is where I write posts about spinning, but also where I explain a bit more about videos I release. Sometimes I make videos that are on the blog only.ย Subscribe or make an rss feed to be sure not to miss any posts.
  • Myย youtube channelย is where I release a lot of my videos.ย Subscribe to be sure not to miss anything!
  • I have aย facebook pageย where I link to all my blog posts,ย you are welcome to follow me there.
  • I run anย online spinning school, welcome to join a course! You can also check out my course page for courses in Sweden.
  • Onย Patreonย you can get early access to new videos and other Patreon only benefits. The contributions from my patrons is an important way to cover the costs, time and energy I put into the videos and blog posts I create. Shooting and editing a 3 minute video takes about 5 hours. Writing a blog post around 3. You can read more about myย Patreon pageย here.
  • Follow me onย Instagram.ย  I announce new blog posts, share images from behind the scenes and post lots of woolliness.
  • In all the social media I offer, you are more than welcome to contact me. Interacting with you helps me make better content. My private Facebook page, however, will remain private.
  • I support Centro de textiles tradicionales del Cusco, a group of talented textile artists in Cusco, Peru who dedicate their work to the empowerment of weavers through the revitalization and sustainable practice of Peruvian ancestral textiles in the Cusco region. Please consider supporting their work by donating to their causes.

If you like what I do, please tell all your fiber friends and share these links!

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Backstrap weaving

For a long time I have been fascinated by the rich textural culture of the Andes. The simplicity of the tools together with the complex textiles you can make and the ubiquitous presence and history of textile making all warm my heart. In this post I share my learning process, my thoughts and my woven projects in the online course in backstrap weaving that I’m taking.

Backstrap weaving

Backstrap weaving is an ancient technique where the warp is attached in one end to a weaver and in the other to a solid object like a tree or a post. The weaver builds the loom for every new project.

Close-up of a backstrap loom. Wooden sticks and rods attached between blue warp threads. A hand is pulling a piece of yarn through the shed.
The building of a Backstrap Loom: On the far ends (which you can’t see) are the near and far loom bars. The near loom bar is attached to the backstrap around the weaver’s hips and the far loom bar around a tree or post. The two bars attached together with silicone bands are the rolling bars. These keep the cross in place and helps the weaver find both sheds. The heddle rod holds the heddles that lift the lower threads in the shed. The beater/sword/machete is used to beat the weft. The thin stick at the top with red silicone bands is a dovetail stick. I’m weaving a circular warp and the dovetail stick keeps the beginning and the end of the warp together.

The technique can be used with tablets, a rigid heddle or with string heddles and is still practiced in many parts of the world. In the Andes most backstrap weaving is done warp-faced.

A person weaving on a backstrap loom. In the picture you see the backstrap around the weaver's hips and the loom bar the backstrap is attached to in front of the weaver. Wooden sticks are stored in the side pockets of the weaver's trousers.
The weaver ties her- or himself into the loom between the near loom bar and the backstrap.

Simple and complex

A year ago I started spinning as close as I could to Andean spinning on Peruvian Pushkas. The fleece I started with was around 2 kilos and there is lots left of it. I still spin every night on my Pushkas before I go to sleep. I have many nights left of spinning before I’m out of fleece.

The Andean way of spinning and weaving fascinates me, as is the rich textile history and culture in the Andes. At first I didn’t plan to learn backstrap weaving, but when I saw that there were online courses available I realized that I really needed to learn this beautiful technique. The courses I have found are made and taught by Kimberly Hamill and Laverne Waddington. I chose Kimberly Hamill’s course and I will also try one of Laverne Waddington’s for some extra techniques. I bought a loom from Kimberly Hamill. She also has instructions on how to make your own backstrap loom.

Backstrap weaving with handspun

One important part of learning backstrap weaving was to use my handspun yarns and find out how to spin suitable yarns for weaving in general and backstrap weaving in particular. By trying different yarns I would be able to learn what works and what doesn’t work for a weaving technique where there is a lot of tension and abrasion on the warp threads.

A natural brown woven strap
My first finished project woven with my backstrap loom. I used a handspun 3-ply from a Hรคrjedal/ร…sen crossbred. The yarn was quite sticky and I didn’t have the flow I expect I would have had with less sticky yarn.

Earlier this year I had a band weaving period and there I realized how different levels of fuzz influence the weaving process. In weaving with my handspun yarns I could find what level of fuzziness I could tolerate. So learning backstrap weaving will essentially also teach me how to spin for weaving.

Happy heddles

When I got the loom in the mail I found all the things I needed โ€“ an array of sticks of different sizes, warping pegs, c-clamps and balls of string for different purposes. One of the balls of strings was truly hideous. And I’m not talking about the bright pink colour, flown in directly from the -80’s. No, I’m talking about the material: Nylon. The reason for the nylon material was that it was smooth and wouldn’t catch the warp yarn which would be good for a beginner like me. I accepted that and used the nylon for my heddles.

A person weaving on a Backstrap Loom. The warp yarn is natural brown. The heddle yarn is bright pink.
My first backstrap weaving project with the hideous nylon heddles.

Equal heddle and warp

Marie Ekstedt Bjersing is a weaving teacher at Sรคterglรคntan center for craft education. She saw pictures of my first weaving project politely asked me if I had chosen the heddle yarn myself. I said no and asked if she had any thoughts about the heddle yarn. She encouraged me to use my own handspun, which I would never have thought of myself. Her advice was to use a 3-plied yarn with long fibers and high twist. The best yarn for the heddles would be slightly thinner than the warp yarn.

Marie also advised me to use the same material for the heddles as for the warp โ€“ wool heddles for wool yarn etc. She has a theory about using equal fibers, or at least fibers with equal properties, in heddles and warp. The strongest material will win and with abrasion the weakest will break. She works with floor looms and often the nylon string have made ugly marks in the beams of the looms โ€“ the nylon string is stronger than the wood in the beams. But the heddles are far easier to change than the loom beams. A heddle yarn that is thicker than the warp yarn may cause breakage in the warp threads. Warp and heddle yarns with different properties may cause abrasion in one of the yarns. A balance between the warp yarn and the heddle yarn will be an important part of the balance in the whole weaving process.

Thank you Marie for your wise thoughts!

Handspun heddles

Just as I needed to find out for myself what level of fuzziness I could tolerate in the warp, I needed to find out how I could use my handspun yarn for the heddles. So far it is working out and I take mental notes of how the heddles interact with the warp. I have not yet woven with warp or heddle yarn that I have spun specifically for weaving but I will eventually. This is only the beginning.

I’m surprised that I enjoyed the making the heddles as much as I did! Perhaps just because I used my handspun yarn for the heddles. When I build the heddles that control the warp threads I feel like I can do anything.

A backstrap loom hanging in a staircase.
My Backstrap Loom safely and neatly stored under the staircase. Warp, weft and heddles are my handspun yarn. The backstrap is woven on my backstrap loom.

Backstrap weaving a backstrap

While the first project in the course was a plain strap, the second project was all about backstrap weaving a backstrap. I was thrilled with the idea.

Close-up of a tight warp-faced weaving in natural and turquoise flax yarn.
Backstrap weaving with flax yarn. Second backstrap project.

For this project I chose a commercial flax yarn, though. I figured that I would weave outdoors in the summer and I imagined a linen backstrap would be lovely to weave with.

Close-up of a tight warp-faced weaving in natural and turquoise flax yarn. Heddles in flax yarn. The sun shines through the heddles and leaves shadows on the warp.
Weaving a backstrap with my backstrap loom. Warp, weft and heddles in flax yarn from Vรคxbo lin.

You know when you do something quite seldom, and when you do it again you remember why you don’t do it more often? That is the case for me and weaving with flax yarn. I love flax, but as soon as I weave with it I remember why I don’t do it very much. Flax yarn is not forgiving like wool and it takes lots of patience and focus to work with. I had this realization when I had finished warping. But this time it actually worked like a charm! The weave was a bit crooked in the beginning, but after a while I got a really nice and even looking fabric.

A finished backstrap on the ground. The end is braided.

I now love weaving with my backstrap woven linen backstrap. It fits perfectly and I burst with pride everytime I wrap myself in it.

Problems with pebbles

The third project was quite a challenge. We were weaving a band with pebble weave. The technique involves pick-up patterns. The first assignment was to design the pattern, which proved to be surprisingly difficult. After a while I came up with a wavy sort of pattern that I liked.

For this project I definitely chose the wrong handspun yarn. It was too loosely spun and too fuzzy. Several warp threads thinned out and broke. Also, the colours were too close to each other in hue. I actually didn’t finish the project, but it was still a valuable lesson in the most important qualities in a yarn.

Close-up of a person manipulating warp threads on a backstrap loom.
The third project was pebble weaving. Very thin, too loosely spun yarn in colours in hues too close to each other. The fiber comes from a merino/silk commercially combed top I had received as a gift. I spun the yarn on a supported spindle. If you squint you can see a vague wave pattern. Heddle yarn in Vรคrmland outercoat wool.

I will get back to this technique with more suitable yarn and colours.

Balanced weave

While most backstrap weaving, at least in the Andes is done warp-faced, the fourth project was all about balanced weave. It was quite a challenge to find the right tension to weave loose enough.

A backstrap loom with a balanced weave in greens.
Balanced weave on a backstrap loom.

The yarn I chose was not one of my proudest moments. A while ago I received beautiful commercially combed and blended tops as a gift. I am not keen on spinning these. I don’t really know how to and I find neither flow nor mindfulness in the process. But I figured the yarn would be good for something and why not weaving. So I spun them quick and dirty and had myself some weaving yarn.

A green scarf hanging on a clothes line.
The fourth project was dedicated to balanced weave.

The assignment was to weave a scarf, but I did some miscalculation on the amount of warp threads and ended up with a 10 cm wide scarf instead of 20 cm. So I’m not really sure how to use this scarf. But it was still lovely weaving!

A bag to dye for

The final project of the course was to weave a bag with most of the components from previous projects. I had a lovely yarn that would be perfect for the bag, but I didn’t think the natural white would be very suitable for a bag. So I decided to dye it. I am not a very good dyer, but for some reason I did things right this time and ended up with exactly the colour I wanted. It was even even!

A ball of blue yarn on a tree trunk.
My proudest dyeing moment. The yarn is my handspun from a Norwegian whole-year NKS crossbred spun worsted and 2-plied.

I started weaving a warp faced strap for the bag. This was the first time I really felt I had control of all the aspects of the weaving. I knew what to do, but first and foremost I understood why I did it and how I could fix things that went wrong.

Last night I warped and lashed on for the bag part of the bag, which will be in balanced weave. You may see the finished bag in a future blog post.

A weaving sample over a book. A sheep's head on the cover of the book.
I’m doing sett tests for balanced weave on a book.

A bag with a purpose

Most pictures and videos I have seen of backstrap weaving have been with sitting weavers. I like to stand and so I stand when I backstrap weave. While starting out sitting I have realized that I have a better control of the tension when I stand. I also feel that I can get a stronger tension if I need to. The problem with standing, though, arises when I drop things โ€“ usually the sword. During this process I have become a master of picking things up with my toes!

At first I didn’t really know what to use the bag for, but when I realized that I would keep my weaving supplies in it when weaving instead of dropping them I could start weaving the bag with a purpose.

Weaving with the trees

The course started in March when it was way too cold to weave outdoors. But at the fifth module it had started to get warm enough to weave outdoors. I almost cried when I attached my loom to a young linden tree in the pale afternoon sun.

A person weaving outdoors on a backstrap loom. The loom is attached at the far end to a tree. An old house in the background.
Outdoor weaving at last.

Standing there, weaving on a loom that I had built myself (although I haven’t made the loom parts) and actually understood, and with warp, weft and heddles that I had spun myself was truly a magic feeling. Last year’s leaves were rustling under my feet and the spring birds were singing. I could feel the wind in my face. The trunk before me felt strong and safe as I worked with it to control the warp between us. We were both essential parts of the loom. I was finally weaving with the trees.

A Backstrap Loom attached to a tree.
I’m finally weaving with the trees.

Happy weaving!

You can follow me in several social media:

  • This blog is my main channel. This is where I write posts about spinning, but also where I explain a bit more about videos I release. Sometimes I make videos that are on the blog only. Subscribe or make an rss feed to be sure not to miss any posts.
  • My youtube channel is where I release a lot of my videos. Subscribe to be sure not to miss anything!
  • I have a facebook page where I link to all my blog posts, you are welcome to follow me there.
  • I run an online spinning school, welcome to join a course! You can also check out my course page for courses in Sweden.
  • On Patreon you can get early access to new videos and other Patreon only benefits. The contributions from my patrons is an important way to cover the costs, time and energy I put into the videos and blog posts I create. Shooting and editing a 3 minute video takes about 5 hours. Writing a blog post around 3. You can read more about my Patreon page here.
  • Follow me on Instagram.  I announce new blog posts, share images from behind the scenes and post lots of woolliness.
  • In all the social media I offer, you are more than welcome to contact me. Interacting with you helps me make better content. My private Facebook page, however, will remain private.
    If you like what I do, please tell all your fiber friends and share these links!๏ปฟ
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Portrait of a sweater

At the Jรคmtland wool webinar a couple of weeks ago I showed a sweater made in Jรคmtland wool and how it had been worn on the elbow after five years. After the webinar I got a request from a follower. She asked me to make some sort of portrait of a sweater and show different stages of its life. I found the idea brilliant and I am happy to meet her request. So here it is โ€“ the portrait of a sweater.

A woman walking outdoors. She is wearing a grey sweater with white spinning wheels in a stranded knitted yoke.
The spinning wheel sweater straight off the needles in 2015

Everyday and wool festivities

I have worn my sweater for both everyday and festive occasions. As an everyday sweater I have worn it at home and at work. It is a warm sweater that works for a large part of the year.

At work nobody really notices it, to most of my colleagues it is just another knitted sweater. But when I go to wool and spinning events it is definitely a festive sweater โ€“ people see the work that has been put into it, they smile heartily at the spinning wheels on the yoke and some recognize it from my videos.

In 2018 I attended the Swedish fleece and spinning championships. That is definitely a festive occasion.

No matter where or when I wear it, it always feels comfortable and safe.

A five year portrait

I started the making of the sweater in 2014 by shearing the Swedish finewool lamb Pia-Lotta. The whole process is well documented and actually the main character of one of my earliest videos Slow fashion โ€“ from sheep to sweater (also available in Swedish). In the video I go through all the stages from raw fleece to a finished sweater. For that reason alone this is the perfect sweater to use in a portrait. In this portrait I document the stages of wearing.

I knit the sweater in the Fileuse design by Valรฉrie Miller.

A new spinner

When I made the sweater I had been spinning for two years. Since then I have improved my spinning for another six years. While it is far from my best spinning it is definitely one of my favourite sweaters. And one of my most worn.

Looking at the sweater today I see many things I would have done differently. The grey yarn is unevenly and loosely spun. I think the yarn ranges between light fingering and sport weight. A consistent fingering weight yarn with more twist would fill out the stitches better and give a more finished overall impression.

The yarn is quite thin and unevenly spun at the neckline.

Had I placed the bulkier yarn on the elbows they would probably be less worn now. The white finewool yarn is also a bit unevenly spun. However, it is woolen spun and the uneven parts don’t show as much as they do in the worsted spun grey Jรคmtland yarn.

I placed the bulkiest skein on the bottom of the sweater. Perhaps it would have worked better on the elbows.

Tales from the elbows

As I wrote in the preamble of this post the sweater is worn at the elbows. I have seen the thinned-out threads for a while and a couple of months ago my daughter told me there was a hole on the right elbow.

I mended it with parallel blanket stitches over a horizontal help thread. That is the only mending technique I have learned.

A darning needle mending a knitted sweater.
A mended underarm on a hoody in a commercial yarn. The sweater has been worn a lot during three years.

I must have been too greedy with the mending since there is a hole on the same elbow again, just underneath the first mending. I should have mended a bigger area.

Portrait of a sweater. A new hole on the right elbow, just underneath the first mending.

I stand at work and use the mouse with my left hand. The right elbow often leans on the table top. I guess that is the reason why my right elbow has thinned out faster than the left. The left elbow is thin, but not worn through.

A thin spot on my left elbow.

Don’t get me wrong โ€“ Five years is a long time for a sweater that I have worn so often. I remember finishing the sweater just in time to bring it to Shetland wool week in 2015. In Shetland I bought yarn for a hoodie at Jamieson & Smith and started knitting it, so the hoodie is a bit younger. I have worn these two sweaters equally โ€“ the spinning wheel sweater in handspun and the hoodie in commercial yarn. I started mending the hoodie in several places two years ago (see picture above of a sweater with stripes). My first mending of the handspun spinning wheel sweater (which is older) was this year.

A new mending

I used help threads for my new patch.

To mend the new hole I removed the old mending. I figured it would be better to make a bigger mending than to overlap the old one. To find a suitable mending technique I used Kerstin Neumรผller’s excellent and methodical book Mend and patch (available of course in Swedish and also German and French). I attached help threads over the hole and followed the knitted pattern with a darning needle threaded with the mending yarn.

A mended elbow hole! I removed the help threads and wove in the ends after I had finished the mending.

The mending technique description calls for a thinner yarn than the original one to avoid a bulky patch. I went the other way and used a bulkier yarn. The elbow is an exposed area and I didn’t want to have to mend a third time. The yarn I used is a handspun Gotland yarn I made for socks. It has two Z-spun threads and one S-spun thread that are plied S for extra strength. I hope it does the trick!

The spinning wheel sweater in 2020, with a mended elbow. The portrait of a sweater has changed.

I decided to make an invisible mending. It blends into the original textile quite well. However, I now understand the beauty of visible mending. With yarn in a contrasting colour you will actually see what you are doing when you mend the hole!

Other signs of wear

I inspected the sweater to look for other signs of wear. I saw a thin spot on the cuff of the right arm. However, I think this part is slightly felted since it is knit in Swedish finewool which felts easily. I don’t think the risk of further damage is alarming. I have it on my watch list but I haven’t done anything to fix it yet.

Close-up of a knitted piece of fabric with a worn-out edge.
A thin spot on the right cuff.

I also looked for pilling and didn’t find much at all. There might have been pilling in the early days and if there was it has all been worn off by now.

All in all I think this sweater has really worn well. I have worn it so many times and it is a wonder that it still looks so nice. I plan to wear it for at least another five years.

Make that sweater

You don’t have to be a master spinner to spin yarn for a whole sweater. There will be uneven parts and flaws. You will be able to look at it later and understand what you would have done differently today. You will also look at your accomplishment with pride. All the flaws you see are seeds to new learning. All the mistakes you see will remind you of what you have learned and how you have used that piece of learning in later projects.

Make that sweater. Embrace the mistakes as gifts of learning and wear your accomplishment with pride. When you see thin patches and holes, mend them and be even more proud. Make your own portrait of a sweater, and many sweaters to come.

Thank you for the inspiration Sissel!

Happy spinning!

You can follow me in several social media:

  • This blog is my main channel. This is where I write posts about spinning, but also where I explain a bit more about videos I release. Sometimes I make videos that are on the blog only. Subscribe or make an rss feed to be sure not to miss any posts.
  • My youtube channel is where I release a lot of my videos. Subscribe to be sure not to miss anything!
  • I have a facebook page where I link to all my blog posts, you are welcome to follow me there.
  • I run an online spinning school, welcome to join a course! You can also check out my course page for courses in Sweden.
  • On Patreon you can get early access to new videos and other Patreon only benefits. The contributions from my patrons is an important way to cover the costs, time and energy I put into the videos and blog posts I create. Shooting and editing a 3 minute video takes about 5 hours. Writing a blog post around 3. You can read more about my Patreon page here.
  • Follow me on Instagram.  I announce new blog posts, share images from behind the scenes and post lots of woolliness.
  • In all the social media I offer, you are more than welcome to contact me. Interacting with you helps me make better content. My private Facebook page, however, will remain private.
    If you like what I do, please tell all your fiber friends and share these links!๏ปฟ
Posted on

Webinars

This weekend I live streamed a webinar โ€“ a breed study of the Swedish breed Jรคmtland sheep from the spinner’s perspective. Webinars are powerful tools to meet and share information and skills. Today I invite you to my studio and the making of a breed study webinar.

This webinar is about Jรคmtland wool.

Webinar content creation

A webinar is a seminar or other presentation that takes place on the Internet, allowing participants in different locations to see and hear the presenter, ask questions and comment.

The first thing to think about in the making of a webinar is the content: What should the webinar be about? At the moment I am making a webinar series of breed studies of Swedish sheep breeds from the spinner’s perspective.

Subject and crafting

I pick the breed I want to talk about. Preferably a breed I have worked with and have fleece available for. I also want it to be a breed from which I have made something of the yarn to show you. If I haven’t I need to prepare that too โ€“ I want to be able to show you the whole process from fleece to a finished textile or at least a sample of some sort.

A woman working on a computer by an office desk.
There is lots of preparation work to create the content for a webinar.

I also take photos for the blog post. The photos, especially the close-ups, are important for both the blog post and the live stream. I have only one camera in the webinar and it doesn’t do close-ups very well. With the close-up photos in the blog post my viewers can go back to the blog post if they missed details in the webinar.

Outline

I have the same basic outline for all my webinars โ€“ I talk briefly about the breed and then I go on to preparation, spinning and use of the wool of that breed. I want to show the steps in the process from fleece to project. To me the preparation of wool is the most important thing โ€“ the steps I take early in the process have consequences for the end result. I show different ways to prepare and spin the wool and how they affect the end result.

The content I fill my outline with is the base of that week’s blog post and is also the starting point of my webinar script. My hope is that the video webinar together with the written blog post will fit as many learning styles as possible.

Administration and tech

There is a lot of administration and tech to be done before a webinar, but I’m slowly getting the hang of it now.

  • I write emails to invite followers to the webinar. I also write emails to those who register. A couple of days before the webinar I write reminders. To have everything ready I also compose the emails to send after the webinar โ€“ the link to the replay and a feedback email. During this period I also answer a lot of emails from followers. For one webinar I send roughly 2500 emails. I use an email marketing and automation platform to help me with this.
  • I set up the registration โ€“ a registration page, registration form and automations to send the right emails to the right people in the right order.
  • To show glimpses of what you can expect from the webinar I make a promo video with the most important information.
  • I also publish a blog post that covers the topic of the webinar.

Rehearsing

I want to have control of what I am doing and usually rehearse three times before a webinar. I do this as if it were a real webinar โ€“ I set up my studio and record a private live stream. This way I rehearse both the webinar and the studio set-up. It also means that I can watch the live stream afterwords to see if I need to make any adjustments. In the rehearsing phase I can fine tune the order of things and placement of tools in the studio.

As part of the rehearsing I decide on what to wear for the live stream. I want to wear something handspun, preferable from the breed I talk about in the webinar. It should also be in a colour that contrasts to the yarn I’m spinning. A light sweater behind white fiber wouldn’t be a good idea. As a former Sign Language interpreter I am always aware of the importance of good contrast between my hands, the wool and the background behind them (=what I wear).

I chose a shawl in Jรคmtland wool for the Jรคmtland webinar. I carefully planned how I wore the shawl so that the tail wouldn’t be in the way of or cover the fiber hand.

The webinar studio

I use a king size bed sheet for a backdrop, a studio light, some extra lights and a microphone. That’s it. It seems like a very simple studio set-up, and it is. However, every time I need to transform my home office to a live stream studio it is quite a lot to remember.

A room with a desk with computer screens, studio light, script holders and baskets of wool and spinning tools.
The studio is set up for a live stream!

The image above seems like your ordinary messy home office. All of the things and gadgets in the image have a purpose in the live stream, though. Let’s go through it:

The studio map.
  • The backdrop provides a calm background. It also covers the busy shelf and whiteboard behind it. A while ago I bought real grown-up curtains to keep the sun out. The window faces west and in the light months I need to pull the blinds down as well. In May or June I even place a parasol outside the window to block the sunlight.
  • The microphone is essential for a good and comfortable sound. Do pay attention to the fancy pop filter. I used to have a bug with a chord, but I didn’t like being attached to the computer while at the same time spinning. Just imagine the amount of things that could go wrong! I bought this new microphone for money I got from my patrons. My 17-ear-old is very envious.
  • Light is of course essential too. I have light from above and from the front plus my studio ring light from the side. These three light sources together minimize the shadows and give a pleasant picture.
  • I place the chair as far back as I can so that my lap shows. In my webinars I do a lot of carding and if I should sit closer to the screen you wouldn’t be able to see the cards. I need to sit quite high for my lap to show and therefore I need a foot support.
  • During the webinar I use lots of tools like cards and combs and I need them organized and close at hand. I keep the wool in a basket, my tools in another basket, the knits under the stool and processed wool in a bowl on the table. I use a felt board to display wool and yarn on.
  • The script is of course important too. I make one page for each section of the webinar and everything is organized in mind maps.
  • The computer screen is where I can see myself as you see me. I can also see the chat window where you write nice things and clever questions.
Mindmap script for my Vรคrmland webinar.

And we’re live!

Ok, it’s Webinar Day. This means that I spend all day in a daze. I am a nervous wreck and quite annoying to the rest of the family. I go through the Imposter syndrome over and over and again. Who am I to do this? Why should people listen to me? But I also tell myself that I know what I am doing and that I am well prepared.

I set up the studio one hour before show time, which is way too early. But it helps me deal with my emotions which skip up and down like balls in a pinball machine. Hopefully I remember to spend the extra time meditating to ground myself. Ten minutes before the webinar starts I start the live stream to check sound and video. It also gives me a chance to chat with the early birds and get comfortable in the studio.

I come early to the webinar and spin with the first viewers.

When I start the webinar I am totally there, with you. It is a great feeling to have you there with me while at the same time in so many different parts of the world.

By the time I do the live webinar I am quite familiar with the script and I’m not nervous. I have prepared enough to know what I am talking about and how to make smooth transitions between different sections. What I am not prepared for, though, are your questions. You can ask me anything live and I quickly need to find a reasonably intelligent and suitable reply. Everybody doesn’t have the same frame of reference and I may need to explain and elaborate on terms or concepts I present. This is quite an adventure and I learn something new every time.

The chat window is full of love and dedicated spinners.

It’s funny, the hour before I start goes so slowly and once it’s webinar o’clock time flies. I have such a lovely time with you, doing what I love. All the hours I have spent up to this moment have had a purpose and paid off. The feedback I get from you is overwhelming.

When things go wrong

Sometimes things don’t go as I have planned. Everything is rehearsed and structured, but when something happens during the live stream I need to make fast decisions. Usually it is the tech that goes wrong. For every webinar I make the nagging sensation is always there: Will the tech goddesses treat me well this time? The very thing that makes this kind of production even possible is also the thing that can totally ruin it.

On one of my first webinars I couldn’t for the life of me find the go live button when the webinar was supposed to start. I got really frustrated and didn’t know what to do. I ended up postponing the webinar 24 hours and by then I knew what to do.

In the Jรคmtland webinar this past Sunday all started well. I got in early and chatted with people. Three minutes before scheduled time the webinar was shut down by YouTube due to “Violation of community guidelines”. I still don’t know why. I tried to get back and to move the webinar to Facebook, but with no luck. Instead I scheduled a new webinar for 24 hours later. To be on the safe side I recorded a private live stream (Monday morning 6:30 am) to send if the second try would fail. But everything worked out and we had a lovely Monday webinar.

It’s a wrap! The webinar is finished and I am full of endorphins.

Post production

When the webinar is over I am totally exhausted and at the same time overjoyed and full of endorphins. I finish the replay email and add links I have mentioned in the webinar or that viewers have asked for. I answer more emails, usually lovely ones. A week or two later I send out the last email asking for feedback to make future webinars better.

I hope to see you in upcoming webinars! I plan to make at least one more before summer.

Happy spinning!

You can follow me in several social media:

  • This blog is my main channel. This is where I write posts about spinning, but also where I explain a bit more about videos I release. Sometimes I make videos that are on the blog only. Subscribe or make an rss feed to be sure not to miss any posts.
  • My youtube channel is where I release a lot of my videos. Subscribe to be sure not to miss anything!
  • I have a facebook page where I link to all my blog posts, you are welcome to follow me there.
  • I run an online spinning school, welcome to join a course! You can also check out my course page for courses in Sweden.
  • On Patreon you can get early access to new videos and other Patreon only benefits. The contributions from my patrons is an important way to cover the costs, time and energy I put into the videos and blog posts I create. Shooting and editing a 3 minute video takes about 5 hours. Writing a blog post around 3. You can read more about my Patreon page here.
  • Follow me on Instagram.  I announce new blog posts, share images from behind the scenes and post lots of woolliness.
  • In all the social media I offer, you are more than welcome to contact me. Interacting with you helps me make better content. My private Facebook page, however, will remain private.
    If you like what I do, please tell all your fiber friends and share these links!๏ปฟ
Posted on

Jรคmtland wool

The newest sheep breed in Sweden is Jรคmtland sheep. The purpose of the breed is to have a meat sheep with wool that can be a Swedish alternative to the tons of merino wool we import from New Zealand, Australia and South Africa. This is the fifth part of my breed study of Swedish sheep breeds from the spinner’s perspective. Previous posts have been about Gotland wool, Gute wool, Dalapรคls wool and Vรคrmland wool.

This Sunday, March 22nd at 5 pm CET I will host a free live breed study webinar on Jรคmtland wool! I will share my experiences with the wool from a spinner’s perspective.

I am aware that this is very short notice. However, considering the situation in the world, I think we need a live webinar now more than ever.

A framed board with a wool staple and a tuft of carded wool. Letters saying Jรคmtland wool at the top of the board.
Whole year’ staple of Jรคmtland wool.

About Jรคmtland sheep

Stop the waste

A lot of Swedish wool is being wasted. At the same time we import tons of merino wool from New Zealand, Australia and South Africa. The owner of a Swedish wool manufacturer in Jรคmtland in Sweden questioned this system and wondered if there was a way to use Swedish wool for his products. The problem, though, was that Swedish wool was coarser and would be scratchy in the next-to-skin garments that his company made. The idea of a Swedish alternative to wool import was born.

A new breed

As a result of this, a project started in 2004 where merino ewes were imported and crossed with fine fibered Svea ewes. Svea sheep is a Swedish meat breed which is a cross between the meat breed Texel and the Swedish landrace finewool sheep. Swedish finewool does have some merino in them from crossing with the merino sheep that we had in Sweden in the 18th century. In 2010 the Jรคmtland sheep was presented as a new breed at the world merino conference.

A pile of fine fibered white wool with high crimp.
Unwashed Jรคmtland wool.

Jรคmtland sheep has increased in popularity as both a meat bread and a wool breed. Statistics say that there were 382 breeding ewes in 20 flocks in 2019. Rams weigh 90โ€“120 kg and ewes 80โ€“110 kg. This is a lot heavier than the landraces and conservation breeds I have presented in earlier breed studies. The micron count lies between 17 and 23.

Long locks of very fine wool and lots of crimp.
Jรคmtland wool has the crimpiest crimp.

Fashion industry

Jรคmtland wool has become very sought after in the fashion industry. Several companies have produced clothes made in Jรคmtland wool. One problem is that the demand is bigger than the supply. A clothes manufacturer may want larger quantities than the sheep farmers can provide. The garments that have been sold have been produced in small quantities with social, environmental and ethical aspects considered.

Knitters and spinners

Many of the Swedish spinning mills today produce yarn with Jรคmtland wool and the products are popular among knitters.

Jรคmtland fleece is also very popular among handspinners in Sweden. In the past few Fleece Championships Jรคmtland wool has been placed in its own category. The shepherdess I usually buy my Jรคmtland fleeces from probably has more championship medals than she can count.

Jรคmtland wool characteristics

Two hands holding a grey long fine fibered staple of wool. Two piles of fleece in the background.
Jรคmtland wool at the 2019 Swedish fleece championships. Whole year’s fleece to the left, autumn shearing to the right. The white fleece got a silver medal in the Jรคmtland category.

Jรคmtland wool is very fine fibered and has high crimp. In contrast to most merino, Jรคmtland wool also has a beautiful shine. The staples are uniform over the length of the staple and over the body of the sheep.

A microscope picture of wool fibers. Fine and even.
Jรคmtland fibers enlarged.

Since Jรคmtland sheep has a lot of merino in them the fleece is generally very high in lanolin, at least compared to the Swedish landraces I’m used to.

I have bought all my Jรคmtland wool from Birgitta Ericsson, a shepherdess who covers her sheep and shears them once a year. The cover is probably necessary to be able to manage a whole year’s fleece, especially considering the high degree of lanolin.

A dark grey fleece wit fine fibers.
Unwashed staples of grey whole year’s Jรคmtland wool. Photo by Dan Waltin.

The superpowers

When I see a fleece I want to get to know it and find its superpowers. I look at the different characteristics and choose three that I feel represent the fleece and that I want to let shine in a yarn and garment. The main characteristics I see in Jรคmtland wool are:

  • The softness of the fibers. They are dying to be worn next to your skin.
  • The crimp. It is hard to take your eyes off the crimp of these staples and I want to make the crimp justice in the yarn I spin.
  • The shine. Jรคmtland wool generally has a lovely shine that in my experience is unusual in this fine type of wool.

Preparation and spinning Jรคmtland wool

Washing

Before I go into wool preparation I need to talk a bit about washing. I wash Jรคmtland wool a lot more brutally than any of the other breeds I spin (I wash other Swedish breeds in water only). Now that I have learned the terminology in English I can safely say that I scour Jรคmtland wool. I bundle up the long staples and tie them with yarn and put them in a pot. I use lots of detergent and hot water. When the wool is dry I can remove the yarn ties. This method takes away enough lanolin for me to be able to handle the fibers without too much fuss.

Combing and worsted spinning

The first fleeces of Jรคmtland wool I processed I combed. To avoid breakage I flick carded the ends of the staples first and hand-combed with my mini-combs. This resulted in beautiful, lofty bird’s nests with lots of bounce. I spun these fluffy balls worsted on my spinning wheel.

One issue with fine fibers like these in combination with the dry air in large parts of Sweden is static electricity. When I comb the long fibers they point in every direction possible and make the aligning of the fibers very difficult. I solve this by spraying a mixture of water, coconut oil and a drop of detergent on the staples. This calms them down a bit. The coconut oil is soluble in low temperatures and comes off easily when you wash the yarn.

If there is still a lot of lanolin in the fibers I place the bird’s nests near the fireplace to make it more fluid and cooperative.

2-ply laceweight Jรคmtland yarn, combed and worsted spun.

From the fold magic

One day I decided to try to spin the long Jรคmtland staples from the fold. The length was perfect and I thought why not? The second the fibers merged into the drafting triangle from its folded position over my index finger it dawned on me: This is how this Jรคmtland wool wants to be spun.

A hand holding fibers folded over the index finger. Fibers are going from both sides of the fiber into the spinning twist.
Spinning from the fold. The fibers come into the twist in a wider angle. Since they come into the twist from the middle of the fibers they strive to unfold.

When you spin from the fold you double the staple over your index finger and spin from the middle if the fibers. What happens when you spin from the fold is this:

  • The fibers come into the drafting triangle from a wider angle. In this, more air coms into the yarn.
  • The folded fibers strive to unfold, which also results in more air in the yarn.
Flick carded staples of whole year’s Jรคmtland wool spun from the fold on a supported spindle and 2-plied.

Spinning from the fold is not a spinning technique, it is just a different way to hold the yarn. Thus, you can spin both woolen and worsted from the fold.

Five pieces of yarn on a board and a staple of wool. The leftmost yarn is sleek and thin. The yarns become more fuzzy and airy towards the right.
Different preparation and spinning of Jรคmtland wool. From the left: 2-ply combed and spun worsted on a suspended spindle, 2-ply spun worsted from the fold on a suspended spindle, 2-ply spun woolen from the fold on a supported spindle, 3-ply spun woolen from the fold on a supported spindle, 2-ply spun woolen from hand-carded rolag on a supported spindle.

Carding and woolen spinning

I would not recommend carding fibers in this whole year’s length. The fine fibers would most probably break and result in nepps in the yarn. Shorter fibers would be excellent to hand-card with fine cards. The fine fibers and high crimp would be excellent for a soft woolen spun yarn.

Use

I have used Jรคmtland wool for lots of different purposes โ€“ sweaters, half-mitts and shawls. It is perfect for next-to-skin garments and accessories. Due to the fine fibers Jรคmtland wool is not suitable for projects that will wear a lot.

A woman standing against a tree. She is wearing a grey sweater with white sleeve ends and white hem. The yoke has a stranded knitting spinning wheel pattern.
Grey yarn from the grey Jรคmtland fleece above. White yarn from Swedish fihewool. Photo by Dan Waltin

The dark grey yarn in the sweater above is worsted spun from hand-combed tops of Jรคmtland wool. You can see the whole process in this video (available in Swedish too). I knit the sweater in 2015 and I recently had to mend the elbows.

A woman walking on a path. She is wearing a thin asymmetrical turquoise shawl with drape.
Laceweight worsted spun Jรคmtland yarn in Martina Behm’s Viajante design. Photo by Dan Waltin

In my experience Jรคmtland wool looks best in fine yarns โ€“ lace weight or fingering weight. The shawl above is spun as a lace weight. The shawl below is the leftover yarn from the shawl above.

A girl holding up a turquoise lace shawl. The shawl has a spider at the top.
I got some lace weight yarn left and made a spider shawl for my daughter back in 2015. Photo by Dan Waltin

Live webinar!

This Sunday, March 22nd at 5 pm CET (world clock here) I will host a live breed study webinar about Jรคmtland wool from a spinnerโ€™s perspective. In the webinar I will talk briefly about the breed in Sweden, wool characteristics and how I process, spin and use Jรคmtland wool. I will use Jรคmtland wool during the webinar and show you glimpses of how I process and spin the wool.

Even if you think you will never come across Jรคmtland wool this is still an opportunity to learn more about wool in general. The breed study webinar will give you tools to understand different wool types and apply your knowledge to breeds and wool types closer to you.

This is a wonderful chance for me to meet you (in the chat window at least, I wonโ€™t be able to see you) and for you to see me live and unedited. The previous live breed study webinars I have done have been great successes. I really look forward to seeing you again in this webinar.

You can register even if you canโ€™t make it to the live event. I will send the replay link to everyone who registers for the webinar. Remember, the only way to get access to the webinar (live or replay) is to register.

Register for the webinar here!

Happy spinning!

You can follow me in several social media:

  • This blog is my main channel. This is where I write posts about spinning, but also where I explain a bit more about videos I release. Sometimes I make videos that are on the blog only. Subscribe or make an rss feed to be sure not to miss any posts.
  • My youtube channel is where I release a lot of my videos. Subscribe to be sure not to miss anything!
  • I have a facebook page where I link to all my blog posts, you are welcome to follow me there.
  • I run an online spinning school, welcome to join a course! You can also check out my course page for courses in Sweden.
  • On Patreon you can get early access to new videos and other Patreon only benefits. The contributions from my patrons is an important way to cover the costs, time and energy I put into the videos and blog posts I create. Shooting and editing a 3 minute video takes about 5 hours. Writing a blog post around 3. You can read more about my Patreon page here.
  • Follow me on Instagram.  I announce new blog posts, share images from behind the scenes and post lots of woolliness.
  • In all the social media I offer, you are more than welcome to contact me. Interacting with you helps me make better content. My private Facebook page, however, will remain private.
    If you like what I do, please tell all your fiber friends and share these links!๏ปฟ
Posted on

Spinning at work

I always bring some textile craft to work for coffee breaks and meetings. Usually knitting or nalbinding, but lately I have been spinning at work with a suspended spindle. The people around me have very different approaches to my spinning and I enjoy responding to people’s reactions.

Spinning as a safe space

Spinning is a safe space for me. I can spin in my own bubble and at the same time listen to the conversation around me. I need these safe spaces. If we have a coffee break at work and I’m not up to a conversation I can just spin away and take part when I want to and still get new energy. Spinning helps me take in the conversation and place it in a context without getting exhausted. The process of spinning helps me see the bigger picture and find solutions, much like a conversation or (thought process) can be more efficient during a walk, at least in my experience. The process of walking or spinning helps the mind find new paths and a direction of the topic.

Spinning for perception

During department meetings at work I bring my spindle. It helps me focus and take in the information. The combined auditive, visual and sensitive signals give me a better chance of remembering and understanding what is being said. In case the meeting is boring the spindle helps me stay alert. Recently I attended a mandatory training together with a colleague. She said that she was jealous of me who had something to do while listening to the speaker.

A suspended spindle in motion.
I spin at coffee breaks or, like in the picture, on department meetings. Many of my colleagues are softly gazing at the spindle during the meeting.

If I am worried that someone thinks I’m not interested in the meeting I just make sure they notice that I am alert and understand the topic. My boss has commented that I look so calm and at peace when I spin, and she is right.

The watchers

Some colleagues just watch the spindle โ€“ the spindle in motion, the rhythm or my hands drafting the fiber. Most of them don’t say anything, but I know they are watching. I also know that my spinning starts something in their minds. Perhaps they enjoy the calming effect of the spindle or think of a foremother who was skilled in a textile technique. Even though nothing is being said I know there is a connection between us, like a diffuse cloud of thoughts merged together into something more palpable, just like the undefined bundle of fiber merges into the twist of the yarn.

A conversation starter

Not often, but sometimes someone asks about my spinning or comments. Perhaps they ask about the breed or comment on the calming effect the spinning has. It usually turns into a lovely conversation about sustainability, the respect for handmade things or the cost for individuals when we buy a cheap T-shirt. These conversations are important for the understanding of something that we too often take for granted. We depend on people making our clothes in shitty conditions, no pay and lots of chemicals. If I can make people around me aware of the time and effort invested in our textiles I have done something good. Perhaps someone decides not to buy that cheap T-shirt next time or buy a more expensive and durable T-shirt that lasts longer and that has been produced in more fair conditions.

A hand holding a suspended spindle in motion in a hair salon.
A while ago I brought my spindle to the hair dresser’s. It started a conversation of the fibers as the hair dresser thought the wool looked a lot like human hair.

A good thing

Whether the people around me just watch, think, comment or ask question I am certain that the reactions are positive. Spinning brings ancient techniques to people’s mind and make them think of times when today’s comfort wasn’t taken for granted. Textile techniques are things of beauty and I believe people respect the skills, art and love that are the foundation of a handmade textile. I am a firm believer that spinning make the world a better and kinder place.

Yarn break

Recently some colleagues from another department started “Yarn breaks” every Monday and Thursday after lunch. We meet at the coffee station and do yarn stuff. Most of the participants knit or crochet at various levels and I spin. We set a timer at 30 minutes and yarn away. These are lovely little pauses. New yarn breakers joins in every week. The more experienced help the newbies and we are all engaged in each other’s projects. The premiere writ warmers were finished, the blueberry hat was given to a new baby and the ripped sleeve got re-knit.

A basket of yarn and open knitting books. A sign invites people to join the yarn breaks.
“Yarn break at noon Mondays and Thursdays. Everybody welcome. Annika treats you to yarn if you want to try.”

Spinning at work: A project

The wool I have been spinning these last few weeks at work is the outercoat of a multicolour Hรคrjedal/ร…sen crossbred that I have been writing about in previous posts. To make out the most of the colours I have divided the fleece into colour piles and spun each colour separately. I ended up with five colours of the outercoat.

I have thoroughly enjoyed spinning this wool. Since I have been processing the wool colour by colour it has never seemed like a mountain of wool to spin. Instead I have had a maximum of six combed tops at a time to spin. This way it has felt doable to spin everything on a suspended spindle.

A basket of wool staples, hand-carded rolags and hand-combed tops.
I prep the wool at home and bring to my spinning breaks at work.

I’m spinning this wool into a true worsted yarn intended as a warp yarn. Since it is outercoat only and combed it is freakishly strong even as singles. My plan for the yarn is to weave a bag of some sort. I intend to spin some shiny Klรถvsjรถ outercoat as well and dye it into a warm blue colour that hopefully will team up nicely with the browns.

Four skeins of yarn in shades of brown and a spindle with brown yarn.
Five shades of the Hรคrjedal/ร…sen lamb Chanel’s outer coat. Spinning at work pays off!

Do you spin at work?

Happy spinning!

You can follow me in several social media:

  • This blog is my main channel. This is where I write posts about spinning, but also where I explain a bit more about videos I release. Sometimes I make videos that are on the blog only. Subscribe or make an rss feed to be sure not to miss any posts.
  • My youtube channel is where I release a lot of my videos. Subscribe to be sure not to miss anything!
  • I have a facebook page where I link to all my blog posts, you are welcome to follow me there.
  • I run an online spinning school, welcome to join a course! You can also check out my course page for courses in Sweden.
  • On Patreon you can get early access to new videos and other Patreon only benefits. The contributions from my patrons is an important way to cover the costs, time and energy I put into the videos and blog posts I create. Shooting and editing a 3 minute video takes about 5 hours. Writing a blog post around 3. You can read more about my Patreon page here.
  • Follow me on Instagram.  I announce new blog posts, share images from behind the scenes and post lots of woolliness.
  • In all the social media I offer, you are more than welcome to contact me. Interacting with you helps me make better content. My private Facebook page, however, will remain private.
    If you like what I do, please tell all your fiber friends and share these links!๏ปฟ
Posted on

Sheep festival

This past weekend I attended the sheep festival in Kil in Vรคrmland, Sweden. It is an annual event that attracts thousands of visitors. This was the 14th festival. The aim of the festival is to spread knowledge, inspire and facilitate networking with the four legs of the sheep as a foundation โ€“ wool, skin, meat and the sheep as a landscape manager.

The sheep organization

The first festival was held in the local industry building in Kil in 2006, but after a few years it had to move to a larger venue. It has since then been held at a local school when the children had their annual sports holiday in the end of February. The festival has grown from just a few hundred visitors the first year to somewhere around 10000 from all over Sweden in 2020. The town of Kil has 12000 inhabitants.

Everyone in Kil is involved in the festival and the preparations run through the whole year. The most significant symbol of the festival is the “tussris” โ€“ a bundle of twigs with wads of coloured wool. Every sports team in town is assembling wad twig bundles to decorate the town and the festival. The Red Cross is in charge of the wardrobe, other organizations are handling the entry fee, other volunteers are helping out as hostesses, serving coffee, cooking, serving, building, promoting, housing and literally breathing the festival. In addition to all the volunteers, several families opened their homes to traveling visitors. I stayed with a lovely family who moved out of their bedrooms to accommodate me and three other festival visitors for three nights.

Here is a short clip from the Swedish news from the sheep festival. You can see me and my embroidered backpack around 13 seconds into the clip.

The Golden Ram award

Every year The Golden Ram is awarded someone who is active in some aspect of the sheep. This year the prize was awarded to Fia Sรถderberg who is the founder of the Swedish wool agency โ€“ a digital marketplace where you can buy and sell Swedish wool. She is also the founder and host of the Swedish wool podcast (in Swedish).

Two women standing on a stage. They are holding up a certificate and a cheque. A sheep on a screen behind them.
Fia Sรถderberg receiving the Golden Ram award and 10000 Swedish Kronor ($1106/970 โ‚ฌ).

While spinning, I listened to Fia’s acceptance speech about how the Swedish wool agency came about. From a frustration over wasted Swedish wool to a flourishing wool market where crafters and sheep owners meet in the name of wool in just a few years. That is quite an achievement and the festival organization couldn’t have picked a more worthy person to receive the award.

Activities on the festival

Around 150 vendors come for the festival, selling yarn, wool, meat, skins, tools for crafting, hand made items and much, much more. Visitors can also take classes, workshops, watch shows and demos and listen to talks about different aspects of sheep and products from sheep.

Braids of coloured wool yarn in a scale from green to pink.
Wool embroidery yarn in every colour.

I didn’t take many photos, but if I had, they still wouldn’t have made the festival justice. But if you wish, you can imagine pictures of yarn, wool, sheep, skins and textiles here.

A knit wizard

I came to the festival with Sara Wolf, who also goes by the alias A knit Wizard, and her husband. Sara is a writer who is working on a book called Knit (spin) Sweden and I assist her with some of the spinning parts. They flew from Boston, landed in Stockholm, rented a car and picked me up on the way. It was lovely to finally meet her. We have had so many conversations about Swedish wool via email and now we could continue that conversation in person. You can read Sara’s blog post about the sheep festival here.

Sara gave me a present that took my breath away. A Turkish spindle. A real Turkish spindle she bought from an antique dealer when she lived in Turkey. It was made around the end of the 19th century.

An antique Turkish spindle with crossing wings. One wing slides into the other through a rectangular hole. The spindle is ornamented with carved patterns.
My new old Turkish spindle is a beauty.

When I look at the Turkey page in the spindle typology it looks very much like the spindles called Kirman โ€“ crossed wings with a short shaft. I need to make myself a shaft for this pearl. It looks just like my modern Jenkins spindles, only a wee bit heavier โ€“ this one weighs 93 grams!

An antique Turkish spindle with crossing wings. One wing slides into the other through a rectangular hole. The spindle is ornamented with carved patterns.
I wonder how many people have spun on this spindle.

Sara had a talk at the festival where she discussed her findings and conclusions about the history of knitting in Sweden. She also described how and why she was looking for Swedish wool. It was a very interesting speech and I became even more proud of being a part of her book.

People

Eventhough there is a lot of wool to fondle and a beautiful focus on all the aspects of how sheep are so useful to us and to nature, one of the most rewarding things about these kinds of events is meeting people. Don’t get me wrong, I am very much an introvert who takes care not to go to fairs and events with lots of people, but meeting and talking to people one on one gives me so much.

The first person I ran into was the shepherdess Birgitta. Her Hรคrjedal/ร…sen crossbred gave me the multicoloured fleece I am currently working on. I had brought a couple of skeins to show her what I had done. After all, I had got Birgitta’s trust to buy the fleece because I would be able to make the fleece justice in a way that no spinning mill would. She was truly happy to see the skeins and cuddle with them.

I met Kari, another lovely shepherdess who is a crafter herself. She won eight medals in the 2019 fleece championships for her Rya, Gotland, Finull, Leicester and landrace crossbred fleeces. She pays close attention to the fleece quality when she decides which animals to pair up for breeding and she obviously gets successful results. I always try to connect with shepherdesses whose fleece buy at the championships auction. For me it is important to show them how I continue with spinning what they have started with the care of their sheep.

A person who has been very important to me when learning about wool is Kia. She has worked for many years as a wool classifier in Norway and she is the one I turn to with wool questions. Every now and then I text her with a wool conundrum and she can always give me a good reply and teach me new things. We haven’t met many times, but we made up for it in Kil as we sat for three hours just talking and having a lovely time in the quiet vendor’s lounge. I bought a loupe from her and I will write more about that in an upcoming post.

A microscope image of wool fibers
Swedish Svรคrdsjรถ wool under the microscope.

I also met lots of other friends of wool. Some who I had met before on other wool events and some who introduced themselves to me and told me how they appreciated my work. Encounters like these always warm my heart. It gives me a feeling of connection and context in this very small world of wool and spinning and lots of inspiration and empowerment to continue my work.

Fleece market

The last day of our visit was the day of the fleece market, and naturally I wanted to grab a good fleece or two. I ended up with four. Fortunately I had brought some vacuum bags for easier transport.

Sara had talked about how she was amazed by Rya wool. I got inspired by that so two half fleeces came home with me, one white and one in grey tones. I bought them from Kari as I knew she would provide really high quality fleeces.

A pile of shiny wool in white, grey and black.
Washed rya locks in all the greys.

I also found a shepherdess who had the loveliest traditional style Vรคrmland fleeces. After all, we were in the county of Vรคrmland so it would only natural to buy a Vรคrmland fleece. I got two extremely soft fleeces โ€“ one in shades of grey and one in rosy brown tones. The ewes were four and six years old and I couldn’t believe how soft they were.

A row of shiny locks in different staple types from white to dark grey.
Unwashed staples from the Vรคrmland ewe Rutan, born in 2014. She has all shades of grey and many different staple types.

My last fleece was a lovely ร…sen fleece in a very light grey with some black tips. Soft, airy and shiny. I had bought fleece from this shepherdess before and I knew I would get good quality from her.

Staples of white wool with black tips.
Unwashed locks from ร…sen lamb with fluffy white undercoat and black outercoat.

All fleeces have now been washed. It is too cold outside for a fermented suint bath, so I have just washed them in warm water with three rinses, no chemicals added.

All in all it was a wonderful weekend with lots of new inspiration and ideas buzzing in my head. It did take a lot of energy, though, and this past week I have been very tired. When you read this post I have shut out the world and gone to a mini yoga retreat. Over and out.

Happy spinning!

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