Whoever coined the phrase "warp speed" apparently didn't have cats

So. I warped the loom. Again. After the unfortunate incident with the red warp yarn that we dyed, I picked up five balls of lovely, red, strong DK-weight alpaca.*



I warped this up the weekend before last onto a 10 dpi heddle and wove a few inches, only to realize that the loom was assembled wrong. This bugged me something fierce, so I took the warp off, fixed the loom, re-tied it and wove about five inches that Sunday night.

Monday I looked at the resulting fabric with a critical eye. The fabric was coming out a little too airy, and was not going to be as weft-faced as we want it. Since the weft yarn is our group's cochineal hand-dyed handspun from raw fleece, we want it to be prominent.

So, I took the whole warp off last Tuesday, and Wednesday night I re-warped it onto an 8 dpi heddle. I was all set to have DH help me wind it onto the loom that night, but that was not to be:


The union stages a sit-in.


Negotiations commence: Whose need is greater?


Negotiations are concluded for the evening.

In the interest of not interrupting an obviously necessary nap time, we wound it on early the next morning, before he left for work (DH is a very good assistant warp-winder-oner, no matter how much he doth protest), and I tied it up Thursday afternoon. I spent much of last Saturday sitting behind a table collecting entrance fees from people for an SCA event.


A knitted SCA combined Arts & Sciences badge. Made quickly a couple weeks ago at the request of the event head cook, to her specifications, to be used as part of a serving presentation during the feast.

During the afternoon dead time at the event, after everyone who was coming had shown up but before we could officially close down the gate, I got in some good weaving time, and had help from at least three others. In the spirit of a truly group project, I'd like anyone who wants to weave a few rows to get a chance, so I taught a few new weavers as well, and Sunday I did some more at home.


Who's happy? That would be me.

It's coming out beautifully. The natural variegation of our handspun wool shows well, and the little bit of warp that shows adds just enough red to brighten it up.


Qapla'

From the first 79 foot skein of weft yarn, we have well over a foot of fabric, 18.5" wide. We're getting 9.5 rows of weft to the inch. We need a little over six feet of fabric - two 3-foot pieces - and then it goes off to others for embroidery and finishing.

And as I finally finish this post and check the date, I realize that it is officially our 14th wedding anniversary. Happy anniversary, love.


* Which begs the question, from a historical re-enactment standpoint, can alpaca yarn be considered within the SCA period we're aiming for, i.e. loosely pre-1600 (1650-at-the-latest) Europe? The answer is, maybe. Alpacas are a South American animal, domesticated there for thousands of years. The Spanish were slaughtering conquering the Incas in the 1500s, meaning they would certainly have had access to alpaca. But did the European conquerers actually use alpaca? Um, probably not. Rather, the Spanish brought in their own herd animals, and it's possible that nearly 90% of alpacas were wiped out during the Conquest, the rest being saved by the natives who took them up into the inhospitable higher altitudes. All modern alpacas come from these surviving herds. Alpaca wool was not really used in Europe until the 19th century. (Note: please don't use me or these random web pages as a reliable scholarly source!)**

** All of which begs the further question - Do I care?***

*** Which brings us to the answer: Nope. I have warp yarn of the right weight and colour that will not break on me. It is not synthetic, and is in fact from an animal that was domesticated well before 1600 and known by Europeans at that time, even if they were too dense to bother using alpaca for fibre. Blows raspberry in the general direction of any authenticity police.

Am I... blue?

Have you ever seen the "This Little Piggy" episode of Justice League Unlimited where Batman is forced to sing to save Wonder Woman?


It still makes me laugh. I am so easily amused.

At any rate, last Saturday started off perfectly normal, and continued as such, until the following conversation:

Bridget: (suddenly changing subject) I hate to say this, but I'm going to need containers to collect urine.
Daniel: (not missing a beat) You know, this is a dark, dark road we're going down...

I want to start a fermentation indigo vat. The old-fashioned kind. Now that I have ample backyard space, I'm thinking, why not?

Why not indeed. Never mind the smell, the chance of scaring our neighbours, attracting the wrong type of critters to my yard and confirming for all the world that I am full-on batshit crazy - did I mention the smell? My understanding is that however bad I think it will be, it will be worse. Bad enough that it could be used in a Klingon Rite of Ascension. I can hear it now:

"DaHjaj SuvwI'e' jiH.
[Today I am a warrior.]

tIgwIj Sa'angNIS.
[I must show you my heart.]

Iw bIQtIq jIjaH.
[I travel the river of blood.]

(pause)

Wait a minute, that's not... eeew."

Here's a great story about a urine indigo vat in Toronto. She is totally my hero.

Really, I'm not into dyeing. Not a bit. Not really my thing. This need - yes, need for an indigo vat comes because some friends and I require a nice, naturally-dyed forest green for a maybe-not-still-secret-but-I-should-check-first-before-blurting-everything project.

As part of this ongoing quest, I tried a recommendation and dyed some of the DorsetX with carrot tops. Another friend tried it unmordanted, and got an olivey-greenish-brown. I decided to test it in combination with copper sulfate as a mordant. On the left is some mordanted wool, on the right, the results of the carrot top dyebath:


Not exactly the green we're looking for, but interesting, in a brown sort of way

I've been researching other options for green. Spinach? Tried and failed. I missed a massive pear leaf pruning at a neighbour's house last fall by a day. There are plenty of things that will give olives and brown-greens, but it seems nothing comes close to giving the strong, bright, colourfast green we're looking for better than overdyeing a good indigo blue with yellow (or hopefully, vice-versa). And the most well-known, time honoured, tried-and-true natural dye combination for this: indigo and weld. I already have some weld-dyed yellow from last fall.

The oldest, and a very historically accurate, way of reducing indigo is in a fermentation vat using urine: "the Good Old Sig Vat" (as per Liles 1990: 82). Yes, there are other methods. Methods that don't make me sound quite as nuts. Methods that don't smell anywhere near as badly. But we're going for historical here, preferably pre-1600.

So really: how much choice do I have? The need is great. I have indigo and recipes. And, I have plenty of the crucial ingredient needed to reduce it.

Sigh. How bad can it smell, really? (Please don't answer that.)

A Time to Spin, Part 4: An Honourable Profession

Me: "In another life and time, I probably would have raised sheep and spent my days making useful things out of their wool. Spinning is a good skill. An old skill. It's an honourable profession."

Wise Woman #1: "Yes, but not very profitable."

Me: "I know. My children would never have gone cold in the winter. They might have starved, but they sure wouldn't freeze."
-------------------------

This is NOT a post.

...because if it were, that would mean that I'm not working right now. I prefer to think of this as "warming up the fingers for writing", which sounds useful, rather than posting a blog entry, which would be closer to "procrastination" than anything else.

After recent conversations with two very wise women who have both gone through this and come out the other side to talk about it, I am beginning to accept that this dry spell in Big D topic writing is normal. It's so big, so overwhelming at this point, that it's too much to tackle on a conscious level. I don't know if my supervisor will buy that, but it works for me. (My supervisor, by the way, is either being exceedingly patient and is not a bit concerned about my lack of written product, or has too many of her own problems to deal with right now to chase me down. I know for a fact it's actually the latter, but I also have an active fantasy life. She's incredibly supportive, though, which, when I'm feeling emotional, as I was today, makes me a bit weepy and concerned that I will surely let her and many others down. I hope that feeling passes soon, because it really bites.)

One of the Wise Women described my current state perfectly, in terms of her own experience: "laying on the couch late at night, wide awake, book you were reading forgotten in your lap while your brain whirls... begging for inspiration, 'please let this happen, let me be brilliant...'" I sometimes think I'll surely go mad before I write another word. But when it comes down to it, I don't have to be brilliant. I just have to be done. I know this, but it doesn't help right now, because I can't get my inner voice to stop screaming long enough to focus on putting words on a page. It's not a panic attack - it's frustration at not having the words. Lately I've been wondering a lot why I'm doing this. I hold tenaciously to the notion that the quest for knowledge, the desire to better oneself, do something you love and be recognized as "An Academic" and maybe even "A Good Teacher" is an Honourable Goal, an Honourable Profession. But in the back of my mind, there's that Wise Woman's voice: "Yes, but not very profitable."

No, we certainly don't do this for the pay.

Suddenly, I hear a Klingon voice, a little bit Worf, a little bit Captain Koloth: "Honour! Sucess! Qapla' batlh je!" Two Klingon warriors step out of the shadows and challenge me to a duel to the death. I brandish dual drop spindles, one end blunt and heavy, the other end sharp and pointy, and some tightly spun garrotting wool as my weapons of choice...

As I said, active fantasy life right now. Not so much with the writing, though.

So, the "Big D" proposal is going very, very slowly. Not backwards, thank goodness, but currently stalled for yet a few more days while I sort out more grading and Major Computer Issues (which will be told another day). But I didn't really intend for this to be a post about Big D. This is a post about what I've been doing other than Big D. And since I sometimes feel like I live and breathe technology all day, I have to fall back on low-tech a lot more these days, to clear the brain.

And wool is almost as low-tech as it gets, baby. A stick or two, something to weight down the bottom of one stick for a spindle whorl (a potato will do, or a mud-pie if you're desperate), and some hair. Yep, Low-tech.

Doctor Who Tom Baker scarf: 59.25% done and already a whopping 7'9" without any stretching. Daniel is pleased with it so far.


Next, wool for spinning:


No label, but it's probably hand-dyed merino. I picked it up at Lettuce Knit in February (?), where there were a half-dozen of these at $5 each, likely left over from a spinning class. I bought the four that matched in colour and started spinning it last weekend. I'm aiming for thinner than I usually do, so that I can ply it into a 2-ply DK yarn and make - I don't know, a hat, maybe? This is the first time I've started from roving with a specific project in mind. If it ends up a little thicker than DK, that's fine too, I can work with anything between DK and worsted:


There is a bug flying around me, tiny, mothlike. It's been bugging me for days, flitting in and out of my peripheral vision, occasionally popping up right in front of me in a way that is both reassuring, since it means I wasn't imagining it, and aggravating, because it is a freaking moth. The cats can't seem to catch it. Ford has tried and failed more than once (Oh, brave hunter, save me!), and Tiger... well, Tiger's response is:

What moth?

I finally broke down and dealt with it, since there's too much untreated wool in this place to let flying insects hang around unchecked. If my Daniel is reading this, I, um, set it free outside, dear.

Cats. They do keep things in perspective, don't they?


It's fine, Ford, I wasn't doing anything with the keyboard anyhow.

Coming soon: Really Big Computer Issues, garb, feast gear, and more things to do when you're staring at a blank computer screen and can't form a full sentence.