sweetgeorgia

Sample Girl

I am the new sample girl for our Greater Vancouver Weavers’ and Spinners’ Guild. What does this mean? It means that every two months, I serve as a liaison between a weaver/spinner who is interested in providing woven or handspun samples to our guild newsletter and the newsletter editor and other volunteers.

Members who receive paper versions of the guild newsletter will also receive a handwoven cloth sample or some interesting handspun yarn. Members who opt to receive their newsletters by email will see a photo of the sample and can pick up a real, live sample at the following guild meeting. The handwoven samples are usually about 1.5 to 2 inches square to allow people to get a good sense of the structure, drape, and hand and are accompanied with instruction on how to produce the fabric (e.g. draft for weaving, list of yarns, special equipment, special techniques, etc.). For physical handwoven and handspun samples, the provider receives a cash honorarium.

When I volunteered to take on the task this past March, I figured it would be a great way to learn more about weaving using different techniques or fibres… but there can be no learning if there are no samples! Yep. The deadline for samples is this Friday, September 1st and all summer I haven’t heard even a peep from anybody who might be interested in contributing samples. I mentioned this to a couple long-time members and they both agree that if there are no samples, then hey, there are no samples. Too bad, but, no worries. They also mentioned that I shouldn’t feel pressured to weave something myself just so that we have samples. Ok, sounds good to me, but…

I wonder if this situation exists elsewhere. Do you belong to weaving or spinning guilds? Do you contribute samples? Why or why not? Is it just too much work? Or you think your contribution might not be appreciated? Would providing more structure be a more attractive option? For example, for November/December let’s showcase samples that employ interesting use of colour and in January/February we’ll feature handwoven samples that use overtwisted warp yarns… Or would people rather just add an extra yard or two to their warps for whatever they are working on? I have no idea. I don’t even know what would pique the interest of a long-time weaver or spinner. For me, everything is new, everything interesting. I’m sure that for a long-time weaver, things that I find fascinating would be ho hum. What would be inspiring?

So as we speed towards Friday and right past this deadline, I’m already thinking about the November 1st deadline. Maybe I should bring some fabric back from China?

New Silks

How about some colour to go with that sunshine?

This is three skeins of 20/2 cultivated silk (bottom) and one skein of 70% silk / 30% seacell (top). SeaCell is a new fibre made from seaweed via the lyocell process. Sound familiar? It’s the same process used to make Tencel, Bamboo, Viscose Rayon, and other cellulose fibres. The manufacturers of SeaCell are saying that all the “good health” benefits of seaweed can be enjoyed, that is absorbed, by wearing fabrics made from SeaCell. That’s some fancy transdermal vitamin delivery system.

Healthy yarn or not, the SeaCell silk is gorgeous. It takes dyes nicely, but as you can see from first photo, it gives a warmer end product. I dyed all the skeins above using the same stock solution, but the seacell skein is slightly lighter (acid dyes not reacting with the cellulose portion of the yarn?) and slightly warmer.

Last night’s guild meeting hosted Diana Sanderson and Kate Barber who came and brought skeins and woven samples of these new silks — beautiful drape, luminous, light fabrics. There was also look/fondle/discussion about silk/linen, silk/bamboo, silk/camel and stainless steel yarn(!?!).

While they talked about yarn, I did this:

A couple days ago, I switched from the H&S ebony circs back to my standard Addi circs and knitting is faster and easier now. This weekend, I might just find some time to catch up!

Spinning New Fibres

What is it about new fibres that is intimidating? I bought little bags of ingeo, firestar, bamboo and soy silk last year on Salt Spring Island — did I spin it? Nope, not really. I dyed up a bunch of soy silk and started spinning it, but didn’t really like the feel… until…

Last Wednesday, through the Greater Vancouver Weavers and Spinners Guild, I attended the “Spinning New Fibres” workshop led by Kim McKenna (who designed the Salt Spring Island colourways for Treenway Silks). From 8:30 am to 4:00 pm, we spun everything from Viscose Rayon, Tencel and Bamboo to Ingeo, Soy Silk and Silk Latte. Most of the day was spent spinning samples of white/cream coloured fibres, making blends with merino and comparing samples. By the end of the day, we started playing with the coloured fibres in our goody bags and were mixing different coloured merino wools with various kinds of Firestar, Flash and Angelina. My blends were all made with my little Forsyth mini-combs and spun, worsted, directly from the comb.

Each of these “new” fibres has some interesting or beneficial feature. Although 100% handspun “Blending Nylon” or 100% “Fake Cashmere” might not be appealing, blending a bit of it with wool makes the final yarn stronger. Soy Silk on it’s own isn’t really fun to spin, but blending it up with wool makes it easier to spin and produces a loftier yarn. Even adding a bit of Viscose to a blend gives the yarn a slight glittery, shimmery look.

One interesting point though — for the same weight of fibre, natural silk is still less expensive than Silk Latte, Ingeo and Bamboo.

And speaking of new fibres, my Gotland fleece arrived already! I washed a little lock of it last night with some Dawn and hot water and it’s super clean and shiny. The fleece isn’t really smelly at all — I checked several times! Yum.

Edited to add: I was so excited about uploading these photos that I forgot to mention my favourite blends! One of my favourites was Ingeo — it seemed to give loft and structure. Good for blending with wimpy fibres (like adding crispness to alpaca). I liked the merino/Silk Latte blend — smooth, drapey, shiny — but expensive compared to real silk. And my absolute favourite — the deep chocolate coloured merino plus auburn alpaca plus copper flash. Yummy like dessert!

Having a Bridget moment.

Bridget Jones and I must have been separated at birth. I mean, trying to hide fifteen pounds of spinning wheel and fibre from a room full of onlookers? Completely mortifying. Man, why didn’t anyone ever mention that spinners don’t actually spin at a spinning guild meeting?

So last night I attended my first guild meeting. Not knowing what to expect, I brought along my spinning wheel and fibre. I walked into the meeting and realized that no one else brought anything except their knitting… Really, the meeting was just like a business meeting… set up like an annual general meeting for small companies… How embarrassing. I talked to the membership chair and she explained how their meetings work — business at the beginning and programmes afterwards. I found a seat near the back and actually put my jacket over the wheel so that hopefully not everyone in the guild would think I was a complete knob. I was kind of outed when the girl behind me recommended that I move my wheel to the back of the room. Ok. No problem. I can deal. My spinning teacher, Irene, was also there and introduced me to a couple people — all good. Everyone was very friendly to me, the complete knob.

After the business portion, the programme of the evening was “Try Something New” and allowed members to try their hand at a variety of different crafts. There was needlefelting (led by Irene), basketry, Chinese knotting, silk ribbon weaving and bobbin lace. I went for the bobbin lace… so much fun! See what I made:

That’s some “cloth stitch” on the right, “whole stitch” in the middle and “half stitch” on the left. The girl who taught us has been doing this for 12 years!

I came to the meeting not knowing what to expect and I left with a lace bookmark and a membership card. Yep. I survived and now I’m a card carrying member of the Greater Vancouver Weavers and Spinners Guild. Maiwa discounts, here I come.