Monday, March 12, 2018

Spinning linen

It is 2018, March, and I am getting that feeling I get every year that I should be hanging out with sheep at some shearing day. My cotton plants are blooming and making squares. But I am devoted to a project that has been in progress for 10 years.
In 2008, I went to Black Sheep Gathering in Oregon and took a class on spinning cotton and linen- bast fibers. I got so excited about it that I came home and bought a full pound of Irish linen/flax from an on-line seller. I had a few small bags that I had picked up at the gathering. It all went into the pile because as much as I like spinning it, I was not sure what to do with the yarn.
2010-Then I took up weaving. I was told that weaving linen was tricky so I needed to practice a lot on other stuff first. Ok. I finally got enough experience to weave linen and I found that it was really easy and not the problems I had been told about- 2012. Hmm. It was time to find those bags and start working through the flax stash.
Unfortunately, life is complicated and there were a lot of events and time consuming activities happening. It is now 2018 and I have spun through 1/2 pound of my box full of stuff. I have enough yarn for the warp on something. But what loom shall I use. Ok, part of that busy time was accumulating looms and weaving other things. But I have successfully woven linen now and want to finish off this box of stuff. There is bast bamboo in there, too.
I started spinning this batch of linen in October 2017, but had to put my wheel away while I had extended house guest. I was able to start spinning again in March 2018. I managed to finish about 6 ounces of the 8 ounce bag within a week. I now have a full 8 ounces of spun linen. One bag down. I will start the next bag soon, but need to do a little house work first.
At some point I will warp up the loom and weave this as hand spun warp and weft.
I have joined a Yarn Moratorium group with the promise not to buy yarn for 12 months. Easy, peasy. But making my own yarn adds to the stash so I need to weave more to get this stash down.
There is no time for housework now. I just want to spin and weave until my piles are manageable fabric. Then we can look at the sewing room and see what must be done.
Linen is pretty easy to spin. I use a wet method so my fingers are damp most of the spinning. When it is cold out, this is not as much fun. We have had a fire in the fireplace for the last few days and it had made the spinning go very quickly. I don't have to stop to warm my fingers. I am hoping this will be a trend and that I can get through all the linen in a couple of months. Yea, right.