Fleece to scarf challenge–with the Mid-Essex Guild

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The first sheep to coat challenge, 1811

In 1811 John Coxeter a mill owner in Newbury, Berkshire (UK) boasted that so improved was his machinery he could certainly start with a fleece and make a coat in a day. On June 25, 1811 the first sheep to coat challenge was completed. It produced what is known today as the Newbury Coat. The garment (pictured below) still exists and is displayed at Coughton Court in Warwickshire– a testament wool’s sturdiness! Since the Newbury Coat, sheep to garment challenges have become annual events at at county shows, fiber festivals and guilds.

Mostly it’s all in good fun, but there are some who take it all a bit more seriously. The Guinness world record time for a sheep to sweater challenge–4 hours 51 minutes– was set back in 2004 by Australia’s Merriwa Jumbucks at Merriwa, New South Wales. Last year Norwegian spinners and knitters attempted to break the record on live television, but fell a few stitches short. Those Aussies are hard to beat.

The Newbury Coat

Last Saturday my guild–The Mid-Essex Guild of Weavers, Spinners and Dyers ran a slimmed down version of the sheep to sweater challenge.One of the guild members supplied and dyed the fleece from her flock of Southdowns. We broke in to teams of five and started with uncarded, dyed fleece to create two scarves per team in about 3 1/2 hours. It’s not as easy as it sounds. Half-way through the challenge we could have used a visit from a massage therapist!

And we’re off!

There was a bit of inter-team trash talking…. well not really. Mainly we were sounding out strategy–such as how much yarn we needed to cast on 120 sts onto 8mm needles, should we be carding or spinning straight from the pile of fleece and should we ply from a center-pull ball or navajo ply? Luckily I was on a team with a bit of experience. One of my team mates had done a test run at home–something that never occurred to me!–and had a rough idea of how much yarn we needed to start knitting.

Once we had spun and plied enough yarn to cast on, the knitters dove in and did their thing. I mostly did spinning, but at the end knitted about five rows and cast off. Lo and behold we had finished two scarves. Talk about crafting on the fly. Phew!!

… three & 1/2 hours later Scarves!!

A Field Guide to Ponchos

 Sally Williams

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Ponchos are everywhere right now. Here in Oregon it’s still warm enough to be poncho weather. I’m sure we will move on to bitterly damp soon enough, but in the meantime I’ve been daydreaming about knitting up a good poncho. Rachel has even said to me, “Sal, there is no good reason for you not to have a poncho.”

So I’ve been looking in my back issues of Vogue Knitting, and on Ravelry, and it’s true, there are a million poncho patterns out there. OR ARE THERE?

When I was a very small child in the 70’s, my mom and I had matching ponchos, that were handwoven! for us by a family friend of my grandmother’s. They were bluish, with mauve-y pink plaid, and I believe mohair because of the general hairy-ness of them. Then my cat got sick on my poncho, and that was the end of that. Cats are the worst.

So your basic vintage poncho is a bias-draped afghan with a hole cut in the center:

Afghan ponchos

Now let’s look at the modern take on this.

VK Winter 2011/12

VK Holiday 2010

VK Holiday 2011

VK Winter 2011/12

Hey modern poncho, I get you. You’re a blanket that’s been folded in half with a neck hole added in. BIAS DRAPING IS SO LAST CENTURY !

But there are also some articles of clothing that are masquerading as ponchos:

VK Spring/Summer 2011

Nope. This is a caftan. Note the deep v-neck: this is not a repurposed blanket.

VK Winter2011/12

Tres chic! But not a poncho. The button-up front indicates that this is a cape.

Pickles pattern

Rachel sent me this pattern. I love the geometric detail, but this is the worst offender as far as non-ponchos go: those sleeves someone added in mean this is clearly, NOT A PONCHO. This is unfortunately a very weird dolman sleeved…sweater. I have issues with sleeve fit in knitted garments. Ponchos bypass this by having no sleeves.

I hope this helps.

Log cabin lessons: exploring the rigid heddle loom

 Rachel Wolcott

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Finished log cabin scarf

Impulse buying rigid heddle looms is just one of the things that happens at Sheep Cabana.

Last summer,I was out in Cambria, Calif., and stopped in at Ball & Skein. The store is chockablock with gorgeous fiber that I could barely resist, but I did. Instead I walked out with a 15″ Schacht Cricket rigid heddle loom, which I brought back with me to the UK.

I have used the loom a few times and have been muddling along with it–not making any serious improvement to my weaving skills. Then I came across a new book Woven Scarves by Jane Patrick and Stephanie Flynn Sokolov and published by Interweave. Full of beautiful projects and easy-to-follow instructions I felt more confident to try this log cabin scarf.

The plan was to spin some of my newly acquired and stashed heritage- and rare-breed fleece to create this beautiful log cabin weave. The log cabin pattern, I thought, would be great to show off the rare and heritage-breeds’ natural colours. One of the great features of Woven Scarves is there is a scale (actual size) photo of the commercial yarn used in the sample scarves alongside the instructions.

Shetland and North Ronaldsay handspun

When I went to spin 200 yards each of Shetland Moorit (chocolate brown) and North Ronaldsay (white, specks of grey), I kept the book to hand and referred back to the pictures every so often to check the yarn thickness. I did blend some darker Shetland roving with the Moorit that had flecks of dyed silk in it. It gives a subtle effect in the finished object–just little bits of color.

The instructions for this project recommended using the indirect warping method. This requires a warping board, which I made out of some pvc piping. Honestly, I should have just bought a warping board. No matter.

warping

Warping the loom was probably the trickiest part of this project for me. There was some considerable faffing with the warping board as I figured out how to use it.

Once I got the loom warped it was smooth sailing. Log cabin weave is a simple block plain weave. The pattern comes from the way the loom is warped (for example, light, dark, light, dark, then dark, light, dark, light, etc) and then woven alternating dark, then light, until switching to light then dark. There’s no call for pick up sticks or any of the other techniques you can use on a rigid heddle weaving.

weaving

However, it’s important to remember that before you go zooming off to weave yards and yards of fabric–you must hemstitch the beginning of the fabric and repeat the process at the end. It makes life a lot easier.

Next up in weaving: Attempting to sew a garment (or bag) out of handwoven fabric.

The Wool Week that was

 Rachel Wolcott

 Blog

Paycockes, Coggeshall

You know you’ve gone a bit potty for fiber when you find yourself in a 16th century merchant’s house in Coggeshall, Essex knitting and talking about wool all day.

That’s how I spent last Friday at Paycockes‘, with fellow members of The Mid-Essex Guild of Weavers, Spinners & Dyers’ doing our bit for Wool Week.

Paycockes is a National Trust property nearby me. It’s a classic Tudor-styled building with a gentle garden in the back sloping down toward the River Blackwater. The Guild has demonstrated there before, because Paycockes has come to represent the wealth created by the East Anglian cloth trade. Naturally wool was at the center of that trade. There are many other towns and villages in Essex, Suffolk and Norfolk associated with the wool trade–notably Lavenham, Colchester and Braintree.

These days the accepted wisdom is that wool, and therefore wool fabric, woollen garments, knitting yarn made of wool etc, is in a decline. Hence the Campaign for Wool’s Wool Week events. Basically, it’s a world-wide effort to promote wool as a natural and renewable fiber suitable for a wide range of uses from garments to home insulation. Sounds like a no-brainer, right?

The Mid-Essex Guild’s spin and knit-in was but a small part of the Wool Week activities, but it did give me the chance to chat to and answer questions from Paycockes’ visitors. I’m going to share some of the comments made and see what you think.

“You just don’t see wool anymore.” That was a comment from one woman who came in and spoke to us about knitting for quite awhile. She wondered aloud if wool’s disappearance wasn’t related to “disposable high street fashion and out throw away society”. It’s a theory I guess. I couldn’t get past her first comment about wool just not being around. Really? I thought. But then I’m probably not a good judge of these things.

Another theory about the decline of wool was: “We all have central heating now. We don’t need big woolly sweaters.” That makes sense to me. Paycockes’ visitors also observed, wool might be quite itchy, and moths like to eat it and then there’s the washing or dry cleaning. I hadn’t really considered all these reasons not to wear wool. But then I wouldn’t.

Other people asked me about my circular knitting needles and made comments about the big ball of wool one of the guild members had with her. “My what I big ball of wool!” The other comment that really struck me was this: “You can wear handknits again.” While wool is deemed to be less popular now, knitting is experiencing a resurgence in the UK. I can testify to that. Ten years ago there were two or three places to buy yarn in London, for example, and the range of yarn was limited. Now there are more shops and there is more choice. It’s a big difference.

Still, it didn’t occur to me that there was a problem with handknitted garments. But of course there is or was. There is still this lingering idea that store-bought is better. I also took the statement: “You can wear handknits again.” to mean there’s no longer shame in wearing handknits. It’s OK now. It’s even fashionable. In some quarters, knitting is still considered an activity one does out of thriftiness not for pleasure. Any knitter knows that these days most yarn is not cheap. Larger handknit projects can cost you a fortune in materials. Sal reckons most of the garments in Vogue Knitting require about $200-$300 in yarn. Not cheap!

Today I drove up to Colchester. When you come off the main road and head into town there is a meadow on the left side of the road. Usually there is a herd of cows in there munching away. Today it was full of sheep. Wool on the hoof for all to see.

Paycockes garden

display of blue-faced Leicester wool