Spring in the North - So much better.

I've been like a mad woman in the last year or so, taking courses in all kinds of strange things.  Mostly old handiwork.  This is not typical of me.  It's kind of not at all like me.  I have always told myself that I can't be taught.  I'm too impatient and arrogant to take instruction from others.  Or so I have always thought.  But it turns out that I can actually listen to what others say and learn from them.  Of course I knew that.  It's not like I haven't learned everything I know from other people.

I spent last weekend with eight women in the north of Iceland, at an agricultural college learning to weave on a warp weighted loom.  This is the old looms that basically date from the stone age and were used right up until 1750 in Iceland.  By that time, weaving had, in Europe, long since become a matter of Guilds and was the domain of men.  Except here, where the vertical loom was found at every farm and women wove every piece of cloth that was used.  And all the yarn used to weave was spun on a drop spindle too.  Right up until the 1750 there were no spinning wheels in use in this country and no horizontal looms.  So it may come as a surprise that this method of weaving has almost become lost in this country.  But now there are at least 8 of us, who know how.

Maybe it doesn't matter that the old ways of doing things get lost.  Some people don't seem to mind.  Maybe most people don't mind.  I don't know.  I have no idea why this had started to matter to me.  But I feel privileged to have been a part of the small group that got to learn this.  And it's not that I was chosen or anything.  I just happened to hear about this course by chance and immediately got interested and signed up.  They needed six people, but had to cancel because they couldn't fill the spaces.  Even if I offered to sign my mother up if needed.  So I kept telling everyone about it.  In the end they had a waiting list.

This really is a most satisfying way to weave.  The loom doesn't take much space.  One can take it down and put it up again, without finishing the piece.  Something that can not be done in the modern looms.  The construction is quite simple and it's not really hard work, although progress is undoubtedly slower than on horizontal looms.

We wove with tufts of "tog" to make a type of cloth that was used in Viking times as a warm and waterproof outer clothing.  It made for a shaggy fabric that hippies would have been proud of in the sixtees.  But my little piece may end up as a cushion cover one of these days.

It took about 7 hours to set the looms up and then the going was slow since we were two to each loom and had to co-ordinate our weaving.  We all did pretty different pieces, some using the natural sheep colours and others using natural dyed wool.  One can weave quite complicated pieces on this loom, twill being the very traditional Icelandic fabric that was so well known in the olden days and was exported in large quantities.  Twill uses 3 shafts on this loom, but we only used one shaft and did a pretty basic basket weave.

I fell in love with this type of weaving and I'm almost planning to build a loom in the garden.  They really look quite good, rustic and solid structures made of sturdy branches and woods.  It would make for a really cool garden sculpture.

Washing Icelandic Wool Fleece

There is something incredibly cool about being knowing how to work wool from being a heap of freshly shorn fleece to a finished garment.  After I learned to spin I was only missing the first link (apart from the actual sheering).  I bought fleece from two sheep this spring when I was  doing the course on spinning.

I knew they would be rather smelly and dirty and that washing it would require the bathtub for a couple of days at least.  So it's been sitting in a plastic bag (not the best storage) in the garage because hubby wouldn't like it at all if I barred him from the bathtub for days.  But this weekend I found myself alone in the house and out came the fleece.

I don't mind the smell.  It's actually kind of nice.  Very farm-y, if you know what I mean.  But perhaps not a smell one would want on a garment.

The fleece was even dirtier than I expected and didn't really know if I could get it white nor was I hopeful that I could get rid of that farm-y smell using only water.

I had only gotten verbal instructions from my spinning teacher about how to wash the wool, so I searched the internet to get some more viewpoints.

Most people seem to use soap or detergent, but since my teacher only uses hot water, I decided to stick to her method and see if that worked.  I do have to admit that using stale urine sounds awsom and it probably is the best method.  It was used traditionally here, as well as in many (if not most) other countries, to get the wool really nice and soft.  It does make sense to a soapmaker that an alkali (the stale urine) and oil (the lanolin, although it is more of a wax than an oil) would make some sort of soap and therefor it should work quite nicely.  Something that I'm sure to try at some point.  Right now the collection and storage is a bit of a problem.  I need to negotiate with hubby about where I might put a collection container.

My biggest worry was that the wool would become felted by too much movement, but since I wasn't using soap I just decided to go for it.  Wool can take quite a bit of heat without felting, it just doesn't like sudden changes in temperature.

The washing is quite straight forward, but takes a bit of effort and time.

I filled the bathtub with 50°C / 120°F hot water and gently pushed a big chunk of fleece into the water.  I let it sit for about 30 minutes and then drained the filthy water.  I found it easiest to do that by putting the wool on a wooden thingy (it used to be a playpen, but I made a dog-gate with one part of it).  Then I filled the bathtub again with some more hot water, slightly cooler this time.  I think I did this four times in all or until the water was running pretty clear.  I let the wool sit overnight to drain and dry.

By the next morning it was quite dry, at least it was far from dripping.  So I hung it up on a coat hanger to dry completely.  It made a nice sculpture by the stairs for a while.  It seemed a shame to take it down.  I had some more hanging in the garage.  That was quite a lot of wool, and I only washed the cleanest bits from the middle.  So I still have quite a bit of wool in a black plastic bag in the garage, ready for the next time hubby is away overnight.

After drying the wool, I needed to separate the coarse outer hairs (tog) from the softer undercoat (þel) and that is done simply by pulling the long silky hairs from the coat.  The texture of the two is quite different, the outer hairs are very long and shiny, almost like human hair.  While the softer inner wool is lovely and nice and soft.

Since I didn't use soap there is still quite a bit of lanolin left in the wool and that makes it very nice to touch and lovely to spin.  I intend to spin some of it like that and leave it un dyed and make something nice out of it.  Preferably something that I would wear next to my skin.  The lanolin really is the nicest moisturizer and to imagine wearing a garment that contains a natural moisturizer.  What could be more luxurious.

Handiwork

In my language we use the word handiwork when we talk about all sorts crafts, anything really that is done by hand as the word implies.  Although, the word tends to have a bit more feminine slant covering more of the things that women tend to do more than men, like knitting, crocheting, sewing and embroidery.

Handiwork was the name given to the class where they taught those skills in school when I was seven.  The boys learned something called "smíði", a word that might be related to the english word smith which means metal worker.  The Icelandic word has a more general meaning because it captures a lot of materials like wood, metal and stone, but not wool, fabric or yarn.  I like to do both and would have enjoyed going to the boy's classes if they had been open to girls.  But nowadays they are, of course, and girls are free to explore a wealth of materials in their creative work.

I still like the feminine materials and love to have some handiwork going.  I have been doing a lot of knitting and crocheting as well as spinning, dyeing and cleaning both goat wool and eiderdown (yes, I'm still doing that).  There is something very comforting in having something on the knitting needles (or the crochet hook as the case may be).  It's like having a great big book to read.  Something that one can turn to again and again.  But then all too quickly it's all over.  And there is a sense of loss and emptiness that needs to be filled.  This didn't use to be a problem because in the past I hardly ever finished projects, but I have found that as I get older I also get better at finishing what I start.  I now have two new sweaters and a growing stash of beautifully coloured yarn.