Scouring with Soda Ash

So...I've been sloooowly scouring (washing) the wool we bought for J2B last year.

A few minutes ago, I put some wool I'd cold soaked out by the pool into a hot tap water bath (2 gallons) with 1/4 cup of soda ash (courtesy of our pool supplies.). I've set the timer for 20 minutes. I don't have any means of weighing the wool. I think it was less than half of a pound's worth...I'm going to say 1/4 pound. We'll see what happens. The wool is in a zippered mesh lingerie bag

We have the house on a water filtration system, so we have soft water running through the pipes and in the pool.

Cold soaking with no soap appears to work fairly well to get rid of the dirt. If I set the tub out in the sun, it gets warm, too. I put this batch of wool in two consecutive cold soak baths of about 5 gallons of water, each.

Ding!
Okay! I just now took the wool out of the soda water and ran a hot tap water bath and put it in to rinse for another 20 minutes. The water from the soda bath looked like very weak tea. Obviously, the cold soak did not get all the dirt out of the wool. Depending on how icky the water looks after this rinse, I may put it in for another 20 minutes on a warm soak and then spin out the water in the machine before hanging it to dry on the back deck.

I picked the wool up off the cement around the pool deck and moved it to the table because the kids are going swimming.

I put half of the remaining wool in the spider tub (it has a spider decal on the side) to cold soak and I changed the water a few minutes ago. Yuck!

A few things I learned this past year

I've started scouring the fleece I bought last year to scour at Journey to Bethlehem. Yes, I know it's March, already. I need more time to let things settle in my mind and get into routines. I've also been sick.

Here are a few things I've come up with that I need to do for next year.
Warp Weighted Loom:
#1. Break down and use 12 ounces per warp bundle for the yarn I've got. I'm going to need 36 soda cans, I guess. Figure something else out for J2B, but just put a can in a plastic grocery bag each, out back.

#2. Find a way to do the heddles quickly. It doesn't have to be period, because very few will know and they won't be able to see it, anyway. I'm thinking texsolve cloth and stringing it to the rods.

J2B:
#3. Know my limitations. I can't do the wool washing. Someone else will have to do that.

This is some of the wool I'm scouring

Scouring wool

The fleece I bought to scour at J2B (and ended up not scouring) is REALLY dirty. Bits of poo and vm. It's the sheep dudu that bugs me. I can't get all the ick out just by washing it.

I have not found any documented way to comb it out that is period correct. The answer back then was probably to throw slaves you don't like or misbehaving children at it. The poo and vm needs to be picked out by hand in order to not mess up the lock structure.

I don't have slaves (darn!). My children would not be able/willing to pick out the ickies without tearing the wool up. If we are going to scour wool at J2B (probably not) then a fleece that has been blanketed should be obtained. If I have to pay money for a fleece to scour, then I want to be able to USE the wool.

For the fleece I have, I'm going to want to find a drum carder. Maybe Judi has one. Or I could borrow her wool combs.

In rinse bath #3

It would be easier to dye the wool at J2B. Only one tub of water, with the dye in it, just let it sit on a disguised hot plate until the dye is exhausted, hang up the wool/yarn to dry.

Clean, dry, and flicked!

So for now, I'm scouring the wool. I think I will dye some (using Kool Aid...yes, soooo not period...) but I want to experiment (cheaply!) with color changing mordants, like iron, alum and maybe some copper (pennies).

Warps and header bands

I found a way to wind the warp pairs for the warp weighted loom. YAY!

The chairs, back to back about 5 to 6 feet apart

I take two of my kitchen chairs, put them around 5 feet apart, and run the yarn through the hole in the top of the chair back. I wound it 4 times. I'm making warp pairs and the length I want is 10-ish feet, sort of. I don't have room to run 10 feet at once, let alone 20, so it's 5 feet: two down and back. Even that takes up most of the floor space in my kitchen.

I hear you wondering to yourself, "Why doesn't she just use a warping board?"

Answer: Because I haven't got one. I want a wooden one, but I don't want to cough up the money to buy the one I want. Besides, the wooden ones I've seen don't fold up. I think I would need to have one that can do that, even if I had the space.

Notes on Weave structures on the Warp weighted loom

I've been looking up weaving something other than plain weave on the warp weighted loom. I finally got a chance to go through some notes I'd downloaded and printed out from http://www.illuminatedspaces.com. They answer a lot of questions I'd had.

The natural shed counts as #1 on the shaft count of any weaving draft.

Apparently, once the heddles are threaded, I can do any twill pattern, except point and diamond (which use a mirror threading), it just depends on the number sequence I use for the pattern.

Now I just need to figure out what would have been used for numbers so I can make a pattern chart.

Making the header band.

The header band

I got the warping paddle/rigid heddle threaded for the header band. I got the handspun washed and weighted to dry out on the deck. I also found the wool box and it looks like most of the wool is still in very good condition, so I'm pleased about that.

one end of the header band

I went with a grey, black, brown and green on the cord. I decided to use the Patons from my stash for the warp. So far, I'm happy with what it's doing. I don't know if it will hold the weights, but we'll see.

I wove about 6 to 8 inches of the header cord tonight at craft night. I tried to take photos, but the battery was dead. I've got 36 ends so far and I'm dividing them into groups of 12. So far the color is working out like this: I've got 4 greys, then 4 black, 2 brown 2 green, 2 brown 4 black and 4 grey. Then I'm going and doing 4 black, 4 brown, and 4 green. That is as far as I've gotten.

the other end of the header band

I've come up with a way to weave the header band that works for me. I weave one end of the header through, but don't pull it in all the way. I then measure the rest of the warp for that end AND for the next one. I hold both ends together, and weave the other shed on the cord, and then pull them both through at the same time, making sure to keep the selvedge on the one side neat. It seems to be working well.

I brought it home to work on next week, so I will take photos and show step by step in the next post.

My back and shoulders really hurt! It's been a long time since I did this, and the chairs at church didn't work as well as my dining chairs here at home.

Making Loom weights

Making the weights is the first step in setting up a warp weighted loom, for me. They have to dry for a couple of weeks, so I make them first.



I made loom weights yesterday, 10/15/2011. I knew I would need some more than the ones I already had that are in storage in the wool box (which, I guess, is still in storage.).


I bought two tubs of this air dry activ-clay. It comes in other colors, but my other loom weights are terra cotta colored, so, fortunately, I was able to find it.






I used the wax paper to line a cardboard box so the weights would dry. It is good to put the weights on either parchment paper or newspaper or something while the clay is drying.





The pool shark toy is keeping the paper from blowing away while I make the weights. You don't have to use a pool shark to keep the paper from blowing away. It just happened to be handy, so I used it.



First, your hands need to be damp while you work the clay, so you need to have some water on hand.

Pull off a handful of clay.

Roll it into a ball.

Flatten the ball.

Pinch a hole into the center of the flattened ball and smooth it out.




This is the box of loom weights. Yes, they look like doughnuts.


The two tubs of clay (3 lbs. per tub) made 37 weights. They were made by feel, so the weight of each one is not exact.

The two that are lighter in color wouldn't fit in the box, so I put them on one of the box flaps to dry. They got more direct sun, so those are drier.


Traditionally, loom weights were not fired. It's not that they couldn't be, it's more of a "why bother" type of thing. They were probably made from a similar recipe to that of the mud bricks, which were also not fired.

Looms would be set up when the weaver had enough wool or linen to make a warp. The weft spinning can be done as you weave, if necessary.

Past photos of the warp-weighted loom

I went searching through the old photo cd's. I found some pictures that had been taken of the loom in Journey to Bethlehem, so I am posting them. They are in order of year.

December 2005, the first year we put up the loom.

I misjudged how long it would take to make the heddles, so that's what I'm doing here. And doing it wrong, as it turns out. I should have been tieing the heddles to the bar above me. I really didn't know what I was doing at the time. I had barely learned to weave on a regular loom.

You can see the loom weights. I got some air dry clay at Joann's and made those. I re-use them every year, but I always have to make more. Some of them break. Another problem is that they dry out and lose moisture weight. I've figured out that I need 5 to 8 ounces on each warp bundle. I had these at 10 ends per bundle and 1 weight on each one.

This is the loom in December 2006. It's blurry. I'm spinning, there on the near end in the pink and black. You can see the header cord, at the top, there.

This photo is from December 2008 or '09. It's a close up of the spacing chain on the warp.