A Woven Rug

I've been working to catch up on washing all the fleece I've got stashed around.  I keep trying to catch up so that I have none left to wash by the time I get my sheep shorn again.  The only time I have ever achieved that was when I had only two adult sheep.

Part of the hold up was when I was given a fadge filled with coloured fleeces.  It took me a while to get through them, then I was back onto mine and just never quite seemed to get caught up.

One fadge from years ago, went into the garden shed.  The shearer we had then, used a battery handpiece and would shear them wherever we had them penned.  He never used a carpet or even a tarp so the fleece was full of grass, seeds and thistle. He didn't separate the dags or belly wool out either.  It was awful to try and clean up.

I was away when he came that time.  He mucked us around for months, we lost a sheep to flies in that time.  He also did the lambs.

So this fadge has a mix of really long fleece lousy with bits of crap that take a lot of work to remove and short very soft fleece.

I tried spinning some of the lamb's wool a while back. It's a slow and frustrating process resulting in a weak thread that's hardly worth using.

That's why this fadge ended up in the garden shed being mostly ignored while I worked with the better fleece.  I say mostly ignored, because whenever we wanted something from the back of the shed, we'd have to move it or climb over it awkwardly and swear about it a lot.

I decided a few months ago to go hard and get this one done.  Get it sorted and out of the way.  I washed it.  It wasn't nice fleece for the most part.  Some of it is more like hair, some of it is matted to the point where I can't separate, comb or card it.  Some of it is permanently stained with sheep sweat (or to use the proper name, sanit) so it has a orange/tan tint.

I could toss it into compost.  I could ditch the lot.  It's pretty rough.  But I just can't do that.  I hate waste, surely there was still a use I could find for it.

I've been making blankets out of my coarser wool.  Everyone has a blanket, except Dad, he doesn't like the weight, the rest of us love them.  My youngest granddaughter isn't even in a bed yet and I'm already most of the way through her blanket for when she graduates to a big girl bed.

I'm running out of people to make blankets for.  I could make them to sell, but I don't think anyone is really willing to pay enough to make it worth my while and certainly not what they should be worth.

It occurred to me that we could use some rugs.  The rug we have on the tile floor in the entranceway isn't really the right size or shape.  I could make rugs.  I learned how to latch hook a rug years ago, my great-grandmother did a lot of it and while I don't think I learned from her, I picked it up somewhere.  There's also another style that I don't know what to call.  Dad used to do a lot of it, it's a series of loops poked through fabric (he always used hessian sacking).  You can either leave the loop or trim/shave it to the length of pile you want.

I presented this idea to Hubby. He didn't like the thought of any of those rugs and instead suggested a simple woven rug. I can do that.  I have a loom.

I got to thinking and planning.  I could use this awful wool and spin it big, uneven and chunky and that would make it even better for a rug.  It would give it a textural element that seems to currently be the big thing on all the home renovation shows.  Spinning chunky and uneven will also be quite quick to do.  If extremely challenging.

I'm a self-taught spinner.  I've watched a YouTube video here and there and read bits in books, but most of it has come from trial and error over about 8 years of practice.  I've spent that time refining my technique and getting a lovely fine and even thread.  So to deliberately spin 'badly' did my head in for a bit.

I started spinning in preparation for a rug.  I was a few balls ahead of the blanket I'm working on for the youngest granddaughter so I had time to spin.

Hubby was working on the hallway.  I banned any new major renovation projects over these Christmas holidays.  None of the previous projects have been completely finished.  The kitchen needs another coat of paint and some finer detail finishing.  The lounge needs some major decisions made regarding a new fire, walls fixed, skirting boards and the carpet laid properly.  Miss 14's room needs some finishing details.  The hallway had the floor replaced at the same time as Miss 14's, but nothing more had happened there.  I put my foot down and said I wanted to see some stuff finished before anything new was started.

The remaining wall paper was stripped and the walls plastered and pigment sealed.  The cupboard doors have come off, been tickled up where they used to be tight (particularly the high cupboards) and the linen cupboard is finally getting a door.  It's mostly down to painting and finishing now.

I suggested the rug I was going to make as a runner for the hallway.  We've gone for very light colours in the hall because it has no natural light of its own and is often a very dark space.  A creamy coloured rug running along the length on top of the fairly dark carpet will help lighten the space.

So to Hubby, it's a race now.  Whether he finishes the hall ready for the rug before the rug is ready for the hall.

I measured the hall and started to prepare the loom for spinning.

I fell down the rabbit hole of weaving.  Heddles and reed, warp and weft.  The jargon on its own can be pretty daunting.  Never mind the actual process and my own inexperience.

I've learned that there is a lot of warp wastage when using a loom.  Warp is the long threads that run from back to front through the heddles and reed.  The warp is the starting point.  You work out the length you need, add some and work it out on the warping mill.

For a 3 metre length, I wanted to start with about 5 metres just to be safe.  I worked this out on my warping mill and started measuring and threading the warp threads through. Hubby stopped what he was doing to help.  This made it a lot easier as I was having to go back and forth for each thread.

I decided to stop before I got to the full width of the reed.  The threads were looking rather tight on the reed and I thought it would probably relax wider when it was woven.

Threading the warp is the longest part of weaving anything.  It takes hours and days.  Each individual thread needs to be untangled from the rest (because you take 30-50 odd 5.6m lengths of woolen yarn, knot it around the rod on the back drum and it tangles itself in protest), poked through a small hole in the heddles, after making sure you've got the right shaft, threaded through the reed making sure you have the right dent and pulled all the way through.  When you've done each bundle, you slip knot it into a bundle to stop it from tangling up too much.  Rinse and repeat.

Warp threads attached to the rod at the back.

Through the heddles

Through the reed and slip knotted

Once that's all done, you undo the slip knots, lay out the long warp threads and wind the back drum up to pull the threads most of the way through.  This was a long and painful process.  The yarn didn't slide through easily like it has previously.  It became uneven and bunched on the drum.  Hubby helped me fix this, one thread at a time.  You also have to keep untangling the threads as they pull through the reed, because as we found earlier, they tangle themselves up constantly.

When you have it mostly onto the drum, you can then tie the ends around the rod on the front drum.  As I learned when I first set the loom up and played with it, you need to leave it until last, as it doesn't matter how well you think you've measured it, it ends up at uneven lengths.

So we did this and tried to start weaving.  The reed didn't want to move.  The entire loom was lifting as I tried to move it forwards and backwards.  The reed was too fine for my wool. 

Luckily I got three more reeds with my loom.  All of which had wider dents (slots) than the one I'd been using.  With Hubby's help, I untied all my threads from the front drum and pulled them through the reed.  I removed the reed and tried another.  I threaded approx 75 threads through and measured the width.  This was too wide, so we tried the one sized in between the two.  We had to remove about 40 threads but at least it worked.  I was finally able to start weaving.

Fortunately, the actual weaving is quite quick.  In only a few hours I've woven 2 metres of rug.

I love how it's working up and can't wait to see it finished.  I will give it a hot wash to hopefully shrink and felt it a little.

Weaving in progress

A close up of the weave