Poor Alfie, his dignity is just eroded more and more. He's very philosophical about it though.
Anyway, enough tormenting of innocent creatures. I have a Project which I am thinking of starting. I haven't really been thinking much about my own personal projects over the last few months, because I've been too busy. This, however, might well have been a bad idea, because those personal projects are the engine-house of what I do. They're where I play, where I work things out, where I just do the things I'm interested in, and of course I tend to find that they lead me down useful paths as well. Now, I have two talks to give in the early part of this year, one next month and one in March, and I want to have a Major Project to discuss for them.
As you know, I'm interested in the historical side of both the Cotswold sheep and the craft of hand spinning. One of my goals for having the flock of sheep has been that I wanted to gain a personal understanding and experience of all the processes which are involved in going from fibre to finished object, both in the modern setting and as they would have been done in the heyday of the breed, and I think I have tackled that pretty well so far. Mostly. I have delivered lambs, I have done routine and non-routine shepherding tasks. I know enough about shearing to be completely OK about that fact that I will never, ever use hand shears (like big scissors, basically) to shear my sheep - too much like hard work, takes a stress-inducing long time to do, doesn't do such a good job in the hands of a beginner. I can sort fleece, assess it, send it to the mill and do creative things when it comes back. I am a pretty expert hand spinner by now too. But there's one big process that I know little about, which is wool combing, and it's that which I intend to master this year.
Wool combing is a process particularly suited to the long locks of Cotswold fleece. It enables the spinner to create a yarn which is flat, shiny and hard-wearing; one in which all the fibres lie parallel (known as worsted), rather than one in which they are jumbled (known as woollen). It's not a particularly common skill today; most fleeces are prepared by carding, which is the way of preparing for woollen spinning. The main source these days for finding out about wool combing is the outstanding book by Peter Teal, Hand Woolcombing And Spinning. There are also lots of very informative videos on places like You-Tube (try surfing to find them, they are many and various).
So, here's the plan. I intend to purchase a pair of wool combs, probably for mondo cash (they are beautiful things, and craftsman-made, and of course as a craftsperson myself, I do not begrudge paying someone to make some for me), and learn by experimentation how to use them. I will then perfect my worsted spinning (I have done some, but not very much), and create a lace cardigan from the resultant wool, of my own design. I doubt I'll have it done by the first talk, but it will certainly give me something to talk about. I also intend to blog about this, how I'm doing it and what I'm finding out.
First step is buying the combs. I've emailed a couple of vendors, so I'm on the way...
1 comment:
I'll be interested to hear more about the combing. I started doing it as an alternative to carding (albeit with a dog comb rather than with proper wool combs) because I found it was easier on my wrists than carding. Once I started it I found that I preferred it to carding, although I'm not really clear what difference (if any) it makes to the finished yarn.
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