Weaving

In the samples shown below, the first shows a rug with both cut and uncut pile rows. The rest are with cut pile, except the last which shows the cut pile combined with a pattern of chained uncut pile weft yarn. All the rugs shown were about 36 inches wide and varied from four to seven feet in length. Because the yarn used was commercial rug yarn, it was permanently moth-proofed and many of the rugs traveled with us until our next-to-last down-size, when all but one were given away.

Perhaps the best thing about our little studio house was that directly across the street, in another former neighborhood store, a butcher shop, a sculptor, Mike Price, had his studio. Because he and we all kept late hours, we became acquainted and then friends. And we met his girlfriend, later wife, Susan. There's more about our friendship with Mike and Susan in the page about our first time in New Orleans. Mike went on to teach at Hamline University and had a long and successful career as a sculptor.

Here's a picture of the former corner store that was Mike's studio. He lived in the back. This picture is from a visit to the neighborhood in 2012 and was taken for Susan.

When we moved to New Hampshire, both of us continued to make rugs and experimented with traditional flat-woven, weft-faced rugs in simple patterns as well as some tapestry techniques. We even made about a dozen rugs using the "punch needle" technique and some Aunt Lydia's yarns. We did a series of these rugs using old printers' logos, which Ellen had researched for a paper in graduate school. Here's a picture of one of those rugs, a copy of the trademark of William Caxton, one of the earliest printers in England in the 15th century. Not exactly weaving, perhaps, but an example of how the different parts of our lives and experiences connected from time to time. This is a picture of the original printer's mark of Caxton from about 1475 and the rug made from it. We later gave the rug as a wedding present to Mike and Pam Renner. We had known Pam in New Orleans when she was a student at University there, and re-connected in New Hampshire where she came with Mike in the summers to run a drive in movie theater in nearby Ossipee. We had many fun times with them.

Shortly after the few less succesful trials of weaving more traditional cloth, Ellen found a nearby master weaver, Bessie Swain, and began taking lessons from Bessie. Bessie, and her husband, Howard, had been early members of the League of New Hampshire Arts and Crafts in the 1930's and she had taught weaving and other crafts for decades. The lived in a large, rambling, old New Hampshire home in Exeter filled with looms and other weaving equipment, most of it "saved" by them as the popularity of weaving waxed and waned through the years and any equipment in danger of being thrown away could fine a home with them. There were also many looms made by them and used to instruct young people in weaving.

In 1938, Bessie had founded the New Hampshire Weavers, an offshoot of the newly organized League of New Hampshire Arts and Crafts. The parent organization, now the League of New Hamshire Craftsmen, still going strong and operating several galleries in the state. and the New Hampshire Weaving Guild continues their craft.

We learned a lot about weaving and about life from Bessie. She was an inspiration and a Yankee through and through. We also got from her the tendency to acquire looms and other weaving paraphernalia.

Here are some of the overshot patterns woven during that time and later. The first is an overshot sample Ellen did under Bessie's tutelage. The rest are of various projects including one of a handbag using a small overshot piece.

Soon after moving to New Hampshire, we purchased a small flock of sheep. Although we were intending to convert the farm to orchards, we wanted to use the land in the meantime for other farming purposes and raising sheep seemed a good idea at the time. There is more about our adventures and misadventures raising sheep on the New Hampshire Page.

And with sheep, comes wool, as they needed to be sheared annually. At first we had a neighbor shear the sheep for us, but soon were doing our own shearing and raising the lambs to add to the flock. At first we sold the wool, which was nearly worthless as the international wool market was dominated by the Australian producers. Wool from Australian sheep was largely from Merino breed of sheep, and was finer, longer, and had a better crimp for spinning than American produced wool. The Australians also sold wool through a huge conglomerate of producers, storing and stockpiling the wool to market it at the best time and price. And controlling the world price for their product.

Some years later, on a visit to Old Sturbridge Village, Massachusetts, a "living history" village and museum recreating New England village life from the 1830s, I picked up a copy of a reproduction news letter from that era. Among other things, the flyer had the then current price for wool, fifty cents per pound. Which was the exact same price we had gotten for our wool through the U. S. Department of Agriculture subsidized "wool pool". Not much progress in 150 years. It was soon after that we started selling our wool differently and also started sending some of the lambs to market each spring.

We found out about Bartlett Yarns, a small spinning mill located in Harmony, Maine, about a three hour drive from us. At that time, they did a "trade" arrangement, whereby a local wool producer would give their fleeces to Bartlett and get a proportion of the fleece weight back as finished yarn. That seemed a really good deal to us, and we soon ended up with a supply of Bartlett yarn for knitting. We soon had more than enough yarn for our projects and began to store the extra and soon were selling it from our Kitchen. And thus, Ellen was in the yarn store business and "Andes Yarns" was born.

Bartlett yarns was established in the early 1800s and spun its yarn on spinning "mules". These spinning machines spun yarn using a technique very much like that used when spinning by hand on an old fashioned "walking wheel". The machines in fact closely duplicated the motions used by a hand-spinner working with such a wheel. The rotating spindles of the spinning-mule machines first twisted the yarn as they rotated in a near horizontal axis briefly. Then the entire machine, with its multiple spindles, moved on a track across the mill floor almost the width of the building, imparting both spin and traction to the yarn as it spun. The combination of spinning or twisting the fibres while pulling on the growing yarn is what "sets" the spin and interlocks the fibers. The mules moved out to their full distance away from the head of the machine, which held the roving, the lengths of carded but unspun wool. Then the spindles turned vertical and as they rotated the entire machine moved back across the floor to its original position, winding the yarns onto the spindles. The process repeated until the spindles were full and the yarn needed to be removed by the attendant to continue the spinning process.

Yard to be spun is first carded into a "roving" in which the fibers of the wool were oriented mostly in the same direction, a circular direction around the circumference of the cylinder of the carding machine or the surface of the hand cards. Carding is a sort of combing using two fine metal comb-like surfaces moving in opposite directions to orient the fibers of the wool in mostly the same direction. When spinning, the wool from this roving was taken from the middle of the roving, producing a yarn in which the fibers tended to lie more perpendicular to the length of the yarn rather than more parallel to it. This type of spinning is termed "woolen" spinning and produces a softer "loftier" yarn, than yarn spun by the "worsted" spinning method. In worsted spinning, the yarn is carded to produce a roving in which the fibers are more aligned to what will be the length of the yarn and the spinning is done from the end of the roving to maintain that alignment. Worsted yarns are stronger than woolen spun yarns and have a more polished look and surface. They also generally are more durable.

Hand spinning on a "sitting" wheel or "flyer wheel" incorporates the two motions of twisting the fibres and pulling on them by having two parts of the spindle assembly that rotate as slightly different speeds. There is a central bobbin that rotates at a slightly faster speed than an outer U-shaped "harp" or "flyer". The roving enters through a hole in the end of the rotating assembly, which imparts the twist to the yarn as it feeds through hooks on the harp, then down to the bobbin, rotating a bit faster, to apply the tension. The wheel has two drive belts, or more often, one continuous belt which is doubled. One belt turns the whorl or pulley on the harp, the other the pulley on the bobbin. The bobbin and harp pulleys are of slightly different diameter, to produce the slight difference in speed needed to set the yarn. This spinning machine eliminatesa the spindle.

Spinning on a sitting wheel, a hand spinner can produce either "wool spun" yarn, the softer, lofty yarn in which the fibers are oriented around the axis of the yarn, or "worsted spun" yarn, the sleeker, stronger yarn in which fibres are oriented along the axis of the yarn. The spinner will alter the product by changing how the wool fibers are pulled from the roving and by either pushing or pulling them as they enter the spinning wheel.

And yes, as the years passed, Ellen expanded her yarn business to include not only knitting yarns, but yarns for weaving. And looms and other weaving equipment. And spinning wheels.

Andes Yarns

The yarn business expanded with our interest in the fiber arts. Ellen dealt mostly in natural fibers and did a lot with wool, from dying wool using plants growing on the farm and along the roads, to spinning, through weaving and knitting. We never returned to doing much Macrame during those years, except when Dale Schwichtenberg came to study and stay with us, through a connection with our friend, Mike Price.

There is more information on Andes Yarns and the farm life on the New Hampshire Page

Ellen's shop carried a wide array of equipment and supplies. She had spinning wheels from Ashford, Wee Peggy, and Clemes. Looms and accessories from Schacht and Harrisville Designs. And yarns for knitting and weaving.

Following are pictures of a small sampling of the many woven projects done during that time. We also collaborated with a weaver friend, Penelope Drooker, who lived nearby, in writing two booklets of weaving patterns which are shown on the Publications Page.

Scarves were always a good way to try out new yarns and experiment with patterns. There were multiple table looms set up in the yarn shop with four to eight harnesses to use for experimenting, for teaching students, and for sale.

Here are a few of the many scarves.