Leftovers

Day 184: At the end of any plied spinning project, the spinner will probably have some yardage left over on one bobbin. If this is a short length, it can be pulled out until the end is reached, then doubled back and carefully spliced so that the remainder can be spun up (bottom photo, double ply white Corriedale). However, if there is too much left to stretch out across your living room with a weight at the bottom of the loop, you have two choices: leave it on the bobbin if you intend to spin more of the same fiber at some point in the (possibly) distant future, or you can have some fun playing with it to try out a new technique. In this case, I needed to free up a bobbin in order to begin a new project and had about 100 yards of Corriedale single-ply left over. I decided it was time to try making bouclé (upper photo).

Bouclé is a labour-intensive yarn. First of all, you will need two Z-twist strands to ply together. At least one of them should be hand-spun because this is a spinning project after all, but the the second can be anything you feel is suitable for a core. The core strand isn't going to show much in the finished yarn. I went hunting in my fiber stash for a skinny Z-twist. Most 4-ply commercial yarns wind up as S-twist because the singles are spun as Z, so nothing in my yarn bins was going to work, but crochet cotton had the proper twist. The one I pulled out to use as my core thread was also a leftover, the tail end of an ancient ball of 20 weight. It was green. "Eh," I said to myself, "it's an experiment. Who cares?" The next step was to select a binder from my sewing thread drawer. I found a blue-green which matched "close enough for government work." Now I was ready to start my bouclé.

To spin bouclé, the core yarn is held in one hand and fed onto the bobbin smoothly. The cover yarn (in this case, single ply Corriedale wool) is held in the other hand, and as the core yarn is drawn onto the bobbin, the cover yarn is pushed up along it to form loose coils around the core. This is repeated in steps at the spinner's discretion, and the two plies are spun in the opposite direction from how they were originally spun (two Z-twists are spun using an S-twist to combine them). To help you visualize the result, the two-ply will then look something like a spring (cover) with a swab stick (core) in its center. When you are done plying the two together, you are ready to add a third ply using sewing thread, and going back to a Z twist. The sewing thread serves as a binder to hold the cover strand in place, and to open it out into the typical "snarls" which give bouclé its unique look (top photo). I'm not sure how I'll use the yarn (roughly 35 yards), but it was fun to make.

Pick A Little Bouclé

Day 146: Having almost fully recovered from my dalliance with mRNA, I am ready to resume my weaving projects. For this set of towels, I picked a little bouclé in springtime yellow and paired it with 8/2 lime green in both warp and weft to make a check pattern. The bouclé provides a challenge as it likes to hold hands with itself as warp, so rather than weaving with it on the floor loom, I've assigned it to duty on the rigid heddle. It's my first experiment with this particular thread and so far, I'm pleased with the results. I'm sure it will "full" nicely once it's washed without losing the bouclé texture. In all honesty, I was reluctant to use it as warp on the floor loom due to issues with getting it to pass through the heddles without binding up. The eyes in the rigid-heddle reed are larger and perhaps more importantly, they are made of a plastic which provides a smoother "glide" for a textured fiber.

Towels In The Raw

Day 78: Nothing inspires me to work more than a new project waiting in the wings. I've mentioned before that I set a rule for myself years ago that I could have only one of any particular type of project going at one time. There is some latitude in that; for example, I can have a piece of weaving on the floor loom and one on the rigid heddle because the physical process of weaving affects different portions of my anatomy...rigid heddle weaving is hard on my deteriorating shoulder and I can't work at it for any significant length of time. A few days ago, I decided that I wanted to make some wider scarves than the rigid heddle loom would allow, but in order to start, I first needed to finish up the cotton towels on the floor loom. I had three done and a fourth barely started, and just enough of the bouclé to finish up #4. The shortage of material was what had slowed me down; I batted ideas for #5 around in my head without coming to a satisfactory conclusion. Now feeling the push, I chose to go with the natural cotton (#5 is visible in the upper right). I set a goal of six inches per session at the loom, putting in up to three sessions a day. Bingo! In short order, the weaving was done. Now I'll warp for the new project and while I'm taking breaks from it, I'll twist the fringe on the towel ends.