(Even though I have been to Peggy's house before, Google Maps managed to lead me astray. After I crossed a river I knew I shouldn't have, I stopped and ask directions from a nice man in a mini backhoe. I followed his instructions while Google Maps barked the exact opposite. That got me in the general area - well, actually to the exactly right spot, but I drove right past Peggy's house without realizing it. When I reached a describable location, I called for help.)
Being a scientist, Peggy is on a "journey of discovery" which in recent years has included growing, processing, and spinning flax. Her husband is a handy guy and helps by creating whatever tools she needs to get the job done - a true enabler. I neglected to take many photos while at her place, as I was a bit discombobulated (see above paragraph). Here are a few from the flax demonstration.
The flax fiber needs to be separated from the rest of the plant, which is accomplished through retting (a good crossword puzzle word) whereby the stalks are soaked for a week or so, to get the stem to rot. An alternative method is dewing - leaving the flax out in the weather where the daily cycle of dew and sunshine do the same job, but over the course of about six weeks. The dewed flax comes out gray in color, while the retted flax is, well, flaxen.
An interesting tidbit is the fact that flax is highly flammable, while the chaff is just the opposite. Flax came in handy when starting a fire with flint.
Peggy also raises sheep, which she keeps jacketed to protect the wool from the usual detritus of country living. She demonstrated fiber prep of wool, from fleece to wheel. Since I'm familiar with these steps, I took no pix, but I did pick up some tips like turn up the hot water heater the night before scouring and put the locks in mesh bags (like oranges come in) so you don't have one big clump of wet wool to deal with. I also learned that finding what is now considered an old fashioned washer - a top loader with a manual timer - may be hard to do. I hope my Maytag lives a long time.
For the second part of our super Saturday, we drove over to the not-quite-ready-for-prime-time business Wabash Woollen Works. Lisa and Michael saved a former hatchery from demolition and are in the process of turning it into a fiber mill/workshop classroom/event center, preserving the stone walls and utilizing windows and doors scavenged from local schools. Lisa is one of those go-getters who rarely sits still so she appears blurry in many of these photos. After we ate our sack lunches, she lead us on a tour of the new facility, which contrasted nicely with all the hand labor we witnessed at Peggy's.
I really wish I had been more with-it that day, wish I had not only taken photos but kept written notes as well. Since I didn't (and I have slept since then), some of the ensuing information may not be exactly correct. So don't quote me on any of this.
WWW purchases fleece and sells it as roving or yarn. The likelihood of the sheep being jacketed is nil, so the fleece must be cleaned. Above, a tumbler breaks up the dirt and vegetative matter and manure so that it separates from the fleece and falls out of the device. Below, the automatic washer runs the fleece through as many as five wash cycles, to remove the remaining dirt and lanolin. (Lanolin gums up the machinery.)
Now I'm a bit vague on how the fleece gets dried. Maybe in the same machine? Or the next? I think this machine's job is to "pick" the fleece - fluff it up so that it is ready to be carded. For the hand spinner, this is akin to using a flicker on the wool locks.
The next step is running the wool through the carder. Here fibers may be blended - in this shot, we have silk and cashmere on top of merino, I believe. The merino is green, so there obvious must be an opportunity to dye the fiber before this point in the process.
The output of the carder looks like roving ready to spin, but not quite. The fibers run every which way and don't spin up well, which brings us to the next machine.
Here, the carder results are attenuated - the fibers are aligned in one direction. I guess this would be like semi-worsted fiber.
Finally, we are ready to spin. Just like my spinning wheel has a leader to start the process, this machine has leaders for each spool of yarn being created. The machine is designed to automatically distribute the singles evenly on the spool, whereas on my wheel I have to move the flyer hooks manually. Very slick.
And of course, the singles need to be plied. Again, this machine evenly distributes the plied yarn on each cone.
At home, I set the twist of my yarn by soaking it in hot water for about 20 minutes, then swinging it around a bit and/or snapping it before hanging it over the tub to dry, which takes a day or three. A business can't wait that long, so they use steam. The yarn here gets steamed by traveling through those insulated pipes.
The yarn is transported through the steamer by this machine pulling it across the room. The yarn is dry by the time it is spooled, a distance of about 20 feet.
Now the yarn is ready to be wound into skeins, which is how it is sold. The finished product is priced by the ounce, and most skeins contain about 200 yards of yarn, but results vary.
Now, as if that weren't enough, there is also a needle felting machine. Roving is fed in from one side...
... and felt comes out the other.
But wait! There's more! There is also a wet felting machine which uses friction to create area rugs of thick felt. (That's a loom in the background, not the machine itself.)
I believe all the yarn is dyed using natural materials, many of which WWW grows, including some in the raised bed garden out front. They also offer natural dye workshops.
I was surprised to discover one may dye with daisy flea bane, which grows wild in my yard, and teasel, which grows almost everywhere around here.
The tags on each skein note the mordant (M) and modifier and sometimes even the water used. I think every dye book I own recommends using water with a neutral pH. But the outdoor spigots at my house are on a well - the water is very iron rich - and I know even the tap water has a certain amount of minerals in it. So now my next experiment with dyes may be to use different water sources, including distilled water and rain water and maybe snow melt.
There were questions about the rug yarn for sale, some of which appeared to be wrapped in a contrasting thread. So back to the carder(?) we went.
These photos do not show it very well, but the rug yarn has a cotton core. The roving is wrapped around the cotton core. To get the contrasting thread wrap, a different color wool is lined up along the rest of the wool on the conveyor belt feeding the machine.
It's like magic!
I have been to the Green Mountain Spinnery, in Vermont, where the machinery is very old and geared for a higher level of production than WWW. The spinning guild I belong to had a dye workshop scheduled at another local fiber mill this coming weekend, but due to the oppressive heat expected (the dyeing occurs outside), that event has been postponed. Like Peggy, I experiment with fiber (although I doubt I will ever grow flax), but I enjoy seeing how my handwork is achieved using machinery. Fun stuff!
