Getting ready to weave: Shirt warp, number three...it's only string, right?

I began this project a few years ago while doing an artist residency at the Centre for Craft and Design in Halifax.  If you go back and read the entries there, you'll find that the shirt warp gave me no end of grief. In the end, I saved what I could of that warp to use later.

Later was this summer.  I dug out my original warp and washed the starch out of it, fully intending to put it on the loom and use it.  Then I realized that the cross had not been saved, and it really was a horrible, tangled mess. I stuck it in the corner of my room and let it contemplate it's messiness while I wound a new warp from the remaining cones of threads I had from that original project.  This time around, my plan was to not use starch, rather, if need be, I'd just spritz the threads down with water.  I was also going to be weaving in the right time of year for linen, in the warm, humid months, and in a naturally conditioned space...meaning no air conditioning.

The second warp was finally wound on the back beam of the loom, and the loom threaded about mid June of this summer.  When I began to weave, the shed just would not open.  The linen fibres were so fluffy they were sticking together tight, fast.  I'd try to open the shed and the whole warp would move as one.  I thought maybe I'd done something wrong when I set up my loom in the Fall, did I tie something up wrong? Nope.  It's the thread.

Part of the problem that I've been having with this shirt warp, part one and part two, is that in an effort to create fairly fine cloth, the threads I have been using were single ply. When I broke down in tears at not being able to open the shed, my Mum and I started searching for solutions.  Plied thread was the only viable solution.  And so, when Pierre started his vacation, he and I day tripped up the thread store in Brassard, QC, and bought new thread.

During this Spring and Summer, my mum has also been battling lung cancer. Since the end of June, my brother and his family have been here for a week, mum has had to endure a particularly bad Chemo cycle, our son and his family have been here. And finally, last weekend, Pierre and I went off to Fort Ticonderoga for our wedding anniversary, and also so that we could get some living history time in this summer. July has been busy.  Needless to say, no weaving has gotten done, as my room has to play double duty for housing extra people when we have company...our house is small.

Pierre went back to work Wednesday morning (yesterday) and I went back to work on the weaving project.  I am now using 2/16 Egyptian linen thread, with a 2/16 cotton in the blue. I am winding six repeats of 20 white, 4 blue, 20 white, 10 blue, 10 white, 10 blue, 20 white, 4 blue, 20 white, 6 blue, 6 white, 6 blue, 6 white, 6 blue. I would have liked to have used a finer thread, but I just cannot buy any in Canada at the moment, and I really want to get this done this summer. I need to get it done for my course work for school.  It will be good apron weight cloth, not fine shirt weight like I had hoped.  But I'll plod along and get it done and possibly publish an article on my research.

While I work, I like to watch documentaries on youtube.  I've 'watched' nearly every Time Team episode, lots of documentaries on the 18th and early 19th centuries in North America, I've also re-watched the miniseries John Adams, and then there is my favourite, Tales from the Green Valley.  This morning, I was looking for something new to listen to and stumbled upon an early 2000s series called Colonial House.  I think it was a BBC production, where they send 17 modern Americans and Brits to live for the summer in a recreated 17thC colony based on Jamestown and Plymouth.  I had forgotten how drama filled this series was.  These people went into the experience with modern agendas, not really wanting to see if they could do it properly.  I was left wondering if that was when Ruth Goodman and crew approached the BBC and asked to try something similar, only trying to do it right. I ended up shutting off the Colonial House about half way through episode3, the modern drama llama holding no appeal to me as I stand here winding a warp, trying to weave cloth in a historically accurate manner. Trying to figure out how my 18thC counterpart would have felt at having to produce her own cloth for the first time in her colonial life as part of a 'revolutionary' act.  So used to being able to purchase fine linen cloth, I'm feeling a bit disheartened at how thick and rough my cloth might turn out. And I'm using purchased threads...I wonder what I'd be able to accomplish using my own produced and spun threads? That will be an experiment for another summer, and I suspect, another year.

Anyway, one more repeat to wind.  Then I can sit and embroider for a couple of afternoons.  I need Pierre's help getting the warp on the loom, and I need new stocking garters, so the indulgence of embroidery is also a necessity.

Why am I here? or, the seemingly exclusivity of living history events

Why am I here?  Well, I'm a living historian, and experimental archaeologist so to speak.  I learn by doing things...case in point the shirt warp, and yeah, sometimes the best lessons learned are those that took the hard way.

While we are in Quebec, I really want to do some living history events to see how things are done, differently?  on a larger scale? for a different audience? with different historical narratives? Fort Ticonderoga has been on my radar since I was a fresh faced 20 year old, first starting out in this profession.  It was big, like Louisbourg 94 big, in my eyes, but also in real life.  It has been a large event, with more living history people in one place than I can really imagine.  I didn't make it to the Louisbourg 94 event, I was still wearing a uniform then, looking after a bunch of cadets in Vernon BC that summer...one of my big regrets in life.
Fort Ti is putting on an event in a couple of weeks.  The fall of the Fort to Burgoyne and the British. Though Burgoyne wouldn't get very far in his intended campaign that year, it is one of those instances where I'm left wondering that if the British parliament had only supported its troops in America, that war may have gone very differently.  If only the British Generals in America actually supported one another...

But I get back to my story...

We are able to go to this event at Ticonderoga, having received permission to join in the fun just recently.  All Spring though, I have been thinking about my 'back story', the why behind why I would be at Ti.  As a Loyalist woman, where would I be coming from, how would I have gotten there, what would I have with me?  But since the early Spring, and the Boston Massacre event in March, I have also been thinking about whether I, as a woman, would actually be at Ti in this particular situation.

Ticonderoga has a wonderful information page for this event that has been shared around my facebook feed.  In it, they mention that the American women left prior to the troops leaving the fort in surrender to the British, and that the women were also captured by the British shortly thereafter.  I'm wondering how many women will be in the patriot camp that event weekend?  What will they be doing?  How many women will be in the British encampment?  Will there be any Loyalist refugees?

I could dig my heels in and say that I have just as much right to be at a living history event as any guy blowing off black powder, but do I really?  Is that the history I want to tell? As a woman, our stories have largely been overlooked.  You have to really search for clues as to where we were and what we were doing while epic historical events were happening.  But the herstory is there.  Nurses, laundresses, wives with children, and my personal pearl that I'm worrying of late, the refugee.

So if you spot Pierre and I at the event, skirting the goings on, on the battlefield, with our pack basket.  Pay us no mind.  We are only passing through. Trying not to grab attention from either side, lest we be mistaken for spies or deserters.  We are only on the long walk from New Jersey up to just south of Montreal where Pierre has family.

a little different from the story we tell while on the shore of Shelburne waiting for a plot of land to get started again.

Paper titles and stuff

Excremental Language and Tears: Sometimes the best lessons are learned the hard way, or an exercise in weaving shirt linen, part the second.

There are 1000 threads on my loom. It is no wonder it took so long to thread...especially where I had to make a few hundred heddles.  Monday we are driving up to Plessiville to buy more thread.  This time two ply, in hopes that I can maybe make something this summer other than piles of string.

The original warp, from three years ago is going to be burned in effigy tomorrow...I might ask the guy down the street for some of his pre-lit charcoal in order to make the pile of mess go up faster.  The 1000 threads that are currently on the loom will be wound off carefully and possibly used as weft threads.

as the ladies at Williamsburg said "It's only string".

Day two, a more fully packed reed, shed still won't open.

The ladies at Williamsburg were lovely yesterday and wrote back with some ideas for getting the weft threads to pack in tighter.  This morning I rethread the reed and retied the warp to the front beam and have just spent the last two hours trying to get the shed to open enough for me to throw my shuttle and weave.

Then I tried spraying with water to cut down on the fuzz...didn't work, won't open.

Then I resorted to the dreaded starch.  What a fucking frustrating mess this is.  Still won't open.

Weaving linen has to be easier than this.

Yesterday I read that a man could easily weave 2 yards/day, cotton, he could weave 6-8 yards a day.  I can't even weave five threads.

and those five threads look like garbage.

I'm sitting, well standing at my loom, pounding the living tar our of the harnesses to try to get them to open when mum calls up the stairs and asks if I should take a break.  She suggests that maybe I go to Williamsburg and see what they do that's different.  Not a half assed idea actually.

Weaving linen has to be easier than this.

ARGH!

This damned linen!

I am now finally weaving...well, if you call it that.  I got the warp tied on and the tension good, I tried to open the shed and it won't open.  What have I done wrong?  turns out, nothing. the linen is just that fuzzy that it is sticking together and not opening.   Ok, so a little armstronging it apart and I started weaving. OK, now I'm having tension issues, so I stop and try to figure out what is going on.  The back beam fell off the hook and was hanging there, all askew.  Well, at least this time is wasn't the warp falling off.  This was an easier fix.

So I start weaving, again.

The shed not opening is still being a bit of a bitch to my progress, but so is the fact that I'm not getting the weft threads to pack in tight enough.

Once again, we have cheesecloth.  I am frustrated.

I have another hour before the cat groomer gets here to give Dubh a haircut.  I have an email in to Williamsburg weaving studio.  They just wove up a similar cloth this Spring.  I hope I get an answer back soon...I might have to resort to the starch again.

Zen and the art of dressing a loom

Many people balk at buying fabric that costs more than 2$/metre.  It is only when you have produced cloth that you fully understand why it was the cloth for garments that cost so much in any historical period prior to industrialization.  Even with the power loom, dressing the loom is still a time consuming, back breaking process that is done by human beings.  Cloth becomes cheaper the more that is being woven at any given time, mostly because you only have to dress a loom once.

That all said, my weaving process is slow on purpose.  I do enjoy the set up process, but it does take a lot more time than I would like it to.  First I wind my warp, which really should be done in small sections when you are working with linen threads.  Otherwise they will find a way to twist up and tie themselves and the other threads in knots.  So my warp has been wound off in sections of about 30 threads each.  And even then, it was a bit of a mess to wind on the back beam.  Pierre and I got it done in one evening though, which was surprizing.  I am only weaving 5 metres this go around.  I haven't actually counted the number of threads yet...that scares me a bit.  The width is about 35 inches.  I'm using 1/12 weight linen thread.

Once we got it wound on the back beam, then I began threading the heddles on the loom.  When my loom guy came to set up the old lady, he asked me if I'd really need more heddles than what came with her.  I looked at the box and shrugged, I really didn't know.  Well, I can safely say now that yes, I will need more, because I am out.  In order to thread, you stand in the loom, kinda hunched over the harnesses that hold the heddles, and you carefully tease one thread at a time from the mess in the back and thread it through the eye of the heddle with a hook.  The heddle hook is my go-to tool for dressing the loom, I'd rather use it than the reed hook when I get to that step.  I have a reed hook.  It's a good luck charm in my handbag.  I never actually use it.
So I've gotten to about 200 threads towards the end and am now making new heddles so I can continue threading the rest of the warp.  Each thread heddle is slip knotted to the top bar, then two little knots are made at the height of the heddle eyes, then the bottom is tied to the bottom bar of the harness. This eats up a crap tonne of time. I watch BBC renovation shows on youtube while I work. Or Tales from the Green Valley.

You know what people hate about sewing?  It's having to haul out all your gear, and then crawling around on the floor to cut out a garment, then just being able to sit down to sew when you have to tidy everything up again so you can get supper on the table.

This is what making thread heddles is like.  So I took yesterday off and just enjoyed the holiday of Saint-Jean Baptiste.

Once I get the heddles threaded, then I will thread the reed...and only then I can start weaving.  That part won't take me very long at all in comparison.

Lost a month, but not entirely unproductive

For those that follow along at home (on facebook), mum's last chemo cycle was particularly difficult.  She didn't get up and dressed at all save for two evenings where we took her out for dinner, one of those being Lebanese street food from the market, so that doesn't count really as being 'up'.  Needless to say, my warp took a back seat for the month as I didn't want to leave her alone.  Add to that my brother and his family came up and my nephew sleeps in my studio when they are here. And our cousin came to hang out with mum while Pierre and I went to a conference on the American Revolution in the Mohawk valley New York.

I wasn't entirely unproductive though.  I started Pierre's new linen breeches about a month ago, and got those to the point of just needing knee bands, and I started yet another pair of socks.  I figure if I just keep knitting socks in the in-between times, the three of us will have enough wool socks to carry us through just about any event.  These ones are back to the off white of the natural sheep, but I had so much fun with the 'cammo' socks, that I'm going to be looking into dying some more yarn.  I'm also going to be needing to get some more yarn...if anyone wants to stop in to the NSCAD store and pick up a skein or two of single ply, and send it up with anyone who is passing this way, it would be greatly appreciated.  I'm also willing to do a bulk order with Neil, but that will have to wait until after the summer and weaving.

So I finally got back to the studio on Saturday morning.  We spent the bulk of the cool temps cleaning it up and organizing it.  I finally own a dresser for my T-shirts and sweaters.  We got a couple more boxes unpacked, that sort of stuff.  This morning I got back to my warp and finished winding it off and dressing the back beam.  It is now ready to be wound on the loom, which I'm hoping Pierre and I can tackle over the next couple of evenings.  I have a few metres to weave before the grandkids come.  I want to have the loom naked when they get here, since Audree is still only three, and prone to getting into things she's not supposed to.

Getting back to that conference.  I understand the dynamics of history, but was surprized at how little the Loyalist story is being discussed in the States.  I will be looking into that more over the next few years while we are here.  That's the story of my own history, and Nova Scotia's history has a lot to do with the waves of immigrants.  I hope to be portraying a Loyalist when I'm in the field, re-enacting.  It will be interesting to see how other living historians take to that narrative.  The conference itself helped me to get a better grip on my dissertation because of that.
I was also happily surprized to see how much volumn was given to the Native stories surrounding the revolution.  Pierre was also inspired by it, and more interested in looking into his own family history with that regard.  It appears that the Mohawk people here were just as caught up in the two 'sides' of the conflict as the rest of us were.  Cool.

Our cousin was also sharing stuff she has been uncovering while trying to tidy up my great uncle's house after his passing.  She tells me that the 'old house', my uncle's house being the 'second house' on the property, may still have foundations to explore.  It would be wicked to be able to do some archaeology up there.  She also tells me there are some of the old orchard left, and again, the historian in me wants to see if I can grow some of great-great grandpa's heritage breed apples.  The property has been in our family since the 18th century, and we are all excited to know that it has been passed into good hands.

Well, that's an update anyway.  I should go get the downstairs part of my day started. My tummy's growling, and I'd like to get that sock finished today.