Honeybees and other pollinator bees are of high importance for our food security and economy. It is incredible that such same beings (which strike fear in the hearts of some) are of such high importance to us. They are even more interesting when you take a look at their biology and social structure. I love insects I think they are fascinating and weird.
So when I saw the fibre (pictured below) for sale at HilltopCloud I jumped at the opportunity to buy 200 grams of it! It has been quite a while since I last knit anything and I hadn’t had any pain in my hands for a while so I decided it was time to start spinning again. I looked in my cupboard and saw the Exmoor Blueface fibre in colourway Honeybee staring back at me, and thought why not do a bee themed project? Why not tie my love for entomology with my love for spinning and weaving?!
My first task was to spin a yarn that had a gradient going from yellow to brown. I decided to do this by fractal spinning the fibre. This entails splitting the fibre in half down the length of it. Putting one half of it aside I then split the other half into four pieces length ways again and these four pieces were spun to one bobbin. The other half which hasn’t been split is then spun to another bobbin. This gave me a gradual change in colour.
At this point I had only spun 100 grams as I wanted to see how much I needed for the cushion and secondly if I was going to get the desired effect I wanted. This was the first time I have tried to do a fractal spin! I then decided on the pattern I wanted to weave. I decided on the pattern for bathroom mats on page 146 in the big book of weaving by Lundell &Windesjo. The pattern won’t be exactly the same as I am using different yarn sizes but the picture below shows more how it should turn out for me. I probably should have chosen a pattern more like honeycomb!
My handspun was to be used as the weft and I used some 4ply white cotton I have left over. My cushion cover needed to be 16 ½ X 16 ½ inches. I dressed my loom with warp which was 20” wide and 48” long, this gave extra length and width for seam allowance and such. Myhandspun yarn was 2 ply at 164 yards and 10 WPI, this should have hopefully be plenty as my project calculator predicted I would need 146 yards, so I didn’t spin the second braid of fibre.
After weaving 26 ½ inches I ran out of handspun yarn. So at this point I had to stop weaving and start spinning again. When looking at my notes that I had made, I had only taken into account the length one side of the cushion! I had even added enough length to factor in the flap for the opening of the cushion but had totally forgotten that I would need two lengths of 16 ½ inches. Luckily I had decided to warp a longer length than needed as I already had a route mapped out on my warping board. Also it would seem I was weaving with 12 picks per inch rather than the 10 I had anticipated, so I my calculations for how much handspun I needed was again well out! Oh well! It’s not a disaster as it will all work out in the end.
So spun the next 100g but because I didn’t spin it at the same time, I accidently spun it thinner than the last batch! Instead of being 10 wpi like the last skein this one was 12 wpi. This project is turning into a bit of a disaster but I carried on and wove it anyway!
So the ties holding the apron rod which had the yarn on it snapped and I almost gave up on the project. I thought it was going to be unfixable, but I tied it back on and put tension on it again and carried on weaving. I would not be defeated!
Finally off the loom it came! I gently washed it in warm water, rolled it in a towel to get water out and set it out to dry. So I come to it today to make the cushion…. And its shrunk. I never factored in shrinking to my seam allowance! I lost 3 ½ inches in width. This made it the exact width the cushion needed to be. I don’t know what to do with the fabric now. I feel slumped, saddened by it. I was so excited about my own handspun cushion cover. I will put it aside til I figure out what to do with it.
Any suggestions?
