The Past Week

Goodness me! It's a week since my last blog and its not because there is nothing happening at Scalpay Linen. In fact its been quite an exciting period as regards planning and production and I've been a bit pre-occupied as a result. However, I have managed to grab the camera at various stages, with some jolly results.

The new warp is now on the beam (see below) and is just gorgeous. I'm busy tying in and am hoping to have a little bit of weft in by the end of the day if all goes well. The quality of the yarn is stunning - wet spun and very glossy. I can't wait to see the finished linsey woolsey.

We have had quite a bit of rain and wind this week - with an amazingly warm and sunny day on Thursday. There were a lot of rainbows too and I managed to capture this one for you to see...

We also managed to get a picture of the white naked neck chick - Meryl. Still not sure whether its a "he" or a "she" but its very glamorous.

One morning I got this photo of the full moon against a lovely pink sunrise. It was such an atmospheric effect!

. During the week we went to both the mills - the mill at Shawbost aka Harris Tweed Hebrides, where we picked up the green checked linen. Wow, its great. Very soft and drapey. Our finishing guru at the mill, Donald, said it was the best yet and I had to agree. Think my warping is improving in leaps and bounds (at last!). Haven't got a piccie of this linen yet, but I will get one and add it into the blog asap. We also dropped off the yellow, brown and turquoise linen to be finished.

We called in a the Carloway Mill, aka Harris Tweed Textiles, who have been struggling a bit with my Hebridean fleeces. They have a whole cupboard full of it cleaned and teased, but despite trying with both their carding machines, its not carding up at all well. So the only solution to this problem is to add some other fibre to bind it together. This was a bit of a depressing thought since my unique selling point for the new Harris Tweed that we are developing is that it is to be made from wool sourced locally - ideally Hebridean Sheep wool. However, the best laid plans etc. etc. so whilst retaining the concept, we have somewhat tweaked the details.....

In South Harris there is a flock of Cheviot sheep which are of exceptional fleece quality. If you follow Calana Crafts blog (see my link list), you may recall that Joan had some of this spun up as knitting wool a few years ago, and marketed it very successfully as locally grown. After a hurried phone call to Borve to check that Richard still had his clip on the premises, he has agreed to supply me with about 30kgs of greasy cheviot which the mill is going to dye brown and then blend with our Hebridean to produce a yarn which will still be locally produced, though not pure Hebridean. However, it will probably be softer for the addition of 10 - 15% of Cheviot. Interestingly, we had provisionally pencilled in an approach to Borve to see if we could use their fleece next year for spinning and dyeing to give us a wider shade palette (assuming that our cash flow holds up). All that remains for me to do is get an exemption from the British Wool Board to enable me to get the fleece direct from the owner rather than go through the Board, which is the usual procedure in the UK, and we will be hopefully then be ready to roll...

Now, I'm normally a pretty laid-back individual as a rule, but I must admit that this was not an easy problem to sort out. Lots of thanks to everyone who has helped us - Steve at Carloway, Richard at Borve, the Wool Board office, Lorna at the Harris Tweed Association who has been very supportive, all our Hebridean fleece suppliers on Lewis without whom we would not have got this far, and my O/H who is always the epitome of common sense!

Now its back to tying-in and winding bobbins.

Surprise Tweed

Well, its been a good week. On Tuesday I got a phone call from someone who had a warp and needed it woven up. "Bring it on....", I said!

The warp had been chained as it was taken from the stakes so we threaded it over rollers suspended from the ceiling above the front and the back of the loom....

and then spread the warp ends evenly across the raddle.

Once the flanges either side of the beam had been adjusted to the correct width so it would wind securely....

Then with one of us hanging onto the chained warp and the other turning the handle of the beam, the warp wound itself onto the beam.

Next job was winding the pirns to go in the shuttles to make the weft shots. We have a six spindle winder, though only five are operational just now. The cone of yarn sits on a spike at the bottom of the frame, the cardboard pirns are on spindles which are rotated by drive bands attached to a cylinder which is turned by a little 0.25hp motor. We needed to wind around three hundred pirns.

I actually missed taking the photo of tying-in the new tweed - it was done while I was out of the loomshed. Anyway, the photo above was taken after about 20 pirns had been woven. You can see the revolving box on the left with the shuttle in the segment, and the reed at the front which carries the warp ends as they come through the heddles.

And finally, the finished tweed, folded, tied and ready to go to the mill.

Job Done!!

Changing the subject, when I got home from my travels last week I found lambing in full swing. The first black lamb has a white mum! Mum is half-hebridean and half-cheviot. Last year she had a white male and this year she has a black female. So the lamb is, by my calculation... 75% Hebridean and 25% Cheviot.

We also have one little lamb on the bottle - a female blackface with no horns at all! Here she is playing with Heather the dog, who has had a haircut since she last featured on the blog.

While I had the camera handy, I caught Heather gazing through the gate at one of the Buff Orpingtons, who are getting huge. They really are the size of a beachball, but its all feathers. Underneath they are pretty scrawny. They are also ne of the few hens that are not laying. If they weren't rare breed birds I'm afraid I would be considering their future very seriously. The other hens are doing sterling work for the cause, and we have the "Eggs for Sale" sign out every day now.

Weather, paper boats and Daisy the sheep

After a busy end of week spent organising the school library at Leverburgh, S. Harris with a colleague, I arrived home last night to find that my husband had been busy with the camera.

The sea was very rough and grey and glowering yesterday so here's a picture of the bay near to where we live.

Even though we are a couple of hundred yards away from the seashore and can't see the sea at all from the house, we are still aware of it because of the noise the waves make breaking onto the rocks, especially when the weather is stormy. Some people think that there is no noise here because we are remote from centres of population, but nature can be incredibly noisy at all times of the day and night.

Good news - my paper boat which I made from paper printed with our new Harris Tweed pattern and named "An Clo Mor" docked safely at Durness and is now part of the Caithness Horizons exhibition-in-progress. For more info see http://joannebkaarpaperboats.blogspot.com/ Friday 30th January entry - my boat is number 17. It's not too late to contribute to the exhibition to commemorate the voyage of the Westland to New Zealand. Just click on the above link.

Update on Daisy the sheep - she is doing well. Lots of new friends and new places to explore.

This is Daisy having her tea......

A New Harris Tweed Being Born

Yesterday afternoon I decided to do something constructive about getting the new tweed on the loom after spending a few weeks dithering about.
So the first thing I did was to get out all my stash of Harris Wool and photograph it.....

There's enough here to do a couple of small tweeds and I can't really afford to buy in any more just now, but I need to decide what colours will go well with what and its important in design to make sure the "balance" is correct between the various colours you are using. The best way to check balance is to turn the photos into grayscale. Then you can match up shades of grey together and be sure that if you use matching shades they will be properly balanced in the warp.

Then a quick visit to the future trends info to check if any of the colours I have are likely to be in vogue next season...... fortunately I have a number of colours that can be combined to make a trendy look.

So I threaded up my little Louet table loom with 100 warp ends and started doing a little sample piece. Don't have a photo of that yet as my batteries have gone dead and I forgot to recharge them. Haven't decided on a draft yet - maybe something a bit different like a staggered herringbone or a bit of bell celtic mixed in to get some texture. With the Hattersley Loom I am a bit limited to the patterning - also for Harris Tweed only certain weave structures will fulfil the technical parameters that will make it the right weight to be stamped as authentic.

Anyway, watch this space for some more progress....