For years, I avoided weaving with linen, and when I finally tried it, yep. It's hard. So hard that I sent my loom to a friend's house to finish off the weaving, and even she had trouble.
I've gotten to know linen a bit since then, and here is basically the video I wish I had watched when I was a new weaver. How to make weaving with linen easy.
Distaffs (or distaves) are used for all sorts of different fibres. It's basically a third hand that holds the fibre while our other hands are busy spinning it into yarn.
Distaff Day is on the 7th of January and is the most important holiday in the spinner's calendar. Well, I say holiday, but it's actually the back-to-work day but we do it with great fun.
This year, I dressed distaves in flax fibre for spinning linen yarn.
Here's a free PDF guide on dressing a distaff with linen fibre.
Last year I did the same with wool
Now, how do I up my game for next year? Anything about distaves you wanted to know?
Chaotically
So this is a list I made for myself. This includes the videos I am actively working on and if they have any deadlines (and yes, dyslexia is a thing - don't even bother correcting, I promise it will do more harm than good).
To get on this list, the video needs to be in the filming, editing, writing, crafting, or gathering materials stage. The list fails to include some of the long-term projects where I'm gathering footage over several years (I started a flax video in 2019 for example), videos still in the planning stages, or videos that got stalled in the editing due to not having the right story to be worth making... yet. There are also a few secret projects that won't make it into this either.
What unexpected yarn has fallen into your life? Do you have a go-to project you love to make with found yarn or do you wait to see what the yarn says it wants to be?
About a year ago, I stumbled on some free yarn, leftovers from the now closed local mill. Talking to people who used to work there, this was part of calibrating the spinning machine, so it contains a lot of different fibres from a variety of farms. Most of them are less than a day's journey away.
So I made a thing. And I made a video about the thing. And the yarn. And deep thoughts about the yarn, fibreshed, and my personal textile history.
Layers!
Hens are great layers. But even better are clothes layered on top of each other. It transforms a seasonal outfit into a multi-season extravaganza!
Winters on the farm are muddy, mucky, bloody, and occasionally snowy. I do a lot of laundry.
Come lambing season, I can do two or three loads of laundry a day.
So I want farm clothes that wash well, like cotton. Only the problem with cotton is that it's not very warm. It actually, what's the opposite of warm? A single layer of cotton is terrible for working outside in the winter because if the cotton gets wet, it chills the human and can cause health issues. So we could be forgiven for thinking that if a single layer does harm, a lot would do more.
Layering the clothes creates air gaps that allow the skin to breathe and provide insulation so I can stay outside longer to get things done. And since I often wear skirts or dresses when working on the farm, I can take my fall and spring cotton skirts and transform them into winter skirts by adding a petticoat or two underneath.
This matches well with my capsule wardrobe goals.
Winter has been a bit meh this year. A bit of a health setback before the Holidays and the only game we get to play on the farm is catch-up.
I've also been working away on several projects and finishing almost none of them.
But finally, I got one done! Just in time for (what I hope is) the last snowfall of the year.
If you like the video, please pop over to youtube and leave a like or even a comment as it helps me out tremendously.
And here is the full playlist that takes us from sheep to finished cloak!
I enjoyed this project. It's the first time I've made something from sheep to clothing that feels like a quality garment. What's more, it's a sheep from my farm! One that I feed every day and who loves cuddles.
In a lot of ways I've gained confidence. I understand better how the yarn behaves in the woven cloth and that I can actually make something from scratch. I also understand why a more historically accurate cloth would involve a lot more people: a shepherd, weaver, spinner, seamstress, etc. It seems almost that I lose as much as I gain doing each step myself.
One of the things I worry about is this sets the bar too high. Both for me and for viewers.
There's no need to do every step ourselves. I did it because I was curious if I could and I'm a cheap little chicken who can't always afford to buy the cloth I want to work with. Even in this project, I combined modern cloth with traditional methods. Add growing, spinning, and weaving the lining to the mix and I would need another year or three to get it done. But even then, I don't think it would have been as good for the cloak as the lining I choose.
It's about learning from history instead of trying to reproduce it. What can I learn from the past and how can I incorporate it in my life today. There's no shame in it. There's no shame if a future project has bought yarn or I go to the shop and buy fabric. And yet, it's a nagging worry that I now need to progress to better and better things, especially on my youtube journey. That's not the path I want to take. I want to make projects that fill me with joy, and sometimes that means buying yarn. Sometimes it means spinning it.
Sometimes there won't be any yarn involved at all.
Most of all, I'm happy with the improvement in my video-making skills. I'm getting better at what to film and what to leave out. My voiceover confidence is improving. I'm still seeking a balance between showing enough for the technically curious and keeping the story moving, but on the whole, I've moved up a notch and am now about 11% of the filmmaker I want to become.
