Debbonnaire - Welcome to the solarium of my castle . . .

Chapel

Solarium

Ah, the Solarium!

This is the sunny, bright room where the ladies work and chat. Even in a cold, stone castle, there were south-facing windows. Imagine a whole wall of them in this room as you wander, browse, and - if you care to - pick up a needle or other fiber toy and join us! We do a little of almost every fiber craft you can think of in here. (Gentlemen welcome too! This is an equal opportunity solarium!)

SPINNING

Even if you know me, you won't recognize me in this picture! I am in eighteenth century costume, spinning at a craft fair/reenactment in Indiana.

I spin mostly on an Ashford Traveler, a small, upright spinning wheel made in New Zealand, but I have spun on a Great Wheel, or Walking Wheel, and I often spin on drop spindles, just for the fun of it. I've spun wool, llama, alpaca, mohair, angora, camel, silk, cotton, and flax. Right now, I'm spinning a beautiful gray/brown alpaca very fine, two-plying it, and knitting warm knee socks for next winter. Alpaca is reputed to be one of the warmest of the fibers, and my feet get very cold in this old castle!

More about spinning:

Before you can have a fiber craft, you have to have fiber. Every thread in the world was once a fluff of fibers, whether cotton, flax, wool, plastic, nylon, or whatever. And once upon a time every blanket, tent, sail, curtain, fish net, tapestry, and article of clothing on the planet was made of thread, yarn, or string spun by hand on a spindle. There are several types of spindles, but in general, a spindle is a stick put through a hole in a whorl - a disk or a round object, such as a stone or a blob of clay. A leader, a piece of string already made, is tied to the stick and the spindle is twirled, maybe by hanging it in the air at the end of the string, perhaps by rolling it down the side of your leg, maybe standing in a little dish and spinning it like a child's top. Fibers are attached to the end of the leader and twisted by the spinning stick and whorl into new thread. Not the most efficient and quick way to make thread, but you'd be amazed how productive a spindle can be in the hands of an experienced spinner. I myself can do about 40 yards an hour this way, and I am by no means an expert. I understand some of the women in the Andes can run two spindles at once - on donkeyback!

You can try this yourself, either by purchasing a spindle or making one in any number of ways. One popular way is by putting a rubber gasket obtained at a hardware store in the middle of one of those ubiquitous CDs you get in the mail all the time, and sticking a dowel rod in the middle of the gasket. You can even put a knitting neede, or better yet, an afghan hook, through an apple! As time goes on, there will be more detailed instructions here on the site, as well as links to other sites where you can learn much more than I can teach you.

Once upon a time, somewhere long ago and far away, some smart person looked at a spindle and said, "If I turn this sideways in a holder, and attach a really big wheel, like maybe a cart wheel, putting a string for a drive band around the big wheel and around the whorl, then when I turn the big wheel the spindle will turn very fast, all by itself! I will have both hands for spinning, except when I stop to give the big wheel another twirl." And so the Great Wheel, or Walking Wheel, was born. You tied your leader around the spindle, just as before, spun the big wheel, attached fiber, and walked backward, away from the spindle to make the thread. Then you walked forward to wind the new thread onto the spindle, or a bobbin put around the spindle, such as a piece of goose quill. (This way, the bobbin of thread could be removed without unwinding it from the spindle. It has been said that a spinster could walk 20 miles back and forth beside the Great Wheel in one day.

Important note for those who like to be up on their history: This is the type of wheel Sleeping Beauty had - not the wheel you see most often today, where the spinner sits and treadles. Those didn't come in for a few more centuries, and don't have any sharp places to prick your finger, anyway. The spindle sticking out sideways from a Great Wheel could get rubbed pretty sharp by all that wool and flax, over time. So unless you happen to know a Prince Charming, be careful when spinning on a Great Wheel!

Leonardo da Vinci is credited, whether correctly or not, with coming up with one of the greatest advances in spinning. He is supposed to have invented the flyer mechanism that has its own brake tension around the bobbin, causing the bobbin to spin slightly more slowly than the flyer, and thus take up the thread and wind it on automatically. I tell children who are watching me spin that it's like when you put down your foot to stop your bike. The friction slows things down, and so does the brake band over the end of modern bobbins. This is a marvelous thing, since it means that the spinner can sit down now! Since the 1600s or so, spinners have most often sat and treadled their spinning wheels. All we have to do is try to feed (or "draft") the fiber evenly. The wheel does all the real work.

Of course, there are lots of other innovations, such as Ghandi's charka, which is a small wheel that is laid on the ground in front of a cross-legged spinner and spun by the foot while the spinner uses his or her hands to draft the fibers. Today there are electric spinners, and naturally, now the thread in your clothes, carpets, curtains, sails, rugs, and so on is spun on giant machines in huge factories. Likely as not, the fiber is made from byproducts of petroleum. But it's all still fiber, twisted together to make thread.

I learned to weave tartan at the John C. Campbell Folk School, which I highly recommend! (www.folkschool.org) Here I am below, weaving a tartan sample.

Weaving tartan "mug rugs" at a Scottish Gathering of the Clans, in eighteenth century costume, wearing my clan hunting tartan in a sash on my shoulder. The bit of pewter on my right shoulder is a clan crest badge, containing my chief's crest surrounded by a strap and buckle with the clan motto, "Garde bien." We are the only Scottish clan I know of that has a French motto. Our connection with the French goes back to the first Montgomery, Roger de Mundegumrie.

WEAVING

I own two looms, both four-harness. One is a 36" Schacht floor loom, and the other is a table model called the Dorothy. I have woven rugs, shawls, and hangings of curly mohair locks, a jillion cotton placemats and table runners, wool yardage for a vest for my husband and a skirt for myself, some interesting little samples to play with, especially of various Scottish tartans, and most recently, four and a half yards of cotton Elphinstone, the Montgomery hunting tartan, for a kilt for my daughter.

Montgomery is my maiden name. Click on it to learn more about the Montgomery tartans and Clan Montgomery Society International. [coming soon]

LACEMAKING

Never say, "I'll never do that!" I saw bobbin lacemakers now and then at craft shows and fairs, and as I watched them toss those little bobbins of thread around on their "pillows," I would shake my head and say bemusedly, "I'll never do that! That looks way too hard!" But each time I watched, I also thought, "That's awfully pretty . . ."

Making lace at The Mountain State Art and Craft Show, Ripley, West Virginia. My pillow and bobbins are all handmade, as well as the lace. This pattern is called "Spider Parade."

One day, my husband and I were in a large chain bookstore, and I cried out, "Look, a bobbin lace book!" It was Bobbin Lacemaking, by Doris Southard, now reissued as Lessons in Bobbin Lacemaking. I picked it up and leafed through it. It started at the very beginning, even showing how to make your own pillow and bobbins. "Look, Les, this is just an oval of thin plywood, with that little box on it . . ." It had wood in it, which caught his interest. We bought the book, and the rest is history.

I have only scratched the surface of the bobbin lace possibilities. I'm not even halfway through Bobbin Lacemaking yet. But I've made lace for hats, brooches and barrettes, blouses, and a dress I dearly love, and now I demonstrate at craft fairs. When people watching shake their heads and say, "I'll never do that!" I laugh and give them fair warning. Then I give them a simple lesson. Sometimes, history starts again.

KNITTING

Knitting needs little introduction. Unlike many of the other crafts I enjoy, knitting has never lost its popularity, and everyone who wants to learn knows someone who can teach. If you fear you can't do it, I assure you, you can if you want to. I tried to learn from a friend when I was about ten, made a tiny swatch which grew tighter and tighter, and when I could no longer force my needle into it, gave it up and spent the next twelve years saying, "I can't knit - I've tried."

Then, when I was twenty-two, I worked nights in a bakery for awhile. Bakeries tend to be unevenly paced. Sometimes you're dashing around working your head off, and sometimes you're sitting and waiting for one batch to rise and another to come out of the oven, and there's nothing to do. In a magazine article about 100 things you can make for Christmas, I saw a man's sweater with a pretty colored pattern across the chest. I said, "I think I'll make that for my fiancé for Christmas!"

So I got out my ancient "Aunt Lydia's Learn to Knit" booklet, ca 1950, looked carefully at the pictures to figure out how to hold my needles and which way to make the yarn go . . . and made the sweater. Mostly in between batches of bread at the bakery.

I'm still knitting!

CROCHET

I don't even know how old I was when my mother taught me to crochet. During the years I believed I couldn't knit, I crocheted instead. I've crocheted all kinds of things, but here's an interesting factoid.

I've never crocheted an afghan!

Can you truly consider yourself a crocheter if you've never crocheted an afghan?

TATTING

Tatting and I have had a thorny relationship. I learned when I was quite young, and contrary to what you've been told, tatting is really quite simple. It feels very awkward at first, but if you persevere and learn the hand movements, it becomes second nature in a surprisingly quick time. I say this as a person who has been constitutionally uncoordinated for her entire life, so trust me - if I can tat, you can tat.

There's only one problem - unlike knitting or crochet, it's real knots. If you make a mistake, it's REALLY hard to get it out! Also, there's the problem of joins, which used to have to be done with a separate crochet hook. So I would take up tatting, make 8" or maybe two feet of an edging, get into difficulties, and give it up again for five years. Or twenty.

I believe it was somewhere in 2003 when I got the itch again. I was going on a camping trip, and wanted to take something really small and portable. Naturally, I couldn't find any of my old tatting shuttles, so I went to a fabric/craft store, finally found a person who knew what I was talking about, and found a pair of absolutely perfect little plastic shuttles with long sharp points for joins. They made tatting easier than it had ever been, and now I love to tat! I'm even considering an entire tatted tablecloth for my 4' x 6' oval oak dining table. Okay, I'm crazy, I know it.

How many years do you have?

Another reenactor once overheard a mother telling her children, "No, dear, that's not a real fire, they have gaslines under the ground!" Well, even if this outlandish idea were true, my question would be, what's "not real" about a gas fire? Anyway, this is a real wood fire, and yes, we really do cook all our families' food on them while we are at the shows.

I'll keep you posted.

EMBROIDERY

There are a zillion different kinds of embroidery, and I've tried most of them at one time or another. Probably my favorites to date have been counted cross stitch and crewel, but I have a hankering to try Hardanger. I'll let you know.

CRAFT SHOW SCHEDULE

coming soon!