Category Archives: weaving, dyeing, fiber arts, murder mysteries, librarians

What about paint

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My husband and I moved into a new house over a year ago. But it took us until now to begin painting. Of course we used Latex paint. It comes in about a million colors and cleans up with water. As I was washing brushes, I began reflecting upon paint. We take it so completely for granted. But its history is a lot more layered (pardon the pun) than one might think.

One of my earliest memories as a child was cleaning my father’s brushes. First, all the paint had to be removed with liberal applications of turpentine. Then the brush had to be soaked in linseed oil to keep the bristles soft. (Fun fact: Linseed oil is made from the flax seeds. The seeds are edible and was fed to livestock. Now, those of us into healthy living eat the flax seed.)

My father was a painter but not a picture painter or a house painter. He was what would be called now a Graphics Artist. He painted signs (and called himself a sign painter). When I was very little I remember him painting cartoons on the signs: little drawings of smoking horses and smiling pigs and so on. Even when I was in high school and learning what was then called computer science, he had a steady clientele who wanted painted paper signs to advertise sales and Christmas specials. But fashions change; even for signs. He went to school to learn to make neon signs and form plastic letters for plastic signs. If he couldn’t find help, all of us kids manned the block and tackle to help him raise the heavy signs to their places on the buildings. I was lucky in that I never had to go up the ladder and help my father. I was terrified of heights.

But I digress.

Oil paint was discovered during the middle ages, as anyone who knows anything about painting is aware of. But oil paint takes a long time to dry. And it is expensive so it was used in the houses only of the rich. Since white lead was a primary ingredient, lead poisoning was epidemic among painters. (Fun Fact #2: The first company to make paint that could be used directly from a tin can without preparation – previously powered paint ground with a mortar and pestle was mixed with water to make the paint – was Sherwin Williams in 1866.)

Poorer folk, and people in early America, had to use an alternative and that alternative, which is seeing something of a resurgence, was milk paint.

The Question of Titles

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I am not good at creating titles; I’ll admit that first thing. Some authors seem to choose the perfect title. snappy and appropriate. I struggle.

I think of this now since I am struggling to title the fourth book. Right now it is titled “Death in Salem”. Bland, right? I started with “Salem Slay Ride” which I think is snappier but one of my readers said it sounded like winter. Since the story takes place in June, not a good thing.

Maybe I should have a vote.

The original title for my first book was “Hands to Murder”. I took it from the Shaker saying “Hearts to God, Hands to work”. The publisher felt that too many people wouldn’t get the allusion so it became “A Simple Murder.”

I was lucky with the second book. Since the mystery concerns a dyer – as in one who dyes – the title seemed perfect. But the third book, now titled “Cradle to Grave”, I called  The Book until my daughter suggested the title.

So now I’m struggling with the title for the fourth Will Rees.  “Death at Sea”? “”Blow the Man down”? I’m still partial to “Salem Slay Ride” because I like puns. Like I said, still struggling.

The Industrial Revolution and the Loom

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The Industrial Revolution mechanized the entire process of cloth making. According to Brouty, prior to the invention of the flying shuttle in the 1750’s, three to four spinners were needed to produce enough yarn for a weaver. The statistic I’ve read other places is nine. Anyway, many spinners are needed for each weaver. The flying shuttle, again according to Brouty, quadrupled the weaver’s output. If you think that then people would try to find a way to increase the yield of the spinners, you would be right. The spinning jenny was invented in the mid 1700s and the first spinning factory was set up in 1761 by a gentleman named Richard Arkwright. Samuel Compton invented the spinning mule ten years later (unfortunately for him, he was a talented inventor that had his life threatened several times and died in poverty) and now handweavers were hard pressed to keep up. Pressure mounted for a mechanical loom that could keep up with the spinning machines.

Hand spinning and weaving, a honored and important job (primarily done by women) became a ‘craft’. Most people don’t even think of the connection between the clothing on their backs and the process by which it got there.

The Jack Loom

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The jack loom is a horizontal loom; i.e. the warp runs horizontally and most of the size is front to back, not up and down. The weaver can sit on a bench. With the vertical looms, like those still used in Scandinavia and previously in Greece, the warp threads hang down and the weaver must stand on a stool or the floor itself must be lowered to provide enough room.

folded loom

A loom this size could easily be put into the back of a wagon and transported from place to place, as I have my main character/detective doing in my historical mysteries. This is a back view, by the way. The white canvas is for the back apron. I prefer to have my finished cloth roll up on the back beam so i tie on the warp threads to the back and then thread them through the heddles and the reed.

Heddles; what are they? I’ve mentioned them several times and then someone emailed me and said I don’t know what heddles are. Well, mine are long metal wires with an eye exactly like a needle. Mine are made of metal, but the looms I saw in Greece had thread heddles. I think I would find weaving with those confusing.

heddles one heddles two

In the first photo, it is possible to see three of the four sheds. Each one has its own set of heddles. Threaded and tied up to the treadles, these sheds make it possible to weave many patterns.

And finally, the reed. The dents, or spaces, determine the fineness of the fiber and is another mechanism for keeping each thread smooth and untangled. I hope you can see the spaces here. Weaving with silk, for example, requires a reed with many many slots,

reed

 

More about treadles

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My husband and I just returned from Greece. Partly research, partly vacation. Anyway, I spent some time looking at looms. The vertical loom seems to have disappeared. At least I didn’t see any. The looms I saw were similar to the jack loom I own, except less sophisticated. Instead of metal heddles ( the needle like things that the warp threads go through), these looms used string. Instead of a castle, or upper frame that holds the heddles, posts were erected on each side. And instead of five treadles, these looms only had two. Only simple weaving could be done with these. Like my loom, however, these treadles are tied up to the sheds so that the threads are raised and lowered in turn.

loom - greece

Dyeing with indigo

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sweater-indigo

I’ll return to looms next blog. But I wanted to post about the indigo dyed sweater. Indigo loses strength with repeated dyeing I like the marbled effect but if one dyes the fiber in successive batches, as I did, the later skeins of yarn are lighter. See the sleeve? Still a few bits of darker dye, but overall the color is a lot less intense. Just FYI for all the dyers out there.

Some semi-modern looms

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There are any types of looms other than those previously discussed.

The drawloom and the jacquard loom both allow a weaver to weave a complex pattern without manually lifting individual threads.

First, a description of harnesses. A loom that makes four sheds (remember: that’s the space that allows the shuttle to pass through )allows a weaver to construct more complicated patterns than one with two. An eight harness loom allows more variation than four.  The compound harness loom, also described as a staggered harness loom, allows a loom to function as though it has many many harnesses. The invention has been ascribed to many different countries but it certainly appeared in China, allowing weavers to create silk brocade. Drawlooms required an assistant to sit on top of the harness and pull the heddles that controlled the pattern in the proper order. The assistant was call the drawboy (or sometimes the drawgirl  Can you imagine this job? Can you imagine that job?).Pre-constructed  patterns were required to produce the desired result.

The very thought of putting a child on top of a loom makes me shudder!

Treadles and Gas Pedals

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My husband has nicknamed treadles the gas pedals. He is not far off. Treadles do have an important function in weaving. They enable a weaver to create patterns in the weaving. As I said for the backstrap loom, the weaver picks up the individual threads. Treadles remove this step (no pun intended). The weaver steps on the appropriate treadle, which picks up the threads that the weaver has tied on to the metal rings. As these threads are lifted, the pattern is created. This enables the weaver, in combination with the threading through the reed and heddles, to make patterns, and, even for a four shed loom, fairly complicated ones.

treadles

Usually, the pattern is repeated across the warp.Look at an antique coverlet and you will see what I mean.

Since I have a four shed loom, I mainly use four treadles.

Treadles are one of THE Main features of modern looms. According to Broudy,  the treadles appeared in Europe about 1000 AD. The loom frame was not far behind. And, by the time silk reached Europe, weaving was already a highly developed art. Looms and weaving patterns developed in response to the fiber used and whether tapestries or other elaborate weaving would be done. Flax, although hard to process into linen, has smooth non-sticky fibers that lie together. Wool is a more forgiving fiber and takes dyes well. Silk is different from both. But whatever the fiber, and however the threads are warped and threaded, the treadles make the weaving of a pattern much easier than picking each strand up by hand.

Early looms – warp weighted

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No discussion of early looms would be complete without mentioning warp weighted looms.

As I mentioned in a previous post, weights have been discovered in archeological digs. The earliest date from the seventh century B.C. in Anatolia. In Europe, this type of loom was used since Neolithic times ( and according to one of the books I read is still used in Norway!). It is thought that this is the type of loom used in Ancient Greece.

What makes this loom different? Well, most of the modern looms are oriented horizontally. The weaver sits on a stool or bench. The warp runs from a front beam through the reed and heddles to a beam at the back. The tension or the warp threads can be adjusted by tightening the beam. The warp weighted loom is oriented vertically. In a warp weighted loom, the weaver stands.Moreover, she must walk back and forth and she pushes her shuttle through the sheds. How did she obtain several yards of cloth? With the modern jack, the warp can be very long and rolled around the front beam, and unrolled gradually as the weft threads are woven through. From what I’ve read, the warp weighted looms were tall. From the descriptions, she would have had to stand on a stool for the first bit of weaving. And pieces of cloth would have had to be sewn together to achieve the necessary length.

Tension is very important. To achieve a closely woven cloth, the warp and weft threads must be tightly packed together. So, the warp in every loom is under tension. In the warp weighted loom, warp threads are tied around weights that hang to an inch or so above the ground. Sticks would have had to be put through the warp to form the sheds.

All in all, weaving with this type of loom would have been much more physical than with a more modern loom. And, as a weaver, I wonder how it would have been possible to create the different patterns possible to construct on even a four shed jack loom.

A word about Norway and the Norse. The warp weighted loom is the type that would have been brought to the Norse (and Viking) colonies. Think Iceland, Greenland, and even early North America. Remnants of these looms, as well as cloth and weights, have been excavated from digs in all these areas. Ostergard, in Woven Into the Earth, discusses the digs in Greenland and the artifacts removed from just such a dig. The colonies were originally established during the middle ages. I always thought that the name Greenland was a lie,  chosen to lure colonists to a harsh and forbidding land. But the climate during this time was much warmer than it became later. In England, the climate was so warm grapes were grown and England had its own wine industry. But after the eleventh century, the climate became much colder. (It is call the Little Ice Age). So much for English made wine. And the climate in Greenland (and in North America) became too harsh for these colonies and they had to be abandoned. Or else the colonists died out.

An interesting study of the burials in North America shows that the bones, coming forward, show evidence of starvation and nutritional deficiencies. The dead also had to be buried in much more shallow graves since the permafrost line rose and graves couldn’t be dug as deeply as formerly.

Weaving and an interest in looms has led me far afield.

 

Looms – Early history

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When I originally took weaving lessons, my instructor commented that language pertaining to men’s activities had come down to us. No so true about language pertaining to women’s activities.

Well, words have come down to us. We just don’t always know them. Heirloom, for example, referred to the loom that was passed down from generation to generation. Looms are expensive now, they were really expensive then. I suspect most people know that spinster derives from spinning. Unmarried women had to spin a certain amount of yarn to make the family linens. We’ve all heard of the Hope chest which girls filled so they had the items necessary for their households as married women.

Eric Broudy, inThe Book of Looms, explains the word loom as from the Old English geloma, which meant simply tool or utensil. He says “The loom, perhaps next to the stone ax and spear, was the tool in ancient times.”

Who knew, right?