ROC Day

Yesterday, Tall Pines, our Spinning and Weaving guild held Roc day. Per Wikipedia, "Roc Day, is 7 January, the day after the feast of the Epiphany. It is also known as Saint Distaff's Day, since it was not really a holiday at all. In many European cultural traditions, women resumed their household work after the twelve days of Christmas. The distaff, or rock, used in spinning was the medieval symbol of women's work."

We use it as an excuse to gather together, spin some yarn and talk. Everyone gets to see everyone else's work in progress and a general good time is had by all.

Last year I started some weaving at Roc day. Sad to say, that weaving is still on the loom since it really didn't inspire me and it really doesn't look all that good. I really should remove it and start something else.

This year I dug into our bottomless stash of fiber and found four batts of Shetland lamb's wool that I carded up 5 years ago and earmarked for a shawl project. Yesterday I spun up 1 1/2 spindles of the wool in 15 tpi thickness and just about finished the first batt. Looks like there will be plenty for that shawl if I can just remember what pattern I was going to use. I fully intend to at least get this batch fully spun up before I put away the wheel.

Highland Games - Day 2

I guess that the organizers of the Houston Highland Games had to take the hall for two days or something but the second day was really a bust compared to day 1. They had completed the competitions for field events and music and had almost completed all of the dance competitions. Most of the competitors and performers that came in from outlying areas or even out of state had gone home and not come back for day 2. Only the junior girls were left competing.



Since it was Sunday, almost no one came before 12. After that, there were some visitors but most wandered around for a bit and then left disappointed that there was nothing "Scottish" going on. There were still some real characters including a kilted Goth with rings and piercings everywhere, tattoos, jack boots and a black kilt complete with black sporran.

About 2 pm the organizers realized that there were a lot of disappointed people out there who had paid $15 a head to get in to see very little. They got a group of 2 pipers a tabor and a snare drummer out to put some Scotch back in the day. They went through a lot of different songs and some pipe and some drum solos. They were really good (watch the hands on the Indian drummer) but a little to late to save the day.

I got a lot of spinning done and managed to ply up about 250 yards of brown alpaca and 120 yards of white so it was not a wasted day for me.

Highland games in Houston

As a "find something to do" plan for a long weekend without my riding buddy Marni, I went to the Houston, Texas version of Scots Highland Games. It is being held in a fairground building that is usually scene to bull riding and calf roping. Today there was the sound of bagpipes, the sight of highland fling dance, drum and pipe competitions and the almost surreal sight of Texans in kilts.

I wish that I could have gotten a picture of the one in cowboy boots, a McCloud dress tartan, a leather vest and a ten gallon hat. What a cultural statement. I did however get a picture of the most ethnically diversified set of Scots that I have ever seen. Look at the picture below.

Close examination shows that the two drummers in the last row are a Korean and a Japanese, the drummer in the middle is black and the piper ahead of him is from India. The rest of the band was just as varied. I went and listened to them in the band competition and they sounded really good for a junior High school band.

I ended up getting into more than I planned. Contemporary Hand weavers of Houston (CHH) one of our spinning and weaving guilds, was doing a demonstration of Scots tartan weaving and they were short a spinner. I volunteered and ended up demonstrating wool spinning for over 6 hours. I'm going back tomorrow to do more spinning. We didn't have a lot of people stop by to watch but there were always several coming around to ask questions, mostly good questions. It was fun and I hope to enjoy it again tomorrow.

Christmas Fiber Swap

My wife and I belong to the Tall Pines Spinners and Weavers guild in Spring, Texas. For the past two years we have done a double fiber swap for Christmas. The format for this year was that everyone brought in a fiber of some sort to the September meeting. These were swapped in a blind random draw so that we each walked out with a bag of fiber from an unknown member. Only the one member who organized this knew who's fiber was who's.


Between September and October, each of us had to dye their swapped fiber in some way we thought was interesting. Then at the October meeting, the dyed fibers were blind swapped again so that we each had fiber from at an unknown member, dyed by a second unknown member. We had to take that fiber and make something from it that we could give back to the original owner as a Christmas gift at our December meeting / Party. Its a challenge to be given a yarn of random type, color and thickness and try to come up with something as a gift for an unknown recipient.


My fiber this year was a ball of 100 yds of red and 100 yds of blue single ply generic wool. The fiber had been tie-dyed so there was some variation in the color at random intervals. Since I am not skilled with pointy sticks (knitting) or hooked sticks (crochet) I usually weave. Last year I made a woven tote bag. This year I decided to make a rug

The 200 yards of wool were certainly not enough for any reasonable sized rug so I raided the stash and found a white and a charcoal grey wool that were nearly the same weight as the the dyed fiber. I had a rigid heddle loom already warped up with some light wool, and with only one month of spare time work until the party, I took the lazy man's way out and used that. Now all I needed was a design. As usual, I let the rug make up the design as I wove it. My usual motif is Navajo so that is not as hard as it sounds. Everything is symmetrical in width and length so if you fill in one quarter, you know what the other three quarters should look like.

Also as usual, I just barely finished on time. It came off the loom at 8 this evening and the party starts at 10 tomorrow morning. I am reasonably pleased with the result even though the last 4" of the rug got away from me when some of the warp stretched out and the tension went bad. With a little ironing and a little blocking, it doesn't look too bad. The picture to the left shows me at the loom and the finished product is shown below. I hope that the anonymous member I made it for likes the work.








I'll post my return gift after the party so you can see what became of my fiber.