Dorothy Northcutt Gray - Fine Art

In the comments of my last post on the nalbinding hat, Kim asked me how long it took to make. It was hard to say for sure, because I worked on it off and on for period of around two weeks, and didn't pay too much attention to how long I spent on each session. So I guessed maybe eight hours total, certainly no more than ten?

I've started a new hat, and I can say with certainty how much time I've spent on the work I've done so far, because I did it all in the car coming back from North Carolina! The below work-in-progress measures eight and quarter inches in diameter, and I have spent just at three and a half hours doing it. I guess that I am maybe halfway through, so unless I run into unexpected difficulties, the finished project will take between seven and eight hours. So I suppose my first guess was pretty close to correct.

I started this hat a couple of weeks ago, and kind of struggled with it, but I finally got it figured out while we were driving from Atlanta to Cashiers, North Carolina on Friday. This hat was made with Oslo stitch in the round, then finished off with two rows of Coptic stitch. The yarn is something like 90% wool and 10% mohair and it is beautiful if slightly scratchy. I think in cold weather it will be quite comfortable.

I am taking the summer off from school, and I have been using the free time to learn some new things. I have become very interested in fiber arts, especially anything to do with wool and other animal fibers.

My focus so far has been nalbinding, which is an ancient - very ancient, - technique of using a single needle to create a fabric made of loops. Most of the stitches involve using the thumb of the left hand to manage the loops while the right hand manipulates the needle over and or under the loops in various ways. It's amazing the many different effects that can be had by simply varying the direction of the needle's entry through the loops. For instance, the York stitch and the Oslo stitch: the setup on the thumb is exactly the same for these two stitches; but in the York stitch, the needle goes through the top loop from behind, but in the Oslo stitch, the needle comes in the top loop through the front. The result is two very different fabrics.

I am also going to at least attempt to learn to hand-spin yarn using a plain drop spindle. One, because I am fascinated to know how it all works, and two, because a lady of my SCA persona's time (10th century Northumbria) would certainly understand how yarn and thread is made. I ordered a set from Lunabudknits on Etsy which includes a cheerfully painted wooden top-whorl spindle and two ounces of wonderfully soft Bluefaced Leicester top wool and as soon as I get my courage up I will be diving right in!