Thinking about Rugs...

Sea Glass

This rug was actually completed a year ago but I don't recall putting it in my blog.  It's going in now because someone asked about weaving with roving and fleecewoven rugs on a tapestry mail list to which I subscribe and I wanted to show an example.  This 40" by 28" rug was handwoven with strips of roving from my own flock that I had hand dyed.  It was very slow-going as I didn't find it practical to wrap lengths of roving on a rag shuttle but chose instead to insert each piece by hand.

Sea Glass, close-up

I had fully intended to place this rug on the floor in a guest bedroom.  However... when I imagined dogs lying on it and wondered about how difficult it would be to remove dog hair from the roving, I decided that this would be a wall rug.

Because dogs are an important part of my life and this is their house too, I made the decision after weaving this rug that all rugs that go on floors will be small enough to pick up and hang over the railing outdoors, hosing off if need be, and they will be constructed of warp materials that can tolerate that treatment.

I have also learned to like using a temple since this rug was woven!

Here was my first rug, woven rather flimsily on a jack loom.  It is on the floor of my sunroom and you can see that these rugs do indeed attract dog hair.

Fleece-woven rug, natural colors

A closer look:

Close-up, fleecewoven natural colored rug

Here's one that's dyed; it was the second rug I wove, also flimsy because I wove it on a jack loom.  The rug was dyed AFTER weaving which was quite the project!

Dyed fleecewoven rug

And a closer look:

Dyed fleecewoven rug, close-up

Roving and fleecewoven rugs are in my opinion tedious projects.  I would not undertake one again but I would use unspun wools in smaller projects because the nubbly texture, particularly with fleeceweaving, is luscious.

Here is, for me, a happy compromise.  These are also a bit flimsy because they were woven on jack looms but they make nice scatter rugs that can be washed, shaken out, etc.  I don't mind using them on the floor- your can see the dog hair as I didn't even bother to shake them out before photographing.

Rugs handwoven with hand-spun yarn

 The close-ups:

These rugs were woven with some of the miles of yarn that I spun as a beginner.  Here and there I laid in short lengths of dyed roving or fleece.  These rugs wove up much faster and still had a nice texture.  Now that I have a Swedish loom with an overhead beater I need to weave up some more of them.  Come to think of it, I need to spin up more yarn to weave rugs with!

Pygora Update:

Everyone is settling in nicely.  The girls are getting downright goofy, racing around and leaping off rocks etc at times.  They are respectful of but quite curious about the dogs.  The buckling, who must be kept separate from the doelings because they're too young to be bred, got a buddy today.  I lured my meat goat wether into hip pen so everyone is happy.