Katherine (McLean) Delorme
Katherine lives in Kenora, Ontario with her 3 children and 2 cats, and works fulltime as a physiotherapist at Lake of the Woods District Hospital. She joined the project for the creative challenge, and to make clothing that doesn’t have the negative environmental impacts of the current clothing manufacturing systems. She started knitting initially as a child in the 1970’s but really returned to it when heading off to university in 1989 after deciding to knit her niece a sweater for Christmas, and hasn’t quit since. She took a spinning class around 2011- 2012 and purchased a Louet Julia spinning wheel in 2013, then took dyeing classes at the Manitoba Fibre Festival starting in 2014, as well as at Wolseley Wool, and then moving to natural dyeing in 2017. She bought two raw alpaca fleece at the inaugural Manitoba Fibre Festive in St. Norbert in 2017, and her first raw sheep fleece in 2018 to try processing through all the steps from scratch. She took a ridged heddle weaving class prior to the pandemic, and purchased a floor loom second hand through a local buy and sell. She managed to get into a beginners 4 shaft weaving class with the Manitoba Weavers and Fibre Artists in November 2021, and joined the Ontario Weavers and Handspinners Flax Plantalong, growing flax for the first time this past year (after having to put up an enormous fence to keep the Kenora deer out of her garden area in 2019). Having mainly worked with wool, those alpaca fleeces are still waiting their turn, but hopefully the alpaca webinars that the OWH plans to put on this year will help them get some attention, in addition to the quilting and cross stitching projects waiting as well. Besides the fibre arts, she also enjoys Scottish Country Dancing, yoga, music and making all kinds of things, including soap, wine, kobucha, and kefir. She is also getting more and more into gardening, for edibles, dye plants and fibre.
Kilt Hose
The raw materials for these Kilt Hose came from Barb Mulock at Prairie’s Edge Farm. I purchased a batt that was 75% Grey Shetland wool from the Barb’s sheep and 25% mohair from her goats, blended at the farm, totaling 10 oz. I stripped the batt lengthwise, and spun it worsted style, into a 3 ply yarn, and knit them up 2 at a time toe up socks, that I designed myself, with a cable pattern at the top. This was a fairly quick gratifying project, as a lot of the processing was done for me, and I finished these in the beginning of April 2021.
Tartan kilted skirt
The raw materials for this kilt came from Barb Mulock at Prairie’s Edge Farm, one white fleece and one grey fleece, from her flock of Shetland sheep. The white one was purchased in 2018, and had been washed, but other than a small amount that had been combed and spun (for use in another project), the rest of the fleece was sitting and waiting for further processing. The grey fleece was purchased in 2020, but hadn’t even been washed yet. After the experience of washing the entire white fleece in my bathtub, the grey fleece was washed in smaller sections, and only as much as I needed for this project. Once the OYOO project was announced, I started combing the fleeces, and dizing bird’s nests from the combs, collecting them in large tubs. My plan was to try to comb all the fibre I needed and spin it all at the same time to try to get some consistency in the spinning. A good idea, but difficult to accomplish. I also spun small samples of the white fleece, then tried some natural dye experiments with plants in my yard. Ultimately, as summer was getting short, I focussed on the white fleece to get enough prepared fibre to spin and then dye a large quantity of green yarn. The dyeing plan flip flopped from with Tansy, then to Marigold, then back to Tansy again, with a final iron after bath to achieve the green colour (alum premordant). Then I focussed on the grey – I wanted to get it as dark as possible. I talked to Ash Alberg in September when on the Manitoba Fibre Trail, and she had suggested overdyeing with sumac. I collected/foraged both sumac leaves and candles, and overdyed the grey yarn (no mordant, just naturally occurring tannins), removing the fibre to dissolve iron into the bath, and returning to the bath for the final colour. The white yarn was the natural colour of the fleece, and was the smallest amount needed in the pattern. The fabric was woven on a 36” Leclerc Artisat jack floor loom, and raw edges were overlocked for stability. The skirt was sewn in a combination of machine and hand sewing. The leather buttons were purchased from Hank and Purl, though may be replaced with firmer buttons made of bone or antler, when I can source and make them. The leather buttons tend to fold and curl a little too easily for my liking, and are the only things keeping it on. If I am going to dance in this skirt, I want to make sure it is going to stay with me the entire time.
The tartan is the MacLean of Duart Hunting tartan, an official tartan in the Scottish Registar of Tartans. The MacLean history website claims that it is the oldest recorded tartan in Scotland, and dates to a charter in 1587, but the Registry states there is no evidence to support this.
This skirt, being completely washed, combed, spun, dyed, woven and sewn by one person, took the entire year to make.
Fingerless gloves
After completing the skirt, there was a skein of green yarn left over, and a bit of white (the grey yarn was almost completely used up). Not enough material for a top (and not enough time to really consider combing, spinning and knitting one) I decided on a small project for my third item – fingerless gloves. I had collected cosmos sulphureus and coreopsis flowers grown in my yard throughout the summer and dried them, so they were used to dye the white yarn three different shades of yellow/orange. I modified a pattern from the Shetland Wool Week annual 2018 called Banksflooer Mitts by Terri Malcolmson. I used the pattern on the palm as written in the pattern, but because my yarn had been spun fairly fine for weaving, and didn’t match the yarn used, I had to modify the number of stitches, and therefore modify the pattern on the back of the hand. I used Alice Starmore’s Charts for Color Knitting 2011 edition to help me create a new pattern that I charted out on knitting graft paper to use. The thumb length was also increased.
Knitted toque in natural undyed wool
This was a last minute addition to my ensemble. A couple of years ago there was a magazine called Spin + Knit – a special issue from Interweave. On the cover was a fair isle hat knitted from handspun natural Shetland wool colours. I thought it looked amazing, and wanted to try it. I had sourced some fleeces, and some batts at the Manitoba Fibre Festival, but was lacking the greys. They weren’t Shetland, but I managed to pick up some small amounts of grey roving that had been processed by Longway Homestead’s mill, a Romney and a Cotswold, for a couple of greys. I spun up some yarn, but wasn’t able to get as fine a yarn as the pattern called for, not even close. The yarn sat, waiting for me to either recalculate how I could still make the pattern, or to do something else. Since I had a little more time on the challenge, and hadn’t managed to make a top, I thought I would add a hat. Since I had a limited amount of yarn, and I didn’t want to reknit the hat too many times for corrections, I decided to start at the top, and work in increases to the size I needed. I modified a very simple colour transition between colours so that I wouldn’t be caught running out of a colour in the middle of an intricate pattern. I used a combination of Top down lifestyle no swatch needed hat pattern, and part of the Sunset hat pattern graph, both on Ravelry. I had to rip back once to change it, increasing the number of stitches once more, and decreasing the number of rows in one colour, otherwise it was a fairly quick ‘make it up as you go’ project.