Back Online!

Well after several weeks with no computer to operate the loom I finally have the laptop back, cured of its virus, and I now have the loom software running on it again (Phew!)... a good job cos I only have 2 months after xmas to get the exhibition piece done :-)

Weavers Block?

Help! Where has all the time gone too????? I really must MAKE the time to warp up for this project...it's all there but the time!
The way the weather is going we are going to miss Autumn and Winter all-together this year, and I was hoping Winter would be riding and weaving :-O

Expo Expression Sonere "Tubular Bells"

I have the concept design for the piece for the 2012 Fils et metier Expo in France. It's called "Tubular Bells" as the expo theme is "Expressions of Sound".
The concept is of an array of fabric, tubular bells incorporating electro-luminescent wire, suspended in an ascending scale array. The array will react to external sounds by emitting light depending on pitch and volume, giving a sound-to-light effect. It's a great opportunity to work in mixed materials and 3D sculpture which is commonly a feature of this particular exhibition; the interactive materials will, I hope, be a first!!

The main design feature will, of course, be the woven tubes. Colour....COLOUR .... MORE COLOUR!!! I will weave a series of different length tubes in double-weave with randomly irridescent-dyed silk warp and a weft dyed on hanks which are wound to match the tube length - that will enable me to control the way the weft colour pattern develops.
The electro-luminescent wire will be would into each tube.

I need to get the silk yarn and the dyes when I go to the UK next week, so I can get cracking when I return at the end of the month......
Meantime it's onto detailed design and choosing the weave structures.

Khumba Puja - Mounted

KHUMBA PUJA


All the panels are now complete. They have been mounted on the contoured wire-mesh substrate and I have now mounted that in the wooden frame. You can just make out the Puja flagpole protruding from the lower wooden frame - it just remains to make the silkflags and attach all them on their lines.

The lighting on this has to be precise to make the most of the light/shadow for the contours and textures on the cloth and I also want their to be movement in the flags. So I have designed its own lighting to provide light and air movement; the flags and lines will be extremely fine so they move in the air currents.

2012 Fils et Metier Expo at Varaignes, Dordogne.

At Last! the theme for the 2012 textile artists Expo at Varaignes is out....its "Expression Sonores" which means "Expressions of Sound". What a result! Interpreting music through my weaving designs was my main drive for all my recent pieces and, in particular, the two pieces I did based around the 2 songs were titled Mayan Music; the one expressing a drum sound, subtitled "Drums" and the other I subtitled "Ocarina" as it evoked a more trill, higher pitched sound....so i will definitely exhibit that pair.

I also have a piece planned which is a hanging sculpture of different length woven tubes which are formed into a wind chime. So i am going to work on that for a while and weave it specifically for the expo...how exciting!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Khumba Puja - Mounting Finished Panels

I have finished most of the panels and started mounting them; this is far from finished but I wanted to get this stage documented

This has been a real challenge....as each piece on the loom is just one piece in the jigsaw, it has been difficult to focus on the detail within each piece AND keep the continuity to the adjacent pieces in my head at the same time. Its 1.3m wide and, in the flesh, the glacier/ice fall really stands out from the mountain.

The panels: woven individually on the loom, each is 20cm wide and different lengths - 2 or 3 make up each vertical panel. The are woven on 4 shafts on an asymetric twill threading. I have chosen a fringed edge as I want each panel to remain seperate in appearance when mounted. The treadling is varied to produce diffferent textures throughout the piece but its predominantly a twill/basket weave. The yarn is wool (DK) and I have woven-in, carded, unspun wool fibres to produce the tapestry and textures I need. All the colours are from the natural colour of different breeds of sheep, and the white is a beautiful ultra-fine alpaca. By slight variations in the treadling (being able to change the face of the weaving on the computer is a great flexibility for this), the fibres are woven in tight or very loose to produce the varying textures and fluffiness.There are 16 panels and they are mounted on a wire mesh which has been moulded to produce the contoured backdrop. Each panel has been sewn onto the mesh.

The Mounting
The panels are mounted on a wire mesh which has been shaped to provide a countour appearance as each panel is sewn onto the mesh - the photo has flattened this, but the whole piece varies by over 50mm in height and this accentuates the effect of the cliffs and the 'flow' of the glacier down the mountain.

From here on........
Once mounted it will be held within a frame and the foreground part (the pole and Puja ceremony flags) can be added.....way to go!

New Project - Khumba Puja

The next project I have titeld "KHUMBA PUJA". It is a large piece (1.3m x 1.1m) made up of 16 seperate panels, mounted either suspended in layers or possible on some contoured frame. It's already on the loom and I have done 3 panels.
Some time ago I was watching a Puja ceremony at Everest base camp and the backdrop of the Khumba glacier and the coloured flags in the wind stuck in my head. Gail is a 5-element acupuncturist, the flags represent the 5-elements, (earth, fire wood, metal, wind) and my first love is trekking in the mountains so it immediately struck a chord. I will use some tapestry weaving techniques, on the loom, to get the textures I want for the ice, rock and snow. It will comprise panels, probably placed foreground, mid and background with the coloured flags on wires....but not sure about that yet as I may mount them on tubes, like a wind chime or on wire mesh.

The panels will be woven entirely in wool and I have loads of carded, unspun alpaca and some merino in various shades of 'snow' and natural wool shades that will be woven in, with a 4ply as the weft. The warp is natural jute. I will vary the weave structure across the panels, but the basis will be a broken twill and a basket weave as they will give the structure and versatitlity I want; allowing me to easily vary the amount of warp showing across all the blocks and the degree to which the loose fibres are either trapped or free above the warp/weft. The unspun fibre weaves beautifully into these too giving a varied loft depending on the tie-up......but there is also the wedding this month :-))




The actual picture I am using as a basis for the design is the second one.

"30/30" - The Finished Article

Well, here it is! Finished and o the wall under the spotlight...so to speak. I am very pleased with the finished result and, most importantly of all, it looks great on the wall :-)

I already have 2 pages of sketches for the next project...its working title is "Base Camp"...... and just in time, a weaving friend from Aubeterre gave us 3 huge bin bags of beautiful yarns, mostly lovely wools and some cotton, bamboo and silk.........may have to wait till after the wedding-of-the-year to begin that one.

"30/30" 2nd Layer with windows

Second layer is warped at 10epi in a 10/1 bronze linen. Its an extracted section of the twill of the main cloth but woven as overshot. Ground yarn is the warp linen and the pattern is a 10/4 linen in steel grey. The set will result in weft faced as I chose the set to suit the requirements of the windows, not the cloth. So I have woven this as overshot with double tabby ABxBAx to make more of the bronze colour come through.



The second layer is on the loom and have finished the first of the 'windows' in this piece.
This is the transparent window behind which will be the bottle. It has a wooden frame piece top and bottom. Each side is 100 picks of pattern, woven seperately and beaten with a comb, so had to be careful with the weft packing to be sure each side was at the same level.


This is it with both sides finished, the top frame picece in place and the first few full picks woven











The unwoven warp is gathered to allow the bottle underneath to be visible.

The close up shows it more clearly. This has worked out really well and the whole thing is perfectly stable and doesn't change when the tension is released as its a a 10/1 linen with zero elasticity.

Now have to weave another 25cm before the next window. I may tapestry weave in this or just use it to show through the backcloth

"30/30" Message in a Bottle

One of the items to be found in the cairn of petrowood is a bottle, in which messages are left. I liked that! I imagined it would be a broken bottle by now so I have made a fabric bottle from linen bandaged around a miniature wine bottle, hardened, dyed, sliced in half and adorned with an 'aged' wine bottle label. It will be positioned underneath the 'window' created by the frame described in yesterdays blog.
Unfortunately, I needed a full size label so a large bottle of Bordeaux had to be sacrificed last night all in the name of art...............................

I suppose for authenticity it's more likely to have been a beer bottle that was left behind, but it was me that had to empty the bottle, and I prefer wine :-))

"30/30" Finished Backcloth

"30/30" - 32" x 44"

Well, not actually finished as still have the fringe to do, but sufficient to hang and photograph. This is just what I am calling the backcloth. I have yet to start the second layer, a narrower, vertically hanging piece that will go over the yellow/red vertical line.

I have managed to get the rolls to stay in the cloth whilst hanging for the dunes, though I think I may remove the upper one as it diminishes the impact of the set of tyre tracks below it. I have some lovely petrified wood, one piece of which I have incorporated into the top fringe to hang it. I am very pleased with it as all the patterns, sand, drifting & tracks, stand out really well from each other, and the raised cloth textures (not visible in the photo) draws you in to want to touch it.

The second layer will have several elements of 'transparency' to reveal the backcloth so that this 2nd layer reveals parts of the layer below. One key feature though will be the central warp yarn. This will be the same fancy metallic/wool yarn I used for the horizontal meridian line. The effect being to have the two meridians crossing; 30 lattitude and 30 longitude.

The loom woven pattern will be the tyre tracks, with the space in the middle having sections of unwoven warp; I will use 2 shuttles to preserve the central space. After seeing the expo, it has given me an idea as for what to do with this central space. I have worked out how, still on the loom, to weave-in a frame to the central section ( I can even do this in wood if I make sure its positioned so it does not have to go over the breast beam) whilst still being able to weave the pattern up the sides using the dobby to select the shafts. This will leave me with a 'framed window' with just warp threads inside it, like a miniature tapestry frame, surrounded by the loom-woven pattern. I can then use tapestry weaving to infill the frame - I want to put 2 frames in this section; I may tapestry weave one of them and the other with the warp threads bunched to allow the bottle below to be seen and also because the bunching will give the impression of the longitude lines converging at the poles.

This is a nice juxtaposition of what can best be achieved on the loom with the tapestry weaving.

Right, got to work ut how best to warp this up!!

Expo at Grand Brassac - Joan Eytle Kendall

Spent a lovely afternoon yesterday at a small exhibition of tapestry weaving; two weavers, one from our commune and the other in the adjacent commune, would you believe! We went on Monday and met Wally and yesterday we went again and met Joan. I really came away with my belief re-inforced that ones creativity is limited only by our imagination...which is great because I have the same attitude, though I am sure mine is influenced somewhat by the fact that I am at the stage where I have far more creativity than I do skill!
Her work is the type where, you could return to look every day for a month and still want more; I am sure she won't mind me reproducing a few of her pieces here.
Despite my mantra that the loom is only a start point for me, recently I have questioned some of my own ideas, particularly those for my 3-dimensional and mixed-media work because they are too unconventional....... but today has definitely reversed that trend. Looking back through my sketchbook and notes has just reinforces that; I can see that I have truncated threads prematurely in my designs just when they have started to lead somewhere different just because they are not 'conventional' or are techniques I have not seen before.

Maybe now is the right time to start looking at the work of others in these field. So dare I look up the links to the artists Joan gave me?

Look her up at www.soulweaving.co.uk and also on her Facebook linked from her website.

The one just above is Night Over Egypt, which I didn't see at the expo but is particularly interesting as my current piece "30/30" is a night scene in the egyption desert and one of my sketchbook designs associated with it, is a night scene I gave the title "Cairo Sunset" which has side-notes saying the sky/sun would need to be tapestry woven due to the lack of shafts on my loom....spooky! ....maybe I will do that one next as a companion pice to 30/30.

Onwards and upwards!!

Working Title "30/30"

I have finished the design sufficiently to start the main back-cloth - I say back-cloth because this is going to be in layers. I have worked out what I think is a twill (so ignorant!) on an ascending undulating pattern. This gives me the squares and diamonds I want for the crytals of the sand, and the overall pattern incorporates the shapes of drifting and a set of tyre tracks.
I have a striking 'hot' orange with a dark blue which reproduce the 'desert sunset' colours beautifully; the test piece shows this and there are some great half-tones in the pattern.



Once off the loom it will be 'sculpted' into an undulating shape to further replicate the dunes - a small amount of powdered PVA is added to the wash and its then steamed onto a former.
The second and third layers are sky/dunes
and one of three design ideas I have to incorporate the confluence and cairn of petrowood.

An Interesting Direction

I love the focus that a fixed "theme" provides when designing and am still waiting expectantly for the theme of the 2012 Fils et Metier Expo in Varaignes, France. So, I thought I would take an earlier theme, from the 2010 Expo which was simply "30", and see where it lead me compared to those who exhibited in 2010. http://www.filsetmetiers.com/expos.php
My first thought was, why couldn't it have been "20" as the title 20/20 vision came to mind, so how about 30/30? 30 degrees North, 30 degrees East? Where is that? Well actually it's in the desert in Egypt! So not much material to design around there...how wrong can you be? Totally! Because I discovered there is a 15 year old project called The Degree Confluence Project whose aim is to visit and photograph every degree intercesection of latitude and longitude in the world that is either on or in sight of land. Amazingly nearly all have been visited and photographed, including 30N 30E. Coincidentally, there was also a 4WD club in Egypt called the 30-30 Club whose aim was to get to this pont by vehicle and their tradition was to add a piece of petrified forest wood to a pile they created, and often to leave a message in a bottle...so it's not just desert, as you can see.

Here is the picture they took.

30N 30E, 54km SW of Izbat Kafr Dāwūd (al-Buhayra), Matrūh, Egypt

EARLY THOUGHTS
I already have an outline design. The main cloth pattern will need to evoke the shapes in the sand caused by the wind and maybe the sand particles themselves; fortunately, the regularity of sand crystal shapes make them fairly easy to replicate.
The tyre tracks are also a feature I want to get into the main cloth. The cairn of petrowood? The messages?I want to "add" that in some way; maybe a 2 layer weave, maybe as a sculpted layer onto the cloth.......

I will have to change the colours though...need something more vivid so a desert sunset is probbaly more appropriate...here is a pic. of sunset in the North Sahara... I love the orange!

Sunset in the Northern Sahara Desert


I am also looking now at using "Sand and Desert" as a theme or maybe the Degree Confluence concept, for a series of wall hangings and sculptures. I did look at the intersection 20/20 (20N 20E) and it's in the desert in Chad and has not been visited by the project - unsurprising considering the decades of religeous and civil war in the region. Maybe I will choose another....wherever you live, you are never more than 80km from a degree confluence...unfortunately, my adjacent intercections are a drainage ditch beside a road and an empty field- how uninspiring is that!

Dance on a Volcano (Ocarina)

The second in the Mayan Music set is subtitled "OCARINA". The sound patterns I have used here evoke a more harsh, trill sound like the wind pipes used by the Matans, hence the title Ocarina

Los Endos (Drums) Mounted and On my wall

Well here it is, mounted on its stretcher and on the wall. Can't decide whether to put in the modern part of the house or the old barn section.

I have decided the two pieces will go under the same heading of "Mayan Music" - this one is subtitled "DRUMS"

Los Endos

This is the second in the 3 piece set I have conceived and the first i will weave until I resolve how to do Ripples. It's warped and ready to go - here are the screen shots of the PCW design; it's an overshot so there will be a fine tabby in the actual woven piece.



I have always had this 'drum-sound' and 'lost civilisation' image for this piece. So I did some fascinating research into the ancient Mayan culture, for whom textiles was and still is a major part of their culture. Four key images recur in their textiles. Two of these were able to be designed into the piece using the threading I developed for the main image.


This one is the "earthlord", a key pagan image in Mayan textiles







And this one is "The Vulture"





The main pattern, which comes from the threading, is part of the theme in these pieces of 'waves' - in this case I want to give the feeling of intense sound waves. Mayans had, like most cultures, an important role for music and their music was based around purcussion, like drums and small wind instruments, like the Ocarina. This piece is DEFINITELY drums to me!! Big, wide sound waves!



It is on 8 shafts in overshot, likethe other two pieces (though Ripples will probably be done on more shafts)

B****R! Ripples requires more shafts

Right, it's official - I am saving up for a 32 shaft Megado!
After many hours of experimentation, "Ripples of a Blue Girls Tears" needs more shafts; at least 12 and ideally 16. I have tried to modify it within the confines of 8 shafts but it's impossible. I can reproduce the image perfectly as designed, but I need the extra shafts to enable a stable ground weave in the tabby of the overshot. I could ignore that it's not a stable structure, as its going to be stretched over a frame, but that is cheating! I now have two projects 'on hold' due to shaft restrictions: The African Queen can also only be done exactly as I want it if I have 16 shafts.
I have another large project in overshot which needs a few more hours work and that WILL work on 8 shafts. ....its called Los Endos in the Project Pages.

Gail is underway

Gail is practicing to get used to her new loom.; a 32" 8 shaft table loom.
She can start her own blog now!

Whoo...hooo! Got my loom back!

I am happy to announce I can have my loom back when I get back to France tomorrow as I have found an 8 shaft Ashford table loom at a a demon price for Gail.
I have been looking for one of these as it can be easily adapted to use the mechanical dobby system I have spare from the Octado...more work in the garage to distract me from weaving lol

Going Native!

A bit of "freehand-fun" whilst I wait for the yarns for "Ripples" - I am off to the UK on Friday so have had them delivered there.
I have done a blanket, done to be a wall-hanging actually, so it will be stretched on a frame and hung in the gite. It's just over a metre long.
It's my design for a traditional Navajo blanket, pretty much made up as I went along. It's loom woven with a warp spacing of only 6 epi so it's entirely weft-faced. I have used a lot of "pick-up" to do the patterns and there are several changes of lift plan throughout. I used up loads of bits of yarns I had; mostly wool with lots of fancy yarns, boucles and fuzzy yarns; all different weights and thicknesses with the main warp in a cotton boucle. If I ran out of something, I changed the design and used something else out of the bag! Good fun!
Can't wait to get going on "Ripples" though!

Ripples of a Blue Girls Tears

"Ripples of a Blue Girls Tears"
It's Big! The final version will probably be done as a tryptych so I can get the 2m width I am looking for.

I have started a seperate page for this project with the full information and moved the background research there.

This is my first foray into interpreting great pieces of music, music which stirs my deepest emotions, then turning them into a woven piece. This is the main direction for my work and what a journey this piece is taking me on!

Music is, for me, the highest art form - the ultimate emotional journey. Listen to this; if you are over 45 and it doesn't stir you, check your pulse...you're probably already dead!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IU2gHmpghx0&feature=related

That is one of my favourite songs, and certainly my favourite lyric; "Ripples", written by Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford. I know the lyrics inside out and it doesn't require a literature degree to work out their meaning; it's about youth, it's optimism, it's beauty, the inevitability of ageing and the futility of chasing what has passed us by. However, it was only when I stumbled on the link between this and the poem "Blue Girls", written 50 years before "Ripples" by John Crowe Ransom, that the image for my weaving really materialised. To my knowledge, Banks & Rutherford have never acknowledged that "Blue Girls" inspired their lyrics; though if you read both (they are reproduced on the seperate project page "Ripples of a Blue Girls Tears"), it's inconcievable that this is not the case.


My piece, "Ripples of a Blue Girl's Tears" represents the Blue Girls through colour and shape, and I have chosen to reflect the melencholy mood of the song and poem also through the colour. The image itself represent the ripples and interference patterns created from tears falling onto a pool of water; tears of the Blue Girls looking upon their reflection in the pool "Seems not very long ago, Lovelier she was than any that I know" then seeing the distorted face reflected back at them "The face in the water looks up, And she shakes her head as if to say, That it's the last time you'll look like today." Dozens of hours have been spent taking the basic overshot pattern for the concentric waves step-wise to the final draft, manipulating the patterns to destroy the symmetry, yet replicate the interference patterns when ripples collide, then arranging these to give the semblence of a facial image in the distorted surface - just hope others can see it too LOL :-)
The final stage was to create the distorted body images of the blue girls - something that I had to do with the liftplan-only, as to change the threading would have undone the main ripples image.

"Blue Girls" is considered to be the pinacle of his work, from an American poet who is considered to be one of the most influential of his time. The lyrics of Ripples are beautiful; the whole is sublime; read and listen and hopefully the two will come together for you in my design.

Mike
.

Gail Weaving the Indian Carpet

Gail is enjoying this weaving lark far too much!!!!
We will be looking for another loom before the winter arrives me-thinks.

Update at 17:30......wow, she is getting quicker...its woven and off the loom (still needs finishing off)

Indian Carpet - first impressions

Just got the first few patterns of the Indian Carpet done - not as easy as I thought as the new loom behaves very differently compared to the first few projects - thick cotton warp (12/4/3) with high warp tension. Took a while to find the right settings; especially the tension which was tending to affect the piano keys of the dobby and cause shaft selection errors....not easy to prevent draw-in either but have sorted that too now with a floating selvage on the second warp beam. The Ashford shuttles are not very good with doubled 8/8 cotton on them either. We changed the colours from denim/teal/gold to rose/shell/custard (sound like a dessert!)...so lets see how it turns out in a few days time.....Gail is now going to take over and complete it...hope she's quick as its 5' long and I want to get back on to my own projects LOL

An 8 Shaft Overshot Solution for "The African Queen"

Horse riding yesterday...today it's already over 30C so its weaving in the cool today.
I have been researching the options for the basic pattern for the "African Queen" and have been exploring overshot as an alternative to a 3/1 twill. I will need to use all 8 shafts to get an overshot pattern with sufficient "curves" rather than blocks or stripes, so I wil need to rethink how I can get the second, seperate warp for the dress. But as the overshot option is ideal for weaving-in the body and head without over-filling the weft with the additional yarn, I think it is the best solution...especially when this one turned up............
...for me it evokes the background on the original beautifully and will be stunning when full size woven in a shiny, glowing yarn.

I do have a solution for the second warp: my loom is to be renamed a "Dectado"! I am adding 2 shafts to the rear of the castle dedicated to the second warp beam, which conveniently for this problem, comes off the back several centimetres higher on the Octado; then by using the mechanical dobby shaft selection pedal (which is fitted but unused when the computer dobby is in use) to select shafts 9&10, I can then do a seperate plain weave.

Lace Menu Holder - Finished and in use

Well the menu envelope is now finished with all its trimmings and even has a menu in it. Could still use a heavier and stiffer linen without losing the delicate feel to it. Have ordered some 10/3 smooth linen on cones;lovely delicate colours and ecru so will do a full table set in that when it arrives and when (if!) I get my loom back, which is already warped up with a cotton warp for the cotton/wool carpet Gail has asked me to set up for her.

The African Queen - Woven Sculpture?

This is the project I conceived over a year ago and now, with the loom to do it on, I have started the long process of planning and trialing it - to do a loom-woven interpretation of this contemporary art painting. I love this painting, know the artist and how he developed his idea from sketches made whilst in Africa. This original hangs in my lounge and photographs can never do it justice...it simply glows; only a highly mercerised cotton or silk is likely to generate the same effect in fabric - "African Queen" is a 36" by 28" oil and acrylic on canvas by Steve Barker titled "The African Queen".
I do not want to try to copy it in woven cloth; I want to interpret it to suit the woven medium. Maybe it will be mixed materials; maybe it will incorporate other techniques than shaft-loom weaving. What I do know is that with only 8 shafts to work with, it has forced me to be more imaginative in finding a solution (but I like that).

I would love to see it on the old stone walls of the lounge beside Steve's original work.

I need a few weeks to really work up the detail but I am planning a background "canvas" in 1/3 twill to create the diagonal flow of the backdrop using a gold warp. Her exposed upper body and face will be woven within the twill; probably with pick-up sticks in a fine black silk so as not to bulk out the main weft. I want to create a 3-dimensional wall hanging, so the dress will be woven simultaneously on a second warp above the background; a fine, almost transparent gossamer weave with the dress woven as overshot on the remaining 4 shafts comes to mind. This will need to use a second, seperate reed and so the fell will have to remain slightly behind the main fell. By "dropping" this second warp strip back under the main cloth at the cleavage line, then "raising" it again at the start of the headress, the beautiful vibrant colours in the headress will be achived by weaving-in beading to a plain weave background (the second warp will have to have beading thread in the warp as well)
As I will be weaving this on my computerised Octado, it will need two programs running sequentially on the computer to control the dobby; one fot he twill and then, when I need to switch to weaving the overshot second warp of the dress, another program for this - but I have already trialed that aspect and that works brilliantly with Fiberworks....so no excuses!

I think I will do the wrist scarf and the tie on the head-dress as free-style; adding another dimension to the piece.

I have yet to decide how to hold the second fabric of the dress away from the backdrop, but I may sculpt a piece of african hardwood to put between the two fabrics, giving me the opportunity to create in 3-dimensions, the ample bosom which is such a feature of the painting.

I can't wait to start but I am going to trial the double warp/double reed first, then trial the gossamer weave with overshot, as I will be lucky to hit on the right set at the first attempt!!!!

In the meantine Gail (my wife) has pinched the loom as she is itching to have a go....will I ever get it back??????????????????

Sectional Warping - Cheap Spools!!!

If you don't have a source of cheap, used spools to populate your sectional warping spool rack then the cost of buying 70 or more spools is huge (350 euros if you buy from Louet!!!!!)

Here is how to make them yourself. Made from 35mm long, deep-cut cotton spools and beer mats, which are 90mm diameter.

Glue two spools to make a 70mm long spool and glue the beer mats on each end. They fit all the spool winders I have found for sale, though I use my own. "Seemple", as the meerkat says :-)

I bought everything off ebay (though if you live in the UK getting free beermats should not be a problem) They cost me less than £25 to make 60 spools