Weaver Craft

An incredible range of materials can be woven but the Weavercraft is primarily concerned with fibers from two categories:

Animal Fibres

Animal fibres come from the shorn or otherwise gathered coat of various animals, but primarily ovines, llamas, and caprines.

Ovine fibre

(wool) is the shorn or clipped coat of the ovine and it can vary markedly in its quality, though all have their uses. (The very finest wools are usually used to make clothing fabric, the coarser ones to make floor coverings.) With variations to suit local climates, ovines are shorn once a Turn, usually in spring. The shorn coat (the fleece) is either used locally or if a surplus is being produced, it is on-sold and transported in bales (compressed fleeces in cube-shaped sacks) to places like the Weaver Hall at Emerald Falls Hold.

Llama fibre

(sometimes called a wool) is the product of two sorts of coat - the undercoat that can be used for finer work - and the coarser outer coat (guard hairs) which can be used for mats and ropes and other coarse work. If harvesting just the undercoat then brushing is the usual method of collection, but if wanting undercoat and guard hairs the llama would be shorn once every second Turn, in spring.

Caprines

are usually reared for milk or meat but one breed can produce a much-valued fibre for Weavercraft. Normally caprines have a mixed coat; a soft undercoat (wool) and a longer, tougher coat of guard hairs which are of no use for spinning and resistant to dyeing. The caprine bred for its fibre produces only a single coat (no guard hairs) of long curling hair which is harvested by combing the coat. Although caprines produce less fibre per beast than ovines, the fibre is highly prized which somewhat redeems the lower production volumes.

The cured hides of animals can also be woven or used in weaving, though this is usually the domain of the Tannercraft.

Plant Fibres

Plant fibres can be used in many forms, some almost straight from the plant but most requiring some level of processing. The most common plant fibres used in the mainstream of Weavercraft are hemp, cotton, flax, and sisal.

Hemp fibre is a stalk fibre produced from the male (finer, more suitable for fabric) and female (coarser, more suitable for ropes or mats) hemp plants. To produce fibre from the harvested stalks (which may grow to over twice man-height) they are soaked (retted), beaten (scutched), then combed (heckled) to align the fibres and remove the shorter or tangled ones (the tow). Finally the dampened fibre is spun in preparation for a wide variety of uses.

Cotton fibre (called cotton) is produced from the seed pod of the cotton plant (a man-height shrub) which grows in dry tropical or near tropical climates. The creamy white balls (bolls) of cotton that surround the seeds are produced continuously on the plant over the growing season. Bolls are picked by hand and the seeds removed either prior to or during the spinning process. Cotton is a versatile fibre with high absorbency.

Flax fibre (linen) is a stalk fibre produced from the stalk of the slender, waist-high flax plant which grows in temperate climates in rich, moist soils like those around Emerald Falls Hold. Sown in spring and harvested one hundred days later, the fibre is removed from the stems by soaking, beating, and combing before it is ready for spinning. While expensive to produce the resultant lustrous thread, when woven, makes one of the most attractive and longest-lasting fabrics.

Sisal fibre is primarily used in the production of ropes because such ropes are slower to rot in seawater than those produced from other fibres. The sisal plant grows in dry tropical or near tropical conditions and the main plant can reach up to one-and-a-half times man-height and has broad spiky leaves which radiate out from a central trunk. The first harvest of the lower leaves starts four Turns after planting and continues every six months for the ten-Turn life of the plant. The fibres are removed from the core of the harvested leaves, with the fibre being washed, dried and combed before spinning.

Plant leaves, fronds, reeds, and branches can also be 'woven' for widely varying uses (hats, baskets, chairs, fences, etc) but these skills are not usually considered part of Weavercraft.

COUNCIL NOTE: While hemp is s readily available fiber, it is assumed that the Ancients, through their incredible genetic manipulating technology, would have brought a strain with little to no THC. In other words it would be useless for smoking!