About Us
Red Crocodile is a family run business based in New Zealand.
We make unique pieces of textile art, spinning and hand weaving, with the emphases on functionality and design. We aim to use natural materials and to source within New Zealand where possible.
We set up this website as a way of offering our rugs, scarves and tablet weaving to a wider audience. The joy of producing them and the compliments from friends and members of the Spinning and Weaving Guild have convinced us that people would appreciate and enjoy them. Initially, we started exhibiting in the Creative Fibre (the New Zealand national fibre arts and crafts body) shows, at a local art gallery and experimented with a monthly craft market. While we had a few successes, the rugs in particular are unsuited to casual sales being too big, heavy and expensive. Tourists and international judges can't just stick one into their aircraft luggage and those more in need of our products, like those having new houses built or doing major redecorating, remained unaware of our existence. And so we have moved online.
Laurence Gatehouse
I took up weaving in 2009 after my wife acquired a spinning wheel and I became fascinated by the deceptively simple machines used in fibre craft. I find it a very satisfying outlet for both my mechanical bent and my creative drive.
Having now retired from my career as a scientist, and having more time to devote to my weaving, I have been trying out some of the vast range of possible weaves and techniques, and have built some modifications to my loom to allow them.
Whilst it is enjoyable trying out new techniques and patterns, I have found that rugs are particularly satisfying to weave. They suit my personal preference to produce practical useful objects and I enjoy the physicality of rug weaving (the heavy tension and hard beating needed to produce a dense hard-wearing 'cloth'). I like to create functional as well as beautiful products, and prefer to recycle materials wherever possible. I like to use colours that are strong rather than pastel.
I weave my rugs using traditional techniques by hand on a large floor loom using, in the main, natural materials. My design inspirations come from nature, filtered through my biological training and my lifelong interests in high energy physics and mathematics. The designs involve either small repetitive patterns that are controlled by how the loom is threaded and the choice of weft colours, or larger scale designs, more suited to the eye-to-floor viewing distance, constructed using the technique of ‘block weaves’.
About Rug Weaving and the Materials used:
The wool weft used in our rugs comes mostly from four sources:
- Old commercial carpet wools, such as Berber, which are of medium strength and resistance to abrasion, usually flecked throughout with various colours, can be dyed very well and are often somewhat felted.
- “Craft” rug wools, or other similar commercial carpet wools, usually in solid colours. While these look more like knitting wool, they are much harsher and more solid, giving them better resistance to abrasion.
- "High twist" carpet wool, often dating back to the 1970s or earlier, that is very strong and can be over-dyed, though sometimes rather unevenly.
- Wool that I have recycled from old, sometimes damaged stocks from the Spinning and Weaving Guild or kindly donated by people who now no longer weave or knit. Some of these may be wool-synthetic blends. In order to recycle these fibres, I ply 4 to 6 strands together, both to blend the colours and make something thick and strong enough to use in a rug. I always treat the damaged wool to kill any moth eggs and discard the (potentially damaged) surface layers of the cones.
Almost all of these are New Zealand produced wools, however, carpet wool is increasingly difficult to source as computer controlled carpet mills no longer produce “mill ends” that can be sold off. I use what I can get but, very few cops of carpet wool are labelled in any meaningful way by the time I get them. Some modern carpet wools may contain approximately 10% nylon.
Rug weaving warps must be very strong with little elasticity. I use either heavy cotton or linen. These are sourced ultimately from Bockens in Sweden as there are no local alternatives.
Our Mecchia 8-shaft countermarche loom is built with heavy timbers and is almost the size of a four-poster bed. Rugs are woven at high tension and require hard beating to better obtain the dense firm texture that will stand up to being walked on, which means using a big heavy loom to cope with the loads. I have progressively modified our loom, both for the weave structures I use, and to cope with the high warp tensions needed. It is also effectively bolted to the floor to stop it from 'walking' across the room.
The dyes I use are standard commercial dyes of the types that use no poisonous metals. I use no chemicals beyond white vinegar, citric acid and/or washing soda to fix the dyes to the yarn. Unfortunately, many traditional natural dyes use poisonous metals to fix them and can fade rapidly. Photo-stability in an item meant to last for years is essential and a full range of bright colours is a design blessing. The rugs are designed and woven to be walked on, but only those woven entirely of carpet wool would be suitable for heavier traffic areas. Being hand woven they are not cat-proof, but then what is? Should you want to purchase a rug for use as a wall hanging, I would be happy to discuss this and make permanent mountings. I am also happy to discuss commissions.
Heather Gatehouse
Tablet weaver extraordinaire and an amazing Mum. Spindle spins, wheel spins and generally does stuff, but cool stuff. Weaving stuff. Cool weaving stuff, but actually quite warm being that they're mostly made of wool, apart from the bookmarks which, if worn as a scarf, would be considered 'cool' in the sense of chilly.
At present, I'm splitting my life between teaching and . . . . wait, 'life'? HA! I laugh.
Here, (to the right), you see why my youngest daughter shouldn't be in charge of picking which photos go in. And if you've read this far, then doubtless you will have realised why she also shouldn't be writing these blurbs. He he he.
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I was introduced to spinning by a friend many years ago. Soon I was hooked, charmed by the gorgeous woods of old spinning wheels and the delightful touch of silky soft fibres. I now spin using a wheel, a drop spindle and a variety of supported spindles, depending on the type of fibre I am using and how portable I need to be at the time.
I also weave, sometimes using a rigid heddle or table loom to produce scarves, but more often using an inkle loom for tablet-weaving. I was captivated by an article on tablet-weaving in Nepal. It sounded fascinating and I was compelled to give it a try to prove to myself that the method described could actually work. Other than an initial panic over a tangled mess of warp threads, it worked perfectly and gave stunning results even in my complete novice hands. One of my favourite forms of tablet weaving is double-faced weave. This gives you complete freedom over the patterns you can create, something that is almost unheard of in most weaving. Of course it comes with a cost - that of having to keep track of what on earth you are doing as you choose which direction each individual tablet/card must be turned. I particularly love creating bookmarks bearing complex pictures inspired by anything from nature to traditional designs, and to happen-chance occurrences. Sometimes I include a tablet-woven strap or decoration on my more standard loom-woven pieces.
About Tablet Weaving and the Materials used:
Most of my tablet-weaving is done on a floor inkle loom. This allows a reasonable length of warp and maintains a good tension. My initial tablet-weaving was done with no loom. I tensioned the weaving between myself (via a belt around my waist) and a door knob. While this worked, it was far from ideal as I was effectively an integral part of the 'loom' and thus had to drop the tension entirely whenever I needed to go and do something else. Not surprisingly, I soon decided a loom was necessary so that I could keep my warp threads organised and tensioned. Laurence made my first tablet-weaving loom based on designs I had found on the internet. Whilst this worked far better than the belt and doorknob alternative, it was still rather awkward. After a bit more investigation, I decided to try adapting an inkle loom and found this was an excellent solution.
The tablets I use are modified playing cards. These are ideal because the coating on them allows them to move over each other and the warp without much friction. I have tried using cardboard tablets but find these tough and clunky to turn.
Tablet-weaving is an ancient craft dating back to at least the 3rd century BC. Despite its age, it is such a creative form of weaving that one can produce countless patterns from a single set of warps. The warp is threaded through holes in the corners of tablets, or cards. I use square tablets with four holes, but there are other shapes with more or less holes. One characteristic of tablet-woven bands is the way the warp threads twist around each other, giving their patterns a classic diagonal motif.
I usually use cotton for my tablet-weaving as this is available in a wonderful range of colours and it behaves well in the weaving process. My thicker bands are made with crochet-type cotton, either standard (for a matt finish) or perle/satin (for a shiny finish. My fine bookmarks and bracelets are made using fine mercerized cotton which gives a shiny finish. I have experimented at times with wool and silk, but with varying success as wool is quite grabby and silk slippery.
About Spinning and the Materials used:
My spinning takes various forms. I have two spinning wheels, an Ashford traditional and a nicely compact Peacock. These my daughter and I use for spinning larger volumes of wool. I have a couple of drop spindles that I sometimes use to create more rustic, often thicker yarns. I also have some beautiful supported spindles that allow me to spin small amounts of very special and often very fine fibres.
The wools we spin are from various sources around New Zealand, although some of my favourite fibres come from Anna Gratton who runs a boutique farm and mill (Little Wool Company) near Feilding. Anna has an amazing eye for combining colours both sophisticated and stunning. She creates wool/silk blends that are heavenly to spin and a pleasure to weave with.
Our hand-spun wool is often used for weaving our scarves and shawls, or sometimes for knitting. Not all of our scarves and shawls are made solely from hand-spun wool, sometimes they are entirely bought yarn, sometimes a mixture. It is particularly satisfying to see a project all the way from raw sliver (unspun wool) to a beautiful finished garment.
If you wish to know more about our work and design processes, have a look at the Red Crocodile Journal that Laurence keeps on Facebook. It outlines years of planning and development, all the work that went into creating these finished products we present to you now. Currently the journal is all about rugs, but we have plans...