by Jean Johnson

I completed a couple of projects this past summer using a new-to-me technique involving rya knots. I had heard of rya knots but had never taken the time to look into the materials, methods, or the range of possibilities available for incorporating these knots into textiles. The wall hanging and the pillows that resulted from my explorations were included in the Triangle Weavers August show-and-tell, and a few photos are online in the YouTube recording of that meeting. However, I was unable to actually attend the Zoom gathering so there is little in the way of explanation presented. I am hoping to use this blog post to provide a clearer summary of some of what I learned and perhaps inspire others along the way.

To begin, the illustration below, taken from Jane Patrick on the Schacht website, shows a rya knot in its most basic form. The yarn used to make the knot goes over a pair of adjacent warp ends, with each end traveling to the back side of the cloth. Both ends then resurface together, between the same two warp ends. If the knot is made with a short piece of yarn, it is pulled tight and the knot is now complete. Additional knots can be made along the fell line, with yarn color, thickness, and spacing varied as desired. The knots are then locked in place with one or more additional weft picks before more knotting is added.

It is often more efficient to make a series of knots from one longer piece of yarn. Each knot can then either be cut apart from the rest of the strand as soon as it is made or left connected to other knots in the same color block with a loop between each. The loops are clipped at a later time to create the individual knots.​​

​Rya knotting is Scandinavian in origin and most commonly seen in Norwegian, Swedish and Finnish textiles. It was extremely popular in the US in the 1960’s and then almost disappeared in this country. I became interested in rya knotting after seeing a recently released book by Melinda Byrd at Byrdcallstudio.com. Fortunately, it appears that there is currently something of a revival taking place with materials again becoming available for an American audience.
 
Note: A rya knot is identical to a Ghiordes knot, one of the three basic types of knots used in hand made cut-pile carpets. Rya rugs are unique in that they are most often made with a coarse, highly twisted rug wool, rather than the fine wool or silk characteristic of say a Persian carpet, and the pile is left much longer, sometimes 2-3”. Rya rugs are often used as wall-hangings, but traditionally also served as warm blankets with the pile side down to trap warm air next to the sleeper.

The first project I attempted was a wall hanging worked on a 16” square of pre-woven Norwegian backing (wool and linen) using Rauma wool Ryegarn for the knots. I thought it would be reasonable to learn and perfect the knotting technique on pre-woven backing and then later advance to knotting at the loom, so I ordered the square of backing material from Byrdcall Studio. I already had a fair amount of the Rauma Ryegarn in a selection of colors that I had purchased from The Woolery to use for a wedge weave workshop taught by Connie Lippert. With materials in hand, I sketched out a simple design using graph paper with a grid that corresponds to the dimensions of the Norwegian backing material and adjusted the color blocks to accommodate the yarn that I had available.

​My second project is a set of two pillows similar to the Gosling Pillows on the Gist Yarn website:This project gave me a chance to work rya knots at the loom as I was weaving the backing, and also to experiment with a less traditional fiber selection. The pillows were woven with cotton and linen, but instead of using the suggested Gist Mallo and Duet yarns, I warped the loom with a cotton slub (Noho Cotton Flake) at 15 epi. The rya knots were worked at the loom using six strands of Euroflax linen with eight picks of plain weave cotton slub between each row of knots. The color effect was achieved by starting and ending with six strands of dark navy and a gradual transition towards and then away from six strands of willow in the center.

​The instructions on the Gist website suggest cutting strands of the Mallo and Duet yarns about two arms spans long and making butterflies of the various six-strand combinations needed for knotting. I found I could minimize waste and avoid winding butterflies (Euroflax linen is expensive, and linen butterflies don’t hold together well.) by making all my strands 60”. With that length I could work exactly half a row of knots as a unit, looping over a pick-up stick, keeping the strands outstretched with no need to wind butterflies. Moving to the second half of the row with a new group was fine, since the pick-up stick needed to be shifted over anyway.
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​Finished rya pillows:

​My next rya project, still in the planning stages, is inspired by tapestry wall hangings made by Allyson Rousseau. She groups rya knots as accents within a tapestry base, and the effect is quite interesting. In her instruction video she shows how she fills the open warp spaces with knots, row after row, with no intervening tie-down picks, but then goes back, off-loom, with yarn and darning needle to stabilize each block.​Clearly one can take rya knotting in many different directions, and there is lots to explore. It is great to see a renewed interest in this traditional technique.

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