July Already?

July already?

Clearly my actions don’t match my intentions. On a regular basis at the end of the day I am clueless about what I actually did, about how things like balancing the checkbook and mowing the lawn could suddenly fill so much time. Somehow things do get crossed of my to-do list, although they’re not very exciting, and certainly not photo-worthy.

Someone in my BuyNothing group announced that her sour cherry tree was in fruit and offered anyone who was interested to pick. Isn’t it beautiful?! Last year the tree had much more fruit, but I did pick 3 scant quarts and made some jam.

I managed to get just one batch of towels woven in June.

Too much outdoor work to do, which called to me much more than the loom did. Like this...

This is an area of my front lawn...much of which is a hill. You’ve seen images of the corner garden before, sometimes just individual plants but I THINK occasionally the whole thing. When I started it, my plan was to expand it each year, to continually minimize the amount of hillside mowing I had to do.

This year I really dug into that goal (pun intended). This area is roughly 7′ x 7′. That’s a lot of grass that had to be dug up, the dir shaken off to the extent possible, amendments added, plants put in the ground, and the area mulched heavily. I added several more plants and a drip hose after I took this picture. It’ll still take a few years to fill up nicely, but it’s on its way.

Meanwhile, out back a calla lily I planted last year and chose not to dig and bring in, decided to return. Probably because it’s rig next to my foundation. Although that part of the foundation is just a crawl space, it surely is still better than being out in the open

Around the corner from the calla, I’ve had these 2 mallows for years. Often they get eaten by bunnies or otherwise barely survived and don’t bloom at all. This year I’m happy to see their beautiful flowers.

I find this light colored one particularly beautiful.

And here’s a lovely fragrant honeysuckle I put in a few years ago. I do love flowers with fragrance.

I also decided to try some new things with my sourdough starter. I made two batches each of bagels (no pix) and ciabatta rolls with 100% sourdough – no commercial yeast. I was happy with them both, despite their...rustic...appearance. Their taste and chewy-ness were right, at least in my opinion.

In May I showed you my embroidery for submission into an exhibit. The opening of that exhibit, in the National Women’s Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, NY, was Friday night. I was very impressed with the entries and tried to get pix of them all. Some just couldn’t be appreciated in the images I took, so I’m only sharing a few here.

A friend of mine knit a ballot box and created 3 little felted and embroidered issues going into the box.

I was really moved by this piece. I’ve heard this poem before, always powerful, and it stitched into the back of a very wearable denim jacket...wow.

Being a weaver, I was of course impressed by the work in this long vest, woven in rayon chenille.

This seemingly ‘simple’ piece spoke well to the fact that women still hold such as small percentage of seats in the U.S. House o Representatives (29%) and Senate (25%). So much lower than many other countries, so woeful, so in need of change.

Women’s health is in so much danger. I am fortunate that I live in NYS, but so many women, especially women in poverty, do no have access to comprehensive health care. Both maternal and infant mortality are rising as women are forced to carry pregnancies that are not viable and that threaten their lives.

Meanwhile, I continue to write postcards to get out the vote. The exact message varies from week to week, and is of course dependent on where those postcards are going. Although it’s certainly not everything, writing these cards is something. It’s something I can do. And who knows – maybe it’ll inspire me to do even more.

When I picked up my postcards on Friday there was a woman there selling necklaces she’d made. I made a spur of the momen decision to buy one, and I’ve since committed to wearing it constantly until November 5, election day.

I’ve seen a meme that I hesitate to post here, given my prior experience posting images that I do not own. But the sentiment is too good to not include. RBG is in the center of the frame, wearing her robe and one of her signature crocheted collars. The words are, “I want you to pivot your sadness and worry into numbers and strength.” Indeed, Justice Ginsberg. Indeed.

July 14th, 2024 | Tags: cotton, towels & linens | Category: Gardening, Life - As I See It, Weaving |

8 shaft silk

 Although I don’t weave them all that often for my scarves & shawls, I do love a complex twill weaving pattern. I modified the gebrochene pattern I wove last year.

Except last year I wove it in 20/2 silk; this year I’m using 30/2 silk. My post from last year incorrectly said the 20/2 was about 8,000 yards per pound (ypp)- it’s really about 4,500 ypp. The 30/2 silk I’m using this year is 7,500 ypp.

I got the silk beamed, heddles & reed threaded, tied on to the front apron. I wove and hemmed the front edge – only 1 reed- threading error, so not bad to fix. Then I wove the first pattern with my weft – POO!! About 1/2 the warp was threaded wrong! I had to unweave the 4′′ and start again.

Rethreading was worse than threading. Why? My loom wasn’t all ‘unfolded’ the way it is when I’m threading. Unless I unthreade the correct half of the reed, I had to work around it. Next time I’ll unthread the reed – I’m sure it’d be both quicker and easier tha what I did.

Anyway, finally got it all back, threaded correctly, and started weaving again. Here it is after weaving a few patterns motifs. As always, I’m not happy with the color.

Now let me talk about the weft for a minute. A few years ago I bought some tram silk. I tried weaving with it...not overly successfully. Not an experience I was eager to repeat. Sandra Rude posted about working with tram last month, and I was encouraged to try again, this time using it only as weft.

I knew for my gebrochene to look right, I had to use a weft that’s roughly the same size as the warp. But I don’t own a McMorran balance – a tool that determines the ypp of yarns. I remembered seeing directions for making one online somewhere, and googled a bit till I found these instructions. I made one with a bamboo skewer and some yarn and it worked like a charm.

I found out that my ruby tram silk is roughly 30,000 ypp. It takes 4 feet of this to balance 1 foot of 30/2 silk. How would I cope wi this? I don’t spin, and had asked one of my guild-mates to spin some up for me, but he said it wasn’t worth it. I tried getting it machine spun at the Fiber Factory, but it was too fine for their equipment.

Still, Sandra inspired me.

So, using a modifier a friend made me, I wound some of the silk onto 4 of the cardboard cones from the 8/2 babywrap cotton. Then I stood all 4 cones up and wound a bobbin from them, careful to wind slowly and with even tension of all 4 threads. It isn’t ideal – a twist in it would be better – but it works. And I just love the sheen of the tram.

Here you can see both the top and bottom of the pattern.

I’m going to use another of the trams for the second scarf on this warp. When I have time, I’d like to weave some shawls out of this pattern. But maybe in 20/2. But then I can’t use my tram. Decisions, decisions.

June 3rd, 2014 | 

They picked ME!

 I just received official notification – my application for an Artist in the Community grant was selected for funding!

I am amazed! And a bit in shock. And scared – can I really do what I proposed? Will it take an ungodly amount of hours to accomplish? What will I have to forgo to be successful at this?

YIKES!

I’ve already sent out email notifications to the people who agreed to partner with me – the elementary art teacher and the local library board – to let them know so we can begin planning in earnest.

Here’s the shortest synopsis that explains that plan: About 160 kids in grades 3-5 will each weave a small square (about 3′′) on an individual loom. Then, I’ll set up a larger loom (about 2′ x 3′) at each of 3 community concerts, with musical groups in 3 different genres. People attending the concert will be invited to weave. We’ll see if the musical genre impacts the colors and/or type of weaving people do. After all that, I’ll weave or sew students’ squares into borders for the larger pieces. All will then be in semi-permanent installation outside the library.

Whew! Does that sound ambitious or what?!

Incidentally, the community weaving project from Angelica this past summer made it to my house a few weeks ago. They needed to take it down from the storefont and I was happy to hang it on my porch. I think it looks great. (Not a good photo. I’ll try again on a cloudy day.)

January 30th, 2014 |

More woven skylines

I found enough off-white rayon chenille to warp my loom for 2 more clasped weft skyline scarves. My plan was to weave both as carefully as I could, and trust that one of them would be good enough for the jury.

I wove about 5′′ on the first scarf and then wanted to do a peaked roof. After trying, I realized that I was likely to have the same issues as I did last time – an inability to get those roofs completely symmetrical. So I left the loom and sat in my chair for a few minutes to think about what might help me. I decided I’d make some peak templates with paper, some triangles of different sizes and angles. I’d pin them under the warp and use them as guides, just as I’d been taught in the pick up workshop.

Back to the loom with my paper cut outs. Nope. Pinning them under the warp doesn’t work – the rayon chenille is too fuzzy and densely sett for it to work.

Pin the paper on top of the warp...nope. Can’t see what I’m doing. Go back to the chair and think some more.

Aha! A brainstorm. Buy a washable fabric marking pen and draw on the warp! This takes a few days, since Joann Fabrics is about 40 minutes away from me and I don’t want to make a special trip just for the pen. So my loom sits and waits.

Once I get the pen I’m back at the loom. It is the best alternative, but less than perfect. The line it makes is thicker, and because of the chenille, fuzzier than I’d anticipated or wanted. Still, it’s much better than trying to count threads and/or follow a warp line across the weaving. So I finished weaving cityscape scarf #2.

Then I decided to go back to my computer for a few minutes and grab a few black & white graphic images of city skylines. I wanted to get Buffalo, the city where I lived from age 3 to 24, and another city that I thought was reasonable for my weaving purpose. As it happened, I picked Houston. I printed them both on an 8.5′′ x 11′′ sheet of paper and brought them back to the loom for inspiration.

I decided that I wasn’t in love with the scale of my buildings in skyline #2. Like the buildings in skyline #1, they were wide and to my mind, not as aesthetically pleasing as they might be. So my buildings for skyline #3 would be narrower, and using Buffalo an Houston as inspirations, they would also have more variability in their height.

Making the building narrower would also make it easier to deal with the symmetry issue. I could much more easily count and/or follow a warp thread for a narrow building.

As I wove along, I was really happy with the scarf. Even though as I got near the end of the warp I wasn’t going to be able to make it as long as I usually do. I wasn’t at all concerned with that since it would definitely be long enough for the jury.

I finished, cut the scarves off the loom, took them upstairs and ran my lines of machine stitching, came back downstairs, and did the hand hemming while I watched the red carpet for the Screen Actors Guild.

This morning I tossed them in the washer and dryer. After the dryer I was very disheartened to see that one of the ends of scarf #3 was in trouble. I obviously had cut through the machine stitching before I hemmed. DAMN!! My experience told me that hemming rayon chenille after wet finishing was problematic.

Apprehensively I took out the hand hemming, took the scarf back upstairs, ran twolines of machine stitching, came back down, and cut off the bad part. I carefully hand hemmed again, and am happy with the result. YAY!!! This is a good scarf for the jury!

January 19th, 2014 | 

Handwoven silk shawls

 The cayenne baby wrap finished the warp on the loom, leaving the Macomber empty. As planned, I focused on weaving pieces for my upcoming jurying. I’m getting anxious because time is ticking away and I don’t have the pieces I think will serve me well.

So I spent some time creating a draft for an 8-shaft undulating twill.

Then I measured 528 ends of 20/2 undyed silk a bit over 6 yards long and warped up the loom at 24EPI. For weft I wanted to us some 20/2 silk I’d dyed with indigo last year at my guild‘s natural dye workshop. I hand hemmed the beginning edge and set of weaving. I loved the way the weaving looked, and got a bit over a foot woven when I took a whole bunch of measurements and realized that I would not have enough yarn to complete the piece. Damn, damn, double damn! I couldn’t bear to waste the silk, either the undyed or the indigo dyed, so I painstakingly unwove 12+”. What a drag!

Then I tried four different colors of silk and silk-blend yarn I had. I wasn’t excited about any of them. Must be time to walk away from the loom for the night.

Next day after playing around some more I decided to use some custom-dyed 20/2 silk I had in Twilight blue. I knew the colors would have more contrast than I wanted, but I wasn’t getting anywhere, so I went for it. I tried and tried to get the colors accurat but couldn’t really – it’s much more blue in real life.

I could tell even on the loom that the beat was not perfectly even, despite my best attempts, so I knew this wasn’t going to be a jury piece.

That meant I really needed the second shawl to be beautiful. I decided to use some 6/60 silk-linen yarn, since the color was similar to the natural-dyed indigo. This color is way off, too, showing much grayer than in real life.

I was happy with how it looked on the loom and hoped I would feel the same after wet finishing. I did, yay! This shawl will go to the jury.

I like both of the sides, where the cream makes the wavy lines and where the winter blue does. A bit closer to the real color, but still not right.

Then I got stalled on my next skyline and had to walk away from the loom on that, too. So while I was not weaving I decided to bead the ends of the shawl. I used pale blue seed beads and gray freshwater pearls. Here’s the entire width of the shawl.

I did notice as I was beading that about 1/4′′ of the width is pulled in a bit on the end, and I’m sure the jury will, too, but if that’s the only criticism on the piece, I’ll be okay with it.

Now for a closeup of the beading.

Back to the re-do of the skyline!

January 16th, 2014 | 

Twill clasped weft

 I finally got some decent pictures of that cayenne baby wrap. Natural light is what it’s all about, for sure, especially with some colors and designs.

Here’s the wrap, showing both sides of it.

Again, I wove a different design on the ends. I’m less enthusiastic about these than I was about the zig zags on the green diamonds, but they’re okay.

Moving on, I mentioned that I wove two clasped weft scarves with a natural ecru baby alpaca weft. After I got the loom warped and wove a bit to look at things, I decided I liked the look of straight twill with the alpaca instead of tabby like the rayon chenille.

For the first scarf I paired the ecru with a periwinkle alpaca-silk weft, and clasped the weft at random points across the width of the scarf.

Here’s a close up of it.

I decided to actually braid the fringes of this scarf instead of my usual double twisting.

After I’d woven this scarf I decided that I’d do another variation. This time I used a variegated unmercerized cotton. Using a poin treadling, I created what I thought of as hills but my friend saw as trees. Either way, I’m happy with this scarf, too.

Here’s a close up of that one.

I’m off to those 8 harness silk shawls on the Macomber now.

January 11th, 2014 | 

Woven skyline

I’m going to start by saying that I am happy with this clasped weft scarf, but not happy enough to send it to the Roycroft jury. I plan to make another, going even slower and more carefully. I do think it’s a great concept, and I am definitely not done with clasped weft. (I wove 2 clasped weft scarf with baby alpaca after this. Both much quicker and easier to get right, neither my ultimate show piece for the jury. I’ll probably show you these later.)

Without further ado, here’s the entire length of Skyline #1. I took this shot before wet finishing.

After wet finishing, I decided you might like to see details. I’m showing you from one end to the other, but you’ll notice it’s backwards from the full-length view; I wasn’t careful for the photo set up and laid it out the other way for the photos.

I purposely ‘overlapped’ the images by one building so you can see how it all fits together. Here goes.

You might notice that I hadn’t yet hemmed the scarf when I took the photos. This was a mistake. I should have done the hemming prior to washing and drying. I am not happy with the hem, even though I did each end twice, cutting off and running another machine stitch when I didn’t like it the first time. Again, good enough to sell for sure, not good enough for the hands-on Roycroft jury.

January 4th, 2014 |