Two terrific days

I have had 2 really terrific days in a row. Life is so good, it’s incredible. Let’s go chronologically.

Yesterday morning I managed to get about half of ZN’s second wrap — a short one for a ring sling — woven. Here’s where I went from a black Egyptian cotton weft in my common hearts weave to a navy tencel weft in what I call my flowers weave.

The tencel is a much lighter ‘hand’ – finer, softer, more drape – but the majority of the difference in look is the weave pattern itself. The structures are much different.

Although changing the tie up for this weave pattern was no fun at all, the weaving went smoothly and proceeded well.

Shortly before noon I left for Rochester and the engineer’s inspection on my new home. Both my son and my daughter joined us providing more eyes, more helpful hands, more listening ears, and more support. I really do have wonderful kids!

Son & I had taken some rough measurements, and while the inspector was doing his thing and we were following him around, my daughter was carefully drawing the layout, including placement of doors & windows. She obviously couldn’t do it to scale, bu it was really helpful. This morning I spent time with graph paper and did my best to translate the combination of her drawing and my rough measurements into a scale drawing. We didn’t measure windows & doors, just room sizes, so some things are approximations, but here’s the layout of my sweet, new house.

I know some bloggers have figured out how to post a relatively small image so that when you click on the picture it gets bigger. One of these days I’ll have to figure that out; you can’t get great info with it at its current size. But you’ve probably guessed that the 2 room I didn’t label are the kitchen & living room. Didn’t notice that till just now.

The inspector was quite happy with what he saw. (And with my kids.) The house has been well taken care of since its 1948 creation. It will need some attention, as does every house, but it’s solid and sound, and he didn’t find anything that I didn’t already know about.

Just one more little house detail. Most of the interior doors, including closet doors — I think 9 all told — have those great old glass door knobs. I think they’re beautiful, and have loved them since I was a kid. My sweet hubby made me a hall tree many years ago with these door knobs as the ‘holders’ for your jackets.

Back to yesterday...I had only been in the house for about 20 minutes the day I saw it and made my offer. I had some real stomach butterflies, I can assure you! Did I make the right decision? Was this the right house for me? Did I act too quickly? Would I really like it?

With the inspector I got to spend about an hour and a half in the house, and the answer to all of those questions is a resounding YES! I am SOOOOO happy with my decision! It’s definitely downsizing from my current space, but that was what I had in mind. And it’s so bright, and cute, and has the best weaving studio ever!

Needless to say, after the 2 hour drive home, I had a hard time sleeping last night. Too much happy excitement!

This morning the inspector from the County Health Department came to inspect my septic system – a requirement when selling house. Remember I told you what a bear the digging was? Here’s a view of the yard so you can get some concept of what it too to get the tank ready for the inspector.

For the past 18 months I knew this inspection was coming. We installed our system in 1978, so I was prepared having some problems arise and having to spend some real money. Like potentially several thousand dollars if it was real bad news.

But it wasn’t! I have to do a few small things, and I have someone coming tomorrow morning to look at the situation and give me pricing, but I’m sure it will be more like several hundred than several thousand. And part of what I’ll pay him to do is to re-cover that tank so I won’t have to do any more digging! YAY!!

Then I had to take my car to my mechanic this afternoon so he could replace a gasket on the exhaust system of my 2007 Yaris. He got it up on the lift and said, “It won’t take long...if these old bolts don’t break.” With complete confidence I replied, “They won’t.” And they didn’t. I was done in about 1/2 hour with a total bill of $47.

Does a day get any better than these two? I don’t think so!

It did end well. I got several boxes packed, which means more bags of garbage created as I continue to weed out. I also finishe weaving the flower wrap for Z. Here’s a shot of the ‘other side’ as it passes over the cloth beam — navy tencel weft.

Just for kicks, here’s the hearts weave with black cotton weft.

Tomorrow I’ll change the tie up back to hearts and start on NZ’s black tencel wrap.

July 7th, 2015 |

Remembering Mondrian

Sometimes when much of life is completely beyond my control I tend to obsess. One way to combat obsessive thoughts is to occupy my brain with complex tasks that don’t allow much room for other activity. That’s what I did for the past several days.

I’ve long wanted to do a different kind of doubleweave. My first doubleweave, accomplished back in 2009, just 2 years after I ha my first weaving lesson ever, was a double width baby blanket. I did a few more double width things, then got away from doubleweave for a bit. Recently I used doubleweave to weave the tubes that ended up being those little treasure pouches.

Although as a concept doubleweave takes a while to wrap your head around, for me, neither weaving double wide nor tubes is particularly difficult or time consuming. This project was different. I wanted to weave what’s typically called color windows. I can show you much better than I can explain what this means.

So the photo up top is an example of color windows. Each of the colored squares is surrounded by black, on the order of a bloc y stained glass. This is cool enough, but it’s double cool when you look at the other side. The design flips to black windows with colored borders!

I enjoyed watching the patterns build as I wove. What I didn’t enjoy was all of the bobbin-changing required in this piece. It’s a two-shuttle weave — one for the black thread & one for the colored thread — so it’s automatically slower, more than twice as slow for me, than using a single shuttle. But with these ‘perfect’ little squares, every time I got to the next square, approximately every inch, I had to change the thread in my colored bobbin to the next color. This dramatically slowed the process down even more. I used the warp color order forward & reverse for my weft colors. That is, I wove the colors as follows: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, F, E, D, C, B, A.

Then, I’m weaving along, and realize that I have miscalculated. When considering how much yarn I needed for the weft for each scarf, I did the calculations as if I was weaving a single layer. With doubleweave, the scarf is 2 layers thick, so you need twice a much yarn. For the colors, no problem. For the black, though....I ran out after about 66′′. I had more black rayon, but I’ve ‘been there done that’ enough to know that all blacks are not created equal. The other rayon was not just a different dye lot, it was a different manufacturer. Although they looked to same to my eyes on the cone, I wasn’t going to take a chance that the last 10′′ would look different and would therefore ruin the looks of the entire piece I’d already spent so much time on. So I decided that a well-done shorter scarf was better than a longer one that caught your eye with an error.

Ok, on to scarf #2. I didn’t want to change my bobbin every inch or so, so decided to alter the pattern slightly. I’d alternate the lengths of my windows and only change bobbins every 3′′ or so. I was surprised at how much quicker this was! I stuck with my color order though, with the weft colors following the same order as the warp colors, without reversing. I decided I didn’t want th much of the light colors grouped together, so wove with colors A-G, then started again at A.

I enjoyed weaving this scarf so much more that I figured I’d get a bit looser still for scarf #3, and change the size of the windows and the colors as my weaving muse saw fit at the moment. Sometimes there’s only 3′′ of color, sometimes more than 5′′. As I wa weaving this scarf it reminded me of Mondrian, a painter many of us became familiar with in the 60s. Although Mondrian had already been dead for 80 years, that was when Yves St. Laurent used his color block style in dresses. I couldn’t change the wid of my blocks, only their lengths.

I’ve now fringed and washed these 3 scarves. I’ve put them outside to dry, but may end up having to toss them in the dryer if the sun and/or breeze doesn’t appear. I’ve hung them on this rack so you can see part of both front and back of each.

I wove these scarves in 8/2 rayon, sett at 18 ends per inch per layer, so 36 ends per inch total. We’ll see how they feel and drap when they’re dry and pressed. I may need to use finer yarn next time. The woman who now, after seeing the time commitment, blows my mind even more with her work uses 60/2 silk – almost 15,000 yards of silk in one pound, compared to about 3,300 yards per pound in my 8/2 rayon. I think I showed an image of one of her shawls before, but here’s a treat for your eyes again.

Some day, when I’m not weaving baby wraps..........

June 25th, 2015 |

Silk waves

I used a nice, soft celery color for the first of those waves & corkscrews scarves I wove. Although I didn’t start it with the treadlin pattern I’d intended, I just LOVE the color. And the sheen of the silk. Even though green is not my color, this scarf knocks my socks off.

Next up I wove with a dark berry wine color. Thought I’d love it, but not so much. Ditto with the intended treadling pattern at both ends of the scarf. Huh. Once again, what I think I’ll like and what I do like aren’t always the same.

So for the third scarf I wanted another soft color, and chose a slate blue. This yarn is a 70/30 silk/linen blend, so it’s a bit stiffer than the 100% silk and doesn’t have the same sheen as 100% silk. I opted no alternate treadling at the ends, instead treadling for the waves throughout the length.

I’ll be amazed if I don’t sell the green and blue scarves at my first show, just about 10 days away. Then again, I almost never accurately predict with will sell.

June 17th, 2015 | 

Zing Bling

 

Some months ago I bought some ‘zing string’ — cotton thread with hand-tied beads strung along it. I haven’t had time to use it t now. This is a plain weave scarf, cotton warp, rayon weft, with the zing string adding some bling at random intervals. I wove two scarves with the silver rayon weft & plain weave.

Actually, the first one on the warp had a black cotton weft and I wove in lace blocks with the bling randomly placed. It was fine, but when I tried the tabby with the silver rayon, I knew I’d do the other 2 scarves in that.

Off the loom, I like them both. I like the black better than I thought I would, actually. But I showed you the tabby first because the bling shows up better. I sewed all 3 into infinity scarves.

I did a bunch of ‘not-weaving’ today. Although I wasn’t wasting time, I’ll be darned if I can tell you exactly how the day went – beyond seeing a black bear cross the road 63 steps in front of me on my morning walk!

I’m calling this weaving draft I came up with for my next warp of 3 scarves corkscrews & waves.

I got 262 ends of 20/2 natural silk measured, beamed, and threaded on the Macomber. I have all of about 6′′ woven...enough to know I don’t have any threading errors. I hope I can get all 3 scarves woven tomorrow.

Here’s a funny thing....I intended to start & end the scarves with the ‘corkscrews’ at the top of the draft because I like them bette than the ones on the bottom; I think they have more movement. But is that how I treadled the beginning of the first scarf? Noooo I’ll end it the same way I started, and do the 2nd scarf in the way I intended. I hope.

June 10th, 2015 | 

Sunset Shawls

 Like most people (I think), I get my creative inspiration from a variety of places – from seeing what other weavers have made, from books, from looking at my stash, from seeing the world around me. The first and last in that list are what led to me weaving two shawls.

These shawls are quite different for me in two important ways: color and fiber content. The color is most significant. I am very used to working with hand painted fibers to create color interest. I’m very comfortable working with solid colors and using weaving pattern to create the interest. I’m gaining comfort with using stripes of different solid colors in a variety of ways to infuse a different appeal.

In these shawls, however, I used many different colors – I think 10 – in semi-random stripes in an attempt to create the impression I want. I wanted to bring a summer sunset to mind, with all the colors it can include, from orange to pink to blue to green to purple to red and an amazing blending at the intersections of them. I think I was pretty successful for my first attempt.

For the fiber, I used 5/2 cotton for the warp & rayon for the weft – I don’t remember ever mixing these fibers like this before. I was a bit concerned that the fibers wouldn’t play nicely together, that they’d cause unpleasant differential shrinkage or crinkling. I trie it because I knew I wanted to soften the cotton, provide more drape than a cotton this heavy could provide. I also set the thread relatively far apart – at 15 ends per inch – and threaded for a huck lace. I treadled only half of the typical huck pattern – I call it huckish. For all you weavers, here’s part of my draft – repeat as needed for width.

So here’s the first shawl, woven with an orange weft.

It’s my fav, for sure. Doesn’t it look nice on Dolly with all that lovely spring green in the background?

For the second shawl I used a spice weft. It’s much darker – probably 20 minutes later into that sunset.

At the show I was twisting fringe and got a lot of positive comments. I think they’ll be attractive to my customers at my next show Of course, I never really know. I just have to weave things that make me happy, that I like, and trust to the process.

May 19th, 2013 | 

Glam shots

I’ve sent in two applications for shows this year. I’m only applying to three this year — between weaving lots of baby wraps and having my house on the market, it seems like about all I can handle, since those 3 applications represent 5 shows. In fact, I worry about producing enough work for these shows – but I have that same worry every year and it always works out. So just one more application to go.

I got something like 48 images from the professional photographer of the four pieces I took to him; I had to narrow it down to manageable — and affordable — six.

I had brought him two props this year: Dolly and a metal stand I call Rod Man. (Prior years he just draped them all over a bar.) Rod Man was a last minute afterthought on my part – I figured Dolly would be the best. He draped Rod Man with a camera drap to eliminate some of the distraction of the stand itself – a good call on his part.

For jurying, I wanted all the backgrounds to be the same so there was no distraction to the eye. But for 2 of the pieces I really didn’t like the way they looked on Dolly, so I chose all 4 from Rod Man for the jury. You’re seeing 2 of each since they’re my favs

We’ll see how the juries respond.

February 26th, 2015 | 

Color me surprised

Yesterday I finished weaving the second piano, hemmed & wet finished the 2 pianos & the cityscape.

I expected I’d prefer the pianos, that’s why I wove 2 of them and 1 cityscape. But no. When I see them side by side I prefer the cityscape. Just goes to show you, what appeals on the loom isn’t always what appeals off the loom.

I’m sure some people will really like the pianos, especially if I get into one of the shows at Chautauqua Institute, so I’m not worried.

If I do the pianos again I’ll actually follow all the calculations I did ahead of time — this time I went by my eye, what looked good at the loom. The final result looks fine, but has 3 extra octaves. It’s not a big deal, I’m sure, but it’s not an accurate piano keyboard. Hey, it’s art, right?

So tell me — which appeals to you: the cityscape or the piano?

February 15th, 2015 |