The khaki linen fabric has been preshrunk and the inkle band has been cut from the loom and wet finished in cool water.  Both are hanging over the shower curtain rod in the bathroom.

Watching fabric dry is a pointless task.

I picked out a scrap of fabric that would be perfect for the binding trim for the inside seams.

Watching fabric dry is still a pointless task.

So I try to clear my cutting table, because eventually everything will dry and I can start trying to lay everything out and see what I have.

Sidebar:  Last summer I worked on a series of felted pieces that I worked into three 9 x 9 x 3″ boxes for a Textile Study Group of NY exhibit, which I did not get accepted to, but are currently on display at the Creation Myths exhibit in Glens Falls NY, the brainchild of the Northeast Felters Guild.

Anyway, I still had a large mound of colorful carded batts of hand dyed corriedale fleece, that I kept moving around my studio.  They’d end up on the ironing board, the sewing table, on top of any loom not in service supporting other looms, or of course on the cutting table.  Which is where they were when I decided that I was bored with watching fabric dry, and I desperately wanted the batts someplace else, so what else could I do?

I grabbed the nearest large plastic container, which sits on the floor at my feet and holds all my long rulers I use for measuring and pattern work (plus my tape gun, don’t ask)…

No silly, I didn’t throw them away, I wrapped the batts around the trash can, and sacrificed a pair of nude panty hose, which no one wears anyway…

and I took the whole thing to the kitchen sink where I dunked it in hot soapy water and worked it until it was time to leave for physical therapy which of course was not one of my better ideas because I’m really really sore today, and I turned it into this…

Which got the batts out of the way, and gave me another large decorative storage container (once it dries, a week from now),  and space on my cutting table to do the layout and assessment for the vest.

Stay tuned…

Whenever I would turn in a different direction than Thomas had mapped out, he would scream at me in his proper very British accent, “Rrrrrought recalculation”, with what I would swear was a harrumph at the end.

Where was Thomas when you needed him…

So the story goes like this…

I occasionally get asked to do community service events, I liken them to missionary work as we like to say in the weaving world.  About the only way to get a younger audience in the handweaving world, to show them what a great skill this is to explore and all the really cool things you can do with a loom, you sort of have to go out find the audience, looking for every opportunity to bring the looms to them.  There aren’t a lot of places to learn weaving, certainly I found weaving in college as many others of my generation, but that was three generations ago.  There aren’t a lot of college weaving programs anymore, and I’d be shocked if there were more than a handful of High Schools that offer it.

Anyway, a local friend with a youth group asked me to do a demo and hands on activity with her teen youth group next Sunday night.  I’m always happy to help when I can, and she came over Tuesday to explore the direction we could take this given the audience and time frame.  All that was fine…

1960's Ad for the Peacock Loom

I got the idea of bringing just a simple two shaft kid’s loom, I had one already warped sitting unloved on the shelf, I’m so not into two shafts, and I brought it down, dusted it off, and planned to head over to the venue with the loom in tow, plus examples of my work, and some colorful funky yarn, each participant can weave a couple of rows, and if necessary, I can leave the loom for a couple weeks.

So far so good…

I just needed to clean up the loom, and remove the beginning part of the weaving, since kids last worked on it (unsupervised) and it didn’t look great.  I figured I’d just go back to the beginning, and all would be well.

As I was weaving in the header, a bright purple variegated yarn, I noticed that the heddles were fraying.  Those are the string things on the roller bars that guide the warp threads up and down.

The heddles are probably original to the loom, which probably dates back to the 60′s, and they didn’t look too happy.  I thought I could just dab a spot of glue on the tops of the worst offenders and all would hold through Sunday night. The heddles just disintegrated in my hands as I tried to grab a hold of them to put a dab of glue on the ends.

This is where Thomas needed to be in the room shouting “Rrrrrought recalculation…”

I really didn’t want to unthread the loom, and make all new heddles and rethread the loom.

I really really didn’t want to do this.

But if I didn’t you know that the first kid that comes up to the loom, or worse, just from transit, there would be a number of popped heddles, and the whole evening would be really really unfortunate.  I’ve been teaching for a long time.  There are some things out of your control, and there are many many things in your control.  To deliberately take a loom that I knew had issues would be unforgivable.

So, I made a jig.  The heddle disintegrated as I banged in the nails.

Then I made 96 new heddles.

Then I replaced all the heddles on the heddle bars on the loom.

Then I re-threaded the loom.

And now, the loom is ready to go, with the header rewoven, and all the heddles are new and sturdy and though things may still go awry, broken heddles won’t be one of them.

Sigh…

Honestly the first priority was much more fun than the second priority.  My husband and I decided to give my son our older flat screen TV, partly because it was his birthday, and partly because we wanted him out of the den where he had taken up residence for all his video and gaming needs.  Because that was the best TV.  So we gave him the “best” TV and bought a better one.  Bigger.  Which meant a complete rearrangement of the room to fit this new better bigger TV.  All this in time for Super Bowl Sunday/Eric’s birthday which were coincidentally the same day.

It was great fun to sort out and clean out and move things around, and the end result was a fun day with my husband, and a fun new arrangement in the room, and a wonderful TV.  I watched the latest episode of Downton Abbey last night, our local PBS station wisely re-ran the episode again at 10pm knowing that even the most die-hard Downton fans would have their TV’s usurped by watchers of the Super Bowl.  After all, it was a NY team that won!  So congratulations to the NY Giants!

I took advantage of the new room layout, and brought my inkle loom down while participating in all of these television events, and finished off the remainder of the three inch wide trim I’m planning to use in a vest.

Then I tackled the not so fun part of my priority list.  It isn’t that I dislike photographing my work, I love seeing it up on the screen, choosing between images, doing the actual camera work, it is the set up that makes me groan.  Loudly.  First I have to empty out the front half of my studio.  That’s the part with all the looms, warping boards, and anything else that might be in the way.  Groan.  Loudly.  That of course means I have to drag looms around, collapse them, compact them, put them in other rooms, and of course that exposes floor areas that don’t get cleaned regularly, which means I also have to drag out the vacuum while I’m at it.

Setting up the studio lighting and back drop, etc, is often a two person job.  The whole process takes a couple hours.

But the good news is, I’m done.  Finished.  For better or for worse, the images are done, in the computer and now I have the arduous task of figuring out what to call these pieces, since the exhibitions I want to enter have definite themes and I have to somehow work the themes into the titles.

The application for the yardage exhibit went out today.  I love the photographs, they clearly show the color sequence, the texture and the structure of the fabric.  Sadly the handling swatch, which has to be sent along with the application, just can’t do the fabric justice since it is only 8″ square.  I suppose most of the entries have this issue.

I called this yardage Pacific Sunset.  When you look at it sideways, I really got the feel of the dark of night, fading into the vivid plums and oranges of the twilight sky, fading into the teals of the ocean.  I adore this fabric, and can’t wait to make it into something.

And now I have to pull together the handling pieces for the fashion show exhibit entries, and come up with names for the garments.  But for now, my studio is back together, and functioning again, and I’m happy with the images I got from the photo shoot today.

Enjoy!

Anyway, a couple of years ago, I attended a conference (not for weaving) in Atlantic City, I probably blogged about it, and did some outlet shopping.  One of the things I picked up was a Kenneth Cole vest.  On sale.  Very cheap.  Even though there were fit issues on my body, I loved the vest style and construction so much I brought it home with me.

I’ve always meant to copy the vest, and rework the pattern with a zipper closure and longer since it is so short waisted.  I can see this in a number of fabrics, and even with sleeves.

Meanwhile, as I was dusting and cleaning off the cutting table, I revisited one of my many inkle looms with a complex dual 7 thread pick-up pattern from leftover hand dyed warps from a project from a couple years ago.  I tend to keep some looms like the inkles warped with projects that I use for demo purposes and I sort of forget about them as something I can really use.  I’m in a sewing kind of mood, and the vest idea kept popping up in my head.

It is a three inch wide band, mostly rayon so light and flexible, and I keep seeing it as garment trim.  Coincidentally the front panels of the vest are three inches wide.

I rooted around my fabric stash and came up with a khaki linen, I picked up a couple of years ago at Vogue Fabrics in Evanston, IL.  I probably blogged about that as well.

There are probably other options in my vast stash of fabric, but the first job at hand, as I think through the possibilities here, is to finish weaving the band.  I’m into a rhythm here, and knocking it out, even with the slow tedious pick up, in record time.  I wanted a project that wasn’t too intense and complicated because really, I have some other things to contend with in the studio, like exhibition deadlines and photo shoots, and local and online teaching commitments, and my lovely wonderful husband is home, for only a couple weeks, so he will get top priority in my daily schedule.

But I’m intrigued with the possibilities here, I love having an idea mull around in my head, and I’m never quite sure where it will take me, but that’s the point of a journey, at least the kind I like to take, to places I’ve never been before, and experiences that will challenge and excite me…

Stay tuned…

I stewed for a day, and then went to look to see what it would actually cost to replace my old trusty machine, and behold…

$199.00 with free shipping from Amazon…  It is pretty much the same machine as far as I can tell from the descriptions and photos, so it will fit all my walking feet, and other assorted parts for a short shank machine.

So that’s on its way…  Meanwhile, I took my Janome 66oo Professional machine in, I had trouble even leaving it there, I adore that machine and somehow not having it in my studio made me feel like I was missing an arm.  The repair guy called back in an hour and said the timing on the machine was perfect and there was nothing for him to service.  Sigh…

So back I went, and picked up my sewing companion, and with all my electronic children back home, and my dress and fabric basically finished waiting for the photo shoot, I decided to do the only thing I could do under the circumstances, and completely houseclean the studio.  I sort of go through this when I complete a major project, I clean up the table, and put things away, and dust and vacuum and generally make everything tidy.  (As tidy as is possible considering how my stuff is crammed in this little 350 square foot space).   I went through all the paperwork, paid all the bills, sent off my application for Small Expressions, got the books in order for the tax man, and cooked a lovely dinner with my son.

I have a new standby sewing machine on it’s way, and my husband is coming home in another 48 hours.  Which is a good thing, since I just had a complete system wide USB/card reader port failure.  12 ports and all of them not working.  I was able to dump the images onto my laptop from the card reader, then reload them onto a USB drive, which still failed to work until I rebooted the whole system.

See, this is why I’m a weaver.  There is never any issue with a loom, because it doesn’t plug in.  It is a simple device, powered by my own hands and feet, and my imagination.  There are no webcams to cause blue screen of death, there are no USB issues.  There are no timing issues like on a sewing machine, no power outages, no internet down time, nothing that can get in my way of total control.  I suppose I just hit the nail on the proverbial head…  I’m a weaver because I can be in total control.  When something isn’t going well, it is more than likely my fault, because I didn’t handle a yarn correctly or failed to select the right yarn for a project or miscalculated sett, or something I can either fix or learn from.

Random electronic failures are out of my control and seriously frustrate me and make me want to rip everything out of the wall and go back to working with a pencil and paper…  And a needle and thread….

And so dear readers, I give you some photos of my cleaned up studio, this is as good as it gets considering I have four floor looms and six table looms plus a myriad of inkle and frame looms, and the other eight or so table looms are scattered in other areas of the house, garage and attic…  My spinning wheels and spinning stash are also located elsewhere.

And now I’m going to shut everything down.  Close the door, and climb into bed with an old fashion book, not my Kindle (which I do love) but a real honest to goodness book with no bells and whistles or ability to plug in…