It is of course a holiday kind of weekend, but it is also countdown to leaving for another conference. So in between the parties and fireworks, I’m trying to fit in the last minute prep, printing handouts, going over my notes and speeches, and getting my daughter her last minute items before she leaves for summer camp tomorrow morning.
Yesterday I went to central Jersey to a wonderful party, I will say that the weather this weekend has been glorious. Warm, breezy and dry. It doesn’t get any better than this. I’ve known my friends Karen and Geoff since 1980, when I met them at a craft fair. They were selling stained glass and I was of course selling my weaving. We hit it off and have been friends for almost 30 years. They still sell the most incredible glass, under the name of Sunflower Glass Studio, and their parties are always full of interesting creative people and awesome food. Another couple, Sy and Lisa, have been friends for almost that long, we attended their wedding and our children are close in age. They make leather bags under the name of Maple Leather Company. And I met Nancy, an amazing woman, who works as a real estate agent by day, and for her creative life, she works in print and film. There were myriad discussions of life as an artist, the struggle we all have of staying fresh in our work, and earning enough money to keep on doing what we love to do.
Today I warped one of my small inkle looms, can’t teach a class in inkle weaving with an empty loom! Fortunately they are very quick to warp, I made it up as I went along, and had this idea of adding a fat, supplemental warp, that wouldn’t actually be woven in, just float in and out as required. So I just passed it over the top of the warp threads, and then figured out later how to weave it in. This should be interesting…
The actual band is gorgeous. I used some of the leftover spools of warp from the Design Challenge Project I’ve talked about ad nauseum…
The color will move through the length of the band. I carefully started and stopped similar colors in specific design areas. You can get a feel for that in the photo above. Meanwhile, I got the idea of crossing the supplemental warps on 
top as I wove the band, and that’s kind of cool. The hardest part was keeping the warps out of the way when they drop under the band, so I ran to the garage and found a miniature bungee cord, and I just clip the cords out of the way while I weave. 
When I bring the supplemental warps back on top, they just float up there out of the way, very convenient.
Meanwhile, I printed about 60 monographs for handouts, and worked on the binding, more to print tomorrow, but my daughter needed some last minute errands, and decided that she can’t go to 
summer camp unless she dyes her hair fuschia. So that was going on in the bathroom, and then of course, the chartreuse yellow nails complete the look. Gotta love her! My daughter loves color as much as I do, though I stick to dyeing wool in the crock pot and weaving with it.
Today’s crock pot color is a red grape color…
Off to the fireworks…
Daryl: your blogs have such inspiration. it is amazing. Now I guess I need to get an inkle loom to try this. John has wound a warp on the reel, threaded on the loom, and lo and behold, has great tension and it ready to weave his solid black scarf. I am so proud of him that he did not give up. There were a few times when he said some not so nice words to the loom, but that’s what happens when one insists on threading a 12 dent reed and not using a bigger one. Must say Briana’s… Read more »
I beg to differ, but the Design Challenge will forever be fresh for me. I was blown away by the three groups and how different the result could be with the same yarns. I also loved your dress in Threads and have passed that message around to several here. I am still keeping my fingers crossed in hopes we can work out a class here for you.
Thanks Marva! Sadly the dress is no longer on the home page of Threads, ah but for its brief 5 minutes of fame! But there it is, on page 81 of the current issue, in its over saturated colors (not sure what happened there but it sure is colorful!) Hopefully you aren’t alone in wanting to hear more about the Design Challenge, because I’m in the middle of three articles about the teams and the garments, lots of close up shots too. It has been fun exploring the different ways artists can work in collaboration. I’m hoping I can work… Read more »