daryl – Page 19 – Daryl's Blog

My new favorite place…

I blogged a lot about the major studio changes last winter, HVAC was installed as I was walking out the door to teach in Oregon the beginning of March. I returned from Oregon just as the world was beginning to shut down and so embarked on a five month effort to convert all my patterns to digital downloads. So though I had this brandy spanking new shiny place for all my looms and fiber equipment, with the basement as the new sewing room, I never really got a chance to use it. It kept calling me. I felt really guilty. I kept thinking about all those gorgeous magazine worthy studios in houses where I stayed, and their owners admitted that they didn’t actually do much in them. I hoped that wasn’t the case with mine. Most of my days since the quarantine began have been sitting right here at my computer in my office generating some kind of content. Sigh… Creative in a way, but not what I really want to do.

Enter an email from Silk City Fibers. I’ve had a very long relationship with them, and I’ve blogged about recent encounters with them, but this time they wanted me to consider being a “weaving influencer”. My discussions with the head of Lion Brand Yarn marketing turned into, send me yarn and I’ll see what I can do with it. And blog about it, or write about it, or give them usable content, or whatever.

What a shot on the arm that was, and in one of my last posts I blogged about the fabric Summer Rain that I got on and off the loom in record time. It was the first time I had set up a loom since I built the new studio. I ran into a lot of, gee, where did I put that tool… but ultimately the studio did its job and created a brightly lit, comfortable and easy place to do what I do best. So as I wrote in my last post, the Summer Rain fabric is finished and sitting on the cutting table in the basement waiting to be cut and sewn into something fun. The draft is available in my store, and any of the drafts/fabrics that result from the relationship with Silk City Yarns, especially if they are giving me the yarn, will be available for free. Add it to your cart, and there won’t be any charge at checkout. You’ll get a link in your inbox and you are ready to go! Find the PDF notes and draft here.

Meanwhile, having discovered the joy of my new studio, and having finished the scarves that were on the 8 shaft small floor loom, I decided to wind a new warp, this one called Autumn Harvest, based on a forecast from my Handwoven Column back in 2004. It is on the loom, and it just glows! The draft is available here.

I got more yarn from Silk City Fibers. A lot of it. I think of nothing else… I gave them a general idea of what I’d like to work with based on what they want to promote, mostly their newest yarns, and I gave suggestions of color combinations, but I get what I get. Which is just wonderful fun. I work best designing with what’s immediately in front of me.

Right out of the box I grabbed this orange Cotton Bambu, (one of their new yarns) which is a little heavier than I like to work with for garment yardage, but I successfully used it in the Summer Rain fabric in a 4 shaft mock supplemental, and I thought I’d like to expand on that for a full yardage. So I added Saphira, a viscose and polyamide variegated with very cool slubs, and a gorgeous copper metallic called Radiance. The weft is a beautiful cotton yarn called Nomad, which I actually prefer to Bambu 7, it has way more body and the same 2100 yds/lb yield. Under the studio lights the fabric just glows, but it doesn’t really show in the photo. Trust me it is head turning when you see it in real life. It is a 4 shaft structure, and I’ll eventually post the details as a PDF download like above. I’m calling it Confetti.

Meanwhile Silk City wanted to know if their SuperMerino yarn would work in a Rigid Heddle loom with an 8 dent reed. I don’t do Rigid Heddle weaving, but I have a table loom with an 8 dent reed, and I can set up a two shaft plain weave. There is enough for two scarves, the first one we doubled the yarn (Brianna did the grunt set up here). She has a heavy hand with the beater, so I’ve taken over and using a double weft, the effect is quite lovely. I believe their SuperMerino is superwash, but I’ll let you know once the scarves are off the loom.

Meanwhile in the bag of yarn from Silk City were these two, Nile cotton tape in Onyx, and Skinny Majesty variegated in a color called Antique Jewelry. I wound the 6 yard warp alternating one of each, and after it was wound, I changed my mind. Nothing like redesigning after the warp is wound. I used every inch of both cones, which is always fun, to have no leftovers! And if you are wondering about the contraption on the back beam, I use the Harrisville tensioning device for perfectly tensioned warps every time. (I’m a front to back warper). Problem is, this is the new to me 32″ Tools of the Trade loom, one of his really old ones, and I have tensioning rods made for the 45″, the 36″ and the 25″ looms. Not the 32″ loom. So using the second back beam from the 36″ loom to support the set up of the tensioning device with the 36″ rods, and a number of C Clamps, we got the job done. (I confess it was all Brianna’s idea).

So I threaded the updated design, beamed and then began to test a number of wefts they offer that have a wool/protein content. I’m a big fan of putting something in the weft that will give a modest amount of fulling to really keep slippery rayon fabrics under control. I have used Zephyr merino/silk from Jaggerspun, and Webs Colrain Lace Merino/Tencel, but wanted to try out some of the Silk City Fiber offerings. Left to right is Nature’s Way Merino doubled, Eco Cashwool, SupraMerino doubled (which I believe is a superwash), Baby Alpaca doubled, and Wool Crepe Deluxe (80% Wool and 20% Viscose Rayon).

I kept the first sample right off the loom (top), the middle sample shows some hand washing in warm water, and the last sample was thrown in the washer and dryer with a load of towels. I love knowing what a yarn can do. I’m ultimately going to use the black Wool Crepe for this particular fabric, but the Nature’s Way Merino (far left in navy) is awesome. The Baby Alpaca (the ivory one) didn’t shrink or full, but it is fluffier than an angora rabbit’s butt. I’m not a fan of superwash, so I probably wouldn’t use the SupraMerino (the middle one) unless the goal was a washable baby blanket, it is really lovely for that kind of purpose. And I liked the Eco Cashwool as well. This was a test I’ve wanted to do for a long time, and I’m grateful for the opportunity.

And of course, this loom still has fabric on it that I really should weave off, but there is something about full looms that make me smile. My babies have been naked for far too long. This is a wool warp with Noro Taiyo Lace weft. January of 2019 to be specific. I’ve blogged about it here.

Assuming the internet gods are cooperating on Tuesday September 1st, I’ll be the featured guest on the Shi Show, which airs live at noon daily on the Lion Brand Yarn Facebook page. I’ll post the link when it shows up on Youtube or you can tune in at noon EDT. I say if the internet gods are cooperating because three times in the last week, there was an area outage, and though I still have some unresolved internet issues, Like I can’t get my printers to connect, the tech guy came yesterday morning and the whole system went down as he started to work, area wide I was told, and so he could accomplish nothing. He is supposed to come back today. He texted me that he is having issues at his house, different carrier, but his power and internet are failing. And there are no storms, nothing that should cause these constant outages, but there are seriously weakened trees and limbs just randomly fall and take out the grid for whatever period of time you need it. We were successful last weekend in running new lines in the walls, upgrading switches and network cards so all the important rooms and devices are hard wired for ethernet at 1GB of speed. Brianna ran the last line herself much to her complete amazement and satisfaction. She is her father.

And so, I’m looking in corners of the studio to see where I can pitch a sleeping bag. This is my new escape, a place that the world stops spinning out of control, actually the only place in the whole world where I have some control, and nothing in there needs electronics or power to actually operate. Maybe the bobbin winder, but I do have hand cranks for that…

Stay safe, wear a mask and stay tuned…

Balloons and Fireworks…

I should be celebrating, this is five months of hard work, and it is finally completed. But I’m already onto the next adventure, so much to cram into this quarantine that doesn’t seem to be going away. Oddly enough there are deadlines looming, pun intended, more about that later.

So we launched the last of the 12 patterns I use for my classes. At this point, you can purchase my patterns, all of them, on my website. This has been a huge deal, we have never worked so hard. It took a team, I created the content, my daughter created the layered files that actually created the patterns, and I hired a tech editor for the instructions. The instructions are, as always available for free on my website. There is a lot of great information in there about sewing with handwovens, but I’m really looking forward to creating YouTube videos on specific areas of support. Like how to actually print and create the full size patterns.

Because so many have written me and asked, and many in the handweaving community haven’t ever purchased a downloadable pattern before, I want to do a video explaining how to basically print and tape together all the sheets into a full size pattern. Yes, you have to print them yourself. Yes, you can have a place like Staples print the file for you. Yes, you have to tape all the pages together. And no, I don’t sell the printed pattern. Only the download. I’m even wanting to get away from printing and shipping the monographs which at the moment are available digitally and in print form. Printing and shipping costs are ridiculous, and with the delays in the post office, I’m wanting to get away from shipping altogether.

Anyway, huge celebration. The last of the patterns is up. This is the 1800 jacket which is like the 800 vest only with sleeves and waist darts. There is a look book available here. There aren’t a lot of images in it because the pattern is only a couple years old. But you’ll get the general idea. You can purchase the pattern here.

Meanwhile, my relationship with Silk City Fibers continues to grow. I’ve always adored their yarn, and I’m getting to really play with styles I normally wouldn’t have looked at. And really loving the possibilities. I wrote in my last post about the yarns that they sent me, new yarns to the collection for me to explore. So refer to the last post about what I actually used. The fabric came out fantastic. I called this Summer Rain, because I was weaving it during tropical storm Isaias, and lucky for me I was one of the few that never lost power. So I kept weaving. The fabric is exactly what I envisioned. It has been washed and dried, and is a gorgeous drapey but stable rayon, cotton, linen, and bamboo fabric that will make a great summer top. I’m thinking I want to combine my 1000 Swing Dress with the 200 Jacket for the armholes and sleeves and make a basic top with short sleeves. At this point, I’m having fun seeing what my patterns can produce by combining them.

Silk City has promised me more yarn. Oh, goodie!

Meanwhile, I finally cleared a loom that has had a bunch of my handdyed scarves on it for more than a year. I was able to move the loom to the new studio with the warp intact, so there it sat. I ended up netting six 2 yard scarves from a 14 yard warp. I love these soft retro looking scarves. They are mostly all handdyed rayons and cottons. The weft is tencel. Actually three of the scarves have a tencel weft, three have a bamboo weft. It is hard to tell the difference.

Normally these scarves would be donated to arts organizations for fundraisers and tricky trays, and whatever makes me feel like donating a scarf worth a couple hundred dollars. I’m really careful whom I donate to. But sadly all of the arts organizations I support have had to cancel major fundraising events this year for obvious reasons. And even my lovely guild show and sale in November has had to move online. So I’ll be populating my eShop with whatever scarves I have, and things like totebags from scraps, that’s my project for the next couple of weeks. We are setting up a lightbox and photography area in one of the guest rooms. Since I can’t have any students or guests, one of the rooms can easily become a photo area.

With that loom cleared, and more yarn from Silk City Fibers coming in the next couple of days, I’m wanting to get another warp on the loom I specifically use for these scarves. It has to have a second beam for the 14 yards of supplemental warps. So I looked through my huge binder of all the color forecasts I developed for Handwoven Magazine, back in the early 2000’s and picked one that appealed to me. Mostly it appealed to me because it was called Autumn Harvest and fall is coming. And I can’t wait. Normally fall means I live on planes and travel and I’m not doing any of that this year. I’m doing different things. I have a huge amount of bookings for guild remote lectures, and some remote workshops and I’ve had to rewrite most of my prospectuses to indicate what can be done remotely. Actually most of them so far. You can look at what I have to offer for remote learning here. I just have to figure out how to do some of my garment classes remotely, especially now that you can buy the patterns… 🙂

So anyway, here is the Autumn Harvest palette drawn from a 2004 column in Handwoven Magazine, and I pulled some yarns to see if I had the right combinations.

I just couldn’t come up with enough of the right muted dusty purple. Everything was too blue, and I needed something softer that leaned warmer. So I dug out the dyepots and for the first time used my new dye sink/area in the new weaving studio. Lots of firsts here. I did have to ask my daughter where we put stuff, but this worked remarkably well. The sink was built high enough so I didn’t have to lean in. It is stainless so I don’t have to worry about stains. And I can hang skeins to dry right over the sink. I think this color will work, if not, I’ll dye another batch. I’ve got plenty of white yarn… And you can purchase the 8 shaft draft I use for all my scarves here.

And the push is on because I’m booked to be the guest on the Shi Show, if you aren’t familiar with this, it is a half hour daily live show on Lion Brand Yarn’s Facebook page. Shira is a descendent of a long line of family that owns Lion Brand Yarns. She is young, and savvy and enthusiastic and represents the next generation of makers. I’ll be the guest host on the September 1st episode that airs 12 noon EDT, I’ll let you know when we get closer, but I need my YouTube channel up and functioning, and the page in my eShop as well, with my lovely scarves and other items that I would have sold at the guild show and sale. This year has been about reinventing myself in fast forward timing. I’m doing my best.

And speaking of my best, my daughter and I came up with a new logo for the videos I want to produce. I’m pretty proud of this. I designed the concept and my daughter turned the whole thing into a vector drawing in layers in Illustrator. Everything is falling into place.

Stay tuned for more adventures of “The Weaver Sews…”

A Saturday in August…

First, I’d like to take care of a little business, please bear with me and read this through. This has been an expensive and trying week. I have been writing this blog for more than 10 years. Many of you enjoy it and have subscribed so you’ll know when I post. I have about 800 subscribers. Know that I do not ever send an email to any of my subscribers unless I have posted a new blog, which is what you signed up for. I don’t sell or otherwise share the email list. Unfortunately, there was a handful of you, 17 to be exact, Google knows who you are, that for some reason, innocent or whatever, labeled my subscriber notifications as spam. I know for some, there is a habit that you want to clear the inbox, maybe want to read my post later, don’t want to trash it, so maybe store it in the spam box. My own sister admitted to that. Or maybe you aren’t interested in my posts anymore. Cool. It is easy to unsubscribe. Really, each email from me has that option. PLEASE don’t ever mark something as spam that isn’t. See, Google keeps track of this and shares info with Yahoo and all other providers. And when they reach a certain algorithm of reports, they blacklist the entire domain. That means that orders from my store don’t get to inboxes, they go directly to spam. Orders from my store go directly to my spam box so I don’t know you ordered. Post notifications that you subscribed to go into spam. I know this because, well, I can’t say how I know this but this came from head of Google security and that’s all I can say. I know someone who knows someone. If you don’t want something that you subscribed to in your inbox, please unsubscribe. It was a challenging and expensive week to undo this, having to pay my tech guy for assistance, and I know none of my readers would intentionally cause me this much grief. Please watch what you label as spam.

Now, onto the good stuff…

First a side story. Most of you who have been with me awhile, know I collect Tools of the Trade looms. I think I have 13 down there in the studio? They find me… My first one came in 1978, I bought it right out of college. And if you Google Tools of the Trade looms, my name comes up, probably because I mention them regularly in my blog posts. So I get all kinds of queries, such as, “I bought this loom on the internet, and I don’t think it is working properly, can you help?” I do my best, and usually, with photos I can get looms up and running or identify the problem. Since I have just about one of everything Art made back in the 70’s – 90’s, I can provide a picture of what it should look like.

So I got this email from a woman in the Michigan or Minnesota area, somewhere up there. She found in a closet a second warp and back beam for a Tools of the Trade loom that she had ordered. She forgot she had it, sold the loom long ago, and came across the beam in a downsizing move. Fortunately she googled and reached out to me, and asked if I wanted it, for the price of postage. She shipped me the beams. I figured it would go with one of mine at least. Oddly enough, when I opened the box, it was for a 30″ width loom. I didn’t know he even made looms in that width. Mine are 25″ and 45″. And I have a rare 16″ in thrown in the mix. So I put it in my closet and forgot about it.

Last year I got a call from someone in New England who had a Tools of the Trade loom she didn’t need anymore, Googled it and got me. She just wanted to find a home for it, my daughter drove to Massachusetts, and though the woman wasn’t expecting to get money for the loom, I think we offered her $400. It was only fair. It was a four shaft floor loom and get this. It was 30″ wide. Turns out it was one of the original looms Art made, stained with a cherry color, including the bench. The loom was pretty lightweight, built off the small floor loom specs, but we threw a linen warp on it and my daughter decided to weave some rag rugs.

You have to know my daughter is a pretty strong kid, having hauled around 800 pound cows in college in her animal science program, a loom is nothing. This particular loom’s warp beam winds backwards than our other Tools of the Trade looms, and had a ratchet and pawl brake, as opposed to a friction brake. About 15 minutes into her first rug, she overtightened the beams, in the wrong direction and split the warp beam. With about 10 yards of linen on it, I was not a happy camper. Clearly the loom was too lightweight for rugs, but we had to wait for the heavier ones to be cleared, for the great studio redo that happened last fall/winter, and for a time we could address the issue.

She was able to carefully weave a few rugs off the loom, but it was clear that we needed to transfer the warp onto one of the heavier looms so we could repair the beam. So we did. By putting two looms breast beam to breast beam, it is easy to transfer one warp from one loom to another.

Once the warp was safely transferred, I could address the split beam. I thought originally that the 30″ second beam could replace the ratchet and pawl warp beam that split. The original beam was so long that it went through a huge hole in the side of the side supports, so in reality, I couldn’t substitute. I thought maybe the heads on the two beams could be switched. They weren’t drilled the same. Disappointed, I repaired the split beam, wood glue is pretty solid. and put the beam back together. My daughter and I spent a long time in discussion and we realized, that though the loom wasn’t drilled for a second warp beam, we could, using the same templates as our other looms, drill it ourselves. Though we have some woodworking equipment, we don’t have a drill press. So I called a really good craftsman friend who is a fantastic woodworker, who lives in the next town, and dismantling the entire back of the loom, marking the side supports well, she donned a mask and headed over there this afternoon and got Gary to drill four holes through the rock maple.

And now, this lovely original loom, has a second back beam and I know exactly what I’m going to put on it. I love when the planets align and things find their way home. I can’t wait to set this loom up and get it working again.

Meanwhile, my garden overfloweth. In anticipation of the storm Tuesday (devastating storm, for some bizarre reason my street did not lose power or internet, but the rest of NJ did) we harvest a lot of basil. This is the second go round this summer, I have a freezer full! Now it is even fuller! I make basil pesto, freeze it flat in little freezer bags and break off what I want.

And I’ve worked hard all week to finally clear a loom, which has had a scarf run on it way too long. I think there are six 2 yard scarves on this loom, and I just have to hemstitch the last one, pull the fabric and wash it.

And the fabric called Summer Rain is beautiful. I’m really happy with how it looks. Will be interesting to see it finished and find out how it washes up but for now, this was a lovely use of the yarns I got to try from Silk City Fibers. This fabric features their new Nile cotton tape, and their new Cotton Bambu yarn, along with Linen 14, Bambu 7, and a couple from my own stash, rayon slubby Saphira and Skinny Majesty variegated. The weft is Bambu 7. The specific yarns are all listed with links in my previous blog post.

And just as a tip, I find that using heavy carabiners on the two last selvedge threads, whether they are floating selvedges or not, really helps keep the selvedges tidy. I have lots of these and I use them on everything I weave.

And today, I had my tech guy come and run an ethernet cable to the new garage studio, so when I do zoom meetings or live demos, I can be hard wired in the studio instead of using WIFI which can be unstable. I now have two ethernet cables coming from the ceiling. Why two? You never know…

So remember, unsubscribe, don’t label things as spam that aren’t spam, and use weights on the last two selvedge threads. You’ll have better selvedges!

Stay tuned…

Meanwhile…

Meanwhile there is a tropical storm moving in tonight. Finally, a typical summer… At least we need the rain desperately…

Meanwhile, I launched another pattern for download. And I’m beginning to add Lookbooks for some of the patterns. I’ve had a number of requests from potential buyers to see what people are doing with the patterns. I know this is a thing on Ravelry, and it does help to see what people do with the pattern, and how it fits all different body types. This is one more thing on my never ending to do list, but I’ve managed to post three of them, one for the vest below, and one for the 700/1700 tunics and the 100 jacket. I don’t know if it helps, and obviously the patterns are too new for purchasers to show what they’ve done with them, but I’ve been using these patterns for years, especially the jackets, and I have a collection of mostly in progress, not completely finished versions from all of my workshops.

What’s important here is that if I used a photo of you in your garment, I cropped all body parts, so you wouldn’t be recognized. Still, if you object to my using your garment, please let me know. And if you have a photo of a garment you made in one of my classes and/or from one of my patterns, especially a finished version, please let me know at theweaver@weaversew.com

The 800 Zippered Vest is fully lined to the edge and has bias bound edges. The vest has a stand-up collar with front separating zipper. View 2 uses the lining as a seam finish on the side, shoulder and neckline/collar seams. Optional yoke on both views. This pattern does not contain directions for sewing. The directions, which contain metric equivalents are available for free from my website https://www.daryllancaster.com/Webfiles/800ZipperedVestDirections.pdf

In addition, a lookbook of garments made from the 800 Zippered Vest is available here https://weaversew.com/wordblog/800-zippered-vest-lookbook/

I’ve only got one more pattern to go in the current collection, which will give me a total of 12! The pattern for the 1800 jacket is done, it is a combination of the 800 zippered vest above and the 400 jacket with waist darts. The directions are rewritten, I’m waiting for the final edits from someone I hired to make sure what I wrote makes sense. The conversations between us are hilarious. Usually she writes that something doesn’t make any sense, and I respond that it would have it they were in class because there would have been an entire class lecture on the fine points of that technique earlier in the morning, and then she responds that people who buy the patterns won’t have been privy to that lecture, so I have to spell it all out. So I’ve added so much to each of the directions for each of the patterns. I keep them separate because whenever something is unclear, I can edit easily and post on a page of my website, without generating an entire new pattern download. The directions are always free, so if you already traced a pattern from one of my classes and need the updated directions, please find them here. As always, if something isn’t clear, please let me know, I’ll try to fix it. And there is the goal to have a YouTube channel to explain many of the techniques I feature in my patterns.

Meanwhile I’m already thinking of how to combine the patterns and what silhouette I want to work on next. A scoop neck top with sleeves…

Meanwhile, I met with a consultant about video equipment and improving the image of my online teaching via Zoom or whatever platform works for the guild hiring me. And they are hiring me. My October Calendar is really filling up with remote guild lectures and a few short workshops. I’m beginning to get cancellations from next year, and I’m really good with that because I don’t see us returning to a normal any time soon. I don’t see me hopping on a plane, dragging 170 pounds of luggage, staying with people, and teaching a 5-7 day class working intimately with students, and returning safely to NJ. Right now there is a list in NJ of 31 states that you have to quarantine from after traveling to… So I’ve edited some of my lectures to list what can be done remotely. I will start on the half day seminars shortly.

So I now have a couple of Canon SLR’s that actually were designed to also work as webcams, in addition to 4K video. I have an AC battery adapter so the camera battery doesn’t die in the middle of a zoom meeting. I have my tech guy coming this week to run an ethernet cable to the garage weaving studio so I don’t have to rely on WIFI. I have the cable company coming to upgrade my modem so I can get 1GB of internet speed. And I purchased a sound system and video lights for recording videos, all that of course contingent on my daughter, who works for me now, learning how to use them. Right now she is creating a logo.

Meanwhile, I’ve mentioned my long time association with Silk City Fibers, which is now a division of Lion Brand Yarns. Alice, who is the director of that division is an old friend and coincidently lives in my town. We are in regular contact about what’s new there and my opinion of the market, the type of yarn, the marketing, and anything else that comes to mind. Last week I was asked if I wanted to be a “weaving influencer”. I suppose I am an influencer. A few thousand friends on facebook, been teaching this stuff since the early 80’s and using their yarn since then as well. I’ve been blogging for more than 10 years, have about a thousand subscribers, and earlier posts have been viewed thousands of times. And of course I always have an opinion. I’m not always right, but my opinion always comes with a thought process that shows how I got there. I met with the powers that be at Lion Brand, via remote conferencing, and largely I said, if you want to toss me yarn, I’ll make yardage out of it, document what I do and what it does, and make clothing out of it to sell my patterns.

And so, at the end of last week, Alice dropped off a small bag of assorted cones, two of them yarns I’d not worked with before. Left to right is Nile, a cotton tape yarn, Cotton Bambu, a heavier parallel plied yarn, great for supplemental work, Linen 14, a fine linen yarn I’ve had experience with before, and Bambu 7, bamboo yarn, pretty much a SSF staple. There was about a half pound of each, which doesn’t seem like a lot to work with, especially if the goal is yardage. But that never stopped me.

I thought about the yarn, and then looked through my stash to see what I could add that was part of their current line. Not much, since my shelves are full of older discontinued styles and colors of Silk City Yarns, all wonderful, but I thought I’d try to stay current. I was able to add these. Clockwise from upper left, Saphira, Skinny Majesty Variegated, and a possible weft, Bambu 7

First I had to figure out exactly what I had. I use a McMorran Yarn Balance and a scale and I can come within a few yards of knowing what’s on the cone.

I played with yarn wraps…

…and adapted the draft from Chaos, which you can purchase from my website here…

…and came up with something that reminded me of summer rain. Think Tropical Storm Isaias.

Meanwhile, I haven’t actually wound a warp or set up a loom since the huge studio move last winter, which seems at this point like a lifetime ago. When I returned from Oregon the beginning of March, the heat had just been installed, but the entire world shut down, and I dug in and made a bunch of new garments, in the basement sewing room, still thinking I had to submit five new works for the Convergence Fashion Show as a guest artist (of course that conference was postponed until 2022). And I started on what seemed like an impossible task at the time, creating downloadable patterns from the ones I developed for classes. I was sitting on a lot of handwoven yardage I had stockpiled, and now my stash is depleted.

So I did what I do best. Create with a small pile in front of me, and see where it takes me…

First up was winding the warp. There are many ways to wind warps, but I wanted to see the colors unfold, so I chose to just do a straight wind off of the draft, as opposed to winding individual chains of each color. The winding was slow, but the sleying would be much faster. The first thing I discovered was the Nile tape lace had to be unwound from the cone like a toilet paper roll, instead of off the top, like typical coned weaving yarns. When exiting from the top, the tape seriously twisted and I knew would never lay moderately flat in the woven surface. So I put the cone on a spool rack, with the rack facing away from me at about a 30 degree angle. The cone unwound easily in that position.

Next hurdle was of course the dreaded slippery rayon, and Silk City Fibers has lots of these. I’ve used them for years. This was one called Saphira, a pretty shimmery yarn with slubs. The color I had has actually been discontinued, but a similar one is available with a black core instead of a white one. Winding a warp with a yarn like this is problematic because any break in movement, like the turn around at the top of the warping mill, causes the yarn to pool around the base, getting caught as the movement resumes. I usually use a nylon stocking around the cone as a drag, which works really really well, except in the move, they are hiding and I can’t figure out where they went. So I used the mesh covering from an Asian Pear, which when tucked around the base, stopped the pooling and the warping could continue.

I loved the way the colors built on one another.

By dinner time yesterday I had the loom’s beater sleyed. Each of these steps was sort of like reinventing the wheel. The chair I usually used for sleying was now in the basement in my sewing studio. So I had to come up with new tools and devices, figure out where my regular tools were now living, figure out where to plug in the magnifying light (in the ceiling as it turned out), and how to adjust the split HVAC system that was spilling copious amounts of frigid air right on me. I figured that out and the room was really comfortable. The new studio worked well. I’m happy and can’t wait to actually spend most of my days out there even when I’m Zooming…

I started threading after dinner.

Meanwhile, my beloved brat of a dog Ranger got his manhood clipped last Monday. He was very depressed and had to wear the “innertube of misfortune”. And of course, that meant he couldn’t wear a bellyband, so my fear all week was that he would pee on everything in my house. We were good until late last night. He saddled up to a shelving tower of handdyed yarn skeins and lifted his leg. So I got to use the new dye sink in the studio and wash all of the offended skeins as I cleaned up the mess. The dye sink worked really well. And incision or no incision, he is now wearing a belly band. The relationship between the two males dogs is slowing changing, it will be interesting to see where this goes. The week for the most part wasn’t nearly has challenging as I thought it would be. I got a lot accomplished locking myself and the dog in my office for hours at a time while he healed. He liked the constant companionship.

Meanwhile, did I mention we are getting hit with a tropical storm tonight? Note to self, pull in anything that isn’t nailed down, like umbrellas, etc. Better yet, send Brianna out to do it…

Stay tuned…

Slow, hot, summer…

And here it is July. And no end in sight to the world’s catastrophic situation. I’m really sad, because NJ and NY were hit really really hard by the virus back in March-May, and no one listened. I saw friends post things on social media that made it seem as if we were overreacting. They turned it into a political stunt. I almost never ever comment on anything political or otherwise, I’m a moderate, centrist, and each side has a point. The truth is somewhere in the middle. Yet on the spread of Coronavirus, NJ has close to 16,000 dead. And yet the internet is full of people that think this is all a game, a political stunt that will all miraculously disappear in November. There is nothing I can do but stay home, stay masked, and try to do something constructive with my life. At this point, I believe that all of my teaching work for the year has been cancelled. I’m scheduled to start traveling again in January/February with two trips to the West Coast. I have no idea if the world will be safe. I can’t even think past this month. This is a true test of living in the moment.

The good news is we are rapidly perfecting the art of remote learning. I’ve been approached about teaching online, including online guild lectures, trying to wrap my head around what’s possible with the equipment I have, because purchasing equipment for streaming is problematic, it just isn’t available. I’ve edited my website offerings to indicate which lectures would work perfectly for remote learning.

Peters Valley has been one of the mainstays of my creative life. A School of Craft in northwest NJ, I’ve been closely associated with them since the 70’s. This year was to be their 50th celebration. That’s on hold, but they are hard at work trying to keep the craft community together. Traditionally, each week of instruction at the Valley would be spearheaded by an evening lecture featuring all of the instructors teaching that week, brief presentations in an old church down the road. That has continued, remotely, even though the entire season of workshops has been cancelled. Every Friday night I get to tune in for free and watch 5 fine craft professionals share their work/studios/philosophies/inspiration wherever in the world they are, and they are all over the world, and I get inspired. The series runs through the summer and they are archiving the past Friday night lectures on their You Tube Channel.

Peters Valley, in partnership with the Pike County Library in northeastern PA is also featuring a lecture series, and they actually managed to get a grant to continue that series, which is a more in depth look at an individual craftsman, held every two weeks on a Wednesday night. I was the featured lecturer July 1.

I will say, though I’ve given this particular lecture many times, and as recently as March for the Portland guild, stood up in front of hundreds of people during a keynote address, I was terrified. I was terrified because this technology scares the heck out of me. Stuff goes wrong. All the time. A typical summer late afternoon thunderstorm can cause the power or the internet to go out and you are screwed. Even a drain on bandwidth can cause the sound and/or video to lag and become unintelligible. And when something goes wrong, I’m so untrained to fix it.

So at the appointed time, even after a rehearsal, I logged in and I have to give credit to my late husband who must have been watching from above, because the thunderstorm headed straight for us split and moved just round my town, all went perfectly, and you can view the archived lecture here.

Meanwhile, my daughter and I are finding our groove so to speak. She is becoming more aware and more involved in running the household. We have a routine with the animals, she monitors the vegetable garden and the ponds, picks up dog poop in the yard, and is happy to do Home Depot, Shoprite, Post Office runs wearing a mask, and grabbing what we need to stay comfortable. We are changing up our routine for eating, she is becoming more involved in meal selection, we cook together, and make enough for multiple meals of leftovers, which is convenient for lunches. My son moved out, found a place of his own, and we are constantly finding things to put in the “give to Eric” box by the door. Last Saturday after being really annoyed by how often she had to rebuild one of the ponds because her four legged child kept chasing frogs right into the pond and completely destroying the plants and the rock wall borders, she went to Home Depot and bought garden fencing and out we went and within a couple of hours we solved the problem. There is nothing like motivation.

And we continue on the current major task of digitizing all of my patterns I use for my classes. The swing coats 300 and 400 were launched a couple weeks ago, and we are finalizing the 600 walking vest as I write. Just waiting on the final edits on the directions. Once the 600 walking vest is released, we only have two more to do, the 800 zippered vest and the 1200 zippered jacket, variations on one another, and I can move on to making support videos. This gift of time has allowed me to do a task that 6 months ago I didn’t think would ever be possible. As always, the directions for all of my patterns are available for free here.

The days are quiet and easy (well maybe not so quiet, we have lots of dogs…) and I’m hunkered down and for now I’m safe. I have a beautiful studio, one for weaving, one for sewing, an office with solid equipment (except a working webcam for my desktop, there isn’t a Logitech webcam available in this country except for a ridiculous price, I’m looking at you Walmart…) but we are resourceful my daughter and I. We also have a woodworking studio, a metals bench/craftroom, and my daughter has all her knitting machines in her bedroom. We have a craft school right here on the property. All to ourselves. And still, there just aren’t enough hours in the day to do all the creative things that make me sing. Oh yeah, and there is music too. A couple of friends, one on recorder and one on cello are coming tonight to sit on the deck, amongst the fairy lights and play a Brandenburg Concerto we have been working on diligently. I’m the other recorder. We keep our distance, drink wine, and play our hearts out. My daughter added fairy lights to the gazebo down the path. My property is magical and this is the first summer since forever I’ve been able to really enjoy it.

And we always have an ongoing puzzle to make.

Instead of telling my friends and kids when they leave, “Drive safe”, I tell them now, “Wear a mask!”. It seems more fitting.

Wear a mask, stay tuned…