Author: daryl

For the Win…

When my kids were young, a dark time in my life because raising children, especially my children, was really really challenging, I found myself in one of the lowest points in my life. I was probably in a deep depression, not something that is a normal affair for me. I remember hearing about a book, or maybe my beloved Mother-in-Law gave it to me, by Sarah Ban Breathnach, called The Simple Abundance Journal of Gratitude. I have five of them on my shelf, and each one starts in January, with a few lines for each day of the year. Inspirational quotes are scattered throughout the book. The copyright is 1996, so that would be about when my kids were just starting school. Those were tough times. I was taught long ago, how important it is to have gratitude, for anything, even if it is just that you woke up in the morning. Desperate times call for desperate threads to hang on to, and I latched onto those little books, for what looks like five years straight, and I dutifully wrote in them five things I was grateful for each day. There are other journals on the shelf which came after, because I actually got into the habit of journaling, a healthy way of putting thoughts on paper and celebrating the good stuff and documenting the tough times. I haven’t ever sat down to reread what I wrote back then, I’m not sure I can or should. But eventually, as my kids grew and I survived multiple traumas, like breast cancer in 2002, I found that the journals I wrote to be more limiting. I wanted to add pictures, and information of where I was traveling, and teaching. I wanted to add what I was working on in the studio, and what my students did.

In 2008, I read an article by tech wizard Syne Mitchell, a column more specifically, that she wrote for Handwoven Magazine, talking about how weavers should embrace this new technology and start a blog. She explained how to do it on eBlogger, and I thought, I can do this. It would allow me to write, journal style, and add pictures, and links and keep a digital journal that if someone actually wanted to read, they could. My tech husband saw what I did, and after a couple of posts told me that I needed to switch to Word Press, and he moved everything I’d done to that platform, much to my dismay, since Word Press at the time is not particularly user friendly, and still isn’t. It just gets more and more complicated. But that was 2008.

I have written more than 900 posts at this point and I have gone back and read and reread many of my posts. I am shocked, surprised, dismayed and thrilled at all I’ve accomplished over the last 15 years of my life. If nothing else the visuals are stunning.

Lots of people read my blog, but that’s not why I write them. I actually don’t care if they are ever read, though I will say I always enjoy getting comments, because I learn a lot and know that people care and appreciate the share. I continue to write the blogs, even though blogging is so last decade, because I like to write, and journaling keeps reminding me of what’s important, or what was important to me at the time I wrote each post.

Today I reached a huge goal. It was maybe a silly goal but it is still an important one to me. In my last post I talked about all the looms I have, and how it became an obsession over the last year to get warps on all of them. A personal challenge? I had one remaining Tools of the Trade table loom in the back corner of the garage/studio that I had purchased used from Eugene Textiles in Oregon and paid to have it shipped across the country. I never got around to cleaning it up and replacing cords, apron strings, and giving it a good wipe down with Howard’s Feed and Wax. At least the heddles all canted in the same direction though I’d need to add a few hundred! So I spent a day, earlier in the week, giving this last Tools of the Trade loom in my collection, a solid refurbishment, and it was ready for a warp. My daughter named all of our looms, because frankly it is the only way we can keep track of the 50+ looms in this studio. She referenced Star Trek for many of them, and this one is named “Kim“. Ensign Harry Kim from Voyager…

In my last post, I mentioned I got the idea of Rep Weave, which I had only played around with briefly many years ago in a guild challenge, and looked through all the books I had on the subject. I found a project that I could base my design on, and started looking at yarns.

I found this cone of vintage Silk City Fibers Contessa, a 75% rayon, 15% silk yarn that at the time, (and still is) my favorite yarn to work with. It was discontinued a long time ago, but because I live near Silk City, when it use to be headquartered in Paterson, guild members in my area acquired a lot of it, and I frequently find the mother lode in estate sales. So I have a decent stash, especially in natural which I dye frequently. This particular cone was one of their beloved variegateds, called Roman Holiday. Cute name…

I spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to see if there was some sort of repeat in the dye coloration, and there sort of was. It seemed the colors repeated themselves every three yards give or take.

When I want to line up colors in a variegated yarn, I have to wind the warp in a circular fashion. You can’t do that on a warping mill. Because I was going to do a short warp, 3 yards, I used my small warping board, and tied it to a music stand. Perfect height.

I went around the board, and up the side, taping off the end of the color sequence so I could start around the board again. As a side, I’m giving a lecture in warping the loom from the front to the back, a method I’ve used since the early 80’s with tremendous success, for MAFA Virtual, a remote conference in July. The great thing about this conference is you can sign up for as many sessions as you’d like since they will all be recorded and what you can’t watch at that moment, you can watch later. I believe sign ups have just begun. Anyway, I’m going to discuss what I just described in more detail in that lecture.

The other day, it was just gloriously warm and sunny and I took my warping board, tied to the music stand, and all the yarn I chose and hauled it out the back door to the studio onto the deck, where I stood, listening to the busy birds and the waterfall in the pond, and kept on winding.

Eventually I wound all the chains I needed for this very complicated warp. I couldn’t get the colors to line up as perfectly as I hoped, especially after there was a break in the yarn and a large knot, and things seemed to go haywire after that. But I persevered and got all the chains wound.

After rehabbing “Kim” I started to sley the chains, four ends in a dent, in an 8 dent reed. I tied the reed into levels, like I always do when warping front to back. Again, I’ll talk a lot about this in the lecture for MAFA Virtual.

I flipped the loom around, dropped out the whole back of the loom, which I can do on the Tools of the Trade table looms, and started to thread. This is a pretty dense warp at 32 ends per inch, basically the blocks are only on two shafts each, so I was sort of sweating whether this loom could handle such a dense warp and still give me a shed…

Then it was time to beam. The colors really started to sing, and I got the dense warp onto the warp beam in record time, since it was only three yards.

And then the moment of truth. Yes, I was able to get a shed, though I have to push down the shafts that want to ride up together, on a table loom that isn’t really an issue. Takes about 2 seconds. I chose a thick and a thin weft, typical in Rep, and started in on the pattern.

I could have sett this closer, probably should have, but I was really afraid the loom couldn’t handle it, and because I have large eye inserted eye heddles, they just don’t nest like a flat steel heddle, which I never had for any of my Tools of the Trade looms. They weren’t designed for that type of heddle. But it is pretty cool anyway, and more to the point, I’m learning a lot. And that’s why I do what I’m doing.

Meanwhile, for no one’s benefit but mine, for the rest of this post and the next couple of posts to follow, I want to document that at this point in time, I’ve warped all the looms that are mine to warp. Since most of them are mine, that’s a lot of looms.

So in no particular order, I’ll start with my first loom back in 1978, Tools of the Trade, 8 shaft, 45″ wide, with a double back beam and sectional option. When I bought it I had no idea what any of that stuff was, but I bought it anyway figuring I’d grow into it. I did and then some. Because this was my first loom, purchased directly from Tools of the Trade in Fairhaven, VT, the looms is called “Fairhaven“. All of the Tools of the Trade large floor looms were numbered. This was one of the first hundred, #94. At the moment it has something like 4 yards of mohair, desperately trying to use the last of the stash, in a plain weave, 6 epi. I blogged about that here.

After I purchased that loom, I realized I needed a second, for demos, workshops, and scarves that would match my regular production fabric, because I was full on into production weaving and beginning to do craft fairs. I bought the identical loom, but 25″ wide, so it could be put in a van and brought to a craft fair. I called this one “Fairhaven Junior“. On this loom, I have an 8 shaft project, from WEBS, documented in a blog post here.

My mother in law, who was a bit of a weaver among other things, (primarily bobbin lace) wanted a loom for her apartment in Wilton, CT. I ordered her a 25″ 4 shaft floor loom, also from Tools of the Trade, somewhere in the mid 1980’s, and when she got too old to weave, she gave it back to me. I just warped it earlier in the week with the cotton runner commission I talked about in my last post. I called this loom “Wilton“.

Next to it is its twin sister, that my daughter and I drove to Atlantic City or somewhere near there to pick up when we saw an ad that it was available. I don’t remember who owned it, but it was really for her use because at the time, she had moved out and taken “Fairhaven” with her and wanted a smaller one for workshops and demos. She named it “Porter“, something to do with it being from a port city in coastal NJ . On the loom is a cotton warp and she is cutting up her late father’s interesting shirts and assorted clothing and weaving one long rag rug art project on it.

She drove to Massachusetts a few years ago to pick up a vintage Tools of the Trade, meaning really early, predating my 1978 loom, 4 shaft 32″ wide. Somewhere along the way, someone had a second warp beam kit in their closet for a 32″ Tools of the Trade loom, which they shipped to me for free. I sat on it and realized that it would fit this loom, so Brianna drilled for it and I named this “Snyder” because I think that’s the name of the women I purchased it from. Right now I have a ten yard ice dyed warp on it, which has been on there a while, and I think I’m weaving this in a crackle structure. I blogged about it here.

Mother’s Day 2021 Brianna loaded up the trailer and drove 4-5 hours to Rochester NY to pick up the largest loom in the studio, which was a 12 shaft Tools of the Trade loom, 54″ wide. # 486 one of the last looms he made. We called this loom “The Duchess“. It is almost too much loom for me, though I did weave my 12 shaft combination weave fabric for my walking vest which was part of the collection I sent for the Convergence fashion show in Knoxville, TN, summer of 2022. Brianna now has a very cool 12-shaft dishtowel run of fabric, in rainbow colors, based on a 10 shaft draft from a Robin and Russ collection we purchased from a weaver’s estate sale. I find the logo for Robin and Russ a bit disconcerting, but the content and swatches in the four binders we have is invaluable.

Behind it sits a sister loom to my original “Fairhaven“. This loom is also an 8 shaft, 45” loom with a single warp beam, # 246, named “Princeton” because my daughter answered an ad that had this loom for sale, and she went to Princeton, with a tool kit, paid the woman the couple hundred dollars she was asking, and completely dismantled the loom so it would fit in the back of a Rav4 as a pile of lumber. She then reassembled the loom in her second floor apartment, next to “Fairhaven” which I had given her when she moved out. Of course all the looms came back when she moved back home, along with her dog and cat. The rest is history. On it is an oversized overshot pattern which my daughter says is from Strickler’s book of 8 shaft patterns.

A number of years ago, knowing I’d be downsizing at some point (hahahaha) and feeling that my 45″ “Fairhaven” was getting to be too much loom for me and that I’d be eventually giving it to my daughter, I found a loom for sale outside of D.C. that was identical except it was only 36″ wide. It is one of my favorite looms in the studio. It fits my aging body well. It is 8 shaft and has a second warp beam. # 273. We call this one “Princess“. On it right now is a chenille ‘color and weave’ on only 4 of the 8 shafts, but I needed the width of the loom. I blogged about it here. I have no idea how many yards I put on it. I’d have to go back and look at my notes. (It was 8 yards)

That leaves the six Tools of the Trade Table looms. I’ll talk about them next time, though one of them, “Kim” was described above.

Stay tuned… Lots more loom fun to come…

The great quest continues…

There is probably some sort of literary word that describes multiple plot lines of a story, all coming together to create a spectacular ending. I won’t say this is a spectacular ending, but I’m at least amused by it all…

A little backstory here…

When Covid shut the world down, I was not unhappy to have to cancel all my bookings and reevaluate my life. I was tired, and Covid gave me a great excuse to just stop. Get off the merry-go-round of endless airports, suitcases, shipping and prep and doing it all over again just a couple weeks later. Most of my peers (not in the weaving world) were retiring from their careers, moving to warmer digs, but I’m an artist. Sort of. Creative people don’t retire. They just reinvent themselves.

For most of my creative life, I’ve had to focus. That’s sort of a thing in the art world. Defining your vision, narrowing your focus for your work, is really important if you want to show/exhibit/sell your work. I started my career as a production weaver, making other people’s work, and then narrowed my own vision so I could get into craft fairs. You can’t do one of everything. It doesn’t work that way.

My first craft booth, circa 1980, did have everything I’d ever done to that point, tapestries, table linens, scarves, shawls, garments, rugs, throws (we called them afghans back then). I found out that to get into serious shows, I needed to narrow my vision.

I make clothing. I’m good at it, and I pretty quickly found a way to link garment construction and handweaving, and though I’d often wander off the path, my work is pretty consistently mine, and I’m proud of it all. Wander through my gallery…

From the beginning, I avoided participation in weaving guilds. I didn’t have the time to devote, and take workshops, and be a part of a team of guild members, and I was lecturing to many of them, so it was sort of a conflict of interests. But truth be told, I was jealous. I was jealous of the family a guild creates, and the exploration of different structures, ideas, cool things to try. I didn’t have the time anyway, but I always wondered what it would be like to do what I do as a hobby, and not as a career.

So when I found myself unexpectedly retiring from teaching on the road, and locked down in my studio for a couple years, I thought to myself, what’s the one thing you always wished you could do? I started telling people, “I want to try all the things…” As a matter of fact, I said something to that effect when Kathi Grupp, host of HGA’s Textiles and Tea asked me, “What’s next for you?” when she interviewed me March 22, 2022. I just wanted to try all the things…

I managed to take a few workshops where Covid allowed, and I listened to a lot of remote lectures and conferences. All sorts of things crossed my radar, but the one thing I really wanted was to be better at woven structures. I am a good weaver, I should be, I’ve been doing it long enough. But I stayed in one path, and rarely deviated.

Over the last couple of years, since my daughter and I built a new weaving studio in the garage, after she moved back home with her five looms and paraphernalia, more looms have found their way in to add to the mix. Especially Structo looms. There are 26 small metal Structo looms, and 5 small 10″ Leclerc Sample looms alone. I have 14 Tools of the Trade looms, 4,8, and a 12 shaft loom, some are floor looms and some are table looms. And we have a mix of others, from Leclerc and Ashford, a huge assortment of inkle looms, Ashford, Schacht, Beka, Gilmore, and Glimakra, and a custom tablet weaving loom from John Mullarkey. I lost count after 50…

During one of my remote guild meetings, someone asked me when it came up that I had this ridiculous number of looms, “Are they all warped?” I laughed, of course they weren’t all warped. But that thought sort of nagged at me. Over the last year, I became a bit obsessed in seeing if I could set up all of the looms. I loved researching a structure, and coming up with what I thought would be a draft that would interest and inspire me, and then pick the loom most appropriate. I’d put on however many yards the loom could hold based on how much yarn I had and again, what I thought was appropriate. There is no plan as to what any of these warps will become. For the first time in my life I’m just exploring. I had a blast doing something like a warp a week. I didn’t have to actually weave any of it off. I just wanted to see if I could actually get all of the looms operational at once. Many of them came in needing some major tender loving care. The Macomber (yeah, I’ve got on of those too), was in really poor condition and I spent more than $1000 getting it up and running, much to the annoyance of all of my Tools of the Trade looms. They weren’t happy when I brought in this “other” brand floor loom. Did I mention I think of my looms and equipment with anthropomorphic traits?

With more than 50 looms, there is a lot of noise in the studio on a daily basis, all of them shouting for attention, all of them needing to be “dressed”. They quiet down when they have a cool warp on them, and know I’ll eventually get to weaving on them. So I’m coming down the home stretch. There were only four looms that were left to be warped, one is a 12 shaft Dorothy from Leclerc, which belongs to my daughter, which isn’t mine to warp, but I had two 4 shaft Tools of the Trade looms, both 25″ wide, one a floor loom and the other a table loom left to dress. I hesitated, because it is always good to have a loom at the ready for emergencies. I couldn’t imagine what that might be, but it seemed like a good excuse.

The fourth loom was a “frankenloom” of sorts named Burnham. I created it from all the piece parts I had around the studio and in the attic after that huge shipment of Structos and parts I got from a school across the country. I blogged about that here.

It was 8 shafts, and I actually had some spools with usable cotton thread left on them, so I thought, what would be fun on this loom that I haven’t already tried. And “Rosepath” popped into my head. Strickler’s book of 8 shaft patterns has a number of pages devoted to Rosepath designs, a basic point twill, but the designs give the ability to weave little pictures of simple flowers, trees, hearts, anything that can mirror repeat itself over 16 threads. And so I set up this odd “FrankenStructo” and it is really happy to be part of the mix.

I was driving to music rehearsal the other night, and I got a call from a friend, who wanted to know if I would weave a commission for a table runner. I immediately said, “No”, and then continued to ask what the specs were, what was she looking for. She couldn’t do it herself, because like me last year, she was out of commission after a fall. I was driving so couldn’t get too involved, but I told her to send me pictures, of what she was looking for, and thought I was 99% sure I was not doing a commission for anyone, I said I’d check it out when I got home.

That kind of thing is like a light switch for me. I did have two looms without warps, but this would need to be woven quickly, so it would need to be a floor loom. I couldn’t stop thinking about how I would do something like this, with the limited equipment I had left. This is the sort of emergency project I figured might come along, needing a loom. I could always clear a loom, but I had this now ridiculous goal of warping every one of them. I asked my friend what kind of structure she had in mind. She said, “What’s your favorite?”

Well my favorite structure is all of them, I mean combining as many as I can into one warp. I wrote an entire issue of Heddlecraft magazine, issue #38 specifically on the subject. Typically I use an 8-shaft loom, but alas, I only had a 4-shaft floor loom available. I sent her one of the WIF files from the issue, one I used from G.H. Oelsner’s Handbook of Weaves that was actually 4-shaft.

She liked it, but I kept thinking, how can I make this more of my own? I went back and read the issue that I wrote…

I picked four colors from my vast stash of 8/2 cotton, based on the interior photos she sent, and she liked those choices.

I spent a few hours working on a draft, playing with repeating side by structures and tossing in some basic straight draw twill. I added a bit of color and weave effect, and she liked it as well. I was really shocked at how varied the draft was, with only 4 shafts. So I wound the warp, dressed the loom, and this morning I started to weave.

Needless to say, I’m pretty proud of myself. Necessity is the mother of invention? Or using up all your looms and not leaving any options? I’ll eventually make the draft available, maybe put it in my shop as one of my $2.99 downloads.

And while I was winding the warp, I heard this pitiful little voice back in the corner on the floor of the garage studio, “What about me?”

So I assured the one remaining loom of mine that needs a little TLC, that I would be addressing that matter soon. I started to think about what other structure I could play with. The voices in the room shouted, “Rep!” Completely impractical on a table loom, Rep is a very dense warp face structure, but there is a big difference between impractical and impossible. And I want to try. I’m already pulling yarn, and getting an idea of where I want to go with this, and I promised that little loom in the corner named Kim (Star Trek Voyager) that I wouldn’t abandon him. I’m on it…

Stay tuned…

Happy Spring…

This past week was full of highs and lows, I sort of felt like a pinball. Monday was the first day of spring, and here in the northeast, we have been hitting temps of about 60 when it is sunny, with steady spring rain in between. I walk into town, and everything has the smallest of buds, ready to just burst apart in some kind of chorus of life. I can’t wait for some color. Even my daffodils are just straining to bloom, tall stalks of yellow confined in their green outer skin.

On Tuesday, I had the wonderful opportunity to moderate an episode of the weekly Handweaver’s Guild of America Textiles and Tea. I prepared hard for this, did my research, collaborated with questions, and was thrilled that it all seemed to go extremely well. The person I interviewed, a knotter from Colorado, Al Canner, was really interesting, extremely talented, and made the most gorgeous work from the lowly macramé knot, the double half hitch, a throwback from the 70’s and the jute plant hangers with the ceramic owl eyes. I still can’t wrap my head around the work he does now, with one foot in the past. My first job out of college was teaching in a mall craft shop in Paramus, NJ, macramé, specifically owl plant hangers. Check out his work, there is nothing like it that I’ve seen in the fiber world. And the interview is on the HGA Facebook page, and will eventually make its way to their YouTube channel.

On Wednesday, my late husband’s birthday, I found out that two people who I really really respected and who had tremendous influence in my life, passed away. One was a weaver in the Pacific northwest, who died suddenly in a house fire from what I understand, and I’m still saddened and stunned that such a spark of life could be so snuffed out in a heartbeat. She was probably the most enthusiastic student I ever had in a class, just a joy to teach, and she will be truly missed. Rest easy Dori.

The other loss was a close friend, here in North Jersey. Ed and I shared a lot of good times creating music together, working on huge projects for Montclair Early Music, and a lot of sushi lunches from my favorite sushi place. I will miss his gentle spirit and musical talent. Too many losses.

So on Wednesday, with news of both deaths, and yet wanting to celebrate my late husband on his day, my daughter and I headed out to the garden center for our annual early spring trek, for pansies and lettuces and I was really really disappointed to find out that no one had any in stock. Which shocked me. Everyone had pansies this time last year, and the year before that. It hasn’t been that cold. I’ve since learned of a couple of places, but the point was, to do something to commemorate my late husband’s birthday. On his birthday. So instead, my daughter and I dressed all the beds after an intense clean out, fertilized, topped off the soil, and planted whatever seeds were in the back of the refrigerator that could go in the ground now. Of course, the hoses aren’t turned on yet, so watering will have to be done by dragging buckets from the house. Not something I look forward to. As if my husband smiled on us, it rained the next day, and then yesterday, and it is supposed to rain tomorrow. It’s like he said, “I’ve got this…”

Which allowed me some lovely studio time. One of my guild mates who lives nearby, came over to work on one of the Structos. I have so many set up with interesting structures. She picked the one with 8 Shaft Honeycomb variants on it, from Malin Selander’s Weave a Weave, specifically the Isolde version. (They are named after operas,) She worked on it for a couple of hours, and I finished it off a few days later. That’s a flat surface, but the deflection in the honeycomb around the gold threads creates the illusion of a wavy fabric.

And of course, my last blog post left everyone hanging with the threading of 8/2 Tencel in an Echo parallel threading on my 12-shaft Voyager Table Loom. It is gorgeous. (The draft is from Denise Kovnat, from her collection of WIF files for Echo Weave available on her website. This is a variation) I feel like there are so many cool things to weave in my studio; I’m a bit addicted to setting up looms, but at some point, I really need to weave what’s on them!

While showing my guild mate all the options with my Structos, I realized that one of them, though threaded for a Theo Moorman technique, hadn’t actually been woven on. I had cut off the piece that was on it, re-tied onto the front, and just left it. So I found a cool photo of the pansies from this time last year, what should have been in my flower pots by now, printed it on silk Crepe de Chine, and started cutting it into strips to weave in an inlay technique. The ground is linen, and the tie-down threads are serger thread. Barely visible. The technique is documented in my monograph called Weave a Memory. It is available digitally.

Those needlework threads I talked about last time, that I purchased from the Lace Day event? They have been calling me. I sat down after calculating the repeat in the handpainted threads, and figured out how many ends, five yards long, I could get with what I purchased in a specific color grouping. Something like 153 ends. So I sat with my weaving software and did a few versions until I liked what I had.

I wound the warp carefully, starting and tying together each end in a loop by the cross, since I would be using a loom I haven’t actually used before, my Gilmore Wave Mini. We named him Quark, (from Deep Space 9, I think). I’m a front to back warper, but the design of this loom requires warping back to front. Normally I would have wound each color separately, and incorporated the chains in the reed, following my draft. In this loom, as in inkle looms, there is no reed, so I had to wind the entire sequence of 153 threads, and try hard to get the handpainted colors to match up. I couldn’t exhale until I had wound the entire warp, because I was so afraid of running short. My calculations held, and I ended up having enough, but that would have been pretty depressing to have had to go to Plan B…

The directions for setting up this loom are strange. The Lease Sticks, two fat knitting needles that slip into the cross, and mount on the back of the loom, work fine for winding, but they have you add metal supports to the warp beam to channel the warp into something like a sectional warp. It doesn’t work. I needed precision winding, to keep the colors from shifting. After winding on 5 yards, I ended up pulling the entire thing back off and winding my own way, which has never failed me; a couple of fat zip ties on the back support, and stiff interfacing for packing material.

Threading from the lease sticks which are suspended a good five inches from the eyes of the Texsolv heddles, which are very densely packed together because this will be a warp face band, proved ridiculous. I ended up pulling the lease sticks and replacing them with a cross tie, like I always use, and just holding the cross in my hand and threading the heddles like I do when I thread the reed. Worked like a charm.

There is always a learning curve with every new piece of equipment I use. Weaving is weaving, but each loom has a personality, quirks, and oddities that make it unique. It is a team effort. So now I’m happily weaving away on this incredible loom, now that it is set up. It does weave like a dream. I’ve never seen such a small loom have the ability to tighten a warp so tight you can bounce on it. And the colors are lining up perfectly.

Life throws you curve balls, and people come into your life and leave. I am a better person for having known Dori and Ed, and I wish them peace on their new journey. And for those of us left behind, I wish for the will to keep on planting, and designing, and playing music, and welcoming the budding trees and bulbs in a joyous celebration of life.

Stay tuned…

Write What You Know…

Back in the day, it was discovered quite by accident that I could actually write. A Catholic Elementary School graduate, I could diagram a sentence with the best of them. But writing assignments in school were tedious and not something I jumped into with relish. When Madelyn van der Hoogt, then editor of Handwoven Magazine, heard the things I said at my now infamous technical critique of the fashion show at Cincinnati Convergence in 2000, she contacted me about writing for Handwoven Magazine. Writing articles is very different than 7th grade term papers. But actually, not really… There is research, and hopefully you get to write about something that interests you. But the spelling, grammar, checking your work thing, that was drilled into me by a bunch of Italian speaking nuns. Go figure…

Madelyn called after my first submission, thrilled with the way I apparently wrote, and kept me on, for 35 issues straight. I only left that job as features editor when the magazine was sold and cost cutting procedures cut me right out of the mast head. But over the years, I’ve been asked to occasionally contribute to various magazines, Shuttle Spindle and Dyepot, Heddlecraft, Threads Magazine, Sew News, and one in Canada after a keynote I gave at a conference there. I genuinely enjoy writing, I like some of the research I have to do, and writing what you know is much easier than some obscure writing assignment in middle school.

I spent a good portion of last year researching, weaving samples, and writing Heddlecraft Magazine issue #38 on Combining Warp Structures. It was the second time I wrote an issue of Heddlecraft. That issue came out last fall, and it is something I’m really proud of.

Writing assignments have been quiet the last few months, which is just fine. I liked the break after an intense year. Oddly enough, at the end of February, I started to get inquiries, “Do you think you could write a short article on…”, or “I have this idea, do you think you could…” or, “Would you be able to do this by next week…” So suddenly, I went from a quiet winter, to six articles or written content I should say, all due within three weeks.

A friend said to me, when I outwardly groaned to her in a phone call, “Why don’t you say no?” That’s not really how it works. I wanted to do all the assignments. They were all interesting and for the most part, things I knew about. Could I write about my experiences using Mohair, could I write about my experiences volunteering for the Shakespeare Theatre, could I write the exhibition brochure for an upcoming exhibition, and could I be the guest host for Textiles and Tea, since the regular host would be away? Well dang… Six in all. I won’t give specifics until things are actually published. But I just spent the last three weeks at my computer searching for images from the 80’s, interviewing an artist as he installed his exhibition (opening this Sunday), and research and rehearsals for my stint as Host on Textiles and Tea, this Tuesday, March 21st. It was a year ago that I was interviewed for this weekly chat sponsored by the Handweavers Guild of America. I thought it would be a lot of fun to sit on the other side of the desk so to speak, as the interviewer.

In the meantime, I have become obsessed with warping all the looms. And I think, if you count the Gilmore Wave, which is a two shaft for warp face band weaves, there are 50 shaft looms in the studio. All but the Gilmore have Star Trek names, or names related to where or who they came from, or something on that nature. I’ll have to get out the labeler… I refurbished another Tools of the Trade table loom I’ve been sitting on (named Torres); this one too was a heddle disaster. I’m always shocked at how the heddles in a used loom are every which way, making it really inefficient to thread. There were a few hundred, and they all had to come off and be carefully reoriented. But I wanted a 4-shaft table loom that could take a long warp, where I could use my Zanshi balls I make tying together all the thrums or leftovers from my looms. Zanshi is the Japanese art of wasting nothing. I wove fabric like this already, I wrote about it here (scroll all the way down). But I ran out of warp, and the basket of thrums is overflowing. A friend mentioned she had woven Zanshi in a rib weave, with a dense fine warp. I got a couple cones of Black UKI 20/2 cotton from a friend who was downsizing, doubled them, and put on a nice tidy warp.

I experimented a bit with structure, starting with plain weave, then twill, and finally the rib weave. Which I love. So I’ll keep weaving the rib, and keep tying those thrums together.

I have a 12-shaft Voyager from Leclerc (called Janeway) I bought a few years ago, from one of my weaving guild buddies. It is 16″ wide. It had a white warp on it when I got it, and I did a quick yarn test for Silk City Fibers for a yarn they were considering by tying into that warp, but I’ve never actually warped it from scratch. Mostly because I haven’t been able to find a 12 shaft draft or structure that interested me enough.

A friend told me about Denise Kovnat’s blog, she is a fantastic weaver, and offers all kinds of classes and drafts for sale on her website. I bought a group of Echo drafts, which included some for 12 shafts, because that was one structure I didn’t have on my looms in the studio. I’ve woven it, but until now, it wasn’t hugely appealing enough to tie up one of my other looms. I worked on one of the 12-shaft drafts from Denise’s collection for a couple of weeks, until I came up with what I thought would be fun to weave.

I wound four yards of alternating lime green and teal 8/2 Tencel, at 36epi, which at 16″ wide, is 574 ends. Which is a lot. In a small space. I’m threading it now, and actually loving this little loom. The back beam unscrews easily, and the warp beam pops off by unscrewing the crank, just like on my Structos and I have a lovely clear shot of the twelve shafts, and the reed where the ends are sleyed in order. Threading an echo parallel threading is challenging, and not for the faint of heart. And truth be told, weaving 4 yards of Echo weave in Tencel on a 12 shaft table loom will take a very long time. I half expect, with all the other looms, that I won’t live long enough to actually finish it. But I no longer care about finishing stuff anymore. It is about the process; it has always been about the process for me. Curiosity and learning something new are my driving force now in my life. As long as my eyes hold out; I was just told by the eye doctor today that I’ll probably need cataract surgery 12-18 months from now. Sigh…

And my yarn stash grows. I’ve gotten a bit addicted to getting the newsletter from Peter Patchis each month, with the latest yarn specials. I usually order one of everything, because I have no idea what I’m doing to do with any of it. This was the latest haul that came in last week.

On Saturday, in spite of some nasty weather, I headed out to Sussex County to a Lace Day, sponsored by the Lost Art Lacers, lacemaking group. I used to belong to them, many lifetimes ago, when I actively made bobbin lace. I still have many of my pillows, but there are only so many hours in a day, and filling looms has become my latest passion. But, in my years of teaching warp face weaving on an inkle loom, I always talked about how appropriate needlework yarns, which are put up in small quantities, are for working on an inkle loom. I was curious to see what was out there. And I especially wanted to see my old friend Holly van Sciver, who is a fantastic lacemaker and teacher, and sells just about every type of thread for lacemaking and needlework in general, and has every book ever written on lacemaking. I wasn’t disappointed…

My small haul was pretty costly, compared to what I had just gotten from Peter Patchis, but I’m looking to set up a couple of inkle looms as well, especially the Gilmore Wave which I bought many years ago, and my daughter immediately stole. It is sitting idle now and calling to me from under the counter.

I was especially impressed with the handpainted cotton skeins from Karey Solomon of Graceful Arts Handpaint. I got a few skeins of 20/2 hand painted cordonnet with some Lizbeth size 20 Egyptian cotton to coordinate. I picked up some Bokens linen, Gutermann Silk, and Idrija cotton in 30 weight from Holly van Sciver.

Dearest readers, as spring is just around the corner, I hope as the small bulbs poke their heads out of the ground that life is awakening and there are gardens to plant, looms to dress, garments to sew, textile techniques to explore, and there are ideas all crashing around in your head. I can never be bored.

Stay tuned…

Previously…

My last post had some serious color mixing and warp winding and I couldn’t wait to get everything on the loom and see how it would turn out. Just a reminder, here is the inspiration for the latest warp based on the insert/poster from a Magic Puzzle we had just completed.

I sleyed the reed…

And because everyone wants to know about the levels in the reed… I warp front to back, for many many reasons, but the trick to working from the front, through the reed, and then the heddles, before beaming the warp, is to have multiple ends in a dent stacked in levels, so they can’t jamb up in front of the heddles. Cay Garrett wrote a lovely book on the subject, somewhere in the late 70’s, just as I was becoming a serious weaver, and I have never looked back. The book was called Warping All By Yourself, and almost every weaving guild library has a copy. Anyway, I tie horizontal cord around the reed, creating as many levels as I need for the threads that occupy the same dent. I grouped them based on size of yarn and structure, so I knew what went in which dent.

That makes threading a piece of cake, since I’ve already gone through and checked my original draft, and made sure there were no mistakes when sleying the reed. As it turns out, I had made two errors, I was short a thread in one of the groupings, easy to add before the warp was threaded and beamed, and I wound one too many of a different grouping. So I just dropped it.

The order in the reed keeps the order in which I wound the warp, so everything was just waiting for a heddle, and I was through this very complicated warp in no time.

I use a tensioning device from Harrisville Designs, which allows the threads to tension individually when beaming. Previously I used just a series of lease sticks, but I like the size of these smooth hardwood dowels.

And suddenly I was ready to tie on!

I selected a fine lambswool weft, which helps keep the rayon under control once the fabric is off the loom and washed, This is definitely a warp faced series of structures, and there is a lot of slippery rayon. The draft is based on the 12 shaft version from my lengthy article in Heddlecraft Magazine, issue #38, but I was able to convert the draft to 8 shafts, and maintain the integrity of the original.

I’m really happy with this so far, it is exactly what I envisioned. Which is always fun when things work out!

Meanwhile, I apparently am on a quest to warp all the looms. I have 49, have I mentioned that? 15 are always reserved for beginning weaving classes, but the rest, many of them little Structos or Leclerc sample looms, I have been setting up with explorations of various structures, for my entertainment, but also because it might be fun to have people come and play. And there is always the hope that one day I’ll carry a little loom outside and sit in the garden and weave…

One of the looms I got from that stash from a school in California still had to be refurbished, so I set out to do that yesterday.

I needed a different reed, obviously a new front apron, and I won’t even discuss the heddle situation. I did a previous blog post on heddle etiquette. Obviously this loom had not been exposed to that.

And so I replaced the apron, fresh and white. And I changed out the reed, I needed a 12 dent reed, which fortunately I had. I have five of this particular loom, and I’m fortunate that two of them had hex warp beams, that fit Structo spools.

So I swapped out the warp beams and added the spools, and though I’m running low on Leclerc heddles, which are a different length than the thousands I have for the Tools of the Trade Looms, and the Macomber, which is different from all those, I did manage to find enough to put on this little Leclerc, with all of them canting in the same direction.

For those who aren’t weavers, skip this section, just look at the pictures at the end. I’m including a little tutorial here because I’m going to be asked, and I might as well include it in the post. How do you warp the spools? I use many different methods, but the easiest is just to make the chain warp, and warp from Front to Back.

Once the ends come through to the back, they have to be attached to the spools, using a strip of paper tape, the kind you wet, and that little tab then slips into the metal flange in the spool.

The next step involves a bunch of zip ties. I buy these by the gross. I put a pair around the hex beam on either side of the spools so they don’t travel left or right as I beam.

Then I put a pair on either side of each of the warp bundles that will load onto a spool, across the back beam. This channels the warp into the spools. It is important as you wind that you keep an eye that there isn’t any uneven build up, and that you hold the warp tight from the front as you are beaming.

And there you have it. I put six yards on this loom, of 10/2 perle cotton, and probably didn’t even fill the spools half way. No packing needed!

A couple of years ago, I saw a fabulous social media post from Elizabeth Tritthart, historicweaving.com called 100 Horizontal Stripes. They were just beautiful, and Elizabeth figured out how to take old cross stitch and needlework patterns and convert them to drafts for pick-up. Typically, she works on a draw loom, but this book had information on how to work with just four shafts, which my little Leclerc had. I’ve been wanting to do this for a while. And I also have old needlework books and leaflets…

And so I started weaving. Yes, this is painstakingly slow, but slow cloth is a thing, and I’m not in any hurry. Each design is separated by a “ribbon separator” as she calls it, a three pick basket structure that looks like a little chain. I ended up using doubled embroidery floss for the pattern threads, as I have tons of it in many different colors.

And so I’ve had the most productive week, I walk into the garage/studio every morning smiling, and my looms smile back. I’m racking up good loom karma, each loom that gets refurbished and warped has a new lease on life and gets to play in my colorful sandbox of fiber. We are all happy campers. This is like a summer camp that goes year round.

There are a couple more looms I want to warp up, and then I’ll just weave away, for the rest of the year, always thinking of what I want to try next.

Stay tuned…