Daryl's Blog

My husband and daughter and I drove up to the Catskills to be with my sister and her husband in their mountain cabin for Thanksgiving.  On the two hour drive up, my husband, who just returned from Saudi Arabia, said to me, “Gee, you haven’t done a blog post in awhile.”  I smiled.  My husband started to rely on my blog posts while he was away, to keep him up to date with what was going on in my life, not the mundane, but the stuff that mattered enough to post.  I’m grateful that he took the time to read them,  and notice when I’ve been delinquent…

Yes, sure I’ve been busy, but not with anything I felt the need to immediately fire out in a post.  Some of the stuff has had to do with my daughter, I mentioned a trip to Rhode Island, that was last Monday, up and back, 7 hours.  Tough day.  But successful.  I took Brianna to look at the University of Rhode Island as a possible college, and of course she loved the school.  But she honestly acknowledged that she would probably be happy almost anywhere.  The deadline for application for the Centennial Scholarship for URI, which would make it actually affordable to send her there, is this Wednesday.  I’ve been reminding her all along about this particular date, “I know MOM!  I’ve got it under control!”

Truth is, she didn’t have it under control.  See, here’s the problem.  Tech savvy eighteen year old does not understand timing that involves snail mail, and a federal holiday.  So asking the guidance office to have all her recommendations and transcripts in to the college before the deadline means taking into consideration that they aren’t ready to go, and that mail isn’t collected and delivered on Thursday, the school is actually closed Thursday – Sunday, and it takes a couple of days for the mail to reach URI from NJ.  Hence the wailing and gnashing of teeth for a couple of days, all of us working overtime to make sure everything is on its way and arriving by December 1.  Big eye roll… (And big thank you to the guidance department for working well into the night on Tuesday…)

And then there was the rite of passage on Wednesday, that’s right, the wisdom teeth removal.  Poor Bri had four wisdom teeth removed Wednesday, and spent most of Thursday, Thanksgiving Day, heavily drugged on Percocet.  🙂

And somewhere in there my wonderful long lost husband came home.  Reentry is tough for anyone who travels.  I give him a lot of credit for holding himself in check as he walked into the whirl of college app deadlines, wisdom teeth removal, and heavy sedation,  for my daughter I mean…  I’m grateful he is home.

Yet, I managed to somehow acquire an additional two looms in my studio since my last post, I know the walls are starting to bow outward, but like stray kittens, they found their way into my studio.  I have another little Structo to add to my collection.  I’m not actually collecting them, they are just the most perfect loom for teaching purposes, I can fit eight or so in my car already warped and do a unit on shaft weaving with my students.  My wonderful weaving buddy Rita swapped this little puppy for one of my scarves, newly off the loom, three have already been shipped to Santa Fe Weaving Gallery.  Rita lives in Florida and the little loom traveled to NJ with her husband via auto, we did a quick rendezvous outside Fat Burger at the Rockaway mall.

And then there was the gorgeous cherry 8 shaft Tools of the Trade table loom.  Gail (whom I’ve never met, but the weaving community is small and places like Weavolution make us all connected) found this loom in a sorry state, and carefully refinished and rebuilt it, I helped her along the way with photos of my other TOTT 4 shaft table loom, and she ended up selling it to me when it was all back together.  This loom made it’s way from Southern NJ via my sister, to the Catskills where I picked it up on Thursday.  It arrived back in my studio yesterday morning.  It really is beautiful and I’ve wanted an 8 shaft TOTT table loom for a long time.  Actually there is a 12 shaft I know exists in Ohio but I’ve given up begging the owner to sell it to me.  Anyway, Thank You Gail and Rita!

Meanwhile, I get an email Wednesday night from Madelyn van der Hoogt, editor of Handwoven Magazine.  “Would I do an article for the March/April issue, deadline January 1.”  See, this is where I consistently get into trouble.  Should I stop what I’m already knee deep in and work on an article for Handwoven?  It isn’t like this is a month with nothing on the calendar.  Of course I agreed, and will probably regret the decision along about December 25th.  I haven’t written for Handwoven Magazine since the Sept/Oct issue 2008.  I’ve written for Shuttle Spindle and Dyepot, and Weavezine, but after 35 issues as the Features Editor for Handwoven, I decided to stop writing for them, for no other reason than, though I appreciated and liked the direction the magazine took, aiming for the new weavers, working with rigid heddle looms, I felt like I had nothing to say to that audience and the new format of the magazine, didn’t quite match with my writing style.  I’m a features writer.  Handwoven has become a vendor driven project magazine, some of the projects are actually amazing, and really inspiring new weavers, as it should, but I’ve never enjoyed designing projects for the masses.

I don’t design or work that way.  I take a pile of stuff and see where it takes me.  Simple as that.  I work my way through the adventure, and some of the circuitous routes I take using the oddest materials, would make for difficult explanation for a project.  Nothing I do is simple actually.  There are other writers that are far better for that purpose.  I’ve never bought yarn for a specific project, I try to make things work from what’s at hand, usually with yarn from mill ends from a long time ago.

But the bottom line is, I adore writing for Madelyn, she is by far my most favorite boss I’ve ever worked for in any capacity, so I said yes. We are talking about a feature and potential project, maybe even a kit.  That would be a first.  Of course that meant I spent much of the holiday weekend with my head spinning for ideas, concepts, possibilities, and avenues of this potential feature/project.  Obviously I didn’t get much sleep, but that’s nothing new…

Meanwhile, I’ve started exploring the next run of scarves for Santa Fe.  I pulled up another palette from my vast archives, this one called Lush Vegetation.  It is a really pretty one, and I started pulling yarn from all over the place getting ready for the yarn wrap.

And this weekend I spent a wonderful time with my family, all except my son, who is working seasonal stock shifts at Target; sad he wasn’t with us in the Catskills, but grateful he has work in this dreadful economy.  I’m grateful for Target for giving him a chance, and I’m grateful I don’t work in retailing anymore, there wasn’t such a thing as Black Friday when I worked in a mall in the mid 70’s.  My son had to be at work at 4am Friday morning.  He is exhausted, but also happy for the work.  He will have drills next weekend with the National Guard, and Target is of course willing to work around that schedule.

We spent Black Friday shopping but not at a mall.  We went to the most wonderful craft shop, Crafts People, outside of Woodstock NY, did some early Christmas shopping for ourselves, and then spent the afternoon in Woodstock NY, wandering around the town, marveling at the time warp, the head shops, the psychedelic colors, and Bob Marley, Janis, and Jimi Hendrix posters.  We had lunch in a wonderful new age restaurant, Oriole 9.  The lentil soup and falafel sandwich were excellent.  We stopped and visited with Marsha Fleisher from Loominus, Marsha has been a major force in handwoven chenille clothing, she began the craft fair circuit about when I finished up, in the late 1980’s.  Marsha has her looms and shop off the commons in Woodstock, a lovely store, and it was a pleasure to visit with her and introduce her to my family.

I’ve got another batch of yarn in the dye pot, this time I’m actually redoing a color, in a slightly lighter shade, I need more dusty purples.  And the washer/dryer are chugging along trying to catch up on all the laundry.  And I’ve walked around the house with a bucket collecting dishes and glasses, I have to do that once in awhile, teenagers tend to cause dishes to go missing…  I’ve changed the sheets, and tidied up the kitchen, and I’ll go make some dinner for the family and then back to work in the studio.

Stay tuned…

So my week went something like this…

Go to Hardware store to buy new flapper to repair toilet that won’t flush.  (I didn’t know that water entering the toilet with no lid on the back gushes like a geyser…)

Repair toilet and clean up water sprayed all over the bathroom.

Pull dead leaf debris from the icy cold spillways of the pond that caused all the water to pump out, in the rain in my pajamas (don’t ask…)

Refill pond.

Clear pump that got clogged from refilling pond so the waterfall works.

Dear Kevin (who has been out of the country 187 days this year, he counted),

It is time to come home…  Your wife and kids miss you and your mail has reached the top of the back of the Windsor Chair. There is no more room.

Love, Daryl

In other news, I continued to plod along, happily sitting in my sandbox studio, like a little kid, surrounded by yarn, by color and by looms that actually have cloth on them.  Some are still naked, but we are working on that.

Each morning I get up, and rinse the yarn from the day before, and wind new skeins to dye.  I pick a new color and process the yarns and put the new pot of yarn on the heating pad to “cook”.

Each morning I’m surprised by the results, it is like opening a present to see what’s inside, and occasionally I’m really surprised like I was yesterday morning when I hung up the “Wisteria” batch.  Each of the eight skeins was a different color.  Go figure.  Such is the world of dyeing with chemicals, not being a chemist, and not having any interest in chemistry other than the basic dye directions and advice from well meaning friends, I get what I get.  This isn’t exactly a problem since I’m not trying to match anything, and having eight different colors come out of the same dyepot gives me even more to chose from as I plan my scarf warps.

This morning as I write, I’m soaking yesterday’s dyepot in the final Synthrapol rinse.  Who knew that Sun Yellow was really orange in disguise?

I have a couple  scarves woven on the latest batch for the Santa Fe Gallery, and I hope with my son gone to drills for the weekend and my daughter at school I won’t get too distracted by whatever flies by my line of vision, and actually get a couple more woven.  I’d like to have the run off by the time my husband returns from Saudi Arabia on Tuesday.  With Thanksgiving lurking, it won’t be much of a productive week, and that’s OK.  There is a scheduled trip to Rhode Island for a college visit with my daughter, and the coming of age ceremony of removing her wisdom teeth on Wednesday, but I digress.

The big loom with the gorgeous warp, finally called loudly enough for me to sit down and actually sample.  I’m really starting to feel my 55 years, and I realize I’m in horrible shape, it was a struggle to lift those 45″ wide solid rock maple shafts, but by the end of the yardage, I know I’ll be much stronger in my back muscles and the shafts should lift almost effortlessly.  (We won’t talk about sitting under the loom re-tying the treadles…)

I’ve woven off the test yardage, sampling anything in the studio that wasn’t nailed down and would be appropriate for a weft.  I sampled more than usual, there were lots of choices, and once again, after cutting the test yardage into three sections, keeping one intact, gently washing one in the sink, and throwing the other one in the washer and dryer with the regular laundry, I’m shocked at what I thought would be great, and ended up selecting something I barely thought to try.

In the end I selected a cone of Zephyr, I tried the copper color, that’s the one in the sample, and I loved the way it washed, fulling nicely and creating a stable warp face fabric, with hints of the weft color peaking out.  The problem was the yard for the sample came from a section of the warp that didn’t have a lot of the purple/fuchsia areas.  I was afraid the Zephyr Jaggerspun wool/silk was too orangy for the whole yardage, so I rooted around more and came up with a cone of russet Zephyr that looks a lot better.  Problem is I probably don’t have enough.  My calculations show I’ll be about 200 yards short, but I’ll worry about that at the end of seven and a half yards of fabric.

This past weekend I spent with my guild at the annual Jockey Hollow Show and Sale.  I got there at 6:30am on Saturday with my son, who volunteered himself to do whatever needed to be done, and he ended up staying until after 3pm.

Let me take a minute to say publicly how much I appreciated his ability to see what had to be done and to do it without complaint, and to diffuse opinion and personality conflicts and make everyone feel heard.  It is a special talent and I have to say, as his mom, I’d never seen that side of him before, when I mentioned it later he said, “Gee mom, what do you think they teach you in the military?  Conflict resolution…”  I was pretty proud of him and will really miss him at next year’s sale if he is deployed somewhere far away.

Anyway, I brought a number of my pieces, some of my older coats, I can’t travel with many of them anymore, and they have gone past their usefulness as exhibit/teaching tools, coats take up too much space in the limited weight suitcases.  I brought a few scarves I’ve had lying around, and I priced everything at what I thought was fair.  We’ve had numerous discussions on pricing in our guild, struggling with the comments from last year about cheap handmade gifts and a church bazaar atmosphere, trying to encourage visitors to the fair to appreciate the time and effort that go into each   handmade work.  I brought much of my work along to illustrate the range of price points, if my $150 scarf is beautiful, but too pricey, it makes the scarves for $80-$100 from other guild members look like bargains, hopefully increasing their sales.

The numbers aren’t in yet, they won’t be for awhile, but my plan sort of backfired a bit, I ended up selling $1200 worth of my own work, much to my great surprise, including a coat for more than $500 and that $150 scarf.  Go figure…

So what could I do?  Spending two whole days surrounded by beautiful work, knowing there would be a nice check coming in shortly, I turned around some of that earnings and bought stuff.  I added to my handwoven dishtowel collection (still haven’t woven one myself) by buying two lovely ones, and I picked up a pair of hand knit socks.  Yes, I know I actually knit socks, but when I spend hours and hours of work and $18 for the yarn, it makes sense to me to buy a pair for $40 every once in awhile.  The knitter of the socks swears she just buys cheap yarn from Michaels, but I swear, they wear the best.  I have one of hers from last year and they are my favorites.

And my newly renovated  guest room needed a throw rug.  To my great surprise, I found one at the sale, I’d have liked it a bit bigger, but the colors were perfect for the room which still had lime green and turquoise furnishings from my daughter’s youth, and a handmade quilt on the bed (from my mom) that tied the room together making it less juvenile.  The throw rug looks gorgeous against the new wood floor.

Thanksgiving is upon us, and there is so much to be thankful for especially in this time of global unrest and confusion.  I am so grateful for my family, for the constant surprises my kids throw at me in a good way, for my son who will be serving his country in the coming year, that his conflict resolution skills will see him safely through, and for my absent husband, whom I miss dreadfully, and will really appreciate having him home for awhile, even though the clutter will resume as the pile of mail in the chair gets distributed all over the house…  Then there are all the newspapers I saved for him…

Oh to be able to work completely uninterrupted in life, a dream I’m sure, but not only is it completely unrealistic, but it would make me a very one dimensional person, albeit colorful!

Such is my life, I longed for uninterrupted studio time now that I’m not  traveling but alas, that also means I’m home, there is taking care of a house, monitoring the escapades of a couple of young adults, guild meetings, paperwork, contracts, lunch dates (OK I know those are optional but when they involve wine…)  Anyway, I like my life, a lot.  I have flexibility when I’m home to work in the studio 15-18 hours a day and not get out of my pajamas, which I can assure you I actually did many days this week.  It was wonderful.  Then a calendar event called me to act like a grownup and get dressed and go do something productive outside the house.  Like teach at the museum.  Sunday I took my college shopping daughter to Pennsylvania to look at a small college near Doylestown that had the pre-vet/small animal program she wanted.  I don’t envy her decision process.  She has applied to Rutgers and heard in less than a week she was accepted.  Rutgers is a wonderful university, a NJ state school so in state tuition, but it has 60,000 students.  The college we looked at Sunday was not a state school, but a small private college, costs twice the money and has only 2200 students.  Sort of like a country club. We will go to Rhode Island later in the month to look at a University that has 13,000 students.

Speaking of my daughter, today she becomes an adult.  Brianna, whom I’ve mentioned many many times in this blog, is 18 today, she started the morning heading off to Motor Vehicles, where she turned her provisional driver’s license into a permanent one.  No more red stickers on her license advertising she is a provisional license driver.  The jury is still out whether the red stickers on the plates, Kyleigh’s law in NJ, is helpful or harmful to underage provisional drivers.  And it was a pain when she switched cars. And the velcro stickers would get stolen.  Anyway, she proudly went off to school with her permanent license, and it was a great way for her to start her day.  Can I tell you how much I adore my daughter?  Her mind, her way of looking at things, the discussions we have, I will so miss her when she heads off to school.

And then there are my bottom feeders.  I referenced many times my son and his military friends who live in my basement, here are two of them, my son is on the right, the third, Andy, is graduating from Boot Camp as I write, congratulations Andy.  Cody and Eric (my son) went off to a benefit dinner last night for wounded soldiers.  They looked so grown up.

So what did I do all week when I was in the studio?

Except for a day when I needed the AVL warping wheel (which I use for skeining) for another purpose, I started a new dye bath every morning.  So my stash of small quantity skeins in gorgeous colors is getting quite large.  I now have enough options to start a warp for more scarves for Santa Fe Weaving Gallery.  Here is the Lemon-Lime from two days ago, and the Strawberry Ice from yesterday.  Today we have Turquoise cooking on the heating pad.  I was running low on Synthrapol, so I placed an order for more from Pro-Chem, and of course while I was at it I just had to pick up another half dozen jars of dye.  This dye project should go well into December, or until I run out of white rayon yarn.

Meanwhile…

I looked through my binder of yarn wraps from my years of writing the forecast column for Handwoven Magazine.  They are still a great source of inspiration, and I love picking my favorites and using them as a springboard for things like these scarves.  I chose one of my all time favorites, the Feathers and Wings palette, from March/April 2005 I think, and started to pull yarns from all over the studio that could work.  And then I print a draft for the scarf and mount it on a card and carefully start wrapping the yarns around the card for a guide.

I loved the palette, and I had lots of small balls of yarns (once I wound all the skeins into balls) from my dye adventures.

So I jumped in and reset my AVL warping wheel for three yards per turn and away I went.  The warp was beautiful on the loom, and I plowed ahead to see what it would look like woven, and to be perfectly honest,  I wasn’t that thrilled.  I had tried a modified weave structure to see if I could add some surface interest to the plain weave sections and within two inches of weaving I decided it was a bad idea and to go back and re-thread for the plain weave.  I started weaving again, and this time, to be perfectly honest, I still wasn’t that thrilled.  The bands of color should flow one into another, this looked like hard edge stripes.  And the supplemental ribbons were either lost or redundant.  I went to bed frustrated and disappointed.  I mused all day on how to correct the situation efficiently, what was really important and what would ultimately be fine once the scarves were woven and washed.  I decided to un-weave what I had done, pull the warp out of the reed, and switch around some of the warps making the transition between stripes much smoother.  And in addition to that, I decided to switch a couple of the ribbons, and substitute four others.  I really didn’t want to deal with four 15 yard warps weighted and hanging off the back, that would really slow down my weaving these six scarves, so I improvised.  It took me awhile to rig up a plan B, fortunately I have a second warp beam so all I had to do was figure out how to get the 15 yard four ribbons neatly between one of the sectional sections.  If you are a knitter or sewer or some other fiber enthusiast,I’m sure I lost you back when I pulled the warp out of the reed, but try to picture me sitting on the floor, with a tension box between my feet, under the loom, hand winding four ribbon yarns with spacers, onto the warp beam.  It is times like these I really feel all of my 55 years.  Getting down there wasn’t the problem, getting back up was the killer…

So last night, after teaching yesterday afternoon at the museum, I hunkered down with a beer to see how all this couple of days of reworking the warp turned out.  I re-sleyed every thing back through the reed, dropping out the ribbons I decided not to use, substituting the new ones, and now, I’m happy.  Of course I still haven’t woven yet on the big loom, the warp from the previous blog post, I’m not in a hurry to weave it,

just wanted to get the warp on so I could put the loom back together.  So I’ll try to get the sampling done on that warp this week, but now I have to weave these six scarves, and get ready for the Guild Show and Sale this weekend.

The Jockey Hollow Weavers 17th Annual Exhibit and Sale, Saturday, Nov. 13th & Sunday, Nov. 14th, 10:00 – 5:00 both days at the Brookside Community Club (1 East Main St. at Cherry Lane, just off Route 24, Brookside [Mendham Twp.], NJ).  The exhibit and sale features textiles for the home; art to wear; fashion accessories; and holiday gifts.  Expect to find a wide range of items on display and for sale, from the very expensive to the affordable.

And, it is with great delight that I announce that I will be teaching a Fibers and Fabrics class next Spring at County College of Morris.  You can find the course listed under Design.  It is listed as a Special Topics, numbered as DSN 292 section 23156.  The class runs Tuesday nights, from 6-10pm, starting in Mid-January.  I gave a lecture there last Thursday to the design students and it was such a fantastic experience, I’m really looking forward to actually teaching this class in the spring.

Here is the course description from the catalog:

Through a hands-on exploration of basic fiber processes and techniques, this intensive course is designed to give students a broad range of skills to enhance all disciplines of study, from the visual arts, industrial and fashion design, to history and anthropology. Topics include the origins of fiber, types of fiber, spinning, dyeing, braiding, felting, interlacement techniques, warp face weaving on an inkle loom, weft face tapestry, and pattern weaving on a shaft loom.  Each week a new technique will be introduced, projects will be developed and individual exploration will be encouraged.

Speaking of a shaft loom, since I am providing all of the equipment, I am on the hunt for as many four shaft table looms as I can find.  I already have a half dozen, the little Structos are perfect for this application, but alas, I only have three of them.  I have three larger four shaft table looms, and I’m in the process of buying a 25″ eight shaft Tools of the Trade table loom to add to my collection.  I need a bigger studio.  But the price was right, and I’ve wanted an eight shaft table loom for a long time.  There exists somewhere in Ohio a 12 shaft version which I’d sell my eye teeth for, but alas the owner isn’t selling…  yet…  I keep crossing my fingers…

So today, I weave, actually no, I will clean my kitchen, shower and dress, do some laundry, and grocery shopping, I do need to pick up an ice cream cake for Brianna.  Then I weave…

At least the current crop of colors I’m working through make me think of the produce aisle at the grocery store!  Today’s color is eggplant.  It looks like it is going to be a rich red-violet.  I’m so thrilled with the consistency and bright colors I’m getting on both the silk and the rayons/tencel.  I looked back over the last ten days at what has come from my daily dye adventures as I work through sampling all the MX Fiber Reactive Dye colors in my cabinet.  And know that I haven’t made a dent, but the drawers are filling with gorgeous yarn.  (Actually the recently vacated drawers in the dressers in the newly renovated guest room are filling with yarn, but don’t tell my husband.  At least I’m not Lily Chin who keeps her overflow yarn stash in the oven…)

Anyway, yesterday’s color, which is now drying was Watermelon, and Sunday’s color was Tangerine.  Both are clear rich vibrant colors and I’m thrilled to have sampled them.  It is making the cold November day with its dropping leaves and biting winds very cheery in my studio!  Ott-Lites and drying bright colors will get you through any seasonal affective disorder.

I’m focusing on getting the big loom warped, because largely it is a question of space.  I don’t have any. (hence the storage of newly dyed yarns in the guest room, along with all my fleeces and felting supplies.  Fortunately

no guests are scheduled to stay at my house until May)  When I’m threading the large loom, the back beam is down on the floor and it takes up any floor space available, so to walk in and out of my studio, I have to climb over the loom.  Hey, it is what I have, so I’ve learned to adjust and work quick.  Except this particular warp is going on painfully slow.  I normally don’t care how long something takes, it is about the process, but not havingany room in the studio is cramping my style not to mention the large bruises on my thighs from bumping into sectional spikes and loom cranks.  And there is no way I can vacuum (not that I have a burning desire anyway, but it sounds like a good excuse) while I have pools of braided warps lying all over the floor.  I had a housekeeper once try to vacuum my studio while I was warping a loom and she sucked the warp chain right up into the vacuum.  It wasn’t pretty.

Still, the warp is gorgeous.  I keep running around the back and squealing with delight at how pretty each turn of the crank is, if this warp weaves up half as gorgeous I’m going to thoroughly enjoy what ever comes out of the yardage.

And yes, it is produce week, besides the fact that I’m picking the colors named after foods for my daily dyepots, I recently joined a veggie coop in my area and my first produce delivery is tomorrow.  Sidebar:  When my kids were little, I ran a food cooperative, we bought bulk organic foods from a Natural Foods Distributor, I handled all the computer work, which was done in very early versions of Excel on tractor feed paper, and every two weeks we had a HUGE tractor trailer back down our little dead end lane, and drop off cases of organic produce, which I would sort, with one child zooming around the garage on some plastic thing with wheels, and the other, a baby on my back in a sling, dividing up the kale and the bok choy and the organic eggplant and carrots into twelve baskets which would be picked up by the coop members.  I was home mostly back then, and I really learned to cook vegetables.  I love the whole idea of being given something and being told I had to find a creative way to use it, probably that’s why I love the odd Project Runway challenges, “Make a dress out of car parts, or Make a dress out of plant materials, etc.”  I use to buy Treasure boxes of yarn from Silk City Fibers and from Webs, way back in the 80’s.  The price was good and you never know what you’re doing to get.  I have a lot of light pink cones of cottons still hanging around my studio and now that I’m getting to be a pro at dyeing, you bet I’m going to start doing some overdyeing.  Anyway, having a drawer full of fresh produce first of all increases your produce consumption, and it keeps you in the kitchen instead of eating out.  For me that is a win win situation.  This basket only comes once a month, and since there are fewer and fewer people to cook for in my house, with my husband gone so much to Saudi Arabia, and my son and the bottom feeders doing their own thing (why is there a pizza box in my oven and how long has it been there?), I’m guessing I’ll be freezing some of this stuff to last for the month.

Anyway, I think my love of working with what is in front of me, like the piles of remnants I just bought from Elfriede’s and Waechter’s Silk Shop makes me much more creative.  Even when I weave, I don’t have a plan for what the fabric will be.  I just like to weave and then it becomes a new raw material.  I never know what a fabric will be, I just like having a stash to draw from when I want to be creative, which is most of the time.  Creativity can come in the kitchen, using a green vegetable you have never heard of, it can come in the studio, picking out yarns or fabrics and seeing what you want to make from them, it can even come in the morning when you are getting dressed.  I try to put together combinations of my clothes I’ve never tried before.  OK, enough musings…

Back to beaming…

Oh, and if you live in the United Sates don’t forget to vote today!

It’s a silly title I know, we really don’t have much control over anything, but I’m trying really hard to capture some control over my life, my house, my kids, (OK, not my kids), and my studio since I’ve been back from all my worldly travels.  My house is getting cleaned, and the piles of debris are slowly disappearing.  I’ve tossed a lot of things that were once food, but now look to be a dyestuff.  I’ve gone to the grocery store countless times in the last week (what, we’re out of toilet paper?), and I’m just enjoying a sane pace that involves working in the studio about 12 hours a day and the rest playing happy homemaker.  I know this seems odd, but I’m enjoying cooking in my own kitchen, making reasonable meals, and getting some control over my diet.  Though it sounds like a dream life, eating on the road, in restaurants all the time, but it has it’s downfall, and I’m struggling to fit in some of my pants, and I refuse to go shopping.  Watching my portions and gaining control of the ratio of carbs to protein and increasing my vegetables will make all the difference (she says with total confidence as she pours six bags of candy into a bowl in anticipation of the five trick or treaters that will come to the door tomorrow…)

My son helped me clean the downstairs today.  It was good to be with him, as he sorts his life out and makes decisions about his future.  His latest plan is to move over to the army and go active for four years, deploying to somewhere in the world where he can do his army thing, meanwhile I treasure every second I have with him, even if it sitting next to him in between dusting and tidying, while we watched the Rally for Sanity in Washington DC on TV this afternoon.  We both adore Jon Stewart, and I nearly fell off my chair shrieking with glee when Jon Stewart brought out Father Guido Sarducci for the invocation.  My son had no idea who he was, and why would he, Father Guido Sarducci was one of my favorite Saturday Night Live characters from the 1970’s, I adored his “Five Minute University”.  Father Sarducci hasn’t changed a bit!

Meanwhile back in the studio…

Things are progressing nicely, I jump from one project to another with the speed of someone who is out of Ritalin.  Did I mention I have ADD?  Did anyone who ever met me ever doubt it?  I love jumping from one thing to another, tossing in a load of wash every now and then, and checking on my emails in between.  I finished the dishcloth, and am making wonderful progress on the silk dress.  It is actually together, and I just have the facings and hem.

My dyeing escapades consume most of my mornings.  I can’t tell you how much your comments helped me in rethinking how I handled this whole dye affair.  I also spent a lot of time emailing and chatting on the phone with my best fiber buddy Candiss Cole, who is an expert dyer.  See, here is my problem.  Candiss sent me a ton of small cones of white raw silk, each one had maybe 250-300 yards remaining.  Once the cones get that small, they can’t wind 60 yard warps, so they just trash the remainder.  I gratefully get the trash.  The problem is not the silk, but the fact that I’m using MX dyes to also dye rayon and tencel at the same time.  One fiber is protein, and the others are cellulose.  MX can dye both, but the results on silk are unpredictable and the processing is different than what you’d use for rayons.

Trying to figure out how to efficiently dye seven different skeins and have them all come out consistent and rich in color, not muddy which the silk has been doing, has been a real test.  I’m not a good dyer, no training, just what I’ve gleaned from other dyers and from reading and from Pro-Chem’s website.  I largely warp paint, so inconsistent results are not a problem.  And I rarely mix up the same color again, so consistency isn’t a goal.  It is now.  I’m not looking to get the silk to dye exactly the same color as the rayons, actually I like that it comes out different, I just want it to be a happy color and not a sad color.

Each morning I rinse what sat and cured over night on a heating pad in the corner of my studio.  I took the advice of the reader who talked about working the dye through the yarn in a bowl instead of painting, and I took the advice of Candiss and her husband Rodger who is the chief dyer now, and stopped using vinegar with the soda ash, which was giving me mud.  I also now scour the silk, it has really helped, and I only soak the rayons in the dye activator, not the silk, and I add salt to the dyebath.  Lots of it.  That was Candiss’ advice.  She told me how important the PH was, and I found that soaking the silk in dye activator or soda ash was creating too high of a PH, so letting it share a dyebath with other yarns that were soaked in soda ash, not soaking the silk directly,  made all the difference.  I get a happier color.

Yesterday’s color was Victorian Blue.  It is a pretty shade.  Today’s color is Butterscotch.  I think tomorrow I will try Tangerine.  I need some good oranges.  I have a wonderful selection of yarns to chose from already after only a week’s worth of work.

Meanwhile, on the loom…

Progress is slow, this is a complex warp, five different chains, I work from front to back so I know it all works, making the reed substitute for lease sticks.  I’ve got the warps all sleyed, and now I’m doing the threading, which is going a little faster.  It took longer to count all the heddles and add to the shafts additional heddles, in some cases more than 150 each.  Since I am weaving full width on the loom, there can be no extra hanging around on the sides.  I can’t wait to see this fabric beamed and sampled.  That’s the part I love most, seeing it all come together.  This kind of a fabric is fun to weave, with every advance of the warp, there is a new color combination.

Stay tuned…