Daryl's Blog – Page 136 – The World from a Weaver's point of view!

Letter writing 101…

I finally heard from my son, who is at Boot Camp in Fort Jackson, SC. He called us from a pay phone late Tuesday night, and I can’t tell you how good it was to hear his voice. He was full of grand adventures, and sounds like he is really growing up, and is benefiting in a positive way, from the whole experience. He was disappointed that he hadn’t gotten any mail, and asked if we had gotten his letter with his address in it? Sadly we hadn’t, though he claimed it had been mailed two weeks ago. He said he had sent seven letters to us and his friends, but none of us have received them. I had to think for a minute, did he even know how to address a letter? I’m sure I taught him… Maybe he was in 5th grade? I know that sounds really odd, but think about it, does this generation know how to communicate in any way other than email and text?

So, armed with his address at Fort Jackson, I sat down yesterday and wrote an old fashioned letter. With the date on top, followed by Dear Eric. As I wrote, I thought about how lost the art of real letter writing has become. I sent him a newsy two sided note, on flowery stationery, which has been in my drawer for about 12 years. It is sort of sad, to think that the art of letter writing is dying, but in this day and age, it is the only way to stay in touch with a recruit in boot camp. I wrote him another letter today. It made me feel good to stick the letter in an envelope, put on a stamp, and leave it for the postman (woman in this case…)

I did an overview of my lengthy to do list, and now that the guild website is functioning well enough, I thought I’d take a breather and survey the next group of deadlines, while I work steadily on the yardage.

Speaking of the yardage. I am about half way through. I’ve had to rig up a contraption on the back of the loom, to take out the slack in the springy cotton lace yarn, which is working moderately well. And I’m sort of embarrassed, I discovered a threading error about three yards into the yardage, nothing critical, but something that I can’t believe I didn’t notice for three yards, and now I can’t see anything but… That’s sort of the way it goes. It was an easy fix, I just used wire cutters to clip the heddle and move it to the correct shaft. No threads needed to be cut and spliced…

The Small Looms Group of the South Jersey Guild of Spinners and Handweavers, asked me to do a workshop in May on Inkle Loom Pick-up, which I agreed to do, as a half day workshop, since the idea is they would all come with warped looms. After numerous discussions with the committee members, I realized they wanted more than just pick-up work, that the consensus was for an advanced workshop, including supplemental work, which I sort of made up and talked about in a past blog post, and I started to think of how I could have them set up their loom ahead of time with one warp that would allow all kinds of advanced techniques through the four hour class.

So I came up with a warp, that I think is pretty interesting, and they can work on whichever section they need to, encompassing three different techniques. For really perceptual advanced weavers, they can do all three simultaneously! 🙂

The warp section on the left, will allow a 1/1 name draft, which I haven’t started yet, and the center section will allow a supplemental warp, shown here with the red X’s. The section on the right, with little seeds, is a standard seven thread pick up. Here it is shown with a pick up design. It is actually a challenging warp, and I can see turning the inkle loom one day class that I teach, into a two day. My daughter has gotten really proficient at weaving the alphabet on the inkle loom, here is the dog collar she is weaving for her new dog Bjorn. (Norwegian for Bear).

Some of the things on my to do list are boring and nothing I’d want to blog about. Like doing the bookkeeping for 2009, getting everything ready for the accountant. They are so boring I don’t even want to do them. I took my 12 year old Honda wagon to motor vehicles yesterday to get it inspected. I wanted to cross that item off my to do list. Sadly the car failed because one of the tires was worn unevenly. I’m proud though of my little Honda car, that after twelve years, it can still pass inspection, it was the tires that caused the problem. So I add to my to do list, buy two new tires.

One of the items on the list was to make a dress from the plaid fabric I started to blog about a month or so ago. The fabric has been sitting in a pile on my cutting table since then. In addition to the handwoven Irish wool plaid, I wanted to make this simple princess lined dress from a silk gown I’d made a number of years ago that I had no use for anymore. I wanted something shorter and more fun. The silk was a paprika color, and if I really liked the fit and style of the dress, once I remade the paprika silk, I’d go ahead and cut it from the plaid.

So I took the dress apart at the back seam, removed the zipper, and laid it out across the table, in addition to the length of yardage left from the original dress. Truth is, I need a sewing project to work on. I love the loom, and I love the fabric I’m weaving, but I really am most happy when I have a sewing project as well. If you are a sewer sewist who has been reading this blog, I’m sure you are quite done with all my weaving escapades, so this one’s for you! Stay tuned…

The computer gods smiled at me today…

I spent the last couple of days really focused on the guild website I’m building, wanting to get it put to bed so I can concentrate on getting this yardage done. I am not proficient with the software at all, the learning curve is huge, and I find that I occasionally get something I just don’t know how to correct. That happened last night. I actually had the whole site created, and uploaded, and when I checked the web pages, I just couldn’t get rid of the ugly blue active link boxes around all the little menu buttons. I knew I had to code the fix somewhere in the CSS, but I went to bed frustrated and depressed, and not sure how I was going to fix the problem. So of course, no way to shut my little brain off. I really didn’t sleep at all last night… 🙁

I got up this morning, determined to figure this out, or redesign the whole website, and my wonderful buddy Sally tossed me an email that said, why don’t you query the problem in Dreamweaver online help? Duh (she says as she smacks herself on an already bruised side of the head…)

And of course, Sally was right on target. It took about 45 seconds to find the little piece of code necessary to fix the problem, which I embedded and viola! I had a site that looked the way I envisioned. Now I’m just waiting for feedback from the group, typos, missed links, weird things happening with obscure browsers, and whatever else they can come up with. Check out the site if you are curious… Frances Irwin Handweavers

So the computer gods were my friends today, and after a frustrating week, I’m happy with the final product. And I made a big ceremonious cross off my to do list on that project. I still have to build the gallery, but I don’t feel so pressured on that part at the moment.

Meanwhile, I got a couple of calls/emails today from former students, just checking in on how much my workshops meant to them, and one of them Regina Novotny sent photos of what she’s done with the information from the class. Regina wove the fabric for this coat, and tailored it from the pattern we used in the jacket class. Talk about a great big vote of confidence. I felt really proud of my students, and how they’ve taken what I’ve given them, and run with it. Two of the students who called today, want me to come and do a private session at their studio in the mountains of West Virginia in June. I’m really really looking forward to that…

So, having a huge smile on my face, and a finished website, I turned to my cutting table which was completely unusable and cleaned it off. There is nothing like a clean workspace to get the muses dancing…

On Sunday, I attended the opening at the George Segal Gallery at Montclair State University, for the Art Connections 6 exhibit. I have two pieces in the show. The opening was packed, hard to see the work, which was hung salon style, filling the walls floor to ceiling, and of course, one of my pieces was near the floor. We all had stiff knees after squatting down discussing the imagery and iconography of the piece.

I had one of my smaller Personal Posts pieces there as well. It was sort of lost between two bright and colorful pieces, yet there were a lot of people peering close to really see what was happening in the piece.

I met a couple of women I hadn’t seen in more than 25 years, one of them I went to art school with in the mid 1970’s. I love the connections one makes at these kind of openings, and lots of business cards were exchanged.

So, now I’m going to focus on getting this fabric off the loom before the end of the month, so I can get it photographed and entered in the Convergence yardage exhibit. I would have liked to have submitted more than one piece, but that’s not going to happen…

The fabric is weaving pretty well, the sticky springy cotton lace is still giving me a bit of grief, but I just ignore it and build up a rhythm. I’ve finished about a quarter of the yardage, and I’m hoping to blow through another couple of yards tomorrow. It is so pretty to weave, each time the cloth is advanced a whole new color section reveals itself. 🙂

Duh…

I’m going to blame it all on having the flu, or too many mojitos, or the weather, or whatever. Today was one of those days where I gave myself a headache from smacking my self upside the head too many times.

First I woke up with a panic attack. You know the kind, your to do list stretches across the desk and onto the floor and you only have 28 days to get it all done. I leave February 13 for a two week teaching tour of the southwest, and all of this has to be done before I go, plus a hundred other things that aren’t even on the list. No pressure whatsoever…

The general way things are going, isn’t conducive to getting 200 things off my to do list in that short of time. Some of the things are easy quick tasks, like Pay NJ Sales Tax. Others, like build website for Frances Irwin Guild (which I’ve promised them for over a year), can’t be done with a quick phone call.

And there are all the exhibit deadlines. No one will die if I don’t enter the yardage exhibit, or Small Expressions for Convergence this year, but it is sort of important to me. So I push myself. And of course, nothing is cooperating.

So I got myself up this morning, well enough from my flu bout to kick it into high gear. I carried my tea to my loom and sat. I worked on this fabric all day yesterday, trouble shooting, correcting crossed threads (only a couple, not bad for more than 1100 threads) but the stripes of cotton lace yarn, set in a 2/1 birds eye are giving me all sorts of grief. It is a springy yarn, and very sticky. I’m getting all sorts of skips. And that can’t happen when you are trying to blow through ten yards of fabric on a loom. This fabric has to weave like butter and all these problems need to be worked out somehow. On top of the sticky yarn, the treadling sequence I designed to simultaneously weave the three different structures is really difficult to follow. I can’t see where I am in the sequence, and it isn’t logical. So I sat with my weaving software, and re-figured the tie-up and treadling sequence, and came up with something that was a lot more logical.

The problem with the second version, was I would be lifting 5 very heavy rock maple shafts on a 45″ wide loom, every time I pushed a treadle. I’m out of shape for that, and I’ll never make it for the remaining 9 yards of fabric in a timely fashion. I need this to weave like butter. And it doesn’t address the sticky warp problem, it will only compound it. I had spent about an hour this morning retying all the treadles with the new tie up, when suddenly it was one of those aha moments, I smacked the side of my head and went, “duh…”

What I needed to do here was weave the fabric upside down. That way I only need to lift 3 of the 8 treadles, and that should also solve the sticky warp problem.

So off I went, back under the loom (how convenient that my weaving software has a button that says “change face” and it automatically gives you the inverse tie-up.) I retied everything a third time, and then resumed my sample.

In my sample, I am playing with different weft yarns, dark, light, cotton, rayon, wool, blends, thick, thin, and once I’ve exhausted those possibilities, I cut the fabric I’ve done off the loom, usually about 3/4 of a yard, and then I cut that apart into three pieces.

Now comes the fun part. I keep the first sample for my notebook. I can clearly see what wefts I used, and it is a great right off the loom reference. I stitch well around the perimeter of the other two samples, and take the second one and throw it in the bathroom sink with some shampoo, swish it around for a few minutes, and roll it in a towel, hanging it to dry. The third sample goes through the washer and dryer with a load of jeans or towels.

Here I have all of the finishing options at my fingertips, and I can really see how a yarn will perform and check my sett. I was surprised at the results, and ended up selecting a dark plum rayon weft, and yippee, a quick calculation says I’ll have enough to actually weave this puppy off.

So I loaded up a shuttle, and started weaving and I’m very happy and confident that I can weave this fabric off, get it washed, dried and photographed, by the January 31st deadline.

I still have two pieces to finish on another loom for Small Expressions…

Fashion Show exhibit pieces are already done and photographed.

While my swatches were drying, I went back to the website I’ve been working on sporadically for the last couple of months. The design I’m working on has these menu buttons for the navigational links, and I wanted to make them from pictures of handwoven fabric.

The site is coming together, I’m still creating in Photoshop, trying out different options, once I’m happy with everything, and my guild buddy Sally who is collecting all the data approves, I’ll move over to Dreamweaver and start to actually construct this thing. But I couldn’t figure out how to make an oval button template, I was doing it in a really convoluted way, and I knew there had to be an easier way to do this. After all, this is Photoshop, there should be six easier ways to do it. I tossed Sally, an email, something like, any idea if there is an easier way, and the response came back, how about making a Path and then just moving the path from one image to another. Paths, paths, paths, I’m scratching my head, so out comes the manual. Let me just say here, that making paths in Photoshop is probably in the beginners manual. I apparently skipped over that part. Duh… It took me about 15 minutes to figure it all out, and then I went crazy making little oval menu buttons from all the guild photos Sally gave me.

The end result is I got a site I’m pretty happy with, and now I only have to go and build it. I got a thumbs up from Sally, and I’m on my way. So today was one of those days where you sit back and say, Wow! I crossed two huge hurdles, and accomplished a lot. My to do list is still spilling off my desk, but I’m a little less stressed than I was this morning…

Wonderful World of Color…

First, I want to thank all of my faithful readers for their kind words of encouragement during my recent bout with the flu. It happens to the best of us…

I did what I was told and stayed in bed ( I didn’t think it was possible to actually stay in bed that long) and I waited out the fever. I woke up today, bright eyed, and feeling sooooo much better. But I still did what I was told and didn’t over do, I just sat in my studio, behind my loom, and threaded. The whole day. I stopped for lunch, and stopped for dinner, but I just sat and threaded, and it felt good to finally finish.

All in all having the flu wasn’t a terrible thing. I didn’t have to be anywhere important that I couldn’t cancel, and being forced to lay in bed all day sipping fluids (ok it was determined that mojitos count as fluids), reading the greatest love story of all time, spanning two hundred years, was not the worst ordeal I’ve ever been through. As ordeals go, this wasn’t even close… The only tough part of this last week, was I miss my son. I admit it, he left for boot camp last Monday, I haven’t heard from him, I had sort of hoped for a letter, silly me, and I miss him. All the things one does like keep busy, get out and be with friends, etc., I couldn’t do because, I was sick in bed. And my husband wasn’t even around, he was half way around the world. Actually, for him that wasn’t a bad thing, being around me when I’m sick is no picnic. So I settled myself by sipping mojitos, courteously left by my son in his basement lair refrigerator before he left for boot camp. Add an ounce of rum, and it all seemed right…

So, I finished threading more than 1100 ends… 🙂

I’ve checked and rechecked, and now I’m ready to beam. I should mention that before I started threading this puppy, I split the three warp bundles in half, so instead of drawing from the middle, they fanned out from the sides. That way the center threads aren’t three feet long and the ones on the outer edges of the bundles are like six inches!

I have a sectional beam on this loom, and it works fine when beaming with a chain, the trick is to keep the warp centered between two outside pegs. To do that I have permanent plastic cable ties mounted on the back beam, and I slide them into place once the warp width is established. (You can see one in the last photo)

So I tied on all of the bundles, hitching them to the twill tape nailed to the cross brace well of the sectional beam. I use a larks head to hitch the overhand knot in the end of the warp bundle. (If you aren’t a weaver and you’ve gotten this far in the blog, congratulations. I’ve probably lost you so just enjoy the beautiful colors that are beginning to show as I beam.)

The beaming process is tedious. But it is gorgeous. Can I tell you how much I’m loving this warp? If it weaves half as gorgeous as it is while beaming I’ll be so happy. Even my daughter, as she sat on the bathroom floor combing out a particularly tangled wig from the prop closet at the high school for the spring musical, kept running in and checking the colors and squealing with delight as she looked at the warp from all angles.

The process here is to comb carefully, all the warps in front of the beater, giving each bundle a tug to tension it firmly. Once they are combed, bring the beater forward. Any knots should now be in front of the beater. Everything behind the beater should be a clean shot through the heddles, over a pair of inserted lease sticks (they create drag), over the back beam, and around the warp beam. As I turn the crank on the warp beam, I slowly walk the beater back until it hits the castle wall. As I’m beaming I keep an eye on the pegs of the sectional beam that they don’t catch on a warp thread.

I’m going to love weaving this fabric…

What a life…

Even though I’m sick, I have nothing to complain about. All the emails and comments wishing me better are like bright rays of sunshine, and in reality, this isn’t such a bad deal. I thread my loom, sleep, read my book, thread my loom, sleep some more, and did I mention sleep? I’m lucky I can do this, that I don’t have to give up sick days at a job, that I can work a little in the studio, and rest, helps that my studio is about 25 feet from my bedroom, and I don’t have any horrendous pressing deadlines that make me have to burn the candle at both ends. And the 2 inches of snow I woke up to this morning were gone by 11am. I didn’t even need to go shovel the driveway… 🙂

So thank you all for your kind and supportive words! The update is, the fever is gone, just have a crummy cold, but no one dies of the common cold, and I’m enjoying the privilege of just hanging. There is something odd about our culture that the only time we just “hang” is when we are too sick to do anything else. Hmmm… Or is that just me…

I’m making progress on threading the loom, more than a third done. I never minded threading. It is sort of zen like. Course I sneeze about every 5th thread, but whose counting? 🙂

If you enlarge the second photo, you can see I am pulling the threads off the reed in the reverse order I sleyed, first from the top, then the middle, and then the one on the bottom. It is going fairly quickly, and I’m just plodding along…

My husband returned tonight from Jerusalem, he has been working all week in Ramallah in the West Bank. When he returned from the last trip to this area back in November, he brought back a souvenir from an olive oil soap factory he visited on a tour of the Old City. I of course, being a fiber enthusiast of the highest order, immediately requested more if he ever returned. He wasn’t completely convinced why this particular soap was of importance, but he knows me well enough that if something rates up there with dark chocolate, then I must really like something.

Ask any felter about the benefits of Olive Oil Soap. It is one of the necessary ingredients for making good felt. 🙂 And I hear it is good for the face too!

So my dear husband returned, after having everyone in his group on the lookout for, and very aware that he couldn’t return back to the states without more olive oil soap, he was presented with a gift the last day of the trip, a case of “Arafat” Soap. I’m not kidding, that’s actually the name on the soap. Made from 100% virgin Palestinian Olive Oil. And I have 12 bars. 🙂 Don’t I have a wonderful husband? (Oh yeah, and he brought me dark chocolate too…)

Back to reading and sleeping…