Daryl's Blog

There is a beautiful rhythm to my days now, I hate to even say it because so many don’t find this whole quarantine thing manageable or doable or remotely inspiring.  And that’s OK.  I’m so very very lucky to have latched onto this gift of time.  I never get to really have a routine, I plan one, and then, as I’m just getting on a roll, it is time to get on a plane and fly someplace to teach.  There is the prep before, and the follow up after, and then I’m on to the next venue.  This quarantine has put a huge halt in my lifestyle, and though I miss my students, I have not missed a beat.  Time is such a precious thing, and we never know how much time we have, so I’m using every minute to the best of my ability.  It also helps that three large dogs and a cat start to try to get me out of bed around 6am.  The cat is the worst.  In the still dark room, stuff starts flying off my desk, nightstand, printer stand, and anything else he can move to get my attention.  When I throw on the light to see what the hell that noise was, the dogs take that as a sign that it might be feeding time and create a ruckus that would wake families three doors down.  (Locking the animals out of my room isn’t an option, they break down doors…)

So I eventually get up and start my day.  I know a lot of my friends are having a tough time living with others in the family 24/7.  It came up as a discussion in one of my Zoom knitting meetings.  I have to say, living with two adult children has kept me from being so alone, and of course the animals… but for us, I think it all works because, I’m not the mom, they fend for themselves, and we are all on very different schedules.  I’m up around 7  if I can push it, my daughter is up at noon, and my son is up around 5pm because he works the night shift at Target in charge of overnight operations, unloading trucks and pushing merchandise through the night.  He comes home just as I’m waking up and heads off to bed.  We get to chat for about 10 minutes.  

I’ve attempted a routine, feeding the animals, letting them out, cleaning the cat litter, watering outdoor plants (such a gift when it rains…), taking out the recycling, grabbing the morning paper, making breakfast and then curling up with my breakfast and my tea and reading the morning paper.  This morning was glorious, and I was able to eat outside by one of the ponds.

Once I’m finished with the paper and breakfast, I clean up the dishes, unload the dishwasher, and clean one room of the house.  I’m lucky I suppose, if you could put it that way, that when my husband died, I went through every room in the house over the last few years and cleaned out, repainted, reorganized, repurposed, and of course there was that glorious studio move.  One of the discussions in one of my Zoom knitting groups was about how impossible it was to clean a room without getting caught up in what’s in it.  I know what’s in every room because I’ve touched it and organized it in some way over the last couple of years, I own it.  So the cleaning has become a pleasant routine, and I marvel at how one room can fill the Dyson canister with so much dog/cat hair.  There is something very satisfying about dumping the Dyson.

The ease of the routine allows me thinking time.  I stopped posting my calendar four months out on the refrigerator.  Other than the occasional Zoom meeting for my critique group, knitting groups, guild meetings or committee meetings, there really isn’t anything on my calendar.  I love this.  The time to think has allowed for some wonderful creativity.  That fur fabric I wove and talked about in the last blog post?  I was able to wash it.  Pressing was a bit challenging; the heat of the iron, even through the linen, wasn’t great on the fur strips, but the effect is still gorgeous, even more so.  I thought over the weekend as to what I wanted to make with it.  I think there is enough for two good size yokes, front and back, and I found a beautiful boiled black wool bouclé knit that I’m hoping is enough for the lower parts.  I’m thinking of my zippered vest, combined with the walking vest.  The goal here, once I get my patterns all up for download, (please be patient, more about that in a bit), is to be able to think of ways to combine them and then offer a tutorial on how to do that.  PDF and/or video.  Unlimited combinations.  I’m just brimming with ideas!  So here is the sketch for the woven fur fabric.  That’s the lining in the upper right corner.

Meanwhile, my daughter’s computer is home.  It is fast, it is healthy, and after two weeks in intensive care at the tech hospital, we are moving at lightning speed.  She has spent the better part of the last 7 hours working on the tunic pattern, and I’m hoping it will be good to launch in the next couple of days.  It will be followed shortly by a drop shoulder version of the tunic, which is a more gender neutral silhouette, better for the guys!  The editor has the final version for a final proof of the instructions.  

I just sent off the first draft of the 100 jacket to the editor; this is the original Daryl Jacket that about 4 million people have made in all my years of teaching workshops.  I can’t believe how much I edited the instructions on something I’ve been teaching with for the last 30 years.  So look for that one, hopefully in the next couple of weeks.  We are on a roll…  Note:  All of my instructions will be available as free PDF downloads here, and the patterns will be available as PDF downloads for a fee, here.)

Meanwhile, renowned weaver Stacey Harvey-Brown, who hails from the UK, but is living at the moment in France, asked if I would contribute to her blog, she is doing a series of “How I got into weaving…”  So that was an easy assignment, I sent her the post and some pictures and it went live today.  It is a lovely brief synopsis of my early life, in case you never heard me tell the story in one of my lectures or keynotes.  https://www.theloomroom.co.uk/how-i-got-into-weaving-daryl-lancaster 

And today, I spent exploring the idea of adding sleeves to my 1000 Swing Dress.  I also wanted to try an A-line version.  I did make the dress with sleeves last month, but the sleeves were attached to the external yoke/facing, and the whole thing was actually detachable.  Sort of. 

So I drafted a new pattern, thinking in the back of my head that I would like to potentially use this fabric.  This is one of the most favorite things I’ve ever woven, because it represents probably the darkest week of my life, I designed it the week my husband was dying, and the exuberance of color and dizzying pattern called Chaos, gives me the confidence that anything is possible even in the darkest of times.  I smile every time I look at it.  You can buy the draft for this fabric here.

So I made up my dress today, in a beautiful rayon batik I pulled from the stash.  Still needs handwork, but I actually love the little dress, it is so 70’s, but a little fresher.  I can see a wardrobe of these, easy summer, better than wearing pajamas all day (like I’m in now…).  

Honestly though, I’m not sure I’m in love with this dress enough to use my precious Chaos fabric.  The fabric isn’t wide enough, so I would need to add side panels. I can’t decide which fabric I have is better, the redder wool crepe on the upper right, or more muted silk twill in the lower left…

The sleeves would be the handwoven, but I’m just not sure this is the best use of this wonderful fabric.  I’m going to think some more on this one…  And so far, I have lots of time to do that.  While I’m cleaning the upstairs bathroom tomorrow…

Stay tuned…

Yes, there was a time, when I was just starting my professional weaving career, when I worked for others, when thoughts of my own ‘line’ of handwoven items was just that,  thoughts.  Back in 1978, having graduated with a pretty useless art degree, newly married, and looking for something to do with my life, I turned back to academia, which was all I’d known for the last few years.  I took another textile class, probably another independent study.  It cost a fortune, because I was paying graduate rates, but I immediately discounted the idea of going on for my master’s.  I was completely discouraged from pursuing it where I got my undergraduate degree, because back then, I was told it looked really bad to do a bachelor’s and master’s from the same institution, like you were inbred or something, didn’t expand your horizons.  Whatever.  I had no money for a graduate degree, and couldn’t really see the point. And there was no place else near enough to me to be practical.  So I took one class at my old alma mater, and spent it studying a technique, written in a book, published just a couple years before (1975), by Theo Moorman, called Weaving As An Art Form.  You can picked up used copies on Amazon for about $5.  I loved this little book.  I found I was torn between the practicality of weaving and the rigid academic training I received in art.  I’ve always felt conflicted with that.  Obviously tapestry is an exception, but I found I had to justify to panels of academic critics why I wove a tapestry and didn’t just paint the image I wanted to convey, wouldn’t it have been easier?  I did a number of tapestries the year before, I’ve blogged about them probably, will look for the link, but I was looking for a new direction. Here is a link, scroll down.  Here is another link, scroll down.

I worked through the exercises, I won’t bore you with all of them, and I’d have to spend awhile looking for them anyway if they still exist, but one of the first ones I did, required weaving additional wefts that floated over the background, held in place with little tie-down threads and spanned the width of the weaving.  The premise of Theo Moorman, which is technically a transparency technique, used in the way she described, is that you weave a plain weave background, and fine threads would raise up and hold a pattern weft in place on the surface so the imagery would float on top, and where there was no imagery, there would be a plain weave ground cloth.  

And because I did end up looking up some of my early Theo Moorman tapestries…

I’ve used this technique for years, mostly in my Weave a Memory pieces, and classes.  I used thin strips of silk habotai, ink jet printed with an image from the printer, and wove them back together using this technique.  I kept a four shaft table loom set up with linen for the ground cloth, and poly serger thread for the fine tie down threads. I wove all of these pieces on this set up.  The warp was quite a few yards long and 25″ wide.  

There was probably less than a yard left on this loom, and it bugged me.  The problem was, I couldn’t just weave one more piece, because the printer I used to print banner lengths long ago died.  You specifically need a printer with user adjustable settings for the size of the paper it takes.  Only Epson had that feature.  And the 8 1/2″ wide rolls I used all got wet when I had an iron water bottle, suspended from the ceiling,  spill all down a cabinet where they lived.  Because of the size of these pieces, I actually printed horizontal strips of 8 1/2″ wide and 20+” long and pieced them together and was able to do really large works.

Because work has temporarily stopped on my pattern development, because my daughter’s computer system is on life support at the tech hospital and a whole series of unfortunate tech events have ended up costing us a couple weeks on the project, I’ve been poking around my studios looking for something to do that wouldn’t become overwhelming should her system become usable again and we can get back to work.  (Which I’m hoping is imminent).  I started weaving again on this loom.  Noro weft with a vintage Harrisville singles warped mixed with Maypole Worsted.  I got into a nice rhythm…

And I kept staring at the 4 shaft table loom across the way, with what I figured was less than a yard to go.  I didn’t need the loom for anything else, I have 35 shaft looms in my studio, but I felt like it was forgotten.  Looms don’t like to be naked or forgotten…  And when I cut off the last piece, I hadn’t tied the threads securely in the reed, and the cat pranced through the back of the warp and pulled out a bunch of the threads.  So repairs had to be made.  Which I did.  Yeah, this cat, which surveys the space I work in and thinks about what it can get into…

Meanwhile, in the huge studio move there were lots of archives that were rediscovered, things that came together in logical places now that I had room.  I have exhaustive swatch libraries of early work of mine, production work, and some stuff I have no idea nor records of what it actually is, but I sort of remember weaving it.  I did though, keep pretty good records back then.  Not like I do now of course where I can grab my phone and take a photo and have weaving software to record drafts and create online archives.  

Sidebar: Way back, when I first left college, I started to weave professionally by answering an ad looking for a production weaver, a couple of women making up small design firm that specialized in mohair yardage sold to designers in NY.  The job was wonderful.  I learned how to weave efficiently, to get 30 yards of mohair yardage on and off the loom in just a couple days.  I learned how to sectionally warp, and I actually made a modest income back in the day.  Eventually I developed my own line of handwoven items to sell at craft fairs, but the point here, is that nothing I ever did when I became my own brand, related to the spontaneity of some of the work I did for that design team.  I’d be shipped a huge box of mohair, and told roughly what it should look like, but mostly, I had to make it up as I went along.  The mohair warp was sett 6 epi, but the wefts were doubled, 4 picks per inch, so I could pair randomly wefts of mohair into the bobbins  for different effects, and I happily had a system where I just “saw” what came next.  I came across some of the few samples I managed to hold on to recently in the move of swatch books.  Before the cloth was advanced, the top surface would be heavily brushed with a sweater slicker while the warp was still under tension.

While I wove for that mohair design team, I had another production job that I have vague memories of, I was actually subcontracted by another weaver who was overwhelmed by the job as she tried to develop her own work.  I remember the yardage sort of looked like tapestry, with thin strips of stripped fur laid in periodically, so from one direction, it looked like a fur coat, but from the other, there was glowing beautiful brocade tapestry peaking out. It was the kind of random weft that you made up as you went along.   Of course I have no photos or draft records, but there, in my swatch book, next to the mohair swatches, was a pair of swatches that I swear were from that assignment.  They don’t have any fur in them, but that would have made sense, since I couldn’t really use someone else’s materials for my own personal notebook.  I’m even thinking these swatches, if they are what I think they are, were the samples of what they were looking for, with the fur strips woven in.  It has always bugged me that I couldn’t exactly recall and had no record of what the fabric looked like,  because it was really cool.

Anyway, there is a point where these two stories converge.  As I sat working on the Noro fabric, I thought, what if I used the last bit of that linen Theo Moorman warp and tried to do a mock tapestry in an inlay, edge to edge, and added some fur.  I have lots of fur laying around.  Before anyone gets bent out of shape, people give me fur collars, cuffs, coats, and other pieces of fur that they can’t throw away, but have no use for.  Most of it is a bit dry rotted, but there it hangs like raw materials waiting for something or someone to give it a second life (and no, I’m not looking for more).  

So over I went to the loom, and started to play.  I found a huge basket of oddities on top of the wall units in my office, I had forgotten in the move that there were baskets of things I used for tapestry classes, and supplemental weft in inkle weaving.  I finally found our collection of rattail and mousetail rayon cord in one of those baskets.  So I dug through one of the baskets and assembled this.

I started weaving, just making it up as I went along, and pretty soon I had something I actually liked.

I kept going.  At this point, I’m thinking ahead that there isn’t much warp on here, too bad because I’m loving weaving this and what do I have on the shelf that I can reset up the loom and be able to weave randomly like this any time I want?  I could imagine all kinds of things to do with cloth like this.  I don’t want to call it Saori, because though that’s kind of random too, it comes with a whole philosophy of weaving, on special Saori looms, which I don’t and won’t have, but this technique is pretty cool for laying in a yarn on top of the ground cloth, and having it tie-downed with fine threads.  The warp/ground cloth doesn’t really have a voice in the piece.

The end result is about 30″ in length, about 25″ wide.  I have to experiment if I can wash it, the fur was pretty brittle and I’m not sure what water will do to it, but that’s for another day.  I revisited something from my past, and I satisfied my curiosity to find out what would happen if….  And now that little loom is clear.  And naked.  And calling for another warp…

Stay tuned… 

This started a while ago, if you’ve followed me for awhile, you know that in the winter months, I keep dye pots going and gather a large group of random dyed skeins of various weights and textures, mostly cellulose like rayons and cottons, but occasionally I’ll throw some random wool or loop mohair skeins in the crock pot while I’m at it.  By November I had amassed quite a collection of random wool and mohair skeins, each not enough to anything with, but together, they represented quite a good amount of yarn.

Back in December of 2014 I wove a series of dishtowels that I loved in cotton/linen, based on a project in the Sept/Oct 2014 issue of Handwoven Magazine, Linda Gettman’s Bright Herringbone Twill Towels.  

This is basically a color and weave project, and the color placement along with the twill makes for a very cool surface.  In the fall of 2017  I made this silk twill tunic, from hand dyed skeins of raw silk, and based the weave structure on that same draft.  It has gone through so many iterations, I probably can’t say at this point it is Linda’s draft, but I really can’t claim it is all mine either.  The frequency and random arrangement of stripes is all based on what yarn I have in front of me and how much.  There is a lot of careful calculation down to the yard of each skein, and careful winding of the warps based on the computer draft.

So last fall, I set up one of my larger looms, not thinking there was any hurry to weave it off, and actually even thought it was a little bright and very random, but would probably make a cool fabric once it was washed.

Side bar…  By this time last year I knew that I was one of two invited guest artists  for the fashion show at the HGA weaver’s conference, Convergence taking place this summer in July in Tennessee.  So for the last year, I’ve been in the back of my head thinking of work I have, that is recent (actually none) and that would represent me and the venue for a Convergence Fashion Show.  They needed five pieces.  This has been haunting me on and off for a year, because I don’t want to invest in five “runway” pieces that I have no use for later on, because really, each piece is only good for two years before it becomes too old to exhibit.  

Anyway, the fabric on the loom certainly was bright enough, and would show well on the runway, but I really wasn’t in a hurry to weave it off.

Then the idea struck me to renovate the garage and build a dye studio and new weaving studio.  Yeah, that happened.  It was an extraordinary amount of work, and physical energy, but it was ultimately all worth it.  However, the two largest looms we own couldn’t be moved without dismantling, and they couldn’t be dismantled without weaving off the warps on them.  One of them had the wool mohair stripe, and the other was a differential sett fabric my daughter was weaving for a lecture in Massachusetts that keeps getting postponed for obvious reasons.  So I sat down and wove, and I wove, I think there was something like 8 yards of warp on this baby, almost full width of my 45″ loom.  Both looms were cleared, and ultimately moved.

I pulled the fabric from the loom and washed it based on the sample, being really careful because some of the wools fulled more than others and I didn’t want a seersucker effect over 8 yards.  It was still bright and random…  I might have posted it on the blog back in February and didn’t get a whole lot of reaction to it.  It was bright and random.

But it would make for a great runway piece for Convergence…

Meanwhile, I’ve been thinking about ways to combine many of my patterns, into new looks, based on feedback from students.  I taught in Oregon the beginning of March and got some solid ideas there.  Most everyone was working on swing coats and I thought about pulling elements from my tunic, precisely the hood and the in-seam buttonholes down the front and of course pockets, and well, there was that bright and random yardage…

The first dilemma was that because the stripes were so random, and I needed for some symmetry in the left and right half of the garment, there was no way to get the fronts and backs to match at the shoulder.  So I went to my old shoulder fix by adding an epaulet of a wool bouclé.  Hardly seen but definitely cleaned up the shoulder issue.

The construction of the in-seam buttonholes is not terribly difficult, but a large strip of fabric is cut off the center front, and then seamed back on, which is what creates the seam with the buttonholes in it.  I cut an wide extra amount down the center front when I cut out the yardage, but the way the stripes occur, the ending result was a bit of asymmetry right down the center front, looking to me like I was being too random in a very symmetrical piece, or just messed up.

It bugged me.  I asked my daughter for her opinion.  She waxed philosophical, saying she knew it bothered me more than it bothered her, but she didn’t say, “Mom, it’s fine.”  I had enough fabric leftover that I could completely take apart the front and part of the hood, cut a new strip that when seamed would reflect the left half of the garment, and redo the buttonholes.  It took a whole day, but I’m so glad I did. Four days of handwork, and lots of Zoom meetings.  The cat decided to help. 

I finally finished the swing coat with hood and in-seam buttonhole placket and I couldn’t be happier. The fit is perfect, and I’m thinking of what else I can put the hood on.  I started to set up my quickie photo shoot in the mirror, actually got out of pajamas and put some real clothes on.  And as I took the first photo, my daughter walked in holding one of the dogs and photo-bombed the picture.  It was so hilarious I had to include it.

So here is the new neckline, symmetry it is.

And here are the front and back views, I adore the back, professional photos will come later.  And yes, my hair turned silver almost overnight.  We aren’t under any stress here in NJ.

Meanwhile, by now everyone knows that Convergence of course has been postponed, my conversation with Linda who is in charge of the fashion show indicated that everything would be moved to 2022 and would I still consider being an invited artist.  What else was I going to answer but, “Of course”, though in reality, that seems like so very far away, and this piece and anything else I create will be a couple years old, which means new work, and well, I’m just not going to think about it right now.  I’ve got patterns to draft, instructions to rewrite yet again (my editor is a task master!) and I’ve a couple naked looms, actually quite a few that are calling for warps!

Stay safe everyone, stay curious, and stay busy! Stay tuned…