Tag: Cordage

Playing with Plants

I fell deep into a rabbit hole. It is a very cool thing, I feel a bit like Alice in Wonderland. Never fear, I’m not abandoning my weaving and garment making, but I’m beginning to develop a new additional love, one I hope can integrate into one I have expertise in (because I certainly don’t know what the heck I’m doing in this rabbit hole), but the journey so far would make Lewis Carroll happy!

First off, before I detail this past week’s adventures in plant land, after much sturm und drang, I am happy to finally announce that my daughter and I have completed the video documentary on my retrospective. My followers around the world get to experience the exhibit, a swan song to my long storied career. The link for the approx. 1 hour video is here.

In addition, I created another page in my Extras section of my website, that has all the garments and artworks shown in the exhibition with their full labels, details of technique and materials. You can look at that separately here, or follow the links in the show notes.

Meanwhile, I took a five day class at Peters Valley School of Craft, with one of my favorite teachers, Steven R. Carty. I took a class with him a couple of years ago in foraged basketry. This one was called Free-Form basketry, and used the materials at hand to provide inspiration for shape and size. I tried to keep things small, but they just wanted to be big and bold. We started with driftwood as the inspiration, and I made a very cool basket using flat reed and sea grass. It should have had more ribs according to my daughter, to be more stable, but that’s part of the learning process.

Next we made hoops of Oriental Bittersweet, located a short distance from Peters Valley (you can’t forage or harvest in federal lands, and Peters Valley is located in the Delaware National Recreation Area, overseen by the National Park Service). Anyway, I’ve been struggling to rip out all the Oriental Bittersweet in my yard, it is horrifically invasive, and even though it makes for great basketry materials, I’m still ripping it out. But Steven found some, and we made hoops that inspired the second basket. My hoop is still green, and I know it will shrink as it dries, but all of that is a learning curve and I just need to try and see what happens if…

I also found out that you can dye reed with Rit Dye. Being cellulose, I should be able to dye it with Fiber Reactive Dyes, of which I have a ton, and I should be able to get at least tints using some of my natural dye experiments. Time will tell. A different rabbit hole…

The salmon flat reed was provided by the instructor, along with some teal dyed seagrass dug from a bin in the class.

But the best part, is where I used all the cordage I’d been making over the last couple weeks, in the beginning part of the basket. This cordage is from the flag iris leaves (yes, also invasive, but I’m leaving them) in my garden.

I’m slowly learning that July/August is time to start harvesting. I’m sort of looking for the late winter when gardening goes to sleep, at least here in the northeast. This has been an exhausting year of constant watering, weeding, and maintaining my newly planted 3000 native perennials/bushes/trees. I had a friend for lunch and then pizza for dinner yesterday, and we spent hours sitting outside talking, and watching the insect and bird activity. I’m seeing birds and bugs I’ve never seen before. There must be a hundred different types of bees alone, all over the blooms of my clethra. And we watched an honest to goodness monarch butterfly flit all around checking out the blooming milkweed and the Joe Pye weed, and I’m hoping will send out a signal to call all its friends. There was a gold finch perched in the tree over a section of clethra, sedges, and more Joe Pye. It is the state bird, but I’ve never seen one on my property. And of course I get an occasional glimpse of my resident praying mantis. Something I haven’t seen in 25 years. It is a miraculous site.

In the front yard, under the Kousa Dogwood I had an unknown volunteer pop us last year. Just a few plants, and they were kind of pretty, so I left them. A plant app told me it was Perilla. I didn’t think much about it, except that it wasn’t native. My Korean friend told me it is a staple in Korean cooking, used in place of lettuce leaf wraps. Huh… In my yard… I didn’t plant it.

This spring, the few plants exploded into a nightmare. I ripped some out, but left some plants, because I had read in Rita Buchanan’s book, A Dyer’s Garden, still one of my favorites that it could substitute for Purple Basil, which she recommends as a dye plant. I had planted Purple Basil in my small dye garden, but only a half dozen plants, not the 18 she recommends in order to dye 4 ounces of wool. I have so much Perilla I’m picking it out of the grass in the front yard. So I picked a huge soup pot full,,, (about 85% Perilla and 15% purple leaf basil)

I added water and cooked for a couple hours on the induction burner I bought. Unfortunately this brand of burner, AMZChef, only has settings of 140 degrees, and then the next setting is 212 degrees, which is boiling. Nothing in between and no way to hold something at simmer. So I may have to look for a different model.

I do know that plants containing purples, have anthocyanins which are fugitive. Meaning they will wash out. Nevertheless, I put in two skeins of Aluminum Sulfate mordanted wool (the stuff I accidentally felted, see my last post), and a mordanted silk jacquard length of fabric.

The soft pink was lovely, and as I stirred, I noticed the silk turning a gorgeous purple. The silk was glorious, and to my surprise, after things cooked for a couple hours, the wool came out grey green.

The glorious purple of course faded when I washed it to a pretty lavender.

Rita talks about post dips, which I’m hearing more and more about, which change the PH of the thing you are dyeing. I tested the dyebath and it was a PH 7, sort of neutral, but I took her recommendation and dipped one of the wool skeins in ammonia, and to my complete shock, saw it turn bright green right before my eyes. I didn’t think you could get that color in natural dyes. The color held even after washing and drying. The other skein, I post dipped in vinegar, and the grey green color intensified, and remains pretty. Amazing results from a bunch of volunteer invasive plants. As an after thought, I also dipped the pretty lavender silk into ammonia and got a lovely shade of soft green. After washing and drying, it seems pretty stable.

And of course I continue in the evenings to work on the cat appliqué quilt. This is block number 8, which bleeds onto the adjacent block, so I can’t finish sewing down the pieces on the right until the entire 9 blocks are assembled. Some of you are asking about the source for these quilt block kits, and they are from the 1990’s, created by Maggie Walker. You can still find some of them on eBay. The quilt is called My Cat’s Garden.

This has been a transformative year for me. A huge part of my life has come to an end, and a new one is just beginning. I feel like such a beginner, I want to learn so much, and am all over the place with information, books, social media sources, and classes. It will slowly all come together. Many many years ago, when my kids were small, and I hung out with a bunch of moms that were totally into alternative medicine, foods, organic options, all the things we thought were important for raising healthy children. We explored medicinal plants, and I had always thought that if I had been younger and had the time, I’d have loved to study with someone like David Winston, and really become an herbalist. One of the women in my basket class is doing just that. Studying herbal plants, creating medicines, and she turned me on to a couple of books she follows. Me, being a book-aholic, immediately ordered a handful from Amazon, which were waiting on my doorstep the last day of class.

The more I find out, the more I want to know. Sort of like when I first learned to weave. That friend that came for lunch yesterday, I showed her how to weave on a four shaft Structo, and she was hooked. Then I showed her how to set up and weave on an inkle loom. She was really hooked. Already looked up the Inklette on Woolery. I suspect she has already ordered it. And a new weaver is born, and this old weaver has fallen into a new rabbit hole… And once I post this blog, I’m off to make another batch of pesto for the freezer…

Stay tuned…

Just Do It…

I’ve taught most of my adult life, in one form or another. Inspiring others to do for themselves is incredibly rewarding, watching that process of cause and effect, and seeing a student run with creativity, putting their own stamp on the information I have given, it all makes my heart sing.

It would be really great if I could take a workshop with myself once in awhile…

I’ve already mentioned in previous blogs, my quest to reinvent myself, explore new areas and adventures, and keep myself as busy as possible in this challenging year. Challenging for many reasons, not the least of them is my son’s deployment to the middle east. I’ve needed to stay distracted and creative.

And of course, one of the biggest distractions of the year has been replanting my property with thousands of native perennials, bushes and trees. I spend hours out there watering, weeding, and watching bugs, bees, birds (I even saw a small praying mantis) and the activity in general that makes an ecosystem, which I’ve largely ignored up to this point, actually felt irritation, in that it is one more thing calling to me.

Things are starting to bloom, to mature, and I’m beginning to think about fall, and harvest, and when and where to do all those things that I thought about last spring. I’m largely in uncharted territory here. I know enough to know I don’t know what the heck I’m doing, but yet, I know I have to start somewhere. I’ve been taking workshops all year, in natural dyeing, eco printing, indigo dyeing, and even making a willow chair, which I talked about in my last blog.

I’m armed with a stack of books in basketry, in eco printing, in natural dyeing, in native plants, in pollinator gardens, and there is a thing as my dear friend Robyn Spady says, called Analysis Paralysis…

I would tell my students, if you want to get good at something, like making garments from your handwoven fabric, don’t expect the first thing you make to be incredible, prize winning, worthy of a Convergence fashion show. You have to start somewhere. You have to learn to fit your body, you have to learn to use your equipment, you have to learn the perks of your cloth, you have to learn what your body can and can’t do (yet) and personal ergonomics, studio set up, or lack of one, all of those things require a journey. But you have to start somewhere, and you have to keep at it, and discover for yourself. Going to YouTube and searching for a topic, and hoping that person will show you exactly how, might get you pointed in the right direction, but you still have to get on the horse and start the journey.

I will be taking a class starting next Friday, at Peters Valley in basketry. It is with a basket maker I adore, and I’ve taken a class with him before. This class is in free form basketry. I thought, though it isn’t required (materials list is, bring your creativity and a water bottle) that it would be great if I could bring some cordage I made, and in fact, I need to do something with all of last year’s shed full of flag iris leaves that have been dried and stored. There will be a new harvest coming…

So I started making cordage, soaking a few leaves at a time, making 2-3 yards in a sitting, and I’m getting a lovely little stack. I’ve since added a few more yards since I took this photo.

I took an indigo dye workshop with my guild a couple weeks ago (sodium hydroxide vat) and at the end of the day, tossed in a silk scarf blank, thinking I could use it for eco printing. As I’m out watering, I’m thinking, I really need to start harvesting some of these leaves, the peonies are on the way out, and I really need to harvest and dry, or just use them. And every time I eat an avocado, I save the skins and pits, and store them in the freezer. The bag fell out the other day. It was full.

So, I decided to put the books down, and just do it. I grabbed a bunch of wool skeins I had bought, and mordanted them with Aluminum Sulfate. Except, I was using a burner I picked up used, and didn’t really know the settings, and ended up boiling the wool, and to my embarrassment, partially felted six skeins. I felt like a complete beginner. I’m not into watching pots, but a watched pot never boils?

After I removed the skeins from the mordant, I tossed in some silk lengths for scarves, tone on tone silk jacquard, with a pretty watery design in it. And I tossed in a yard of a silk/cotton lining fabric, just because, I’m curious.

Annoyed with myself, I took the avocados out of the freezer and someone told me to grind up the pits. I pulled out my food processor, with the grater disk, and realized that I needed to thaw the pits first. Duh… Even a Cuisinart won’t grate rocks…

I put them in the sun, and they thawed within the hour, and I was able to grind the pits up, and tossed it all into a soup pot and didn’t care if they all boiled away, except that I read later that boiling them takes away the pink color. Sigh…

I got a pretty peach color, with two skeins of wool, one mordanted and one not (I read that avocados don’t need a mordant), and I added one of the silk lengths.

And it seems with all foodstuffs, that the color isn’t really stable, or so I’ve read. So once washed, they were kind of dull and uninspiring, and one of the skeins is partially felted… There is that. But I can always overdye…

I took the peach colored silk jacquard length, and went out and harvested a bowl full of cool stuff. Cotinus (smoke bush), Japanese maple, ferns, Oak, Peonies, Rose leaves, Redbud, and I tossed in for good measure some onion skins.

I used an iron blanket, a length of cotton I had, dipped in Ferrous Sulfate, and laid on top. Rolled the whole thing up and steamed the bundle, for maybe an hour, forgetting that I had to go out to an appointment, and didn’t want to just walk away from a steaming roaster. So I turned it off and a few hours later came back to it.

The results were hugely disappointing. Other than the orange pops of the onion skins, there was almost no imprint on the silk.

Though the iron blanket was pretty. But not what I was going for.

I grabbed the indigo dyed scarf, and tried again. This time, I just went back to basics, and sprayed it with 50/50 vinegar and water, and tried again.

Super disappointed, there was no imprint at all except for the few coreopsis flowers I tossed on at the last minute.

Still, there are many avenues to take here, so I started over, mordanted the indigo scarf with aluminum sulfate, and dipped all the botanicals in Ferrous Sulfate before laying them onto the scarf.

I covered it with an iron blanket, another length of cotton from the stash, and finally, I got something I can work with.

The iron blanket actually had some color in it, but I am starting to think about different post options, and thought, what if I tossed it into a dyebath, and so I did, with a handful of onion skins. I always have those available. The onion skins and the ferrous sulfate combined to make a lovely green. I haven’t washed either scarf, I read I should wait for a few days…

Meanwhile, I’ve ordered a bunch of dye extracts and chemicals from Botanical Colors in Seattle. They will take a while to get across the country. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to locate a source for aluminum acetate, everyone seems to be on back order. I’m patient. I have enough to keep me busy.

But I’m starting to get excited, see what I can try next. None of this is what I actually want as a result, but it is a start. I won’t make that award winning piece for awhile, if ever, but that isn’t the point here. I’m learning, exploring, wondering what will happen if… And that is the point. And all of this is coming from my gardens. Except the chemicals…

Of course, having learned my lesson, I now baby-sit pots all day long. I thought I was off the hook watering my gardens the last couple of days, since we were supposed to have torrential rains tonight into tomorrow. It looks like most of it will go south of us. So that means back to watering tomorrow, but I had a couple days just sitting and watching pots, and working on quilt appliqué block number seven.

There are nine blocks in this quilt, a project my mom bought in the 90’s, and never got to do; asking me last year if I would make it for her. Her arthritis is too bad now, she is 93. I agreed and it has been an amazing project. The coolest puzzle I’ve ever assembled. Once the 9 cat blocks are finished and assembled, there is a huge vine that meanders through the entire quilt, the trunk of which starts with the cat I’m working on, his claws are scratching the trunk, or will be. I can’t completely stitch them down until the rest of the quilt is together. It is the perfect project to work on, that and cordage from my invasive flag iris leaves, while I sit and watch pots so they don’t boil.

And I did order an induction burner from Amazon. I can actually set the temperature…

Stay tuned…

Mea Culpa…

Please Forgive me dear readers, no wonder I’ve been getting letters to make sure I’m still alive… I remember well Saturday night Catholic Church confessional when I was a kid, “Bless me Father for I have sinned, it has been six weeks since my last blog post…”

At the beginning of the month I caught this horoscope in my newspaper. Once in awhile I’m brought up short.

I need that reminder frequently.

I’d love to say that life in retirement is blissful and easy and boring. Yeah, no. I only retired from teaching on the road. I didn’t stop my calendar from filling up. I wanted to avoid this photo below, a photo I shot before I loaded my car to teach 8 classes at the NY Sheep and Wool Festival 9 years ago. It popped up on Facebook as a reminder…

I need these constant reminders that as chaotic as my life is now, it was much much worse…

I did take on a number of private students this fall. I’m pouring a lot of money into producing the YouTube videos, and paying my daughter a salary to make them happen, and I could use the income. (No, I don’t make anything off of YouTube, I’d need a couple million subscribers.) And I wanted to see what it was like to be in my space, using my equipment and supplies to do what I love.

And I’m enjoying the experience of having students in house. Cooking for different types of diets is a bit daunting, but I’m managing that, good skills to develop. But the calendar is rather full, one group leaves, another one comes in. That should slow up in another few weeks, but I also, in my quest to learn all the things, signed up for things I didn’t really have time to fit into the schedule. They were remote right, so they should be able to just fit right in… Between the student on Saturday, and teaching in Michigan on Monday and Ontario on Tuesday… I’m finding the need to print my schedule out hourly. That’s a first.

Still, no regrets… My guild was sponsoring a workshop with Jennifer Moore, whom I adore, the expert on double weave structures. For those that aren’t weavers, double weave means you are weaving two (or more) layers of fabric simultaneously, one over the other. There are advantages to this, but our focus was on weaving blocks, where the layers could change place, side by side. And the warp was her famous Rainbow warp, I used 4 ends of 8/2 Tencel as I moved through the color wheel.

Though I did have experience with double weave, this was a fun and challenging workshop, and I finally was able to get a warp on the new to me 25″ Macomber that I rescued and rehabbed. It wove like a champ…

And while I listened to a guild presentation last week, a different guild than the one that sponsored the double weave workshop, I sat and made cordage from leeks (the green parts), which I had sliced very thin lengthwise and let dry, giving a little spritz to soften them up when I was ready to use them. I can’t tell you how much fun it is to make cordage for basketry.

And in my spare time, I’ve been mulling over a draft I got from a friend, it has been making its rounds. This one is for something called Drunken Squares. It is a wicked cool fabric, and the draft was sent to me in the form of a profile draft. If you aren’t a weaver, skip this paragraph, it won’t mean anything to you. If you are a beginning weaver, this is a profile draft, meaning it isn’t something you can weave. You have to substitute each block in the threading and treadling with an actual structure. Each block is a unit. What you put into that unit depends on what structure you want. And since this is a six block structure, I thought I could do it with my 12 shaft loom. I tried, for a month. I got it to 10 shafts, and then when I spent another week or two I realized I could actually do it on 8. Most of my friends have done the draft effortlessly with 16 shafts. I don’t have that many. I plugged the profile draft into my weaving software (Fiberworks) and went to the block substitution tool. I worked for hours. I ended up with a tied weave, on 8 shafts, but it needed 14 treadles. I have 10. So I worked for hours more… In my spare time.

I got something I thought would work, 8 shafts, 10 treadles using more than one at a time. And no, I’m not ready to share the draft. I worked too hard on it.

I wound the warp, and went to my small 25″ 8 shaft Tools of the Trade floor loom, and looked at the treadles, and decided that this poor little loom, which I’ve had since probably 1982, could use a really good treadle scrubbing. I used a magic eraser, they are amazing for removing years of gunk, and gave the treadles a good polishing with my go to loom feed, Howard’s Feed and Wax. Even though my poor little loom still has its nose a bit out of joint since the acquisition of the Macomber, my treadles are very happy.

I beamed my warp. This is 10/2 perle cotton, in colors I had on the shelf. I had to drop one stripe to fit on my 25″ loom, but that’s OK.

And I got everything working and started to weave. I did it. There is such a personal triumph when you focus on something really challenging, determination keeps me going. I refused to admit defeat. And it worked. I did it. The drunken squares are really drunken rectangles, but I didn’t care.

While I was working on the loom next to it for the doubleweave class, I glanced over and thought, duh, just change the size of the blocks… ’cause that’s what we were doing in the doubleweave class. There are days I’m freakin’ brilliant, and there are days when I think, where did I leave my brain?

So I did another block of the repeat, and now I have real drunken squares. I remember years ago working on a two shuttle structure and having the shuttles constantly falling in my lap. And I designed a fix… This is a small loom with a small weaving area. So I took the second back beam (there is a second warp beam which automatically comes with a second back beam) and I slipped the cover on it I had made years ago, inserted a 5″ wide plastic ruler, and slipped the whole thing on the front to make a shuttle rest. I’m amazed I found all the parts considering the studio move.

And we are back to filming videos again for my YouTube channel The Weaver Sews, after a 6 week hiatus. Each video takes about 20-25 hours a week between my daughter and me, to produce. In my spare time… hahahahahah!

I finished filming the videos for my summer shirt. Just in time for fall, which has been delightfully summer weather… Handpainted skeins circular wound into an ombré effect warp. I sell this draft on my website… Also, the pattern is my 1000 swing dress cut into a shirt length, with the neck and in-seam button-down placket (no buttonholes to make!) from my 700 or 1700 Tunic. Those patterns are available in my eShop. Videos will soon be released on how to do the collar and armhole facings, last week’s video drop featured the in-seam buttonhole placket.

I planned this fabric from a few handdyed skeins while my husband was dying, worst week of my life. Took everything in my brain to focus on anything but what was happening to our lives. I’ve held onto this fabric for five years waiting for it to tell me what it wanted to be. I can’t tell you how proud I am of this shirt. I did add shoulder epaulettes, since I couldn’t get the shoulders to match. It is one of my favorite cheats. The contrasting fabric is a heavy weight linen. Here is a photo of the original skeins I used to create this fabric. I called the fabric Chaos. Fitting…

And so my retirement life isn’t any less chaotic. And as I vacuumed and dusted my weaving studio this afternoon, I thought about how much, as chaotic as it is, I love my life. There is always something calling to me, wanting to be designed, engineered, played with, created, or even cleaned, cooked or washed. And now as I cook I think, gee, can I use this for making a basket? Will it make cordage? And the animals always demand time. I’m never never never bored. There is a lot of life to cram into my remaining days and I want every minute I can get. Because we never know. I want to learn all the things, do all the things, and be all the things, in my spare time…

Stay tuned…