Frances Irwin Handweavers – Page 2

White Yarn Everywhere…

I actually thought I had a rather good idea when I wrote my last post. I really do need to get all my naked looms warped, especially the large one, I fear I haven’t actually put a warp on it since I started this blog, and that was almost a year ago. Shame on me…

Largely I need to dye more warps, I was so inspired with the last set of warps I dyed, and I spent the better part of 2007 weaving up the yardage from all the dyed warps. I spent the whole spring of this past year sewing garments from that yardage, and I’m completely out of all my handwoven yardage (except vintage scraps) and there are no more dyed warps just hanging around to inspire me.

I am probably sitting on 50-75 pounds of white yarn. All kinds of white yarn. I’d say the bulk is rayon, and there is of course a lot of cotton as well. I’ve only a couple of large cones of a loop mohair and some beautiful cashmere and something, again, all white. All of it needs dyeing. I also have a cabinet full of MX dyes from Pro-Chem. I’ve been talking about doing a week of dyeing, but that would mean a week with nothing on the calendar demanding my time, where I can turn my space into a dye studio, and work uninterrupted.

Now I actually have the time, all my calendar commitments are finished for the year, and the yardage deadline for HGA Convergence Exhibit is a mere two months away. I need to get cracking. I decided to take advantage of the fact that my son is into me for more than $200. and put him to work. Winding warps is basically mindless work, hard to mess up, and I’d be working right next to him making sure that there are no screw-ups. He worked very slowly and very carefully, and I was pretty proud of how he stuck with it.

Using a cone holder and a paddle, I wound eight ends at a time.

I pulled down all the white cones I thought I wanted to wind into 10 yard warps. I grouped cones together, If I had one gigantic cone, I gave it to my son, and he started to wind, single thread, listening to his tunes, and plodding along. I took advantage of cones where I had multiples of the same yarn, and used the paddle on another warping mill, and we both spent the weekend winding white warps.

Some of the warps we wound, and lots of yarn still to wind...

One of my readers, Diane, commented on the last post, asking why I didn’t use the AVL warping mill for this task. I thought about it, and decided that the standard warping mill was still the best, easiest to get a cross, and put a large amount of ends, I usually wind anywhere from 250-500 ends, depending on the size of the yarn and how much is on the cone. I’ll figure out later what I want to do with it. And I think it is easier to be able to tie everything off before chaining, when it is on a standard mill.

However, I did get to thinking about Diane’s

The AVL mill comes in handy once again, for winding 2 yard skeins for dyeing.

suggestion of using the AVL warping wheel and thought it was a pretty good idea for winding skeins for dyeing. I don’t think a three yard skein would fit on the umbrella swift for winding back into a ball once it is dyed, three yards being the outer perimeter of the AVL mill, but if I moved the brackets down the struts, I can get a two yard circumference, and that’s perfect for winding a skein. So I played around with the mill, I haven’t ever moved the brackets to the two yard set up, and I was surprised at how easy it was. I had a full skein on the wheel in no time, a lot faster than winding yarn for skeins around the standard mill. I just used the little reed to help guide the yarn into position on the wheel. Once the skein was wound, I just unbolted two of the brackets and popped them out and I could easily pull off the skein.

The yarn does me no good on the shelf, so I might as well just wind.

Using stretcher bars as a frame, we warped with strips of quilt fabric, and started twining a mat.

Meanwhile, I mentioned the Frances Irwin Handweavers meeting Monday the 9th, where member Jeri Shankler gave a lovely presentation on twining a mat. She made little frames for everyone, with nails across both ends, and we cut 2″ strips of quilt fabrics and warped with the fabric strips. Twining is actually a technique I use to use for texture when I did tapestry, so the concept came pretty quickly. She had an illustration and I can’t tell you how much fun I had just twining away with the fabric, chatting with the guild member next to me. I wanted to clear the project off my cutting table to make way for all the white yarn.

So I sat down the other night, and just finished it off. What a fun technique, so many techniques, so little time…

And last Sunday, in the middle of the guild show and sale, I went to Bergen County to the opening of the Focus on NJ exhibit at the Art Center of Northern NJ in New Milford. I enjoyed the exhibit, mostly painting and drawing, a few sculptures, but I got a shot of my two pieces hanging in the gallery space, happily living side by side with the other works.

My woven piece Big Sister is hanging in the upper center of the photograph.

My woven piece Watching Death Come is hanging in the lower right hand corner.

It is interesting to view my work in a two dimensional context, surrounded by more traditional fine art medium. I’m rather enjoying the exposure, and living in these two different worlds. In the handweaving community, the emphasis is on technique, how you did it, and the complexity of the structure, are really important. In the art community, how you did it is sort of a novelty, the tag only says, Mixed Media, but more importantly, it is about content and imagery. The piece is judged on the strength of the image. The technique is a distant second. And of course, the metaphor of weaving, constructing a life row by row, is so commonplace among the handweavers, we sort of take it for granted, and it isn’t important to the visual imagery of the piece, but in the art community, that metaphor of reconstruction becomes a critical part of the voice of the artwork.

Friday night, my husband and I took my daughter and a friend into NYC to see the off Broadway show, Avenue Q, for her birthday. My husband and I had seen the show many years ago, before it won the Tony Award, and now that it has moved off Broadway, into a smaller venue, we decided to take my daughter who has been dying to go every since she got hold of the score. To say this show is funny and biting would be a bit of an understatement. If you haven’t seen Avenue Q, it is an adult version of Sesame Street, with Henson puppets, and incredibly talented puppeteers, a biting satirical score, and some wonderful poking fun at some of the stupidity of the human race. My daughter didn’t stop laughing for the entire show. Her favorite characters were these two overly cute bears, that popped up at the most unfortunate times, called the “Bad Idea Bears”. They acted like the conscience of my 19 year old son and his friends, why buy a 6-pack when a case is more economical? And of course all of their bad ideas had some wickedly bad consequences.

Anyway, after the show, the cast sold merchandise and a photo-op with the Bad Idea Bears and actress/puppeteer Maggie Lakis, as a fund raiser for Broadway Cares: Equity Fights Aids. I think Brianna felt this was the best birthday present ever.

Tomorrow: More warp winding…

My Rocking Chair

All the stress of the past year is slowly melting away. I made it through all my teaching commitments, and if I end up with the flu, I can actually stay in bed and get well. So far, the flu has stayed away from our house, but it is everywhere, and I’m just lying low and hoping to fly under the proverbial radar…

I spent the day tackling my to do list, besides working my way through a very dirty house, I always liked cleaning real meaningful dirt, I sent out a proposal, for a weekly sewing class next spring at the Newark Museum, and I started playing around with the design for a new website for the Frances Irwin Handweavers. I promised them their website first. I don’t have vast archives of photos to chose from, since I’ve only been a member for a couple of years, but Sally has a computer full, and she is traveling at the moment. So I sketched out the layout, and played around with a “look” for the pages, and I’ll wait now for feedback from her and for her return and access to the photo archives. Each time I do this, I get another bald spot from ripping out my hair, but I learn so much…

Last night, I actually “got off work early”. I know that sounds like such a normal thing, but it isn’t when you are self employed and your studio is in your home. There is no huge push at the moment, just time to be creative, and rest. The spring will come too soon and I’ll be on a plane again. I don’t get caught up in the holiday madness, this is my down time and I’m not making my life crazy because our culture dictates it. So I stopped working, put together some leftovers for dinner, and then cleaned the upstairs bathroom. Then I curled up in my newly reupholstered rocker and sat by the fire in the woodstove, putting my feet up on the footstool Bri made in woodshop, and wove more inkle trim. I blew through another two yards of trim, glued it to the rocker, and with six yards finished, I only have another two yards to go, and I warped up the little inkle loom for the remainder. I’m so happy with how the rocker turned out, and I think my mother in law would be proud. If you didn’t catch that blog, the rocker was a wedding present from my mother in law to my husband and me 31 years ago. The upholstery wore out, and I found the fabric to reupholster it with on my travels last May, to Portland.

I spent today playing with my eShop on the website. I have had “updating the shop” on my to do list for months, I finished the Website Success Monograph back in the early summer, and never got around to adding it to the site. My goal was to ultimately put all of the work I took to the guild sale, that didn’t sell, up on a new page on the site, and I procrastinated on that long enough. I spent the day figuring out how to add a page, update the product line, change around some of the monograph combination’s, all of it frustrating but ultimately successful. It takes awhile to add one of the garments to the site, processing photos, and linking it to my website for further viewing, but I won’t reduce my huge body of work in my overburdened closet if I don’t at least put the work out there. So I think there are six items up there for sale, and I’ll add to it every couple of days.

I delivered the piece for the Blank Canvas event at the Visual Art Center today, usually I’m skidding in at the last minute, so a day before the deadline is actually a treat for me. I’m happy with the piece, it was fun to make, and I really need to play more often. 🙂

Meanwhile, I’m looking at all of my empty looms and the brain is just churning along, and I’m thinking that one of these days, I’m going to get out the warping mill and just start winding white warps so I can do a week or so of just painting. Looking ahead, the HGA yardage exhibit deadline is sometime in January. And I’d like to get another colorful scarf warp on the small 8 shaft, and since that has a second warp beam, I’m thinking I’d like to try to do some doup leno in addition to the supplemental warp, for additional texture. That’s a technique I haven’t played with for many many years. And on the four shaft small floor loom, I’m even thinking of setting up for an additional two overshot placemats for my daughter and me, since we each ended up with only seven mats each in the guild exchange last spring. I’m not holding out hope that the delinquent two will ever show up.

So now I have some time to be creative, and do all the computer things that have been on my list, get the two guild websites designed and built, add my huge body of work to the website eShop, and before the end of the year, I want to obtain a copy of InDesign, Adobe’s publishing software, and learn to use that. Always something new to learn and create, and invent…

Off to watch the finale for Project Runway…

It’s October and you know what that means!

That’s right, it is the month of fundraisers! Seems like every day my daughter has brought home yet another large envelope bulging with the catalog of all the wonderful things I need for my house, my bathroom reading basket, and my freezer. Let’s see, I have one here for Yankee Candles. That would be the HS Junior Class fundraiser. Did I mention I am terrified of burning my house/studio down with a candle accidentally left unattended? My ADD is too severe to stay in the same room and watch a burning candle. I have a hard enough time remembering to shut off the iron… (My studio iron is an industrial…) At least I can get wrapping paper…

And, do I support the PTO, or the Girl Scouts, both have magazine subscription fundraisers on my desk… Alas, we get about 20 magazines or more a month, but the bathroom reading baskets are always entertaining and educational. I think I won’t renew Martha Stewart Living this year, I stopped looking at it when she had an article on the well organized garage and it had four things in it. Hell, I can organize four things… I want to see Martha do an article on organizing a garage with real people using it…

And the yearly music department cheesecake order brochure is coming in tomorrow I believe. We still have frozen choco chip cookie dough in the freezer from last year. I know, it’s pathetic. No time to even make a batch of frozen cookies. But the cheese cakes are pretty good and they are already cooked!

Excuse me while I go spend a few hundred dollars in useless things I don’t need…

So, I took a look at my to do list, which is a pretty cool strip parked next to my now well functioning Google Calendar. I’ve successfully moved my calendar off my Palm Pilot, and now it syncs with everything I own that’s sync-able… (I’m sure that has to be a word…) I leave Thursday for my last trip of the year, two workshops and a lecture for the Hudson Mohawk Guild outside of Albany NY. I’m driving for this one, so I’m not worried about luggage or weight. I am going to try to bring a loom too.

That means it’s monograph/handout printing day! Oh joy… My poor laser printer gets quite a workout, and I get to spend hours at the binding machine. I’ve got my daughter working on this mega task tonight so I can blog and attend to other things! 🙂

Meanwhile, yesterday was the Frances Irwin Guild meeting, and my trusty Leclerc “Stucto” wannabee, and I learned all about Double Corduroy, and how to do it on the loom. For the non weavers reading this, it is a popular pile rug technique, done on a loom. The idea is similar to corduroy fabric, the wales are cut once the fabric is woven, and in this case, the pile is creating by cutting apart the long floats. I’ve done a few pile rugs in my past, and the technique I used was rya, tying small pieces of wool around the warp threads with a Ghiordes knot. Tedious…

Here are two images from my vast archives, I did these two rugs in 1976. They are about 3’x5′. Tying individual knots is much better for achieving imagery, which was critical in these two rugs. But the double corduroy goes faster, and makes more of a flokati look, and less of a precise color placement. It was fun and I’m amazed what I can do on this little loom that fits in a tote bag…

While I had to sit all day and babysit the laser printer, I decided to look ahead on my long range to do list, and the first thing that popped out at me was to make another tote bag, the ingredients were just falling off my shelf into my hands. The scrap in the foreground is from the sandstone jacket I finished in the spring. On the left is a wrinkled cotton sari from India, I love the wrinkled quality, and I might fool around with trying to capture that in the tote bag.

Meanwhile… I am now offering a workshop, a two day class, in making a vest. I’ve done this vest as a pieced class, similar technique to the tote bags I’ve been working on, but students never get to actually make the vest in the class. They just get to do the piecing. Since I’ve had so many requests for a two day jacket class, which I can’t do in two days, I thought I’d try to have classes make the vest, no piecing, and I have about half a dozen bookings already. The next one will be at the Newark Museum in November.

The Vest of the Vest (I am not responsible for this title!)
with Daryl Lancaster
Vests are multi-purpose garments that allow you to go from
work to play. The vest is simple to sew, will have a lining
and looks fabulous in whatever fabric you choose for its
construction. The instructor will custom fit you to be sure
all looks good when you are done. Beginner/Intermediate
Friday and Saturday, November 6 and 7, 10 am –5 pm
Member: $153, Non-member: $170, Materials: $25

I realized when I used my vest pattern at Siever’s a couple weeks ago, that I really needed to grade down another size, I am starting to have really tiny women in classes, and I needed the next size down. So I took out one of my multi sized patterns, and following my grading schematic, I graded down to the next size. That meant of course, I needed a muslin. So I rooted through my stash to fine some fabric scraps that I wouldn’t be caught dead using for any real garment purpose. So, as odd as it looks, the vest above is the muslin for the smallest size vest I offer.

Now I need to actually make a really nice sample, one that I would wear. All the vests I have are pieced. So I want to make a vest I can use for the class, and do all kinds of cool techniques on it, and have it fit me, so I can actually enjoy wearing it a few times…

Off to search through the stash, my favorite thing to do…

This exercise netted me a large hunk from an old production throw (called afghan back in the 1980’s), from Harrisville singles wool in graduated shades with an alpaca weft. I had woven them for sale in four colorways. My Aunt had asked if I could make one of them into a vest for my Uncle, this would have been back in the very early 1980’s. I remember making the vest and finding out I made a major mistake in copying one of my Uncle’s vests, and had to redo it, so I had a huge hunk of a second throw just sitting on my shelf for 25 years. I liked this color combination, though I have to say, I never really liked the hand of the fabric I wove for these throws. (Pictured is the one in the blue/gray colorway and I know the wrinkled sheet is a big no-no, but that’s what I did back in the 80’s). So I decided I had nothing to lose by tossing the wool/alpaca throw in the washer and dryer. 🙂

OMG! It is gorgeous. The fabric is unbelievably soft and fluffy, and for all you weavers out there, take a scrap of something you made years ago, where you didn’t machine wash and dry a fabric, and see what happens! This is all part of a class I teach on washing your fabrics when they come off the loom, but I’m still surprised when I take things from the archives, that were washed, though not very aggressively, and run them through the washer and dryer and see what would have happened. I even found some balls of the original Harrisville singles I used for the warp. Wonder what I can do with that…

Anyway, I rooted some more in the stash and came up with some items that I thought had potential to work together. The wool challis in the upper right corner would be perfect for a lining, and in case I didn’t have enough of the alpaca throw, I did have a light gray wool in the stash, but I was pretty determined to make this small hunk of a throw work for the project.

I managed to cut out the vest, in my size, and got everything but one armband, but there was enough small scraps to be able to piece. And I had to cut it on the crosswise. I’ll add piping, so the conflict of grainlines won’t be so noticable but all I had left once I finished cutting this vest out, was a handful of dust! I love when that happens…

Enough creativity for one day, my brain is tired. I won’t get to make the vest until after my trip to Albany, I’m thinking of trying to do triangular bound buttonholes on the center front band, I need another teaching sample using this technique. Plus I still have the pile of stash for the next tote bag…

I’ve had a couple people request the text from the survivor’s statement I wrote that accompanied my photo in the Pete Byron exhibit at the Morris Museum, The Faces of Breast Cancer. So here is the text in case you couldn’t make it out from the photo.

Looking back over the years since my 2002 cancer diagnosis, I can honestly say that my diagnosis and the year of treatment that followed, though truly difficult at times, became one of the most life changing, positive experiences of my life. I learned to trust, to let others in to help. I learned to live without fear, living my life in a fuller way, grabbing at opportunities, not being afraid to try. This has completely changed the way I work and think as an artist. My own fiber artwork, has become more narrative, I have a voice now, and though my body has been altered, my scars are a road map of my journey, and I celebrate that journey.

I chose not to have reconstruction for the missing breast, partly because I just wanted to get back to work, to life, and to do what I love most and be with those I love most. And partly, I wanted to remember how life was before cancer, and the celebration of life now, without fear, with confidence, with passion, and with living only in the day.

— Daryl Lancaster

OK, so I learned something…

I have something to admit. When my weaving guild, the Frances Irwin Handweavers, first announced their fall/winter line up for their programming, I was less then excited. OK, I admit, I was downright disappointed. I admit it. I don’t do rugs, I’m not interested in rugs, and ask anyone whom I’ve juried for, sadly I don’t really know anything about weaving rugs. (This is a bit embarrassing…)

So the programming chair thought a bunch of rug related programs would bring a consistency and longer term study to the meetings, and I will admit, that part was a good idea. Studying something for more than an hour and a half, is kind of a novel idea, as far as guild meetings go. Well, maybe it isn’t, I haven’t actually been a member of my two guilds for more than a couple years, I’ve been traveling to guilds all over the country for 25 years, but I’m the speaker. I don’t know what else they do during the year for programming.

When I got the September Newsletter, I was sort of surprised at how much effort the programming chair had put into this whole adventure, she figured out a way to put on a warp, 10″ wide, and with some minor rethreading (it is only 6 threads to the inch), you could use the same warp for all the fall programs including the December exchange. How cool was that? Not wanting to be a party pooper, and admitting that I don’t know everything, and I could really learn something here, I was a sport, and pulled my 4 shaft Leclerc version of the little Structo. I have a Structo, but it was a bit narrow for this project. The draft we were given could be just squeaked out of the 10.25″ width (I think the requirement was 10.5″). The loom set up quickly and I went to the meeting. I blogged about this back in September (it seems so long ago… do I have an out of control life or what? The title of that blog was “Overload”). Anyway, it was sort of fun. And the yarn I chose, some hot pink wool that matched my daughter’s hair, and some brown handspun both from my mother in law’s stash, worked out perfectly, though I found out after plying the yarns, they didn’t need to be that fat.

Sidebar: My daughter attends a night class in Japanese, at the local community college, once a week, even though she is still in HS. Part of a challenge program for gifted students. She is loving it, but, a) the local community college is 40 minutes away, and b)she isn’t driving on her own yet, so someone has to take her and pick her up. That someone would be me, unless I am traveling. So, I bring lots of busy work, drop her at class, wait endlessly for a parking space near the student center, and then haul all my busy work up and wait for three hours.

Two weeks ago, (last week I was traveling), I took my inkle loom, and attracted lots of attention, lots of opportunities to talk about weaving, and the weaving community. I feel like the weaving community’s PR person. This week, I took my trusty little Leclerc’ Structo’ wannabe (but better) and hauled it up to the student center in a big tote bag I whipped together from two freebies right before I left. That’s the green and purple thing the loom is sitting on. I just have to pull it down enough to expose the critical parts of the loom, and it acts as a surface protector as well.

So I wove. I had a woman come up who turns out teaches history in a home school setting, and we of course talked about how fiber can be used to teach almost anything, especially the history of the world. Every culture has some kind of interlacement process in their origins, and the United States especially, is full of them. The conversation would have continued, and I wouldn’t have gotten much weaving done, except a political science class came into the student center to watch the NJ gubernatorial debates on the wide screen TV. I won’t comment on the stupidity of the candidates in these debates. Except to say, what happened to our political process when the only way to get elected is to discredit your opponent while not committing to anything concrete you would like to see happen on any of the issues that matter. It isn’t good enough to just say, “We have to cut taxes…” Well duh… Everyone knows that and supports that. Duh… The question is how? No one, except the independent candidate will dare say how they intend to do that, including the incumbent… Ok, I’m off my soapbox….

What I’ve learned (besides the fact that I hate politics)…

Rug Weaving is sort of fun and uses a lot of yarn…
I found myself actually thinking I’d like to set up my large loom and weave a throw rug… (I’m actually not going to, I just thought about it.)
I love working on this little Leclerc table loom and think I might even warp up my little eight shaft Structo and see what it can do. I can actually haul a shaft loom in a tote bag and sit in a student center for three hours and weave. How cool is that?
I shouldn’t have been so quick to judge the fall programming choice for my guild. I’m learning a lot. Now I actually know what Taqueté is…
I’m really proud of my little sampler, and did a computer draft of the five treadling variations on a Summer/Winter rug.

Now I’m off to rethread my loom for the Double Corduroy program next week…

Overload…

Well best laid plans…

I’m listening to The Devil Wears Prada on my new iTouch. I’ve seen the movie of course, but I never got around to reading the actual book. I was looking for something light, to download from my library service for audio books. They don’t have a lot of the type of literature I like, but this caught my eye. If you haven’t seen the movie, rent it, a great chick flick. New college journalism graduate lands her first job as the assistant to a wickedly sadistic boss, Miranda, the editor in chief of Runway magazine played by Meryl Streep, sort of an obvious take off on Vogue. There is a scene, repeated quite often in the movie and the book, where the poor overworked assistant, Andrea, is sitting at her desk, and “Miranda” sweeps into the reception area, dumping her sumptuous full length fur coat on Andrea’s desk, completely covering her and sashays off into her private office, leaving Andrea to deal with the coat.

This is a great visual for how my week has been going. I feel like the planets are having a field day dumping huge fur coats across my desk, so many I’m drowning in them. There are some wonderful, sumptuous opportunities being thrown at me from all directions, and I am accomplishing some really fun things in the studio, but I feel like I’m drowning in too much of a good thing. Can you imagine? So I don’t want this blog to sound like I am complaining…

First, there is the opportunity to send proposals to the American Sewing Guild conference in Atlanta next summer, then there are a number of late fall/winter art exhibitions that I should apply to, and there is my article to write for SS&D. Orders have been coming in, and I’ve been invited to participate in a Fiber Arts telesummit, in November, a weekend virtual event where participants listen to and interact with presenters on the phone. The roster of speakers looks great, and I need to send bio, lecture title, write up, etc., by yesterday. I’ll talk more about this event as I have promotional material to post.

Meanwhile, I did talk about trying to make something to sell for my guild show and sale in November, (the same weekend as the Telesummit). And did I mention I’m leaving on Sunday to teach for a week at Sievers Fiber School in Wisconsin? I made it to UPS today, with a huge box of handouts, monographs, and interfacings and such, since I’ll need to be prepared for whatever the returning students want to make. And I took a quick drive to Montclair State University this morning to drop off an application for an exhibit next January. The application was of course due today.

I have been somewhat successful in making a couple of things for the sale. Here is where it gets a little difficult. I am perfectly capable of making stuff. The hard part is making cheap stuff. I mean affordable stuff. Once into a project, it twists and turns, and usually turns out wonderful, but at a price point that would be way beyond what someone would pay at a guild sale. I purchased a yam colored pigment dyed sweatshirt from Nancy’s Notions. Nancy has gorgeous sweatshirts, in wonderful colors, if you like sweatshirts, and I bought one to try it out, and cut it into a jacket, and trimmed it with a handwoven scarf I had laying around. I made one of these last spring after an American Sewing Guild chapter meeting, where the seminar leader took a sweatshirt, cut it into a jacket by cutting up the center front and removing the bottom bands and sleeve cuffs, and adding quilt fabric for trim. I took it a step further, and used a handwoven scarf. There were two tiny scraps left when I was finished.

Next I started on a tote bag using the piecing technique I teach in my pieced vest class, called Vested Interest (which I’ll be teaching at the John C. Campbell Folk School in NC in January). I am trying to see if I can develop a one day hands on seminar, using the technique and developing a project that will appeal to everyone, and can be completed in one day. Well, I was partially successful in making a very cool tote bag, (almost finished, just some handwork) but failed miserably trying to make a reasonably priced item for the guild sale and something that could be made in one day. I’ve been working on it solid for three days, and yes, I take photos every step of the way, about 200 so far, and I am constantly ripping out and redoing as I think of a better way to accomplish something, but I’m at least moving in a direction full of possibilities. I basically have to simplify, simplify, simplify, and sadly, I never learned the meaning of that word…

I’m trying to finish up the inkle band that coordinates with it, and maybe use it as trim, though I’m liking it just the way it is, and think I may use the inkle band for something else…

And then there was the guild meeting on Monday. The Frances Irwin Handweaving Guild is embarking on a fall study of rugs and rug structures, and we had to bring a loom warped to try sampling the September theme of Summer/Winter and Taquetté in rugweaving. The directions called for a 10 1/2″ wide sample warp, and though my little sample loom is only 10 1/4″ wide, I went with it. And the recommended thickness of rug yarn was heavier than anything I have laying around in the studio, so I went on an attic hunt and procured a bag of yarn, some bright pink wool, and some brown handspun from my mother-in-law’s stash. Even though she has been dead for three years, she still guides me to her stash when I need something, as though her spirit is still hanging in my studio and telling me, “Use this…”

So I dusted off my trusty Ashford wheel, and plied the pink wool, and brown handspun, to make something closer to the required weight of rug wool.

I got the loom warped, and took it off to the guild meeting yesterday, and was pretty happy with the first samples off the loom. I will say this is about as foreign as it gets for me in weaving, one because I’m using a table loom which is awkward and slow, I’m use to speed yardage, and the weight is really unusual for me, I think I’ve woven two rugs in my whole life, maybe not even that many. I weave yardage for clothing, so this is a stretch. But I love the colors.

So, I’ll continue working as hard as I can, because that’s what I do. My daughter is also putting out fires, apparently there was a major summer assignment for her Spanish 4 class in High School, which was never given to her, and she found out about it only a week ago, the teacher graciously allowed her a week to complete the hugely labor intensive assignment, and my lovely pink haired daughter is alternating between ripping her pink hair out, and suffering complete meltdowns. And trying to keep up with all the other work assigned, and the extra curricular activities, is killing us both! And my wonderful adorable, lazy 19 year old son has finally made the decision to join the Army National Guard, the appointment with the recruiter is tomorrow, to finish the paperwork and make it all official. Part of me of course is immensely proud of him, and part of me is scared to death. And part of me is snickering, because when he acts like the lazy 19 year old he is, I think to myself, “The army will never put up with sleeping until lunch time…” And there is his room in the basement… 🙂