I suppose it is a good thing that there is still a foot or more of packed ice covering all of northern NJ. And of course my gardens. And half my driveway (well that part isn’t so great). I try to spend each day chipping away at the ice piles in the driveway. But the gardens I’m told are fine. Snow is an insulator, and all will be well when it finally all melts. The good news is that may take a while, and there is nothing for me to do in the gardens until I see the actual ground. Which means I have some more time inside before I have to venture outside.
I’m still slogging my way through the natural dye class through Maiwa. Each of the saved batches of dye are being reused to exhaust them, no sense tossing perfectly good dyepots. I’ve got a routine, including exhausting the exhaust baths… Don’t ask! I think I counted so far that I will have done more than 75 dyebaths. And I haven’t gotten to the indigo yet.
I finished the 8-shaft Shadow Weave scarves, design from Webs, I put the link in the last post. They are sitting in my closet waiting for the guild sale.
I kept at the 12-shaft towels my daughter started years ago. I wanted that warp off. Good thing I have such good leg and upper back strength from weaving on this monster loom, because I need it shoveling mounds of icy snow.
Pretty soon, the sight every weaver longs for…
And I cut the roll of towels off the loom, and left them for my daughter. They are really hers.
Then I took my 12-shaft Voyager Table loom, (did I mention I hate table looms?) and slowly started to transfer the echo weave draft I got from Denise Kovnat, onto the 12-shaft floor loom. I wanted to finish one last warp before this loom moves to FIT in NYC. I knew I’d never get to weaving off this complex Tencel warp on the table loom, so I started sleying the reed of the floor loom, directly from the table loom.
I got all 574 ends threaded, 36 ends per inch.
And then releasing the brake on the table loom, I wound through the four yards onto the floor loom.
And I will admit, it took a while to get the sheds clean on all 12 treadles, lots of tweaking, but once I spent the time on it, it is weaving beautifully. I love this pattern. And I love that it is a single shuttle weft. My kind of weaving.
And just today… Knots… This makes me so happy. Probably one more repeat…
I pulled a box of sheepskin fur scraps from the attic, I’m making a medieval brocade vest, and I’ll line it with the sheepskin pieced together. It only took the cat about 10 minutes to find the box, and now it is his favorite place to rest.
I think I want to come back in another life as one of my animals…
I got my latest Shuttle, Spindle and Dyepot last week. It is the publication for the Handweavers Guild of America. I casually opened the front cover and there I was, with all these young faces, part of the Careers in Textiles symposium sponsored by the Handweavers Guild of America. I was reluctant at first to be a part of it, because the path I took to become who I am doesn’t really exist anymore. But then I thought about it, and it isn’t about the path, it is about seizing opportunities and learning everything I could about each of the components that helped me earn a living as an artist, handweaver, writer, and educator. So I’m the artist, handweaver, writer and educator on the panel. It happens in March. I have started writing my presentation, which I have so much fun with…
And I practice like a crazy person every day, cello and recorders, and a week ago Friday I had a performance with one of my groups, the Mendham Consort for the Folk Project. We played a colorful version of Greensleeves, which is a song about unrequited love, from the 16th century, at a concert featuring love songs for Valentine’s Day. It was so much fun. That’s me in the center, standing, playing bass recorder. Seated next to me is my cello teacher Loni Bach.
And one of my groups, New Jersey Early Music, has its spring concert on March 22, which is coming up soon, less than 4 rehearsals to go. I’m playing cello and bass recorder for that one.
And I was just asked to record a podcast with the SweetGeorgia Yarn company, out of Vancouver. I’m always up for a podcast. I looked at their yarns, all handdyed or handpainted. They are gorgeous.
So life is of course spiraling out of control, which is all fine. I choose all these fun things, and they sometimes collide, but I have a breather before I have to get outside and work in the dirt. In the next couple of weeks, two more looms will be gone from my studio. The 12-shaft Voyager Table loom is heading to Michigan to my weaver friend there, and the 12-shaft 54″ Tools of the Trade is heading to NYC to the weaving lab at FIT. And at the Shakespeare Theatre of NJ, we are working on costuming four shows at once. And this is the off season. My weekly volunteer day there is chocked full of entertaining sewing.
Or one row at a time, or one module at a time, or one inch at a time…
There is a great saying, used well by 12-step groups, “One Day at a Time…” The theory is that you can accomplish anything if you just take it one day, or even one minute at a time. I’ve lived by those words for my entire adult life, and it is how I accomplish much of what I set out to do…
This is a new year. And though I almost never set resolutions for myself, this year I have a number of goals. Continuing to clear looms is high on the list, but the most important one, is to finish the online class I started in Natural Dyeing with Maiwa. I signed up back in 2024, it was an expensive class, and I bought the kit, with all the fabrics, dyes, chemicals, tagging sheets, everything needed to take the class. It was shipped from Canada. I have three years to complete the course. I’m already half way into that time restriction. So this dark cold January, when I thought the music rehearsals and performances would ease up (Hahahahahah… what was I thinking…) that I could really take the time to work through all the modules, one a day.
I am actually doing well, I’m more than half finished the class, and have a lovely array of wool yarn, wool fabrics, and silk jacquard all dyed with natural dyes. Each of those skeins/fabrics, will then be cut into more pieces to experiment with modifiers, indigo overdyes, etc. The class is fantastic. Worth every penny I spent. Directions and videos are exceptional, and I look forward to cranking up the dye pot every morning.
My only complaint, and it is a humorous one, and I was warned, all the dye baths need to be saved for exhaust dye studies. So my basement refrigerator looks like this, and I haven’t even gotten to the cotton/linen/hemp module. It is hard to find large ball jars in the middle of winter…
I’ve already written in a previous post how I’m not great at babysitting pots on the stove, so I went to the loom with the Shadow Weave Sampler, in 8/2 Tencel, and I’d weave one section of one repeat, get up and check the temp on the dyepot, and stir, and then go back and weave another section of one repeat. After a couple of weeks of this, I finished two 2-yard scarves, and have enough warp left for a few more repeats, which I’ll use for zippered bags next fall for the guild sale. The pattern is from Webs.
Meanwhile, this morning it snowed. We got about 4″ of heavy wet snow, which I had to clear pretty quickly, because in NJ, temps drop at night, causing everything to freeze and turn to ice. But I made myself a deluxe grain bowl and sat by my garden window in the music room and watched the falling snow. It was beautiful.
Meanwhile, I had transferred the warp from one of my little Structos, which was set up for Doup Leno. I put it on one of my small 4-shaft floor looms. With a single shuttle, I blew through that warp in a couple sittings. Though it was painfully slow to twist all that fringe.
I had actually cleared that loom back in November or December and put on a run of Monk’s belt towels, which I talked about in my last blog post, from the latest issue of Handwoven Magazine, and blew through them in record time, which gave me a nice stack for holiday gifts.
The loom I was weaving on, sits tucked into a corner next to a shelving unit, and hanging from that shelving unit were two very large skeins of hand painted cotton, which kept getting in the way when I’d reach back to adjust the back brake. In disgust, I pulled the skeins from the side of the shelving unit, and then got distracted, thinking, how much fun would it be to weave up some yardage, using a draft I developed for Silk City Fibers, using a similar fat cotton floating over a finer ground. The draft is on my website, and is free.
It was great fun to go shopping in my stash. I refuse to ever buy yarn again, I have so much, and I pulled things that made the hand painted warp sing.
I went right to the warping board, once I finished all the towels, cut them off, washed and hemmed them, and gave them all away.
There is a fine thread of purple glitter yarn, which must have been something my daughter acquired because I can’t imagine ever buying purple metallic.
I am in the process of threading the heddles, again, a couple inches at a time, in between weaving off the shadow weave, and watching the next module for the Maiwa class. I’m more than half way, and can’t wait to beam this and start weaving to see what it looks like. Patience…
When I showed my weaving buddies the photo of the warp, my friend Ginnie, who lives on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where they are up to 137″ of snow, that is not a typo, sent me a gorgeous photo of a winter sunset, that looks exactly like the palette of my yarn choices.
Meanwhile, last Saturday I had a performance with one of my Early Music Groups, this one for a Viking coronation ceremony. It was so much fun, I played cello mostly, and we all got dressed up in our medieval garb, and played our hearts out, all through the ceremony. There was a wonderful Viking feast afterward, with all foods that would have been cooked back in the Viking period.
Meanwhile… first the back story… My daughter, many of you know, is a terrific weaver. Before Covid, she was even thinking of going into life as a craftsman, between the knitting machines, and the looms, five of the ones in the studio are hers, and we started teaching together, and planning to move in the direction of a mother/daughter team. Then Covid hit, and everything got cancelled, I don’t have to tell you dear readers, that so many people, including me, changed the direction of their lives as a result. I had hired my out-of-work daughter, to figure out how to do a YouTube channel, we bought the equipment and filmed more than 75 videos, one a week for more than a year and a half. It is called, The Weaver Sews, and if you haven’t checked it out at this point there is a tremendous amount of information on Sewing Handwoven Fabrics. It is everything I know.
Anyway, my daughter went on to finish her vet tech degree, and after a couple of different positions at vet practices, she now works the night shift as a critical care vet tech and sleeps all day. She loves the job, and the career, and spends her days, when she is not asleep doing things she loves, watching TikTok, playing video games, building small kits she finds online, and creating a life very different than mine. I have no judgement here, I miss her in the studio, but in our discussions, she has mostly just lost the passion she once had. It may come back, but it isn’t my life or my place to push her to do that which no longer defines her. She has a really tough career, some of the stories she tells are devastating. She does what she needs to do for her sanity. As I do mine…
One of my long term goals is to completely downsize my entire studio, move out things that no longer interest me, and though I’m down to under 30 looms, from my previous high of 64, I still have a long way to go to clear and find teaching homes for my equipment. I cannot keep a studio with 30 looms in the hopes that someday my daughter will want to return to my passion.
In 2021, my daughter loaded a trailer onto the SUV, and drove to Rochester NY to pick up a loom that had become available, a 12-shaft 54″ wide Tools of the Trade Loom. I wrote about the adventure here. It is a monster loom, originally from the Rochester Institute of Technology, which closed its weaving program some time ago. It takes up a huge amount of space in the studio. It is really too much loom for me, lifting 54″ rock maple shafts at 70 years old is a challenge. Originally my daughter commandeered the loom after I wove a small piece of yardage, and there still sits, a very long warp, for rainbow dish towels, taken from a 1959 10-shaft draft from Robin and Russ. (I would have been four years old…) Since we had 12 shafts, she rewrote the draft to use all 12. She wove a couple of towels for gifts, but the warp still sits on what is essentially my loom. I bought it and paid for it.
I have found someone who wants it, The Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan. It will be used in their new renovated weaving studio. It seems fitting that it is going from RIT to FIT… The problem is, I’ve repeatedly asked my daughter to clear the warp, and after a number of months, I realize she isn’t going to. So…
First I had to figure out what she did. She doesn’t keep records, it is all in her head… I sat for a long time staring at weaving software and came up with the draft, based on the original, the current threading and tie-up.
I will tell you, by the time I finish this warp, I will have the leg strength of an ox, and a bunch of powerful back muscles. This is pretty tough on the body. But I am weaving the warp off. I do about 4 repeats at a time, and it adds up. She probably won’t be happy with me, it is her warp, but it is my loom, and I’ve given her plenty of opportunity to weave it off.
And, of course there are bins and bins of spinning fibers, which haven’t been touched in a ridiculous number of years. I joined my guild’s spinning study group, and we meet once a month and just sit around as friends and chat, and spin, or knit, or whatever someone is currently working on that’s portable. My goal is that at least once a month, I have devoted time to just sit and spin. And today, I plied the last of this mystery fiber I bought too many conferences ago, I’m thinking it is Merino and maybe Tencel, or all Merino, it is beautiful. You can tell I started spinning it years ago, and with a dozen year’s gap, the spin isn’t the same as what I spin now. But I’ll make something from it eventually. One bobbin at a time, one month at a time, and eventually the job gets done.
All of my Early Music ensembles are gearing up for spring concerts and recitals, and events. I have more playlists than I had last December if you can imagine that. So when I’m not rehearsing or practicing, I’m in the studio, tackling a task an inch at a time, a repeat at a time, a dye class module at a time, one day at a time…
…Though this is probably a good thing if you are mordanting yarn…
True confessions… I hate to baby-sit anything. I am bored, distracted, whatever you want to call it after about 5 seconds. Yes, I’m the most patient person in the world, but I have ADD, meaning I get distracted easily, and always have to have my hands busy…
So I finished my Fiber-Reactive dye sessions for January, my shelves are overflowing with colorful skeins that I’m itching to play with. Dyeing with MX Fiber-Reactive dyes, you set up the pot and leave it over night. Set it and forget it…
February 1st, I decided it was time to revisit and continue on my natural dye education and move onto the next step, which is mordanting the wool yarns, and wool fabric in the kit I purchased from Maiwa, to be able to follow along in the 10 module class.
I had previously attempted to mordant yarn, a step necessary before dyeing, and was using a regular electric hot plate, and of course, because I absolutely can’t stand to sit and watch a pot to keep it from boiling, I got distracted by something else in the studio, and I ended up felting the yarn.
I decided it was the fault of the hot plate, since it was electric, and I’m use to cooking with gas. I had seen instructors use induction burners, and I thought, that would be perfect. So I ordered one. I found out pretty quickly that it wouldn’t work for my purposes because it had two settings, 140 degrees, which is about my hot water from the tap, and 212 degrees, which is boiling. Nothing in between. You can’t hold anything at a simmer.
So I ordered another one. This one, a Duxtop, I did a bit more research, and reading the manual online, it had, starting at 140 degrees F, increments of 20 degrees up to 460 degrees F. I bought it last fall, and finally took it out of the box.
I thought, this will be great, set it and forget it. Yeah… no… I take my wetted, scoured wool yarn, and gently place it in the pot with the correct percentage WOF of Potassium Aluminum Sulfate, and set the temp to 180 degrees. I walk away. I didn’t feel like much was happening, so I put in my dye studio thermometer, and no matter how long I waited, the temperature never got above 140 degrees. Great, I’m figuring it is defective. I go back and reread the directions and there, in the fine print, it says, “…different cookware yields different temperatures, the temperature readout is only an estimate of the actual cooking temperature. It is accurate enough for daily cooking requirements. (No it is not…) The temperature in your pan may be different than the setting you have selected. Please test a few times to find the proper temperature setting for your particular cooking task and cookware…”
Sigh…
So pinned up to my wall is a note, that after some testing and constant pot watching, I’ve determined that to get the temp up to 190 degrees, I need to set the induction burner temp to 280 degrees, and once it reaches 190 degrees, drop the temp to 260 degrees where it will hold at 190 degrees for the hour I need to mordant the fiber.
Of course I’m bored and distracted the whole time, and my studio is one giant distraction. I get into trouble when I can’t focus on a task. I look up at the ceiling and what to I see? A pile of 6-8 ft. lengths of climbing rose runners we trimmed from the rose arbor back in 2021.
I know it was 2021, because I found a photo I took after we cut them. My daughter I remember, spent an entire Saturday breaking off all the thorns.
My intent at the time, was to use them for basketry; some of them were 3/8″ thick. Last summer, when I took a freeform basket class at Peters Valley, I took one of the lengths, and soaked it overnight in my pond, the only water body big enough, and brought it to class. The teacher began to play with it and we realized that these runners when dry are hollow, so they just bent in half, instead of curving into something I could use for a handle or a rim.
So I’m babysitting a pot, and staring at these runners in the ceiling, and I go off on a super unrelated tangent. I need to use them, or get rid of them. I’m sick of dusting plant materials in the ceiling.
I ended up cutting the rose runners into 24″ lengths. This idea popped into my head, influenced by a willow tray I made in a different class at Peters Valley last summer, that I could line up all the 24″ lengths and make a garden fence of sorts. I thought about weaving them, but I wanted space between the elements, and though I could use a leno technique, I just didn’t see how it was realistic to weave these into what I wanted.
So my next thought was some kind of knotting. Long story short, spending lots of time watching pots and thinking of all the possibilities, I ended up using a skein I had of Euroflax wet-spun linen, and suspending the first 24″ length from the frame over the door of my shower stall. From there, I added the lengths of linen, and did a couple square knots between each additional rose length. I found a bunch of knitting yarn bobs, and used them to support the long length of linen I cut. I soaked the rose runners in a large plastic basin on the floor of my shower as I worked.
It took a couple of days, but I’m really happy with my little fence.
When we converted the garage into the studio, I had a split ductless Heat and AC unit put into the block on the north side. It attaches to a compressor at the base of the foundation on the outside. It blows a continuous warm dry air, which has killed most of the plants in that particular area.
My landscape designer found an American Holly and told me that it would be happy in that location, and so last fall she planted it. I worry that the steady stream of dry air would affect the holly, it looked a little dry on the leaf tips that faced the compressor unit. And so, even though overnight, we got about 5 inches of snow with a quarter inch glaze of ice on top, I worked my way out to the side of the house, and placed my little fence behind the holly, which was looking a bit glazed from the ice.
I’m so very very proud of my little fence. I wish I had a willow patch. But I’ll settle for cutting more of the rose runners as they reach for the sky this coming year.
Meanwhile… I eat my meals at the puzzle table, otherwise I’ll mindlessly doom scroll on my phone. My mom loaned me a puzzle someone gave her, a brand I’d never heard of, Pickforu, which featured cats in stained glass. This was one of the most fun puzzles I’ve ever done, the colors are magnificent. (I’ve since ordered three more from Amazon…)
I grabbed a bunch of pictures of the poster, and thought about what I could do with those colors, and all that newly dyed yarn just hanging off the shelves in my overflowing studio.
I went around and pulled everything I thought could work in a color layout for a scarf run. I could use more scarves in my collection of things to sell at the guild sale, give as gifts, give as donations, etc. I figure I’ll put on a 12 yard warp. Maybe get 5 scarves?
The yarns that were skeined for dyeing had to be wound into cakes of course, which required hours of baby sitting the electric cake winder. I have one from Boye, it really is not a good product, but it is what I have and there aren’t a lot of reasonably priced alternatives out there. So I babysat for hours today, transferring the skeins to the electric cake winder.
And while I sat and monitored the action of winder, I knitted. I’m working on the second sock, which I started after my trip to Japan, 2023?
By the end of the day, or quitting time which is when I get attacked by all the animals for dinner, I had started the heel flap for the second sock.
I only have a couple more skeins to transfer to cakes, and I can start doing a yarn wrap. Really looking forward to this next adventure. And yeah, I still have to monitor the pots and mordant the silk and the cellulose fabrics. At least those won’t felt…
My life is so full of really fun stuff, gardening is winding down, the visuals are changing daily. New stuff is blooming, (hello goldenrod) and other plants are dying back, going to seed, and looking wretched (goodbye milkweed).
I’m taking a natural dye intensive through Maiwa, in Canada (remotely of course) and watching each module, carefully taking lots of notes, and starting to scour some of the yarns and fabrics in the kit.
I’m taking cello lessons. Yep, something I always wanted to learn, it is my most favorite sounding instrument of all. First draw of the bow string and I was hooked. I practice furiously every day, hoping the pads of my fingertips will soon harden up! The photo from the teacher is for me to try to replicate proper posture…
And in all of that, honestly, I miss weaving. I love and have always loved the gentle process of a shuttle going back and forth, feet and hands in a rhythm that makes my heart sing. That and the cello… Often I listen to one while doing the other.
So here is the true confessions part. I have 17 table looms, all with interesting stuff on them, and I HATE weaving on a table loom. Really. Please don’t write letters telling me all the advantages of having a table loom, I know what they are, that’s why I still have 17 of them, down from around 3 dozen. There is nothing better for teaching structure, portability, etc.
Before Covid changed the world and certainly my life, I was able to cart around an entire weaving studio in my car, and bring the world of weaving to the masses. I gave 12 of my sturdy little 4-shaft Structos to my weaving friend Anne Choi, who has a sheep farm and was excited to get them, and set up her own mobile weaving studio, concentrating in underserved areas that don’t have access to the joy of handweaving. She sent me these couple of images of my beloved Structos at the Newark Museum, here in NJ, this past weekend, another group of new weavers is born. Here is the link to her website.
So, what about me… Back when I was doing this regularly, with my daughter in tow (she is now an emergency vet tech, and has little time for weaving), I started to build a group of 4-8 shaft Structos, with all different structures, envisioning a follow-up round robin, where people could try things like Summer/Winter, Huck, Doubleweave, Deflected Doubleweave, Honeycomb, Rosepath, etc. I put 4-6 yards of fine yarn, cotton or Tencel, on these little Structos and got each of them started and there they sat. This photo is from October 2023, it hasn’t changed…
One of them, actually a Leclerc 10″ wide 4-shaft sample loom, with spools on the back, had a Huck Sampler in linen, the spools had come with the loom, from my mother-in-law, and I thought it would be perfect to use up all that linen. What was I thinking…
I had no idea how much linen was on this group of spools, so I finished the yard and a half sampler, and there was still plenty to go. I picked one pattern and figured, how much could there be? So, I wove… And wove… And wove… This went on for the last year. I will be honest, it was painful… I couldn’t believe that the end was nowhere in sight.
So determined to clear this little guy if it killed me, I finally last weekend wove until I saw the end of the warp, which on a loom like this with spools, is the paper tape end that tucks into the flange of the metal spool.
And there it is. 7 1/2 freaking yards. Of 10″ wide huck in fine linen. I could have done this in probably a couple sittings on a floor loom. Instead it took me months. Sigh…
I had needed one of the small looms for the group that went to the college for my retrospective. So back in January I decided to actually cut off a Doubleweave sampler I started, and rethread, and beam onto a floor loom. Desperate to weave something, anything, I sat down this week, and pulled out Jennifer Moore’s Doubleweave book, and started in again. Oh the joy of using my hands and feet. I only have two more units left on this sampler, and I’m loving every minute of it. I have the more challenging ones left, quilting in a pattern and doubleweave pick-up, but with my feet working as part of the team, I’m looking forward to this.
That said, I looked at that wall of Structos and thought, well damn, I’ll just take them one at a time, and dump them onto my little 8-shaft Tools of the Trade loom, and carry on. I’m actually excited. The planning is done (though I have to convert from a lift-plan to a treadling sequence, I have software for that), and once I dump onto my floor loom I can weave like the wind.
I was chatting about this brilliant decision of mine with a weaving friend, and as I took a sip of my tea, she blurted out, “Friends don’t let friends weave on a rigid heddle loom…” (Sorry, if you aren’t a weaver you won’t understand this comment) I spit my tea across the table! Them’s fighting words in the weaving community. Truth be told, I feel the same way, and again, please don’t send letters telling me the grand virtues and benefits of a rigid heddle loom, they have their place, much like my beloved Structos, but I have a dozen and a half table looms, all set up that are not fun to weave on. My blog, my opinion…
So I continue with my dye studies, and while I baby sit the pots for scouring and mordanting, I work on the quilt. It is all together, and I’m now starting on the 380-piece trumpet vine that meanders all throughout the quilt. This is something I really don’t want to finish, I’m having too much fun…
And, I looked at the calendar and realized I have exactly one month to make stuff for my guild sale. I still have lots of scraps left from my production years, though thankfully the pile is getting smaller. The pieced jacket I finally finished used up a nice amount. It will be for sale at the Jockey Hollow Weavers Show and Sale in Mendham NJ starting November 1.
I sold all those adorable bunnies I had last year, (blog post that shows the finished bunnies, scroll down…) and took the last of the mohair fabrics and scraps I had, and cut out four more. Mulder was doing his best to help.
So my days are full, garden for an hour, watch a module in the dye class for an hour, work in the dye studio for an hour, weave for an hour, do correspondence for an hour, practice cello for an hour, and fit in housework, processing a bucket full of tomatoes, basil for pesto (my freezer is filling up). Yes, I’m ridiculously busy, but having a blast, now that I am truly honest with myself and admitted I hate working on a table loom…
I recall a similar blog post, a number of years ago, where I said that I always thought of September as the start of my new year. There is something about new beginnings, even though I’ve been out of school for a long time; fresh pencils, new clean copybooks, newly covered textbooks with brown shopping bags (I was a pro at this), and the chance to learn new stuff. I loved school, I loved learning, and still do.
I’ve talked throughout this year about how important it was to keep myself busy. I think I took probably a dozen classes so far this year, many of them through Peters Valley School of Craft, which is only an hour from me. The last of the classes I signed up for there, occurred Labor Day weekend, a three-day weaving class actually. Unfortunately the teacher, Brittany Wittman cancelled the week of the class. The title of the original class was ” Tactile Sensibility: Weaving Compositions”, focusing on weaving as a creative process and enhancing tactile sensibility through experimentation with structure and surface. Sounds like art speak, but hey, I’m a good weaver, but can always look at the loom differently. I was of course disappointed when I found out she cancelled, but Jesse Satterfeld, who is the fiber fellow this year at the fiber studio of Peters Valley, stepped in to run the class. He is quite talented, master’s degree from Kent State if I recall, and though the course description changed somewhat, I decided to follow through because, well why not…
I was a bit surprised that the three other participants in the class were all brand new weavers. But my needs would be different than theirs, and I’m a self-starter. And the looms were already warped, so I plowed ahead.
The looms were set up with the most basic blank canvas you could ever have in weaving. 10/2 cotton, 30 epi, about 9″ wide, and all white. In a straight draw. For the non weavers, that means that the threading was 1,2,3,4 and repeat. I brought some odd funky yarns from my studio, and a bucket of some of my oddiments left from the basketry class. We were given directions for plain weave, various twills, rib, basket weave, many of the same structures I already teach when I do a Learn to Weave class. So I started to play. I sat at the loom, with this “blank canvas” of a warp, and just wove.
Who does that in the weaving world? For three whole days? With no plan or goal? Just sample, play, see what happens if? I even jumped ahead to clasped weft, while the rest of the class was still trying to understand how to do a twill structure. I probably had a yard and a half woven by the end of the day.
Day two I came back, and tired of just weaving odd yarns in basic structures, I really started to look at the four shafts and what they were capable of. Honestly, to spend three days, with one canvas, just looking at it and seeing possibilities I really hadn’t looked at before, was such a gift. It was also a challenge beyond belief, to keep reminding myself that I’m not the teacher, to keep my mouth shut, and let the teacher do his job with the new students. This entire year has been a challenging exercise in this regard, and not always have I been successful, but I’m determined…
I started to play with a mock Theo Moorman, using one shaft as tie down, using a pick up stick to isolate where I wanted the threads. I had a few Catalpa pods and I played with adding them to the mix.
And I took some of the cordage I had made leftover from the basketry class I took back in the summer, and used that same inlay technique.
I even tried weaving in some of the little actual seeds, in the same technique.
The third day, I played around with things I know about but hadn’t ever thought they could work on a four shaft threading. I did some Brocade, which is nothing more than combining a 1/3 twill with a 3/1 twill, using a pick up stick.
And I did some actual inlay, which I haven’t done since a workshop I did in the 1970’s. I’d like to go back and revisit this technique, with a different warp and sett. We combined the inlay with damask, which was pretty cool.
In the end, I had a sampler that reached taller than any ceiling in my house.
I realized it would fit perfectly between the garage doors in the weaving studio, hanging from the ceiling, with a little prop support to keep it from dragging on the ground, becoming cricket fodder (even though Mulder is stalking them every night, I didn’t want my sampler to get in the way of his routine slaughter…)
And of course, September means that the weather is gloriously cooler, and that the garden season is starting to wind down. My gardens are amazing, considering where I started last spring with tiny little plugs. I am including lots of pictures because my 93 year old mom, has by request, no access to anything digital, and the only way she can enjoy my blog, which she loves to get, is by snail mail. So mom, here are a bunch of garden pictures…
The pool in the back of the picture is the neighbor’s yard, there is a stockade fence between us, running along behind the greenhouse, which is in the middle of my vegetable garden.
And of course, my tomatoes are coming in like crazy! I just oven dried a bunch of the little guys to pop in my freezer for the winter
And I’m starting to put the appliqué quilt blocks together. There is still a massive amount of work to do, even once all nine are together, because there is a 380 piece vine that runs through the entire quilt. But it is really cool to see the blocks take shape, and I’m beginning to finish the blocks that I couldn’t initially finish because they extended over the borders into the adjacent blocks.
The Maine Coon on top has a glorious tail that will extend into the adjacent block once it is added.
I’ve never understood the lure of a kit, and I’m a complete convert. Where I spent three days just staring at a blank “canvas” of a warp, just making stuff up as I went along, executing someone else’s design in a kit that provided all the materials, fabric selections and schematics has been such a different experience. I can see the benefits of both ways of working. One is a creative exercise and one is a technical exercise. Different parts of the brain! Different skill sets. It is probably why I love volunteering as a stitcher at the Shakespeare Theatre of NJ costume department. I just get handed assignments and I have to figure out how to do them.
Last night, I drove up the NY State Thruway, in the pouring rain, to a wedding of one of the girls my kids grew up with. Her family has remained close, and though neither of my children could attend, I was privileged to have been invited and made the trek up to the country club where the wedding was held. During the cocktail hour, the weather started to clear, and I wandered outside to look at the fountains and to my complete shock, there was the most glorious rainbow I’ve ever seen. Guests started pouring outside, and there were more photos of the rainbow I’m thinking than of the bride and groom!
And then as we all watched, a double rainbow appeared. That has to be good luck and a strong omen for the newly wed couple.
And tomorrow, I get to go “back to school”. My ten week class in natural dyeing starts, through Maiwa, and I’ve watched the intros, started a binder of the PDF printouts, organized my dye area, unpacked the “kit”, and am ready to sink my teeth into yet another opportunity to learn.
