Tag: Peter Patchis

But where are the pictures…

This has been one crazy month, just like old times. Which I would have been happy just leaving in the past. But I have no one to blame but myself, adding so much to the calendar, I felt like I was running on five cylinders for a month straight. It was all good stuff, but oddly enough, bad social media influencer that I am, I took almost no pictures.

I had a pair of students in for the week just prior to my guild sale. They made lovely jackets. I took no pictures.

My guild sale the first weekend in November was a smashing success. Record sales. I was there for the Friday night opening and all day on Saturday. Selling my little heart out. Just like I used to do in the 80’s when I did craft fairs. I took no pictures. There were others assigned to that job. But nothing to share with you. Except these two images of my work packed up ready to go to the sale on that Friday morning.

In the end, I sold a lot of stuff. All of the bunnies are gone, and three of the four squirrels. Almost all of the totes went, and a large number of greeting cards. Almost all the work I showed in the last post has gone to new homes. One of the buyers of my handwoven ginger jar was so pleased with it, she posted a photo in her own blog after her husband picked up some pretty fronds.

The rest of the leftover goodies from the guild sale that didn’t sell, went on to the Shakespeare Theatre for their Pop-Up Shop during their final production for the season, A Midwinter Night’s Dream. The show opens December 6th. This is a particularly complex set of costumes and I’ve spent a lot of hours there volunteering as a stitcher. I’m heading there tomorrow as well. Of course, there are no pictures.

The Shakespeare Theatre had its annual gala/cabaret fund raiser the weekend after the sale. Lots of glitter and sequins. I wore this long vest. I took no pictures of course. It was a fabulous event. There is a knitting group associated with the Theatre, called ShakesPurls. I sat at a table with them. Lovely to be with like-minded people when surrounded by incredible theatrical talent.

And work continues on the complete destruction of my yard. My invaluable handyman, who has taken all this on as a personal project, has removed nearly 30 invasives, mostly Japanese Barberry, and couple of surprise Callery Pears, and a few Japanese Honeysuckle. There is lots more, but I managed to find maybe a handful of plants that aren’t invasive, a few hiding American Holly, and a Ninebark, which I didn’t know I had. I took no photos. Except, before all the leaves dropped, I tried to identify what’s left, using a plant finder app, and each time I focused in on a plant I got something like this… Sigh…

I, of course, live in the northeast, that little smudge next to Pennsylvania, little dense NJ. Lots of corporate landscaping. All lawn and invasives.

I had another student, one of my dearest long time students who studied with me at Sievers, came for the week. We worked on a gorgeous Harris Tweed plaid she bought in Scotland. We made a fantastic coat. I took no pictures.

Thanksgiving was Thursday. My daughter and I drove to my son’s apartment in the next county, where he cooked a lovely Thanksgiving salmon dinner. She grabbed a photo of him cooking. I took one picture, of my dinner plate.

However, my head has not been idle… I look at my yarn shelves, which are overflowing, no more room at the inn so to speak. I picked a random style of yarn, a 3.75/3 cotton, in eight colors, from Peter Patchis, and sat looking at it for a couple weeks. It is a bulky unmercerized 3-ply yarn, and rugs came to mind, but I’m not really a rug weaver. I’ve always wanted woven bath towels, but could this really work? I looked at Waffle Weave structures, and have been thinking and perusing ideas, looking at books in my studio, and along comes an article by Elisabeth Hill in the Nov/Dec 2023 issue of Handwoven Magazine, talking about tutu’s. Not what you are thinking of. Apparently, when you weave a very collapsible weave structure, and do a plain weave hem on either end, once washed, and the structure collapses, the ends don’t and you are left with a ruffling tutu. I had never thought about it, and duh… That would have been an issue on a large bath towel. The article goes on to explain that by breaking the hems into two layers and doing double weave, that would resolve the density of the warp ends juxtaposed to a collapsed structure.

So I sat with software, and a calculator, and the article, which had examples that didn’t quite work for what I wanted. As a matter of fact, one of her drafts shows a “double weave” that isn’t exactly plain weave top and bottom. But I got the idea. I wanted the waffle cells deep, because of the size of the yarn, so I drafted, and redrafted, and came up with something, on 8 shafts, straight draw. The treadling is a five-end point threading.

I took a deep breath, and wound 10 yards, because that’s how much yarn I had, which would give me four 75″ x 45″ bath towels. Which I knew would shrink probably 25%. This was all a giant guess…

I got the whole thing on the loom last weekend.

It was pretty important that I sampled, cut it off and washed it, though I’m not sure if it didn’t work what I would do with the 10 yards on the loom. I chose a sett of 12 epi, and it seemed to weave pretty square. I did a double weave hem.

I cut the whole thing off after about 6″, and tossed it into the washer and dryer along with the sheets from my last guest. Hot water wash and a hot dryer.

Damn I’m good…

I even tried to dry myself off after the last shower with the small sample. It got wet pretty quickly, but the sample wasn’t enough to wrap myself in, so I really don’t know how well they will perform, and they certainly won’t match my bathroom, but my whole point was to turn yarn on the shelf into something interesting that pushed my skills.

I’m all tied on again, and weaving the first towel. I thought the color changes and treadling sequence which are all carefully orchestrated would be really difficult. It is very easy, though I did have to dig out my widest temple to maintain width on the loom, since this structure collapses even under tension.

Oh, and right after the guild sale, I made a down filled pillow from a large square of handwoven fabric I found in my stash, which I wove back in 2005 I think? My first hand painted warp project. Leftover from this jacket. It is mine, and I have it on my bed when I want to sit up and read all about invasive plants.

And so dear readers, I am furiously rehearsing for my last recorder concert of the season, you can find the info here, December 3rd in Montclair NJ. And tech week starts next weekend for the Shakespeare Theatre, so my roll as a stitcher will be finished. And my yard work is done. I hope life settles into a lovely winter routine, winter is when I usually get out the dye pots, so I’ll do a bit of that, which sketching out what I want to plant where in the gardens.

Hoping for a lovely holiday time for all of you my friends, no matter what you celebrate, fill it with things that make you happy and bring you joy, and surround yourselves with those who hold you in the light.

Stay tuned…

Merrily We Roll Along…

Typically this time of year, I am knee deep in dye pots. Well not really, I don’t dye myself, just yarn, but truth be told, there isn’t anymore room to put dyed yarn, even though I’ve amassed an embarrassing amount of yarn that needs to be dyed. Even last year, with a broken shoulder in a sling, I figured out how to lift heavy dyepots and rinse yarn.

But this year, it didn’t seem like the thing to do, since I have to use what I’ve already dyed, which is in the works…(at least in my head). Meanwhile, I have a large basket of the leftover mohair that didn’t get used for the blanket extravaganza last year. Many of the colors weren’t appealing, a white, bright pink, and a purple that just didn’t appeal to me.

In addition, I had a few undyed skeins of soy Chenille a friend gave me way too many years ago. These are skeins I had already dyed. Too many years ago…

Both mohair and Soy are protein fibers, so need acid dyes, I decided to make use of my crock pot (the one in the studio, not the one in the kitchen) and toss in some of the not exciting colors of mohair and a skein or two of soy chenille with some random acid dyes I have in my small stash. Mostly I use fiber reactive dyes, since I dye mostly cellulosic yarns, but I spent a few mornings winding skeins, mixing dyes into some pleasing color, and having fun.

I calculated really carefully, (well almost, I did make one stupid mistake, but nobody died!) and came up with a warp based on the yarns I had dyed, and some black mohair in the basket.

I wound multiple chains and tied them onto the front beam to get ready to sley the reed.

I threaded the mohair…

And I beamed the mohair, easiest warp I ever put on. I decided because the mohair was so sticky, that I would place the tensioning rods above and below instead of in a shed, which worked swimmingly well, and I beamed onto the lower warp beam which was a sectional. I had the six yards on in about 20 minutes.

This warp is a bit narrower than the blankets, 38″ in the reed, I had thought shawls, but I may just end up weaving the whole thing as yardage. Because that is what I do!

Meanwhile, I’ve mentioned before that I have 49 shaft looms in the studio. 15 are small Structos reserved for an Annual Learn to Weave class through my guild, and anybody local who wants to come hang for the day and try their hand. Another 15 are being restored and prepared with various structures, partly for self exploration, partly because I can take them outside in the summer to weave (which I never seem to do) and partly because it would be cool to do a round robin with my guild where participants rotate through various structures. I’m learning a lot from this exercise, and am prepping another 8 shaft Structo for a Summer Winter study, exploring different surface textures by adjusting the tie-down sequence, something that makes Summer Winter pretty cool. It is a variation on a draft I got when I studied with Madelyn van der Hoogt, but I cut it down and adapted it to an 8″ wide Structo with 20/2 cotton.

Meanwhile, I had a few cones of a painted looking chenille in three colorways, one of my monthly purchases from Peter Patchis Yarns. That place is addictive. Or rather the once a month email. I typically just get one of everything.

And I have about 6 oversized cones of a black tweed chenille from Silk City Fibers bought from their outlet back in the day. Discontinued color? I have a lot of it. It is in the upper left in the photo above.

So I decided to figure out something to do with the chenille, I don’t typically weave chenille yardage, just was never my thing, considering the history of rayon chenille way back into the early 1980’s. It just wasn’t my look. But hey, there were these cones calling to me, that didn’t fit on the shelf, so off they went into calculation land.

I wound the warp…

…sleyed the reed…

…threaded the chenille…

…and then beamed the chenille. I think another 6 yards? Sounds like a nice round number. I calculated carefully to use up the Peter Patchis chenille, using the Black Tweed from Silk City as the dark in a light/dark alternating patterning.

And I started to weave. I wish I could see more of the pretty painted colors of the chenille, but chenille has to be sett dense so it doesn’t work its way out of the fabric, and so the subtleties of the colors are lost. But still, this fabric is gorgeous.

I mentioned that 30 of my 49 shaft looms are spoken for, but that leaves 19 others. My goal this winter, or what’s left of it, was to get what was naked warped up with something fun. 5 of the looms have warps that my daughter is working on, and one of the naked 12 shaft looms is also hers. Now that I have the looms with the mohair yardage and the chenille log cabin set up, I have plans for my 8 shaft Macomber, (some of those dyed yarns perhaps), and one of the naked table looms. (A Zanshi fabric from my tied together thrums.) That will leave only three more looms for me to figure out what to do with, since the rest are all warped up with interesting projects. Then I can just weave… and weave… and weave. (I failed to mention the half dozen or so inkle looms with projects on them, mostly set up for teaching, but I can definitely clear them as well…)

Perhaps I shall clear a loom a week…

Stay tuned for more winter adventures…