Tag: Structo Loom

There are no coincidences…

There is so much to write I’m not sure where to begin…

I will start by saying this is a challenging day, this morning I woke with a start, and looked at the clock, 4:34am. It was this exact time, 10 years ago, my husband passed. I laid there for awhile, this day for some reason has been more in front of my mind than in the past few years, where time puts distance between hard things and how we feel about them.

I have written many times about my ponds. They were my late husband’s pride and joy. He spent hours counting fish, sitting by the ponds, finding peace there. I have spent a fortune trying to keep those ponds alive. Because he had traveled so much prior to his illness, the ponds had started to deteriorate. By the time he died, they were overgrown, I can’t remember if there were any fish, and they were in sorry shape. Because I have replanted most of the property with native plants, bushes and young trees, water features are an important part of the ecosystem of the yard. There are snakes, and frogs, and all kinds of pollinators flitting about, and I now get to spend hours, counting the fish and finding peace in that rushing water.

Unfortunately, over the last 10 years, problems arose, and it has been a challenge to keep the ponds going and keep the fish safe. One pond has goldfish, and that has stayed largely maintenance free, other than routine filter work. The other one, closest to the deck, has 8 koi, some of which are now 10″ long. They are affectionately known as pond pigs. They are hilarious, and are an endless source of joy.

I’ve had huge issues over the last few weeks, coming out in the mornings to feed the fish, and finding the pond half empty. My beloved pond guy, Bob, has tried hard to find the problem, and finally, I just told him to completely rebuild the waterfall, once we determined that was the source of the water loss.

He took it completely apart and found a couple of chipmunk nests, and some nice size holes in the liner under the rocks. I watched him completely rebuild the waterfall, it was air tight! Daryl 0, Chipmunks 1…

Twenty-four hours later, the stream or spillway I call it, which is where the filtered water dumps, failed. I came out in the morning and the pond had completely emptied and there were flopping 10″ koi in 4″ of water. I was heartbroken. And angry. I had a few choice words for my late husband, through tears, not understanding why this all can’t just work the way it is supposed to. I called my pond guy again, and he came out and we spent a long time talking about what to do. I had many well meaning friends not really understand the dynamics and emotional connection to these ponds and my late husband, who just said, “sell the koi and back fill the whole thing”.

Bob and I talked about options, I let him sit for a long time and stare at the spillway, which turned out, that a patch from last winter had failed. It has been an emotional roller coaster of a week, but yesterday, Bob came back with a liner, and an underlay, and he pulled the plastic tubs that created the stream bed, and started from scratch. I scampered around the yard, finding appropriate rocks and flat stones. I helped as best I could.

By 5pm last night, I came to the understanding that time isn’t kind to ponds, and sometimes they need to be redone, and that my late husband knew it was time, and maybe in his divine presence, he directed this to all fail at the same time, so that by the anniversary of his death, the pond would be fresh, and renewed, and good for a number of years. I’m sticking with this version of the story, because it gives me peace. I knew this was the correct thing to do, when Bob turned on the water and it all worked the way it should.

I sat out there today, watching the pond pigs (koi) feasting on Creeping Charlie (who knew it is considered a snack for those piggies!) A young grackle flew in, just a few feet from where I sat on the deck. I grabbed a photo (to help identify it, I’m not a birder), and he proceeded to jump into the top shelf of the waterfall and have a splash. He was having a great time.

I had a tree company come in a couple weeks ago, and remove the last of the horribly invasive 10 feet tall burning bushes, Morrow’s honeysuckle, and forsythia that lined my neighbor’s driveway. We do plan to plant the area with perennials in the fall, and there are baby baptisia growing there from my seed dance last fall. We had planted a small sumac tree and had hoped it would fill some of the space.

I have a neighbor across the street, who comes out every hour to have a cigarette. Joe sends me pictures of deer activity in the lower end of the street. He texted me the other day to tell me there were five gold finches in the front yard. He is loving the activity in my native plant yard, and understanding that having the perfect lawn, and mulched beds, isn’t good for diversity of species. It creates a sterile environment.

So of course, the deer herd made its way to my poor sumac tree, and with the invasive wall of burning bushes gone, they decimated my poor sumac in one go.

I was crushed, and sat for a while on my porch trying to think of options other than 6 foot deer fencing. I noticed an unused hanging planter on the decking of the porch, and placed it over what was left of the sumac tree. I tied a half bar of Irish Spring Soap, which I use prolifically in my textile studio to deter moths, to the hook of the plant hanger. It was a long shot.

Twelve days later, this is my sumac tree, and there are babies popping up all around. Daryl 1, Deer 0…

My gazebo, that my husband and I built, laying the circular patio, 25 years ago, while I was going through breast cancer treatment, had collapsed last winter, which I mentioned in a previous blog. My daughter rebuilt it for me, and I hoped the native vines I had planted would survive.

Survive they did, there was an explosion of native honeysuckle…

And crossvine…

…and more than half the replaced canopy is covered now in vines. Good vines.

My yard is incredible. My dogs love nosing around, finding odd things and critters. They all seem to live in tandem.

They seem to leave alone my yard crew, happily munching through the ground cover.

I have a pair of cardinals that came up to my open window every day for a week or so, the female, I named Ethel, and her mate is Fred, is quite the chatterbox. She chattered away for hours, little chips. Mostly towards Fred.

And I named the pair of Finches that hung out eating the seed heads from the Packera, Lucy and Ricky.

And last night, my daughter and I sat by the newly repaired pond and she captured this photo of a Northern Flicker. I’ve never seen one before. Her birding friend identified it.

And I have to share this cool tool my daughter gave me for Mother’s Day. It isn’t actually a garden tool, but I thought it was perfect for cutting edges in the beds, it is a throwing ax, shaped like a Uterus. You can’t make this up… So here I am, using it to edge a bed, it is really well balanced, and doesn’t matter which side I pick up. It is called a Uteraxe…

This has been an intense season of rehearsals, and concerts. I had one, the beginning of the month, that required a Viking costume, preferably in white. This was as close as I could come. I was playing recorder for this concert, so didn’t need my split skirt like I do for cello, so I used a walking skirt I’d made a few years ago, from a Folkwear pattern. I made the vest last fall, and the blouse was from an older costume I haven’t worn in awhile.

The following week we had another performance, this time for a Steam Punk Festival. If you don’t know what Steam Punk is, look it up. The costuming is like a fantasy Victorian. So I came up with pieces from my wardrobe that I could modify into something that would work for the day.

My cello recital was last weekend, I’m glad that is over so I can work on some new music. I have one more concert in a couple weeks, with cello, and then there is a breather until the end of August, and right into fall performance season.

And yes, the studio is quite active. And there are no coincidences. One of my cello teacher’s other adult students is a young nun, and along with the teacher, we played a trio of Shubert’s Ave Maria, along with a pianist for the recital. This young nun, from a local convent, and I have become friends. Turns out, her spiritual advisor’s mother was a weaver, and this young nun has had a huge desire to learn to weave. There are no coincidences that our paths have crossed.

I loaned her the small Leclerc 4-shaft sample loom, which was warped with the Learn-to-Weave sampler I designed for teaching purposes. I told her to finish off the warp, and meanwhile I would think of something more permanent. She sent me this photo, very excited, that she thought she was finished. I told her to keep weaving until the knots came all the way to the back of the castle.

Meanwhile, though she would love a floor loom, practicality insists that a small table loom would have to do for now, until she really shows that this is going to be a lifelong passion that will benefit the other sisters in the community. I have an 8-shaft Frankenstein like Structo I put together a few years ago from assorted parts, that I kept with a warp set up for the Rosepath series of borders in Carol Strickler’s 8-shaft pattern book. I really wanted to at some point go through the 40-ish different borders. I wasn’t planning on doing it this month.

So I wove, one or two a day.

…and I wove some more.

I now have maybe a dozen borders left to do, and then I’ll work with my friend to see what makes sense for her next. I know she ultimately wants to weave stoles for the nuns who are ordained as priests. (This is an Episcopal order, nuns can be priests.)

And I had a warp that I had moved from one of the Structos to a floor loom, so I could weave it more efficiently. Or so I thought. This was not one of my brightest moments. I mentioned in a previous blog, that I had set up a Structo with an 8-shaft Honeycomb sampler from Malin Selander’s Weave a Weave.

Selander’s book is written for a sinking shed loom, which I don’t have. My floor looms are jack looms, rising shed, which means for you non-weavers, that when I step on treadles to separate threads to create an opening for the shuttle to pass through, I’m now lifting 7 of 8 36″ rock maple shafts. Which is completely impractical. And I can’t weave Honeycomb upside down because the back is such a floaty mess you can’t see the pattern.

So I spent an afternoon, and moved the warp yet again, to my bigger table loom.

This is weaving so much easier, and I’ve already done two nice size samples of one of the honeycomb designs.

I’ve been documenting for the last few months, a different warp I transferred from another Structo table loom, to my small 8-shaft floor loom. This one is called Quigley, it is an 8-shaft four-tie unit weave, that is fairly complex, but the designs are stunning. I was using a handout from a three-day class given in 2015, at the Florida Tropical Weavers’ Conference, by Diane Click. She generously sent me the handout when she heard I was interested in the structure.

Many of you have written me that you would love to get in touch with Diane, and obtain a copy of the lengthy handout. Unfortunately Diane had a hard drive crash and lost a lot of her documentation. We have corresponded back and forth, and ultimately decided that I would scan the handout I have, and offer it free to anyone who wants it. I scanned just the part I used, and you can get it here in my eStore.

I had a dream early this morning when I finally fell back asleep. I was taking a workshop at Peters Valley School of Craft, a place my husband loved, and someone came up behind me and gave me a big bear hug, which freaked me out in the dream because I didn’t know who it was. I was able to wrench myself free, and I turned around, and it was Kevin, my late husband. I took from that that all would be OK, and that he was still watching out for all of us, and that what I did with his beloved pond and gardens, is what he would have wanted and that he was still watching in the background. I’m going with this interpretation, it was a pretty powerful dream, and I found that the rest of the day, I was at peace, and spent a lot of time with my pond piggies.

And if you are still reading at this point, I know this was a long one, here are some lovely flower pictures to make you smile.

There are no coincidences…

Life Happens…

I finished up my last blog, and headed “down” the shore (a NJ expression) for an overnight, meeting up with an old college friend and her husband, who had just flown in from the West Coast. It was a lovely day that Sunday, and then hurricane Erin stirred things up, and Monday was a cold, rainy day, thrilled to get rain, but sadly not at home two hours north, and definitely not a beach day. I headed home Monday night.

Tuesday I spent the day with my sister at the NY Botanical Gardens, finally getting to see the Van Gogh’s flowers exhibit. It was pretty incredible. But more importantly, my sister is a superior gardener and well versed in native plants. We poked around, examining labels, identifying plants with my trusty app, and acted like two horticulturists, or in my case really, a horticulturist wannabee… We discovered all the different variations of Rudbekia (hirta, fulgida, and triloba, if you are interested…)

Tuesday night I started feeling sniffly, and by Wednesday morning I was sick. I was so sick, feverish, I got really suspicious. 48 hours before, I was with a whole group of people… hmmmm.

So I wanted to start this blog post with all the glorious pictures of my new costume, and my cello debut at the Montclair Early Music Medieval fest. Turns out, I couldn’t go because, I TESTED POSITIVE FOR COVID! Damn… Bad timing. So basically I cancelled my life for the next 10 days, until I tested negative once more. I was really disappointed, so many things planned for the end of the summer. Fortunately I was sick for just a couple days, and stayed in bed, and did what any weaver would do, took a loom to bed with me.

I cleared one of my Inklette Inkle Looms of a Supplemental Weft piece that has been on there for too many years.

I was on a roll, and couldn’t go anywhere, so I cleared another Inkle loom, this one set up for turned Krokbragd. Both looms were donated to Jockey Hollow Weavers for their loaner loom program. Two more looms out of my studio.

Meanwhile, the gardens, in spite of no rain, (in spite of being sick, I still went out and watered the critical things) my tomatoes are prolific.

So I made a pot of sauce…

And that warp from hell? The one that wouldn’t end? I was determined…

6 yards of 20/2 fine cotton. I initially worked through the Robyn Spady overshot sampler from a back issue of Handwoven Magazine, switching back and forth from Rose fashion to Star fashion, and then I just said, “Screw it”, and picked one of the patterns that appealed to me, and just wove. And wove. And wove…

So now I have this incredibly long sampler I will have to do something with. I think zip bags? At least a portion of it.

Which meant that I could move another warp onto that loom from my dwindling collection of Structos. I chose to move over an 8-shaft Quigley, the original pattern on the Structo I got from Tom Knisely’s book of Table Linens. It was designed by Diane Click and is a four-tied Unit Weave.

It is complicated to weave, and when I originally posted it on my blog, a couple of years ago, Diane actually wrote me, told me she taught a workshop in this structure at the 2015 Florida Tropical Weavers Guild conference (I’m pretty sure I was there teaching) and generously sent me her handout. Since I had already set the loom up, I didn’t do much with it, but now that I had the opportunity to rethread, bingo! Now I can work through her handout and really study the structure.

I was on a roll, and though I finally tested negative for Covid, I decided to move the warp on the 4-shaft Structo I had set up with Doup Leno. I wanted to prove to myself that I could weave Doup Leno on a Structo, but table looms are painfully slow, so once I moved the warp, I blew through a half yard in a sitting. This is 10/2 cotton.

Then I decided to move the warp on another 8-shaft Structo with a Honeycomb draft, from Malin Selander’s Weave a Weave. Here is the original piece I cut off the Structo before I moved it to my 8 shaft 36″ floor loom.

This probably wasn’t my best idea, I should have waited for a smaller floor loom, but I wanted to reach out to my contact at FIT in NY who is patiently waiting for me to clear Structos. I wanted to make it worth the trip for her.

This is going to be a bit technical, so if you are not a weaver, just skip to the picture and move on. Malin Selander’s book is written for a sinking shed loom. I have rising shed jack looms. In a sinking shed loom, in Honeycomb, only one shaft gets pulled down at a time, the rest stay up. Easy treadling. (Though I’m curious because I’ve never seen an 8-shaft loom with a sinking shed, at least from the era the book was written). I have rising shed jack looms, like I said, which means, to have one shaft stay down, I have to lift 7, 36″ wide rock maple shafts. This is quite the workout. And yes, I could weave it upside down, but trust me, you don’t want to do that in Honeycomb. Cause I’m kind of designing as I go… Not only that, one of the designs in her Honeycomb sampler calls for 18 treadles. I have 10. It is easy to weave on a table loom, you just pull levers and engage the shafts you want. (There are 254 combinations of shafts in an 8-shaft loom) Not so easy on a floor loom. So I jumped down a rabbit hole, determined to figure out a skeleton tie up so I could use more than one foot, and get the tie-up down to 10 or less treadles.

There is an old program on the internet called Tim’s Treadle Reducer. I went there, and either it is no longer functioning, or I blew it up. If anyone knows its status, please let me know, it was a really handy tool. So I was on my own.

I sat with the draft for an hour or so, after transferring the tie-up for a rising shed loom. And slowly I worked it out to be able to use less than 10 treadles, two or three at a time, but set up in a way that one foot could press two at once, having the treadles adjacent to one another. I was pretty damn proud of myself. (I tweaked it further, shifting the plain weave to the middle, the photo shows the middle of my calculations.)

I haven’t woven that one yet, but this is a different design in her Honeycomb sampler, it is a very cool weave structure, but I’m going to be with this one for a while, since there are something like four yards on this 16/2 cotton warp.

Yesterday was an interesting day. First, it rained. We have been under extreme drought conditions here, I’m struggling daily to keep my plants alive, and Wednesday we planted another four dozen native bushes and perennials. It started raining Thursday night, resumed on Saturday, and well into this morning. I’m thinking we got more than 2″ of rain. For that I got on my knees and gave thanks to the universe for taking care of its own.

Secondly, if you own a PC with Windows 10, you probably know that October 15th is D Day. Microsoft will no longer support Windows 10 with security updates. Which is really problematic, leaving any computer with Windows 10 vulnerable. My tech guy came over yesterday, I was not going to try this myself, to upgrade my two computer systems to Windows 11.

Yeah, so the first computer, my laptop I use for teaching online, which I can annotate with a pen, set up in my studio, the processor in it won’t support Windows 11. So $1000 later, I have a new laptop on its way. Apparently the processor in my desk top computer will also not support Windows 11, but my tech guy, who is really brilliant, found a work around, and got everything on my desktop updated. Of course I have high anxiety knowing by the end of the week, I’ll be ripping my hair out making sure all my programs work on the new laptop, finding registration codes, passwords, etc., and getting a new code for Fiberworks. Which I definitely need that critical piece of computer software.

So one computer is safe and updated. And it rained. And I’m Covid free. And my sister didn’t get it. And my garden continues to delight and astound me. Leaves are starting to turn, things are beginning to die back. And I just cleared a number of looms, all going to good homes who will use them for teaching.

And I looked at the calendar and my eyes got really big, and I realized I have six weeks to make as much stuff as I can for the guild sale, inventory sheets are due the end of October. OMG! Fortunately I have a 5-yard plus Overshot sampler to start with…

Stay tuned…

Wonderful World of Color!

It has been a colorful couple of weeks. I warped up another Structo, this time with a summer/winter motif, that can explore the many ways to manipulate the tie-down threads to create different looks. I just did the first one, in brick formation, and this just made me smile, in the bleak mid winter days of February. I love the black background.

Over the weekend, I taught a two day remote class, actually it was one day, spread over two afternoons, with a group in California. I just marvel that I can wake up in NJ, do my usual morning routine, work a bit in the studio, flip on the computer and guide a dozen women 3000 miles away through a project. They were an enthusiastic group, and had some wonderful scraps, leftovers and workshop samples to play with. And one woman described how much the project made her smile when she remembered each bit of fabric, handwoven or otherwise, and the story behind it. I think I should call these memory mats. Anyway, here is a sampling. Photos are still rolling in!

If your guild is interested in this workshop, here is a link to the prospectus.

The Magic Puzzle Company, which inspired a fabric I wove this time last year, in spite of a broken shoulder, issued three more puzzles in the series. We dove into the first one, and I grabbed the poster and ran off to the studio with it. The colors were glorious, and perfect for the grey days of winter, and I knew I was jumping into the deep end on the next project.

I pulled as much yarn as I could fit on the counter, almost all of it is hand-dyed, except for a couple of commercial coned yarn fill ins and some extreme novelties, which I toss in here and there.

I used the draft from the puzzle fabric I did last year, converting it from 12 shafts to 8, because the floor loom I want to put it on is the only one that’s free. My daughter commandeered the 12 shaft loom! Because I’m using so many different weights of yarn and so many different structures, all requiring different setts, I carefully printed out the threading sequence, added yarn samples, and outlined a custom sett, which was important to know how many inches this baby would take up, since the loom was only 25″ wide. The number of ends is misleading, and the sett is an average of about 27epi, but it depends…

And then I started winding. I did five different 8 yard chains, each with about 5″ worth of warp.

And here they are all together waiting to be sleyed through the reed.

I had just the best time this week, carefully working from the skeins directly to the warping board, taping the ends to the mill frame instead of knotting, less waste and quicker, as I changed warp ends, sometimes every thread. Though I had a plan, often I deviated a bit with the color or blend of colors, throwing in a novelty here and there. It is the most creative I get in the weaving process and it is so much fun to see it all come together. I can’t wait to get this sleyed, threaded and beamed, and try the first couple of inches. I can’t imagine I’ll hate it, there is just too much fun color, but you never know…

So stay tuned to see how this goes…

All on account of…

My friend came to visit this afternoon. She said, “You haven’t posted in a while, I keep checking… I miss your posts…” My friend isn’t a weaver, has no sewing skills. We are musicians together, and raised our kids together, but she loves reading my posts. Who knew?… So, I promised her I’d sit down tonight and post one. And I was shocked at how behind I was on all the interesting goings on in my neck of the woods.

I made it through the holidays. They were quiet and somewhat challenging, but this is January, and a fresh start, and unlike this time last year, my shoulder is mostly healed and I’m carrying on. But January, after a couple of years break for Covid, means it is time to buckle down and do the final preparation for the Learn To Weave Class that I teach for my weaving guild, the Jockey Hollow Weavers. I spent the last few months rehabbing a number of additional small Structo looms I had acquired, and though the looms were ready to go, I had to wind 16 warps (I wind two at a time, cross at both ends and cut in half), and print all the handouts, and of course packing and loading the car. All on account of I had agreed to do this. I always ask myself why, until I’m actually doing it and I realize why I agreed to it and how much I love it.

We ended up with 14 students after a number of last minute cancellations, mostly from people not feeling well and terrified of spreading something nasty to fellow weavers. In the past no one would have thought twice about coming with a little cold or cough. But I appreciated the caution, and to my knowledge everyone from the class was and still is healthy.

So I give them each a small 4 shaft loom for the day. Most have no previous weaving experience, though a few are rigid heddle weavers, wondering what the shaft experience is all about. I prewind a warp from 8/4 cotton, in two colors, with a striped section in between, and they sley the reed, thread the loom according to the draft I give them, which has a point threading and straight draw, learn to read a draft, and weave off a small sampler of all the cool structures you can do on that point threading and straight draw. In one day. They work hard, and learn a lot.

Usually they either kindly thank me for opening their eyes to the work involved in weaving, or they want to jump right down that rabbit hole and immediately join the guild and borrow loaner equipment and become our newest weavers. I already have three who have since joined the guild. And one discovered a two shaft structo loom hiding in her basement purchased from some consignment shop years ago. It is only 2 shaft but she is on her way. These were her samples.

All on account of I did something really really dumb, something I’ve never done in 35 years of teaching, I double booked the day. Apparently back in May, I agreed to pencil in a date to give a lecture for a guild in Oregon. The same day as the Learn to Weave class. Which wasn’t officially in my calendar at the time. I didn’t hear back from the guild until the end of December with final plans. That’s not unusual, but what was highly unusual was there was no record of the lecture in my calendar. I never ever make that mistake. They couldn’t switch speakers from another month, and I’m too professional to just say, “sorry…”, so my daughter and I decided to actually film a video on the topic of What to Do with Leftovers, which was what the guild had asked me to lecture on. I scripted it, used the slides from the original presentation, and we created a YouTube video, about 48 minutes long, which I offered to the guild for free as compensation. I admitted to them they were basically doing a beta trial for me, so I didn’t feel like I wasn’t benefiting from the experience myself.

There were some technical challenges streaming the video, my daughter worked with them to try to iron out any issues. This was a guild who was not only showing the video to the in person meeting, but to those out in Zoom Land who were tuning in. That in itself presented challenges. I was on pins and needles all afternoon during the Learn to Weave class, hoping we wouldn’t get a call that they couldn’t get it to work, or something technical went wrong and they didn’t have a program. In the end, it all worked well. I heard they loved it, there was laughter all through the video, something about my deadpan comedic expressions (all my daughter’s clever editing, I can assure you) and applause at the end. They told me it was one of their best meetings. The palpable relief at the end of a successful Learn to Weave class and a successful guild lecture happening at the same time, was incredible. All on account of I screwed up.

Last year I saw this lovely project download on Webs (www.yarn.com) that had kitchen and dining room textiles, in three color ways. The structure for the striking mats and runner was Summer and Winter on 6 shafts. I bought the download and printed it. It called for 8/2 cotton, which I had a tonnage of…

It was all on account of I couldn’t see what I actually had because the cones were all stacked to the ceiling on top of the wall units four deep. So I had my daughter climb up and pass me down all the cones, which I lined up on the dye sink counter so I could start keeping a log of what I had, where it was from and how much of each color I had.

We eventually got all the yarn labeled, catalogued on little cards, and stacked back up, but I held back yarn I thought would work for the mats. I didn’t have a key color for each of the colorway choices, but I wasn’t about to order more yarn for a missing color, so I got creative with what I had. I substituted out the green for a more celadon color, I didn’t really like the green anyway (I did have that green, just not enough).

And I spent the day Wednesday, winding the 8 yard warp, sleying the reed, threading the loom, and beaming the yardage. I was weaving by Wednesday night. It is nice to know what’s on your shelf!

Meanwhile, on account of I was giving a remote lecture to another guild, also on the west coast, late last night, on the topic of Doup Leno, I decided to try to see if I could actually do that technique on one of my four shaft Structos. And so, I spent the early part of the week figuring that out, and was really pleased that not only did it work, but I really liked the fine lacey cloth from the 10/2 cotton, and I could use it as a second live demo during the lecture last night. I’m still experimenting with the cell height, but that’s expected.

And earlier in the month, or maybe it was during Christmas week when nothing happens, and there is always fun to be had in my studio, I set up an eight shaft Structo with a honeycomb structure, from Malin Selander’s book, Weave a Weave. I am having a blast with this one. All on account of I have these 30 Structo looms…

I’m sorry January is nearly over. I like this month, it is cold and nothing happens in the garden and I can hunker down and really play. Once the Learn to Weave class is over.

Stay tuned for more adventures on account of I have a bunch of looms that are naked and not happy with me, and of course, I have to update the prospectus now, for the What to Do with Leftovers lecture that has a viewing option of watching my video instead of me live on Zoom, for a lot less money! Seems like each time I do anything digital, there are 57 things that then have to be updated…

Happy New Year!

Loom gods and safe spaces…

I truly love my weaving studio, both of my studios actually, but the garage converted weaving studio is my beloved safe space, where nothing can intrude on my life and my looms know me and we have fun together. There is infinite creativity here, and I’m so very blessed to have this space in my life.

But first, the back story… Because you know there is always a back story. I’m a story teller…

When my late husband was still alive, he traveled the globe as a telecommunications consultant. When he wasn’t traveling, he worked mostly from home, in an office in a large bedroom space we strategically divided in half. I worked down the hall in this old house, in my weaving studio, which was created back in the 1980’s increasing an existing bedroom out 15 feet. It worked for me for most of my career.

I will admit that the computer gods and I weren’t friends. Back in the day, I always felt frightened of them, and found them to be rather hostile. My late husband on the other hand, had an intimate relationship with those computer gods, and I knew they loved him and behaved whenever he was around. I had that relationship with the sewing machine gods, just ask any student in a class with me who had a sewing machine issue. But not the computer gods…

It became a joke in our house, that I’d be working on something in the studio, which also contained my office, and something would go very very wrong. I’d text my husband down the hall, and ask him to come to the studio and just stand in the doorway. 30 seconds later, all 6’3″ of himself would appear and he would just stand there. And I swear, whatever was causing me grief on my computer system would instantly start working again. It really became a joke in our house because it happened so often. He wouldn’t even have to enter the room. It was as if they saw him coming and said, “Never mind…”

I even bought this hilarious creation at a craft fair for his desk. It now sits on mine. The computer gods and I have formed a truce. They miss him obviously, we all do, but we are OK together.

So in my weaving studio, whether you think there is any truth to inanimate things having some sort of soul, I can say with complete certainty, that looms, which were once part of living trees, (except the little metal Structos) and all the yarn in my studio, which came from living things, plants and/or animals, that there is a collective energy that makes its presence known. There are days they aren’t happy, and I feel it.

So in the morning, I turn on the lights, and have my smart speaker play some type of classical music, usually WQXR, NY classical radio, or if I don’t like what they are playing, Sirius XM channel 76, which is also classical. I have a few alternatives, like my Pandora account, in case I don’t like either of those choices, but I usually find something that soothes the soul, all of the collective souls, and I get to work. It has become a routine now, that I turn on the lights, and say good morning to all the looms, all 42, and then go about my day. The other morning, I said, “Good morning” and then had a thought, that the collective energy in the room should decide what music to play on the smart speaker. So I asked them. And I instantly got this blast of a voice in my head, “Strings”. Which surprised me, since Sirius XM just started a new station available on the app, called “Strings”, which I only discovered my smart speaker could play last week. So I thought, cool, “Strings” it is. I asked my smart speaker to play “Strings”, which is all violin/cello music, anything of any genre involving a stringed instrument. I started winding a warp for another Structo adventure, using my AVL warping wheel to load another set of spools, and as I’m winding this 20/2 warp I suddenly realized the irony of a group of looms asking for a station called “Strings”. And I started laughing.

I’m sure you are all thinking at this point that I’m completely losing it. Maybe I am. My daughter thinks I need to get out more. But I’m so happy in my garage/studio space, we all get along, and there is always something cool to create, some yarn to play with, some structure to explore. I’m making progress on entering my vast library into LibraryThing.com, and I’m up to 645 books. I’ve just started in on the weaving books. So much to study, explore, I really need 5 lifetimes to make a dent.

So my buddies in the weaving studio, the loom gods, keep me good company, and we collectively finished the first mohair blanket which I just had to cut off the loom. Because I wanted to see one completely finished, and secretly because I needed to resley half the warp because I put two mohair ends in the same dent. No one will know, but I didn’t want to weave the rest with that issue.

I am just so in love. This is what I remembered weaving 40 years ago, and I never had one of my own to curl up in. This one is mine. I can’t wait for winter. Meanwhile there is plenty of warp and plenty more weft in different colorways.

I have a student coming next week, for a week, for a private class in my weaving studio, and I needed to clear the loom I’ll be putting her on. I started this yardage last fall, from a weaver’s estate sale/donation, from some handpainted wool for the warp, along with some alpaca and merino, and the weft is merino for the ground and some 4 ply baby llama I bought from a knitting store. I put on 6 yards of warp, and thought I’d have enough of the llama for the weft. I’m less than a yard from the end, and have run out. So I found a couple balls of a similar weight 4 ply alpaca in a darker brown, and I’ll finish the yardage out of that. Don’t ask what I’m going to make. I never have any idea. (Except for the mohair blankets). I weave because I like to weave.

And I’m making progress on warping up many of my little Structos. These are such fun to work in miniature, and every time I set one up, I hear a small cheering squad in the background. My daughter named all the looms in the studio, and she gave all 19 Structos names of characters in Star Trek. They seem to love having personal identities. It seems to give them a soul, or at least a cooperative energy.

Here is Riker with a four shaft overshot gamp, by Robyn Spady, from a draft in the May/June 2014 issue of Handwoven. 20/2 cotton ground sett at 30epi. Pattern is 10/2 perle.

And here is Kira, with a Krokbragd warp, 8/4 carpet warp, sett at 15epi, from a project in the latest Handwoven magazine, May/June 2022.

It took a bit for me to get the courage to write this blog, because though I’m really loving my happy place, the world right now seems very cruel, uncivil, and just downright scary. I use social media when I have to, I have 2800 friends on facebook, and many, or rather most of them, I don’t actually know. Most are from the fiber community, and I love seeing what everyone else is working on, inspiration comes from many places, and no, you can’t create in a vacuum. But along with that, I have breaking news feeds from about 10 different news sources, some liberal, some conservative, some right in the middle. And the news this past week was about as unsettling as I’ve ever experienced. I’ve tried incredibly hard to keep my personal beliefs and politics to myself, because it isn’t anyone’s business, and I have a lot of students, friends, acquaintances around the world, and even family members who are passionate about what they believe and I have to respect that. As a trained artist, I’m taught to see all sides and perspectives of something, to extract out my vision, and act on it. But so much of life depends on so many factors, where were you raised, under what conditions, and in what generation. Do you have children and how old are they? My perspective has expanded having two children on either side of 30. And one is a staff sergeant in the military. He definitely has an opinion. The other is a member of a couple of marginalized groups, and so definitely has an opinion. Respect, and civility have always been my method for approaching life, pretty critical when you traveled and taught for a living. I tried hard to keep politics out of my classroom.

So this week, the US Supreme Court handed down a number of decisions that were really unsettling. Facebook exploded, and lines were drawn in the sand. And there I stood in the middle, not sure how to respond to any of it, because, though I knew how I felt about gun issues, and abortion issues, many of the people I love and respect, feel very very differently. (On the gun issue, NY and NJ have some of the toughest gun laws in the nation. NJ is the most densely populated state in the country. The Supreme Court ruling knocking down NY’s Concealed Weapon law was at first glance disheartening.) So I spent the last few days, talking to many people who pay attention but feel differently than I do. Creating a dialogue. Because that’s what we are missing in the world today. I did not take to facebook to scream vitriol, I reached out to those I respect who see life differently. I read as much as I could from different sources, keeping in mind which sources slanted liberal, and which slanted conservative. I NEVER watch cable news. Cable news is designed to scare you, get you angry and keep you coming back for more. I read. And talk to people who don’t see life the way I do. It is enough.

I will say, that in 1974, the end of my first year in college, when I ended up with a nervous breakdown, desperately trying to extricate myself from a relationship that was abusive and controlling, spending a week in the infirmary trying to heal physically, and mentally, and just get through my first year of college, that I found myself in a situation where I thought, after everything I’d been through, that I was pregnant. I have never been more frightened and alone in my life. Roe V Wade was newly passed, and I made my way to the nearest Planned Parenthood, and I’ve never been more grateful for anything in my life. Turns out I wasn’t pregnant, just really really messed up, and I began the slow process of healing. I told my mom years later, no one really knew what I went through, but to think that someone wouldn’t have that option, should they find themselves in a situation that there doesn’t seem to be any viable solution to, I’d want them to have that same set of choices. And my heart grieves that in some areas of the country, those options no longer exist.

Maybe we as a country can work together to find solutions that aren’t so black and white, because nothing is black and white in this world. Meanwhile I’ll scroll on past the vitriol on Facebook, look for the really pretty creative stuff, and keep reading and asking and having meaningful dialogue that can lead to some kind of middle ground. One can only hope. Meanwhile, “Strings” from Sirius XM is playing for my looms, and they are happy, and there is life and soul and positive energy in my happy safe space.

Stay tuned…