During the year just past, 2020, I bought a record number of reference books on weaving, tapestry, and textiles in general. I started reading one, then another arrived in the mail so I started that one too. This went on until I had about six books partially read, and I realized that I’m not mentally agile enough to read that many books at once!
Threads of Life: A History of the World through the Eye of a Needle is not the first book that arrived in my mailbox, but now it is the one that I have focused on finishing ahead of the others. When I decided to set the others aside and read this one, I became enthralled. I can hardly put it down. The author covers some important historical events where needlework factored heavily, such as the Norman Conquest and its recorded depiction in the well known Bayeux Tapestry. Another chapter covers Mary, Queen of Scots, and her many embroideries used as pleas to those who might give her aid. But what makes this book a page turner for me are the everyday stories of women and men who find solace or find their voice through working with a needle and thread.
The chapter titles are compelling. “Unknown” is about the women (nuns) who worked on the Bayeux Tapestry and whose identities we’ll never know. Other chapters, with titles like “Frailty,” “Captivity,” “Loss,” describe the many ways that needle and thread have assuaged human suffering or given voice to those who felt unseen and unheard. You can imagine what some of these circumstances might be before even reading the book. Jews in camps embroidering messages and emotions on fabric as small and delicate as handkerchiefs, men in POW camps doing the same. Larger works, like banners, express political ideas and personal causes. In 1985, a massive banner of appliques and embroidered quilt blocks, was displayed in Washington, DC, to draw attention to the HIV/AIDS pandemic. It was meant to wrap around the Pentagon.
“The Ribbon didn’t just wrap around the Pentagon. It spread across the Arlington Memorial Bridge, around the Lincoln Memorial, down the Mall, around the Capitol, back up the Mall, back to the Lincoln Memorial and the Pentagon.. It was 15 miles long.”
These are just a few of the many stories that the author addresses with such sympathy and understanding. She herself has worked with people who have PTSD or who are imprisoned. She helps both men and women find a non-verbal way to express their emotions through applique, embroidery, and other needle and thread techniques.
The author is well traveled, and she discusses the textile traditions of a number of places throughout the world. In one chapter she describes the traditions of many cultures that save bits of fabric from the possessions of forebears or dear ones, that are then repurposed to make new garments or accessories that are precious to the one who gathered them. I could absolutely feel the truth of this in my own life, in the textiles I have saved from both my grandmothers. In another chapter she describes what clothing is chosen in various cultures to send their loved ones into the next life. Some cultures keep a bit of fabric or clothing to cherish the memory of the departed one, while other cultures hang the clothing of the dead near the grave, out in the elements, so that the clothes deteriorate similarly to the buried loved one.
In my own experience of gathered fabrics, I have almost all of my paternal grandmother’s quilts, and they are precious to me. As a child I have a sense of lying on at least two of the quilts I now have, poring over the many fabrics used in the patchwork. Even as a young child I wondered where all the many, many fabrics came from that contributed to these lively quilts. One quilt is a cacophony of pale floral calicos that were cut into elongated diamonds and sewn together. When I was quite a bit older I realized that this quilt’s pattern is well known, a six-pointed star. It’s a riot of diamonds, mostly in pastel colors that whisper to be noticed. I think I gazed at these fabrics for many hours when she put me down for a nap during the afternoons I stayed with her. This is my favorite quilt. It predates memory. At some point when I was still a young child my parents took the quilt. The last I remember of it before I took it into my own possession was that my parents kept it in the back of our family station wagon for use at the beach, where we lived on Long Island. Even as a child I knew that this was a travesty for such a wonderful piece of family history–all those small elongated calico fabrics that encapsulated an era, probably the 1930s and 40s, in the southern U.S. where my grandmother lived. I knew I had to save this piece of family history and take better care of it than my parents were doing. I still have it. I don’t have it hidden away in archival tissue, but I do treat it gently.
I have a set napkins and a couple of placemats that were most likely woven in the 1940s. There is a small tag on one of the pieces that identifies the piece as being woven in Berea, Kentucky. Although there are a couple of pieces that coordinate with the set of eight napkins, they may not have come from the same weaver or even the same craft school in Berea. They are also precious to me, although I don’t know who wove these. Several years ago I contacted Berea College hoping to learn some of the names of the weavers from those long ago decades, but no one wrote back to me. The lower two mats in the photo are woven in Dukagang, a woven structure that I am particularly fond of weaving myself. The upper most fabric is Monk’s Belt, another favorite! I always use these during the Christmas holidays.
Melody, who is spending the fall and winter with us along with our younger son, expressed an interest in weaving, and I was happy to oblige. This is a photo of her weaving two kitchen towels at the end of a long warp.
Next we may weave some linen bread bags together for our ongoing sourdough bread baking. This is the project I have in mind, from Handwoven Magazine.
Naturally I hope all my handwoven items become heirlooms to my family, although I know this is highly unlikely! With the optimism of a typical grandmother, I hope one–or both!–of my granddaughters will be drawn to my textiles as much as I was to my grandmother’s. Time will tell.
It comes as no surprise that I highly recommend Clare Hunter’s book, Threads of Life!
Silver linings have been on my mind for some months now. In spite of the fact that I do not consider myself an overly optimistic person (I live with one, though!), I have found that the small mercies that occur quite often have been a significant factor in my outlook over the past year. I began to think of silver linings more and more as the new year approached. We’ve all got a long way to go before the restrictions we now live with will loosen, so it’s important that we stay the coarse however we can. For me, that will involve gratitude for silver linings.
I’m hesitant to list my silver linings. That doesn’t seem to be the point. The point is noticing them, being grateful for them, listing them privately to myself. Perhaps they have made the difference between madness and sanity.
During a year when I wasn’t certain I’d ever see my home again (perhaps a bit dramatic but definitely a worry), and during this time when my family grieves the loss of Bob’s mother in the last month of the year, there have been other moments that take some of the sting out of the hard things. Life has always been this way, but this year I’ve taken more notice of it.
After Bob’s mother passed he began to search through boxes and boxes of old photos. Together we’ve taken a wonderful trip down memory lane.
Our younger son moved back to the East Coast to live with us in September, after he had spent a long spring and summer isolating due to the pandemic, and being mostly confined indoors in the mildest part of the country due to the wildfires spreading through California. He came to us with his partner Melody and their Siberian husky, Mila. This is the first time in my adult life that here has been another female in the house. What a marvelous addition Melody is! She expressed interest in learning to weave, and since I had a very long warp on my Baby Wolf for making kitchen towels in an Ms & Ws threading from Strickler, I thought she might enjoy trying her hand weaving the last few yards of that warp. She made two towels: the first in plain weave and the second in a straight twill. Next time she’ll make the warp and dress the loom. She would like to weave a shawl while she is here.
I am nearing the end of winding a warp for what I hope will be a fun blanket for Tori, granddaughter #1. It’s a variation on Susan Poague’s draft for circles in turned taquete. I’ve expanded the draft to 16 shafts (Susan’s design is 8 shafts.), and I’ve chosen a heavier cotton yarn for this project to make it a better blanket weight. Or so I hope! My warp and weft is 6/2 unmercerized cotton from WEBs. I’m so excited to get this project going. If it works as I hope, I will post the draft here.
This is Tori, who will get this blanket. Her family is in our small bubble, but we don’t see them too often since they live so far away. They have a lake house that is halfway between their house and ours, so we’ve met there a couple of times. When we saw them last week we celebrated Tori’s birthday, Christmas, and my birthday. It was festive! In this photo she is playing with her first installment of her monthly activity box from Kiwi.
How has the year started for you? Now, more than ever, we need to stay connected and get excited and inspired by the new work that’s out in the textile world. This morning a friend sent a link to this article from Architectural Digest about a new tapestry by Helena Hernmarck. I hope you enjoy it! The photo alone should do that! I hope it gets your juices flowing. I’ve bought almost a dozen new books this year, and I’m so thankful for each of them. In the next post I think I’ll write a short review of each of them. Let’s keep each other engaged!
A sheep farmer in Wiltshire left a message for me here, and when I contacted her privately, she gave me a bit more info about the sheep she raises. I hope we can continue our correspondence because I would love to know more specifics about her own sheep and the situation in the UK in general. It made my day be able to contact her!
The sheep on Margaret’s farm are related to the Wiltshire Horn breed which she told me are natural shedders. Her flock have been crossed now to shed more so that they don’t need to be sheared.
This is such a revelation to me. The earliest sheep were shedders. Women learned to spin wool by collecting the bits of discarded wool that might cling to things where the sheep had grazed. Fast forward many, many millennia to a time still in the distant past, where humans have been breeding sheep NOT to shed, to have many different kinds of fibers to be used by humans for many different products. Now look where we’ve gone–back to wanting sheep that lose their fleeces naturally. Margaret said that shearing her flock would cost three times what the fleece would bring at market. She also said that the cross she raises has coarse fibers which work well in the climate of Wiltshire. That surprised me. I can’t imagine a climate much worse than the remote islands off the coast of Scotland, where those sheep (Shetland and Ronaldsay come to mind) have wonderfully soft fibers for cold weather. There’s a lot to this that I clearly don’t understand. Margaret also told me that this fall has been exceptionally wet in her part of the world–cold and wet. Her sheep need their coarse coats in order to stay dry and warm. I am fascinated by this. If I learn more I’ll share it.
Meanwhile, if you want to read a bit about this history of Wiltshire Horn sheep, you can look here. I didn’t see anything about shearing vs. shedding there, but I intend to keep searching. I found that I could buy a little Wiltshire Horn stuffed sheep here. Tempting.
Meanwhile, my weaving feels like it is moving at a snail’s pace. On the bright side, just a few minutes ago I finally cut off 6 yards of cotton and linen blend fabric that is going to become six towels. The woven structure is in Carol Strickler’s A Weaver’s Book of Eight-Shaft Patterns. It’s #314. I used Jane Stafford’s cotton boucle for the warp and much of the weft. By the time I was truly bored with weaving, and my color options of the cotton boucle were dwindling, I switched to weaving with Gist’s cotton/linen called “Duet.” Maybe I was just so bored with the boucle, but the Duet cotton/linen seems a better look to me. I will keep that towel for myself. I don’t really know why I wove all of these! I don’t know anyone who has a kitchen that calls for out the colors I chose.
I was deeply in need of weaving when I returned home from a long winter away, locked down for months in foreign countries and feeling very much an outsider–an outsider not wanted due to the fear of pandemic we might bring to the small islands we visit each year on our sailboat. When I got home I couldn’t wait to just mindlessly sit at my small loom and weave. I wove off the napkin warp that did not get finished before leaving on the long voyage last November. Then I wove two linen warps dyed with indigo for waffle weave face cloths. Then came the warp for nine (yikes! nine!) kitchen towels with JST cotton boucle. Who will want these somewhat odd colored towels? I’ll keep two, but that leaves another four! Ah well, I needed to make them for sanity, for therapy. Now I can move on.
Next on my list is a variation of the popular turned taquete circles that Sue Poague developed and showcased in Handwoven in one of the issues from 2019. I actually bought a set of placemats from her because I was so intrigued with this weave structure and yet would not be home to weave any for myself. They cheered me up every night at dinner on our boat while we were in far away places. Back home I wanted to plan a blanket for my older granddaughter in this structure, but I wanted the circles to be bigger. I have a larger loom with 16 shafts, so I started trying to expand the pattern to more harnesses. I think I have it sorted and hope to start winding the warp soon. I’ll share the pattern when I can determine that it weaves well. I’ve bought a large selection of 6/2 cotton in eight colors so the threads will be thicker for blanket weight. I’m excited to get started! I have spent more time than I care to admit on color arrangement. I have seven colors for the circles, and the background warp and all the weft will be a medium grey. I need 19 color stripes across my warp and I’m having a devil of time arranging them in what I hope will be a pleasing order. Ugh! Isn’t it the smallest details that cause the greatest delays? I’ve taken multiple photos on my phone of color arrangements, and then I’ve edited those photos to be black and white so I can assess the values of the circles going across the warp. I’m not happy yet.
Looks like summer, right? I now use these when eat outside at home. Well, I hope my blanket will look as pretty as these placemats. I’d better get to making that warp!
Oh, boy! Last night I got quite riled up about people’s attitude toward wool. Bob sent me this article from the Times of London. It’s called “Shear Waste,” and it covers the dire situation of sheep farmers across the UK. This year many farmers burned their fleeces or added them to their compost. For years I’ve heard that farmers expend more energy and money in caring for sheep than they get when they sell the fleeces at market. This year the new low was 33p per kilo, which I learned does not even cover the expense of shearing. This is heartbreaking. Seriously, I am crestfallen by this situation.
From the Times of London, Fleeces being composted at Stuart Fletcher’s Sussex farm
I went looking for more information, and I started with the Campaign for Wool. I had no idea this endeavor is now 10 years old. Time flies. How have things gotten worse instead of better? It seems that many people in the UK feel that wool is only useful for rugs these days. Whoa! I have had the pleasure of spinning some wonderfully soft wools from the UK, and nothing–absolutely nothing!–gives me more pleasure than knitting or spinning Wensleydale or Shetland wool. Am I mistakenly under the impression that everyone in the UK knits? …at least for a few years as a child? Don’t they need fresh supplies of wool and the ability to try the many breeds that are grown all around them? Aren’t designers, especially of men’s suiting, always in need of wool?
A few months ago I read the book Wild Dress: Clothing and the Natural World, by Kate Fletcher. The author is Professor of Sustainability and Fashion at the University of the Arts London. She has written other books, but in this one her writings are autobiographical. She explores the relationship between garments and our human connection to nature. The chapters read like essays to me, and in one she marvels at people who spend time in nature by hiking through the landscape. She notes that nowadays, you have to dress the part of someone who spends times in nature by wearing the most unnatural clothing. If you aren’t wearing a polyester fleece made from recycled plastic bottles and elastane-nylon pants, you must not be a serious outdoorsman. Kate Fletcher writes, “As garments go, there are few pieces less natural than a polyester fleece pullover. Nor are there many pieces that act to distance the world outside more than those made from filaments of hydrocarbon with their high resistance to micro-organisms, poor heat isolation and low water absorbency. The things we are wearing to arrive in nature do not, cannot, let nature in… We keep her at arm’s length, or more literally at sleeve’s length, with hydrophobic fibres, an impervious fabric membrane and garments so durable they will outlive us all.”
Wool has so many uses. It can keep you warm and is fairly water resistant. Through millennia of sheep breeding wool can be soft enough for undergarments and tough enough for weatherproof yurts. It can insulate houses, hang on the wall as a beautiful way to keep out drafts. It can become stunning clothing and household items when knitted or woven or felted. I thought there were many millions of people clambering to have excellent sources of wool. So how can these farmers be in dire straits right now? I am worried that they will soon give up sheep farming and turn to something else. What will I do? I can’t possibly be the only one who fears this.
I own exactly one polyester fleece pullover which I bought at least 30 years ago to support a non-profit group I had joined. I still have it, and I wear it only occasionally, although never out in public. I have a wardrobe of sweaters I knit myself that I love to wear out in public. Most of my friends and acquaintances also love the sweaters and other garments that they have woven or knitted. Even if you yourself do not knit or weave, I bet you know at least a handful of people who do. We are everywhere.
About a decade ago I joined the Association of Guilds of Weavers, Spinners and Dyers in the UK. Ten months of each year there are online workshops to take. One month we focused on breeds of sheep that are not well known. Each participant got a small amount of fleece directly from the farmer to comb or card and then spin. I got some Ronaldsay fleece from the Orkney Islands off Scotland. I got some Bowmont-Merino fleece from Leslie Prior’s farm in Devon. That was an amazing bit of fleece to spin. She has the only Bowmont sheep farm in the world, and at one point there were only 28 sheep at her farm. I felt so lucky to get a bit of this wonderful fiber to spin. Since then I believe she has prospered with this breed. She has an outlet for getting the yarn spun in the UK, and made into garments and household items that are manufactured in the UK.
When we had the fleece workshop through the UK Guild, those of us outside the UK did not know for certain if we’d ever receive our fleece samples, or how long it might take to receive them. The ones I chose all arrived at my house, and I think the longest delivery time was only three weeks, which is fast considering these packages had to go through the Animal Plant Health Inspection Service of the United States Department of Agriculture. The inspectors have the right to send back anything they deem unsafe. After playing with various fleeces from the around the UK, I ordered a kilo of Ronaldsay from Orkney. I washed the wool, combed it and spun it before knitting it into a sweater for my younger son Chris. I’d love to spin some more Bowmont now!
This is my long winded way of saying that I hope there is some way to save the wool industry in the UK. I read that half the wool stays in the UK, but the other half gets exported throughout the world. One quarter of the wool goes to China, and this year, due to the pandemic, no wool could be sent there. In the article I linked at the beginning, I also learned that British wool is used in carpets on airplanes and cruise ships, and those industries are certainly suffering at this point in time. To me, wool can be such a luxury item that we should all cherish it. I don’t want to lose that. What can I do?
I’ll end this with some stunning wool products and some links.
This is the story of a student design project for Campaign for Wool to create new designs for Holland and Sherry, a well known Saville Row shop known for their use of high end wool fabrics.
Dear Reader, are you a knitter? Were you shocked when you learned that the most creative knitter of all time, Cat Bordhi, passed away in September? I did not know she had been living with cancer for some time. I did not know that she was 69. She’s the most youthful 69 year old I’ve ever seen, and I think that must be because of her inquisitive nature, her drive to find new ways to achieve results in knitting. Her creativity makes my brain hurt, but I’m always so happy and intrigued to try her techniques.
Cat Bordhi
Recently, I got another shock from the knitting world. Annie Modesitt also passed away, on October 1. I knew she’d been dealing with overwhelming health issues for many years, both her own as well as her husband’s. Two knitters of such immense creativity are gone.
This year has been stressful for everyone between the pandemic, the world political situation, advancing climate change issues, and our own presidential election. My best stress reliever is always doing something textile-related, having thread or yarn in my hands–weaving, knitting, embroidery. That’s the main reason I wove two sets of waffle weave face cloths, and now have a set of eight kitchen towels on my small loom. On Monday I saw Amy Singer’s tweet about having a knit along to relieve our election anxieties. She offered a choice of three knit designs or mentioned that any of us could just knit something, anything, together. And that’s when I knew I had to knit at least two of Cat’s ‘anemone hats.’ The first two would be for my granddaughters, Tori and Emme. Maybe I can even knit one for Rhett without the moebius brim. Outrageously cute, right?
I ordered lots of yarn for these hats because I also want to knit two adult hats, even though I have no particular recipients in mind.
The yarns I’ve ordered so far are from Lorna’s Laces, called “Shepherd Worsted.” The yarn for the adult hat, pictured on the left, is a color called “black pearl.” It will be hard to give that hat to anyone but me! Can you see the little amethyst stitch markers on the needles? They are from Twice Sheared Sheep, my favorite source of stitch markers and row counters. They came in the adorable tin on the right side of the photo. I have a couple colorways of Malabrigo yarn waiting in a shopping cart for a few more hats.
So knitting has been my ‘go-to’ for a good deal of each day this week. Most of the reason for that is there is a mistake on the kitchen towels I’m weaving! It’s a weaving mistake, so all I should have had to do is UNweave by treadling the sequence backwards. But life can be full of limiting conditions, and here are mine:
–My Baby Wolf has the combby dobby head attachment, and the reverse button does not work, and supposedly cannot be fixed.
–I use Fiberworks PCW, and I should be able to ask the program to weave in reverse, but I haven’t had luck with that. So I have looked for the place in the pattern where I can weave forward and yet be UNweaving what I did. I am using an Ms & Ws pattern (Strickler 314.5) that reverses, so as long as I’m weaving forward in the part of the pattern that is the reverse of my problem area, this should work. And it does work. I’ve now UNwoven twice without a hitch. It’s when I begin to go forward again, finding the place that goes forward from where I left off, that hasn’t worked.
After two reversals and two botched forward attempts, I walked away from the loom in a snit. That was about 2 weeks ago now. With all the other anxiety-producing stuff going on, I was not in a good place for tackling this. I think I’ve recovered sufficiently, mostly from knitting all those squiggly anemones, to tackle this again. I’m headed to the loom shortly. Wish me luck!
I must share a perk from this week of stress. A friend gave me a big treasure box of antique and vintage linens. Oh my, oh my! I’ve been swooning over the contents for two days now. I’ve dealt with the stains that mostly came from years (and decades) of being stored on wooden shelves that allowed tannins to migrate into the linen. So I have soaked some of the items in Oxyclean and then washed them in the machine. There are tablecloths and napkins, large linen bath towels, handmade bobbin lace edgings on doilies, and even linen bedsheets embroidered in pulled thread designs with satin stitch monograms. Three of the bedsheets are a stunning peachy-pink. I feel weak every time I look at these treasures!
This looks like Portuguese embroidery to me. Want to weigh in? — please get in touch! I have two of these tablecloths, and 12 coordinating napkins. One cloth is sized for a small table (72″), and the other is probably good for sitting 10 or 12, at 120″. I hope I get to try the large tablecloth someday. I wonder if we will ever have large dinner parties, or holiday dinners in the future. I hope so!
There are eight of these beautiful placemats. They have no stains, so all I had to do was iron them.
There are three of these large linen bath towels. There are tannin stains on at the folds. I have soaked them in a mild solution of Oxyclean and warm water overnight, and then run them through the normal machine cycle on warm wash, cold rinse. They are significantly better, but not yet perfect. Maybe ‘perfect’ is not attainable; maybe that’s okay.
Keeping my hands busy is definitely helping this week, especially learning the wonderful moebius cast on, knitting, and binding off, of Cat Bordhi’s fun anemone hat. I hope your hands are busy too! — in a good way.
The last time I wrote something here it was late spring, and now it’s early autumn. Where did the summer go? Have you felt the pressure of these past few months? The strain on our lives due to fires in the West, floods in the upper midwest, hurricanes along the Gulf Coast. Along with the pandemic it feels like we are living through an apocalypse. I did not add in the political strife, but I certainly feel it. I wrote this post in early October, and now we are just days from the end of yet another month. It’s now mid-autumn, no longer early.
I’ve been spinning my wheels all summer and not managing to verbalize any of it. Ideas and plans are swirling around my head, but not much seems to come of all my deliberating. Some of this dilemma is literal. I have done a lot of spinning. What a calming activity, especially when I listen to audio books while doing it. I expected that a bit of yarn spinning would help the thoughts spinning in my head, but it hasn’t worked that way. I have a large stash of silk tops, and this summer I managed to start turning them into yarn….yarn that might become yardage, someday…..yardage that might become a garment of some kind. All of this is completely nebulous. That feels appropriate since right now nothing in my life feels defined, or planned, or like anything I might count on to happen or become.
Today (meaning back in early October) I spoke with a friend who produces a news program on one of the major radio stations. I told her I was ‘reeling’ from the news over the past week. She laughed and said we should all be reeling–reeling our yarn onto niddy noddies, onto spools, onto anything at hand. So true.
And my own weaving? Right now I cannot make myself look at the tapestry diary I started while we were living in the Caribbean over the winter and spring. It is too raw and too fresh. Of course I am berating myself that it is a diary of this year, and this year will soon be finished while the tapestry will not. At the moment, with everything else going on, I just don’t want to dwell on the experiences of this year. Who knows where that will lead. In the meantime, I’ve woven a couple of fabric projects on my smaller loom, the Baby Wolf. I finished the set of napkins that were waiting for me on my return. They are pinned for hand sewing the mitered hems, but as of right now I’ve only actually hemmed one of the four. There are six in the set. I gave the first two at Christmas with the promise that the rest of them would be done before the next Christmas arrives. I’d better get on with the hemming.
I wove two sets of waffle weave face cloths (for a total of 10), based on two I bought from Are Clothes Modern weaver Arianna Funk. Her face cloths are done in Swedish 5S waffle weave, with hand dyed indigo warps that a friend of hers dyed for her. I was lucky to find two colorways of indigo dyed linen from Claudia Hand Painted Yarns this summer. One is very pale and the other quite dark. I wove the pale indigo warp in 8S waffle weave. I love them! I thought I might tie on the dark indigo warp to weave the same structure, but in the end I decided to warp and rethread for a 6S waffle weave.
I can’t decide which project I like best. The face cloths are such simple things. Hardly worth the effort perhaps, but again, they were so therapeutic to weave. I enjoyed thinking about who might get these little gifts, and what I might include with this gift, like local handmade soap or one of L’Occitane’s lavender soaps from Provence. Weaving them was a time of escaping the current stress of the world and doing something profoundly simple but caring. Self care, if nothing else.
Here are some of the light ones, ready for giving. I saved one for myself, which is why there are only four in the image.
I could not capture the true blue of the darker indigo face cloths.
This is the closest I got to showing the color of the dark indigo skeins.
Much of the summer I enjoyed gardening and bringing cut flowers into the house. Bob and I visited our older son and his family a few times. He lives in a state that is as low in Covid cases as Connecticut, and both our families are not seeing anyone at this time, so we made a bubble together. They surprised me with a half birthday celebration since my real one falls in January when we are in the Caribbean. The twins turned two as I had a ‘half birthday.’ It’s impossible to get a photo of all three grandchildren together. They are like billiard balls released from the triangle!
The garden off my studio in June, when the clematis and astilbe were looking lovely.
One of our front window boxes in midsummer.
The garlic chives in late August.
There is a glorious finale to the gardening season this year. We’ll have a frost later this week that will end the morning glories, but not the monkshood.
A silver lining to being somewhat locked down at home is that there are fiber festivals that I would normally never get to visit until this year, when many of them went virtual. I took a virtual visit to Edinburgh in September for Scotland Cloth #20. It was well done, with the ability to visit the virtual booths of the artisans, watch videos that some of the fine crafts people had prepared, even choose music to accompany one’s tour of the festival. I’ve had a desire to buy something from Bonny Claith (aka weaver Cally Booker), and this was my chance. Now that it’s a bit colder, I’ve been enjoying my new cowl, sent all the way from Scotland! It’s a great accessory for my ancient Elsbeth Lavold designed cable sweater (Siv). And note my new do. After 10 months with no haircut my hair came down to the middle of my back. It was not youthful! I had become one of those stereotypes of a weaver with long gray hair. All I needed to complete the look was Birkenstock’s and cats.
Now that we are well into autumn, I find that I am no more focused or settled than I was in mid-summer. I am still spinning that silk stash. I’ve finished the face cloths and moved onto another ‘homey’ project of a long warp for eight kitchen towels. Kitchen towels? Truly, I am craving some simple luxuries. I got out my warp trapeze that Bob built for a much larger loom. It works quite well on my small Baby Wolf, and warping was a walk in the park!
I will have eight variations on the towels. This is the first towel, and I’m currently on the fourth.
Yet I find that I am still in a muddle, with so many ideas and plans, and no clear path to prioritize what I want to do. I just want to do everything while also enjoying what little socializing I am able to do within our small bubble. Last week I was still pining for the wonderful hand dyed indigo linen I used in the face cloths. I decided to plan a project for an undetermined top using linen from my stash. Here’s what I found in the stash.
As you can see, the linen is quite old. The front two spools are the same dye lot, but the other two are not. It will make a nice mixed warp when these subtle natural colors are dyed with indigo. Fingers crossed.
I feel so disconnected from people these days– my weaving friends, lace friends, old friends and new. I hope you are well, and that there are things in life that give you joy, make you want to get up in the morning to spin your own wheels, real or otherwise. And I hope there are gifts in your life, both received and given. Enjoy the season and please stay well.
It’s great to be home again, in spite of these very stressful times: a once-in-a-100-year pandemic…oh!…and political turmoil that feels like the start of civil war. I have found, amidst the strife and worry, that I can find solace in simple things. Every day I make a promise to myself to do something, any small thing, that will just feel good.
Who can predict what can change an attitude? Yesterday I was so stirred up with anxiety and disappointment, I picked up a small cross stitch pattern that I bought years ago. I haven’t given this a thought since about a week after buying it on impulse. It came into my line of sight yesterday because I was looking for something else. Without conscious thought I simply brought it up to my ‘nest’ chair in the den and began to stitch the little sheep. It’s actually a Christmas design. It’s June. I have no idea what I would ever do with this little sheep….but it feels good right now. I’m going to stick with it based on just that: it feels good.
I’ve been thinking about Sarah Swett’s paper yarn that she spins from used coffee filters. One of her friends dyed some of the filters with indigo and cochineal. Then Sarah dyed some herself. Hmmm. I have a big collection of onion skins, and I have madder. Oranges, reds, golds. What a comforting way to spend time. I’ve enjoyed just washing my filter each morning and draping it to dry over the kitchen faucet. I’ve starting cutting a few in prep for the spinning. It’s mindless work that requires some attention to detail to make the concentric cuts even. A perfect feel-good activity.
Digging in the dirt feels good right now too. Some things are bursting into bloom in my garden; some things are still just seeds in pots waiting to sprout. My lettuce is in between. Right now I’m happy to watch it grow.
The whole gamut of garden life feels encouraging right now, and I need that. I’m keeping track of the types of birds at our feeders (4 different varieties of woodpeckers, goldfinches, wrens and house finches, a red breasted grosbeak! Where are the Baltimore orioles this year?) There are wrens and house finches nesting in multiple places, near doors that we now have to avoid in order not to disrupt their important task of making and raising a family. We have droves of hummingbirds nesting in the trees near our back deck. They are at war with each other for domination of the feeders we have hanging from the deck. Nature has no idea what evil lurks in men’s hearts. The garden is a great place to escape!
What are you doing for solace these days? I hope it feels good and renews your equilibrium. Is this the new normal? It’s not all bad, especially if we can each spend a bit more time doing simple things that spark joy.
I have four napkins to hem for Melody and Chris, a very simple task. Thread and needle and probably a couple of hours of attention to the detail of making small , even stitches around a piece of handwoven cloth. I feel quite lucky to have such a task before me.
I’ve written this short tutorial for a friend who would like to start weaving, although we are far apart at the moment and not able to visit during these strange times of the Covid-19 pandemic. At the moment I am living on a boat, far from home, so I do not have access to the loom or the materials that I’d use to do this. Since I do not have access to my studio, I am using a loom that already has a project in progress on it. I’ve covered the work in progress so it will be less distracting, but there is a bit of my cartoon showing in the photos I’ve taken. Try to ignore it! Also the warp is fairly fine at 12 ends per inch. At home I have a sample loom set at 4 ends per inch which makes the techniques far easier to see.
Hopefully when I return home, I will replace these photos with new ones taken of my sample loom with the big, fat warp at 4 epi! I hope my friend finds this useful, and I hope you do too!
Winding a Bobbin: In order to begin weaving, you need to fill a bobbin with weft yarn. There is a left/right orientation to doing to this, and in the photos below I am showing it being done for left-handers since I am one myself, as is my friend.
Although the photos show winding a bobbin for a left-hander, the description is written for either handedness. With the bobbin in your dominant hand, you want to turn that hand in an outward motion so that you do not cause any wrist strain. Start with the bitter end of the yarn parallel to the bobbin’s neck, with the rest of yarn facing upwards over the top of the bobbin.
Make a wrap or
two with the yarn in the direction that will allow your dominant hand to turn
outward. Then wind the rest of the
yarn onto the bobbin by turning your dominant outward over and over again,
while your non-dominant hand guides the placement of the yarn.
Winding a bobbin for left handed weaving
Doing this allows the yarn to wind on with no extra twist. Winding bobbin with a left or right orientation allows the yarn to spool off the bobbin properly for your handedness.
Some people have hand and wrist injuries that may make this procedure uncomfortable. If so, you can use your non-dominant hand to wind the yarn on the bobbin in a ‘round and round’ motion. This does put some added twist into the weft yarn, but saves any discomfort.
How to hold the
bobbin for weaving: Always
hold the bobbin in your dominant hand, no matter which direction you are
weaving. Making the effort to
master this will enable you to weave consistently and to weave faster in the
long run. In the beginning one
direction will be easier than the other.
Although I am not the type of teacher who gives ultimatums, I will tell
you that I never break this rule
myself.
Hold the bobbin in a similar manner that you would hold a knife: with your index finger extended down the shaft of the bobbin and your thumb nearby, as shown. The rest of your fingers curl around the bobbin for support. In this position you can beat in your weft using a motion that comes from your arm.
The proper way to hold a bobbin
I’ve seen students hold the bobbin as they would hold a pen or a pencil. When you use the bobbin to beat in the weft in this position it is far less effective. It is a weak way to beat in the weft. Do not hold the bobbin this way!
Do not hold the bobbin like this!
You will pick up weft threads with your non-dominant hand and use your dominant hand to pass the bobbin through the shed you have created, putting the head of the bobbin in first. Keep the bobbin in your dominant hand as it exits the shed.
How to insert the bobbin from right to left in a shed.
–Do not make a bubble of weft! Meaning: do not make a curve of weft before beating. Leave the unwoven weft rising up from the fell of the cloth at about a 30-degree angle. Holding that weft with your non-dominant hand, beat the weft in place with the point of the bobbin (in your dominant hand), while adjusting the amount of weft in the shed as you beat toward the last warp thread in your shed.
In this shed I am weaving from the right selvedge to the left. My non-dominant hand is underneath tensioning the weft as my dominant hand beats the pick into place.
–In one direction of weaving you will be picking your shed in the direction you are weaving, and this will feel logical and normal. Going the other direction you will have to pick the shed in the opposite direction of your weaving. It may seem awkward at first, but with practice it will start to feel as normal as the other direction feels. Keeping the bobbin in your dominant hand will make for more consistent tension and better-looking weaving. The hand that is picking the shed will quickly learn to go in both directions. Trust me on this!
Begin Weaving: Based on the loom you are weaving, you will have some kind of foundation weaving before starting your woven design. On the copper pipe loom I am using I have a scaffolding of warp yarn going across the warp as well as a section of foundation weaving using warp thread as weft. It looks a bit disheveled because I have just added it to a project that is already underway. For a real project I would also have added a row of double knotted soumak in thread before starting the weaving for my project. These are procedures for warping a copper pipe loom, which needs its own tutorial. To start weaving you need to put a half hitch of weft around the first warp thread of the area you plan to weave.
In the photo below I am pointing to the selvedge where I will begin weaving. The two outer warp threads show a high and low. The edge thread is a low, which means it is not covered by the foundation weaving. The second thread in is a high; it is covered with weft of the foundations weaving.
The bitter end of the half hitch always goes under the weaving that will commence. It will lie between the fell of your foundation and the first row of weft. Later when you hitch off in order to start a new bobbin of yarn, that bitter end of yarn will also lie between the fell of your woven cloth and half hitch you are making. In this way, the half hitch will always be well secured by the weft rows that pile up on top of it as you weave.
I have placed the bitter end of my weft between the first two warp threads. To begin weaving I will bring the bobbin around the outermost thread as well as behind the second warp thread which needs to be a low. In other words, I will pick up both the edge threads and put the bobbin behind both of them. That will give me a covered edge thread and uncovered second thread, which matches what I need to weave to continue the plain weave I established in the foundation weaving. After picking these two thread together, I can continue across the row picking every other thread, as normal.
Starting to weave by making a half hitch to secure the weft.
–During weaving you will only pick 1” or less of warp threads. If you pick more than an inch of warp you are likely to have tension problems, especially as a beginning weaver. Your practice warp is set at 8 ends per inch. To pick a 1” section of warp you will only pick up 4 warp threads at a time, pass the bobbin and beat, then pick up no more than 4 more warp threads. Repeat. This is the other ‘rule’ that I never break.
–Selvedges are a little fussy. In reality you need to have slightly more tension as you turn the weft around the last warp thread. This may not be a noticeable difference that you can observe, but eventually you will feel it. Too much additional tension will pull in your selvedges and the weaving will get distorted at the edges. Too loose tension at the selvedge will cause some bumps and bagginess. This is true of the shapes you’ll make in weaving. Small shapes need a bit tighter tension than large shapes. Getting your tension just right takes practice, practice, practice!
–While weaving, it helps to pay attention to the space between your warp threads. If a section of warp is getting closer than the original sett you will begin to have trouble packing in the weft. That area of weaving will start to rise higher than the rest of your weaving. When it gets too tight you will begin to see warp threads through the weaving. This is called ‘lice’ because it looks like little white spots. (I guess medieval weavers immediately thought of lice, rather than some other small white dotted thing, like snow flakes or grains of salt.) In normal weft faced cloth, the most recent pass will have some warp showing because there is not yet enough weft to cover the warp. After two or three passes of weft the warp should be completely covered, and there should be distinct weft beads covering each warp.
–There are simple solutions to warp space problems, especially if you catch the problem early on before you start to get warp spots showing. Try using your bobbin to strum across the warp before continuing to weave. In the next few picks of weaving use the tip of your bobbin to go a bit deeper into the warp as you beat in the weft. The tapered tip of your bobbin will spread the warp a bit if you put the tip in deeper than you’ve done in previous passes. If you need a bit more adjustment, you can take both hands and pull on that section of warp threads. You’ll be pulling horizontally across the warp, each hand pulling outwards to pull the warp threads apart slightly. Continue weaving paying close attention to the area that got too tight.
–The warp in my photos is sett at 12 epi and the section I am weaving a section 3″ wide. At this sett, that is a bit wider than I would normally weave with one bobbin. I would weave this space with two bobbins of the same color weft. To weave with multiple bobbins in any given row you must weave each section of the row in opposite directions. That is called weaving in opposing sheds.
My initial weaving was done in the open shed with the bobbin going right to left. Your loom may not have an open and closed shed, but you can check which shed you used to weave with the first bobbin. You need to go in the opposite direction with the second bobbin in that same shed.
I am holding the open shed in this photo, and it matches the weaving in the shed that goes from right to left. Therefore, to start a second bobbin, I need to weave left to right in the open shed in order to be going in the opposite direction. To do that I will start my 2nd bobbin on the left side of my warp and weave in the open shed toward the right.
I am holding the open shed in this photo, and it matches the weaving in the shed that goes from right to left. Therefore, to start a second bobbin, I need to weave left to right in the open shed in order to be going in the opposite direction. To do that I would start my 2nd bobbin on the left side of my warp and weave in the open shed toward the right.
I will demonstrate this now using a different color of yarn to make a small angled shape. As you can see the final warp thread needs to be covered since in the shed below it was an uncovered warp (a low). To hitch on, I put the bitter end of the weft between the first and second warp thread to the back. I then picked up both the first and second warp thread and placed the weft behind both threads. This allowed the first warp to be covered (a high) and the second warp to be uncovered (a low). Also the hitch lies between the previous row of weaving and the new row which will secure it in place. Now I can weave across the row picking every other thread, as normal.
This is the first pass of the second weft bobbin.
If you notice I have worked the second bobbin to place where I wanted to turn to make a new shape. When I turned the weft to complete the pass, the warp thread where I turned is covered, which is called a ‘high.’ You may need to open this image in a new tab and enlarge it to see that I turned on a high, or covered the first warp of the new row. When I weave the first color to meet it I should turn on a low, which will be an uncovered warp thread. This will maintain the high/low plain weave structure across the whole warp.
Here the first bobbin has been worked over to meet the lighter color on the 2nd bobbin.
If you look closely you can see that the plain weave high/low is constant across the warp. This will allow me to weave the dark color to meet the next turn of the light color.
Here you can see the first pick of the next pass of the dark color. The weft is on an angle, not bubbled (!), and I will beat it in place with the bobbin in my dominant hand.
Here I have completed both shapes, and the wefts have now returned to the place where they each began. I can continue to make this angle or do something else.
–Let’s look at the selvedges. On the right where my weaving started, the selvedge thread is a high because when I turn the weft around it that thread is covered by weft. At the other side of this warp, you will see that when I turn the weft around that last thread it is not covered in the new pick. It is a ‘low.’ Take note of how this makes the two selvedges look quite different from each other.
First Exercise: The first sample to weave is to make a warp about 4″ or 5″ wide, set at 8 epi. Put in whatever foundation is required for the loom you are using, then begin to weave with one bobbin across the entire warp for about 2 inches.
After that, divide the width of the warp in half and weave one half with one bobbin and the other half with a second bobbin. Don’t try to work completely across the warp with both bobbins. Weave one shape and then the second. Don’t forget that the second shape must be woven in the opposing shed from the first shape. Do this for another 2″ – 3″.
Keep a close eye on the selvedges for both shapes. You now have 4 selvedges. There will be slit between each shape. As you weave the internal selvedges that fall in the middle of the warp, try to keep the weft from taking up more than half the space between the warp thread where you are turning and the warp next to it that will be the selvedge of the second shape. Weave until these two shapes are about 1″ – 2″ high.
Next divide the warp in four sections across the width, in order to weave 4 squares across the warp. Complete each shape before moving to the next bobbin. Keep track of how to do this so that each shape is woven in the opposing shed from the shapes on either side. Make each shape in a different color from its neighbor.
Let me know how you get on with this little exercise!
The sweetest word in my vocabulary. I thought I knew how much I loved home each spring when I arrived here from a long winter of sailing. This year it is doubly sweet. I am long overdue returning, and the journey to return was harrowing.
I really don’t want to relive the trip home in these pages. I’m sure Bob is writing about it as I write about being home. I may have to give some reference points to his version of the passage, so I’ll consider that.
Meanwhile, it’s mid-spring here. I have missed the daffodils and crocus, the tulips and lilacs. But there dogwoods blooming, and my peonies are still in bud. The roses are budding. Our yard is full of tulip poplars that have yet to bloom. House finches and wrens have made nests in all the outdoor light fixtures as they normally do. They’ve even deigned to use the birdhouses that Bob made, hoping they’d stay away from the light fixtures. His efforts have just attracted other bird families. Last fall I bought a painted gourd at a festival down in Maryland, and there are wrens in it now. Life is bursting here, and I’m so glad to be back in time to enjoy it!
Here’s the painted gourd with the wren family, and notice that there is a nest above one of the birdhouses that Bob built in the center of the image!
In December last year, we found a local nursery that was willing to take some of my larger plants to overwinter in their greenhouses. What a thrill that was, not to lose some of my cherished herbs and plants. Bob and I got them back on Tuesday, and I was so moved to find that several of them are in bloom! My French lavender and rose geranium are already just past prime, but I’m so happy to see them bloom at all!
My olive tree not only bloomed but now has quite a few tiny olives on it. I’m holding my breath until they get a little bigger. The plant did not seem big enough or old enough to bear fruit. There must be some good karma at that nursery!
We also started up our two water gardens with new plants, and one water lily that we overwintered from last year. We both could not resist this beautiful pitcher plant in flower for the water garden out front.
I have not yet managed to unpack. I have things strewn on one of the beds in the upstairs guest room, and I have plenty of things strewn around my own bedroom. Poor Bob, who is far neater than I am. Truly I am Oscar to his Felix. But instead of putting my things away, I have been weaving! This is a set napkins for Chris (our son) and Melody. I managed to weave and hem two in time to gift them for Christmas. These are the last four on the warp. I wove two between yesterday afternoon and today. Only two more to go, and then I’ll be making a new warp for the next project!
My small tapestry made it home with no damage. It went through a LOT to get here. It is better to have it safely on its easel in my studio that bashing about through the Caribbean aboard Pandora!
With all the good surrounding our arrival home, do I want to dredge up the awful trip home? Maybe just a couple of highlights, which are really lowlights–just to balance whatever Bob is upstairs writing at the moment!
I made quite a few meals ahead of time, in an attempt to make a good effort for this trip. I made Asian barbecued chicken thighs. I made ziti. I made meatballs. Yes, homemade meatballs. The meatballs occurred because I couldn’t find frozen meatballs in the Caribbean, even before the lockdown. Anyway, I love making them and of course, homemade is better. We managed to eat one portion of the meatballs and one portion of the chicken (I made enough of each for two meals. It was hard to eat any of this, and the ziti never made it into a bowl. It was too rough for eating. We were lucky to get some cream cheese on crackers, and I don’t know how Bob managed to get anything out of the fridge or cabinets, or even how he could spread the cream cheese. He could barely carry them up the companionway, even though they were in a bowl rather than on a plate.
Have I mentioned it was rough? There were many points when the waves looked like something from a movie– a documentary about storms at sea, or even some of the scenes from “The Perfect Storm”–although not that final scene where the fishing boat does not make up that last horrific wave. The seas were confused, so they did not come from one direction. They were hitting mostly from the stern, but both starboard and port. There was no place to sit comfortably without bracing ourselves, and no comfortable place to sleep.
We can never sleep in our own bed on passage, or even use the master bathroom (stateroom in nauticalese), since both of these are too close to the bow. I made up a ‘go bag’ with some changes of clothes and my toiletries so that I would not have to enter our stateroom during the passage. I have to say our hygiene was less than stellar during the passage. I think I managed to wash my hair three times in thirteen days. Again, we were just lucky to brush our teeth twice a day–in the galley sink at the bottom of the companionway. Using the head (toilet) was such a feat of getting in there and then hanging on to everything possible while trying to accomplish that feat. There was one night when I was so tired that I tried to sleep on a settee (that’s an upholstered bench, like a couch) down below. As I mentioned the waves were hitting us both port and starboard. Bob did not want me to use a lee cloth because it might get ripped off the wall (a lee cloth is similar to the barriers that toddlers have when they graduate out of a crib). Well, that was the only time I attempted sleeping down below. I was actually thrown out of bed. I woke to find myself in mid air, and then promptly hit the hardwood floor. I didn’t break any bones, but I was bruised. I won’t even talk about seasickness. So much for the myth that everyone gets over it after three days! Ha!
I really don’t know who can possibly like making long passages. Sure, the weather might be better, but it’s never calm enough for living a normal life aboard. I don’t ever plan to do it again. I’ll leave all the details of wind and speed and way points to Bob. I only mean to convey that it was difficult and scary. As we approached the entrance to Fort Lauderdale I began to think that we would die within sight of destination. Bob would not agree with that, but he did say it was the roughest passage he’d ever made. And he has made 14, or maybe a few more, of them. Just sayin’….
I’ll take a loom with a view, thank you. There is no place like home!
Our long passage home began on Monday, so this is Day 5, and it has gone better than I expected. I’ll never be a sailor, but Bob sure is. If you ever have to go on a long voyage against your will, I highly recommend Bob as your captain and Chris Parker as your weather router. You cannot do better!
Day 1: (Monday, May 4) We left Caneel Bay, St. John, at 1pm. We were wallowing a bit in following seas with the wind directly behind us. I got out my sketch book/notebook to jot down a few impressions of each day, and on this day I noted that I was having a hard time writing. I was worried that writing would make me seasick, so I kept it rather short. By 5pm we had left the Virgin Islands behind us. By 10pm we could lights on Culebra and we could see Puerto Rico faintly in the distance. There were big swaths of sargasso everywhere, and a big clump of it was tangled on the rudder of our windvane. There were big, dark squall clouds all around us, and from 2am – 5am we sailed through a number of them. Seeing big squall formations on radar was was intimidating for me. We also saw one ship in the dead of night. My anxiety level was high. I was no help at standing watch since I kept falling asleep–a sure sign of mild seasickness!
Day 2: (Tuesday, May 5) Low wind, wallowing in following seas. I was looking forward to seeing Puerto Rico, but during the day I could not see any of it. Our course took us from about 25 miles off the coast to 40 miles off the coast. During the morning we sailed over the deepest part of the Atlantic Ocean, the Puerto Rico Trench. It’s over 27,000 feet deep there, which is more than 5 miles deep. Just a bit further west is the Old Bahamas Channel that has some of the shallowest shoals I’d ever imagine to find in the middle of the ocean. What a strange world! Our view was 360 degrees of water. It is a deep indigo color verging on purple, like what we see all through the deep waters of the Caribbean. When night fell we had non-stop squalls, especially from midnight ’til 8am. I slept through most of this, leaving all the work to Bob for a second night in a row.
Day 3: (Wednesday, May 6) Squalls. Uncomfortable! Are they ever going to stop? On the one hand, the winds have been light, and seas are down. I told Chris Parker I wanted a flat sail home. I wanted to feel like we were just sailing across a lake. He’s done a great job of finding those conditions for us. If only the squalls would stop! Bob has always said that he finds Day 2 of a passage to be the hardest. On Day 2 he often wonders how he will endure the entire trip. For me, that day came today, on Day 3. I struggled with a sense of feeling imprisoned in a small space with a view of a vast seascape which was not at all soothing. The Dominican Republic was to our left, but we could not see it, even at night. I was fairly depressed this day, unable to pass the time reading or knitting. I have a few audio books, and it was helpful to recline in one of our adjustable cockpit chairs with my eyes closed, listening.
During the night we had a parade of ships, likely due to being in the vicinity of the Mona Passage and Windward Passage. I don’t know why I hardly ever see a ship during the day; then they all seem to pass by us during the night. It’s stressful. On the positive side, I was able to stand a 2-hour watch so that Bob could sleep. Progress!
We are traveling during the time of a full moon, which does make for a a few moments of excitement in that otherwise endless view of water and more water. The nights have been overcast due to the squally weather, but the moon has been a lovely gem.
Here is the moon setting, no longer silver but a stunning golden orb from the rising sun.
The water in the foreground is a perfect study in calm seas. Bob took a close up for me.
Day 4: (Thursday, May 7) We’ve now gone more than 350 miles. There has been no sight of land, which is rather depressing. I had hoped to see some of the Dominican Republic, and maybe even a bit of Haiti. Still following winds directly behind us, but calmer seas so that we are not wallowing today. I can read!– and I actually spent a good deal of the day knitting!
We learned that bad weather is headed our way. A cold front is forming that will bring near tropical storm weather right to our route home. Our weather router is urging everyone in our flotilla to get shelter on the southernmost island in the Bahamas, Great Inagua. The Bahamas is closed to boating traffic at the moment, even for boats seeking shelter, so our shoreside volunteers in the Salty Dawg organization did some terrific work in getting our homeward bound flotilla boats permission to land at Matthew Town on Great Inagua for as many days as we need to avoid the bad weather. We cannot check in to the Bahamas, or go ashore, but we can anchor and wait out the storm. We could not have managed this individually, so help from these volunteers is priceless. They are working hard to get us safely home. What a relief.
The night was challenging for me. There were squalls all around us with violent lightning on both sides of the boat. I stood two watches this evening, so Bob got more sleep than he’s had in three days. It was frightful to me. Like desert mirages and visions in the fog, after a while I began to see things in the haze. The radar showed that there were two boats that would soon cross our paths, all of us headed to shelter in Great Inagua. As hard as I looked into the gloaming to find their running lights, I could not see them. I saw all kinds of other things instead! I saw various ships and strange lights, and I heard ominous sounds. After 3 1/2 hours, I could not stand the stress any longer, so I woke Bob to take my place.
Today is Day 5. (Friday, May 8) We have sailed 537 miles, which is close to half the way to Florida. This has now become the longest passage I have made. It’s seems like a great time to take a break, but this is not the break I’d like to have. There are no harbors on Great Inagua; boats simply pull up to the shoreline and anchor. The Bahamas is notorious for ‘clocking’ winds, which means that every few days the wind direction shifts around the entire compass. We arrived here with westerly winds which is the worst direction for anchoring here, as you’ll see on the map. In westerly winds this is called anchoring on a lee shore, which means if your anchor drags you’ll drift right onto a shore that will be a challenge to get off since the wind is pinning you on that lee shore. Not good! The winds are slowly shifting eastward, but the westerly ocean swell will continue to roll us about. We are now facing northeast, with northwest waves rocking us sideways. It will be hard to sleep tonight. As I often say about sailing, “out of the fire and into the frying pan.” I wish this weren’t always the case.
And here we are newly anchored off Matthew Town on Great Inagua. This is the memorable Bahamian blue one finds in about 20 feet of water. Stunning.
We have been granted permission to anchor in either Matthew Town, where we currently are, or in Man of War Bay, just north of Matthew Town. You can see neither of these locations is protected. The wind is gradually shifting to the east, but the waves continue rolling in from the west. It feels just like our first two days of wallowing in following seas. Ugh.
We cannot go ashore here, but I should mention that there is a big salt pond on the island, where Morton Salt makes their sea salt. On the map you can see this salt pond right at the lower left hand corner, just inland of South Bay. There is a gate that can be opened to flood the pond with sea water. Then the tropical sun causes the water to evaporate and leaves behind the salt. It’s terrifically hot here. I can imagine turning into a block of salt myself. I am so ready for some temperate New England weather!
There is also a protected flamingo rookery here. We won’t be seeing any flamingos on this visit, since we cannot go ashore. I guess I’m happy to be here. It’s uncomfortable, but it has to be better than riding out a tropical storm.
From the Washington Post. The largest breeding colony of West Indian flamingos .
I’ll close with this photo of Sailor Bob, ever ready to take on a long journey and make the best of whatever conditions Mother Nature throws at him. He’s hoisting the “Q” flag (for quarantine) and the giant Salty Dawg rally banner. Do you see that threatening black cloud above us? That’s another squall in the making. Bob is not worried about it. He set the anchor well and now intends to open a cold beer and get some well deserved R&R. As he sat down to enjoy himself, he got a wonderful air show of a US Coast Guard helicopter landing on the airstrip in Matthew Town. I was so tempted to hail them on the radio and ask for a ride home!
INTERLACEMENTS: Artistic Expressions in Weaving. Juried Biennial Exhibit of the Handweavers' Guild of CT. River Street Gallery, 72 Blatchley Ave., New Haven, CT.
March 30 - May 5, 2019. Awards: 1st Place Wall Hangings, HGA Award for Outstanding Fiber Art.
CROSS SECTIONS: Works in Fiber by the members of North Adams Fiber Artists. Sept. 7 - Oct. 8, 2018.
Opening reception, Friday, Sept. 7, 5pm - 8pm. Gallery hours: Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays, 12pm - 5pm.
A CELEBRATION OF FIBER ARTS: Arts Center East, Vernon, Ct, October 11th -- November 7th. Opening reception Oct. 11th from 2-4pm. Gallery is open Thurs--Sunday from 1-5pm. "Sunset on Wilson Cove" and "Hudson River Idyll" are both there for this exhibition.
AWARDS FROM NEW ENGLAND WEAVERS' SEMINAR: for "Sunset on Wilson Cove": 1st Place Tapestry and Transparency, Judges' Choice, People's Choice, Textile Arts Center "Best in Tapestry," Rebecca Dea Award for First Time Entrant. NEWS 2015.
NEW ENGLAND WEAVERS' SEMINAR: gallery exhibition, Smith College, Northampton, MA. July 9 - 12, 2015.
"THE WEDNESDAY GROUP" at Garnerville Arts Center, Garnerville, NY. May 30 - June 4,2015.
"CONTEMPORARY HANDWOVEN TREASURES," 2015 Biennial Exhibiton of Conneticut Guild of Handweavers, Lyman Allen Museum of Art, New London, Ct; April 4 - 26.
www.lymanallyn.org
"POSTCARDS FROM HOME," Invitational Gallery Exhibition of small tapestries by artists in Scotland, Ireland, Denmark, Australia, and New England. Northlight Gallery, Stromness, Orkney Island, Scotland. March 25 - April 25.
August 2015, Torshavn School, Faroe Island, Scotland.
"A LIVELY EXPERIMENT," Gallery Exhibition of the Handweavers Guild of America (juried), Rhode Island Convention Center, Providence, RI. July 16 - 19, 2014.
"SMALL FORMAT TAPESTRY: Untitled/Unjuried," sponsored by American Tapestry Alliance at HGA, Convergence, University of Rhode Island Feinstein Campus Gallery, Providence, RI. July 16 - 19, 2014.
