ArgoKnot

ArgoKnot
A journal of my weaving, spinning, and knitting life
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Author name: ozweaver

>Lost Posts

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I wrote two posts recently and saved them as drafts so that I could add pictures. Bob was out of town with the camera both times, and I was waiting to have access to it. Now both posts are gone. Obviously it’s human error, but I can’t imagine what I did since the “save as draft” button is as big as life, and the only other button is “publish” which certainly didn’t happen since the posts are missing!

We are going through another bout of absurdly cold weather. It was only about 15-degrees F today, with snow. It’s not the snow I mind at all! I couldn’t bring myself to work in my basement studio. Even if the heat is on down there it just feels cold.

I’ve added another link at the bottom of the page. It’s the online guild I joined at the new year. What a great group! Every month there is a new online workshop to join, with lots of online lessons and homework. I got a calendar with photos of members’ work which is just lovely, and the calendar is perforated so that the photos can removed and saved when the calendar is no longer useful. And lastly, I received a printed journal from this group with interesting articles and terrific photographs. I had no idea that there would be a journal included in my dues. This is a great group and membership is quite a good deal.

Since this month’s workshop is weaving Summer & Winter, I’m posting a photo of a project Bob and I did together a couple of years ago, in honor of both our parents’ 50th wedding anniversaries. I wove the polychrome S&W cloth on my AVL. What a bear pegging the treadling sequences! I should have woven it on my 8H jack loom with a skeleton tie-up. I thought I was being so clever to put it on the AVL, but it was actually one of the stupidest things I’ve ever done! Well,”experience is what you get…”

>Late Winter

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Saturday, March 3, 2007


I wrote a post about a week ago, and it is lost! That just shows how little I know about what I’m doing here. Oh well.

I have come down with a cold on these first few days of March. Perhaps that has contributed to my funk lately. In spite of my lethargy and less than optimistic attitude, I have been weaving. Sometimes I avoid the things I love doing when I’m down, and sometimes I find quite a lot of solace there, even when I cannot seem to cheer up. I am weaving what feels like acres of solid color plain weave on my historical tapestry. I should post photos soon, although who wants to see an acre of solid color plain weave?

I make very small progress on my fabric projects: runners in Monk’s belt on a borrowed Norwood loom, a small hanging of autumn red maple leaves in Theo Moorman technique on my Baby Wolf, and those same red/tan, 8 harness, log cabin dishtowels on the AVL. I could be weaving a silk scarf, an 8 harness network twill on my small Purrington table loom if I would just tie on and get going.

A few more birds are joining the chorus these days as the light stays longer. On a couple of days I’ve noticed that spring-like bouyancy in the air, a combination of humidity and warmth, at least in the sun if not in shade. Hopefully soon we’ll be in the midst of what e. e. cummings called “mudluscious,” a time I always find ridiculously hopeful!

This photo shows a detail of a scarf designed and woven byBonnie Innouye. I took the photo during a class with her last fall. This is the type of thing I have on my Purrington table loom. I should get back to it….

>Late February

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I’m counting down the days to the end of winter now. I do this every year. I don’t mind more snow. I love snow in early March. What I don’t want is temperatures lower than 30 and please, please, PLEASE no more wind unless the temperature is over 40F. The wind has been so violent lately and I’m so worn out from it.

My older son has an early March birthday. Out of his (almost) 23 birthdays, I’d say 20 of them have been white, and he was born during a wild snow storm when about 12 inches of snow fell in just a few hours accompanied by thunder and lightning! What a night. March is e e cummings to me: the poem about the balloon man and the word “mudluscious.” What an image!

I am just finishing a three day workshop with Nadine Sanders, the singing weaver, who is well known for advancing the Theo Moorman technique. Maybe “advancing” is not the right word. She is certainly passing along the knowledge of the technique and she has done some interesting things that Theo Moorman did not do. Imagine being in a weaving workshop, busy as a bee at your loom, and having your instructor sing to you and play the violin for you. She even sang her good bye to us today. If you get the chance to study with her, grab it! We had too big a group in this workshop, and three people did not get their looms warped for weaving until the last day of the class, and yet Nadine sailed through these hurdles with grace and even a helpful, caring disposition.

I want to talk about my project, but it doesn’t seem appropriate since I my camera is on the other side of the country now with my husband skiing in Utah. How about if I just say go check out Nadine’s website:

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I spent the weekend weaving and crocheting, trying to escape some things that are weighing quite heavy on my mind. I am not in the best frame of mind these days, and the weather is not helping! Last winter I wove a small tapestry that was not particularly successful. The image was dawn in the desert, and the original image comes from a book my son gave me that has beautiful photographs of earth’s landscapes from many vantage points. This desert scene spoke to me on some non-verbal level. The image was so powerful (alas, mine is not!) and spoke to me of creation, and of something else. The idea that no matter what man does to this environment, it will be undone in a mere day. The winds in this desert erase all trace of us. Everyday is a new creation in the desert, and not in the “greeting card” sense.

I’ve been reading a good deal of Carl Sagan in the past few months. Dragons of Eden, Cosmos, and have just learned that his wife has published some of his lectures in a book titled The Varieties of Scientific Experience. I believe it will address his very reverent views on religion, for which he is labled an atheist. But getting back to deserts, I found some moving photographs on Sue Lawtry’s blog, as well as her insightful comments:

“Here there isn’t a single trace of man’s presence… The wind shapes the landscape as it likes. It is an unchanging landscape which is constantly changing.”
Gerard Lanux

Wind on desert sand; water on coastal sand… the rhythmic passing of time.
I am guessing that every single one of the resulting undulating patterns is different. Like every grain of sand, every star, every pass of weft over warp, every found stone on a beach… all the same, all different. (Ref blog entries: Nov 15 2005 “notes for the day” and Nov17.)

Desert breeze, beach tide: both erase the marks of our passing, our presence merely tolerated.
It is the order of things here… to be rendered as ghosts in the landscape.

Desert sands. Photograph Sue Lawty - Click to enlarge Desert sands. Photograph Sue Lawty - Click to enlarge Desert sands. Photograph Sue Lawty - Click to enlarge Desert sands. Photograph Sue Lawty - Click to enlarge Desert sands. Photograph Sue Lawty - Click to enlarge Desert sands. Photograph Sue Lawty - Click to enlarge

I have only just discovered it, but I will be visiting it regularly.

>Bitterly Cold

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>What’s it like in other parts of the country right now? Here it is just ridiculously cold. We’ve got brilliant sunshine that is so deceptive to the frigid conditions. The snow is so hard you can walk right on top of it and not sink in. It’s 14F degrees this morning, but the wind chill makes it feel like 5. We’ve had temperatures like this for a week now! We’ve had so much wind for so long, I think it’s been more than a year with unusually high winds. Are the windy places of the world even windier, or did we get some of their wind so that they are now milder? I’d love to know that.

My Korean art teacher believes that wind is caused by anger. Initially that may sound absurd, but high and low pressures have to originate somehow. I know I show my ignorance of science here, and I shouldn’t go down paths where I have no knowledge. Anger causing wind is just such a powerful image. There is certainly no shortage of anger anywhere.

When we get to the last few really hot weeks of summer we call those days the “dog days.” We need a name for these last few weeks of interminable winter. I don’t think we can use the word “days” since winter is more about “nights.” Someone please think of something! “The teetering on the edge of death nights of winter,” “the way beyond the pale nights of winter,” “the nights when hell just might freeze over,” “the Boreal nights of winter”…etc.

So here’s a picture of my garden, a deceptively peacful winter scene. It’s hard to tell that the wind is blowing at least 25 mph and the temperature is only 14F!

I’m heading down to my studio to weave and hopefully not hear the wind howling.

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