Author name: ozweaver

The weeks have been ticking by, and I’ve had SO much to post and no ability to do it!  For these past 6 weeks, I’ve felt like a woman with her hair on fire!

Posting has been virtually impossible (and continues to be):  my computer is full, my iphone is full, and Dropbox is full!  How could this happen all at once?  Clearly, I am that kind of person who just glides through life enjoying my high-tech toys, who then completely falls apart when these tools require some effort on my part!  I have resisted the urge to simply pay for the upgraded Dropbox.  UGH……

So, in addition to having clogged up all my precious tools, it’s also been the holidays and I’ve just had minor surgery!  While the surgery was minor and completely successful, general anesthesia always takes its toll.  I’ve been blissfully relaxed and able to sleep ridiculous amounts of time, and I’ve been quite fuzzy brained.  In a number of ways, it’s been a blessing!  I’ve had a no-stress holiday since I couldn’t get up enough energy to jump through all the hoops or even worry about what lists I should make!

A terrific perk to not worrying about Christmas preparations was that I took a whole day to go into New York to see the Pieter Coecke van Aelst tapestries at the Met.  It was so inspiring and overwhelming and just plain HUGE.  Isn’t it marvellous how they displayed the tapestries coming out from the walls?

But, on the other hand, there is so much I would like to catch up on here.  I had such amazing experiences in Portugal, and I want to record them.  There were so many opportunities to experience textiles.  I spent a day in the lace museum at Vila de Conde and another day at the lace school that is part of that museum.  I saw wonderful textiles everywhere!  Each part of the country has its traditional embroidery techniques (and pottery designs too!) which are easy to find.  And I visited the eastern city of Portalegre where there is a tapetry studio for large works created by well known modern Portuguese artists.  I have lots of photos and lots of stories about these wonderful places, and I hope to make some space on my computer so I can begin to document these adventures!

Meanwhile, it’s that lulling time between Christmas and New Year and Bob and I are throwing our stuff together to head south and move onboard our boat Pandora, that is waiting for us in St. Marys, Georgia.  I am taking some guilty pleasure from spending some time washing and ironing all the linens we have used over the past week.  I am setting the table for my return in May, and have a new embroidered tablecloth from de Viano do Castelo in the north of Portugal.  Take a look at that link for some gorgeous examples of the handwork of the women in this area!

 Here is a close up.

A few other things that have given me a grateful holiday spirit:  Approaching the end of my Merle sweater.  Huge thanks to Jared Flood and Harrisville Designs for making such a lovely yarn (Loft) for knitting!  Thank you to Amy Christoffers for this beautiful design.  I have knitted it a intriguing color called “Button Jar” which is a complex green, hard for me to describe….muted with wonderful flecks of a bright warm blue, like sky blue, and sunny yellow.  It has been a dream to knit, and it looks pretty good on me too!  Unfortunately, I am having no luck getting the colors to be accurate.  This is too washed out.

 When I return home in May I will be ready to finish weaving this medium weight linen fabric that has huck motifs crossing each other in a plaited effect.  Pretty cool!  It’s a huck threading based on a plaited twill that Laurie Autio designed on her computer, and I am translating into cloth. This design was part of a hand out that Laurie gave us at our November mini-workshop at the Handweavers’ Guild of Connecticut.  This fabric will become a hefty tote bag lined with some fun plaid linen fabric from my stash.  It will be a summer bag and I hope it will be finished in time for summer in New England when I return!

This is the fabric on the loom….the color is somewhat too cool.  The real thing is a bit warmer.

And this photo is of a sample that I cut from the loom, and now the colors are too warm!  Reality is somewhere in between…. Also, the huck motifs running in one direction are a noticeably different color than the motifs going in the opposite direction, but the photos do not demonstrate that.  Having the warp and weft in contrasting colors emphasizes the plaited efftect.  While I chose a medium contrast of colors, the photos just do not pick it up.  The real deal is much more effective!

Wish me luck getting my computer files under control so I can post some videos and photos of the beautiful handwork of Portugal!

 

 

 

We have been in Lisbon almost a week….a wonderful week!  We are staying in a lovely studio apartment in the Alfama, the oldest part of Lisbon.  It was originally settled by people from northern Africa, so there is lots of Arabic influence.  A good number of the streets are too small for cars so it is quiet with lots of foot traffic.  Our apartment is in a small cluster of low masonry buildings that are perched up on a high terrace, with views of the Panteo Nacional.  It dominates our sky and is stunning at night when it is lit.

Our taxi from the airport dropped us off at one of end the nearest larger street (meaning one small car could navigate, and clearly he wasn’t will to do it).  We walked a ways up this street (up being the operative word here!)….and then we began walking steeply up a trail of narrow cobbles and steep steps to our terrace.  But what a reward at the end!

Each morning we have been walking down from our high perch to have coffee and pastry at Alfacinho coffee shop which has good internet.  The coffee everywhere here is delightful.  I don’t know why we cannot get better coffee in the US!  And the traditional sweet pastry is delicious!

There is so much to do here that it feels somewhat stressful making sure we see all the “important” sites.  So we have tried our best!  The well known tile museum, and of course the Gulbenkian, and both were as impressive as we could hope!  But the best part of being here is walking the tiny medieval streets, listening to Portuguese, looking at the views!

 

 

On the first day we chose sites that were within walking distance, and we walked a total of 8.5 miles.  I slept really deeply that night!  The next day we tackled learning the metro system and headed for the central part of the city, where we found a bank and the long walk uphill through the park to the Gulbenkian Museum.  Aside from most places NOT taking our Visa card, everything is going really smoothly.  We are a long metro from a bank, and of course there are limits on what you can withdraw each day…..so living on cash is going to be a bit dicey!  And who knows if there will even be banks in the smaller towns.

We went to the Castelo San Jorge, which (naturally!) is on a high bit of land where it could be well defended.  It was originally a fortress built by the visigoths, and then later acquired its current name.  Portuguese certainly know how to relax…. there are cafes everywhere, and in fact, at the castle there was even a wine cart, where we bought two glasses of wine and and sat on the parapets enjoying the immense 360 degree views of all Lisbon.  The city has sprawled out over a number of hills that rise up from the Atlantic and the Tagus river.  Walking anywhere involves much steep ups and downs…..feels like mostly up no matter which direction we head!  How can everything be uphill in both directions??

 

There were falcons and owls inside the castle, and a group of trainers who worked with the birds.  You could even pay to have your photo taken with one of the birds.  At one point a trainer let one of the owls fly about.  The owl was quite reluctant to come back, and after quite a long time the owl was still flying about the courtyard.

Last night was our first weekend in Portugal, and Alfama was a great place to spend it.  It is well known for many tiny taverna style restaurants with live traditional Fado music.  Fado is a type of folk song, always sad, always accompanied by guitar.  The place we chose last night had three guitarists; one playing 12-string, one on 6-string, and one playing mandolin.  The singers rotated between three men and two women.  They were all very entertaining!  At one point the two women sang a duet together.  I could not understand more than a random word here and there, but I definitely got the impression that the two women sang about loving the same man.  One of the men had a beautiful tenor voice.  It was a great way to spend the evening.

We are still sleeping later than usual each morning….perhaps we begin to show our age? Tomorrow we will figure out our way to Sintra and for the rest of our stay we will mostly be in smaller towns.  We hope to settle in somewhere quiet where we can make day trips to other locations, but stay settled in a quieter location than bustling Lisbon.

This fall I’ve participated in three workshops, more than I’ve ever done in such a short time!  Last week I spent three terrific days with members of my local guild, learning crimped cloth with Dianne Totten!

Weaving crimped cloth uses the techniques of woven shibori, but instead of dyeing the cloth (or in addition to dyeing the cloth!), you tighten the pull threads and steam the woven cloth.  Whether these pull threads are in the warp or the weft determines the direction that must also contain some thermoplastic fibers.  In this class we used orlon or polyester sewing thread.

Here is Dianne wearing one of her beautiful vests.  This is an advancing twill on 16 shafts, woven in a straight draw.

Since I haven’t been home long enough to actually warp a loom, I decided to be a virtual weaver by bringing my computer with Fiberworks software.  I’m so glad I participated this way!  I got to photograph Dianne’s samples, try on the clothing which mysteriously seems to fit everyone , take copious notes, and watch what the others were weaving.  I did a few drawdowns and have made a plan for my own crimped cloth warp.  I hope to get going on it the moment I return in mid-November!

This is one of Dianne’s finished pieces called “Garden Party.”  The fabric looks like Fortuny himself pleated it!….and the warp is a luscious blend of three different tencel colorways of Just Our Yarn’s “Almaza.”  I have my own stash of “Almaza” which has been ‘aging’ (as veteran stash collector and weaver, Kathi called it!).

Here is a detail of the sleeve that shows the weave structure used for the pull threads that created the pleats.

I’m very intrigued with inserting zippers into the front opening!

Several women in my area guild had taken this workshop with Dianne last spring when it was offered to the statewide guild.  They arrived at this class with finished cloth and spent days 2 and 3 begining to fit and sew their garments.  This added such excitement to atmosphere in class!

Dianne is an excellent teacher!  She is ingenious, creative, and completely open to sharing.  She spends plenty of time answering questions and listening to ideas from the students.  She’s not afraid to admit what she doesn’t know, and she’s not afraid to problem solve on fitting questions.  I think the best part of the class was fitting and constructing the garments for the women who had already woven their yardage.  There was so much to consider during that stage, and Dianne gave us all plenty of food for thought!

Tomorrow Bob and I are off to Portugal….for a month!  Lots of wonderful textile adventures to have while there.  I’ll be going to the tapestry workshop in Portalegre, as well as looking at handmade bobbin lace and embroidery in all the towns we visit.

And speaking of bobbin lace, I was very surprised to get a red ribbon (2nd place) for my little lace edging on my linen top at the Big E!  Wonders never cease sometimes.

And my wonderful lace mentor, Mary, has really helped me make progress on the never ending handkerchief edging.  I really intend to have this finished before the end of the year.

Time to get packed!  Hopefully I can post some wonderful textiles from Portugal!

Let me recount the amazing experiences of the past 3 weeks before they disappear into distant memory!

In the past 3 weeks I have had the good fortune to spend a week….YES! a WEEK….studying with Joan Baxter, who came all the way from Scotland to share her knowledge and her wonderful sensitivity in tapestry design with a handful of very lucky students across the US.  I was part of her first workshop in Rockport, Massachusetts.  Then she headed off for a week of teaching in each of three additional locations:  Santa Fe, San Francisco area, and the Atlanta area.  Lucky weavers all!

On the first day we spent the afternoon getting inspirational shots of Cape Ann to develop a design for a tapestry with images of the sea and/or the coastline.  This is the quarry at Halibut Point State Park.  You can see the Atlantic in the distance.

I took a lot of wonderful images that day….including some shots of the women in my class.  We are all members of TWiNE (Tapestry Weavers in New England).  I had not met any of them before so it was also a good experience getting to know women I’ve only seen as names on email lists.

Someday maybe these images will inspire something, but my tapestry design was already chosen before I got to class.  For me, this class would be about honing what I wanted to say with an image I already had in mind.

Joan certainly knows how to design works with multiple layers of images that create an entire story in one tapestry.  You can see her work here.  These are some of the samples she wove to blend colors for ideas for her designs.

She generously brought lots of yarn for us to try,  7/2 wool that she had dyed herself and every color of 18/2 wool that Weavers’ Bazaar carries.  It was a terrific way to get familiar with their yarns.

I started a little sample of a Portuguese Man of War.  I’ll explain why I’m intrigued with this in a future post, when I have more to report.

Less than a week after Joan’s class, I headed up the Hudson almost to Albany for the last regular meeting of the Wednesday Group.  It was a bittersweet gathering of the entire group.  Some people really had to jump hurdles to get there, but we all managed it.  Archie made a very touching farewell to all of us, but I don’t think most of the group realized what he was doing.

He brought in one of his recently completed tapestries, one that we’d all seen in progress some months ago.  Typical of Archie, this tapestry is an experiment in meaning….woven in code.  He was testing the human ability to read many different fonts and handwriting styles. He wondered if we could as easily translate letters into colors, so he wove a poem with a coded color scheme. I think he wondered how many of us could decipher the poem….or would even bother to try.  Naturally, this brought out the puzzle solver in me and in one of my good friends in the group.  In the long run, I had to take a photo of it after Archie had wrapped it up to take it home. Hence the very bad image! Just a few minutes after class, two of us decoded the poem almost simultaneously! Then three of us got busy checking to see if we were right…and we were!  And it was a sweet farewell message from Archie to all of us!

I would love to tell you what the poem is, but I know he wants you to see this tapestry in some venue down the road.  He wants you to have a go at figuring it out, so I’d better not spoil it!

Meanwhile, our little band of friends wanted to let him know how touched we were, so we decided to sing our own version of farewell to him at dinner that night.  I know it’s corny….when we arrived at our favorite sushi restaurant, four of us surrounded him and sang a little  farewell poem back to him.  It was clear that he knew we had broken the code, and he was very touched!  Our goodbyes could not have been any sweeter!  All things must pass, and I’m very thankful for these last wonderful days together.

The Wednesday Group also had a final project. Almost everyone has now delivered their chopstick weavings.  They are a terrific statement of each person’s weaving style!  For the most part we could all identify who wove each one!

This was Archie’s ingenious idea.  For several years now we have all stayed together after class on Wednesdays to order Chinese take-out to share.  The number of chopsticks used on these occasions was rapidly growing, and Archie wanted to find a creative way to recycle them.  He devised a little loom with 15 chopsticks for warps, and he challenged us to weave a face.  He made a loom for each member in the group, and some of us had so much fun that we made a few on our own in order to weave more chopstick portraits! This is my “Chopstick Triptych.”

One member did a series of six maneki nekos (or maneki neki?  Who knows Japanese?).  Are you wondering what they are?  Well, you can read the official report here on Wikipedia, or you can take my word for it.  If you go to any Japanese restaurants or sushi bars, you’ve seen them.  They are good luck charms, or talismans, in the form of little kitties, and they have one paw raised in a gesture of beckoning.  They are beckoning all sorts of good fortune for those who pass by.  How apropos that one of our group wove a set of them on chopsticks! (Now don’t you hope we display these treasures in public sometime?)….

On the morning after I returned home I had to get out early for my monthly lace meeting.  I’ll save writing about that…as well as describing my upcoming workshop with Diane Totten for another post.  It’s been crazy around here, and I have loved every minute of it!