ArgoKnot

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

In Full Swing

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Everything seems in full swing now…. I am making progress on projects I missed all fall and winter, and at last (!!) I’ve connected with the interest groups in my new area: weavers, knitters, dyers, and lace makers!  It’s all very exciting and inspiring to me.

Earlier this week I met my oldest friend at the Lyme Art Association while she was dropping of her sculpture “Daughter” that will be on display as part of the upcoming exhibit by the Hudson Valley Art Association. Right nearby was a bronze bust of Robert Frost done by Jose Bascaglia. Exciting works! My friend also has a piece in the National Sculpture Society’s exhibit that is traveling this summer (Lea Ann’s piece is “Virga,” the first image on the page).

It was a soft green drizzly day , and LeaAnn and I decided to walk through the grounds of the Florence Griswold Museum where the gardens were in soft focus.

On my daily walks I pass a certain fence that is about 100 feet long and bedecked in this lovely candy striped rose.

Later in the summer this same fence will serve as support for about a million sunflowers.  The sunflower seedlings are already up!  And to add to the ambience there is a huge lawn just beyond this fence border that is home to a beautiful yellow barn and two Weimaraners who are often out frolicking on the lawn.  There is always something beautiful to see at this spot along my walk!

And in my own garden this summer I have a passion flower vine growing in a pot.  The first flower opened this morning!

Surrounded by so many flowers, it’s no wonder I’m thinking about them for my next tapestry.  I am halfway through the final pear in my ‘Trail of Pears,’ so I’ve been designing the next tapestry.  I’m intrigued by a still life based on a woodcut of nasturtiums in a bowl.

I am enjoying taking this pot of nasturtiums and putting it into an environment….perhaps with a window behind and some curtains, the edge of a table…. we’ll see.

Mid-Spring

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Is there anything with as much promise as mid-spring?  My gardens, my projects, my whole world is all hope and possibility.

I’ve completed pear #4 in my ‘Trail of Pears.’  Each pear has brought  harder color decisions, and #4 caused me to call on the advice of both my husband and younger son.  I had every shade of gold in my yarn palette out and none of them worked.  Chris helped me let go of my preconceived notion that the pear had to be in the yellow family.  That pear is a tan that I would never have considered if not for Chris. Now it’s finished and soon the background around pear #5 (the final pear) will be finished as well, which will mean making the final pear color choice.  I plan to be at my Wednesday Group class next week so I can get some input from all the weavers there.  Whew!

When I’m not weaving the pears I’ve been spinning some silk.  Does anyone remember Carol Weymar who called herself the silk worker. I can’t find her anymore! I used to buy her handpainted silk roving, so I have a little collection of them.  I always wanted a bit more than 2 ounces from her, but she never had more than that of any given painted way.  I took this as a challenge to me to learn to spin finer, hoping to get 1,000 yards out of that 2 oz.  Well, I still can’t do it!

So, to the latest colorway which I will call ‘mid-spring’ (all the colors of a spring garden, except blue) I am adding a strand of luscious 50/50 merino/silk.  The merino is a warm natural color, something I might call ‘almond,’ and the silk is a shimmering white.  Spun together I’m getting a lovely shade of cream and I hope it will be stunning plied with the 100% painted silk from Carol.  I’d like to start plying right now, but I will force myself to let the newly finished merino/silk set overnight.  Boy, I can’t wait for tomorrow!

It’s 90 degrees outside today, one of those abnormally hot spring days we sometimes have.  My basement studio is a cool respite on a day like this, and the view cool and green.

Have I mentioned that I live on the edge of a large nature preserve? May offers up so many beautiful sights there…. lady slippers are in bloom and we found a robin’s egg on the ground! There are dragon flies everywhere, and the hummingbirds arrived.  I’ve seen eagles soaring above our house.

 Yes, it’s all hope and promise around here.

 

Perfect May

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This wisteria vine is growing along the walk I take most days.  This and the azaleas and the spring green of unfurling ferns are what lures me outside each day.

I will enjoy playing with these two images for a tapestry cartoon, even if I never actually weave them.  Back at home I discovered a few mushrooms from the recent damp weather.  I’ve cut them and brought them in for identification.

I think they are Agaricus arvensis which are very common gilled mushrooms.  Part of identifying a mushroom involves getting a gill print on white paper (or black paper if the gill print is white). This gill print is a deep grey tinged with purple, very similar to the color of the gills themselves as you can see in the photo above.

This mushroom mostly gives tan, beige and grey in the dyebath; not too exciting since wool naturally comes in those colors.  But if I mordant with tin (and yes, I do have that) I might get a golden brown.  I’ve got 12 oz. of mushrooms, so it is a bit tempting…. and I actually remember where my dye pots are!

And there is news of Bob today.  The wind continues quite favorable for sailing, and he is now in the Gulf Stream so that current is pushing Pandora to speeds over 10 knots.  He is WAY offshore, but roughly the same latitude as the southern part of Georgia.  That’s a lot of ground covered in 48 hours.

Getting Reacquainted with Bobbin Lace

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It’s a drizzly Sunday, perfectly May weather, and I have set up my bobbin lace table in an east-facing window.

In this spot in my living room I have morning sun coming in over my shoulder.  I am quite lost at the corner of my most recent handkerchief border, so I decided to revisit a pillow with an older project on it.  It is a straight lace that I used on my linen top last summer. It only has 12 bobbins and has a sewing edge,  central spider, and scallop edge.

A great way to spend a Sunday morning!  I’ve heard from Bob via sideband radio that he has been able to sail at 7 knots for the past 24 hours.  He is now off the coast of northern Florida, east of the Gulf Stream, about 150 miles north of the Abacos.  If this kind of favorable wind keeps up he’ll be arriving home in one week!

 

Home Alone

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This has been such a productive week while home alone.  I’ve made progress on my current tapestry, which has been neglected for the past 9 months.  I finished plying the saffron mohair and am contemplating ideas for a striped fabric with some kind of warp-direction float pattern in the brighter stripes, like a rose path or other twill.  Nothing has yet to strike my fancy.

Yesterday was the last statewide Connecticut weavers’ guild meeting, and I was thrilled to get there!  It was my first meeting since last May when we moved up here…  during the morning, I got a call from Bob (in Marsh Harbor, in the Abacos) to say goodbye and use up the last of his Batelco minutes on our Bahamas cell phone.  He and his crew were planning to leave mid-morning to sail the few miles to “the Whale,”  the eastern inlet just north of Marsh Harbor.  He’ll be using the transponder on board to mark his progress up the eastern side of Abacos as he heads north toward the Gulf Stream.  With luck, they will sail in the Gulf Stream, well off shore, all the way to Montauk at the top of Long Island.  That is 1,000 miles!  Thank heaven I don’t have to do that trip!  If all goes well he will arrive home in about 7 days, in time to celebrate Memorial Day!  (He missed that last year doing the same trip.)

If the weather does not smile on them, there are any number of places they can bail out, either south of Cape Hatteras or north of it.  Doing that will mean that he won’t be home as quickly.  He’ll be communicating with his weather router via sideband radio, and he’ll be sending me emails over the side band.  As of late last night Pandora was here.

Here are some Bob’s last photos of the Bahamas.  It’s already hard to believe that I was ever on beaches like this, with powder soft sand and aquamarine water!

We spent so much time looking for orchids and hardly found any.  What a difference a few weeks makes!  After a month in the wet season, Bob told me the Abacos are blooming with lots of these epyphytes (which I think are epidendrum) with pendulous flower stalks hanging down from trees.

I hope his trip home will be completely uneventful!

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