dyeing – ArgoKnot

The Work of My Hands

December 18, 2024 | 3 Comments

It’s early Sunday morning, and I am sitting in my favorite chair unraveling the sleeve on my most recent sweater. It’s a design by Kate Davies which has serendipitously turned out with quite a different silhouette than the images on her website. My sweater is significantly bigger than I expected, and I love it this way. A very nice surprise. As I was knitting the 2nd sleeve mid-last week, I realized if I just sped up my knitting I would finish the sweater that day and be able to wear it to my holiday guild meeting the next day.

The temptation to finish was great, which is what made me ignore what I know for a fact about knitting speed, at least for myself and Meg Swanson: the faster I knit the looser I knit. So, this sleeve looks considerably looser than the first sleeve, and also looks rather flimsy and messy compared to the rest of the sweater. Haste does indeed make waste. Time to rip and re-knit. Sometimes the work of our hands is creative and sometimes it needs to be a chore, like re-knitting a sleeve. I’m trying to not think of this as drudgery since it’s a quiet, pre-dawn morning, and there is coffee brewing.

It has become a time of mending since I have just finished re-sewing the side seam of a sweater I wanted to enlarge. Last winter I planned to add a gusset to the side seams of my old “Hild” sweater by Elsbeth Lavold, but I tried it on yesterday and felt the gussets are now unnecessary. That was good news for me! Since I’d only managed to knit one partial gusset before putting it aside, I unraveled the gusset on the first side and re-sewed that seam this morning. I will wear it tomorrow to another group meeting of weavers.

Doing these chores, which barely seem tedious in the quiet pre-dawn of a winter morning, has me thinking about all the kinds of work we do with our hands. I tend to focus on creating, but sometimes I have to take a step back, undo something to either fix it or make it more useful to me. I have not worn the “Hild” sweater in at least 5 years, so I’m thrilled to have it back. I probably knit it shortly after this book was released in 2006. I’m still smitten with it!

It’s now early in the following week. I have worn both sweaters! What a trill to have a new sweater and also to wear one that I made so long ago — that hasn’t fit me for years.

In Italy, while staying at the art school La Romita in Umbria, I indulged in some new work for my hands. The workshop was 10 days of tapestry weaving and natural dyeing, as you may have seen in an earlier post. I have barely done any natural dyeing, and this workshop has piqued my interest in doing more. When you see the photos of the colors we produced, you may go down this rabbit hole with me!

Two of the students took charge of this part of the workshop. They are Yonat Michaelov and Kris Nardello, both from California. Their expertise was just what we needed to get over 50 colors in only 10 days, with very limited equipment for dyeing. There was only one umbrella swift, and we had 10 lbs of local merino to wind into skeins suitable for dyeing. Chairs to the rescue.

While the skeins were scoured and mordanted in alum, I dabbled with making watercolor paints from the ingredients that our leader, Shelley Sokolofsky brought for us to try. Jody Brewer took this photo.

I now have an exciting set of colors to try, in spite of knowing nothing about water color. Another rabbit hole for me.

Here are the first dye colors from only about 3 days of work. Yonat and Kris were amazing in their organizational skills, having only two pots on two burners, with a few buckets to save some colors for overdyeing. I can’t believe what they accomplished. I was so lucky to be their assistant.

And here, Yonat explains the process and dye for each color we got so far, which was mostly the traditional dyes used throughout history, which Shelley brought from the US from Botanical Colors.

The workshop description stated that we would also use local plants from Umbria for dyes. That required some of us to get up early and go foraging. It wasn’t added to our itinerary, so Yonat and Kris foraged almost every morning to bring us more plant material to try. They found olive leaves and branches, a variety of bright orange mushroom called omphalotus, abundant local flowers called Dittrichia viscosa, over ripe pomegranates, fig leaves, prunus leaves, and oak galls. We had a treasure trove of material to try.

Jody Brewer took the next few photos of the local plant colors we dyed.

The entire range of colors we got from the local plants.

Colors from Olive leaves and branches

Oak galls.

The lovely and abundant flowers of Dittrichia viscosa.

Lastly, here is Yonat holding the color card displaying all of hers and Kris’ hard work!

Once home I find myself wanting to dye more than do the work needed for the holidays! I have a small olive tree that we prune every fall in order to keep it small enough to put inside during the winter months. I don’t cut too much so there was only 58 grams of leaves and branches. With that small amount I only tried 25 grams of the Italian merino in the dye bath.

My color falls right in the range that we got from olives in Umbria, but I wish I’d gotten a more saturated hue. I’ve saved the dye solution because it’s definitely not exhausted. For this batch I simmered the yarn for 1 1/2 hrs and then let the yarn sit in the bath overnight. I repeated this process for three days. Now the leaves are probably decomposing a bit in the bath that is sitting in my chilly garage. I want to try at least one more day of simmering and cooling to see if I can darken the color. Jody and I plan to spend a couple of days working with a sucrose indigo vat which we will make together and some madder powder. I got both those from Botanical Colors. I hope the work of hands produces some exciting results.

Back At It!–in Umbria, Italy

November 13, 2024 | 5 Comments

This is quite a thrill for me to access my website and write a new post. This site has been ‘sick’ for about six months, and I have not been able to access it.

It would be quite an epic if I tried to cover all the things that I’ve thought about, done, and struggled with over the past six months, so I think my best option is to just tackle a few vignettes, starting with my trip to Italy in October.

I went to Italy for a natural dyeing and tapestry weaving workshop at La Romita, which is in Umbria. I asked some of my students if they’d be interested in joining me, and my weaving friend Jody decided to go. The two of us quickly made friends with two experienced natural dyers, Yonat and Kris, from California. Part of the workshop description was that we would meet local dyers and weavers, but there were no dyers on our list of day trips. We decided to skip one of the trips and rent a car together to drive north to visit the workshop of Elena Villa in Castiglione del Lagos, a walled medieval town on the shore of Lake Trasimeno, where she sells her hand-dyed yarns and various finished items, like knitwear and dyed scarves.

We’d been warned that we’d probably have to take a car with manual transmission, and since I was the one who’d most recently driven standard cars, the driving fell to me. It had been about two years since I’d done that, although I’ve driven standard transmission cars for most of my driving life, so I was a bit nervous. A strange car with a standard transmission in a foreign country–but as luck would have it, we got a big American car with an automatic transmission. I have a sense that it was because Valerio, who took us to the Avis agency in Terni, pleaded our case with the staff there.

The trip was a cinch with Google maps, and we all had a terrific day. I think we were the biggest car on the road–not my first choice!

And here we are! Elena opened her shop for us that day although she is normally closed on Thursdays. Lucky for us.

Elena is in the foreground, with Kris (R) and Yonat (L) looking through yarns. Can you imagine how much we were swooning over all these wonderful items in such stunning natural colors?

Elena’s husband took a wonderful memento photo with the lake behind us. It was such an exciting experience to meet her and to see her work. Elena recommended we go to a certain restaurant before heading back to La Romita.

We left feeling inspired and ready to create things with the yarns that have such lovely blended gradations of color, as only natural dyes give. I found a whole shelf of merino yarn fine enough to use in tapestry.

The colors are:

Solidago (golden rod) a bright gold on the merino yarn and softer yellows on the three scarves
Solidago with “Robbia” (madder), the salmon/orange
Solidago with “Cipolla (onion), the orange/rust/yellow/gold/green variegated yarn.
Fitolacca (pokeberry!), which is havested more than once from spring through late summer, giving different colors as the season progresses.
Noce (walnut, although I don’t think walnut trees grow in Italy), medium, warm brown.
Galle di Quercia (oak galls), medium grey. I bought three skeins of this because I thought it would be a great neutral.

Lunch was another rare surprise for the day. When we entered the dining room we discovered the terrace overlooking the lake. Beautiful!

It’s so rare to have photos of myself because I am usually behind the camera. The photos that include me were all taken by Jody. It’s great to have a record of being here. Here is our terrace lunch with a view of Lagos di Trasimeno.

It was a magical day, the best any of us could have imagined. I bought some fiber from local Appeninica sheep that Elena had dyed with golden rod. I didn’t have a spindle with me, so Elena went home to get one of hers and delivered it to me while we had lunch. I will never forget that! Now I have to think of something remarkable to do with this yarn.

I spun this wool on both the spindle I got from Elena and, once home, on my Nano 2 e-spinner. The spindle spun yarn is on the right and is finer and more loosely spun than the skein on the left which is I what I spun on the Nano 2. I plied both these skeins on my folding Lendrum.

I just read about Appeninica sheep on Wikipedia. They are a modern breed, first established in 1970s, and based on quite a few other breeds. They are raised mostly in Umbria and Tuscany and were bred to do well in the Apennine mountains. Their wool is considered medium/coarse. That was not my impression of the roving I had. Perhaps the golden rod softened it a bit. Who knows?

It’s exhilarating to travel, and even more so when we can branch out and explore the exact thing we are most interested in experiencing. The four of us became good friends during the workshop, and we feel we made a great connection with Elena and her stunning shop.

Retrospect

March 31, 2023 | 1 Comment

Today is the last day of March, and even in the Caribbean it is going out like a lion. Tomorrow I will start the new month (fully spring!) by flying home to New England. I’ve been counting down the days for the entire month of March. I’m now at that final number: one day to departure.

Twice a year my life takes a sharp turn from living in a house surrounded by my looms, my spinning wheels, my taka dai, my dyepots, while surrounded by good friends and family, to living on a boat with very little space, no looms aside from a copper pipe loom, a newly acquired tiny e-spinner, knitting and embroidery, and a few friends that are not often in the same anchorage I am. I take stock. Each year in winter I take stock of the things that consumed my time at home, and now at the beginning of spring I take stock of what I managed to accomplished while living on a boat. It’s my semi-annual retrospective of my goals and my priorities.

Meanwhile, the first things I’ll do on my return are thrilling events I’ve been thinking about all winter. Tomorrow my guild’s biennial exhibition will open. I won’t be there, and I don’t have anything in that show, but I am looking forward to seeing all the works when I visit early in the coming week. I will meet my oldest friend there. For several years she had a sculpture studio at this location, the Farmington Valley Arts Center. It feels like a different lifetime when I used to visit her there. I would drive from NJ, where I lived at the time. She had a son, and I had two sons, so getting together was a rather complicated endeavor at that time in our lives, but it was important to both of us to spend time together. I expect we will reminisce about that other life we had decades ago while also seeing the works of many of my dear weaving friends.

The postcard for the Handweavers’ Guild of Connecticut biennial exhibition

On April 2nd, the day after I return home, I’ll drive up to Leverett, Massachusetts, to see an exhibit of tapestries by the Tapestry Weavers in New England (TWiNE) that will be on display for the month of April. I’m excited that less than 24 hours after getting home I’ll be reconnecting with good friends at this event! Due to the generosity of one of my friends, who offered to hold my pieces for the entire winter, I have three pieces in this show.

Looking back is always a bittersweet endeavor, and I don’t think I’m alone in feeling that. When I left home in December I had one more placemat to weave on my Japanese paper weft project. The biggest hurdle about that is the weft for that last placemat had to be unwoven from a previous previous placemat that was not the color I wanted. I will take that weft and re-dye in an indigo vat that I need to make. I am excited and intimidated about dyeing the re-used paper yarn to get the color of blue I want.

Neither my Caribbean tapestry or this sweater got finished this winter, but they both made progress. That’s all I can say, and I must make peace with progress instead of completion. As this sweater grew it got hotter and hotter to hold it in my lap while knitting, which is the main reason I set it aside.

When it became clear that I would not finish my Caribbean tapestry or the sweater above, I dug out an embroidery I started more than a year ago. I bought this design because of the sheep, no surprise! And that’s all I had finished when I put it away. I have enjoyed the few days that I spent embroidering the poinsettias and snowflakes. Wouldn’t it be nice to have it finished for the holidays at the end of this year? Not holding my breath.

In an effort to look on the bright side of my not-finished Caribbean tapestry, I plan to take it to the TWiNE show on April 22, to demonstrate weaving while I sit the gallery on that date. I’m glad I found a bright side to this disappointment.

The only thing I actually finished this winter was the hot water bottle cover I made from Kate Davies recent design group called “All Over,” a collection of stranded knitted designs. I think there will be some chilly nights at home ahead when I can use it! (Also I finished spinning about 100 grams of merino/silk hand dyed fiber…but I’m not counting that because finishing a spinning project is only the beginning of whatever project the yarn is meant to become!)

Along the way of making projects and fulfilling (or not fulfilling) goals, there were plenty of wonderful distractions, like knitting underway while listening to an audio book, which was only calm enough to do one time, when we sailed down the western coast of Guadeloupe.

Drying laundry while Bob writes a blogpost.

Lunch with friends overlooking one of the pitons in St. Lucia.

So many tropical flowers and animals

Months of beautiful views

And one of my favorite visuals: windows and shutters

Look at the view out the window at the back of the room with the open doors.

This is the kitchen at Fort Napolean on Terre de Haute, Les Saintes–another great room with a stunning window and the stark reality of getting water in the 19th century fort.

And speaking of kitchens, I often enjoyed making dinners onboard. I made a version of Isabella’s quiche (from La Brasserie in English Harbour, Antigua). It’s pretty close to hers–incredibly deep and creamy.

I was overjoyed to find mushrooms–all the way from France!–in Fort de France, Martinique. That called for chicken supremes in mustard/cream sauce with mushrooms. It was a good evening!

It was a winter full of lemons and limes. Everything is better with a little lemon or lime, and fresh herbs which grow in abundance here.

In the balance of things accomplished and things experienced, I guess there was a healthy dose of each. I would have loved more time to work with my hands and experiment with some ideas that are burning a hole in my brain! —but— it’s hard to give up the amazing experiences that kept me from working. The weather did not cooperate much this year. There was too much wind which made travel difficult and working at anchor very difficult. I live on motion sick meds every time we sail to a new location, and that takes a day or so to get out of my system. I am not patient waiting to feel better. On the bright side I listened to some wonderful books. At the top of that list would be Elizabeth Strout’s My Name is Lucy Barton.

In retrospect I wish I had more work to show for my time here, and less days feeling the drag of mal de mer. But on the bright side, and thank heaven there is always a bright side, I am filled with ideas to pursue at home and some great memories of time spent with sailing friends and Bob.

St Kitts, Thomas Jefferson, Batik

January 11, 2018 | 1 Comment

That’s an odd assortment of names in the title, yet that is the diversity of what we have seen on this island!

The weather has us pinned down off the southeast coast of St. Kitts. There are no harbors here for protection, which is the case for many of the West Indies islands in the Caribbean, and boy do I miss the protected harbors on Antigua. After sailing from Antigua last Saturday, we attempted to anchor off Nevis, but the best anchorage area was too rough! It was only 2pm in the afternoon, so we sailed about seven miles further to White House Bay on St. Kitts, and then had to move again for more protection. We were finally settled, although not comfortably, just before sunset. The winds have been quite strong, which is typical for this time of year. They are called the Christmas winds and usually last until the end of January.

The capital of St. Kitts is Basse Terre, and in the center of the city is a roundabout with a clock in the center called Piccadilly Square.

Cruise ships arrive almost daily in Basse Terre, and we can see them come and go from our anchorage, a few miles to the east. There is a hospital ship in the same area that has to leave every time a new cruise ship arrives. We learned that this ship is a medical school and that since the destruction of the medical school on Dominica this ship has taken on the faculty and students from that university. We watch it come and go every day to make room for the large cruise ships. I wonder what the faculty and students think of that. I’m trying to wrap my head around the students practicing surgical procedures on a vessel that has to be rolling around even slightly, in spite of having stabilizers. I contemplate over each evening as we watch the sunset from Pandora.

Yesterday we hired a tour guide to drive us around the island. Normally Bob and I detest this kind of touring, but this island has many windy roads and switchbacks that lead through the mountainous terrain, and driving is on the left. It was a smart decision not to tackle it ourselves!

Alexander Hamilton was born on nearby Nevis, and Thomas Jefferson’s great-great grandfather had a large plantation here on St. Kitts. The plantation has become a historic site here, no surprise, as well as the site of a botanical gardens and a local business of women who make batik fabrics. I’m quite fascinated to learn—so late in life!—that some of our founding fathers had such exotic origins! Years ago I visited the home of George Washington’s family, Sulgrave Manor, that seemed to be ‘right down the street’ from Princess Diana’s ancestral home Althorp. Both these family manses are in Northamptonshire, in the UK, so not so exotic. Still, I was well into adulthood before I ever gave a thought to exactly where our founding fathers originated. I just vaguely thought of them all as English. History is far more interesting in the details, isn’t it?

Romney Manor was first the site of gardens for a man named Tegereman who was chief of the indigenous tribe of Caribs. By 1625 this site had become a beautiful Euorpean style home for Sam Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson’s forebear.

The gardens are good mix of natural landscape and cultivated gardens.

It would hard to ever leave a spot like this…..more lemonade, please!

Along with the gardens, which are well cultivated and include beautifully landscaped areas of quite a variety of tropical plants, a group of women also run a textile business on the property of the plantation. The women make wonderful batik fabrics and their business, which started in 1976, is called Caribelle Batik. After 40 years, they must be on their 2^nd or even 3^rd generation of women keeping this technique alive and well. I’d say I was watching the 2^nd generation of master batik makers demonstrating for the tourists, since all of them were about my age.

The shop was full of about anything you can dream up to make with batik fabric. There were wall hangings, clothing, all kinds of little containers, pillow covers. I bought a nice selection of things to bring home for friends and family.

The designs are drawn with a stylus filled with melted beeswax.

They do intricate designs, and the best thrill of all was walking through the gardens, surrounded by exotic plants, views of the ocean, and lines and lines of batik fabrics drying in the breeze. I think this will be the highlight of my winter!

In addition to a rainforest full of exotic native and not so native plants that have found there way here, St. Kitts also has a large colony of green monkeys. They are everywhere! Our guide told us that they were brought to the island by the French, who brought them on their ships from Africa, along with their human cargo destined to be slaves. Some islanders have taken young monkeys for pets. I got accosted by a heckler, who came up from behind and just put this monkey into my arms. I didn’t mind, but I would have preferred to be asked. I guess he knows well that if he asks, most people will say no. It’s better to just throw a monkey into your arms and grab your phone before you have a chance to think. It’s the way of life in this part of the world, so it’s best just to go with it. Cute monkey, isn’t it?….wearing a diaper, thank heaven!

We had stopped for this view when the ‘monkey man’ approached me.

How about a monkey in its natural setting. They are pretty shy so we haven’t gotten close to the wild ones.

In the middle of our day our tour guide took us to a local restaurant–just a couple of picnic tables under an awning, with a ‘kitchen’ in an attached shed. No refrigeration. Our guide said all the food was prepared daily so no need to refrigerate anything. Well, hmmm. The choices were pretty varied, so it’s hard for me to imagine that they used everything up everyday.

Yeah, I know! It looks pretty rough, and I’ll admit that I was nervous about the food. It was all delicious–barbecued pork ribs, rice and pigeon peas, green salad, and Caribbean mac n cheese. Others had baked chicken, or baked mackerel with same side dishes. No one got sick.

I am staying onboard today. The wind has abated, although our weather guru says it’s best not to change locations until the weather is more settled at the beginning of next week. Sheesh! It’s only Wednesday! I plan to spend some time working on a small tapestry that is getting embarrassingly old, and then I will spend some time on my little Norwegian woven band. Later we will meet our cruising friends for sundowners at the beach bar, SaltPlage, where the view of the sunset will extraordinary! Well, as you can, we already had our sundowners…I could not get this post online yesterday.

So, that’s my report. St. Kitts is an interesting and unusual mix of history, lush flora and fauna, and beautiful local textile work. All good for me.

Nordic Tapestry in Washington Depot

August 24, 2017 | Leave a Comment

The day after the eclipse marked one month left until the vernal equinox. We are on the downward slope of summer. These next few weeks will hold the last of summer’s wealth….

Last weekend my friend Jody joined me in visiting the opening for the Nordic Tapestry exhibit in Washington Depot. What a lovely town that is, and the venue for this show of works was quite beautiful, which made a great backdrop for the wonderful tapestries. The artists are a group of students of Helena Hernmarck, mostly from Sweden, with one from Iceland and a couple from the US, who organized this event to honor Helena during her 75th year. What a great birthday present! ….and well deserved.

This is one of the Swedish weavers, Stina Fjelkner-Modig, standing in front of her “Poppies in a Wheat Field.” She has certainly done wonderful things with Hernmarck’s technique for creating texture.

This may be my favorite tapestry from the students’ exhibition. It is “Autumn” by Anneli Forsberg. Jody and I enjoyed talking to her about Sweden and working with Helena. It’s stunning, right?– with the same marvelous use of floats and thick bundles of weft.

A few other works of note…..

“Lighthouse.”

“Longing for Summer,” by Hugrun Runarsdottir

Two of the artists/weavers admiring the crocus. The artist for this tapestry is on the left.

Both exhibit spaces were on the green in Washington Depot. This is the building where the students’ exhibition was on display.

In the back is a lovely sunken garden where they served refreshments. By the time Jody and I found this spot the opening was over and the clean up had started.

At the other end of the green was the display of Helena’s work. I loved the setting and the way this building is open to the outdoors.

The last time I saw Helena, at her studio, this piece was newly finished. It is double woven with a layer of plastic strips on the back. When it is hung in a way that allows viewing on both sides, it has a luminous, transparent effect. The plastic on the back side creates a sparkling effect on the front. On the back side the effect of the woven plastic strips is very glossy and dazzling.

One of my all time favorite pieces is Helena’s “Anemones.” Her use of floats and big bundles of weft is what makes her dramatic use of focus and out of focus effects. Looks like I had trouble focusing on holding my camera straight!

Here’s a detail shot….

At the end of our visit, dear Jody got a photo of Helena and me together. I treasure this!

It was Jody who thought to take this fabulous photo of two of Helena’s works together.

This was the BIG event of my summer, and I’m looking forward to seeing another work of Helena’s at the “Plunge” exhibit in New Bedford, later this weekend!

Backtracking a little, I made contact with one of the award winners from the juried exhibit at NEWS. The basketmaker, Barbara Feldman Morse. I’m rather certain I saw another of her baskets awarded two years ago. Now this year she gilded the lily by also weaving a liner for her latest basket. Brilliant!

I had no way to contact any of the weavers whose works I admired, but I happened to stumble on Barbara on Facebook, so I tried contacting her through FB messenger. Well, it took a couple of weeks for her to see my message, but when we connected at last I found a most interesting woman!

Over the 40 years that I have been weaving and getting to know other weavers, I’ve often found that weavers lead fascinating lives. They are often gardeners, artists in tw0-dimensional techniques, like painting, and often good cooks too. Many weavers seem to love cats. It turns out that Barbara loves to cook and in particular she bakes madeleines! What wonderful little luxuries! She has published a cookbook on madeleines and her madeleines were sold at Ghiradelli’s Chocolate in San Fransciso, at local Starbucks, and they have been used in films. All that baking success is quite a feat on its own, but she is also a master weaver and accomplished basket maker. I am happy that I have crossed her path. You can read her here and also get a few madeleine recipes!

And summer marches on …. Bob and I participated in a “Conquer the Current” paddle on the Connecticut River last weekend. He did the conquering and I kept cool and out of the sun by holding my umbrella. Bob rowed 9 miles down the river! We put in at the Haddam Bridge (think Goodspeed Opera House), and ended at the Connecticut River Museum, in Essex, where the museum staff treated all participants to a wonderful Sunday brunch on the grounds of the museum–even me–who didn’t do a thing!

The gardens I see along my walks are just beginning to show signs of slowing down, but are always still a wonderful part of any venture outside. It was a hazy August day-after-eclipse that I took these.

The eclipse seemed to have an oddly productive effect on me. Before it started I dug out some linen fabric that I had eco-dyed last summer, unsuccessfully. Actually, I eco-dyed it twice and still did not get a pleasing outcome. So on eclipse morning I brewed up some French marigold flowers that have been stashed in my freezer from last year’s garden. I simmered the linen fabric for about an hour, then let it cool in the dye bath for the rest of the day.

This photo is about as hazy as my garden shots above. The color is actually darker and quite interesting. The fern prints from eco-dyeing that barely showed up now stand out considerably more! Win, win!

First the marigolds, so you can see the color of the flowers.

And here’s what I got…although darker than this photo.

After the eclipse I brewed up a batch of peach jam. That’s a lot of productivity for me in one day….. it had to be some lunar/solar energy vibes.

It’s been a good week in my little world. I hope it’s been good for you too!