Category Archives: inspiration

Mid-Spring

Posted on May 31, 2013 | 1 comment

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.

 

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Posted in gardening, inspiration, spinning, spring, tapestry

Perfect May

Posted on May 20, 2013 | Leave a comment

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.

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Posted in dyeing, inspiration, tapestry

Time Warps

Posted on May 18, 2013 | Leave a comment

“Time Warps: Textiles from Today’s Weavers.”  What a catchy title for the biennial exhibition of works by the Connecticut Guild of Handweavers.

I’ve been looking forward to seeing this exhibition since I got the first announcement back in March.  Nothing like cutting it close, since I am going on the last day it is on view!  Whew!

This is from the Connecticut Historical Society’s event page on their website:

Time Warps: Textiles from Today’s Weavers

April 20, 2013 – May 17, 2013

This juried exhibit of handwoven goods displays the work of contemporary weavers who use both historical and modern techniques and designs. The Biennial Show organized by the Handweavers’ Guild of Connecticut includes articles of clothing (scarves, shawls, jackets), decorative pieces (wall hangings), and household items (table runners, rugs, towels, blankets). The work is produced by members of the Handweavers’ Guild of Connecticut, an organization of handweavers, spinners and fiber artists from all levels of experience who are dedicated to the education, preservation, and promotion of handweaving and spinning.

Inline image 1

What they don’t mention is that Nancy Hoskins was one of the two jurors for this show.  And what a wonderful surprise to see two of her pieces hanging in the show, both Byzantine portraits done in samitum.

There were two rooms of woven items, everything from tailored clothing, wall hangings, rugs, shawls, table linens, even a couple of wonderful soft sculptures.  This is what greeted me when I entered the first room.

The rugs are particularly well displayed in these elevated cases on the floor.  The items on the walls are displayed coming out of frames, which is a great idea, but would have been considerably better if the frames had been chosen to match the width of the items.  Some of the shawls are ‘crumpled up’ in the frames, and I think that looks messy.

There are some wonderfully creative works on display.  The two wonderful soft sculptures are Penelope sitting on a stool, holding her shuttles, with wild, jet black hair sticking straight out from her head and wrapped in yarn to make little pigtails.  (I would love to show you, but I really can’t without permission!)  The other wonderful soft sculpture is a felted owl standing on a perch.  He is beyond description!

I was so inspired by the work in this exhibit!  I’m not sure you can imagine what it felt like to walk through two rooms full of handwovens when I’ve been in such a very different living situation for almost 9 months.  All that intense color and texture and fiber.  It was a rush!

And tomorrow I will go to the last guild meeting of the year (my first and last this year).  Bring it on!

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Sunny St. Augustine

Posted on November 28, 2012 | Leave a comment

We spent a lovely day ashore in St. Augustine yesterday.  It was sunny, there were blue skies, and the temperature was in the 70s!  Finally!  This is why we headed south!

The Main Square on King St.

The oldest church in St. Augustine.

Flagler College

It was warm enough for an al fresco lunch at a Cuban restaurant!

Christmas in the main square.  Yes, those are poinsettias planted outside!

…and the highlight for me was getting this shot from the fort of Castillo de San Marcos which I think might make a lovely companion tapestry to my “Terrace View from Skouros.”

We ended the day with dinner at Bistro de Leon as planned.  Chef Jean Stephane Poinard’s menu was as delicious as we expected, and this years’ Beajolais Nouveau is quite good!

Day 78, November 27: St. Augustine, Florida

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Posted in holiday, inspiration, tapestry

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Beach Combing on Black Friday

Posted on November 23, 2012 | Leave a comment

I couldn’t help thinking about all the folks who got up in the predawn today to hit the malls and start their Christmas shopping.  Black Friday has become quite the American tradition to kick off the holiday season….and not a good one.

It doesn’t seem like it’s time to hang the wreath and put candles in the window down here.  We left St. Marys for a short motor over to Cumberland Island which has the National Seashore.  To get to the ocean-side beach we walked through a forest of live oak, Spanish moss, and palmetto that could have been Middle Earth.

After getting out of the forest you walk a bit further on a boardwalk above the dunes to get to the ocean.

The forest transitions into beach along the way…

And then there are miles of silky pearl colored sand to walk along, and millions of shells rolling to and fro in the surf.  I picked up a lot of shells.  The whelks and clams are so different from what I see in New England!  I even found a lovely angel wing….although only one. I’m imagining a Christmas wreath made from these shells, a wreath covered in Spanish moss and shells.

We had heard that Cumberland Island is known for fossilized shark teeth.  They come out of the river when the channel for the ICW (Intracoastal Waterway) is dredged.  The dredged debris is dumped in large quantities in a certain area on the island.  Bob was on a mission for a shark tooth! He even found a sieve to help him in his search.

He was hoping to find one a little bigger these!…although he could wear these as earrings.  I keep wondering if he’ll pierce his ear/s now that he’s a full time sailor.

Another exciting sight on Cumberland Island are wild horses.  We saw a mare and two foals along our walk.  They are pretty used to people so they are easy to photograph.  They don’t let you get close enough to touch though!

And as if a fantasy forest of live oak and palmettos, inhabited by wild horses, and a
17-mile long beach isn’t enough, the final highlight of Cumberland Island is the ruins of a Gilded Age house that was the winter retreat of the Carnegie family.

This was the first day in about a month that we enjoyed clear skies and warm sun, so we stayed ashore almost all day to soak up as much as we could!

We were back on board in time for sunset and a lovely dinner with new friends who spent the day with us at the seashore.

 It hardly felt like opening day of the Christmas shopping season…

 

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Posted in holiday, inspiration, sailing, travel

Sweetgrass in Charleston

Posted on November 6, 2012 | 4 comments

We are in Charleston, and I have not posted anything here since our arrival last Thursday.  Bob has posted lots of photos and descriptions of what we’ve been up to, and he’s done such a thorough job, that I’m not inclined to try to catch up!

I’ve been distracted.  We are photographing doors and window boxes, something I’m always intrigued to do… I’ve been thinking of window box images taken from every place I’ve been in the past decade or so…. Maine, France, England, now Charleston.  There are so many beautiful little window gardens…  I’d like to choose a few and weave them using Theo Moorman technique as Daryl Lancaster does (and as I have now done a couple of times), and put them together in a window frame fashion.  I’ve got just the spot in our house for this…

I’ve also been distracted thinking about the potential group tapestry project that the Wednesday Group might do.  For the first time in aeons I have been reading papers on classical literature and reliving my past when this was such a major part of my life.  It’s been aeons of aeons since then.  It’s rekindling the love of words and ancient languages that I’ve neglected for so long…

And I’ve been looking for the perfect basket.  Actually, I saw it last Thursday, on my first day in the Charleston Market, but I did not know it until I’d spent days looking at hundreds more baskets!

I didn’t realize that I would have so many choices.  And in the end that perfect basket was still waiting for me this morning, although when I finally realized it someone was holding it, considering it for themselves.  They put it down, and I heard them say, “I’ll think about it and come back”…..bam!  It is now mine.

Carlene Habersham made my basket. Here she is making some last minute adjustments to the rim.

She had this book on display in her booth

Carlene said the basket on the cover was made by her grandmother.  She then turned to the pages that highlighted both her grandmother’s and her mother’s work.  I was duly impressed.  But most of all, I just love the basket she made.

Last Thursday I spoke to another woman, Susie, who had some very delicate small baskets on display.  I wanted six of them to give to some basket making friends of mine.  Susie said only her daughter did work that small, and she called to ask if her daughter could make six miniature baskets over the weekend.  Susie told me to come back today and they would be ready.  Luckily for me, her daughter came too so I could meet her.

There were lots of other stalls with small baskets, but only these were done to a scale that was pleasing to the size of the basket.  Aren’t they lovely?

This basket is done by Susie’s other daughter.  It caught my eye as I was leaving their booth.

I am in basket heaven….

Days 52 – 56, Nov. 1 – 5: Charleston, South Carolina

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Posted in baskets, inspiration, tapestry, weaving

Waiting out the Storm

Posted on October 26, 2012 | 1 comment

I should get a good amount of knitting done while waiting for Hurricane Sandy to pass by.  Luckily we are far enough south that Sandy will not even be a tropical storm in these parts, much less a hurricane.  We expect winds of about 35 mph with gusts to 50.  The downside is that this is a very slow moving system, and we may be stuck in one place for as long as five days.  On the bright side, more time to knit and read….

As I write, Sandy is wreaking havoc on the Bahamas.  Such a beautiful area, always so fragile due to these terrible storms.  And New England is hunkering down for a combination hurricane/snow storm that is being dubbed “Frankenstorm.”  Yikes!

I’m worried about all my family and friends who live from New Jersey up through New England.  Stay safe, dear ones!

Meanwhile, I knit…..and knit…

I could not figure out a good way to photograph the finished ‘Wingspan’ shawl.  This is the best I could manage…

I’ll be wrapped in it shortly when the temperatures drop tomorrow or Sunday…

It is beginning to feel like I’ve been knitting the “Ann Jacket” (Vivian Hoxbro) for half my life.  It is a lot of knitting.  I am about two-thirds done with the 3rd body panel (out of four total).  Where am I going to get the energy for that last panel??  Then there will be all the plain knitting for the sleeves!  Sheesh!  I really do want to wear it so I’ve just got to muddle on.  It is so cleverly designed, but it is endless knitting…

This is the finished back.

The two body panels are knitted together in a very clever fashion by picking up stitches going up the left body panel, place a marker, cast on a number of stitches (and the number of stitches cast on here are what will determine the width of this center panel!), place marker, pick up stitches going down the second body panel.  As you knit along this very long row of stitches you decrease on both sides of each market (every other row) so that the knitting begins to form a mitered triangle at the very center back!  By the time you have only one stitch between the two markers you hold the two ends of your circular needle together (with the wrong sides of the body panels facing outward) and use a third needle to cast off all stitches.  Yes, that one stitch between the two markers does mean there are an odd number of stitches to be cast off…. so the last “K 1 st. from each needle together” becomes “knit last stitch from one needle together with the last 2 stitches from other needle.”

I know….it doesn’t show up very well in such dark yarn!  Here is a close up view:

Funny how things often happen when they are meant to happen.  I have put aside my swing knitted jacket “Soo Feminine” because I wasn’t happy with the finishing technique. Now, assembling that jacket looks like a perfect use for Hoxbro’s mitered technique from the “Ann Jacket!”  Should be interesting looking with the long color changes of the Kauni 8/2 Effektgarn I used…and I hope will complement the swing knitted shapes.

But… before I return to the swing jacket, I really want to finish this one.  So, onward….

Day 46, October 26: North Myrtle Beach

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Posted in inspiration, knitting, sailing

News from Home

Posted on October 17, 2012 | Leave a comment

We passed into North Carolina on Tuesday, and it feels like we are really on a new adventure now!

But first…. we have had some particularly poignant news from our life back home…

On Friday I got very exciting news from our son Chris that the folks at Bloomberg News wanted someone from Columbia University to comment on the recent Nobel prize in physics.  Naturally they wanted Brian Greene, who was unavailable.  So they contacted Chris’ lab to talk to the head of the experiment, Tanya Zelevinsky.  She happened to be in Japan for a talk, so the next person in line was Christopher!  He was picked up by a driver on Friday afternoon and delivered to Bloomberg offices for the interview.  They taped the interview around 6pm and it went on the air at 8.30 Friday evening!  I was ecstatic!  In fact, I’m off the charts as a shamelessly proud mother!

You can see the interview HERE!!!   If I were savvier I would be able to inbed the video…
He was positively cool as a cucumber in front of the cameras and under the relentless questions of the newscasters!

The other news is that Jack Spangler, a new friend in Essex, has passed away.  From what we’ve heard it seems that he died peacefully in his sleep one night last week.  We knew of him when we were members of Norwalk Yacht Club, but we were just really getting to know him in Essex.  He sponsored us at Essex Yacht Club, and he took us under his wing, like a mentor, in our first months there.  One of the glorious highlights of our first summer in Essex was spending an afternoon with Jack aboard his classic Dyer 29′  Musketeer.

In the short time I was getting to know Jack he told wonderful stories about his wife who passed away years ago, he accompanied a lovely elderly woman who could no longer drive herself to the yacht club almost every evening so she could enjoy the sunsets with the rest of us, and he took a great interest in Bob and me.  Although I hardly knew him well, he had a great influence on our settling into town, and he seemed to be one of those gregarious people who are endlessly interested in everything and endlessly upbeat….which brings me to one of my favorite quotes from another sailor, Henry Plummer:

If I didn’t continually prove myself a fool I would think myself a philosopher–for I seem to come nearer to complete happiness more often than other folks.  I have worked hard for it, too, in a way, and I believe that I have made such friends with bluebird that neither poverty, want or woe can drive him far away for long…     (The Boy, Me and the Cat)

I know Jack will be missed by all who knew him.  How could anyone be impervious to his infectious optimism, his interest in everyone and everything, and his lightning sense of humor!  I am so thankful we had that lovely afternoon on the Connecticut River with him in August.

 

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Eccentric Pleasures

Posted on August 29, 2012 | Leave a comment

It is less than two weeks until we leave, and I have just spent a week with visiting friends, up to see our new location and to say good bye before we sail off into the sunset…

While doing a little local sight seeing with friends, I visited several amazing places over the past week.  First the Chester Fair!  Wow!  This is a real old-fashioned country fair with oxen pulling contests; cow, sheep, and goat judgings; best vegetable and fruit contests. There was a sheep herding demonstration.  There were judgings for best fruit pie, best whoopie pie, best vegetable decorations…just to name a few.  This has been taking place since 1877, and it’s just down the road from me.  Who knew?

Two other highlights of the week occurred yesterday when my friend June and I visited a weaving school in an historic octogon-shaped house in Carolina, Rhoda Island, run by Jan Doyle who also teaches at URI.  She is doing an amazing program with local weavers, and she has lots of looms and quite a large weaving reference library.  On the way home my friend and I stopped in Stonington at the Velvet Mill to see the Fiber Arts Studio.  What an amazing space!  Just walking in the door I felt the weaving zen come over me.  I could live here…..

Now that I’m home, doing laundry from the week of visitors, all I want to do is weave.  I have two weeks to get organized and packed for a 9 month trip, but all I want to do is put on a fine linen warp for napkins….wouldn’t that be relaxing?  I really must snap out of this…

….which leads me to what I can realistically do today.  In the laundry this morning are 13  handwoven linen dinner napkins (not all woven by me), a dozen linen cocktail napkins, and several small handwoven towels from the powder room.  They are all air drying right now, and shortly I will have the pleasure of ironing them.  I know…..it’s a bit eccentric….maybe even quite ’round the bend’…..but I love to iron linens.  That’s a pleasurable activity I can’t wait to do in a short while when the linens are barely damp.

A spray bottle of water for the stubborn wrinkles, a really hot iron,  steam that will waft up at me and the sweet smell of ironing.  I can’t wait!

 

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Posted in inspiration, weaving

Tackling My Toika

Posted on August 1, 2012 | 1 comment

In spite of that pep talk from my son, in spite of Su Butler’s excellent website with extensive information, including photos (!) about tying up a Toika, and in spite of perusing every forum post about Toikas I could find on Weavolution, I could not get my loom to work.  When I opened a shed I had such a jumble of threads at differing heights, there was no way to throw a shuttle! And I won’t even mention how hard it was to depress the treadles.

This is a warp I made somewhat over a year ago, before I knew for certain that we’d be moving.  As soon as we decided to put our house on the market, the real estate agent we used insisted that I take this loom apart and put it in storage.  She thought my studio would show well as a second family room.  We rented a storage unit and I put both the Toika and my 40″ AVL in it, not to mention lots of other studio equipment.

The project I have on the Toika is 8 shaft boundweave threaded in rosepath at 10 epi.  I’ve used some precious tapestry warp that is hard to get these days, and I put on about 6 yards, 24″ wide to make several boundweave wall hangings.  I’m envisioning a little story board of my family.  For me I have charted out a floor loom, a castle style spinning wheel, a drop spindle, various garden flowers, and maybe a bucket for dye!  For my husband I’ve charted a boat, and anchor, and a car.  My head is brimming with ideas to include our two sons, along with various cats and dogs…. and yet…. I could not get the loom to work.

Today I came close to tears.  It wasn’t pretty….  I became obsessed with talking directly Su Butler because I believed that she was the only person left in the world who could sort this out for me.  Either she had some advice or it was time to get rid of this loom.  Shame faced, I sent her an email.  Within moments she wrote back and recommended we talk on the phone.  Hallelujah!

My Toika works like a dream now! What a relief….

So, what did I do wrong?  Well, first (and probably most importantly) the distance between the bottom of the shafts, the top lamms, bottom lamms and treadles should be about the same.  Not knowing exactly what that meant I had them within 2″ of the same distance apart.  Su said I needed to get all these within a 1/2″ of the same distance.  Bingo!  The other dilemma was my treadle height.  Doing it as described on her website didn’t give me the necessary position when the locking pins were removed. My treadles ended up slanting upwards toward the bench, and that was no fun for trying to depress them!  She was familiar with this little quirk on some looms and explained to me what to do.  Now everything is in great working order!

So, these are not the best looking trees by any stretch….but the loom is working well, and I don’t mind working on my little graphed charts to improve the image.  I’ll give it another go shortly.

8 am next morning…. I have better trees!

I was compensating for my graph paper squares too much in my first attempt and therefore elongating the trees too much.  Now I think I’ve got it!  So I will weave a header and begin the first actual wall hanging!  Can you imagine me doing a happy dance around the loom??….punching the air!  Yippee!

Better looking trees shortly….

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Posted in family, inspiration, patterns, weaving