weaving – Page 11

Sweetgrass in Charleston

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

Eccentric Pleasures

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!

Tick, Tick, Tick….

August 23, 2012 | Leave a Comment

Isn’t this mid-August weather glorious? It’s hard to choose between being outside and being in the studio. With only three weeks left until my long voyage, I have to choose being in the studio!

Tackling My Toika

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….

Change

March 28, 2012 | Leave a Comment

We are stumbling closer and closer to our move to Connecticut. We have a buyer for our house in New Jersey, and we’ve committed to a house in Connecticut…..but getting everything to fall into place so everyone involved can move on has been a bit difficult. It looks like we will be en route to our new home by the middle of next week! We have been rattling around in our empty, echoing house for a few weeks now. It doesn’t feel like our home anymore, so it’s time to move on….

We packed my last loom over the weekend. I probably should have taken some photographs!…but it was too stressful. I had the strong impression that one of us was going to end up in the ER, so grabbing the camera just didn’t happen. This last loom is my big Toika, and it had a warp of cotton seine twine on it for a boundweave project. My dear friend and experienced Toika weaver, Sister Bianca recommended leaving the warp on the loom.

Sr. Bianca advised me to take the beater, the harnesses, and the jacks from the top of the loom, and wrap them all together around the warp beam. It was a brilliant suggestion!….

….executing it was not so brilliant….. imagine cutting the warp from the front apron and taking the reed out of the beater. While trying to keep that from flopping about, I then tried to hold all the jacks in place while my husband tried to disconnect the jack-holding frame from the large side frames of the loom. Where was our 3rd set of hands for this job??? Certainly no extra hands for photos… At one point I thought the jack frame would surely hit one of us on the head, necessitating a hospital visit, and possibly necessitating a long recovery from head injuries (if not worse). My husband was not amused at my conjectures. I wanted to take a ‘time out’ to plan a strategy; he just wanted to get it over with! Typical male/female disagreement, I believe!

I’m happy to report that there was no loss of life…..or even loss of consciousness! But I don’t want to do that again any time soon. If there is to be a next time, I must remember to get more detailed information on how to accomplish this! Advise welcome!

With my looms packed, I have turned to more portable projects. (Hey, who am I kidding?….I haven’t actually woven in several months, just knowing that I was going to have to pack up those looms.) Have you seen the swing knitting projects on Ravelry? Amazing! I’m intrigued…

I did buy the workshop download for learning this technique, but I didn’t want wristlets, or a hat, or socks. I wanted a jacket! So I jumped in the deep end of the pool, and really, this technique is not difficult to understand. There is no reason to do a little project if you really want the big one! This jacket, designed by Heidrun Leigmann, requires four sections just like this one which I finished a few days ago:

Knitting swing jacket 1 mar 2012 — Swing Knitted Jacket by Heidrun Leigmann

As you can see, it is a mitered square with short rows to create the curving elements. The yarn called for is Noro’s “Flower Bed,” which I cannot find here in the US. Since it is roughly sock weight yarn, and since I love the weight and bounce of Shetland, I have chosen to use a Shetland-like yarn by Kauni in a long colorway that runs through the entire spectrum. Is it too colorful?? Probably. Do I have the guts to wear something this blinding? …not sure… but I am enjoying knitting it! Can I really knit four of these sections without losing motivation? …not sure of that either!

In other facets of life, when not packing, I have made another “Blooming Gardens” crystal bracelet, along with matching earrings and even a small pendant. The purple one is for my sister’s very belated birthday.

And lastly, I finished the Nantucket basket that I want to give as a wedding present to a dear friend’s daughter. It’s only three months late…. that’s actually quite good for me! Now I’d like to make one for each of my own kids!