weaving – Page 7

Past Wedding, Full Forward on Inspiration!

August 11, 2015 | 1 Comment

First a moment of shamless personal happiness: our older son was married over the weekend in Baltimore. It was a glorious event! I enjoyed every detail of it starting with our private time with the almost newly weds when we arrived on Wednesday evening last week, right through to the after-wedding-Sunday-brunch. It was a small wedding, but the honored guests came from as far as San Francisco and Denver and Florida, to as close as right down the street. It was a congregation of close knit friends and relatives. It couldn’t have been better!

We invited our very oldest friends–two couples we’ve known since long before either Rob or Chris were born–Chris and Pat and LeaAnn and Garrett– and a dear friend, Craig, who has been more than an uncle to our boys….and my sister Sheryl and her family–Carl, Madison and Chloe. It was perfect!

Elevator selfies are certainly the rage now!

The wedding party was large for so small a wedding– 6 bride’s maids, 6 groom’s men,
1 groom’s dog, 3 flower girls, and 2 ringbearers. The groom’s dog may have stolen the show. After walking down the aisle with the groom, he then gave the groom a ‘high-5’ moments before the bridesmaids entered.

He lay down peacefully between the bride and groom when the vows began.

When he began to make nesting movements with the bride’s beautiful wedding dress, he made no fuss at being moved in front of the groomsmen. Just look at all those Chuck Taylors!

He got to spend a few moments at the reception before he was sent up to the bridal suite to to relax with a very attentive friend.

Here are more moments from the day… I loved every minutes of it!

Photo ops in the beautiful Hotel Monaco in Baltimore.

The best man and the mother of the groom–moi!

I am shamelessly proud of these two young men–the groom and his best man brother!

The finale of the ceremony!

That wonderful moment for any mother of the groom!

The very best moments of this weekend aren’t documented with photographs. It was spending some wonderful time with both our sons, our new daugher in law, our friends, my sister and her family. It was finding two very sweet handwritten notes from my son thanking us for so much, acknowledging what a wonderful relationship we’ve had over the years behind us and the years to come. This note arrived with a gift just moments before I left our room to go down to the ceremony. It just doesn’t get any better!

With a little help from my friends (there’s always a Beatle theme when our family is together) Bob and I hosted a brunch for the newly weds on Sunday morning at their new house in the suburbs of Baltimore. If not for Pat and Jeremy, and of course Bob, the brunch would not have been nearly as buttoned down as it was! I guess we were way too busy hosting to get any photos.

I am so indebted to our old friends and my sister’s family for making such a long trek to be part of this event. Being with them put the frosting on the cake and the cherry on top!

Now back at home I am relishing the all the memories and enjoying looking through all the candid photos taken by friends. We’ll have the photographer’s images shortly.

I have turned my attentions back to the tapestry presentation I’ll be giving in early September to the weavers’ guild in Rhode Island, to working on what I’ve lovingly called the “Archie Project” for the past ….. years. I refuse to admit how long this project is taking!

Bob and I took inventory of his stash of dowels in the workshop to determine what he might need to buy in order to make a backstrap for loom for me. It looks like we have everything needed! I might be weaving by early next week.

This morning LeaAnn sent me links to a wonderful illustrator and writer who lives in Wales — Jackie Morris. My imagination took off while reading her blog. On Saturday, while we were celebrating a wedding, she wrote this:

The summer is always busy. It’s hard to find the silence required for clear thought. George MacKay Brown talked of writing poetry as ‘the interrogation of silence.’ I know not everyone needs it to work, to think, but I do.
…I become more fascinated by silence as I grow older. But finding silence is different to being silent. When you choose to stop speaking you unnerve people. They fill the silence, the space you leave. They interpret your silence in their own way.

At the end of her post she invited people to comment on how they achieve the silence they need to think and work, or to respond that they do not need to find this silence.

I agree whole heartedly with her description about needing inner silence and attempting to find it. There is no one place where I find mine. Sometimes it is easy to retreat to a wonderful silent place, and sometimes, no matter where I go I cannot get to it. I’m certain it has more to do with the state of my mind than the features or faults of any physical place. It all comes down to me. I just have to learn to be still and let it come.

As a weaver I often find that being at one of my looms is the best place for me to be silent and reap the benefits of where silence can lead. It doesn’t always work, but it is almost foolproof. On a floor loom or at a spinning wheel there is a rhythm of mechanical music that takes me deep into my inner self where there is a vast landscape of something like silence.

In tapestry I almost silently lift each warp thread by hand to create an image, and in that case it is my own deep thinking about the image that draws me away from the world, from any other noise but that deep music inside me. These are the reasons I return to weaving again and again.

After all the busy-ness of this summer–the SSCA extravaganza, visiting friends, the biennial weaving conference, and the wedding–it’s time to find that silence and get some good work done.

A New Direction…

August 2, 2015 | 1 Comment

It’s less than a week until my son’s wedding! I have finished my projects, but I’m still deep in lists– lists for everything we need to bring to the wedding– a list of what I need for myself as well as what I’ve promsied to supply for the ceremony…..lists for meals before the wedding, and a list for what I need to host the wedding brunch at my son’s new house the day after the wedding.

Meanwhile, I can’t help thinking about weaving projects. I’ve gotten precious little weaving done on the small tapestry I started onboard late winter this year. What I have done on it has been quite fun–lots of swirling water and the beginnings of the tentacles of a Portuguese Man of War. Very soon I will have my first attempt at pulling the warp around the loom so I can continue weaving up the warp. I’m more than a little anxious about this, but once I’ve done it I hope it becomes something I can count on doing. It will allow me to have smaller looms on board if I use this kind of warp. Check out my new attempts at holding my cartoon in place–a small, very powerful magnet. These little magnets will jump right out of your hands to fly together they are so strong. And a very large paper clip. Neither is a good solution, but I muddle on.

And I’ve been planning my next floor loom project. It’s so hard to choose what to weave when I have so little time at home and so many ideas. I think I will weave yardage in Plaited Huck (same structure as my recent linen tote bag). This time I will make a warp of tussah silk in natural (sort of a pale oat color–not shown in the photo because the cone is the size of a small loom) with random stripes of several silks from SanJo that are also cool natural colors, but matt–no sheen like the tussah. One is smooth, another is boucle and the third has wonderful dark flecks in it. The weft will be golden tussah, in the center of the photos. It will become yardage for a top I hope to make…

But here’s my NEW DIRECTION–all caps because I am very excited about this! At this time of year for the past 3 years— the threshold of late summer–I have become rather anxious and a bit cranky (might be an understatement) that my weaving time at home is rapidly diminshing. This year I have even less to show for myself than previous years… sigh…

Yesterday morning I was looking at some messages on Ravelry and then clicking on various links to other things. Isn’t that the recipe for suddenly losing half a day? Following various links on Ravelry, a site for knitters, I stumbled on Laverne Waddington’s website about backstrap weaving. Here is the first photo that caught my attention.

Are these not WONDERFUL??? A little voice is saying to me: Are these not exactly what you’ve been wanting to weave??? Book covers and handbags. The little voice again: That’s why you’ve woven and sewn two tote bags in the past year. That’s why you took a class on making paper forms for handmade books…..you can do this….YOU can do this on a boat!

Look how Laverne personalized these book covers with the initials of the lucky friends who will receive them!

There are lots of small bags on Laverne’s site too, and lots of simply beautiful pick up designs. Go take a look!

Oh, be still my heart! I think backstrap weaving might be a wonderful new direction for me. It will fit on the boat. It will satisfy my need to weave somewhat complex cloth. It will allow me to continue my new interest in making book covers and handbags. It is taking all my willpower not to make a loom right now… I must stay focused on the wedding for 8 more days, then I can come home and get started!

Funny how things come to you when you need them. I’ve known of Laverne for a number of years now. She and I are in a number of the same online groups. I see her stuff on these groups now and then and marvel at her beautiful weaving. It just never occurred to me until now that this type of weaving may be the perfect solution to weaving onboard.

It’s summer and I’m thinking about Linen…

July 20, 2015 | Leave a Comment

There was a recent post on Facebook that linked to a May 16th article in the New York Times about the two brothers from Pennsylvania who wrote The Big Book for Flax. Most anyone who attended Maryland Sheep and Wool festival a few years ago saw them there, selling their beautiful coffee table book about linen when it was first published.

The article points out the hardships these two men have faced in trying to build a commune where members would work together to live off the land, including growing flax and spinning and weaving it to make their own clothing. Their lifestyle is modeled off the colonial Moravian communities that settled in this part of Pennsylvania a couple of centuries ago.

I’ve never been certain how well flax grows in the US. I know Sara von Tresckow has good success in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. Her website boasts a flaxcam, although I did not see live video of flax growing!–truly like watching grass grow! Instead there is an interesting photo essay of the whole seed to harvest process. Sara spins and weaves with her homegrown flax. I loved her solution to the volatile weather that the midwest gets each summer. She cordons off her fields with baling twine to help keep the plants vertical during a blow or a thunderstorm. Now that’s an attention to detail and a labor of love!

Last year I met a woman from New Hampshire who demonstrated flax preparation at the Bushnell Farm in Old Saybrook as part of an annual historic festival of ‘life on the farm’ in our area of the Connecticut River Valley. Gina Gerhard brought locally grown flax from New Hampshire along with all her tools for demonstrating the whole process from harvest to stricks that are ready to spin. I described the whole process last year in this blog post.

Still, I can’t help thinking that flax is easier to grow in northern Europe where the weather is more reliable, where the light is gentler for softly bleaching the fibers to that perfect silver.

Linen is such beautiful fabric that I have always wanted to spin it. I have made a few attempts in the past and have enjoyed it. I have a few spools of wetspun linen waiting to be plied and then utilized in some way. I have a lovely image of myself in a simple handwoven jacket–where I also am a perfect size 6. It’s always fun to dream….

Last week at NEWS I saw some beautiful linen stricks at the VavStuga booth and couldn’t resist buying one. It has that beautiful color that I associate with flax from Belgium or Netherlands. Now I wish I’d bought two–or three! I can’t do much with 4 oz!

Then today I stumbled on a link to a beautifully done vimeo video on current European flax processing. After seeing so many demonstrations and videos of traditional techniques for retting, breaking, scutching and combing flax it was very interesting to see the same processes done by machine. It still appears to be a low impact way of using a natural product–far less environmentally challenging than most cotton. Check it out.

And there is a sequel that includes some high tech applications for using linen in the automotive industry, for sports items such as bicycles and surf boards, and even for fishing rods! There is exciting information in this video about quite innovative uses for linen and flax fibers, and yet the mechanics of processing flax are fairly basic compared to other high tech fibers. Fascinating!

There is about 25 minutes of video here, and all my words. I think I’d better stop for now!

Confluence

June 29, 2015 | Leave a Comment

Once again, it’s been a month since I’ve posted here, and usually when that happens I’ve been writing posts in my head for weeks and weeks before finally getting to a keyboard. Not this time–I haven’t even thought about posting. Old age? Beginning senility? I’m dancing as fast as I can and the music is still accelerating!

The past month has been quite a confluence of all the facets of my life. Don’t we all have competing interests and obligations that keep us juggling things to try and get just the right mix? Too long without weaving and I become cranky; at the same time too much solitude in my studio and my hermitic tendencies start to drag me down.

The two big June events in my life were Bob’s 60th birthday, which he glided through like a swan. He doesn’t look or act a day older, and he enjoyed getting together with some of his dearest friends to celebrate the landmark. I still have more than 6 months to go, and I am feeling older and older each day. Hmmm….

Last week Bob and another local sailor hosted a large sailing event for the Seven Seas Cruising Association. George and Bob put on a three day conference with speakers and social time, a fancy dinner at a yacht club, and a dinghy raft up on the river. It was a lot of work, but something both men really enjoy. I sort of go along for the ride, although I did have a house full of overnight guests and made some breakfasts and one rather large dinner for 12!

Here we are with in our den with two couples who have helped us immensely in getting used to living aboard. Both of these couples live aboard full time, unlike Bob and I who only live onboard during the winter months. They are truly nomads.

And here is the young man who gives all the live aboards their daily weather information. This is the man who kept us safe through hurricane Sandy two years ago, and has kept us safe through many other storms over the past 3 years! He was our honored house guest for the weekend, and he even used Bob’s office to broadcast his daily weather information over SSB radio. He had some way of connecting to his radio tower in Florida in order to do the broadcast. The amazing Chris Parker:

While both these events were fun, I have not had any time to work on tapestry or fabric weaving. I have certainly had some important ‘thought time’ making plans for two projects that I will put on a couple of my floor looms. Hopefully I can finish weaving at least one of these before we leave again at the holidays. More on that in a bit….

After the guests left I turned my attention back to the linen fabric I took off the Baby Wolf about a month ago. I spent some time over the weekend sewing a tote bag. The linen is a medium weight fabric. The warp was a mixture of several colors of a rather thick 2-ply wet spun linen. In the photo below the 3 spools used in the warp are lined up together and the golden colored spool on top is what I used for the weft.

And here is close up of warp threads; you see they are a bit coarse and hairy even though they still have the sheen of wet spun linen.

This is the fabric off the loom in May, drying outside after machine washing. You can see the cutting lines I wove in to help me in making the tote bag. The fabric for the handles and top of the lining is at the top of the photo and is woven in plain weave.

And here is the finished bag.

The draft for this fabric is a blend of plaited twill with huck blocks. It makes plaited huck! How cool is that? I got this draft from Laurie Autio when she gave a talk called “Designing for Block Weaves Using Twills as Profiles” at our guild last fall. This particular design is a 6-Block, 8-shaft structure using huck threading on a base of plaited twill.

My warp was threaded at 12 epi and woven to square. The fabric is close to burlap weight, but not nearly as open as burlap. I am very happy with it. If you weave this structure with a lot of color contrast between the warp and the weft you’ll get a good contrast between the plaited elements, those that go over and those that go under. I am more a fan of subltety, but the downside is that you probably cannot see the plaited effect in my photos. I also blurred the woven effect by using multiple colors in the warp. This is just my preference. It would be quite dramatic woven in two very contrasting colors.

I plan to write up the procedures for weaving this project very soon. Stay tuned!

Shameless Landlubber

March 29, 2015 | Leave a Comment

We have spent some wonderful days ashore between Fernandina, Savannah and Beaufort, SC. I can’t walk 10 feet without taking a photo– of window boxes, planters, a beautiful front door or porch. Clearly I miss land! –in spite of my little container gardens on Pandora.

Our last day in Savannah: camellias, cherry trees– even a few that have already begun leafing out!—azaleas, pansies. It is full spring here.

And just a few more doors…..I can’t help myself! Note the gas lamp at this door. There were many in Savannah.

Elegance on elegance…..would love to get a peak inside both these places!

This gate with ivy is so pretty I can only imagine how lovely the garden must be on the other side!

Lunch was fun in a well known English style pub with good pub fare: bangers and mash, shepherd’s pie, ploughman’s lunch. I took this photo to show my dear friend Lesley, but I wish I’d taken a photo of my lunch so she could see I was having a Branston pickle!

We visited the maritime museum that also happened to have a lovely garden surrounding it since the museum is housed in an historic house with beautiful grounds.

The museum had quite an extensive collection of ship models, but what caught my eye were some of the very few other items, relics from various ships. There was a wall of scrimshaw in one room, and I was intrigued with these lovely carved rolling pins. I don’t even have a rolling pin on Pandora since I only make a pie once or twice during our time onboard each year. I use an empty wine bottle….we always have one on hand!

And of course I had to take a photo of this lovely scene of children with a lamb. Not your standard scrimshaw image!

And just before leaving Savannah we had our photo taken by a couple of tourists after Bob offered to take theirs.

From Savannah we moved on to Beaufort, where I looked forward to visiting one of the friendliest yarn shops, Coastal Knitting. Just walking through the charming business section of town—so many beautifully tended shops and interesting restaurants—was delightful. And the residential areas were beyond wonderful! There were gardens in luscious bloom everywhere. Here is just a sampling!

This morning, just one day after leaving Beaufort, I found a comment here from a woman who lives in Beaufort, and who just returned herself from a couple of months onboard her trawler, armed with both knitting projects and a tapestry project. It is a thrill to know that there are other weavers out there! It can get so lonely out here without other weavers to talk to!

Non-weavers often recommend that I get an inkle loom or a little rigid heddle. I love these small tools and enjoy using them when I have a certain project in mind that suits them. But they in no way replace that urge to weave the type of cloth that I love. It’s just not the same, and an inkle loom is never going to satisfy my need to design and create fabric. Anyway—it’s very nice to be in touch with another weaver. Laura Burcin plans being onboard for a longer period next winter. I look forward to connecting with her in person. In the meantime, I feel I have gotten to know her a bit through her blog.

Should I talk about my “For Irene” sweater, which I have ripped back in order to make the lower body smaller? I certainly don’t want to! It has not gone as simply as I envisioned! I knitted most of this sweater in Portugal on my rosewood, interchangeable Knit Picks needles—size 4. At the airport in Lisbon, as I was headed back to the US, they were taken from me. Now that I’m trying to match the stockinette on the body of sweater, I am finding that none of my other needles are able to match the gauge of those particular needles I lost! UGH! I have started and ripped back five times now! This is a crisis! I did try to replace those needles in Coastal Knitting in Beaufort. They don’t carry the interchangeables, but they did have size 4 circulars from Knitter’s Pride which I have heard is the same manufacturer as Knit Picks. Alas, no luck on getting the same gauge!

I wanted to wear this sweater to a wedding in a little over two weeks, and now I’m rather convinced it won’t happen. Ah well, time to make peace with that. When I get home I can order a replacement for the needles I lost….