Category Archives: weaving

>April Showers

Posted on April 6, 2009 | 2 comments

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We are having more than showers today, and it seemed a good day to stay in, do some baking for the upcoming holiday weekend, and spin during the waiting times of rising and baking.

A good friend of mine gave me this wonderful roving over the weekend. I don’t know why I’m getting such lovely surprise presents this spring, but I’m enjoying all of them.

This roving is from Linda Lee, known as exclusivelylindalee on etsy. It’s cotton, and I have not spun cotton since a very futile attempt once as a new spinner! Since I could only spin worsted back in those early days I could not spin the cotton I’d bought. I think I got rid of it in a guild raffle. Fast forward about a decade, and I am having a wonderful time with this beautifully painted roving, which is called “Phoenix Garden” colorway.

Cotton spinning (1)My, that decade sure flew by quickly! I have visions of a woven project with this yarn….just have to find appropriate warp, as I’d like to leave this yarn a singles so I don’t have to plan the color sequence in plying.cotton spinning 002

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Posted in spinning, weaving, yarn

>Sap is Rising…

Posted on April 1, 2009 | 3 comments

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…and I feel my creativity rising with it!

The rise in creative juices has led me to go exploring other people’s blogs, looking for what inspires them, how they communicate it, how they cope with the ebb and flow of creativity.

image_thumbThank you to Bonnie and Jennifer for the creative blogger award!  I’m thrilled that they noticed my blog!  Both of them do work that affects my internal spaces, and also makes me stop and analyze myself.  I look at Bonnie’s use of color with the eyes of a newborn, trying to soak up all her amazing knowledge of color and pattern.

The very first photo I saw on Jennifer’s blog made me realize I don’t actually have to hear music to have my internal spaces rearranged.  Just the photo of her harp in front of an empty chair, with all that potential for music  set my emotions in motion!  Her writings are sensitive, like harp music, and her wedge weave is wonderful….and rhythmic…

I’ve spent a couple of days nurturing my creativity by looking at other blogs: those recommended by others giving that award and those I’ve found while ‘googling.’  I am overcome!  Visiting these blogs has been an ‘artist date’ for me!

Weaving the Dream is a blog I stumbled on when googling.  There is a banner on her site that says, “Take a gentle step forward in your spiritual and creative journey.”  That’s just what I felt as I read through some of her posts. 

Magic Warp, by Steve Bremner.  The first post I read is about feeling that there is never enough time to weave.  That’s the very feeling that keeps me away from it.  That feeling is a real creativity killer, and is probably the biggest hurdle to any artisitic output.  It’s the devil.

(If you put your cursor over any of the names or blog names above you will see that they are live links.  I don’t know why they are not showing up as links without having the cursor on them. Most of this technology is a complete mystery to me!)

It’s amaryllis season at my house!March 09 002 March 09 001March 09 004

One more wonderful March surprise! A gift from my son’s friend, who thought I might enjoy tea from India.  He visited the estates where these teas were grown.

 

March 09 006

 

I wore these colorful socks yesterday, with an orange turtleneck, my denim shirt with the embroidered palm tree from convergence 2009 tampa fllast summer’s Convergence, and what else? Orange crocs!  It’s spring!

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Posted in gardening, inspiration, weaving

>Nuppdom

Posted on February 23, 2009 | 5 comments

>I spent the weekend deep in nupps on my current Swallowtail shawl. This is my third Swallowtail, and I was certain I had mastered nupps. On every right side row I diligently slowed down just enough to ensure that my ‘K1, YO, K1, YO, K1 in the next stitch’ was decidedly loose, so that on the next row I could more easily insert my needle for a P5 tog. Well, it’s still not a walk in the park for me to do that P5 tog… There are only 10 rows of it, but they are slow going, and I must be nearing 300 stitches on the needle where every 10th stitch is a nasty nupp!

Actually, I’ve finally graduated beyond ‘nasty nupps.’ They are just annoying nupps now! Oh, but I do love the little drooping lily of the valley blossoms they create! I hope to be blocking this shawl by tomorrow or Wed!

Look what came in the mail! Oh my! I’ve promised myself that I will divest myself of a great deal of Paternayan in order to add this treasure to my stash….

I am completely flumoxed about creating a design for some aspect of the Hudson River (to celebrate the quadricentennial). Although I do not like to be tied down to a subject, there is so much leeway here I can hardly say I’m being ‘forced’ into a particular design. I’m so frustrated I’m seriously considering just warping up and weaving with no cartoon. ….just to see what might happen. Obviously I want water and sky. This is not about not liking or caring about the Hudson River…I actually think it might be just the opposite. I’ve lived near the Hudson for most of my life now. I love the view of the Palisades that I see almost every week in my local travels.

Well, I can’t weave if I’m not warped, so I will at least get that done…..

5 Comments

Posted in knitting, tapestry, weaving

>Fallen Woman

Posted on February 12, 2009 | 4 comments

>I’m a fallen woman! I only made it 6 weeks before falling prey to a yarn purchase!

What would you do in my situation? I read on my tapestry list that Weaving Southwest was discontinuing its fine singles tapestry yarn. ….never to be had again. Oh, I wish I could post the colors I ordered, with luscious names like Chokecherry, Ganado, Red Willow, Caramel, Pinon and Spruce. I can’t wait to open that box!

And I have to say this has been a particularly hard 6 weeks. I’ve spent too much time trying to think of ways I could get yarn without actually buying it! I asked my husband to buy me yarn for Valentine’s day (he said, “why don’t we just go out to dinner instead.”). I offered to send my sister money and a list of yarns I wanted. I’ve been getting more and more uptight as the weeks go by. Deep down I knew I’d never last a whole year… truthfully, I don’t feel that guilty!

I worked on Rob’s hand at Soyoo’s today. Finally all the ‘dotty’ shapes turned into a hand! I like it! Here are two of Soyoo’s rules: when shading within a shape (in this case, Rob’s hand) always include most of the colors from the previous colorway. And to unify a piece use one color throughout. In this case the bright and deep golds of the background will be used anywhere there is light to give a sense of the wonderful golden light of sunset falling on everything.

A little project making a temari ball. I made a few more than 25 years ago (where does the time go?), but decided to join a group of friends to make a few more. Our time together is a great learning session, because we are following a plan, starting with the first exercise in the Diana Vandervoort book and working through the different techniques in order.

4 Comments

Posted in tapestry, weaving, yarn

>A Productive Week

Posted on February 6, 2009 | 3 comments

>It’s been a good week here! Wish I could say that more often. Both tapestries are showing progress, even if it is very slight!

My biggest thrill this week was dyeing without anyone holding my hand, and being pleased with
the outcome! This is quite a hurdle for me.

So, first is the green: I took two skeins of my weld-dyed handspun (a romney that I spun for tapestry) and overdyed it with my indigo. I made the indigo vat with a friend over two years ago. We dyed one day and the vat has sat ‘idle’ ever since. I re-constituted it with soda ash and thio-urea. The weld skeins were dipped twice for 10 minutes with a 30 minute rest in between.

The lovely blue silk was dipped three times for 10 minutes each, with a 30 minute rest between. I thought I would have gotten a deeper blue, but I’m pleased because this shade will be lovely for enhancing the edge of the pink shawl which has lain dormant since about Sept….because I needed to come up with something to finish the edging!

I’ve made great progess on knitting the ‘Cardi for Arwen,’ but I feel that needs its own post, so I’ll save that for now.

The days are definitely longer! I’m waking earlier and feeling more energy! The sun is higher in the sky, and in spite of another bitterly cold week, I can tell the sun is stronger.

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Posted in dyeing, weaving

>By dribs and drabs

Posted on January 30, 2009 | 4 comments

>Slow progress on numerous things. I can never decide what to work on first….

You probably cannot imagine my excitement over weaving the first lens of Rob’s sunglasses! I doubt you can even tell in this photo! Even looking at the real tapestry, my husband could not quite tell what it is, but I know turned out well.

And this little project is probably my favorite right now. Quite addicting….


Something doled out in miserly amounts is provided in “dribs and drabs.” A drib is a smaller relative of a dribble. Nobody seems to be sure what a drab is in this sense, except that it’s a tiny bit larger than a drib.

4 Comments

Posted in knitting, weaving

>Today’s Progess

Posted on January 2, 2009 | 4 comments

>Today’s work: ripping up the old floor. It went faster than I could have imagined!

So, it’s finished just after noon! Bob is painting some kind of latex tile ‘enhancer’ that needs to dry for 90 minutes before we can start laying the new tiles!

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Posted in renovation, weaving

>New Year’s Progress

Posted on January 1, 2009 | Leave a comment

>Such a busy day for Bob. He sure works fast!

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Posted in renovation, weaving

>Let the Holidays Begin

Posted on December 19, 2008 | 1 comment

>This is a wall hanging I did about a decade ago. It’s 24″ x 36″ and hangs in my red kitchen all year long. I had never taken a photo of it until recently when someone asked to have some directions written for doing boundweave….
Guess who finished the nasty Christmas stocking today? That requires some celebrating!….so I immediately grabbed the most luxurious yarn I could — “Sublime” cashmere/merino/silk — and began knitting the “Fetching” fingerless mittens by Cheryl Niamath from the summer ’06 issue of knitty.com.

Little progress made on any tapestries, but the most has been done on this one. I’m ready to start working on Rob’s hand. Challenging!

Time to make the cookies and the toffee and wrap some presents…. it’s almost Hannukah, Christmas, Saturnalia, and, best of all, the Winter Solstice! Let’s all give a howl!

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Posted in knitting, weaving

>Summer Vacation

Posted on August 11, 2008 | 1 comment

>When I left for this year’s vacation I had visions of writing blog entries, even without photos, to share all the experiences right as they occurred. Didn’t happen! My time on the computer was terribly limited, and even though the ever present urge was there, I did realize it was better to enjoy the great outdoors!

For over a decade now our summer vacation has been sailing in Maine. We’ve spent most of that time in the Penobscot Bay area. This year we started a bit west of that, in Booth Bay. We’ll be back in early September for two more weeks of sailing, and we may take time then to better explore Casco Bay.

This year’s trip was the coldest we’ve experienced, and it rained every day except two! And when I say rain I mean torrents some of the time. It’s not easy being on boat in the rain. No matter how big the boat is (and while ours is not huge it has grown somewhat over the past 30 years) rain makes everything feel damp….clothing, bedclothes, the upholstered settees in the main cabin….all damp…and cold!

I brought three knitting projects, some beautifully dyed mohair top for spindling, and my smallest copper pipe loom set up with a four-selvedge warp for trying a little Pre-Columbian historical study. I did not weave at all. We spent long days sailing, and I can only weave at anchor. I did spend a lot of time knitting, so I was able to complete the cute Minnowknits Scallopini sweater for my niece. Photos to follow soon, I hope! I spent maybe 20 minutes, total, spinning. Still, I could not have gone sailing without the potential for working on these projects. I left the pipe loom and weaving yarns on the boat for when we return in September. Surely, I’ll be more successful then….

Almost every morning I drew for a while, and I did a lot of thinking about weaving and thinking about a design for a Hudson River tapestry to commemorate the quadricentennial.

The highlight of the trip was stumbling on an acquaintance from New Jersey who brings his wife’s horses and a carriage even (!) to Mt. Desert each year. He invited us to go for a carriage ride! The carriage is a beautiful piece of workmanship, hand made by Amish craftsmen in Pennnsylvania. It looked like a carriage straight out of Jane Austen, and I need to find the appropriate name for this kind of vehicle. It was a beautiful day (no rain!), and we drove through the the Rockefeller carriage trails to Long Lake where we stopped for lunch near a scenic view with a boat house. I still can’t believe it really happened.
(Well, checking Wikipedia leads me to call this a Phaeton, although Jane Austen speaks of curricles and gigs as her choice of sleek, light carriages with two wheels pulled by two horses. I need to do more checking.)

To get to Maine, my husband did a Category 2 Ocean race called the Lobster Run with a crew of seven. He spent about eight months getting our boat ready for this kind of race, and he was happily repaid with a wonderful second place trophy! Our older son was one of the crew.

Now that we’re back home, we have a little over one week to get ready for that same son’s wedding. I’m in a constant state of happy excitement now! For over a year now the wedding has been something that has required planning, discussion, dreaming, but actually it didn’t feel REAL…..now it’s about to be a reality!

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Posted in knitting, spinning, vacation, weaving