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I’m leaving for Convergence and the ATA workshop tomorrow morning! I’m looking forward to all the wonderful events and to coming home full of inspiration!
I did not harvest my weld…..I guess it will just wait for me….
I saw the first fire flies of the year last night, so it’s really summer!
>In a few minutes I will download the most recent photos on my camera. There will be shots from the Philadelphia Flower Show taken during our visit on Wednesday last week, there will be shots of boat projects that my husband is currently doing, and there will be shots from an event we hosted on Friday evening at a restaurant in New York…..what there will not be is my son’s 24th birthday which we celebrated with him yesterday. Ask me if this makes me sad, and I’ll have to say yes. I’m feeling very sorry for myself right now that I let that landmark event go unrecorded. And please don’t ask me how many birthdays I didn’t record as it will just make me sadder still. We had a lovely day at Rob’s house, but today I find myself so sad that I have nothing tangible to mark the event. I took the camera….I just never got it out of the case. Why is it so easy to photograph projects and so hard to photograph my family?
So, as you might guess, I’m in a bit of a funk today. I knitted for a couple of hours, working on the Shetland KAL that Elizabeth Lovick is leading for members the of EZ as Pi yahoo group. It’s my first traditional shetland shawl, and so far, since I’ve only got 320 stitches in each round now, I find the knitting easy. It’s more logical than anything else. Let’s see if I say that when there are 1,000 stitches on the needle and the pattern gets algebraically more complex!
The highlight of my day was spending an hour weaving the clerical stole while listening to an episode of Cast-On. I’m deliciously behind on listening, so I might be able to weave the entire stole while catching up. It’s hard to sit at the loom and mindlessly weave when all the color choices, warping, beaming, threading, and sleying are done. There’s nothing left now but the rather tedious process of weaving off the six yards of material. In my funk it was very hard to go down and do it….but Brenda Dayne made it pleasurable!….and got me out of my funk for a whole hour!
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I’m feeling rather smug that the presents are wrapped and the house is decorated. After my annual panic about whether I remembered everyone on my list, whether have I been fair with everyone, and whether are there enough goodies for the stockings, I am pleased to report all is well and I’ll be sleeping soundly for the next few nights!
So that gives my mind time to pursue other tasks, like a lineup of possible future projects. There are a lot of wonderful shots of desert in Nevada from our recent trip. There is a large pile of linen tow singles in luscious colors waiting to become dishtowels. There is a little warp left on a Theo Moorman project that wants to become a stylized image of sunflowers. There is a warp on my table loom waiting to become a silk scarf in my own design network twill (from aBonnie Innouye class last fall). So what am I doing HERE at the computer???
>I never got here in June. Hmmm…. I was traveling again, and when home, frantically working in the garden. I’ve been away so much the gardens are quite overgrown and messy. I hope I get them a bit tidied up before I leave again at the end of the week. As this is our first really hot week with temperatures in the 90s I’m not exactly energized to get outside and weed.
Look what I finished! Finally! Although I posted pictures of this project on the loom back in Feb., I actually think I put these towels on the loom way back in November! I was full of excitement to give them as Christmas presents, but somehow after the first couple of weeks I couldn’t actually sit down and weave them. Having a guild Show and Tell at the end of June was what motivated me to finally get back to weaving them. I’m happy to have them done! I will keep one and give the other four away, most likely well before this Christmas!
I have just spent an amazing weekend at our regional weaving conference, called MAFA which stands for MidAtlantic Fiber Association. This was the first time they have offered a conference in which one could take only a full three-day class, as opposed to some variation of 1/2-day and 1-day classes. I took a class on natural dyeing, and the teachers were so organized and so well prepared that we managed to dye 76 wonderful colors in only 3 days. We were insanely focused and busy, and we even had to stagger our lunch hours for this class when the rest of the conference had 2 hour lunches which allowed for lunch as well as shopping in the vendors’ hall, but it was well worth it! I will try to take some photos of my incredible sample book.
I am now so thoroughly re-committed to the tapestry project I’ve had in mind for a couple of years now. I want to do it with hand spun, hand dyed yarn, and this class has moved me considerably closer to gaining the skills I need. I’ve got two fleeces waiting (one washed, one not!) to be combed and spun. I’ve done a little sampling on spinning technique. I’ve taken a mentor on this project, or rather, she has taken on me! Her name Vicki Fraser, and she is the creator/weaver of the California Rug Project.
Vicki has been very patient with my questions on what breed of sheep to use and how to spin the yarn. She’s been giving me advice on mordanting and dyeing, which I haven’t even started yet, but I have taken copious notes from my phone conversations with her. This workshop at MAFA gave me the chance to do some real dyeing and get some experience under my belt. The two teachers, Debbie McCrea and Carol Wood, were also very encouraging to me (sorry, no website for them, but they are located in the Alfred, NY, area and are members of the Rochester Guild) and have offered to guide me on the dyeing if I can come do it at their studio. I’d better get spinning.
Meeting these three women who are so willing to share their knowledge with me makes me realize what positive energies are out in the world when one needs guidance. Some people call this synchronicity, which means something like “with time.” That’s just my very rusty ancient Greek coming back to me….I think it must really connote things coming together at the right time, and boy, that is what’s happening here! I feel touched by something greater than coincidence right now, and I don’t want to squander these opportunities.
Hopefully I’ll post pictures soon, and hopefully I’ll post again this month. I’ll be sailing around Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket for the rest of the month, but I hope to get some of the clean white Romney fleece combed before I leave so I can spin while sailing. I’m bringing my electric spinner (made by my husband) because it takes up so much less room on the boat than my wheel. He made it to be compatible with the flyers from my Lendrum. He’s so clever….
>Stash….I’ve read a lot of things about stash over the 30 years I’ve been collecting mine, and a few people have given me stash advice in person. I was out walking one day this week when stash advice began to replay in my head. I want to record some of those ideas before they go underground again for another decade or so!
Pat Slaven recently wrote a very poignant essay about stash, inspired by the death of two good friends. She was somewhat involved in dealing with the stashes left behind by both these women. In one case she was invited to view the friend’s quilting stash in order to pick some fabrics to make a quilt for the 6 year old son of the deceased woman. Are you getting misty yet? She tried not to influence the young boy, but she did hope that he would choose fabrics that would still speak to him as he grew and matured into a young man, and beyond, as this quilt would hopefully stay with him for many years. Pat was relieved that he did choose fabrics that were not specifically for very young boys. The poignant part of this story is that Pat discovered that her friend never seemed to have used any of these fabrics. There were no quilted projects in progress, no finished projects anywhere in the house, and no one remembers ever seeing her sew. There was only her stash. Her friends and family can only speculate what this stash meant to her. Was she going to learn to sew? Was she just interested in collecting interesting fabrics? Who knows, but her stash remained hidden in various closets in the house, complete with sales receipts.
Many years ago, in a weaving class with Daryl Lancaster, she admonished all of us to enjoy our shopping experiences. She said, “Shop to shop, buy what appeals to you! Then weave from your stash!” This has been my motto for many years, ever since I first heard Daryl say it! I shop with such abandon! I buy things that call out to me, and boy do things sing to me. The problem now is that I have opportunities to buy (and do buy) at a faster rate than I can weave. I now have some serious space considerations, and no hope of catching up if I continue to have SEX (Stash Enhancement eXperiences) at this rate! My studio looks like a warehouse, and it’s often difficult to access my looms, much less my stash. I do weave from my stash, but the effort it takes to get things out and examine my stash is often competely overwhelming. Sometimes I have to take a month’s break before I can face going back into my studio to put some of that stash away. It’s too hard. There’s too much of it, it doesn’t fit neatly on my shelves (in plastic bins, and in anything else that will contain it) anymore. Trying to find things has become a herculean endeavor, and I am not strong enough for the task! I now have my spinning stash in one bedroom, my knitting stash in another, and all of my weaving stash overfilling my basement studio.
This leads me to a bit of advice I heard recently on a podcast I enjoy: “Cast On” by Brenda Dayne. As part of her New Year’s ritual each year she goes through her stash and reorganizes it. She had some fantastic ideas, especially for anyone whose stash is still moderately sized. She calls her yearly process the “Airing of the Stash.” She gets it all out for viewing. Yarns that will make complete projects she bags together, and when she has several complete projects bagged she places them all together in large vacuum bags and proceeds to vacuum them into a small concise size, which can be stored and easily viewed. You go, Brenda!
It gets even more interesting after this. With the rest of her stash, which consists of small batches of yarns that appealed to her when she bought them, she begins grouping them into possible projects. She looks at color and texture and decides what yarns look good together. These also get vacuum bagged together, after being collected into various possible project groups. What a feat of decision making and courage! She makes it sound like this possibly takes place during ONE day, maybe a couple of days. I may remember this wrong, but I’ve pictured this more random stash spread out on a bed! I’m thinking of my random stash taking up every horizontal surface in every room in my house, and me playing a horrific memory game (oh, where is that lovely aubergine mohair that would go so well with this celery green alpaca? Did I see it in the dining room or the basement?) Ha! After 30 years, I think my stash has become a behemoth, a monster, a nightmare.
But, to get back on track with Brenda Dayne’s idea: Here’s one awesome benefit of doing this. At least once a year you see your stash. It rekindles the ideas you had when you bought each thing, which perhaps will get you started on a new project, and/or motivate you to finish current projects in order to start something new. And better yet, now that you’ve seen your stash, when you are out shopping and some wonderful little tidbit leaps out at you, you can make an intelligent decision on whether you really need it or not! How great is that? I might be panting over some incredible blend of color and luxury fiber, but perhaps I won’t buy it knowing that I have something equally wonderful waiting for my attention at home.
This idea of “viewing your stash” at least once a year is a terrific idea. I just can’t figure out how to do it! I’m not sure I can share photos of my own personal stash here, for two reasons. The first and biggest reason is that it won’t all fit in one picture, or even two. It might fit in a photo album! The second reason is that I’m a bit shy about this. It would be like showing the dark side of my addiction. It’s not pretty!
Well, okay, here’s one picture (what’s a blog entry without a picture?). I think this is about 1/4 of my linen stash for weaving, with some other stuff in the background. I swear not all of my stash is this messy….really!
Posted in knitting, serendipity, spinning, weaving
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I wrote two posts recently and saved them as drafts so that I could add pictures. Bob was out of town with the camera both times, and I was waiting to have access to it. Now both posts are gone. Obviously it’s human error, but I can’t imagine what I did since the “save as draft” button is as big as life, and the only other button is “publish” which certainly didn’t happen since the posts are missing!
We are going through another bout of absurdly cold weather. It was only about 15-degrees F today, with snow. It’s not the snow I mind at all! I couldn’t bring myself to work in my basement studio. Even if the heat is on down there it just feels cold.
I’ve added another link at the bottom of the page. It’s the online guild I joined at the new year. What a great group! Every month there is a new online workshop to join, with lots of online lessons and homework. I got a calendar with photos of members’ work which is just lovely, and the calendar is perforated so that the photos can removed and saved when the calendar is no longer useful. And lastly, I received a printed journal from this group with interesting articles and terrific photographs. I had no idea that there would be a journal included in my dues. This is a great group and membership is quite a good deal.
Since this month’s workshop is weaving Summer & Winter, I’m posting a photo of a project Bob and I did together a couple of years ago, in honor of both our parents’ 50th wedding anniversaries. I wove the polychrome S&W cloth on my AVL. What a bear pegging the treadling sequences! I should have woven it on my 8H jack loom with a skeleton tie-up. I thought I was being so clever to put it on the AVL, but it was actually one of the stupidest things I’ve ever done! Well,”experience is what you get…”
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I wrote a post about a week ago, and it is lost! That just shows how little I know about what I’m doing here. Oh well.
I have come down with a cold on these first few days of March. Perhaps that has contributed to my funk lately. In spite of my lethargy and less than optimistic attitude, I have been weaving. Sometimes I avoid the things I love doing when I’m down, and sometimes I find quite a lot of solace there, even when I cannot seem to cheer up. I am weaving what feels like acres of solid color plain weave on my historical tapestry. I should post photos soon, although who wants to see an acre of solid color plain weave?
I make very small progress on my fabric projects: runners in Monk’s belt on a borrowed Norwood loom, a small hanging of autumn red maple leaves in Theo Moorman technique on my Baby Wolf, and those same red/tan, 8 harness, log cabin dishtowels on the AVL. I could be weaving a silk scarf, an 8 harness network twill on my small Purrington table loom if I would just tie on and get going.
A few more birds are joining the chorus these days as the light stays longer. On a couple of days I’ve noticed that spring-like bouyancy in the air, a combination of humidity and warmth, at least in the sun if not in shade. Hopefully soon we’ll be in the midst of what e. e. cummings called “mudluscious,” a time I always find ridiculously hopeful!
This photo shows a detail of a scarf designed and woven byBonnie Innouye. I took the photo during a class with her last fall. This is the type of thing I have on my Purrington table loom. I should get back to it….
Posted in weaving
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I’m counting down the days to the end of winter now. I do this every year. I don’t mind more snow. I love snow in early March. What I don’t want is temperatures lower than 30 and please, please, PLEASE no more wind unless the temperature is over 40F. The wind has been so violent lately and I’m so worn out from it.
My older son has an early March birthday. Out of his (almost) 23 birthdays, I’d say 20 of them have been white, and he was born during a wild snow storm when about 12 inches of snow fell in just a few hours accompanied by thunder and lightning! What a night. March is e e cummings to me: the poem about the balloon man and the word “mudluscious.” What an image!
I am just finishing a three day workshop with Nadine Sanders, the singing weaver, who is well known for advancing the Theo Moorman technique. Maybe “advancing” is not the right word. She is certainly passing along the knowledge of the technique and she has done some interesting things that Theo Moorman did not do. Imagine being in a weaving workshop, busy as a bee at your loom, and having your instructor sing to you and play the violin for you. She even sang her good bye to us today. If you get the chance to study with her, grab it! We had too big a group in this workshop, and three people did not get their looms warped for weaving until the last day of the class, and yet Nadine sailed through these hurdles with grace and even a helpful, caring disposition.
I want to talk about my project, but it doesn’t seem appropriate since I my camera is on the other side of the country now with my husband skiing in Utah. How about if I just say go check out Nadine’s website:
Posted in weaving
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I spent the weekend weaving and crocheting, trying to escape some things that are weighing quite heavy on my mind. I am not in the best frame of mind these days, and the weather is not helping! Last winter I wove a small tapestry that was not particularly successful. The image was dawn in the desert, and the original image comes from a book my son gave me that has beautiful photographs of earth’s landscapes from many vantage points. This desert scene spoke to me on some non-verbal level. The image was so powerful (alas, mine is not!) and spoke to me of creation, and of something else. The idea that no matter what man does to this environment, it will be undone in a mere day. The winds in this desert erase all trace of us. Everyday is a new creation in the desert, and not in the “greeting card” sense.
I’ve been reading a good deal of Carl Sagan in the past few months. Dragons of Eden, Cosmos, and have just learned that his wife has published some of his lectures in a book titled The Varieties of Scientific Experience. I believe it will address his very reverent views on religion, for which he is labled an atheist. But getting back to deserts, I found some moving photographs on Sue Lawtry’s blog, as well as her insightful comments:
“Here there isn’t a single trace of man’s presence… The wind shapes the landscape as it likes. It is an unchanging landscape which is constantly changing.”
Gerard Lanux
Wind on desert sand; water on coastal sand… the rhythmic passing of time.
I am guessing that every single one of the resulting undulating patterns is different. Like every grain of sand, every star, every pass of weft over warp, every found stone on a beach… all the same, all different. (Ref blog entries: Nov 15 2005 “notes for the day” and Nov17.)
Desert breeze, beach tide: both erase the marks of our passing, our presence merely tolerated.
It is the order of things here… to be rendered as ghosts in the landscape.
I have only just discovered it, but I will be visiting it regularly.
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I belong to quite a few Yahoo lists, and I can become quite involved in searching for some product that someone posts. Most recently there was a discussion on WeaveTech about shoes for weaving. One woman was traveling to Boston and found these shoes: http://www.conversationshoes.com/. Well, I HAD to have a pair, didn’t I? It was so hard to choose!I ended up choosing a pattern called “Metro Retro,” but there were at least four other patterns that tempted me! I know I will have to order at least one other pair in the future since the choices are just too fun!
I did wear these in public once (because they’d just arrived and I couldn’t resist), but from now on they will be “indoors only” so they won’t scratch the treadles on any of my looms.
So here’s what I’m weaving while wearing these shoes. These are dishtowels. The pattern is a color and weave technique, a real “no brainer” from the Yarn Barn catalog. I am using two threads together of both tan/greys and reds. The two reds are one 8/2 unmercerized cotton in deep burgundy and one brigther red in 22/2 cottolin. The tan/greys are one thread of 8/2 unmercerized grey and one thread of natural linen colored cottolin. Hopefully these towels will have good absorbency! I am weaving the last towel now.
This first picture shows the cloth beam at the back of my AVL with the warp (behind the harnesses) above it. The next picture is at the front of the loom where I’m weaving:
Posted in weaving
Gallery Exhibit at NEWS Conference, July 20-23, 2023. First place “Miscellaneous” for a Nantucket style basket, with 2 special awards for “Best use of Historical Inspiration and Best Use of Off-Loom Weaving.
OVER, UNDER, AND THROUGH THE WARP: The Art of Tapestry Weaving, April 1-30, 2023, The Barnes Gallery, Leverett, MA. www.barnesgallery.org. An exhibition of works by Tapestry Weavers in New England (TWiNE). My works “Entangled 1,” “Untitled 1,” and “Mind the Risks” are in this exhibition.
TINY BUT MIGHTY Unjuried, small format tapestry exhibit, hosted by American Tapestry Alliance at HGA Convergence, July, 2022 Knoxville, TN
INTERLACEMENTS: Artistic Expressions in Weaving. Juried Biennial Exhibit of the Handweavers’ Guild of CT. River Street Gallery, 72 Blatchley Ave., New Haven, CT.
March 30 – May 5, 2019. Awards: 1st Place Wall Hangings, HGA Award for Outstanding Fiber Art.
CROSS SECTIONS: Works in Fiber by the members of North Adams Fiber Artists. Sept. 7 – Oct. 8, 2018.
Opening reception, Friday, Sept. 7, 5pm – 8pm. Gallery hours: Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays, 12pm – 5pm.
A CELEBRATION OF FIBER ARTS: Arts Center East, Vernon, Ct, October 11th — November 7th. Opening reception Oct. 11th from 2-4pm. Gallery is open Thurs–Sunday from 1-5pm. “Sunset on Wilson Cove” and “Hudson River Idyll” are both there for this exhibition.
AWARDS FROM NEW ENGLAND WEAVERS’ SEMINAR: for “Sunset on Wilson Cove”: 1st Place Tapestry and Transparency, Judges’ Choice, People’s Choice, Textile Arts Center “Best in Tapestry,” Rebecca Dea Award for First Time Entrant. NEWS 2015.
NEW ENGLAND WEAVERS’ SEMINAR: gallery exhibition, Smith College, Northampton, MA. July 9 – 12, 2015.
“THE WEDNESDAY GROUP” at Garnerville Arts Center, Garnerville, NY. May 30 – June 4,2015.
“CONTEMPORARY HANDWOVEN TREASURES,” 2015 Biennial Exhibiton of Conneticut Guild of Handweavers, Lyman Allen Museum of Art, New London, Ct; April 4 – 26.
www.lymanallyn.org
“POSTCARDS FROM HOME,” Invitational Gallery Exhibition of small tapestries by artists in Scotland, Ireland, Denmark, Australia, and New England. Northlight Gallery, Stromness, Orkney Island, Scotland. March 25 – April 25.
August 2015, Torshavn School, Faroe Island, Scotland.
“A LIVELY EXPERIMENT,” Gallery Exhibition of the Handweavers Guild of America (juried), Rhode Island Convention Center, Providence, RI. July 16 – 19, 2014.
“SMALL FORMAT TAPESTRY: Untitled/Unjuried,” sponsored by American Tapestry Alliance at HGA, Convergence, University of Rhode Island Feinstein Campus Gallery, Providence, RI. July 16 – 19, 2014.
