ArgoKnot

2nd Attempt

Posted on January 12, 2014 | 2 comments

Well, my journey with warp painting continues with round two. Here is the list of what went wrong this time.

1. Warp was too wet. I got more bleeding in the knot area than I would have liked. Ugh…. (Note to self: in future blot the warp before painting!)

2. Mysterious faint smudges of pale blue that are no where near where I was painting. These blue smudges are behind the stencil and it was a brand new stencil that I cut since I was afraid any leftover dye on the first stencil might cause problems (unlikely, I now know, since the dye on that has lost its activation)….still, I was also afraid that the manilla folder’s cut edges might have gotten a little soggy from the first round of dyeing so I just thought it best to go with a new stencil. So, how on earth did these smudges get on the warp? There is no dye at all on the back of the stencil, and the smudges occured in an area that was covered by the plain, uncut part of the stencil. No clue….

See all those smudges above the beginning of the knot? Most of them will be in the hem, but not all. I am pretty bummed about this right now…. the blue warp that is in the lower left corner of the photo is my shadow…..not a blue warp!

I’ve been thinking about the kind of shifting I’m getting as I wind back on, and although the shifting has been quite different for each project, there is one thing that the two projects I did at home have in common that is different from the two projects done in class with Sarah Saulson.

Sarah insisted that we tug on our warps after every revolution of the warp beam. I hated doing that. I felt like I was losing the registration of what I’d painted when I grabbed the whole width of the warp in one hand and tugged. But I have to admit that the two scarves done with that technique have almost no shifting. I guess I will give that a try this time. Besides, I feel like this round is already a failure, so not much to lose.

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Posted in Fine Craft

Journeys

Posted on January 11, 2014 | 2 comments

The word journey has been foremost in my mind for months now…. my father in law’s major journey (his life) has just ended. He led a beautiful life, and he was as much a father to me as he was to his three biological children. He was a great man in all the best ways possible…. devoted to his wife, his children, and a consumate volunteer which means he was devoted to all the causes he he championed.

Lately my own journey seems fraut with anxiety, too many deadlines, too many places to be in such a short time. I feel like I’ve just returned from our long journey down the Eastern seaboard of the US and across to the Bahamas, and now we are to leave again in just a couple of weeks. Where has the time gone?

Well, mostly we’ve been spending some very special time with Bob’s father. It hurts to know you are losing someone, but in the long run I feel it has been a gift to help Bob, Sr. through the last months and a gift that we could be with him as much as possible for our own needs…. I think this is far better than losing someone you love without any warning at all.

During this last summer/fall/winter of my father in law’s journey I’ve been thinking about the Moirae, whose names are Clotho (the spinner), Lachesis (the measurer), and Atropos (the one who holds the scissors and cuts the thread of life).

I love Sarah Swett’s rendition of these fates “The River Wyrd.” She has done a great job portraying them having a laugh at our small lives, our loves, our passions. At this moment in the grieving process, I’m much too bogged down in the sadness of missing him, and wonderful memories, and nostalgia and schmaltz…. to treat this subject with humor. And I am searching for a way to find voice for the respect and love I have for my father in law’s life.

So I’ve been rather focused on images of the thread of life. My father in law, the original “Bob” in the Osborn family, had a wonderfully long life, although not nearly long enough for all of us who loved him. He was connected to many people, a life long best friend with his brother who died just weeks ahead of him, and a life long friend of a surprising number of others. How many people do any of us know who can get together regularly with friends they’ve known since before a marriage of 60 years?

Anyway…. my own recent journey has been in trying to depict images of a beautiful, long life. I’m not there yet, but impatience led me to attempt a less than fully developed idea, with a technique I learned a couple of decades ago from Betty Vera and revisited this summer with Sarah Saulson.

The technique involves dressing a loom with a warp, then pulling out the warp onto a flat surface, under tension, and painting the warp with dyes thickened with printers’ paste, or sodium alginate. Here are some photos of my first attempt at this.

My warp is silk crepe which I wound onto two spools for easier handling.

I made a stencil of my design on a manilla folder.

Here is the warp after painting. The dye is ProChem blue #402 mixed for full saturation with a little “New Black” added. You can see the stencil brush I used in the lower left. It is a wonderful tool that I found at Long Ridge Farm’s booth at Rhinebeck one year. It is made of very tightly packed natural bristles, but I don’t know anything else about it since the attached tag is in Japanese, and Nancy Zeller did not have the information on her when I bought it.

The dye required four hours to set with moisture at a temperature of 70 degrees F. After that the plastic film is removed to allow the warp to dry before being wound back on to the loom.

In my haste to work on this project (I had envisioned this piece hanging from the lectern during Bob, Sr’s. funeral…pipe dream!) I did not take any photographs of the weaving process. My 8 shaft Baby Wolf was threaded with an undulating twill, and I used a natural colored, smoothly spun silk thread for the weft. I think both warp and weft are in the range of 20/2 silk, but neither of these silks, in my stash for decades, were labeled. I threaded the undulating twill at 30 ends per inch. The seredipitous surprise after weaving and wet finishing was the amazing sheen of the silk crepe! It glows.

Here is the finished piece. It shifted more than I expected when I wound it back on to the loom, which is when I discovered that some of the heddles were not oriented properly on the shafts. A number of heddles were upside down, and I think this opposite orientation caused a bit more drag on the threads which resulted in significant shifting. I tried repositioning these threads by adding a bar at the back of the loom with these threads pulled around it….but as you can see from my photo, it did not help.

This is not what I had envisioned for the finished piece, but I am not unhappy with it! Yesterday I made a new warp (and used up all the rest of my silk crepe!) and dressed the loom so that I will probably be ready to paint again tomorrow.

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Posted in dyeing, family, weaving

Weaving Adventures

Posted on December 3, 2013 | 4 comments

I’ve neglected mentioning some of the events that have inspired me this fall. First would be the 18th century tapestry series titled “Weaving the Myth of Psyche” on display at the Wadsworth Atheneum.

There are some stunning images in these tapestries. Look at this donkey….

And the spinner….

And Cupid’s wing….isn’t that something? I am going to have some fun with this image!

The museum asked for some guild members to demonstrate tapestry that day, and three of us participated. Here one guild member is luring in the children with her spinning.

A couple of weeks later, the state guild meeting featured the boundweave work of Rebecca Arkenberg, called “Tales from the Loom.” Her boundweave figures are whimsical and creative, and it is obvious she is having a great time combining boundweave with a sense of humor. She said that people often can’t see what she is portraying, and she’s learned to let that go and just enjoy herself. What terrific advice!

Rebecca has a great knack for reducing world wide cultural images to the barest essentials.

This one is particularly fun! Navajo women, rugs, and Churro sheep!

And how about bunnies with angora tails sitting in rows of carrots and beets?

Cat and mouse….

A highlander in kilt!

The Scarlet Letter….

I had so much fun at this guild meeting and came away buoyed with ideas for returning to my own boundweave project that has been neglected for some time now!

4 Comments

Posted in spinning, tapestry, weaving

Thanksgiving

Posted on December 1, 2013 | Leave a comment

It wouldn’t be Thanksgiving without some outdoor time, walking in the woods, putting the garden to bed, and (hopefully) having bulbs already planted. This is not the first time I’ve posted photos of these two lovely structures. There is moss growing on the cedar shakes of this pretty barn. I did not catch the light properly because (in real life) the moss was glowing vivid green in the soft light.

I can’t seem to walk by this house without taking yet another photo of it. It was a mostly grey holiday weekend, rainy and raw, but I seem to love the scenery along this walk in almost any weather.

The highlight of our walk yesterday was seeing the beaver that has caused so much destruction along the banks of this stream! He has not left a single tree untouched….busy guy! I was thrilled to see him, although I know you probably won’t! He reall is there, right in the center of the photo, just under the branches with the green leaves! Trust me!

Moss and lichen on rocks. Someday I’ll get just the right photo to begin a tapestry cartoon. This is intriguing, but the light is not quite what I saw yesterday.

At home I am re-mounting my Flax Spinner and getting a new silk warp ready for painting.

Knitting is Catching Fire!

Posted on November 27, 2013 | 4 comments

Oops! See note at end the end of this post for why this post is badly titled!

Bob and I went to the movies last night. It was an escape from the very sad and very stressful time we are going through, which involves a loved one’s serious health condition. Bob has been not-so-patiently awaiting the release of the second “Hunger Games” movie so we dashed out to see it last night on his return from the daily hospital visit. I was mildly intrigued, but definitely looking forward to an evening’s distraction…

No one warned me there would be KNITTING! The whole first segment of the movie held me captive, and I was craning forward in my theater seat to get a better look at the unusual knitted designs that Katniss wore! It was a visual feast! I swear there were three knitting garments, but I must be wrong…

….because these garments are already all over the internet, and there are only two:

This garment does not look knitted to me. It made me think of nalbinding or some other rather ancient technique that predates what we call knitting today. I’m intrigued! I’d love to see the real garment.

Then there was this lovely cowl in luscious shades of berries/trees/water. There is something really interesting going on in the stitch pattern. I tried to magnify this image to get a better look, but it just got a bit blurry! Hmmmmm….

Okay….enough about Katniss! Here are a few things I’ve been working on lately. Mostly, I have to say that I’ve been curled up in a fetal position for several weeks now….sleeping too much….

My English friend, Lesley, just finished this sweater in a deep garnet merino wool. I bet it is breathtaking! I was so intrigued that I had to have one too…. in medium blue cotton (Cascade’s Ultra Pima in color #3772). I have finished the cables around the neckline, and now I’ve put it aside…..it’s a lot of plain stockinette for the rest of the body….sigh…. I do love the way the longest cable comes down below the garter stitch area, which you can see on the right side in the photo. What a beautiful design!

And I’m spinning my first “Tsarina of Tsocks” kit called “Kitri.” The body of the sock is a lovely claret red merino/silk blend. I’m doing a test spin for a 4-ply by topping off a few bobbins with the tsarina fiber so I can ply just a short amount to check my knitting gauge.

A couple of weeks ago Bob set up my large Shannock tapestry loom. I’m ready to start two tapestries and need to decide which one comes first! The full size Flax Spinner or “Into the Night,” which is a new cartoon I recently made…

Isn’t she an impressive loom? Cartoons are draped on the treadle bar, including a really old cartoon that I never wove. In the foreground you can see an umbrella swift with a skein of silk draped on it. I just finished using that silk to make a warp for my next painted warp project. It will be a small wall hanging based on an image Bob took while we were in the Bahamas. If all goes well, maybe I will bring it with me in January and hang it on the wall of our main salon.

And speaking of making cartoons…. I borrowed an opaque projector from an old friend. It’s quite a relic from the 50s and makes quite a roar when I turned it on. In fact, it blew a fuse, so I haven’t actually gotten to use it yet. Here’s Bob setting it up for me.

So, I guess I’m doing more than just sleeping my days away, and I’m glad I wrote this. It helped me see that I am progressing on work….just at a snail’s pace… and that (in reality) is not much slower than I normally work.

NOTE: It has been 10 months since I posted this, and clearly interest in the Katniss fashions from “Catching Fire” is still running high! Many thanks to Kristin from dreamspunfiber.com who sent some links to the two designs I wrote about. It turns out neither one was knitted! They are both woven! …and the green cowl is a beauty in what looks like deflected double weave! Although that makes my post title inaccurate, I am quite thrilled to learn these garments were woven. You can take a closer look here and here.

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Posted in Fine Craft, knitting, weaving

In a Funk !!

Posted on November 19, 2013 | 3 comments

It’s shocking to me to see that I haven’t posted since Hallowe’en, and that post doesn’t even count. It was just a funny photo….

I’ve been home now for more than two weeks, getting lots done, but not feeling terribly good about anything. Bob and I are in the throes of worries about our aging parents, and it’s an emotional and stressful time. Weaving and knitting…and spinning!….help me get through these times, but this time around things are pretty serious, and even my favorite activities cannot take away the sadness and the fear of what is coming.

Baking is another activity that soothes me during stress, so yesterday I spent some of the day baking toward our early Thanksgiving which we’ll celebrate this Thursday as well as next Thursday in order to see all of the family. I always make Julia Child’s croissants at some point during the holidays for those who will be sleeping over. I have to admit I stole one when they came out of the oven. Someone had to make sure they turned out well!

This morning is a glorious November day. There is always at least one late blooming rose after the first hard frost….a rose that blooms among the hips.

Most of the trees are bare now, but along our walk we saw one still bright yellow, and another that is still bright red!

Deep blue sky, red berries against the tan field, a spot of green from a rhody…and a lovely river make for a wonderful morning walk.

In a day or so I’ll update my current projects and write a little about the various events I’ve managed to attend since I returned home.

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Posted in family

Happy Halloween!

Posted on October 31, 2013 | 1 comment

Gather ye treats! Arrghhh!

Anchored near Pandora in Beaufort (NC) Harbor.

1 Comment

Posted in sailing

Chilly Nights, Warm Days

Posted on October 29, 2013 | Leave a comment

The weather has moderated in the last few days so that we are no longer freezing to death! I know, I’m just a bit of an exaggerator! But it’s no fun being cold all day and then painfully cold at night. We made a very poor choice to take our sleeping bags off the boat and to skip bringing any serious winter clothes. It’s always colder when you are exposed outside all day while also on the water. Those sleeping bags are in my car in Annapolis, and they would have made all the difference in getting some sleep the past week or so….

This is yesterday’s pre-sunset. I think you can feel how soft and warm the day was. Just moments after taking this photo, Bob and I each got a text from my sister, wishing us a happy anniversary of our first date, 41 years ago. This is a landmark date we always celebrate, and if not for her text we would have missed it for the very first time. We are both wondering if this is our first big sign of getting older….

So we sat in the cockpit of Pandora, enjoying this view all the way through sunset. We blew the conch shell to herald the night, and headed out to dinner ashore in Belhaven, North Carolina.

Luckily we had already planned to go out to dinner. Boy, did we choose a fun spot! The Spoon River Artworks and Market….interesting name since I saw neither artworks or market, but only a restaurant! And a very nice one too. Here is a view from our table… it’s lovely, isn’t it? For the first time ever we chose to sit facing inward from a window table, instead of facing outward.

And walking around lovely Belhaven before dinner I spotted this pretty cottage garden that look out to the harbor.

Today we are headed to Oriental, North Carolina, then on to my final destination in Beaufort. I will get a few days there to relax before Bob’s crew delivers my car to me to head home while they get onboard to head offshore to Florida.

231 Mitred Squares

Posted on October 27, 2013 | 1 comment

All these years while my Zig Zag ruana was stuffed in a zippered vinyl project bag, I thought I only had a few squares left to knit….maybe 15. I remember thinking I was so close to the end. And that’s why I always thought I’d pick it up again right after whatever current project was on my needles. I could be wearing it in just a matter of days…

Yesterday I counted how many squares I have left to knit…. 86! How could that be? Even on the chart it looks like I’m approaching the end! So I decided to count how many squares I’d already finished. I couldn’t believe I’d knitted 231 squares back in the fall and winter of 2002/2003. That’s a LOT of little mitred squares!

I remember one of my knitting friends warning me that this project involved a LOT of knitting. Naturally, I took no heed and can barely remember the warning much less who warned me. I was happily knitting. Now that I’m back to it, I am slowly remembering lots of other things too.

This was the fall that my older son went away to college. I missed him terribly, but there was a wonderful silver lining that I had not anticipated. My younger son and I suddenly had some uninterrupted time together. It was the year that he toured colleges, took his SATs, wrote his applications. We went on college visits together, and I brought along my knitting….this very project. It had not grown to the dimensions it is now which make it somewhat cumbersome for traveling. We visited schools in Pennsylvania, New York, and New England. We had that unexpected time to become closer.

It was the last few months before he got his driver’s license so I was still his main companion in the car, and I was the one who accompanied him when he drove places with his learner’s permit, such as the physical therapist I mentioned earlier.

It seems to me that everyone takes notice of the wonderful time you have with your firstborn, before there are siblings who require you to divide your attentions. Surely it’s a mother’s point of view to romanticize this special time with a firstborn that no other child gets. But I think the time I had alone with my younger 16 year old was equally precious….because he was aware of it too. We both enjoyed getting to know each other more deeply, and he had my complete attention while he navigated the rite of passage out into the world and determined who he wanted to become. It was a significant time of life for both of us, and I was moved to have time with Chris during this stage.

And all through that period I was knitting the ‘Zig Zag.’ Chris graduated from high school over 10 years ago. He finished his undergraduate work in math and physics and is now in his 5^th year of a doctoral program in physics. He has become the person he planned to be. He is almost finished writing his dissertation and will probably be out of academia in a few more weeks. There is a lot of life that has happened while this ruana lay in its project bag, buried in my studio in New Jersey, and then my new studio in Connecticut.

Such is the life of a knitting project….everything completes itself in its own time.

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Posted in knitting, sailing

Ups and Downs of Life Aboard

Posted on October 26, 2013 | Leave a comment

It’s no surprise that living on board a boat has its challenges….some things are just so easy at home and so hard on the water. I have gone for months and years at home with no major equipment failures…..heat, water, appliances. At home we expect these things to go on working for decades…. On board they break all the time. You cannot get through a single sailing season without constant repair to major things….. why is that???

So, I won’t go through the laundry list of things that have gone kaput on Pandora. It’s too long and technical for a weaving blog anyway. But I will say that these problems fall heavily on Bob, so he has been under strain to find the source of our engine problems and our failed heating system. We have been freezing the past few days as the temperatures have been unseasonably cold in Virginia and North Carolina.

I finished my niece’s sweater and have plenty of yarn leftover to make her a matching hat….I could almost make a second sweater! (Polly Macc’s Brother/Sister pattern)

But I have been SO cold that I decided to take out a bigger unfinished project so I could wrap myself in it as I knit. It’s the fun Vivian Hoxbro wrap called “Zig Zag.”

As I began to take a close look at where I left off and how to get back into the zen of this pattern I began to realize that’s it’s been a really long time since I put this away. I bought this kit when I met Vivian at a workshop at a friend’s house….we were able to arrange this workshop because the friend offered to meet Vivian at the airport on her very first knitting workshop tour of the US, which meant that we became her very first group of students on her US tour. Ours was not a scheduled workshop, but something that my savvy friend was able to put together since she was housing Vivian on the first leg of her US tour.

So….how many years ago was that?? Vivian’s book Domino Knitting was new in the US, and she had copies with her to sell. It was autumn, and I knitted my Zig Zag through that season and on into winter. I remember specific knitting times when I was waiting in a physical therapy office, happily knitting, while my younger son was getting therapy for some long distance running injuries. Yesterday I asked Christopher what year that might have been, and he thinks it was either his sophomore or junior year of high school. That was a long time ago…..2002 or 2003. And since I met Vivian a few months earlier in the fall of the previous year, I’m pretty certain that I started this pattern in fall of 2002. Eleven years ago…..

What surprises me about how long it’s been since I set this project aside is that I have thought of this fun pattern every few months, planning to get back to it. For over a decade I have told myself that I would pick up my Zig Zag right after I finish this or that other project…..and it’s now been 11 autumns. Where does the time go??