Life Aboard

Posted on October 23, 2013 | Leave a comment

Once again, it’s the sailor’s life for me…..sailing down the Chesapeake, watching the season gently change to fall down here, getting back to knitting.

We spent a week getting to Hampton and Norfolk, Virginia, where we’ve been stalled for almost a week.  There is a lot to do here.  In Norfolk we visited the Nauticus Museum which includes the battleship Wisconsin which served in the Pacific in WWII as well as in the Korean War, Viet Nam and Desert Storm.  Long history.  Across the harbor from Norfolk is Portsmouth, and one night we went to see the movie “Captain Phillips” at a lovely restored theatre there.  I doubt there are many places more perfect for seeing this movie, with the harbor full of the same commercial and military ships that participated in those terrifying events.

I have found it rather depressing to see so much real estate and equipment devoted to war, but the alternative is equally depressing….  There is also a memorial to General MacArthur in Norfolk which we visited.

We have had a quick trip home to Connecticut to say goodbye to our favorite Uncle Dick, who has passed away after a long illness.  He spent much of the past two years in a hospital, which is tragic for anyone, but especially so for someone who was so full of spunk and life.  His funeral was probably the most upbeat funeral I will ever attend.  We celebrated his quirky sense of humor and remembered all the practical jokes he participated in during his 60-year marriage and the rearing of their five children. It was great to see all the cousins and their expanding families.  That is certainly the upside of losing someone….pulling in the long tethers of family and friends who are dispersed for so much of the time.

I spend some of each day knitting.  My sister and I are knitting sweaters for her two daughters.  They are matching sweaters, but each in its own colorway of Adriafil Knitcol yarn, so they look quite different!  It’s wonderful to be knitting with my sister again, even though it’s somewhat vicarious, through texts and phone calls, since we are not physically with each other.  The sweaters are Polly Macc’s Brother/Sister design, and they are turning out really cute! The short sequence, space dyed yarns are so much cuter than what was used for the cover of the pattern booklet!

 We each have enough yarn left over to make matching hats, and I’m thinking hard about a design that will have ear flaps and long ties, maybe pom poms on the ends of the ties….maybe with I-cord as a border… on the days when I have internet access I am enjoying searching for idea inspiration on Ravelry.

It’s raining this morning, so we are just sitting here having coffee, enjoying the internet.  Probably this afternoon we will venture back past Norfolk to enter the IntraCoastal Waterway for the final leg of the journey to Beaufort.  We should be there in about a week.  Then I’ll head home….

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Posted in knitting, sailing

Alchemy

Posted on October 15, 2013 | Leave a comment

It’s that time of year again…..time to head south on Pandora.  But before I go back to living onboard there is SO much I want to do on land!

My small guild always has a natural dyeing workshop in October, and I’ve been looking forward to this all summer!  Bob and I made our plans to head south based on the date of this dyeing workshop.  My 4 lbs. of goldenrod was collected for this workshop, and I also planned to reconstitute my indigo vat.

Everything about natural dyeing seems like magic and alchemy…. The recipes are as old as civilization and some of the processes seem downright absurd!  Who figured out these strange concoctions and procedures??

I mordanted two 100 gram skeins of my handspun white alpaca with alum and cream of tartar.  I had two small hanks of fine linen (80/2) which will be for sampling bobbin lace designs (one for me and one for a friend), and I had a 100 gram skein of raw silk in the lovely natural color with black flecks.  I have not mordanted linen before, so that was my first challenge.  It requires some tannin along with alum.  Sure would have been great if I’d realized that in time to order tannic acid online.  Barring that I had to find something natural growing nearby or lying about.  My only option, since I didn’t find any oak galls on my trees, was to cut some sumac.  I’m not sure I’m ready to tell that story…. suffice it to say that henceforth, I will only cut sumac that is in flower so I can see that large red/brown flower stalk of the safe sumac. … ‘nuff said….

The dyeing workshop was fantastic!  It was held in Bozrah, Connecticut, a town I’d never even heard of before this event.  The drive there was stunning for an early October morning.  I drove along my side of the river for a bit, crossed the historic Haddam Bridge, and the drove along the east side of the river before turning northeastward toward Bozrah.  It was a beautiful morning with mist on the river burning off as the sun rose higher, and the trees almost at their most brilliant autumn color.

Our workshop was in the garden of a lovely rambling farmhouse with numerous outbuildings.  The gardens wound their way through the property giving privacy to each garden ‘room.’  The tables for the dye pots were set up on a slate terrace near the kitchen door.  The hostess uses one of the prettiest outbuildings for her weaving studio, and we all sighed and wished we could weave in such a bucolic setting!

Our dyes of the day were marigold, jewelweed, black walnut, onion skin, goldenrod, golden marguerite, indigo, and an orchil lichen.  Quite a nice selection!  I dropped one skein of alpaca into the onion skin bath and put the other one in my goldenrod.  When they were finished I had a wonderful combination of deep pumpkin from the onion and a beautiful gold from the goldenrod.  I wanted to get a green by dipping my goldenrod skein in indigo.

My indigo did not reconstitute, even with the addition of both thiourea dioxide and more dyestock.  It got the slightest bronze bloom but never turned yellow green.  It stayed blue.  When we dipped a trial piece in it the blue rinsed out completely.  Ugh.  One of the other women happened to bring a little indigo ‘kit’ and we mixed that up in an extra dyepot.  So I did get to dip my goldenrod-dyed alpaca to make a mysterious, very interesting green.  I can’t say that it coordinates as well as I’d hoped with my pumpkin colored onion dyed skein, but I love both colors!

The true excitement of the day for me was that lichen dye pot.  The woman who brought it has this particular lichen growing on rocks on her wooded property in Connecticut.  Lucky woman!  She is very careful not to take much of it, and the little she takes has lasted her for years.  I could not believe what a deep purple we got when we put in our various skeins of yarn.

 The lichen she uses is the one pictured at left on the cover of Casselman’s book.  It can be light green in wet weather or grey in dry weather, but the underside of the lichen is always a very dark almost-black.

Perhaps the lichen dyeing seemed the most like alchemy to me.  Sharon said that the fibers dyed with lichen need to stay wet for 24 hours and then dry in natural sunlight!  Doesn’t that sound magical?  Well, I certainly wasn’t going to tempt fate, so I brought my three lichen-dyed skeins with me down to the Chesapeake so they can get their sunlight under the dodger on Pandora. It’s been quite cloudy in the Chesapeake so I hope that won’t affect my color.

So… after my day of dyeing I returned home to throw some things in a bag in order to leave for Annapolis early the next morning.  I’ve been on board for a few days now, and we are heading south to Beaufort, North Carolina.  I will get off the boat there and Bob’s crew will drive my car to me so they can get onboard and I can drive home!

Annapolis is such a pretty city!…although I am reluctantly missing the beautiful fall colors of New England.  It was the last day of the boat show as we left the harbor.

We sailed to Solomon’s Island yesterday and on to a little creek just south of the Potomac River today.  We should be in Hampton, Virginia, by the weekend in order to participate in a big cruisers’ festival over the weekend.  We are already seeing many friends from our trip south last year.  It is such a small, small world….

This is the Thomas Point lighthouse that we passed on our way to Solomon’s Island.

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Posted in dyeing, sailing

The Wednesday Group

Posted on October 7, 2013 | 2 comments

A perfect first week of October…. it started with the beautiful drive to Archie Brennan and Susan Martin Maffei’s studio along the Hudson River.  The drive takes me north into Massachusetts and then west through the Berkshires.  And although it was barely October the color was already reaching peak along parts of this drive! This month the Wednesday Group was quite large, 10 of us in all.  That can be a challenging number to fit into Archie and Susan’s studio, large as it is!  They have a generous enclosed porch that overlooks the Hudson, probably 40′ long with a wall of windows along that whole length.   The views are amazing and distracting! Large ships bearing gravel power by throughout the day and night, and there is pleasure boat traffic as well.

A couple of us are very lucky to stay right nearby at the house of a friend. Doing this means we get to have home cooked meals at night  and can bring homemade lunches to class.  We eat like royalty and enjoy evenings sitting out on the terrace watching life on the river amongst the herb garden and fruit trees.  This week the weather was warm and one evening, while having wine and cheese on the terrace we were entertained (and I was amazed!) by the loon-like call of a screech owl…..over and over…  it was idyllic!

 

 In spite of our numbers in class, we all seem to have gotten some good work done this month.  It’s great to be together, and a larger group ensures that there is plenty of inspiration and good vibes flowing.  I came home ready to get down to work!

….but WHAT work?  I am working on a sample for some lengthy text, an excerpt from the Robert Frost poem, “Mowing.”  This poem ends with:                    The fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows. 

  And I’m thinking about a photographic image that Christopher took from the passenger seat of our new car while facing backwards.  The photo was taken at dusk with with the fading light in the distance while cars are zooming along into the night, away from the light.  The image has a lot of motion and light and dark in it….it intrigues me.

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Posted in inspiration, tapestry

Bucket of Gold

Posted on September 25, 2013 | Leave a comment

Summer has ended with such glorious days!  Along my daily walk the views seem extra lovely, with dappled light coming through the canopy of tall trees, playing on the thick undergrowth of fern.  The light is getting long so it is particularly nice in the morning and late afternoon.  The goldenrod is glowing along the roadside…

And goldenrod is just what I need to donate to my guild’s annual natural dye day.  Bob came along with me to tote the large shopping bag as we both cut flowers.  I was aiming for two pounds, but before we knew it we had four!I sat on the front porch to cut the flowers into smaller bits. The smell of cut goldenrod is delightful!….green and sweet/spicy!

I never get tired of seeing the houses along this walk.  I like to imagine how I’d live in each of these houses, where I’d put my looms, how I’d make some gardens!

On the last full weekend in summer we finally had our first sail since returning home to New England.  We sailed down the Connecticut River, then spent a night at Fisher’s Island, then four days in Newport.  It’s been decades since either of us have toured any of the mansions.  We chose The Elms, which is considerably smaller than either The Breakers or Marble House but still quite impressive.  You can lunch in the carriage house.  The ambience is great, but the food not so much, so we opted to take a picnic to a nearby park.

I found a mansion that is just my size!  Unfortunately, it is not for sale… I can just imagine myself weaving on that upper floor…

We walked along the cliffwalk and along the harbor, where we were anchored.  We volunteered for few hours at the annual Newport Boat Show which gave us free admittance to all the exhibits.  Bob loved that!

Back at home, I am settling in to the first week of autumn.  My goldenrod dyebath is ready, my yarns are mordanted.  I’ve got a year old indigo vat that I’d like to reconstitute, and I’ve got fresh indigo ready to harvest.  That will be a new process for me!  I have a couple of tapestry designs swirling around my brain.  Bob is gathering firewood, and I am gathering apples.  I love the change of seasons!

Our son Rob visited over the weekend and saw his finished portrait for the first time.

Back at my looms, I am weaving a bit text and making good progress on the final painted warp.  It’s time to think about painting another warp!

 

 

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Posted in dyeing, tapestry

Try This at Home

Posted on September 4, 2013 | 4 comments

Well, I have managed to use synthetic dyes completely unsupervised in my own house.  It’s taken me at least 20 years to get up the nerve and confidence to do this.  I know….  there has never been a logical reason for this, but it’s been a huge hurdle for me to attempt this at home!

I sectioned off about 1/2″ of warp at both selvedges to paint a solid color with the burnt orange.  And then I sectioned off an inch to paint in a pseudo-ikat effect.  Each of these sections was wrapped in it’s own bit of cling wrap to prevent any co-mingling of colors.  Finally, I painted the main, center section.

After a curing period of about 6 hours wrapped in plastic, I uncovered the warp to let it dry.  The far end of the warp is now suspended off the table for better air circulation.

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Posted in dyeing, weaving

Mixing Colors

Posted on September 3, 2013 | Leave a comment

While mixing colors is fun and often quite a revelation, getting the colors  in my mind might take years of practice…..might, actually, never happen.  I did make a rather good burnt orange, but my cool deep red was a disappointment.  It is more burgundy than I would like…too similar in value to the orange.  So I needed a change of plan for the deep violet I’d wanted.  All three would have been far too similar.  So I’ve made a medium blue/teal.  It is not a true teal, but leaning that direction from medium blue.

My mixtures are:
Burnt Orange: 3/8 tsp. sun yellow, ‘spot’ of scarlet, ‘spot’ of new black
Burgundy: 3/8 tsp. fuschia, ‘spot’ of lemon yellow, ‘spot’ of black
Blue:  1/4 tsp. blue 401, 1/8 tsp. lemon yellow
Black:  3/4 tsp. new black

While mixing these colors (and tweaking!) at my kitchen sink, I watched three hummingbirds vie for the feeder….and the nusturiums….and the passion flowers….and the mille fleur petunias. They really do not like to share, and time is short before they head south.  Have you ever seen hummingbirds buzz each other?  While they are standing off, hovering, they really do look like fairies in the air!  Then they buzz by each other at lightening speed, too fast to see, and dart all about before hovering again.  It was quite a show!

This is not my photo although it is very similar to what was going on outside my kitchen window!

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Posted in dyeing

Project Hiatus…

Posted on September 2, 2013 | Leave a comment

Life, again.  You never know when life is going to take over and make all your plans seem positively ridiculous…..as impermanent as a shadow in fading light.

So Bob and I have been at a standstill for the past few weeks.  He’s behind on getting Pandora ready for its next season of long distance sailing, and I’m behind in using my precious land time to fulfill my own projects.

In honor of Labor Day we are having a quiet day at home (it’s raining so there is no pressure to be out at a picnic or parade this year).  I am returning to my silk warp from the NEWS conference.  I have prepared my folding table and loom with drop cloths to protect everything from dye, and I have been looking at my MX dye charts from decades ago…  Unfortunately, today is not serving up the best light for choosing colors.  Hence, I’m taking a break here to document this project!

What is left of my warp is not long enough for a scarf.  I would have bet money on this being the case, so all along I’ve imagined this last piece being a narrow wall hanging.  My design choices are limited by the threading I’ve already established which is an advancing twill.  I can weave it in sharp advancing points or in undulating advancing hills.  I want to try separating out an inch of warp at each side for an ikat-effect black and white block design to frame the main design in the center.

Now I will begin mixing colors.  I am considering several reds, from a cool cherry red to burgundy to a plum type of red/purple and a deep dull orange in the pumpkin range.  I also want black, and I’ve got the ‘new’ black….hoping it is deep and true as advertised!

And here is a gift from my not so friendly weaving cohort that greeted me on my morning walk.  She also waited out the onslaught of life (in the form of a violent thunderstorm and heavy rains last night) before creating her glorious web sometime early this morning.  I hope I will be as successful!

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Posted in dyeing, family, weaving

The Height of Summer

Posted on August 13, 2013 | Leave a comment

…and what a summer it has been!  The heat of July is long forgotten, along with that stifling dorm room at NEWS.  In addition to the best summer weather any New Englander could possibly hope for, I spent two days at my monthly tapestry class with Archie and Susan, and I spent almost five days with two other members of the Wednesday Group.

We looked at and critiqued each other’s works, and I got tremendous input and inspiration from these friends.  We ate well and enjoyed amazing views of the Hudson from our host’s house.  Tugs and barges floated by, going both north and south, day and night, breaking the bucolic spell of this rural area with such a contradiction of noise and spectacle!

We spent an entire day driving to and from Auburn, to see the exhibit Innovators and Legends: Generations in Textile and Fiber at the Schweinfurth Memorial Art Center.

This exhibit is traveling around from Michigan to Auburn, New York, then to University of Kansas in Lexington, and finally to Fort Collins, Colorado.  It was curated by Geary Jones, with works from well known artists and newcomers…75 works that span several decades of fiber arts and offered a trip down retro lane as well as powerful new ideas.  We all loved it!

The one piece that has intrigued me since leaving the exhibit is Piper Shepard’s “Dome.”  Although we could not take photos of anything in the exhibit, and I was not impressed with the photos in the catalog (which was sold out anyway and had to be ordered from Muskegan Museum), I have enjoyed reading about Ms. Shepard’s work online.  Her piece titled “Dome” was made from a large sheet of muslin fabric that had been treated with gesso and graphite to have a very dark surface.  She then cut out tiny shapes in the manner of cut paper, like Scherenschnitte.  She displays these works as if they are made of heavy metal, hanging from sturdy steel brakets that hold them out from the wall.  Light creates marvelous shadows, and any breath of air gets the large work to undulate, giving the viewer the realization that this is a very light and fragile material.  It’s a beautiful blend of bold, fragile, delicate and large all at once!

My drive home took me through wonderful parts of New York state and Connecticut.  After dropping off one friend at the Hudson train station…

…my GPS directed me home entirely on back roads!  I usually get to this area of New York by taking Rte 90 through the Berkshires, which is quite scenic, but this route of Rte. 23 from Hudson to Sheffield, then Rte 7 down into Canaan, Connecticut,  and Rte. 44 through western Connecticut just can’t be equalled!

In Avon, I stopped at a local bead store and got some crystals to add to the hem of one of my recently finished silk scarves. The bead store is on the right of this lovely building.

Back in the studio, I am on the home stretch on my sunset tapestry!

 

 

 

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Posted in inspiration, tapestry, travel

Finished Objects

Posted on August 2, 2013 | Leave a comment

It seems I’m not always on top of posting finished objects.  That is because I am focused on the process, the decisions, right or wrong, the ideas, the mistakes, the journey.  When a piece is finally finished I stop thinking about it with the same maniacal focus, so it slips into obscurity…. well, not totally, but certainly the journey seems done to me at that point.

Here is the finished trail of pears.  It was a terrific learning process.  The image is so simple that my focus became the line and the color of each pear.

I am waiting for some deep brown, medium weight linen to arrive so I can mount this little tapestry, which is ….  And I am hoping that the bit of wrinkling in the center of the piece will dissolve once the tension is off the loom.  Normally I wouldn’t have an ounce of hope about this, but Archie seemed to think that is what will happen.  Please let him be right!

And here are the two scarves from my workshop at NEWS with Sarah Saulson.  I still have not gotten to a bead store to purchase something to embellish the plain hems.  And I have not yet painted the last bit of warp. So in reality, these scarves are not yet finished!

Now back to what really intrigues me…. I have come back to the tapestry of my older son, and that journey is still exciting!  I am shading his neck and cheek right now and hope to reach his ear by early next week.  There is a LOT  I am not happy with on this piece.  I feel driven to finish it so I can perhaps do it again….better.

Ooops!  You can see the finished pears behind him…. oh well…

 

 

 

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Posted in Fine Craft

NEWS Exhibits

Posted on July 24, 2013 | Leave a comment

These didn’t get posted as quickly as I intended….I made the mistake of tackling some boxes in a room off my studio, and now I am buried in stuff that I have no idea where to put!

I have opened Pandora’s box, and now my carefully organized studio is a sea of knitting, spinning and weaving materials that is far vaster than I can handle!  There just isn’t enough storage room for all this stuff!  What to do?

Meanwhile, my two scarves are finished and cut from the loom.  I decided to hem them rather than have fringe, and now I’d like to do a little beaded embellishment at the hem….for this I need to find a local bead store, and I need time to do the beading. Here they are after a hand wash, hanging to dry from a birch tree in my front yard.  I wonder what the neighbors think when I dry handspun skeins and dyed projects.

It feels like it will take months for me to unbury myself from the chaos I’ve unleashed by opening all those boxes!

In fairness, it’s not all fiber related.  The chaos includes a lifetime of printed music from my performing days, a set of dishes that I could not squeeze into the kitchen or dining room when we moved in last year, several lifetimes of photos that include our kids plus both sets of parents’ photos (they have both moved into assisted living facilities and now there stuff resides with us!), my father’s ridiculous collection of DVDs and our collection of music CDs which are no longer necessary.  I’d like to give Bob the task of dealing with the DVDs and CDs, but his plate is already laden with other chores.  I think it’s all up to me, and there will be no weaving or knitting until I get to the bottom of all this stuff!

And, naturally, all I want to do is weave!  I’ve come home from NEWS so inspired!  My dyes have arrived and I’ve made plans for the last of the warp I made for trying this technique!

During the conference I bought the book Custom Woven Interiors by Kelly Marshall.

I want to weave almost every item in the book, but I’d like to start with this rug!….as a runner in the kitchen and a smaller version for the two Dutch doors in my family room.

And meanwhile…. there is all that inspiration I got from the exhibits at NEWS.  Oh yeah, that was the point of this post….  here are the photos.

From the Instructors’ Exhibit, this is Dianne Totten’s wonderful collapse weave jacket.  It is done in the manner of ‘shibori on the loom’ with extra warp and/or weft threads that get pulled to create the pleats.  Then the fabric is treated with something that keeps the pleats in even after washing.  I hope to take a workshop in this technique someday!

This is the back of Barbara Herbster’s large wrap.  I have done a lot of scarves and shawls in this technique of supplemental warp with ribbons.  I wouldn’t mind getting back to it!

I thought this was a great combination of items together!  A  matching set of double woven blanket and pillows with the wonderful ply-split woven vessel.

There were wonderful household linens in the static juried show!  These were the items that inspired me most!  Look at the dragonfly inlay in this tablecloth!  It is a picnic set with wine bottle holder, silverware wrap, and matching napkins!

I love the overshot inlay on the corners of the napkins to match the table cloth!

The colors in this rep weave table runner and placemats are terrific….better than this photo shows.  They were woven by Barbara June Gordon.

A loom woven shibori hand bag!

This transparency of a lady slipper is a gem.  There was a larger transparency that won an award, but this small work is the one that won me over!  Look at that great woven border!

And THEN there was the fashion show!

I am intrigued with this beautifully woven and assembled handbag!

Great use of color and stripes in this vest.  It looks like it would be flattering on almost anyone.

This is an amazing piece, woven with horsehair and feathers and attached to a leather strip which fastens around the neck.

This jacket was woven from some lovely materials that I have now forgotten!  Hemp perhaps?  and linen?  It is called “Birch Bark Jacket” and the materials and woven technique make it a perfect match to its name!

It was woven with an undulating reed!

And this is the piece de resistance, designed and woven by Barbara June Gordon! The woven structure creates all the fitting in this top, and trust me, it fit the weaver perfectly!  She was brilliant to model it herself so we could all marvel at her skills.  It is an amazing feat of color, structure and fitting perfection!

Now you can see why I wish I’d never opened that first box.  I’d rather be weaving!

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Posted in Fine Craft