weaving – Page 5

Working Remotely in Remote Places

February 13, 2023 | Leave a Comment

A couple of weeks ago Rebecca Mezoff’s email newsletter mentioned that since she traditionally works at home, when she works ‘remotely’ it means that she has traveled somewhere. It’s the first time that I realized I work remotely every winter. Many people think Bob and I are on vacation when he sails south for the winter, but it’s really our ‘other’ home. We live our every day lives, full of chores and responsibilities, from our 2nd home, which happens to float. I always bring ‘work’ with me, and am often disappointed that I’m missing some vital color for a tapestry, or a particular size of knitting needle, or some other item that derails for my plans for work. At my first home I can quickly go online and replace almost anything I’m missing within days. That is never the case here. This is a view from Shirley Fort overlooking Portsmouth Harbor. Pandora is out there!

We are in Dominica now, and have been moored in Portsmouth for the past four days. Bob’s sailing group has arranged for an impressive number of outings on this island, known as ‘the nature island.’ Most of Dominica is rain forest. Most of the hikes here involve hiring a guide. Perhaps the most intensive hike on this island is called the ‘hike to the boiling lakes.’ This hike, which I have not done and Bob regrets not doing, takes people to the edge of the volcanic caldera where the sulfur lakes are literally boiling. It’s not easy getting up to those heights, and this week’s trip was particularly hard for the hikers because it rained most of each day in heavy downpours, which made the paths and rocks quite slippery in addition to being quite steep. The hikers walked along the steep rock walls of three caldera that looked down into the boiling lakes.

From Wikipedia: The Boiling Lake is a flooded fumarole located in Morne Trois Pitons National Park, a World Heritage Site on the island of Dominica. The lake, located 6.5 miles (10.5 km) east of Dominica’s capital Roseau, is filled with bubbling greyish-blue water that is usually enveloped in a cloud of vapour. The Boiling Lake is approximately 200 to 250 feet (60 to 75 m) across and is the second-largest hot lake in the world after Frying Pan Lake, located in Waimangu Valley near Rotorua, New Zealand.

In the rainforest people clear small plots to grow all kinds of veg and fruit, and the rest of the West Indies is indebted to Dominica when the supply boat arrives in the other islands carrying produce grown here. They even grown coffee here in the higher elevations. The melons and bananas are unbelievable! I’d forgotten what non-GMO avocados taste like, and these bring back memories of the first avocados I ever tried, as a teenager, years before Haas avocados had been developed. I’m a big fan of the real ones now. And, as it happens, there are numerous varieties of avocados. We’re about to try some that are quite tiny. The one thing I cannot find–and don’t even seem to know how to ask for–is cilantro! There is an herb grown on some of the islands called “chadon beni” that’s pronounced more like “shadow benny.” It does not look anything like cilantro, but it tastes like it! It roots easily, so I was able to grow my own the only year I found some to buy.

I know that some cultures call cilantro ‘coriander,’ which is what I call the seeds of the cilantro plants. At the local Saturday market here in Portsmouth, I tried asking for cilantro, coriander, and ‘shadow benny,’ but I got no hits. I even had an image of chadon beni open on my phone for clarification. The only response I got was an offer of some flat leafed parsley! Oh well. I can’t make the guacamole of my dreams, but I am enjoying eating avocados in other ways, including the way I first ate them in junior high school, with canned tuna salad stuffed into the place where the pit was removed in the big avocados! And when you root one of these avocado plants you will get fruit on your tree, unlike Haas, which are sterile. I am making do quite well with a healthy, rooted Caribbean version of basil which is growing like it’s on steroids.

The Saturday Market in Portsmouth, Dominica

The entire Caribbean is a colorful world, as Bob captured in the fishing fleet on the dock.

At the moment I am licking my emotional wounds that I have a major set back on my Caribbean ‘postcard’ tapestry. I don’t have any white or cream weft yarn to weave the iconic church in Deshaies, Guadeloupe. I have other options, you know, necessity being the mother of all mislaid plans. I can weave a different scene from Guadeloupe to eliminate this church entirely. I’m feeling a bit negative about that since drawing the rough cartoon was quite an effort for me, with no option to resize some of my images with a printer, or even stopping into a Staples store for help. In the end I have four pieces of paper glued together to create my cartoon, and it has angel fish and turtles swimming around the postcard of the church. I just continue ‘to sleep on’ the idea of tossing out this idea.

So I’ve turned to my current sweater in progress, a design by Ainur Berkimbayeva for Purl Soho called “Amphora Pullover.” It is a top/down sweater with fun increases through the neck and shoulders that create swirls. Quite attractive on the model! Now that I have put the sleeve stitches on holders and am about to continue on the body only, I am going to test some ideas of continuing some of the swirls to create a swing style body. I can never just knit a design as instructed. Patterns are jumping off places for adding our creativity to a garment! I hope my idea works.

The “Amphora Pullover” by Ainur Berkimbeyeva for Purl Soho.

Looks like I have an opportunity to start my own small business here in Dominica!

During the past week I have been challenged by an exceptional idea that is currently keeping me awake at night, with all kinds of possibilities running wild through my mind. If you don’t know me, you may not know that I have recently begun teaching tapestry at a non-profit organization in Connecticut that is near and dear to my heart. The organization is Hartford Artisans, and their mission statement is what captured my attention: The Hartford Artisans Weaving Center is committed to being a welcoming, accessible community that actively works to create a kinder and more equitable world for everyone. Our diverse community unites people from different backgrounds and experiences to learn from each other and uncover their own unique skills. We challenge assumptions about disabilities and aging and show that everyone deserves an opportunity for creative expression. We recognize we have a responsibility not only to open our doors wider, but also to understand and work to change the racial and gender inequities that hurt us all.

The director of this organization recently got a letter from a blind weaver in the Southwest, asking if there were any audio sources for learning to weave tapestry. I have done a preliminary search and found nothing. Yet there is one weaver out there who wants to do this. There is, or was, a weaver at the Artisan Center who wove a tapestry that hangs on display in the hallway. I don’t know whether that weaver is still with the Center, but if so, I’d like to her/him. The piece is more texturally interesting and is not based on imagery. It has striking merits. As we all know, there is no one way to describe or view tapestry, and no one correct way to achieve an idea. While I was thinking through ideas, Bob googled textured tape to see if there is a tape that has bumps or some kind of measurement device done in texture rather than in visual marks. By Jove! There is! I thought about how to describe the process of making an Archie Brennan copper pipe loom without any visuals, how to describe the seine twine I’d recommend for the first few warps, and at some point, how to describe various techniques. I thought about describing the warping process in words only. Are you now thinking too? If so, I hope you’ll get in touch. Creativity should be accessible to all people, and it falls to some of us to make this happen. In the meantime, I’m going to proceed, hopefully talking to some of the visually impaired artisans about what kind of instructions make the most sense to them. I am hopeful.

I’m looking forward to getting back to my ‘real’ home, my first home, where I can be more connected and less remote! I’m halfway there: six weeks to go! And it will be almost time to garden again.

species cosmos in bloom against a wall in Portsmouth, Dominica

New Place, New View

January 27, 2023 | Leave a Comment

We are approaching the last weekend in January, which means I’ve now been a live aboard for a whole month. In some ways it seems longer than that, in other ways less than a month. We have been in the small village of Deshaies (pronounced Day’ay) on Guadeloupe for several days. It is a charming place, if a bit run down. The shabbiness lends itself to chic-ness here. Very French Mediterranean here, in an ‘every man’ sort of way. Although, there is one big yacht that anchored behind us last night. They played some very loud music for less than 5 minutes (thank heaven!), and then turned on these amazing blue lights just as the moon was setting in the West. Those blue lights cast a huge aura around us.

One of the highlights of a visit to Deshaies is the botanical garden that is just outside the village, up a steep hill. Every year at the garden is slightly different. This year the heavier rains have made the place look close to perfect. Even the flamingos have benefitted. Last year we worried that they might not live another year.

There is also an aviary full of parrots.

After walking the gardens, where Bob took a lot of wonderful close-up shots, we had lunch with friends, Lynn and Mark, at the scenic restaurant.

Along the way, Lynn took some photos of us.

On our last morning in Falmouth, Bob walked to the hardware store to by a length of PVC pipe so he could make me a niddy noddy that would allow me to wind a skein of the yarn I had spun and plied on my little Nano 2 e-spinner. The niddy noddy will not come apart, so I thought I’d better pad one leg of it with a napkin to help me get the yarn off when I finished winding.

It worked well! I now have 840 yards of 2-ply lace weight merino/silk blend. I love it!

I’ve been looking for ideas for a short ruana to utilitze this yarn. This will be a lightweight fabric, using stash of my handspun waiting at home, added to this skein, and perhaps some merino/silk zephyr in dark blue. I may weave with zephyr that I have on hand in a lighter, sort of “Wedgewood” blue. This is one image I found online that I rather liked. I will sew the side seams closed on mine, and I simply must have a braid to embellish the neckline. I have also seen (somewhere!) sleeves added to a ruana. I’m intriuged by that. I’ll have to do some sampling.

Now that we’re here in Deshaies I have got a photo of the church that identifies this village for me, and which I’ve wanted to add to my Caribbean tapestry. I took the photo this morning. I will be finishing up on an octopus and a few fish before I tackle my view of Guadeloupe by weaving this charming church. Of course, I need to eliminate all the clutter in the foreground and show the full height of the mountain behind. Poetic license.

I need a photo of myself (horrors!) for an upcoming date on Textiles and Tea. I sent in a photo of me holding the Archie book, in which I was actually hiding behind the book. HGA rejected that, so I’m faced with getting another photo. Bob took this one this morning. I hope it will work. I’m still trying to hide, this time behind my loom, but it’s less obvious.

That’s the news from here. Bring on February, when we’ll head down island to Dominica and Martinique. Before that lies Les Saintes at the southern end of Guadeloupe, which we would never miss.

Views of the New Venue

January 17, 2023 | Leave a Comment

Like many people, my work space is my living space onboard. I’ve posted plenty of photos over the years of projects underway in the main saloon or cockpit of Pandora when she herself is not underway! I cannot work when we are sailing, only when we are anchored or at a dock.

Here’s a look at how I manage my projects onboard. This is where most of my supplies are stored. This 3-shelf cabinet extends back further than I can illustrate in a photo. This year it is holding three knitting projects–the hot water bottle cover and two sweaters– my little Nano 2 e-spinner plus merino/silk fiber to spin, a rather large supply of tapestry yarn for weaving as well as another pile linen yarns for experimenting on a new tapestry design, and various tools. I have two copper pipe frame looms onboard, and they are stored in the hanging locker that holds Bob’s clothes. They couldn’t possible fit in my hanging locker, and luckily Bob is a very good sport about my need for equipment and stash!

On the bottom right of this photo there is a folded maple contraption that is my new tapestry stand! I have great expectations that this will make weaving onboard more comfortable. There will photos in the future.

Here are two little gems that hold tools. The first is a wonderful woven envelope by Lucienne Coifman (of rep weave fame), who is a member of my weaving guild. I have a number of small items from her that she makes from samples. Her hand finishing is exquisite.

There is a embroidered loop for the button similar to the loops that hold the scissors in the next photo. Lucienne’s finishing work is equal to her fine weaving.

Then I have this small tin full of handy tools.

This is the best small tool kit I’ve ever owned. It even has a ridiculously tiny pair of scissors. Can you see them? On the upper right of the tin, with pink handles. You can see that there is a tape measure, a needle gauge and various needles, along with a small crochet hook for picking up dropped stitches (although I never pick up stitches that way). What you can’t see are various stitch markers.

Having extra knitting needles onboard along with tools is worth far more than their tiny weight and size. Ellen, who started the knitting group, has given me a little envelope of dental floss threaders which will get added to this tin.

We’ve also had a change in venue for two days last week, which merits showing. Life onboard can get pretty small. I’ve always called it “Living small, with a big view.” Back in November when all of the sailboats that rallied together arrived in English Harbour, the national parks administration here threw a celebratory dinner to commemorate the arrival of so many sailboats. You can see some great photos of this on Bob’s blog. At that event the Minister of Tourism gave Bob the gift of a two-night stay at the historic Copper and Lumber Inn that is part of Nelson’s Dockyard. It’s a place where the Tot Club meets weekly, and this is a photo I took when Bob invited the fleet of our boats to be guests at a tot.

Tots take place in the courtyard of the Inn. I have only been up on the balcony once, last year, to get a similar photo before the tot ceremony began. This year it was a thrill to actually get to stay in this beautiful, historic spot.

There were three large double windows, which had stunning views. In the previous photo the drapes are drawn because the light completely washed out the interior. But of course the views were the best part!

Copper and Lumber is particularly beautiful at night. Above the entrance are the three windows of our room.

And back on Pandora, we have some new views this year. I brought one Christmas ornament from home since I wasn’t ready to give up the holiday when we came back here.

We also found orchids for sale at the local market! We could not resist getting one since we left our little family of phalaenopses and a paphiopedilum at home in the care of Melody and Chris.

I’ll close with a video Bob took of how my little Nano 2 spins. I am enjoying it, and I’m using the time to think about how to proceed with the tapestry experiment I want to try. Soon.

Life onboard is well underway this year. I hope it will be productive.

The Act of Making

December 19, 2022 | Leave a Comment

Over the years Bob has described me as ‘goal oriented.’ He seems to think that I am overly focused on finishing things, and even perhaps that I define my ‘success’ in the number of finished projects I complete in a year. I’ve never felt this defines me, and only recently have I realized what might be a better description of my compulsions. I need to be making things. It is wonderful therapy for me to spend a day in my home studio working toward some finished item. It’s not the finished project that entices me nearly as much as the act of spending a day using my skills to make something. It’s definitely the process of making over the having of a finished object that motivates me, but I will admit that finishing things feels great! I have spent a wonderful six weeks this fall engaged in making.

I have been working on some tiny baskets during the past few weeks, each one only 2″ in diameter. My favorite supplier of basket materials is DELS in Freetown, Massachusetts. Their in-house scrimshander (a female, so perhaps scrimshandress?) did the lovely scrimshaw for the handles of my baskets. The scrimshaw is done on old piano keys. The unfinished one in the foreground is one of three I’m making for my three young grandchildren. These did not get finished due to not having enough waxed linen. They are made with bleached staves and weavers which makes them look a little like ivory. I have scrimmed piano keys for these as well, candy canes on the two baskets with red waxed linen, and blue snowflakes on the basket with blue waxed linen, plus the children’s names and the years they were born. These little baskets are woven in 2/2 twill (over 2, under 2) while the adult baskets are woven in plain weave with natural cane and weavers. I only finished two of the three needed for the grandchildren, so these will have to wait until next year. It is what it is!

This year I needed three hand made presents for the various groups I go to throughout the year. One is my lace group, and that was the first holiday party that took place this month. I am the least skilled lace maker in this group, so I certainly wasn’t going to make any lace for a present. Also, I am incredibly slow at making lace! I opted to make a cover cloth which is used to protect lace while you are not working on it. This was a completely machine made item, embellished on an embroidery machine and then machine sewn to a lining. Still, the placement of the embroidered bobbins took me hours to do. That’s another skill I am inexperienced at accomplishing. The embroidery pattern was for one bobbin, and I wanted three placed almost the way I got them positioned on the fabric.

The lining fabric came from Spoonflower and has a wonderful array of lace making images in the print–bobbins, tatting shuttles, bits of lace and tatting.

The small group within my large statewide weaving guild also had a holiday party for which we needed to bring a present. The theme was to make something out of a scrap of fabric. A small treasure bag is what was recommended. Well, since I don’t make clothing, I don’t have scraps! I decided to make a tiny tapestry and a bit of kumihimo and somehow turn them into a bag. This became the most therapeutic process over the span of three afternoons. I enjoyed every minute of making this bag.

The tiny tapestry, sett at 12 epi, uses a technique for ‘couching’ that I learned this summer in a workshop with Fiona Hutchison. Wrapping and couching a larger diameter weft that floats on the surface of the tapestry creates a wonderfully dimensional effect. I’ll be using this technique more and more. After weaving the small piece, I enjoyed making the kumihimo braid and then machine sewing the small bag which brought the whole thing together. I am happy with the project, which is the best part of enjoying the process of making–being satisfied with the end result!

The last thing I made was a set of four pot holders. This was by far the least enjoyable project. I won’t make many more of these, although I am frequently drawn the patterns you can create in a potholder. This was the pattern I made in the “Potholder Wizard” program.

I made four of these, two each with a light background and a reversed dark background. Here are two of them.

And so the holiday season has started. I’m content that I carved out enough time to make things and that these went to people who expected to receive a handmade gift rather than to those who might not want this kind of present! It was time well spent for me to indulge my love of making, and giving the gifts to other makers was an additional perk.

It’s time to head back downstairs to begin wrapping the presents for family and friends. These are mostly bought items. A couple of them are handmade by others, and then there are my tiny baskets which will go to my two sons and their partners, and then eventually the bleached ones will go to my grandchildren.

I’ll close with a personal holiday image. Here is one of our grand-dogs on a walk with our son on the Columbia campus in New York, taken by our wonderful Melody.

Today is the first day of Hanukah, and it’s less than a week until Christmas. Whatever you celebrate in this season I wish you time for making and time for giving. I’ll be back in the new year, in a very different setting.

The Saga of the Japanese Paper Yarn

December 17, 2022 | 2 Comments

It’s December 17, which means it’s only one week until Christmas Eve. It’s past time to focus on getting ready for that holiday with my family, but I am entangled in what has become an unusual adventure using paper yarn from Habu.

When I first put on a linen warp to weave some placemats with paper as weft, I was so excited to use the paper yarn dyed with indigo. Granted, it was a very pale indigo, so I admit I had some worries about how the woven pattern would show up on the pale warp of white and unbleached linen (#365 in Strickler). It didn’t show up well at all! Unsure of how to progress, I may have reacted too quickly by diving through stash and deciding to use a beautiful blue linen as weft. The placemats are lovely in this blue, but I continue to wish they were paper. I now have four of these, and I used up the whole first warp to get them.

In October I took the remaining paper yarn and dyed it with indigo from a friend’s vat. She had re-invigorated the vat a bit more than she planned. After just a five-minute dip I pulled out my skein that was far darker than I had planned. Well, that’s the nature of natural dyeing and certainly the nature of being a novice. Although it was a quite a bit darker than what I’d envisioned, I was smitten by the variation in blues. It’s quite stunning. I call the color variation ‘abrashi,’ a word I learned from Persian rug weavers.

In summer I made a new warp and tied on to the old placemat warp. I won’t do that again any time soon. I started weaving my newly dyed paper yarn in late October, mixed in with making the gifts I needed for this busy season. Now, with gifts finished (sort of…and nothing wrapped yet!) I have turned my attention to getting the last four paper-woven placemats finished. I will have two pale indigo paper placemats, four all linen placemats, and four darker indigo paper placemats. All of that was from an original wish to have six indigo-dyed paper placemats. I could finally see the finish line of this extended project! There is quite a difference between these three attempts, and you can see the changing colors in the newest, darkest version.

Yesterday I finished the 3rd placemat and went to wind more bobbins. That’s when I realized how little is left of my skein of indigo dyed paper yarn. I would be lucky to get another two bobbins wound, and that’s far from what I need for this last placemat! Why is nothing every easy?

I slept on my dilemma for a night and woke up this morning ready to take apart one of the pale paper placemats to salvage the weft. Of course I have to dye it, and it will take more than a novice’s ability to get a blue anywhere close to what I got back in October. That makes me think I need to pick out the weft from both pale placemats.

It took me 1 1/2 hours to unpick one placemat. The weft became tangled in the warp whenever the warp got to be longer than 1/2″. So every 1/2″ I cut the warp closer to the weft and continued to unravel. That means the one placemat was cut into almost 50 little fringes. Here is the mess in progress.

I only unraveled one placemat, and I know I should do at least part of the second placemat to ensure that I have enough weft. I also went looking for my indigo kit from Maiwa, but it wasn’t where I last remember putting it. Nothing is easy….ever.

Although I am focused on getting this project off the loom before I leave, I realize I may not succeed. I want to come home next spring to an empty loom ready for a new project, but I am only home until Tuesday…this Tuesday. It will be a downer to come home to this last placemat that needs so much work in an area I am completely unprepared to tackle. Such is life. It’s a good thing I love weaving. This is quite a hurdle and a saga, but we can’t help what we’re drawn to do. I fell for that yarn, and you can’t choose what (or who) will melt your heart.

The yarn has also compressed during weaving. I need to get it back to the ‘tape’ it was initially, and I need to get close to matching the blue I dyed in October! Wish me luck!

Onward….but maybe not for months to come. The saga continues.