travel

It’s quite hard for me to believe that I have not written a post in more than six weeks now.  I have been working like a woman with her hair on fire….and that usually goes hand in hand with having a LOT to say–or write.  For some reason I’ve been strangely mute.

Finally I have turned my attention to a project that has been lingering on my big Toika loom for several years.  I managed to move that loom with the warp on it when we relocated here in Connecticut, and I’ve managed to play with it for short bursts over the past few years while we’ve lived here.  Suddenly I want it off the loom and on the wall!  That’s always a good motivation!

I’m chronicling the 40+ years that Bob and I have known each other.  The piece starts with a row of autumn trees to represent our first outing together: a walk in the woods, in the nature preserve called Devil’s Den in Weston–back in 1972!  What do you think of my boundweave loom?  I can’t take credit for drawing that gem.  It is Karen in the Woods’ design which she posted on Weavolution.  I learned to weave in 1976.

The past couple of days I’ve worked on wedding rings, sailboats and kitties.–wish you could see their green eyes.  I’m now in the early 80s.

When I settled down to weave this project I could not concentrate until I completely picked up and reorganized my studio.  There was way too much clutter everywhere I looked.  Now that I’m in the thick of boundweave my studio has become messier than it was when I couldn’t stand it any longer.  Funny how that happens.  Now I cringe a bit when I enter the room, but I really had to pull out all that yarn out for picking the colors and the softness I need for my little boundweave figures.

It was a beautiful summer although, aside from the linen tote bag, I did not knuckle down to any floor loom weaving until August.  There was SO much I wanted to do–I won’t bore you with the list….

We had more hummingbirds than we’ve had in previous years.  One of the females would sit on top of the iron plant hanger and chase away all other birds who came to feed.  I grow lots of red flowers on the deck to keep everyone happy.  The hummingbirds were constant companions for us.

In September I was invited to give a presentation on tapestry weaving to the Rhode Island weavers’ guild.  There are several women in that guild who are also in the CT guild so I already knew a few members.  They are a dynamic group who do some amazing work.  You can find articles that various members have written in back issues of Handwoven.  There are some well known weavers in Rhode Island:  Antonia Kormos, Norma Smayda, Jan Doyle…. I could certainly learn more from any one of them than I could possibly teach them!

For the presentation I collected images from all the tapestry weavers whose work inspires me.  I was impressed how willingly each of these weavers shared their photos with me so I could share them with the RI guild.  Such beautiful work!–Joan Baxter, Tommye Scanlin, Jon Eric Riis,  members of the Wednesday Group, of course!–along with Archie and Susan.

And in the afternoon an adventurous group of guild members tried their hands at weaving on chopstick looms.  Sally’s husband made the looms, and he did such a stellar job that it made all our Wednesday Group looms look pathetic!  I’m not going to give out Henry’s last name or he might be inundated with requests for these beauties!

Here are some of the portraits, all well woven!

In August, after the wedding,  Bob and I spent a week sailing on our new Pandora, all the way to Nantucket and back during the most mild and beautiful week of the summer.  I’ve got a new stash of window box and front door photos from all the pretty houses there.

Maybe I’ll post more of these another time, as a ‘postcards from summer’ type entry. I can’t help myself when it comes to gardens, and there were a lot of wonderful gardens on Nantucket….and I visited the oldest house on the island for the first time.

I’ve got warp ideas filling my head, and hope to get at least two of them on looms before we leave for the winter.  Lucienne Coifman is in my guild and has just published an intriguing book on Rep weave.  I bought it after also borrowing it from my guild library.

 This is the project that is calling me!  I think it would make wonderful placemats and runners (in a different colorwary) for my son and his wife’s new dining room.  Naturally, I don’t have any 5/2 cotton which is the weight I’d like to try for a rep project.  So it looks like a big order is looming….ha ha!  I hope I can get it all together before I leave.  I know from experience that it is a wonderful thing to come home to a loom just waiting for me to sit down and weave!

 

The draft for this pattern is from a workshop Laurie Autio gave our guild in fall of 2014, called “Designing for Block Weaves Using Twills as Profiles.”  In the post I wrote I about this I called it a ‘blended draft’ which Laurie says it is NOT!  So I’m not certain what to call the procedure of taking a twill circle (1-2, 2-3, 3-4, 4-5…etc) and using that sequence as a profile draft for plugging in a different weave structure, such as huck.

Here is the plaited twill draft that was used for the profile:

 Here is the draft.  The huck draft of little sections of 5-thread repeats that create either a weft float or warp float are threaded according to the twill pattern above.  There has to be a better way to say this, and when I find it I will rewrite!

I  wanted a subtle woven huck fabric so for the warp I used three very close colors of 2-ply wet spun linen whose weight is a bit heavier that 16/2 linen.  I’m sorry I cannot say exactly what it is.  I have a large stash of unlabeled linen cones of linen and silk cones from a dear weaving mentor, and none of them are labeled!

WARP
Laurie recommended that I give the McMorran yarn balance information about the yarns I used.  I have never felt confident in trusting this little device.  When I perform the procedure on the same yarn multiple times I never get the same number!  My three warp yarns gave me a range of yardages from 1325 yards per pound (ypp) to 1750 ypp.  They are slightly different  grists, so it is conceivable that their yardages would be somewhat different, but a difference of over 400 ypp is a bit untrustworthy to me.   And here is another reason that it is hard for me to trust this little gadget!  My cones of linen are thicker than 16/2 Bockens linen, yet they also look like they have less twist.  That might make them lighter weight in spite of looking thicker.  Yardage for 16/2 linen is 2700 ypp, and my ‘thicker’ yarns ranged from 1325 – 1750 ypp.

I made the warp by holding the three yarns together, separated between my fingers.  I put the spools on a spool holder and ran the yarns up to a hook in the ceiling and then down to my finger tensioning technique.  I made a 1 x 1 cross since the yarns are a little hairy and I didn’t trust having adjacent yarns in the same cross.  My warp was sett at 12 epi, and sleyed 2-per-dent in a 6-dent reed.  The warp was 25″ wide and I used my Baby Wolf for this project. The pattern repeat for this draft is 30 threads.  At 12 epi with 10 repeats I needed 300 warp threads, which was 10 pattern repeats across the warp.

WEFT AND WEAVING
The weft is a single ply linen that is rougher than the warp.  It has lots of thick and thin areas, so I think the McMorran yarn balance will be even less accurate.  I measured three times and averaged my findings for a result of 1900 ypp.  I wove to square the pattern. After weaving the necessary yardage for the front and back of the bag, I wove plain weave to the end of the warp for the handles and the top of my lining.

FINISHED FABRIC
I wanted the front and back of the bag to be roughly square before doing the box corner at the bottom.  I have a tote that I made from commercial fabric that I cut 24″ square to begin and I love the proportions of that bag.  I knew I would not get a finished fabric 24″ wide on the Baby Wolf, so I thought I would just use whatever width I did end up with for making my size determination.  After washing the width of the bag was about 20″.  I put in cutting lines (two plain weave picks in a contrasting yarn) after weaving 24″.  I thought the shrinkage would be greater lengthwise than in the width, but my cutting lines ended up longer than my fabric was wide.  If I had not woven in these cutting lines, I could have changed the proportions of my bag.  With the cutting lines I put in, the bag became somewhat taller than it is wide.

This photo was taken after I machine washed the fabric on a normal setting and set outside to dry.  You can see the cutting lines and where I switched to plain weave (at the top of the photo) for the handles and part of the lining.  I used a commercial linen fabric for the lining;  it is brown/tan/black plaid that you can see in the little loop for the button in the next photo.

SEWING THE TOTE BAG
You can use the directions I wrote for the smaller tote bag that I made last summer, changing the size of the pieces you cut to match your fabric, roughly 20″ wide by 22″ long.

For this particular bag I used the directions below.  After some thought (and because I did not have enough handwoven fabric!) I decided to omit the zipper that is detailed in the beginning of this video.  I am now happy that I decided to omit the zipper since the bag opens wider with only a button and loop closure.  The contstuction method for this bag has different order of sewing the pieces than my written instructions from the previous bag, and I just loved having the handwoven fabric at the top of the lining.  I think that is more professional looking.

 

It is glorious in southern New England and I am thoroughly enjoying all the perks of living in a house!  Laundry!  Cooking!  Puttering in the dirt!  In spite of the harsh winter all my perennials are showing signs of life–except one peony, but I’m pretty sure it had died before last fall’s first frost–and I have scattered some seeds which causes me to excitedly search for signs of germination each morning and evening when I walk around the gardens to take stock of new life emerging.  As of this morning I have poppy seedings! Rejoice with me!  I plant poppy seeds every year–and never get any.  Dare I hope??  Rain is expected tomorrow and I sure hope it will be gentle on my tiny seedlings.

There are a couple of wonderful volunteers in the lawn this year.  Some pansies from my window boxes self seeded along the front walk.

There are violets everywhere in the lawn… makes me want to dissuade Bob from mowing. He’s not here now to mow down these sweet gems.

And this is a new volunteer this year, and something completely unknown to me.  I have just googled yellow wildflowers in spring and found that this is Leopard’s Bane (Deronicum).  It blooms at the same time as daffodils.  I hope to transplant this into one of the gardens before Bob arrives home with mowing on him mind…

My first bouquet from the garden….daffs, hellebore and forget me nots on a handwoven runner on my desk where I write these posts at my computer.

And now, along with getting as much weaving done as I possibly can, I am turning my attentions to my older son’s upcoming wedding.  It’s time to look for a wedding outfit.  I am in the unfortunate, but not so unusual, predicament of having two, yes TWO, mothers of the bride, so my fashion choice must accomodate theirs!  Anyway, I have decided to attempt making my own outfit.  This decision is entirely based on catching up on two seasons of Downton Abbey since I returned home one week ago.  My son calls that ‘binge’ watching–and he’s right!

I am thinking of making a boat neck tunic out of pale to medium blue silk charmeuse and embellinging the neckline with ribbon embroidery….. very like this tunic that Lady Crawley wore in a couple of episodes. (I have a collection of photos of Downton Abbey costumes–taken while pausing the show to snap the pix! I wonder how many others do this too!)

I am imagining trailing vines in greens and browns with some roses and other flowers thrown in (color choices will be based on the overall effect going with my favorite brown silk pants with the pretty Chinese knots that run down the outer leg). I will stop by Banksville Fabrics on my trip to New Jersey later this week.  If I can get a lovely blue silk there I will then make a trip to Thistle Needleworks in Glastonbury to get the silk ribbons for the embroidery.

I am also dabbling in some Romanian Point Lace that intrigued me at Saturday’s monthly lace gathering.  My friend Mary is trying it and she shared the information that she has found recently.  There is a lot on Pinterest, and there are two older issues of Piecework that describe this technique  (March/April 1998, and one from 2001).

I must have garments on the brain (too much Downton Abbey for sure!)….I think a border of this lace would be stunning on a tunic.  This time I envision a handwoven silk fabric with Romanian Point Lace at the neckline.  It would also look wonderful on the collar of a melton wool coat.

So, with puttering in the gardens and doing just the smallest bit of spring cleaning in the house, I have not yet managed to touch any of my looms.  As I finish this I plan to bring up my portable easel and get back to my small Portuguese Man of War tapestry that I started on the boat.

Today is a glorious day for weaving outside!

It has been a bittersweet journey home–the drudgery of packing up years of stuff from one boat, then riding around in an overstuffed van for 10 days before unpacking it all onto another boat.  In the middle of the 10 days between one boat and the other we were driving south–inland to Columbia, South Carolina–to attend the wedding of a very dear friend.

It was one of the sweetest/saddest things I’ve ever participated in.  My younger son, now 29, became friends with groom in kindergarten, when they were both five.  They went all the way through high school together, and I have lots of photos of them–mostly predating digital images.   I have vivid memories of playdates from those early school years when the two of them had a massive collection of mutant ninja turtles.  Either one of them would arrive at the other’s house with a black garbage bag full of action figures.  I remember the yearly man hunt game on New Year’s Eve which always ended with sparklers at midnight, preceded by wonderful dinners together for the parents.  I remember hearing all that wonky music from the various Nintendo games–Mario ad infinitum, Donkey Kong, Dungeons and Dragons.  These games led to more complicated computer games and more geeky science and computer interests as the boys grew.  When they were young many people thought they were brothers.  They each had a brother, but it seemed they looked more like each other than their real brothers.

Now both boys have grown into handsome men–refined, even elegant.  Seeing them together as adults makes me wonder where the boys have gone.  Chris’ friend is tall and lean, and very handsome.  He is articulate and moves with grace.  He was recently ordained a Lutheran minister so he is comfortable in crowds and is surely a good public speaker.  He looked perfectly comfortable with his stunning bride who made us all think of Kate Middleton.

In this photo Chris (on the left) is standing with his two oldest friends– the groom is in the middle. I took almost the same photo 11 years ago when these three graduated from high school.  They were so awkward and youthful then–so comfortable and confident now.

The saddest thing about the wedding day was that the groom’s mother and father could not be there. The father was in the hospital at the end of a long 18 months of trying to stop the cancer that had been spreading for over a year.  He lost that battle only 3 days after his son got married.  It was heartbreaking to be there without the presence the parents who have been such good friends to us for 25 years.  It will probably be one of the happiest/saddest events of my life.  I would not have missed it.  In fact, Bob and Chris and I jumped through more than a few hurdles to get there.  It breaks my heart that the hurdles for getting to this wedding were bigger than humanly possible for the parents of the groom. (yes, I am wearing the sweater I had hoped to finish in time for this occasion.)

After the wedding we had a couple of days with Chris as we continued south, back to Florida, with a destination at our new boat.  Chris flew back to San Francisco; Bob and I began unloading that van into the new (improved!) Pandora.  Bob and I had barely gotten all the boxes onboard when it was time for me to fly home.

Now I’m back in Connecticut, in the blinding yellow of daffodils and forsythia and the deep blue of the Connecticut River that glints like a sapphire in the silver setting of last year’s marsh grasses glowing in the late afternoon light.

Today I bought pansies for the window boxes on the front of our house.  I’m waiting for the trees to leaf out.  I’m going to start weaving the projects that I left on my looms in December.  Right now there is a pot of carrot tops simmering on the stove and a hank of silk waiting to be dyed.

Life goes round and round–until it doesn’t.

 

Let’s start with ridiculous.  This is day 1 of unpacking Pandora–utter chaos, and NO fun!

It’s hard to pack things when you don’t even have room to move….

I thought packing up a boat would be a piece of cake compared to the three houses we have packed up in the past few years…..but in some ways this is harder!

Bob put boxes in the rented van while I tried to straighten up the main salon so we could have dinner without too much clutter.  The van is now 2/3 full, with the back seats folded down, and we still have a long way to go!

At the end of the day we decided to go for a walk.  First we passed this other example of living small.  I bet it wouldn’t take any time at all to pack up your belongings from this little abode–but I wonder how many people think that about our boat!  I guess there is always something smaller!

And always something larger….

Of course, if I lived here–Tryon Palace– I certainly wouldn’t be doing my own packing, would I?

Tryon Palace was the Governor’s Palace of provincial North Carolina in the 18th c. before the American Revolution.  After independence it burned to the ground just before the end of the century.  This reproduction was built in the 1950s and is now a museum.  I thought I was done taking photos of gardens, but I guess I just never will be!

Walking through the gardens at Tryon Palace is rather difficult on a Sunday afternoon at the height of spring.  I can’t speak for other times–but it would not surprise me if this place is popular all year ’round.  There were two brides, each with her own camera crew, and a newly engaged couple with a crew of camera toting family.  Everywhere we moved we heard sighs and saw gestures–frustrated gestures, not rude!–that we were invading someone’s Kodak moment.  In trying to get out of the way of one bride we were always moving into the way of the other!–or the engaged couple!

But I would not have missed a walk through these gardens for anything!  What surprised me most were the anemones and batchelor buttons.  You expect to see tulips and daffodils, but anemones are such a happy surprise!  This is not a great photo, but I love these iris which were in gardens all over town–mixed with batchelor buttons.

Tryon Palace is in a residential part of town that has houses from all the architectural periods since this town was settled in the early 18th c.   Since each house has a formal garden I wonder if you have to prove your gardening skills before you can move here.

The daffodils, tulips and wisteria are already past their prime…but en masse they still have a vivid impact!  I have been seeing tiny yellow rose like flowers on a climbing vine everywhere, even along the highway climbing up trees.  I just learned it is a climbing rose named Rosa Parks.

I can just imagine these homeowners picking their colors to coordinate with the azaleas.

Now it’s the morning of day 2.  I am going to have some coffee, or rather Bob’s amazing latte, and get back to packing. We hope to end each day around 4pm this week so we can take a walk through this pretty town!