travel – Page 48

On the Road Again….

January 29, 2014 | Leave a Comment

We have slipped our land moorings and are on the road to our vagabond life on Pandora. I will miss my looms over the next few months, but I’ve brought some fun projects to keep me company….knitting (of course!), and this time some embroidery and a small tapestry loom. I’m intrigued with this image, and hope to play with it a bit. It will give me lots of practice with circles, won’t it? Circles are considered the hardest shape to weave…..I’ll deliberate on that while I weave a few dozen of them!

As you can imagine I’ve brought just about every color imaginable….small loom, big bin of yarn. I really wanted to design something with minimal colors, but my time was spent elsewhere over the past few months….and I’ve always been a sucker for color! It has been such a hectic fall and winter, and I have struggled to find a balance between weaving and designing while also enjoying the holidays and spending precious time with my husband’s parents during our last wonderful month’s with Bob’s dad. It was a tremendously moving time for both Bob and me. One week ago we moved Bob’s mother to her new assisted living facility, into a one bedroom apartment with magificent views of Long Island Sound. It was one of those days with gale force winter winds, and the views of the Sound were quite dramatic. She likes it! Her belongings look very pretty in her new place, and it already has a nice sense of home. On Saturday she told Bob that he has taken wonderful care of her since his father died, that she loves her new place, and that she felt he should take a well deserved, long vacation. So, although we hated to leave her so soon after such big changes in her life, we have hit the road for Florida where our boat Pandora has been waiting for us since November. Honestly, I was in no big hurry to return. I have grown quite complacent to be home in our quiet little town on the Connecticut River, even with the single digit temperatures and the snow. I got a fair amount of work done over the summer, and this most recent project is finished pretty much to my liking. Surprisingly, the first painted warp is the one I prefer. I could not have known this until I did the second one. I have made two braids that the piece will hang from, and I am happy with them as well.

Here is a detail of the braid….a fiddly process of making a tiny braid in the middle of the strands of silk, and then closing the braid into a loop and adding in more silk to continue with a bigger braid.

We have rushed down the East Coast in order to stay ahead of the ice and snow that has shut down Georgia and the Carolinas. We spent a wonderful night with Rob and Kandice in Baltimore before we hightailed it for Florida. We are in St. Augustine now, and although it is a nippy 40 degrees F with wind and drizzle, we don’t dare complain!

We are staying in this pretty little inn right in the historic district. Our balcony overlooks the Lightner Museum. We managed to sit out and enjoy the view for a few minutes before the chill drove us back inside. Here is a shot of our room with the railing outside of the large window and the little balcony for sitting just off to the right of it.

I am looking forward to dinner in the cozy, intimate dining room later today. Yesterday we enjoyed a glass of wine in the bar. A cocktail in the evening and a full breakfast in the mornings comes with the room.

Stocking up on a few luxuries for our time onboard, like blood orange infused olive oil and some good books from the used book shop!

Later we will visit the Lightner Museum and tomorrow we will do a little more touring before heading down to Ft. Pierce where Pandora awaits.

2nd Attempt

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.

Thanksgiving

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!

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.

Ups and Downs of Life Aboard

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??