tapestry – Page 3

Summer Weaving

July 13, 2017 | 1 Comment

Summer is a time when my weaving projects must take priority since that’s when I’m home to work! Yet summer offers SO many wonderful distractions! The garden, family and friends visiting, lots of conferences to attend. I want to kick back and enjoy the season, but I also feel the pressure to make as much progress as possible before I leave home again.

These are the scenes that greet me each day on my walk along the Connecticut River, although the peonies and iris have shifted to roses, and now the roses are being overtaken by hydrangea.

It’s been a banner year for roses in my own garden. I have to give all the credit to Bob since he has fertilized every time I’ve asked, and he’s also used some kind of eco-friendly spray when the gypsy moths fell out of the trees on to the rose bushes.

We have a granite wall that is about 100′ long and planted in pink and yellow roses, interspersed with lavender, daisies, and boxwoods.

I’m going to back up a bit and reminisce about the trip I took to Tennessee to attend the Southeast Fiber Festival back in April. Back in April? Time flies! I took three weeks to drive down to Gatlinburg and back. It was a perfect mix of relaxation and adventure. After spending Easter weekend with my new granddaughter and her parents, I continued south to meet my good friend and tapestry weaver AnnaByrd to make the rest of the trip together. We had a wonderful 500 mile drive through the Shenandoah Valley and into the Smoky Mountains. Both going and returning we stopped in New Market, Virginia, and enjoyed lunch in a cafe at the civil war museum there. We were both taking a 3-day class with Jon Eric Riis on Coptic tapestry techniques.

In spite of the terrible destruction in Gatlinburg by last autumn’s fires, Arrowmont is still a stunning place. There is plenty of evidence of the chaotic and destroying force of fire, but I was relieved to see that there was still plenty untouched. This view is not the direction of the fire came from.

A view of the main building from the dining hall. The dining arrangement is the best I’ve had at a conference. I wish I’d photographed the dining room. It is cafeteria style, and the food is excellent. You sit at real wooden dining tables that have real chairs. Although there are a lot of tables in this large room, it feels quite like gathering in a home situation because the food is excellent and so obviously prepared with care, and the setting is so comfortably home like. Well done!

My few photos from this trip are not memorable, but the memories they conjure for me are too good not to use. Here is Jon during his keynote address for the conference.

The slides of his work covered most of his weaving career. I had no idea he’d been weaving for 50 years–how can he be old enough to have had such a long career? I have always loved his Icarus tapestries, and I no idea just how many works he’s done over the years. Look at this assemblage of pears! I know, it’s a bad photo– what can you expect of a photo of a projected slide during the presentation?

AnnByrd took this photo of Jon and me together, and it’s a great memory for me, even though blurry. Some day the memory of the workshop will become like this photo….a bit out of focus–but hopefully not too soon.

On display in the instructors’ exhibit were a series of partial faces that Riis wove entirely in metallic yarns. I don’t know HOW he got such a beautiful surface with such challenging materials. On the last day, after this work was crated, he unpacked a few and let us pass them around. Look at the curve of the chin–and the shading!

There are 20 partial faces in this series that hang together in a grid. The piece is called “Diaglogue.” You can see it here.

About 10 days after I returned home from this adventure, I was off to the Cape with a couple of lace making friends. We were headed to the Sacred Hearts Retreat Center in Wareham, Massachusetts, for the annual weekend retreat of the New England Lace Guild. It’s a wonderful setting near the beach, all our meals are served to us family style at big tables in a large dining room. We have private rooms and shared baths, and we can stay up all night making lace if we like, go for walks, take classes, and even buy stuff from the Van Scivers who always come. For the past two years I’ve opted not to take a class, and instead, filled my days sitting in the sunroom with a couple of my own projects that needed uninterrupted attention. There are plenty of other lace makers who do the same.

I spent the weekend working on this project while also keeping track of the eagle cam that was following the eaglet Spirit, on the Anacostia River, just off the Potomac in Washington, DC. You can just see Spirit at the edge of the nest (upper right) on my computer screen.

Here is one of the two classrooms….. since the center is in a large Georgian house, the rooms are generous and furnished from decades past.

Back at home, with the summer unfolding, we’ve celebrated our 40th anniversary, and been treated to a long weekend with both our sons and daughter in law, along with cherished new granddaughter Tori and a few good friends. I’m working on a couple of floor loom projects and two tapestries.

One tapestry is the line of text that our son Christopher asked me to weave. As of this week, I am 20% done. It seems like an insane thing to weave, and even Archie tried to dissuade me from this project, in spite of having woven quite a lot of text himself. Yet I find it both relaxing and challenging. Chris made the font and then hand manipulated the spacing of letters for my cartoon. I am not making any marks on the warp, since I’ve found that I have more success working from a cartoon when I let the cartoon be an idea of the weaving, rather than trying to actually follow the cartoon slavishly.

And here is the work in progress on the design I created in Riis’s Coptic workshop. The workshop was titled “Unraveling Coptic Weaving,” and we were to bring family photos to reinterpret in a Coptic style. I balked at that idea and brought a lot of other images that intrigued me more–Minoan dancers, Greek vase paintings, and one of the bas relief religious figures from the facade of St. John the Divine Cathedral in NYC. Anyway, after playing with those compelling ideas, I settled back on the idea of a family member…..dear little Tori.

The warp is sett at 16 epi, which is considerably finer than the finest sett I’ve ever used before — 12 epi. Between the fine sett and the neutral color of the warp thread, I am struggling to see what I’m doing! Still, when I pick the right threads, the weaving is also compelling.

It was a good challenge for me to draw this cartoon. Tori will be surrounded by clouds with hearts in the corners….schmaltzy for sure, but I hope to balance that a bit by using some tertiary colors. Each cloud and each heart is somewhat different from each other….the only way I can do it. We’ll see.

This morning I measured the lace that I started at the retreat. It’s also for Tori. I just photographed it after I put away the measuring tape. It is now a whopping 32″ long!

So I’d better get back to work on these projects so I can get some of them finished before the season changes!

A Day at the Cricket Match

March 6, 2017 | 2 Comments

Well, who knew I’d ever be talking about cricket–me, the obsessive weaver/knitter and somewhat reluctant sailor will now spend a few words on cricket. We were given tickets to the West Indian/English cricket match here on Antigua. Antigua has spent a fortune on a modern stadium for this sport so the locals must love this game. They have chosen having a stadium over having better water or sewage systems on the island, and certain over having good roads. Who am I to say what’s more important?

Lucky for us that two very nice Englishmen were seated in front of us, who were willing to explain the game and give us some background on cricket. It’s a long game. We arrived over an hour after the start and still saw most of the first half, in which the West Indian team was batting. By the end of that half they had scored 258 points.

I know these photos don’t do justice to the action. All I can say is that I’ve never seen anyone run as fast all these men do! It was more exciting than watching the Olympics just to see them run and catch balls. They can catch anything!

I wish I had a photo of our English cricket tutors. They were both dressed so perfectly shabby/chic in their rumpled linen shirts and khaki shorts, finished off with panama hats and shabby boat shoes. Their diction was also perfectly Queen’s English. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to learn they are both barristers, or maybe even earls. Enchanting gentlemen…

The spectators were very well dressed. This has to be quite a big social event for the locals. And during the breaks you could buy all kinds of food–or get your face painted!

We left about 4 pm, even though there was more than an hour left in the game. Because the game is played in two halves, with only one team able to score during its own half, we have no way to know who won. Maybe we can find out from a local when we get ashore later. You do really do have to stay for the whole 8 hours!

Life aboard continues as ever. More of our acquaintances have arrived in the harbor so we’ve had several nice get togethers. As you can see our numbers are growing. It’s hard to all congregate on one boat so we’ve moved on to larger venues on shore.

Each day brings it own chores, just like home anywhere. The last week was focused on fixing broken things aboard Pandora, and Bob has made some great headway on those things. We are still waiting for some kind of power supply for the SSB, and then that repair will be finished. Our friends on Kalunamoo came into Falmouth yesterday with a broken windlass. You may remember what that is from a couple weeks back when ours died as well. It’s the thing that pulls up the anchor since a hundred or more feet of chain is way too much for a mere human to handle. It’s important. When it breaks it’s time to get on that project right away.

This morning we have been busy making water and doing two loads of laundry. I hope to get out my small tapestry by noon. Tori’s little sailor sweater is finished and almost ready for giving when I see her at Easter. I hope her parents will like it enough to have her wear it through the spring and on cool summer nights.

I almost took a photograph of all our laundry hanging out to dry, but then thought better of it! Here’s a photo of what Bob has to do to get anything out of our freezer for dinner. “You want the WHAT??? Honey, that’s at the very bottom!”

Our younger son Chris arrives next Wednesday to spend almost a week with us in English Harbor on Antigua. March and April are big months in the Osborn family. Both Rob and Kandice have birthdays in March–Rob’s is this Wednesday! Where does the time go?? In between Rob’s and Kandice’s birthdays, little Tori will turn three months old! I haven’t seen her in a month now and she is changing rapidly, as babies do. Luckily Rob and Kandice send us new photos of her almost every day.

Here she is looking very glam in her shades!

And this was taken yesterday. For almost a month now she has been standing up while holding on to Mom or Dad. It appears she may be as precocious as her daddy was at that age. I’m enjoying remembering Rob’s babyhood through Tori, but I know that Tori’s mom and dad are in for wild ride ahead! She started doing this just after turning 2 months old.

Chris’s birthday with be next month, just before Easter. So much to celebrate, and we are too far away to do it properly!

Time to finish sewing that last seam in Tori’s sailor sweater and then get out my loom…. maybe Bob will find out who won the cricket match while he is ashore using the internet to order some more things for Pandora.

Keep on Keeping on!

November 20, 2016 | 1 Comment

Years ago I knew an editor who said that we must all find a rhythm in life that we can maintain for at least 30 years. I’m still struggling with that. My last birthday put me into a new decade, and at this age I’m not sure I will ever learn what speed I can maintain. So must settle for the mantra to just keep on keeping on….

This was an excessively busy week which seemed perfectly do-able when I first signed on to participate. First came a 2-day workshop on rep weave with Lucienne Coifman who recently published a book on this subject.

Setting up my Baby Wolf for this project was rather daunting. A pre-workshop on Lucienne’s method for warping a rep weave project should be a must-do in order to have a stress-free experience. I think that’s entirely possible if you take an on-going class with her. This was her traveling 3-day workshop crammed into 2 days for our guild’s annual November workshop.

There were 18 participants in a round robin class, where each of the looms had a different rep weave structure, from traditional Swedish designs to Lucienne’s designs. It was impossible to weave all 18 designs in the space of 2 days, so it was somewhat stressful. Most of us skipped breaks of any kind, including eating lunch. But look what we got!

This is Lucienne’s sample of the structure she gave me to put on my loom. This is in her new book.

Other designs we wove:

The little tags were for identifying different treadling methods.

There were more wonderful designs choices to weave than there were hours in this class. As the last hour approached we all had a moment of disappointment at the designs we did not get to try. When we cut off the yardage on our looms we brought them all to the front table.

Lucienne gave a number of lectures during the two days. It was hard to tear myself away from weaving to listen and take notes, but all the information was important so I had to do it!

I still have a bit of warp on my loom with which I will weave some samples for the women who did not get to my loom. And I sure hope there will be enough warp left over for me to weave a little something useful–perhaps a book cover–for myself!

So Friday evening we all packed up our looms to leave–no simple feat. I unloaded my car and then reloaded with the tapestry paraphernalia that I needed for the next morning’s talk at the state guild meeting. I was to give a program for the morning open lecture that is part of our regular meeting agenda. My talk on images in contemporary tapestry was well received. I was quite nervous about doing this talk, mostly because I had almost no time to prepare for it. But I slept well the night before, especially after two intense days of weaving rep weave on strange looms! I woke up Saturday morning calmer than I’ve been in months for which I was very grateful. A couple of good friends promised to attend to give me moral support, and nothing beats that! Quite a few people signed a list to receive more information from me on how to get started learning how to weave tapestry, and that was the point of the whole thing! So I guess that means it was successful!

The afternoon program this month was given by Norma Smayda about her experiments weaving ondule fabric with a fan reed. Schiffer Publishing will soon be coming out with Norma’s new book on this subject! I can’t wait to get it.

Norma took us through her entire process, and that gave me quite a bit info for doing my own experiments. I have almost bought a fan reed from Sara von Tresckow of the Wool Gatherers twice but balked at spending so much on something I had no idea how to use well. Look what Norma has been doing with it.

If you plan your stripes you can accentuate the movement of the reed. You can also get undulating selvedges or straight selvedges, depending on how your thread your reed.

After buying a reed that had fans going across the entire width, Norma then ordered some fans she designed herself with straight pins for part of the width and fanned pins for the rest. It allows her to have areas of straight weaving and areas of undulation. Quite beautiful! The blue/orange wall hanging is all one piece, with straight weaving on the left and undulations on the right. Try to ignore that bit of another woven piece in red at the right edge of the photo. I did not want to touch Norma’s work so I could not get the red wall hanging out of the way.

And here is the red piece from the corner of the previous photo–it’s so graphic it vibrates!

Norma is wearing a vest that she designed. I don’t remember who sewed it for her, but she did a fabulous job! There is a placket at the back of the jacket where the seamstress inserted one repeat of the ondule fabric…such a wonderful touch!

As you can see, I’ve had quite a week! I went to bed at 8.30 last night because I could not keep my eyes open any longer! My head is full of ideas — now just to find the time. I just have to keep going, even if it’s slower than I’d like.

Past Wedding, Full Forward on Inspiration!

August 11, 2015 | 1 Comment

First a moment of shamless personal happiness: our older son was married over the weekend in Baltimore. It was a glorious event! I enjoyed every detail of it starting with our private time with the almost newly weds when we arrived on Wednesday evening last week, right through to the after-wedding-Sunday-brunch. It was a small wedding, but the honored guests came from as far as San Francisco and Denver and Florida, to as close as right down the street. It was a congregation of close knit friends and relatives. It couldn’t have been better!

We invited our very oldest friends–two couples we’ve known since long before either Rob or Chris were born–Chris and Pat and LeaAnn and Garrett– and a dear friend, Craig, who has been more than an uncle to our boys….and my sister Sheryl and her family–Carl, Madison and Chloe. It was perfect!

Elevator selfies are certainly the rage now!

The wedding party was large for so small a wedding– 6 bride’s maids, 6 groom’s men,
1 groom’s dog, 3 flower girls, and 2 ringbearers. The groom’s dog may have stolen the show. After walking down the aisle with the groom, he then gave the groom a ‘high-5’ moments before the bridesmaids entered.

He lay down peacefully between the bride and groom when the vows began.

When he began to make nesting movements with the bride’s beautiful wedding dress, he made no fuss at being moved in front of the groomsmen. Just look at all those Chuck Taylors!

He got to spend a few moments at the reception before he was sent up to the bridal suite to to relax with a very attentive friend.

Here are more moments from the day… I loved every minutes of it!

Photo ops in the beautiful Hotel Monaco in Baltimore.

The best man and the mother of the groom–moi!

I am shamelessly proud of these two young men–the groom and his best man brother!

The finale of the ceremony!

That wonderful moment for any mother of the groom!

The very best moments of this weekend aren’t documented with photographs. It was spending some wonderful time with both our sons, our new daugher in law, our friends, my sister and her family. It was finding two very sweet handwritten notes from my son thanking us for so much, acknowledging what a wonderful relationship we’ve had over the years behind us and the years to come. This note arrived with a gift just moments before I left our room to go down to the ceremony. It just doesn’t get any better!

With a little help from my friends (there’s always a Beatle theme when our family is together) Bob and I hosted a brunch for the newly weds on Sunday morning at their new house in the suburbs of Baltimore. If not for Pat and Jeremy, and of course Bob, the brunch would not have been nearly as buttoned down as it was! I guess we were way too busy hosting to get any photos.

I am so indebted to our old friends and my sister’s family for making such a long trek to be part of this event. Being with them put the frosting on the cake and the cherry on top!

Now back at home I am relishing the all the memories and enjoying looking through all the candid photos taken by friends. We’ll have the photographer’s images shortly.

I have turned my attentions back to the tapestry presentation I’ll be giving in early September to the weavers’ guild in Rhode Island, to working on what I’ve lovingly called the “Archie Project” for the past ….. years. I refuse to admit how long this project is taking!

Bob and I took inventory of his stash of dowels in the workshop to determine what he might need to buy in order to make a backstrap for loom for me. It looks like we have everything needed! I might be weaving by early next week.

This morning LeaAnn sent me links to a wonderful illustrator and writer who lives in Wales — Jackie Morris. My imagination took off while reading her blog. On Saturday, while we were celebrating a wedding, she wrote this:

The summer is always busy. It’s hard to find the silence required for clear thought. George MacKay Brown talked of writing poetry as ‘the interrogation of silence.’ I know not everyone needs it to work, to think, but I do.
…I become more fascinated by silence as I grow older. But finding silence is different to being silent. When you choose to stop speaking you unnerve people. They fill the silence, the space you leave. They interpret your silence in their own way.

At the end of her post she invited people to comment on how they achieve the silence they need to think and work, or to respond that they do not need to find this silence.

I agree whole heartedly with her description about needing inner silence and attempting to find it. There is no one place where I find mine. Sometimes it is easy to retreat to a wonderful silent place, and sometimes, no matter where I go I cannot get to it. I’m certain it has more to do with the state of my mind than the features or faults of any physical place. It all comes down to me. I just have to learn to be still and let it come.

As a weaver I often find that being at one of my looms is the best place for me to be silent and reap the benefits of where silence can lead. It doesn’t always work, but it is almost foolproof. On a floor loom or at a spinning wheel there is a rhythm of mechanical music that takes me deep into my inner self where there is a vast landscape of something like silence.

In tapestry I almost silently lift each warp thread by hand to create an image, and in that case it is my own deep thinking about the image that draws me away from the world, from any other noise but that deep music inside me. These are the reasons I return to weaving again and again.

After all the busy-ness of this summer–the SSCA extravaganza, visiting friends, the biennial weaving conference, and the wedding–it’s time to find that silence and get some good work done.

Tying it all up

April 7, 2015 | 2 Comments

Time is short! Bob and I are rapidly approaching our last week onboard Pandora– not only the last week of this sailing season, but the last week we may ever sail on her. We are delivering her to a broker in New Bern, NC, tomorrow, and after that we’ll spend a week unloading 8 years of provisions we’ve put onboard– and we’ll do all we can to clean and polish her to a gleaming state so that someone else might want her as much as we did just a few short years ago. We have enjoyed our time on her!

We have just spent a couple of days at Cape Lookout, a spot we have not visited before. What a gem! I think it is considered the most violent bit of sand and sea along the East Coast of the US, but it may also hold the record for the most violent bit of geography on the Atlantic. Not certain about that—but I intend to look into it. Our photos tell a different story–peaceful and serene.

At anchor in the bight at Cape Lookout….

The lighthouse at Cape Lookout at sunset. The light flahses for one second every 15 seconds, and Bob managed to get it!–you have to have great eyesight to see that tiny point of light in this photo!

There is fabulous shelling on the beaches at Cape Lookout, both on the ocean side and in the bight. Amazing. We collected quite a trove of great shells.

These shore birds, which I can’t identify positively (they might be a type of tern–Caspian? Forster?) really scolded me for invading their territory. I am always impressed at how fearless most birds are. En masse these guys were determined to get me off their bit of beach!

After many attempts to catch dolphins on camera–since we see them everyday–Bob caught this one! I hear that loggerheads come here to spawn, and that should happen pretty soon.

Tomorrow we head back out into the Atlantic for a few miles, then into the ICW near Beaufort. If we time the tide right we’ll be in Oriental before the end of the day. By Friday morning we’ll head up the Neuse River and be in New Bern by afternoon. And then the chores begin taking down everything that has been our winter home for a few years now. End of an era….