ArgoKnot – Page 11 – A journal of my weaving, spinning, and knitting life

To Sir, with Love…

January 28, 2022 | Leave a Comment

By ‘Sir’ I mean Archie Brennan. While Archie became an Officer of the British Empire in 1981, he was not technically knighted, so he was never a ‘sir.’ But to those of us in the Wednesday Group he will always be “Sir Archie.”

Thirteen years ago Archie and I began working together on what is now Archie Brennan: Tapestry as Modern Art. After all these years, our book is now winging its way around the world! The pre-orders and the copies I had the publisher send to acknowledge those who helped with the book have mostly arrived at their destinations, including Australia. I’ll admit that I am still a little awestruck that this idea that Archie and I discussed so many years ago really came to be. There were plenty of times when I didn’t think it would happen.

This photo was taken by Bob on the last day I spent with Archie, in 2016. We had finished photographing the works that were still in Archie’s possession. It had been a long day, especially for Archie, who was clearly showing signs of diminished health. Bob and I borrowed photography equipment from Schiffer Publishing. By the time we picked up the equipment and drove to Archie’s house, we’d been on the road for 10 hours. Local friends, Alta and John, not only took care of hosting us and feeding us at their house, but also pitched in to make the process of getting the pieces out of Archie’s attic and into my car, then unpacking tapestries, photographing, recording info, and repackaging the works go smoothly. Really, it could not have happened without their help. John arranged for us to use the social hall at the local fire station for the photo shoot. Thank heaven all those tapestries fit in my station wagon!

This photo of me holding open the book at the image that represents so much to me, was taken by my dear friend LeaAnn. She took it because she wanted to document for me how happy I was that this photo is included in Archie’s story. Near the end of the publishing process my editor decided to delete this photo. I was crushed. Her reason for omitting the photo was that it was just a ‘snap shot.’ She was right, but for me this image represented the culmination of about eight years of work by 2016. And I never saw Archie again, so there was that too. After a week of back and forth, my editor agreed to include it in the book. As it turns out, it’s in a wonderful place, at the end of the index. It stands there as a little sentry, evoking my last day with Archie on the long journey toward this book.

Now the book is arriving in mailboxes all over the US, the UK, and even as far away as Australia. In February it will be available in Canada through Amazon. Weavers’ Bazaar in the UK, is going to carry it, and will have it ready to ship next month. As people have received their copies, they are sending me heart warming messages. I am so moved, I often find myself speechless.

From Julie von Wettberg: It brings together so many threads… weaves them into whole pieces with the accompanying photos you and Bob helped create… and results in such an engrossing story, even from just reading bits here and there.
Your words are beautiful. Your goal… fully accomplished.

From Anna Wetherell, who has reviewed the book for “Tapestry Weaver,” the journal of the British Tapestry Group: Just to confirm that Archie has arrived. My first impression is that it is a beautiful, well crafted book and I am going to learn a huge amount from reading it! I may well also feel that Archie has arrived in person, judging from Brenda’s introduction…
and from Facebook: It’s superb Brenda! Hugely well done. (being one of the lucky ones to get a chance to review it!)

From Molly Elkind: I LOVE this book! (I reviewed it for SS&D). Tapestry weavers will truly enjoy it and learn so much. Congratulations, Brenda!

From Kay Lawrence, Professor Emeritus at the University of South Australia, and internationally known tapestry artist: The Archie Brennan book arrived yesterday. What a handsome publication and what a massive task! I’m so glad you stuck it through to the end. It will be such an important reference for the development of contemporary woven tapestry in the twentieth century.

To Sir, I miss you daily, and it helps greatly to know that many others will get to know as well as your devoted students have done. You will continue to teach others through those who now teach after being your students, through your video series, and through this book about your fascinating life. With love…

The Annual New Beginning

January 3, 2022 | Leave a Comment

The start of each new year coincides with me moving onboard Pandora for a winter of sailing in the Caribbean. We stayed home last year because of Covid. After following the mandates being enforced here and the level of infection in Antigua all year, Bob decided it was somewhat saferfor us to be in Antigua this winter than we’d be at home. (Of course, that didn’t include the absurd crowds we enccountered at JFK airport!–never again!) I was not as confident, but here we are! Happy New Year from English Harbour, Antigua.

I don’t know if we’ll get further down the island chain. Antigua seems to be the safest of the islands at this time.

What is on my mind every time I ring in a new year is how much I didn’t get done while I was home, how many projects on ‘my list’ remain just ideas. I spend some time each January grieving the things I didn’t accomplish because now I have four months with no looms, no sewing machine, no spinning wheel, no marudai and takadai, no lace pillow. Oh, I could on and on about this. I get rather morose at this time of year dwelling on what I’m giving up for the winter months. Those winter months are such a marvelous time to hunker down, almost hibernate, and just create. It used to be my most productive time of year, mingled with guild meetings, which no longer occur, that inspired me to do new and better things.

During the pandemic I have subscribed to a journaling newsletter called the “Isolation Journals,” written by Suleika Jaouad. She is a wonderful writer who inspires me to think differently and to record how my ideas and attitudes might change with her weekly prompts. Lately, I’ve been enthralled by her messages, in both good and sad ways. She is going through the recurrence of some serious medical issues, so her prompts about attitude have deeply affected me. At the end of last week she wrote a message about re-thinking the new year, and her ideas helped me to look at my accomplishments differently. For years she makes five lists around the new year. On the first list she records all the things she has accomplished. That’s what I did yesterday, and I feel a LOT better about the things that didn’t get done. Try it! We all do so much more than we think we do when we reflect on our time. It’s a great idea to list the things. It’s more than you remember until you force yourself to list them all.

I won’t go through the other four things that are helpful to list because you can read the message here. I hope you will.

My grief at leaving home has lessened. I don’t have quite the projects onboard that I had hoped to bring because Bob may not sail Pandora home this spring. After 10 years, he is getting tired of the long journey home each spring and the longer journey here every fall. We are considering leaving Pandora in Trinidad which is outside the hurricane zone. With that in mind, I had to choose carefully projects that are compact enough to make some kind of journey back to me, either by crate on a ship or in various suitcases (that we’ll have to buy!) to check on a flight home. It will certainly be a new hurdle for us, and I’m already worrying about it. I’m so good at that!

My year ended with some wonderful family time, in spite of the pandemic. We are a small family, although my older, married son sees far more people since his children are in nursery school and his wife has a large family. We visited them in Maryland the week before Christmas so that we went ahead of their visits with the distaff side of the family. But, nothing is completely safe these days. On the evening we arrived our son got a message from the nursery school that a teacher had tested positive for Covid and that the school was now closing until the new year. The families of the students were required to quarantine for at least 10 days. That included us since we were now in their house. All went well for us; no one got the virus, although we got a good dose of a different virus! Bob calls our grandchildren adorable virus vectors, and they are!

At Rob’s house, along with nine people, three of whom are still nursery school age, there were three dogs and two cats. Everyone got along well, and mostly the cats just hid somewhere safe from dogs!

Our younger son and his partner also joined us on this early Christmas weekend. It was the first time all our family was together in several years. That is because Chris (younger son) has been living on the West Coast for about seven years. He doesn’t make it home every year. Now he has moved back to Manhattan, and we’ll have more family gatherings as long as we are all well enough to do so safely. This is a wonderful gift for me.

This was a moment I won’t soon forget. Tori and I fell asleep on the couch together at her house. When I awoke she was still sleeping. Is there anything more angelic than a sleeping child? Yes, actually there is! Watching a sleeping angel cuddle the knitted toy sheep I made for her about three years ago.

For the Christmas weekend, Chris and Melody came to our house, along with a dear family friend who has been in our bubble for the entire pandemic. It was a quiet Christmas, but very moving for me.

It snowed on Christmas Eve this year, and Melody got up early Christmas morning to take photos.

When she sent me this photo of Mila from Christmas morning, she added the caption, “Snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes!”

One more photo of our oldest grandog, who is only three. We have a family of young children, young dogs, and old cats!

I ended the year with a heart full of gratitude, and with help from the Isolation Journals I’m not beating myself up much about the things I didn’t accomplish this year. This new year feels like a positive new beginning, rather than a time for moping about lost opportunities. That is a huge difference for me. It’s time to knit!

I wish all of you health and safety in this brand new year.

Life at my Kitchen Table

October 30, 2021 | 1 Comment

The biggest news I am compelled to share–a real book! Something I can hold in my hands!

What a thrill it was to find a package from Schiffer in the kitchen yesterday when I returned from a day out at the Wadsworth Atheneum! I thought the museum exhibit was exciting, but I had no idea what further excitement lay in store! The book is a pre-release copy. Only a few were shipped by air to Schiffer for promotional purposes. The rest of the books will arrive by ship whenever that is possible. No one can guess that anymore. The original release date was Sept. Then it got moved to early December. Now it will be sometime in the new year…with luck.

The book is bigger than I expected. I knew it was over 300 pages, with lots of photos, but I didn’t expect it to be this big.

The Schiffer team, headed by senior editor Sandra Korinchak, worked hard to get the colors as close as possible on the photos. I’m sure they were sick of my phone calls and worries, and they had to work with some considerably old slides that have changed color over the decades. Remember Kodochrome and ektochrome? Yep, those were the good old days of film.

I lost a lot of sleep over the images for the book. I am thrilled that they are quite good. The Schiffer art folks had a lot of work to do without ever getting to see the actual tapestries. There was a lot of sleuthing, and although I’m tempted to go on and on about that, for now I’ll spare you. Shortly after I took a quick look through the images, I weighed the book. I was just that enthralled with how heavy it feels. It’s 5 pounds.

It’s strange to be taking photos of the real book. It has only existed in my mind and then in pdfs from my editor. Now a real book is on my kitchen table, where so much of my life takes place. My son calls our dining table “Mom’s studio: the sequel.” A lot of straightening up goes on before we eat dinner here most nights. Now I’ve even placed a couple of small side tables near my chair so I can just move my stuff from the dining table to the little tables. This is what often happens. On this day I happened to be in an online bobbin lace class to study and sample making Ipswich lace, led by Karen Thompson. It was a bit difficult to move this when dinner was ready.

Most days for the past year+ the table has been cluttered with stuff pertaining to Archie’s book. I’m thrilled that those days are past. I got this pre-release copy almost two years to the day after Archie passed away. I could never have imagined how long a process this would be.

Those sweaters I mentioned in my last post have not been touched yet. The pattern for the autumn leaves in Rauma wool is definitely awol. What a shame. It’s going to take some effort to develop my own pattern based on what I’ve already knitted with no records! I did find the stitch pattern, so it could be worse. It’s only a bit of math. I just have to do it.

I should be talking about tapestry, shouldn’t I? I’m just still not ready. It’s like the feeling when you finish a good book or a good movie, and you just can’t start a new one right away. I need a bit of time to process that Archie’s book is a reality before I can focus on my own tapestries. I thought I’d dive right in, but that’s not how I feel right now.

Instead, I’m focused on knitted sweaters, and an unfinished basket, and bobbin lace. I’ve gone down a few deep rabbit holes. Today I saw this sweater on facebook–a sweater that depicts bobbin lace. It doesn’t get better than that!

The pattern is free, so if you’re a knitter go get it! Here is the lace that inspired the sweater (also from facebook).

And now that I’m getting quite off topic from the book, I’ll show you my lace from Karen Thompson’s Ipswich class. Ipswich is traditionally done with black silk — not my favorite look by a long shot. And it’s hard to see. But this class has been a good experience, learning about the first documented lace from the new United States, circa 1789, based on samples in the Library of Congress. Alexander Hamilton (the first Secretary of the Treasury of this fledgling country) kept records of the various manufactured items in the 13 new states, and his records, including samples of about 20+ laces made in Ispwich, Massachusetts, are in the Library of Congress. In spite of the current connotation of the word “manufacture,” remember these laces were made by hand, usually in the home of the lace maker.

Back on track–tomorrow will be the 2nd anniversary of Archie’s passing. I miss him on a daily basis, as you’d expect since I’ve spent so much time reading his words and looking at his tapestries. This year I’d like to think that there’s a little silver lining, that now there is a way for weavers to see so many of his works and his creative thought processes collected in one place. But I can’t predict the future. This is what I wanted for him, a way to connect with all the weavers he taught and befriended over the many decades of his career, and a way for those who never met him to get to know him. That’s my wish. I hope it comes true.

Life after Archie’s Book

September 24, 2021 | 2 Comments

For those of you who got here early you may now see that I’ve changed the title. I thought better of my choice of words almost immediately! Archie Brennan and I started down a path more than a decade ago to create a book chronicling his fascinating life, and that path has reached its destination. Based on what little I knew about him in 2002, when I joined the Wednesday Group, I thought he had lived quite an exciting life. I saw him as someone who took chances, loved adventures. As he hand-wrote his memoirs and gave them to me to transcribe, I realized how limited my idea of adventure was. He led a most adventurous life!

A love of adventure and the unknown is probably a good ingredient for living an examined life. Examining life is a good ingredient for having an open mind while also developing strong opinions about what works in your own life. This is exactly how I view Archie. He was easy to talk to because he was genuinely interested in others, not just artists, not just tapestry weavers. He was fascinated to learn about whatever motivated another person to live the life they lived. Since he felt that his chosen profession was no different, and certianly no less important, than being a farmer or a mason or anyone else who worked with their hands, he was able to listen to others and know them on a level that most people just don’t ever reach.

My journey with Archie to produce his book is coming to an end. In terms of the actual, physical book, it’s done. It went to the printer in late August. The publisher expects it to be available in December. I don’t know what the future may hold. Of course I hope to talk about the book in any setting that might occur. There are over 300 images in the book and wonderful stories. I always knew that this book had to be an autobiography; no one could tell Archie’s story as well as he could. Along with being such a great visual artist that man could tell a good story. He was Scottish, after all.

Now my own future is wide open. I have neglected my own tapestry weaving, along with the fabric woven projects, spinning projects, and countless knitting ideas, braiding ideas and other handwork projects that have defined my adult life. While Archie’s book progressed and stalled over the years, I could not focus on my own work. Today I will sit at my spinning wheel with some natural black Shetland that I’ve wanted to spin toward a sweater that has lived in my mind for too many years.

There are three sweaters taking hold of my imagination, and memory. Two are about 10 years old and are neglected “works in progress.” I began both of them with the idea of celebrating my knitting jubilee. Now I’ve been knitting for another 10 years since then–60 years. It’s time to make those celebratory sweaters. They were featured here in my blog almost 10 years ago.

This is Alice Starmore’s Tudor Rose design. In my own project, I am just above the armholes.

This next sweater is the one that is calling to me to finish first. It’s based on a design by Ruth Sorensen, but I no longer know who might have tweaked the version I was knitting…maybe Ruth herself. It’s been 10 years, and the pattern is now gone from my Ravelry library and gone from my computer files. I’m a bit stumped at how that happened. The pattern is no longer available, so I can’t just buy it again. It’s a dilemma.

I bought Danish yarn called “Kauni Effekt” to use for this design. The brilliance of getting these amazing colors together is buying handpainted yarn and then using it as yarn A and yarn B. I just needed to make sure that each skein started in a different part of the color sequence. No need to change colors every two rows, as in a standard Fair Isle design. The yarn does all the work, and I just knit. I sure hope I can recover the pattern somewhere in my files. There is a slim chance that I printed it, but it is not with the sweater materials. I will have to excavate my knitting notebooks, and that is no small feat.

The third sweater is a new pattern from Sunday Knits called Tia Teva. I really splurged and bought the yarn for it as well. Go me! My sweater will be a medium and light grey/blue.

This is SO totally clever! Don’t you agree? Stripes that undulate to allow for stranded work insertions. Carol Sunday is so creative! I hope I can finish the other sweaters before I start this one.

Oddly, that brings me back to Archie. He had so many ideas in his head at all times, yet he never worked on multiple tapestries at once. He might be drawing sketches for several ideas he wanted to pursue, but he didn’t warp up a new tapestry until the current one had been cut off the loom. I need to do that. I really do. Thinking about that reminded me of a question someone once asked him after a presentation he’d given. The person asked what was the most difficult tapestry he had ever woven. He replied, “It’s always the one on the loom right now.”

I’m excited for this book to become a reality–at long last. I’m also excited to now have time for my own work, with Archie’s wise words scrolling through my head after years of reading and re-reading them, arranging them and rearranging them into chapters. I cannot count how many times I’ve read the manuscript, but his words have continued to remain as fresh as the first time I transcribed them. Now I am free to implement his wisdom into my own work.

Still Playing with Paper

July 20, 2021 | 2 Comments

There is more paper yarn to choose from on Habu Textile’s site. I wanted to see what an indigo dyed paper yarn might inspire. With all the colors on the site, Takako Ueki, the owner, warns that the colors I might choose may not actually look like they do on my monitor. That’s a worry, but unavoidable for online purchases.

Another paper yarn on the site is called “Shigoki” (n-14 Shigoki paper) which comes in some interesting colors including a pale blue called ‘water.’ It is also 100% linen paper, and the put up is 1.7 oz, and the yardage is 285 yards. That seems too heavy for what I hope to do with it. It does not look any heavier in the photo from the website, but I have to trust the yardage.

In the long run I ordered two skeins of n-73 indigo linen paper. The color is “mizu.” I wonder what that means in Japanese. It is dyed with natural indigo, and the put-up is 476 yards for 1.7 oz skein. That’s twice as fine as the n-14, and the color is closer to the blue I envision…at least on my monitor! (Ha! I just googled ‘mizu,’ and it means ‘water.’)

I have to wonder why Shosenshi (n-60), which is 100% linen paper with the same yardage per ounce as Indigo Linen Paper (n-73), is less than half the price. Could it be the dyeing process? Shosenshi is $29.50 per 1.7 oz skein, and Indigo Linen Paper is $67.00 per 1.7 oz skein. My placemats will be very dear, indeed! I justified this by noting that my current blue linen placemats were made in the mid 1990s and still look new. I hope I get as many decades out of this set of placemats!

After quite a bit of thought, which mostly occurred in the wee hours when I can’t sleep, I am going to make the warp out of cottolin again, sett at 24 epi, just like my paper towels. I love the hand on those towels and how well they come out of both a machine wash and machine dry. They will be easy care. This time I will mix the natural colored cottolin with a fine white linen to give some energy to the warp color. The weft will be the paper. I want to make six placemats. If I have more diners at the table I will add in my aging blue linen placemats. I like the idea of a coordinated table more than a perfect match of place settings anyway.

Here are the materials I’ve gathered for this project. The blue is not as pale as it looks here–must be that dark blue background, but I couldn’t resist using an old sashiko embroidered runner that I made almost as long ago as my blue placemats. I have twisted a bit of the white and natural warp yarns together to give a sense of how the colors will blend in the warp.

And here is the draft. I did a bit of searching for a Greek ‘meander’ pattern, without much luck. And I tried designing my own, but found I needed more than 8 shafts, and I had uncomfortably long floats. When I get this excited to begin a project I am not one for sticking with the design process. I want a solution right now! In the long run, I’ve found something in Strickler (#365). The Greek key is on an angle because the structure is a twill. The pattern requires 16 treadles, which is not a problem since I’ll be using the Baby Wolf combby to weave. If I could have designed a Greek meander pattern that didn’t have such long floats, I would have been willing to put this project on my 16S AVL. But to find an 8S pattern with short floats is the better choice.

Here is my draft:

If you are tempted by this pattern and don’t have 16 treadles or a desire to figure out a skeleton tie-up, take a look at #367 which is quite similar and only requires 8 treadles.

I don’t know when I’ll make the warp. I am tentatively planning a week or two away at the beginning of next week. This week I am supposed to be putting final edits into a book I volunteered to produce years ago. It’s been a long project that is finally reaching its end. I need to discuss that in another post. Yet I’d love to have a new paper yarn project on the loom before I leave, waiting for me to begin weaving when I return. Wouldn’t that be nice?