Blog - Page 24 of 100 - Sherri Woodard Coffey

Another book-The Thread’s Course in Tapestry

After all the talk several months ago in the tapestry group about The Thread’s Course in Tapestry by Mette Lise Rössing, I decided to order it.

I like the fact that it’s spiral bound, always handy to keep the right page open. The book is in Danish and English, which takes a little getting used to, at least for me. The illustrations are all hand drawn and are very good.

Which brings me to this very fuzzy picture below. This soumak may be open, closed, or both–for some reason those terms are confusing to me. But this is what I started an ended the rug with. And have I tried a bunch of ways of doing this beginning and ending stuff. Right now, I like the way this looks. After it’s off the loom, I still do the weaving of warp ends, which leaves them pointing in the right direction for the needle-weaving part.

I like this book, although I haven’t tried very many of the techniques. Might be interesting to do a sampler, starting at the front and working my way to the end.

It’s warp time again

Here’s what I’ll be doing this week. All week. There are two pieces that need their warps taken care of. Plus, there’s a jam-packed calendar of things, some fun, some just necessary.

One of the pieces that I’m working on is one that I just thrust aside after cutting it off the loom because it had caused so many weaving problems. It was redesigned a few times mid-weave and just wasn’t what I’d intended. After a rest, I decided it wasn’t THAT bad, so it’s getting a warp fix. Then I’ll think about it again and decide if it’s ever going to make it out of the basket it sits in.

The good news is that the warp is tied on the loom again. If I could decide on a direction, I could weave.

Progress on all fronts

I feel like my week can be summed up with three photos. I weave, spend an hour or two outside in the afternoon, repeat. Not complaining. In fact, I’ve really enjoyed it, AND it gives me lots of steps on the pedometer. Our weather has been delightful, except for a lack of rain.

From a few days ago. Much more is woven now.

The weaving is now five inches away from the end. Then there’s that scary part of cutting it off the loom and hoping you end up liking it.

Yes, I know…a really boring picture of dirt.

I now have three garden beds finished. I’m planning on one more, then I’ll move to the flower beds. And maybe cut some brush. I really want to have vegetables again because they are so good grilled. Plus I’ll know where they came from.

The new grill. It was interesting to figure out a way to get this sucker out of the car. It’s heavy!

Habits are hard to change

Entirely understandable because of the events of March, 2011, I slipped into a habit that I don’t like. During that period of time, I zoned out in front of the TV every night as a way of numbing myself (also with the help of a margarita), hiding from my thoughts, who knows. That habit is no longer useful to me, and I am trying to stop it (the margaritas left after the first year). Saturday was Day 1 of no TV. During the day, that’s not a problem, but at night I would start to turn it on almost unconsciously. Amazing how habits work, isn’t it?

The weather turned on us again, even after I had declared that winter was over. Guess Winter wasn’t listening. I even bought some plants, although I know it’s too early to put them out. Cold, but there was a chance of rain, and we do need it, so I stopped complaining.

Then Sunday arrived, a beautiful day, much warmer, with sunshine. So it was definitely a day for working in the I-will-have-a-garden-this-year spot. It has become much grown over, so I’m doing the down and dirty method. It comes from an article in Mother Earth News about no-till gardening. On their Facebook page, there’s a link for another no-till garden article, but I can’t seem to get Mother to come up today. Maybe they’re having a problem, so here’s the link. My plan is to lay down a layer of newspapers, water them, and cover with mulch. When I get ready to plant, I’ll just plant seeds in the mulch. When putting in plants, just poke a hole through the newspaper layer. At least that’s the theory. With no TV and daylight savings time (grrrrr), I should have time to weave and garden. By the way, the article that I actually read is by Lee Reich. His blog is here. I also like to read A Way to Garden.

Hooey, but still fun

For my birthday last September, my daughter gave me a Groupon deal for getting a psychic read of my palm and tarot cards. We had planned to do this during the Christmas vacation, but couldn’t fit it in. When Megan sent me a frantic sound text about the Groupon expiring, I made an appointment and went.

I’m kind of superstitious about this kind of thing. Years and years ago, the children went off to camp, and I went to Spain to study Spanish. There were women on the corner asking to read our palms. I wouldn’t do it because I didn’t want someone to tell me the plane was going down and I’d never see my kids again. Silly, I know.

Back to the psychic–Yes, I did go, and it was really kind of interesting. Unfortunately, in the center of my cards is the Hermit. Not good, I was told. And that actually didn’t surprise me at all. I am perfectly happy staying home and doing what I do, but I also know that I shouldn’t, for healthy body and mind reasons. And I really have been working on this aspect.

She also told me that my spirit is tired and I need to meditate. That’s something else I’ve known, but can’t seem to do, so she suggested visualization. That might be something I can do. Or try tai chi. That’s supposed to be meditative. Another we’ll see.

Lost territory

I posted this on my Facebook page: Goals for the week that’s already half over: finish piece on loom, continue outside work (porch, compost leaves, weed garden area), do the finish work on “grasses.” This is probably more than I can do, but I’m going to try.

Fuzzy picture, but you can see where the big gap is above the colors.

That went pretty well yesterday. I wove five inches out of the 28 that I have left to do, finished with dragging all the leaves into the compost bin. Today I even got to the loom earlier ad was moving along nicely. That is until disaster struck. A warp broke! And it didn’t break in a nice, convenient area, but very close to the fell. So I took out several inches, including some that I wove yesterday. That means that today is a wash, as we say here in Texas. (Is that common everywhere?)

Now I have revised goals:

Outside–

finish cleaning off the porch, which also means hauling stuff to Salvation Army.
Weed the garden bed

Weaving–

Get 10 inches woven on the piece on the loom
Do the warp finish work on “grasses.”

We’ll see how this goes.

Books, Part I

Colour: a workshop for artists and designers

I’ve been thinking about a series based on how color interacts and appears with other colors. I’m also interested in the phenomenon called simultaneous contrast. Not having ever had any formal study of color, I usually just go with my gut, and frankly, I kind of don’t want to mess with that.

Anyway, I pulled a book on color off the bookshelf, and it’s exactly what I wanted. In fact, I may actually do the exercises! Gasp! The book is called Colour: A Workshop for Artists and Designers. The exercises utilize gouache paints to try out the different principles in the book. Then, by the time you’ve done a few exercises, you will have a pile of painted papers to use for the other exercises. This appealed to me because I have often thought about painting papers with colors that I like and then combining them to make a design, like Matisse did later in his life. You can see a bunch of those compositions here.

Maybe I’ll set up a card table in the spare room and play with paints. I’ll keep you posted.

Weaving and experimenting

This is what I’m working on right now, and I already think I’m going to have to dye some more yellow. Plus, I made a design error, at least according to my drawing. After going back and redrawing the design, I elected to continue rather than take out four inches of weaving. Wonder why!

I’ve also been experimenting on the Baby Wolf. Part of the current weaving is going to have a rectangle, and I want it to look kind of like a shadowy door. I’m embarrassed to show these pictures, but I guess I have no shame. First of all, the Wolf doesn’t get enough tension for this purpose, but it is just a trial and error, so I continued. Originally, the little square was woven by itself. Then I went back in to weave the parts on each side. The sides were then stitched together just to see how these different techniques would look next to the background. The stitching is really messy, but that’s not the point. I’m still not sure what I’ll do when I get to that section of the weaving, but I do know what I don’t like.

Filters

Tangled skeins are what I’m dealing with

In the process of prepping the skeins for dyeing, they were soaked in the washer with Synthropol. When it came time to actually do the dyeing, I turned the dial to spin, or at least I thought I did. It took me a few minutes to realize that the washer sounded all wrong. Turns out that I had moved the dial to rinse and these yarns were being agitated. And oh what a mess of tangled yarns.

Tangled mess

While balling up many tangled skeins of yarn–and tangled yarns take a really long time to ball–I suddenly realized that I could demonstrate the red and green filters.

Magenta-ish yarns

Magenta yarns with red filter

Magenta yarns with green filter

These aren’t good pictures, but the idea is shown. Above are the yarns in their natural state. On the left are shown the two filters. It’s probably obvious which is which.

Greenish-blue yarns

Below are some greenish/blue/turquoise yarns, even though they don’t look like it in this picture. Even farther down are pictures showing the same yarns with the green and red filters. In theory, these filters are supposed to “remove color”, making it easier to see value among the yarns. The instructions say that for most people, the red filter is best. However, if you are looking at reds, switching to the green filter may be better. And the reverse–looking at greens, the red filter may work best. You be the judge. I think you can also do the same thing with a black and white photo.

Greenish-blue yarns with green filter

Greenish-blue yarns with red filter

Value

Ruby Beholder

Magenta yarns

Black and white of the magenta yarns

In a rag weaving workshop, I remember the instructor saying that when you don’t like the colors in a design, it most often is because of value. And that’s the first time I heard of the Ruby Beholder.

Usually you just know if a color doesn’t go with the others, there are other ways to check the value in the colors we choose. I took a black and white photo, thinking of the gray scale, but you can use an actual gray scale finder. Still another way is to use red or green filters. The handy tools come to us mostly from the world of quilters.

Filters

Gray scale

While looking at my magenta yarns again the other day, I decided to get out the color wheel. When I pulled open the drawer that held it, I found something better, the 3-in-1 tool by Joen Wolfrom.

Color Tool

Color tool contents

This tool has separate pages for lots of colors, from yellow green to aqua green, with all of their variations on little color rectangles on each page, AND there are also two filters, both green and red. If you want to read a bit more, all of the tools can be found on Amazon here.