Having a great time!

On the loom

Love the colors!

The colors on the loom are really exciting to me! Even though it’s just throwing a shuttle (which has the ability to be boring), the colors are fun. Here’s a picture of some of the yarns I dyed and balled up lately.

All balled up

The reddish violet one was originally a reddish magenta, which I overdyed with violet and polar red. Not only do I like the color, it turned out as expected. The yellows are dyed with Sabraset Mustard Yellow at 1.5%.

Winding needs improvement

Now, back to that throwing the shuttle thing. For whatever reason, no matter what I do differently, the two strand of yarns are not rolling off the bobbin correctly. You can see the problem below. That’s how much slack there is between one strand versus the other.

Extra weft

Then I remembered the new shuttle that I had, the one that uses quills. Tah dah! 

When I first started to weave, many centuries ago, I used quills. However, I’ve slept since then, so winding the weft onto the quill takes a bit of practice. I’m using a 1/4 inch dowel to hold the quill, and dug this driver up from a long lost box. Wonder if I can also find the charger? 

And all is working now! I have not wound a huge amount onto the quill, although the shuttle-maker (High Desert Weaving) says that it will hold over 45 yards of a bulky yarn.

Quill in shuttle

Winding weft onto the quill

So, I’m a happy weaver again. Nevertheless, I’ll have to solve the winding problem at some point. It’s funny how sometimes there is no problem, but now there’s a huge problem.

Now, what are you working on? Do tell!

Bringing work home

Path to the Sun in box

Wall Gallery in Dallas has closed, so I picked up my work a couple of weeks ago. The one above, was sinking and no longer very attractive. It was returned to the framer by the gallery owner, and I was to call with instructions about the piece.

When I mentioned to the framer that the piece was sinking, he said that he would fix that. Instead, I decided to have it completely removed. If it sank that much in just two years, what was going to happen in two years after fixing it?

The piece below is still in its acrylic sandwich, but I think I’ve figured out how to remove it. I never liked the way this one looked in this frame. So now, I’m going to have some big pieces of acrylic. Anyone know how to cut it? Might be fun to do something with it.

And speaking of cutting … I would like to learn about cutting sheet metal. There are a few ideas floating around in my head. I need to take a class, if I could find one.

Door

View of the acrylic “sandwich”

Gallery walls

Running in place

RED

Maybe I’m a bit out of control with the red right now. This was done on the small 5-inch Mirrix Lani loom.

I learned some lessons here, but I’m don’t think I will ever apply them because I didn’t really enjoy weaving this very much. You can tell by the ribs of the warp the direction this was woven. Curves are a bit wonky, as is size.

One of the most important lesson I learned from this is to not mark the warp with the design until the first element is finished. I ended up with so many marks I couldn’t tell what was what.

When I decided on doing this little piece, I was thinking maybe a color word for each color, or the same word in different fonts. Now I know that the idea of weaving words is better than the actually weaving words is–for me.

What’s going on?

Do you ever feel like you’re not getting anything done until you look back at the week? That’s my place right now.

I’m always trying to figure out where I put my reading glasses. They’re usually on my head or hanging from my shirt. I’m trying to get rid of the carpenter bees, but they keep multiplying. Whack-a-mole, anyone?

Interruption after interruption, but then I look back over my bullet journal and see how many things I got done and how many items are no longer on my to-do list. (That’s kind of useless, since more things are added to the list all the time.)

Dyeing

Here’s what I dyed last week

Red dyeing

And here’s what I’m dyeing right now.

Mustard yellow

Both of these are two of my favorite colors to dye and use. The mustard, at 1.5% is at a slightly higher percentage than my usual 1%. The red is 2%. I use Sabraset acid dyes from ProChemical.

Mustard Yellow and Deep Red

I think the next up will be a purple of some kind, and finally some black. I do still have that black and white piece to weave!

Inktense colors

And last …

Because I was going to do some design work, I got out the Inktense pencils, but then when I looked at them all, I decided a color chart might be helpful. Here you see the fruits of my labor. They still need a wet brush going-over, but that’ll come later. Maybe something like paint chips would be better? At least they’re in color groups!

 

   

Razzle Dazzle

Overdyed greens

Dyeing

One of the tasks on my list last week was to overdye the greens below. You can see the results above. I’m not thrilled, as I was hoping there would be a bigger difference in the colors. Yes, they are nice greens (and a blue), but now what? No matter, I’m overdyeing the next batch, which is very similar in color with turquoise. The blue one is the second from bottom in the picture below.

Green yarn

Another goal

… was to get this off the loom. It’s done, although it hasn’t been steamed or anything, but here it is. Makes me dizzy, so the working title for now is Razzle Dazzle.

Razzle Dazzle (horizontal)

And here it is flipped. 

Razzle Dazzle (vertical)

Warp, 36.5 inches

My next two pieces have been planned, one black and white and the other a bright stripe. I’ve increased the warp to 36.5 inches, a real pain. The back beam has 48 inches of warp beamed, but I never let loose the extra inches. So, I had two unwind three inches on each side to get the extra inches needed. It is now tied on with the header woven, ready to go. Now I need to do some dyeing of reds and 3 more skeins of black. Woo hoo! I’m excited to get started! I’ve also got a bitty project going on the Mirrix.

What’s everyone working on?

More progress

10 more inches

I’m not going to take another photo until this sucker is off the loom. Right now, I have about 8 inches to go, and 20 butterflies going. Why? Who knows!

In other news

After working on a commission, I thought I would never use the color green again, but I have excavated for the excess yarns and overdyed part of them with blue. The “new” yarns aren’t washed yet, so that picture will have to wait. Next week. I did take a sample of each color so that I can compare, and there’s the picture below also.

Green yarn

Since I’m speaking about greens, how ’bout these pictures from Borough Market of green vegetables? I can’t remember what the swirly one in the second picture is called, but I love the pattern.

Although I’ll be dyeing some black yarns next, I’m thinking about overdyeing the rest of the green yarns with turquoise. Do you think those yarns would be able to play nice in a weaving?

Looking at these greens reminds me of Pantone’s color of the year, Greenery. If you go to the Greenery page, scroll down to look at their suggested color combinations.

Asparagus

Vegetables

Then there’s the sunflowers. I took a photo of sunflowers and used Waterlogue on it, thinking that some sort of blurry “painting” might make a good weaving. Hmmm….. maybe I should try the vegetable pictures with Waterlogue too.

Sunflowers

Sunflowers 2

London

Progress

You may have guessed that I have been traveling. One of the things I did before leaving was to make a list of what I wanted to do when I got home. When I travel, even if it’s just for a long weekend, I have a hard time getting back into a routine. Frankly, I’ve been a little restless about staying home and working, so this list was extra helpful.

On my list is getting some dyeing done. So far that hasn’t worked out so well. I’ve had appointments, and well, a social life. Lunch out two times in one week? Unheard of. There’s also a coffee date already set up. What’s with this social life thing? Oh well, it’ll be over with next week.

My body clock is not back to normal, though, so I am getting some weaving done. Progress is slow. The goal for the above piece is to reach 30 inches (only 20 inches to go!). I’m hoping to get it finished soon, because another list I made is of the pieces I want to weave in the next few months.

Traveling always brings inspiration in one form or another. Mine seems to be spirals and pattern, as usual. Below are examples from the British Museum in London. I already posted a picture of spirals at the Underground station.

Pattern

Egyptian spirals in British Museum

Handweavers Studio

One should always find the local weaving shop, right? I was told by a friend that this is one of the best she’s visited anywhere, so a visit was definitely in order. My friend was right–it’s a great shop! Handweavers Studio and Gallery

A bit about the trip

My daughter, son, grandsons, and I traveled to London. One reason we did this is because my daughter said that when we took them back when they were in high school, it was a life-changing event for her.

We decided to rent an apartment in the Bloomsbury area, which turned out to be an excellent decision. We were only a couple of blocks from the Russell Square tube station, so getting around was easy. When I first started looking for a place, I was looking at how many beds there were. Then I realized that I should also look at bathrooms. Five people, one bathroom? Not an ideal situation. 

We really loved being to stay in one place and visit when we made our way back after a long day of sightseeing and walking miles. 

Back to the schedule

After over 17 hours of trains, planes, airports, and auto, I got home after 9 pm, had a bit of dinner, and headed to bed. When I woke up in the middle of the night to make my way to the bathroom, I was disoriented in my own bedroom. Weird. But all is well now, and I’m back to work. It was a great trip, and we all had a good time. The list I made ahead of time has served me well.

 

Getting inspiration

Getting inspired

I was taking a picture of the design incised in this concrete,

Concrete

when I decided I liked these toes better.

Toes

Copper table

This circle of books was actually very colorful, but shooting through the glass gave them a bluish  cast  

Circle of books

E ver eaten feng sushi?

Feng Sushi

All but the steaming

Finished

This piece is finished, a long haul for me. It’s at 6 epi, and the ends were really difficult to weave in. Plus, this is such a boring task. So boring, in fact, that I did the first end watching made-for-TV movies of Perry Mason. And while doing that finish work, I was mulling over my sett and whether I wanted to continue that, or go back to my roots of wool warp at 4 epi. No matter–there’s still lots of warp left on that back beam for now.

All that’s left is the steaming and a real photo.

While deciding on that weighty issue …

This is what I’m weaving right now, totally spontaneous, with no plan. On a whim, I decided to add the red “stripe” before starting the next bit. The multicolored part is 5 inches and the red is 1/2 inches. Below, I manipulated the image with various rotations to get an idea of how this would look as a full sized piece with both the red and without the red. I still haven’t decided. Frankly, the red bit was just a way of breaking the monotony of deciding colors and making sure things were changing up. The final piece is to be about 30 x 30 inches.

Red border    

 

 Wanna help me decide? Let me know what you think.

Maybe I should just go outside and work and let this bounce around a bit.

 

The piece from ???

Original cartoon

The original

Above is my original plan for the tornado piece. But as I mentioned, this was turning into the piece from hell. Too many incorrectly tied sections, and it was VERY long. So back to the drawing board. 

The changes

From the beginning, I changed the color blocks, reversing the yellow and red in the weaving. When I went back to my drawing, I cut off the section (in the drawing) that I had tied incorrectly and changed the size of the yellow color block. In my head, yellow at the top indicates sunshine that returns after the tornado, and red at the bottom represents the destruction from a tornado. Believe me, here in Texas we have lots of experience with that destruction!

More changes

Then I went to the drawing board with my compass and tried to figure out if the length would work, based on dynamic rectangles. I hit a wall there because I couldn’t remember how to do them at first. A little research and I’m merrily making away at dynamic rectangles, when my compass would not go wider.

Changed cartoon

Another wall

I had to actually get out my calculator and calculate square roots and see if my calculations matched up with any of my drawn measurements. They did! The actually did!

Off the loom

Saturday afternoon was spent securing the warp and preparing it for needle weaving back into the body of the piece, all while listening to old made-for-TV movies of Perry Mason. What a way to spend a Saturday afternoon!

In the meantime, I have tied the warp back on and started weaving a totally spontaneous piece, a mystery even to me.

Again and again

63 inches and counting

What’s that quote about insanity and repeating actions?

I’m insane, according to that definition, because I’ve done it AGAIN! Now whether this is really a mistake in my ikat-tying or another kind of mistake, I’m no longer sure. However, a lesson has finally been beaten into my head…I have to do a better job with the cartoon to make sure that the wrong sections aren’t tied or not tied.

Label, label, label!

I haven’t quite decided what the best process is for that yet, but it has to happen. The cartoon above is for ikat. The one below is for a tapestry. As you can see, they are black and white outlines. Should I label the ikat ones with color ID like the one below? Or should I color in the cartoon with felt tip pens?

Cartoon with color ID

I could use some ideas for a prevention technique.  Or maybe this piece on the loom really is the piece from hell, and all will be better with the next one. Whaddya think? (And did you know you can actually find many Google entries for that word?) Or should it be whatcha think?