Sherri Woodard Coffey

I was reading Alyson Stanfield’s Art Biz Blog about her birthday and the Year of the Rabbit. That made me curious about my year. I found information here. Of course, as with all zodiac personality characteristics, and this one is no exception, some are on target but many are not. Darn! I was really hoping for a definitive personality analysis!

Year Of The Monkey—that’s me!

Sunshine again today, after rain last night, (and the coldest temperatures in 15 years last week, along with rolling electrical blackouts) makes me feel more energetic. I’m off to tackle threading the heddles and will try to think of this process as one that painters have to go through—prepping the canvas before the “good stuff” can happen. Of course, I wouldn’t be doing this at all if I hadn’t yanked out all of that old warp, but at least I can listen to a audio book as I thread heddles—no counting of revolutions involved with this task. And I’m not going to think about the predicted bad weather (AGAIN!) that’s scheduled for Wednesday. Pollyanna, that’s my middle name this week.

You can find info here. I’m using this to take my mind off the weather. But, as I write this, I am hearing that the temperature is not supposed to get as low as projected. Now they’re saying 14 instead of 10 degrees tonight. Heat wave! However, they are still saying that temperatures will not be above freezing until sometime Saturday. The streets still have ice, and well, you know what happens when temps don’t rise. There was actually a convoy of snowplows driving into the area this afternoon! Plows have not been used here for 15 years.

Unfortunately, the weather has caused the cancellation of the reception for the opening of the Materials: Hard & Soft scheduled for Friday night. Darn! I was looking forward to that! Our schools have been closed for three days now. Hard to believe.

I’ve been plugging away at the warp. It takes me 15 minutes to do each 2-inch section of 30 yards. You can do the math. So, I still do a bit, then take a break. More Thursday. Perhaps even done Thursday. I’m doing the full 60-inch width, even though I seldom weave anything that wide.

Just as my sniffly, sneezy, allergy-self was about to drift off to sleep last night, it hit me. I had pulled all of the old warp off the loom! You know what that means…no tying on of the new warp to the old warp. This will be a totally clean start. Many opportunities to make threading mistakes, awkward positions while getting that warp through the heddles and reed. Instead of the one day to get that warp on, who knows? I love this Cranbrook, but I’ve never found a really good, easy way to get up close and personal with this loom. The beater assembly is really heavy, the breast beam requires serious undoing, but I guess I’m going to grit my teeth and do it!

…cut off the loom and placed on the floor so that I could take a picture—with all its fuzz, hanging warp and weft threads, and miscellaneous trash. It is approximately 12 inches shorter than planned, but such is life and the length of a warp.

I cut off the swirly piece yesterday. I think I like it, although the bottom sections with the blues to purples don’t show up very well in the light where I put it down. I plan to put it in another room and take a picture later day. This is also the day to clean up the studio, all the fuzz, bits of yarn, re-ball the yarns and store them in some organized (???) fashion. Then I have the pleasure of warping the loom. Before I can do that, though, I have to put the new counter on the AVL wheel. After all, that is the whole reason for using the wheel for me. My mind goes walkabout when winding on 30 yards or more of yarn, and I lose count.

I’ve also got to decide what to weave next. I’ve been thinking about a tail to tail or nose to nose Señor Fish, or something similar to Sine Wave, except in reds. I like the optical illusion of curves that can be created with straight lines. But I’d also like to experiment with weaving two narrow pieces side by side at the same time. Could my poor brain handle that?

I’ve been trying to figure out why I like this. After all, it does have pink in it—not exactly one of my favorite colors—but I do think it’s the combination of colors which appeals to me.Esteban Vicente, Kalani, Hawaii, 1969  You can see more of Esteban Vicente’s work here on Artnet and read about him on Wikipedia.

And speaking of pink: What’s up with the Pantone color of the year? Honeysuckle? I have never considered honeysuckle to be pink, but obviously was wrong.

I am cutting up the cartoon in six-inch sections, then marking my warp, and weaving that section before repeating. I learned early on that I must number each section, or I will not be able to recognize where I am in the process. This cutting up makes storing easier also. When the piece is finished, everything from the original drawing, the to scale drawing, samples of yarn used, dye formulas, and the cut up cartoon, go into a plastic sheet protector. I also keep a small tablet by the loom to record anything that I do while weaving, such as the knots at the beginning and end of the piece, or a hem—whatever needs to be remembered, including the beginning and end dates. In the event that memory needs to be refreshed down the line, well, you get the picture.

I always like hearing how everyone works. How do you keep up with things?

I posted this small picture below of my progress way back when. Above is today’s progress. I got as much of the weaving as I could by rolling back the weaving towards the warp beam. The beginning blues are not visible in this picture. Because of the nature of the design, I started out with seven butterflies, but now only have four going, so the weaving is getting faster. I have also reviewed how much of the cartoon I have left to weave, and it’s possible that I can actually complete this as designed. Not for sure because I don’t know how close the knots can get to the heddles before there is not shed. Pick up? If you compare with the computer coloring on the design, you can see that the colors in the actual piece are more subtle.

This line shows about where I am in the weaving now, the whole thing done with hatching. The whole process is going faster the more I weave, probably because some of the colors are dropping out, so there’s not so many butterflies. The colors are not exact, of course, because they are computer generated. I took the drawing of the design, scanned it, and colored it in Photoshop. And I still don’t know if the finished piece will be anywhere near the planned size, since I can see the end-of-warp knots. They are still on the back beam, though, so fingers are crossed! I hope so, because I really like the way it looks, and I’m really enjoying the weaving of this piece.

Below is the drawing with the various colors labeled for each section. Everything frequently changes as one weaves; the colors are the same, but sometimes the lines of the swirls change a little. This is going from blues to yellows and it reminds me of an awakening. That, in fact, may be the title.

I saw the pictures below and found them interesting. The first came from Daily Art Muse on Facebook.

The second is on the Moon Rain website. I think it is absolutely beautiful!