Sherri Woodard Coffey

We get very upset by our modern graffiti, but it hit me one day that it’s been around forever. Think cave men, travelers long ago in a foreign land, etc. The illustrations below are from Wikipedia.

Ancient Pompeii graffito caricature of a politician.

The satirical Alexamenos graffito is believed to be the earliest known representation of Jesus.

In El Morro National Monument, there are over 2000 signatures. Here is a quote:

Paso por aqui . . .A reliable waterhole hidden at the base of a sandstone bluff made El Morro (the headland) a popular campsite. Ancestral Puebloans and Spanish and American travelers carved over 2,000 signatures, dates, messages, and petroglyphs for hundreds of years. We invite you to make El Morro a stopping point during your travels.

There are more pictures here. I remember the second time that I traveled to New Mexico and we went to some of the places that are slightly off the beaten path, I was so excited to see both the petroglyphs near Albuquerque and the signatures on the sides of the boulders in El Morro. To think of the people who wrote on these walls and the fact that their writings and drawings are still visible today, is astounding.

Take a look at these huipil purses from Handeye Blog. Aren’t they wonderful? Maybe something to do with your various scraps of handwoven fabric… On these, I love the strings. Here’s a quote about the folks responsible for these beauties.

Their latest Sololá collection celebrates the colorful artistry of Guatemalan weaving and the talents of local artisans with the creation of hand-worked fashion accessories that bridge two worlds.

I have always loved molas from the first time I saw a one. Check them out here at the Textile Museum of Canada. 

I’m trying out the new camera, hoping I can learn all its bells and whistles as I go on a need-to-know basis. Below is the vase picture taken with the old point and shoot camera, which I wrote about earlier. Below is the picture taken with the new Nikon dSLR camera. I should have looked at the original photo and tried to recreate the exact picture by filling the frame, but I was so thrilled with actually seeing all of the colors, I went straight to the computer!

This is what Amy said:

I have just finished one of the 2 little cell phone bags I am making for my daughter and my hairdresser to donate to their Breast Cancer 3 day walk auctions. There are a lot of hours put into this one but I do love the Mirrix. Part of why I like it is because I can carry it from room to room or elsewhere. I have a hard time sitting in one room for long hours. I need a change of scenery quite often.

Reading about how Amy likes a change of scenery makes me think of the new contest that Mirrix is having. Read about it below from their Facebook page.

Mirrix Tapestry and Bead Looms Claudia’s Birthday Month Contest! Ends August 30th, 2010. “My Mirrix’s Day Out. A Contest.” One of the great things about the Mirrix family of looms is their portability. Even our biggest looms can be picked up and thrown in the back of the station wagon.

Mirrix Tapestry and Bead Looms The smaller looms were designed to be so portable that no one would think twice about taking their Mirrix to the beach or a soccer game or that workshop across the country. We want to know where you’ve taken YOUR Mirrix.

Mirrix Tapestry and Bead Looms Take a picture of your Mirrix somewhere fun and exciting (on top of a mountain, on a sailboat, at the top of a famous landmark, at work… you get the picture) and email us that picture with a short description of the location. We will choose one winner and put all our contestants pictures in an online gallery.

Mirrix Tapestry and Bead Looms The winner will receive:-Everything to make a beautiful bead cuff bracelet-Ten small but beautiful skeins of Claudia’s own and-washed, hand-dyed, hand-spun tapestry yarn. -Two inspiring books: “The Sea” and “Myths and Folktales” (Check out our store for more information on these fantastic books.)-15% off your next order of $100 or more (you will receive a special code)

The Cube

You may remember my attempts at weaving a box. I am embarrassed to show this, but it’s finished. I promised warts and all! It’s very lopsided. Below are some while-in-progress pictures in which I tried out various line techniques.

What to do differently:

1. Have a template of the square
2. Know in advance how the edges will be stitched together

Possibilities

1. Weave in silk or mercerized cotton
2. Line box
3. Plan for a lid and fastener

I have missed my loom. Much time has been spent on other things lately. One of those “things” involved preparing ikat. As I have said before, with ikat the prep goes into the front end and the weaving goes faster than with tapestry. Then, after tying the warp to the front, I realized that there’s really not much warp left of that 33 yard warp that I had put on previously. I took one of the extra warp threads that was hanging past the width of the current piece and unwound it from the warp beam. Hmmm…only 4 yards. Guess this will be last piece until I re-warp! I also made a few adjustments to the design, just in case I made another miscalculation. I thought I was very carefully entering in the amount of warp used, but evidently that didn’t happen every single time I completed a project. As the say, live and learn. I may put on a warp piece by piece until I decide for sure what I want to do about warping. I have been using a 4-ply smooth wool warp that I like, but it limits me to 4 epi. I have been considering using a 9-ply Swedish cotton warp set a little closer, but that may mean a change of weft. Always decisions!

In the picture above you can see what’s on the loom. I wanted these ikat ovals to have contrast, but not too much. As I weave, I can see how this is a possible problem. It’s hard to keep up with where the design is. I overdyed the red sections again because there was more contrast than I wanted. Will that now be a problem in weaving? Stay tuned.

At Convergence I took an all day workshop presented by Gregory Case. This is going to seem so dumb, but I found out on my little point and shoot camera that there is a place to change the exposure! Duh! So, while I plan to get a new and better camera soon, I am playing with exposure. That little graph-looking thing—well, you can look at that and know whether to adjust the exposure or not. A couple of other things about taking pictures are the issues with color and color calibration of the monitor. More on that later, but we all know how important color is to us!

It’s been waaay too long, but today I wove! Felt so good!

Here are some pictures of wild mustang grapes. For the really curious, click on the link below the picture; it will take you to the Wikepedia page.

Mustang Grapes-Vitis mustangensis

Monday’s list:

1. Tie on warp for ikat piece
2. Prepare tube and cover for piece that’s going to a show
3. Deliver above and another piece to show
4. Warp Mirrix. I’ve decided to do the face and forget about more text and the warp that remains. Time to move on.

Whoops! I thought the warp that is visible on the back beam looked a little thin, so I took one of the threads and measured it. Only 4 yards left! Obviously, someone made a mistake in keeping track of the warp used out of the previous 33 yards. Who could that person be? Hmm… Guess I will have to warp after the current project. I’m debating whether to switch to cotton or stick with the wool. What to do, what to do.

Tuesday’s list:

1. Weave on the ikat
2. Warp Mirrix. I’ve decided to do the face and forget about more text and the warp that remains. Time to move on.
3. Make skeins. I need to test the Crazy Monkey and see how long it takes to make a 1/2 pound skein. I am supposed to dye some yarn for a friend, but don’t know how much to tell her it will cost, since I don’t know how long the skein-winding will take. Plus, for some experimental dyeing that I want to do, I will need LOTS of small skeins—about 112. I’m basing everything on groups of seven, since each skein will be dyed in seven shades of the same color. I will dye each shade another color to experiment with color blends. Think I will have to make a table to keep everything straight in my head.

Of course, there are all the usual things that normal life brings. It was 106 degrees Monday At 8PM it was still 102 and will continue like this for the entire week. Guess I will need to water the garden—what’s left of it!

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I’ve been thinking about doing some simple gradation weavings, branching out into colors that I don’t normally think of doing. When we were in the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum gift shop, my mother bought me this vase. I love the colors and the unusual shape, although the photograph doesn’t do it justice. Maybe this should also become a new weaving. This is absolutely stunning when the light shines more on the interior. The top section is more of a purple-y burgundy than it looks like here. I could be done in gradations from this direction also. Tweaking to be done….

The following is the list for today:

1. Tie on warp for ikat piece
2. Prepare tube and cover for piece that’s going to a show
3. Deliver above and another piece to show
4. Warp Mirrix. I’ve decided to do the face and forget about more text and the warp that remains. Time to move on.

Would also like to shop for new camera, but that’s probably not going to happen. The show is for the Texas Arts Coalition Members show, for which two pieces passed jury muster, shown below. Opening reception is Friday. Nice to  have something, local so I can actually go! I didn’t realize they were both so purple until I got them together.

The weekend has been spent cooking wild mustang grapes, straining for the juice, and re-dyeing the red ikat yarns. I hope to have a before and after photo soon.

Website: http://sherriwoodardcoffey.com
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PO Box 123305, Fort Worth, TX 76121, USA

Fiber Trail

In the July 30, 2010 of USA Today, there is an article about the NM Fiber Trail. In the print edition there is a nice color picture of the gallery at Weaving Southwest. Inside is shown a picture of WSW outdoor dye studio, with skeins of yarn hanging. To bad that one is not in color also—their colors are yummy!

Below is a quote from the article, where Teresa Loveless is compared to Lucy in the famous grape-stomping scene. Now for me, I’m not sure grape stomping and dyeing compare, but who am I to say what it appears to others?

A tough economy may have crimped sales of the contemporary, high-end tapestries at Taos’ Weavings Southwest, but not of its luxuriously supple, candy-colored yarns.

“When things go bad, more people turn to knitting and weaving — it’s a comfort thing,” says owner Theresa Loveless, 27, whose 84-year-old grandmother, Rachel Brown, started the gallery a quarter-century ago. At the family’s outdoor dye studio in nearby Arroyo Seco, visitors are welcome to watch as Loveless, looking like a radiant Lucy Ricardo in that famous TV grape-stomping episode, swishes hanks of wool in wood-fired pots and drapes them to dry in the hot New Mexico sun.

For other pictures of the Weaving Southwest dyers doing their magic outside, go here.

Neurodiversity

Interestingly, I read Rebecca Mezoff’s blog about her quest for peanut butter and her seemingly puzzling inability to see things when they are right in front of her (like the jar of peanut butter). Now this happens to me all the time, so I guess I’ve adjusted. However, this whole problem made me think of a public radio program that I had heard just the previous day. This is a locally produced program called Think. It’s two hours every day, and on this day, the topic was neurodiversity. As a believer in diversity, this struck me as an idea that I had not thought of before. Thomas Armstrong is the author of the book called Neurodiversity:  Discovering the Extraordinary Gifts of Autism, ADHD, Dyslexia, and Other Brain Differences.  The premise of the book is about how many people with what we might consider a disability have other abilities and ways of thinking that might be considered more important in the right situation. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could all find our particular niche no matter what our “disability” or neurodiversity?

Don’t you love places with a sense of humor? They don’t take themselves too seriously? On our last day in Albuquerque, we all ate breakfast at the Range Cafe. What’s the first thing you think of when you hear the words range and cafe together? I thought of cowboys, Home on the Range (the song), etc. You know, down home, basic cooking from the chuck wagon. Well, take a close look at this picture. Notice the ranges? And that blue sky above the ranges? A mural. Great food, too. Along with the usual choices of toast, biscuits, etc. they offer muffins. I chose the green chile corn muffin—not too shabby, not sweet. I can’t stand sweet cornbread—cornbread so sweet it might as well be dessert—not for me.

Anybody want to share a good place to have breakfast? We could make a list of places all over the US for when we travel.

I tried to limit my shopping at Convergence, but still came away with some irresistible items. But before going on, take a gander at the beautiful booth that Weaving Southwest set up. A picture cannot do justice to the wonderful hand-dyed yarns! Yummy, yummy!Here’s Teresa and Rachel Brown. Rachel is the founder of Weaving Southwest. Teresa Loveless is the current owner and the granddaughter of Rachel. Doesn’t Teresa look like she’s having fun with the Rio Grande spinning wheel?I had contacted Susan at Yarn Barn about buying some heddles for my Mirrix. She graciously stuck them in her purse for the trip to Albuquerque, and now I have not-homemade heddles for when I warp next.

From John Marshall I bought some Instant indigo . Since I likely won’t be using it soon, John recommends keeping it in the freezer. He is such a nice man and very generous with his knowledge and expertise.

I have previously bought some paper yarn from Habu without any idea of what to do with it. Below is a “paper” yarn from 100% linen. I have the gold and red.After looking at the yarns again and seeing others that appealed, I have decided that I will make an unplanned textured tapestry piece on the Mirrix. The picture of the yarn below comes from Habu Textiles. On the label it says: Vegetable root sizing silk. Below is the quote from the Habu website about this yarn.

Very plain, but with a beautiful sheen. This yarn dyes very well and works perfectly as a warp yarn. It is quite springy, so suited for a sculptural knitted pieces or even basketry.

“paper” yarn. A small pieces of linen paper is sandwiched between the nylon core.

    
If these yarns work out, I may get some that I can dye in small sample sizes. However, there will be no time to warp the Mirrix for a few days, plus I have one more Text weaving to try before cutting the current warp off. After being gone for many days, the coming week is full. One of the items on my list is to pick wild mustang grapes. It’s jelly time!

Didn’t you just love it when the new school year started? That fresh, never-been-used box of colors? Those new colors were wonderful!

I think my sense of color came from my mother. I can remember her pointing out colors along the country roads as we drove to my grandparents’ house. I can remember casual conversations of what “goes together” from an early age. Of course, those go-together colors have changed over the years and have expanded to include combinations that probably weren’t acceptable then.

This picture from the newsletter by Melissa Anne really appealed to me. I love the colors together. And, need I say it? Do you see the purple? I usually like bright colors, but these subdued colors here charmed me. Take a look at her other photographic work here and on Facebook.

Look at the colors in the shells from a slideshow of seashells from NY Times. This picture reminds me that I have been intending to weave some more color gradation pieces. Maybe the time has come.

Below is a quote from the Times slideshow page.

“The Book of Shells” by M. G. Harasewych and Fabio Moretzsohn covers a wide range of shells, a shell being the external skeleton of the creature that lives within it. Each shell, whether brightly striped or bland and pale, shines in its own way. Begin the slide show for examples of shells described in the book.

I can see doing something with the color, shape, and pattern on these shells. Maybe something utilizing ikat?

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PO Box 123305, Fort Worth, TX 76121, USA