Sherri Woodard Coffey

We’ve had a strange object in the sky for several days now, and it’s been wonderful! For a few days the sun was accompanied by bitterly cold temperatures (a big surprise when opened the door to go outside), but for the last two days temperatures have been closer to normal—low 60s. Funny, but there’s still snow on the ground from last week’s record-breaking snowfall. Today, though, is a different story entirely. Cloudy, windy, dreary and cold. Still, we persevered and constructed one bed for the garden I plan to have this year. Tomatoes and corn, here I come!Thursday was filled with doing some research on Mayan ruins in Belize and the ruins at Tikal, weaving, cooking two dinners in two Crockpots (yay for slow cookers!), a little yard work, and shopping for muslin at Joann’s. The muslin will be used for covers for both the tubes and the outside of the rolled pieces. I think 10 yards of 90” muslin should last a little while, especially since I can only complete about one piece per month.

Monday night I presented the program to the Dallas guild on natural dyeing. The skeins above are from a dye workshop many years ago with Michele Wipplinger of Earthues dyes . Each small skein is actually two; we dyed both a gray and a white skein for each color. Don’t they look gorgeous! Each skein is tagged with its formula for reproduction of that color. I do the same thing now, except with a notebook and/or extensive notes. Every thing I weave is drawn on graph paper, and as I weave, I write notes on the sheet. That way, if something doesn’t work, I can assess the reason. If it does work, I have a way of duplicating if I want. Below is an example of one of my workshops.

Once I bought this little inexpensive radio/iPod player, I finally fell in love with my iPod. It has a remote control so that the volume can be adjusted, and it can be turned off or on while sitting at my loom. I tried making CDs from my audio books, but that takes FOREVER! The little iPod syncs in seconds, much faster than it takes to download the books from audible.com in the first place. This little device, which is made by Atlantis, also has slots for USB and SD cards. I have not used those features, but theoretically, a book could be loaded onto a flash drive and plugged into the player. I bought it at Sam’s Club in the store. I don’t think it’s listed online.

We finally have sunshine today! This may continue for several days (Here’s a toast to THAT!). I’ve been trying to look back and I think we’ve only had a couple of days of sunshine in about three weeks. It’s still really cold, but with sunshine it’s more bearable.

View yesterday, February 11, 2010

View today, February 12, 2010—After 12 inches of snow, a record in our part of the world. The picture on the right is zoomed in. Notice the tree branches are ON the chairs.

Below is where I had to park after my driving adventure yesterday. The one on the right is a close-up. Those branches are usually 6 feet off the ground. I worry that they will crash to the ground on top of my car, but I can move it, and if I could move, where would I go? My poor car is not used to this kind of treatment!

David Wharton, my photographer, called and said he had made it to his studio, so I went in earlier than planned. It was exhilarating to not only have these pieces finished, but to have their pictures ready!

As I left, the snow was coming down harder, so I made only one other stop, and headed home. The streets in my little neighborhood had not been traveled, so the going was tough. In front of my house the street is fairly flat, but then starts a hill going down. My driveway is close to the bottom of that hill. I misjudged everything (remember, this is Texas; we’re not used to driving on snow), and couldn’t slow down enough for the turn into the driveway. So, I turned the corner and couldn’t get up the next hill. I backed down, but was afraid that I’d end up in a ditch. While in the process of calling a tow truck, a kind lady stopped and guided me in backing up so that I could make a wide circle around a couple of blocks, then park in front of my house. This kind person used to drive a truck and was very helpful.

This snow-driving kind of put a damper on my exhilaration, but it’s still nice to have all that work over with and the pictures made.

Now for another hard part—thinking of titles. But at least that is something that sits in the mind while sitting at the loom.

The weather forecasters got it right. It happened. Snow. Around 3 am I looked outside and thought everything looked white. It was snowing as I took these pictures this morning, but the small flakes are not visible in the pictures. As you can see, it’s only a couple of inches of white fluff.

 Guess I’ll be dusting off my firewood today. Couldn’t resist this picture of the metal jackrabbit that sits outside. He always looks so alert.The steaming, pressing, hemming, and pressing again is finished. The pieces are rolled up and ready to go to the photographer—that is if anyone gets out today. Two pieces are rolled around one tube. Covers come later. This finishing stuff is hard work! I was exhausted last night.

I have experimented with every recommended finishing technique around and still don’t have one that I’m entirely happy with. I decided, that since the pieces that I’m working on now are small and will never be used as rugs, that I would hem them. Don’t like it! Just don’t like the way they look. So, back to needle-weaving the ends back into the body of the piece for the next pieces. One part of the finishing that I am happy with is weaving the warp before either needle-weaving or hemming. That technique is in Collingwood’s book, page 498. I use 5-7 warp ends at a time—have done it with 3, but not with total success. The above is a phone picture, so usual caveat—not a great picture.

I am not going to complain about the weather. I am not going to complain about the weather. I am not going to complain about the weather. It is cold and dreary here, but so many people have it worse with feet of snow. And it’s hard for me to comprehend having to worry about roofs collapsing from snow. And digging out your car, much less driving it in all that snow. At least we saw the sun here yesterday! They say we may get some of that white stuff tomorrow, but probably not much. Keeping the fingers crossed!

Back to steaming, pressing, hemming…

 Guitar on a Table, Pablo Picasso, 1920, The Menil Collection, Houston

Several years ago I bought a downloadable program called Color Schemer. One of the things that I like about this program, is that I can import a photo, and it chooses colors from that picture. You can decide if you want 4 colors or 10 colors, and all the numbers in between. I am planning on weaving a piece in the future with blacks and browns. When I saw this Picasso at the Kimbell exhibit, I immediately noticed the colors, and wondered about including some blue in my piece. Using Color Schemer, I picked various colors from the picture.

I am still undecided about what colors will ultimately be chosen, but this program is fun! There are other programs that one can use online, but I like having this one at my disposal all the time. It also gives you the color codes for RGB, CMYK, and maybe others that I know nothing about. But I can take those codes and use them in another program to get the colors I want to play around with, like, for instance, Photoshop. By the way, I love the Snip tool that is included in the Windows Accessories. That’s how these little “snips” came to be. Thanks, Lynn, for reminding me about that tool.

After a morning of appointments and errands, we went to the Kimbell Art Museum to see their current exhibit. This is an exhibit of selected art from collectors in Texas. It was organized in order of period; going from room to room and moving forward in time. I found myself looking with more interest at the Impressionist era after reading The Swan Thieves. After reading about brush strokes and the style of the Impressionists, I was paying more attention and looking closely at brush strokes. As I strolled through the exhibit, I got out my small Moleskin notebook and made some notes about any of the paintings that drew my attention more than others.

Maurice de Vlaminck, Barges in Chatou, 1905

In person, the colors of this painting were very impressive.

I noted what detail attracted my attention, in many cases it was color. In some cases it was both color and design—my this time I was in the more modern period of Picasso, Mondrian, and others. The above is a Vlaminck painting of barges. I loved the color, not so much the actual painting. One of Monet’s Water Lilies is in the exhibit (how do they keep track of all of them?). This was a 1916 version with lots of blues, greens, violets and spots of orange. And, again, the brush strokes!

Guido Reni, Saint Joseph and the Christ Child, 1618-40

This seventeenth century Italian painting, by Guido Reni, was one of my favorites. I don’t usually gravitate toward this period of art, so my visceral reaction to this painting was a surprise to me. The look in both their faces, the lighting, the tenderness depicted—all was so apparent. Naturally, an online picture does nothing to portray the magnificence of any painting.

After completing the tour, I ended up buying the catalogue, something I rarely do. Now if I could squeeze in some design time while the inspiration iron is hot! I’m really looking forward to my workshop this month at the Kimbell.

Surprise! The rumor is that we’re actually going to get one and a half days of sunshine!

As the weather is a little chilly and wet around here, I would prefer to not do any dyeing right now. With that in mind, I have decided on the next two projects based on yarns on hand.  This is the palette for the next project. The colors are bright, in contrast to the gloomy weather around here. I’m really trying to work on my attitude and have tried to NOT mention weather for a week or so. But I have my limits! It will be similar to the picture above. The warp is tied on, spread, waiting for the knots, and the first rows of weft. There are some skeins to ball up, but basically, everything is ready to go.