Sherri Woodard Coffey

Shuttles loaded and ready to go. The yellow yarn on top made the shapes below—still have some work to do on curves! The labels are cut up Tyvek envelopes, which hold up well in the dyepot.  I label the start position and the end position of the yarns on the ikat board before removing them. It felt really good to weave again.

I am obligated to call in or look online daily to find out if I will be called to the courthouse for federal jury duty.  Kind of messes up making plans, but it beats hanging out at the courthouse!

 

 

Dilemma #1  The piece came off the loom yesterday, and I’m pretty happy with it. My ikat skills are improving, and I should probably tackle the oval/circle. I thought I knew what the next project would be, but now I’m undecided.

Even though it’s raining today, it will be a dye day—many skeins of black. I will also weigh more skeins for a blend of scarlet/magenta dye. The weather forecast calls for rain daily this week, so no matter what (or when), I’m going to get wet! Good weather for catching rainwater, though. Got all the buckets, unused clean garbage cans. Yeah!

Dilemma #2   I have been accepted into the American Craft Show in Atlanta, which presents another dilemma. The show is in March, and I don’t think I can have more than 9 pieces finished by then. Is that enough for a high-dollar show? The most inexpensive booth is $825, then you’ve got to have food, lodging, more display materials, and transportation. The whole project could be pretty expensive. But there is lots of exposure and it would only be necessary to sell one large piece to recoup costs. I’m just not sure 9 pieces is enough. Have to decide by October 21. Hmm…

Dilemma #3   Just how to spell the word dilemma has been, well, a dilemma. I was taught dilemna, but decided to look it up. Seems there is a slight controversy about the spelling, but no N is the more accepted spelling.

It’s finally over! The month of September was a very busy month. And to celebrate, I had a colonoscopy yesterday, October 1. Gotta tell you, that sleep stuff was pretty good! I asked what it was—propanol, of MJ fame. Everything was good and I don’t have to suffer through that prep for another 10 years! Came home and slept the rest of the day away. Perfect rainy weather for it. Today it’s back to normal: weave, go to grocery store, deliver Mostly to its new owner. 

I should be able to finish the piece that’s on the loom by tomorrow, except that I’m thinking of going to a guild meeting in a town about an hour away. The program sounds interesting—Japanese fabric. Anyway, after finishing the current piece, I have another ikat piece planned. This one will have an oval so that I can continue to test my math/ikat skills for enlarging designs. Then I may experiment with making two smaller pieces at the same time. The issue will be whether I’ve got the brain capacity for that…hmmm.

The Mint Museum in Charlotte, NC has a really good pre-Columbian collection. In the midst of the collection are these two items. They are from the North Coast of Chile, dated 600-800 AD. The following is a quote from the identifying card with the exhibit: The workbasket contains the tools of an accomplished weaver: yarn, thread, spindles,  and whorls, needles, and a miniature loom. It also has two cactus stalks, both with colored thread wrapped around them, and one packed with needles. The basket itself was painted with cross motifs. In the Andes, weaving was a female activity, and such workbaskets were burned with master weavers.

My daughter, grandsons and I enjoyed our visit to the museum. She and the children have been going to the family special Saturdays. The next one will be on making masks to coincide with the current exhibit below. Much of the student artwork is displayed on the first floor behind the lobby.

 

Passionate Journey: The Grice Collection of Native American Art

One of the current exhibits at the Mint. I especially wanted to see the masks, but the pottery and baskets were also excellent. Of course, I always look at the design on items with the view of perhaps incorporating a design element into my weaving in some way.

That’s what I seem to be doing right now. A million things that need doing, but not getting done. I really must cut the grass after all the rain we’ve been getting, but it’s raining again. We’ve had a wonderful thunderstorm for the last couple of hours. The lights flickered, but thankfully stayed on. Maybe it’ll be dry enough by tomorrow afternoon to get at least part of the grass cut.

Today was spent redoing my phone settings. Not the whole day of course, but it does take time. The ring on this phone has always been extremely quiet, but I thought maybe I just hadn’t figured out the right place to correct it. On the way to my final appointment for the root canal, I stopped at the ATT store. With the ambient noise in the store, no one could hear my phone ring, so off to the repair place I went. Even the repair person was shocked at the low ring, so I now have a new phone. Thank goodness I had synced it with the computer right after we got back from Philly. But I still had to get rid of all the notifications for email messages, organize the apps that I use regularly, etc.

There was another technology fiasco today. I was listening to an audio book on the iPod, hit the wrong button, and then could not figure out how to get to the spot where I was in the book. This is just total inexperience on my part. Later in the afternoon, I figured out how to fast forward a few “pages” instead of a whole chapter. What I need is a 12-year-old around here!

It’s hard to tell if this is just a bad picture or if it’s the fuzzy edges of the ikat, but whatever it is, it’s progress. You can see the woven zigzags through the warp, almost ready to be wound onto the cloth beam. The picture definitely doesn’t show the color of the green section well; it is much more intense.  I am now into the really boring part of this piece—inch after inch of solid color, a vibrant royal blue. Definitely a time for a book on CD! I’ve driven from Texas to Charlotte, NC by myself twice and listened to The Di Vinci Code on one of those trips. The book definitely made the trip go faster for me. Wonder if the new Dan Brown novel would do for this project?

We just spent several days in Philadelphia for a history and art vacation. Even though we had a rental car, after a very frustrating day of trying to get around in the city, we parked the car and rode the bus. Our hotel (Penn’s View) was perfect for this, since it was on the end of the line. In addition, the neighborhood had several very nice restaurants within walking distance, even after a walking-all-day of sightseeing. We found that everyone was very nice and helpful in our efforts to understand the bus system and trying to figure out where to get off.

We arrived in Philadelphia Monday, September 14 around 4. After settling into our hotel, we went for a walk around the neighborhood. We went to a Spanish restaurant that I’d read is supposed to be good, and it was delicious. Since it’s restaurant week here in Philly, we each chose 2 items from the appetizer list and 2 items from the main list. This place is know for its tapas, so the servings are tapas sizes. This was a great meal!

First full day in Philadelphia—went to Independence Hall, Liberty Bell, saw Dr. Phil filming (what’s up with that?), had a cheese steak (not my favorite thing,  but hey, you gotta try ‘em), and went to the Italian Market area.  I always love this kind of neighborhood. Wonderful cheese shops, etc. Stopped and had coffee here.

For dinner, we tried an Afghan restaurant close to our hotel. Amazingly, there were two Afghan restaurants within two blocks!

Second full day was spent at Valley Forge and Brandywine River Museum.

Although with road construction it was difficult, I am really glad we were able to visit the quarters where George Washington stayed while at Valley Forge. The house was very interesting as were the grounds. Amazing that ships could come up the Schuylkill River close to Valley Forge and goods transferred to barges which traveled in the creek in front of the house at Valley Forge.

Imagine 12 soldiers living in cabins like this one. Washington’s men constructed cabins like this one in squads of 12 men. These cabins not only provided shelter, but warmth with the chopping of wood and construction.

 

We arrived at the Brandywine museum just in time to join the tour by Victoria Wyeth. She is a very vivacious, entertaining, and knowledgeable presenter.  We saw Jamie Wyeth’s special exhibit called Seven Deadly Sins.  This is an exhibit of the usual sins of gluttony, lust, etc, but with seagulls instead of humans committing the various sins. I will never look at seagulls in the same way again.

I don’t think I had realized that it is N. C. Wyeth’s illustrations in the books of Treasure Island, The Boy’s King Arthur, The Last of the Mohicans, Kidnapped, and others. Ms. Wyeth mentioned being read the stories from Treasure Island and the real painting from the book is hanging on the wall across from her bed.

Third Day…an art day.

Fabric Workshop and Museum

• Tristen Lowe-Mocha Dick inflated whale covered in industrial felt with zippers and barnacles, even scars. This guy is huge! Takes up the whole 3rd floor!
• Virgil Marti-wall fixtures made from cast human bones painted with white flat paint. I know it sounds strange, but I loved these. You have to look closely before you really realize that you’re looking at finger bones, or jawbones.

Snyderman-Works Gallery

• Grethe Witrock-Braid and Tassels, paper yarn braids, wrapped groups, 57 x 28 $8800
• Adela Akers-Remembrance, horsehair, linen, paint, metal (foil from wine bottles

Philadelphia Museum of Art is an amazing museum. On the third floor tapestries completely surround the atrium.

Jun Kaneko-glazed stoneware I loved these large pieces. Exhibit of chairs

In this exhibit there were also fabrics, but the way they were displayed made taking pictures pretty impractical. The description of one of the pieces of fabric stated that the designer used the punch cards from Jacquard machines for the fabric design.

An Enduring Motif: The Pomegranate in Textiles

These aren’t great pictures, but the exhibit was about the pomegranate in textiles. These are ikat pieces.

The Last Day was a little disappointing. The plan was to take the ferry across the Delaware River to New Jersey and go to Adventure Aquarium.  We were told that the ferry leaves from Penn’s Landing on the hour and returns on the half hour. We went to the ticket booth to buy tickets, but it was closed. The ferry appeared to be on the other side of the river. When the Maritime Museum opened, I went in and asked about when ferry tickets would be available. I was told that the ferry only ran on Saturday and Sunday. No sign was posted on the ticket booth. Many folks with children came by to purchase tickets, but of course were disappointed. I looked online at the River Link website, and there is nothing posted there about running only on weekends. We elected to not drive over the bridge to the aquarium and went to the museum instead. Later we took the bus to Rittenhouse Square where an art show was going on.

We also went to Elfreth’s Alley which is the oldest residential area in the country. If you look at the website, there’s a picture of this quaint alley in snowfall.

Tomorrow it’s home again.

 

This picture came from the NPR website where you can read about this story. 

30,000 year-old linen. Amazing. Read about it here and here.

 

I love the piece with the spiral–just like it is oriented in your blog post. Nice work!

The above comment by Rebecca Mezoff made me think about spirals. I love spirals. This is the second piece that I have woven with spirals. The first one has squared spirals, so maybe isn’t technically a spiral at all. I also want to do a weft-faced ikat spiral, but my skills are lacking in the “circular” area for now. I also liked cutting out shapes and then weaving them w/o perfecting them too much. The zigzags on the piece at left took LOTS of time because I wanted each zag to be different from the other one. Required much concentration to accomplish that, because my brain wanted to be symmetrical.

All of this reminds me of certain household items.  I also seem to love small drawers. Years ago we used to go to many antique auctions because they’re cheap entertainment (if you don’t buy anthing), and usually kind of interesting.  I was always drawn to the old pieces that had drawers. One of my first splurges was an old spool cabinet from Coats and Clark. The drawers in that piece are, for all practical purposes, unusable because they are only deep enough vertically to hold a spool of thread. I also have several old pine pieces that rest on top of other pieces of furniture that have many drawers, all more useful for holding stuff than the spool cabinet. Probably everyone has something particular type of thing they love—wonder where that comes from?

I’m pretty excited that the math for the ikat seems to be working out pretty well. It’s off by a small amount, maybe 1/4 inch so far, but doable. Won’t know for sure until I’m finished.

I’m also going to try and keep records concerning warp size. For instance, on this piece, the warp width is 6.25% less than the measured ikat on the board. It would be interesting to know how percentages vary with width—or not. At least is would be a starting place for tying on a warp.

Guild Show

The Fort Worth Weavers Guild hung their biennial show on September 1, 2009. A sale will be held on September 12, beginning at noon. That evening there will be a reception during Gallery Night. We also have a raffle. Tickets will be available during the sale from 12-9 or you can contact me: sherri@sherriwoodardcoffey.com. A picture of the raffle item is below.

The pieces are hung from weaving tools. In addition, an “inspiration” board is included beside each piece. The boards explain the inspiration and/or the process for the piece.

Here is a slide show of some of the pieces in the show.

Today

On tap for today: more weaving, finishing the spiral piece I took off the loom a couple of weeks ago. I need to arrange to have a photograph made before the sale next weekend.