Tag Archives: Design

Being behind, at least I was weaving, and a book

The holidays are inching closer and I’m feeling very behind. During the first stage of house renovations, I moved things out of two rooms into the back bedroom, otherwise called the guest room. The major stuff has found a new home, but there’s still some piddly things that need to be addressed. After all, I am going to have guests, and they need a place to sleep. And the washer needs to be fixed. And I can’t wash some yarns I dyed for a friend until it gets fixed plus there’s regular laundry. Yes, I’m kind of whining.

We’re having perfect weather for building a fire in the stove and weaving, so that’s what I did today. I cut the wedge/squares piece off, and I still don’t love it–picture later. But it was really important that I was weaving. Sometimes you just have to just jump in and do it. This cold weather is supposed to be gone in a day or two. Then I will go outside to continue with the other Great Sort, make more trips to Goodwill, and make my garbage men love me. But I have found three boxes that I can take to the shredder. Yippee!

Besides color, I constantly look at shapes and patterns. The shadows of tree leaves on the walk, the lines of the upholstery in the waiting room, advertising, whatever. Here’s a book with some interesting patterns in it: 100 Diagrams that Changed the World. I want this book! I don’t care what the review says about the text. I only want to look at the pictures. If I want more knowledge about one of the diagrams, well, there’s always Google. Below is a picture from the book, stick navigation chart from the Marshall islands. Love the lines in this! And Google has already come to my rescue, along with Wikipedia.

Parade magazine had an article about the book on a Sunday several weeks ago.

 

More wedges

The wedge theme continued…..

I woke up and had the idea of stacking the wedges. I cut out a wedge from the piece I wrote about earlier and traced around it in a way that I found attractive. I then scanned the drawing and colored the wedges with shades of blue in Photoshop. These aren’t the exact colors that I would use in a weaving, but the best I could come up with in that program. If I decide to actually weave this, I’ll work on the colors more. Maybe change to shades of red?

Below is the result of using the wedge motif in multiples but smaller. This would be done with weft-faced ikat. I’m kind of itching to do a little ikat.

I really love the ideas that come in moments of non-thinking. I also like the feeling of looking at things differently. I know I’ve mentioned this before, but this is my only experience with an art class–in a long ago photography class, our first assignment was windows. That was it. I looked at every window I came across. Shadows in windows, reflections in windows, cracked, broken, jagged windows, the shape of windows, flaking window sills and the wood that divides windows. That class was ages ago and I still think about it and look at windows. I’m hoping the same kind of thinking will possess my brain again–after the holidays!