Long Thread, Lazy Girl

Lazy, all my life.  Even my name, Susan.  Lazy Susan.  I used to protest, but I know it fits me.  Lazy is my nature.  The adage long thread, lazy girl chastises the girl that puts too long a thread in her needle, so she won't have to rethread so often.  I  habitually try to get away with doing less.

And yet, I manage to work productively,  even happily.  Cursing when my long thread knots, and I have to rethread anyway.  Weaving and needling paper rya knots today,  dipping the Finnish paper yarn in water, watching the morning sun light filtered through the paper petals I'm weaving.  Lazily.

Rags, rags, rags, more rags

 

My romance with old and worn rag rugs goes on with an antique cotton rug that was a gift to me from my husband.  He knows me so well.  The soft colors and texture of this rug are perfect, and after years of use, and good care it has become something more than a handwoven rag rug.  It's a real textile.

My new books are finally here.  I'd been waiting with great anticipation (hunger?) to see Finnish American Rag Rugs:  Art, Tradition & Ethnic Community, by Yvonne R. Lockwood,  just published by Michigan State University Press.  It is a study about rag rug culture and the role of rag weaving in Finnish America.  It explores how this craft, rag weaving,  reinforced the culture of the immigrant Finns, who settled in Michigan's upper penninsula. There are over 200  pictures of rugs, and old Finnish rag weavers, many now deceased,  weaving at their looms. There are also pictures of Finnish hand-built looms, lakeside weaving sheds, rugs in saunas, old rugs,  and techniques used by the Finnish weavers when designing and making their rugs.  Books may be purchased here at Avalanche Looms.   Or, email me for a copy, susan@avalanchelooms.com ( $29.95 + shipping) 

Update on Mittens for Haiti:  4 pairs of mittens, knitted by Barb Monroe, have been sold to date.  Barb and I are so pleased to have been able to turn her mittens into a contribution for Haitian relief, thanks to you mitten buyers!  There is still one pair available, "Thistle" violet and fog gray mittens.  (The purchase price of $45 will be donated to Partners in Health). 

 

a good day to wash rugs

Doublebinding rug, plastic and velvet, I wove over 15 years ago, a linen check repp runner from IKEA, and a wool rug woven by my mother, take the air.
Rug washing by the river in Oulu, Finland, 2005. The striped Finnish runner has been scrubbed and hung over the rail to drip for awhile.


Rug washers on the specially designated rug washing docks in the river in Oulu, Finland, 2005.

Woman scrubbing her rug with a long handled scrub brush.


This couple were washing rugs standing down in barrels. The square bar of soap is a special rug washing soap sold in many stores.

Today I'm washing and hanging my rugs out to dry. It's finally a good, warm wind, and the rugs surely need it. I'm also thinking how I might enjoy looking back at these pictures, when February rolls around again, and the snow is deep, and the thermometer is less generous.

In 2005, my mother, Irene Johnson, and I went on a train trip through Finland, visiting her family in the towns along the way. It was a wonderful adventure for the two of us, and we soon found that in every town there was a station set up for rug washing. I took the rug washing pictures shown here in Oulu.

It was an idyllic day, and the people washing the rugs were having a nice time. My mother asked the woman why she was standing down in that barrel (my mother speaks an approximation of Finnish remembered from her childhood in N. Minnesota) and the woman answered, "Well, so I don't fall in the river!"

It was like a rug show by the water, and we were amazed. In other towns we found rug washing stations by rivers, but they were connected to the town sanitary systems, since the Finns are very eco-conscious, and are phasing out the places where people wash rugs directly in the river.

Native Big Blue

The rain last night bent over the clumps of native prairie grass, Big Bluestem. Some of us like to use the colored, segmented dried stems as wefts. It's flowering now, and the stems will continue to color into September, when we harvest it. We cut it with scissors, wrap it in bed sheets, and put it out in the sun to dry for a week. I like to use it in a plainweave linen warp on the big barn loom with traditional Scandinavian ticking stripes. With Finnish and Japanese paper yarns it has a crosscultural feeling that I like: Japanese and Finnish.

the poppy president

Jean brought me poppy heads! She's bringing more. It's poppy doll time again.
Tarja Poppi-nen, popular second term President of the Republic of Poppy-land: her platform,
equal opportunity & education for everyone, healthcare for everyone, an end to world hunger!

Feeling Good

All My Eggs is just off the loom, and floating free in the breeze! Now I'm going to have a beer!

Plastic!

When the Finland girl mentioned her grandmother's golden plastic coffee bags woven into rag rugs, I remembered my mother telling me, after she had made her first trip to Finland, "Susan, they are saving up golden plastic coffee bags to weave into their sauna rugs. I will never weave plastic in my rugs."

I thought, I might weave plastic in my rugs, and I did. I liked it. Today, I started looking for more white things to tie into my rya weave. Thinking of plastic, I found a woven plastic tarp on my packing shelf that I unwove. Now I have narrow striped pieces, very strong and easy to thread on my needle. When I threaded the first one into the weave I felt a small thrill. There are the plastic ribbons, just after the silk ribbons, the paper and the mohair. It's the mix that excites me. The idea for this was put into my head this morning from someone I don't know, far away in the north.

All My Eggs in One Basket Again

I'm constructing a new piece of spaced linen warp and rya knots. The warp is bleached 16/1 Swedish linen, and unbleached 20/2 (if I remember right, since the label has dropped off).
I'm making the knots of paper yarns from Habu, and Finnish paper yarn I brought home from Finland. I fine cut some organdy rag, and just added some knots out of white mohair. This is fun, but slow, slow.