Doing what I love to do

 

I put linen on the old barn loom again, and wove this piece with Finnish paper yarn. Linen and paper go together. Their fibers transpire, they breathe, they change. This is slow weaving. Paper yarn threaded on a tapestry needle makes rya knots for the flowers. The lattice squares, or windows, are bound with 9 separate pirns, each passed back and forth.

Off the loom, I brushed 320 petals with water and opened each by hand, petal by petal. I checked the clock, and this blooming process took 5 hours.  But, while I'm working, I tend to forget the time.There is something about doing this that empties my brain of pesky thoughts. I forget myself a little, in an air garden of linen and crisp paper, the thunk of the beater, and the pure pleasure of making something.

Spring Backward, Wisconsin!

 

This is a dark spring, so far.  Complacency is out the window. Newly elected hard line, Tea Party Governors, in midwestern states are vandalizing the institutions we crafted to protect our  resources:  our people, our land, our water. Just two months in office, and our new Governor, Scott Walker,has threatened most of the citizens of  Wisconsin with teacher lay-offs, loss of the right to collective bargaining, loss of health care, and using our National Guard against us, in case we're unruly and protest.

But, the banks and Wallstreet have already bled this particular turnip dry.  And, they got away with  the pot of gold, too.  The working class has turned its pockets inside out already.  The poor, elderly and disabled are just not that lucrative a source of money, unless you take away their medicaid,  their home health nurses working for $9 / hr.   Our Governor has already handed out $117 million  in tax cuts to corporations and wealthy backers.    His great political miscalculation is to think that the teachers, nurses, lunch ladies, etc, will be the ones to pay for it.  Over 100,000 outraged people turned out daily over 3 weeks  in Madison, and across the state, to protest. They were non-violent protests, that felt more like a 4th of July parade, but they were deadly serious. 

Dark,  maybe, but also Spring, because we are standing up to fight back, and more than that, we are winning.  After all, we are people of the Heartland, and this new legislation is nothing if not  heartless.  When I woke up  one  morning this week to go visit our State Senator, Dan Kapanke, a supporter of the Governor's bill, at our courthouse, it was hard to think what to write on my sign. Riot!  was the only word that came to mind.  No wonder I accidentally cut  through 8 (!) warp threads when I got back to the loom.

Above images:  a soft blizzard at midnight, pink-nosed and pink-toed, possum in the birdfeeder, and weaving linen on the barn loom

Paper and Linen

This is a longer, many-flowered piece.  I made it on the barn loom.   It took so long to finish that I thought it must be at least 8 ft long as I unwrapped it from the loom's front beam.  The flowers that were wound into the apron were pressed flat as if they'd been in a flower press.  I spritzed them with water spray, and they perked right up. 

As for its extraordinary length,  it's a mere 5 feet long, and just 13 inches wide, a narrow textile.  I call it a banner, or a ribbon. The birch twig hanger was selected, trimmed and smoothed.  The woven linen tabs at the top look really nice with the twig.  Yes, details like this please me very much.

Between the loom and the south window is the best light to take photographs.  I'll post it on my Etsy shop, and then find a place to hang it here in the workshop.  I collect my push pins,  step ladder,  monofilament,  climb up and down,  adjust the light,  and don't drop the camera!

Maira Kalman illustrated  the classic Wm. Strunk, Jr. and  E.B. White,  Elements of Style, which I keep near.

Flowery May

That time of the year again, when white cherry blossoms hang conspicuously,  here and there, on the hills,  among gray trunks of a leafless woods. Here I am,  back to my old barn loom, with a spaced linen warp of unbleached and half-bleach.  I'm weaving and rya-knotting  Finnish  paper yarn, and cut silk rags into flowery pieces to hang.   I'm still looking around for my plastic painting tarp to unweave for rya knots.

barn loom

"Our tools are very much a part of who we are."
--Ray Kurzweil, futurist

When I first saw this loom, in 1980, it belonged to another weaver. At that time, I didn't know front from back on a loom, but seeing this loom, I distinctly remember an inner voice speaking up: if this loom could come into my life, I would become a weaver. And, soon, strangely, this came to pass. The weaver decided that the loom took up too much room in her studio, and she wanted a smaller, 4-harness LeClerc. She asked if I could store it, and so I brought it to Avalanche, 4 miles up the road from Brush Hollow.

It is a Norwegian style, counterbalance loom. These old hand made looms are called barn looms, either because it was built with the same construction as the log barns in this area, or because it was so large it was only set up during the summer, in an unheated outbuilding, to weave. It has 2 harnesses, two treadles. Step on one treadle, it pulls that harness down, and by pulley action lifts the other harness.

It has a massive wooden frame cut from trees here on the old Norwegian immigrant farm, where they built the house, and the barn out of logs, and then the furnishings. The back beam is an octagonal shaped single log piece. The sectional rails were added to it, but the circumference of the log is 30". I don't know how much it weighs, but it is heavy. The overhanging beater is typical of Scandinavian looms, and this one swings easily, and beats with a satisfying thunk. It also creaks and squeaks a little. I think it sounds like a wooden boat. It was made ca. 1900. There is no maker's name on it, no date. A few notes penciled on the side of the beater in a weaver's hand say 3 rugs were woven for Martha Overbak. It came with no bench, but I can see where one was bolted on and removed. I learned to weave standing at it.

Once it had a fly shuttle, a contraption that flung the shuttle through the weaving shed. That was gone, like the bench, but the beater is a foot wider on either side of the loom to acommodate that mechanism. Weaving on an antique loom I often wonder who wove on it before me, and what they wove. The weavers are most likely ghosts now. They most likely wove rugs, or toweling. Maybe blankets. This was not a loom for fancy weaving.

At first I thought I should saw off the extensions on the beater, since I had small children then, roaming around the loom, and feared the beater accidentally hitting the 2 yr old. But I didn't shorten it, and there were no accidents. The beater packs a rug beautifully. It also turns out that the loom is very good to weave linen on.

When people visit here, and see this loom, they are often reminded of a grandmother who wove on a loom just like this one, only hers was much bigger! I think they were probably much smaller then, and have an enlarged memory. To thread the loom I sit inside it, and I lean into it while I weave. It feels like a room inside this loom, a spacious room from another time, and is still a good place to be.

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.

Finish and Begin Again

The first window weave is off the loom, hemmed and ready to deliver. Now I'm moving to my next project, a spaced linen warp with rya knots made of Finnish paper yarn, Japanese paper yarn, linen, and silk ribbon. It's another in my series of All My Eggs in One Basket. I'm excited, but it is time consuming to weave it, and there is a mid June deadline. I'm happy that the loom is already warped with enough linen to do this project. The linen on the
9 silver paper pirns is to weave the tab loops to hang the finished weave.

Plan

The big barn loom is empty now and needs to be warped for a plain weave linen curtain.
It will be made of linen, with some Japanese paper yarns, and some wefts of the prairie grass native Big Bluestem. It needs a traditional ticking stripe.

Some weavers work out plans for warps on graph paper, or use a computer program. What works best for me, so I can see what I want and how to get it, is to wind the linen threads around a piece of cardboard, taped on the back. I usually leave enough room on this tag to write a few details about the weave, what it's made of, who it's intended for, the date, and how long I plan to make it.

Begin Again

This is the start of a mixed warp of unbleached linen, bleached linen, perle cotton, and silk yarns. It is 12 yards long, and I'm going to weave random stripes and mixed linen, cotton and silk wefts for the whole warp. What I hope to have is a long bolt of handwoven fabric when I'm done, that I'll wash, dry and sew into panels in a set of small blankets. I think the blankets will
be pieced with other linen yard goods, and then hand quilted.

It's not actually clear to me, yet, what this will look like. But I am so excited to find out.
The spools above have been wound so that I can wind them (30 at a time) onto the back beam of my barn loom.