These Days

Suddenly we had a cats-and-dogs rain, with no disastrous floods or tornadoes. I admit to feeling more anxious than usual, lately.  The bee yard up on Salem Ridge was soaked. The random colors of Bill Pike's bee boxes were free for the taking, so, inspired, I rushed home to weave. The supple scarf is silk and cotton, mainly, with some tencel, and cotolin. It is one of the new ones with the great spring story moving through my imagination, and hopefully through my hands

(update: Bill was just here to look at the bees and told me he paints the colors on his boxes so the bees won't drift into the wrong hive when they come back from gathering. It's their address. He paints with paint returned to Walmart by people who had the wrong color mixed.  Can people do that? I thought once it was mixed you're stuck with it)

Chinese Kites!

New in the store this week are these beautiful, hand painted silk traditional Chinese kites. I'm infatuated! There are butterflies, owls, dragonflies and swans. Each one comes in a cloth covered box with ribbon ties, and cord handles.  The kites assemble easily in a few minutes, and just as easily come undone, to go back in their boxes.  They have bamboo frames, and each of many joints is tied with string wraps and glue. They are rather sturdy.

The plastic reel winder, with orange nylon flying line, screws, nuts, and satisfying tick-tick-tick sound while winding, is an old school toy all on its own.  I can imagine my own boy once upon a time standing on the bridge with something tied to the string letting it go downstream, until he wound it back.

out of chaos

What my brain looks like, on the wall.  I look at other artists' inspiration boards and realize that most take down what they had up last, and assemble new things to look at.  I layer.  The first things were pinned here 10 years ago when we built my shop.  I want to see at a glance if I still care about the same things as I used to, and if I'm still on track.

Out of this scramble emerges some pretty orderly weaving, with organized color, and balanced designs.

Eating Bread and Honey

That would be me, like a queen in her parlor, eating bread and honey.  Mr. Pike, the beekeeper, delivered these  bottles of honey from the hives in my yard, gathered in the flowers in our fields and woods.  There's still quite a bit of honey left in the hives for the bees to use to get through the coming winter.

Scarf # 3 is drying on the line.   I'll call it Sugar Maple, for the color the maples are about to turn on the hill.  One more to make on this warp, but it will be back to the shadows with my normal nocturnal plan:  copper,  light olive green, dark orange and deep teal blue.

Agenda

Let's see.  There's my antique Swedish spool winder that came along with an antique Swedish barn loom I bought a few years ago.  Clamped to my shelf the winder fills pirns, the rolled up paper tubes,  with cotton and linen and silk yarns.  It's a small job that is very satisfying.  This is what it looks like when I fill a pirn with Habu tsumugi indigo silk to make a linen and silk scarf.  The cone of yarn sits below the winder on the counter.

Scarf # 2, linen and silk, in the classic plaid, a soft, textured scarf.  I'm always attracted to this simple design plan, and the scale of the checks.  Indigo and linen, or natural silk, in a Swedish lace weave,
called myggtjall, or mosquito, is a traditional curtain weave.

At mid-July I feel Christmas barreling towards me, and I know already that I am not ready, nor will I be ready for it. As a storekeeper I feel responsible to create holiday magic, and fulfill  desires of children and teenagers, and parents, and spouses, rich uncles and young marrieds.  "I've no idea what they would like, they're young, they're very stylish."   "What can we get for someone who has everything?"  "What is there for my husband?"

I do love to keep store,  so I'll just do what I can not to disappoint the hopes I see when the Christmas customers come in the door.  Maybe a little birch tree will be pretty  this year for Christmas.  With strands of butter paper origami box lights.  And garlands of milkweed pods. There now,  that's better.

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.

morning scarf

July. On the last bit of linen warp I was able to get this one last piece. Soft and sweet, like this morning.

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.

For the Birds

Birds are weavers too, and in raw spring I like to put out linen and silk leftover yarn for them to weave into their nests, though I doubt they know they're collaborating with me. Once when I had cut Ursula's hair I later found a finch nest blown out of the tree lined with her blond hair.

This piece is a long, long linen, silk, and cotton banner 10" X 20'. I may cut it up to sew into baby blankets, or leave it as a long spring ribbon. Unbleached linen sections in this piece are
like the transparent skeletal leaf debris after the snow has melted, interrupted erratically by bursts of warmth and color, and the surprise (but we knew it would happen) of the late spring snow fall. Spring, we learn again, and again, is the start and stop season. Waited for too long, it promises and disappoints us.

Snow Melt

The narrow warp of linen, cotton and silk is what I have been weaving while the snow has been disappearing into the ground and the creek. I've woven over 8 yards of it now. I cut this fabric I wove, and pieced it with soft new blanket wool, to make some baby blankets. The wool is washable, and sweet cocoa brown. At first I wanted to make it into a quilt , but now I have decided to leave it as a single, supple layer, and sew a binding around the edge.

January Scarf

Now it is midwinter and a flock of cardinals still dominates the feeder. Two gray squirrels came as a tag team down the hill last week. They visited the feeder, but spent more time chasing each other and leaping from branch to branch. Snow is coming again tomorrow, and then bitter cold days ahead, wonderful days to weave with the sun shining in.

This series of 5 or 6 scarves woven on the old Norwegian barn loom, is handwoven of rayon and silk chenille, cotton and linen yarn. The design is asymmetrical in muted colors.