tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-72420930560746800202024-03-05T14:00:42.686-06:00Avalanche LoomsSusan Johnson Design/weaveAvalanche Looms / Susan Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02555899151202475975noreply@blogger.comBlogger393125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7242093056074680020.post-7393538692274381752018-05-17T12:19:00.000-05:002018-06-03T13:30:51.944-05:00Making the Best<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i> Irene Johnson in her studio, White Iron Lake, Ely, Mn, ca. 1982</i><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">My mom sewed for me, and both of my sisters. In the 60's, girls weren't allowed to wear pants to school. We wore cotton dresses, with gathered skirts, button-up backs, pockets, rick-rack, and bow back ties. She liked to add crisp white collars, and cuffs, which were always snapped on, so she could wash them separately. She liked dark plaids for the start of school in September, but hounds tooth plaids, and cotton pique for spring. The process of sewing a dress was the same for as long as I can remember, and involved me, and my sisters, brought along to shop for fabric in the dimly lit local department store, where she carefully evaluated the bolts of fabric. We twirled on the tall stools at the pattern counter, while she paged through heavy pattern books.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">My little sisters were so bored and impatient, they would lie down in the store aisle, whining, " Can't we go home yet?" Once we had the happy entertainment of our cat, just retrieved from the vet, and still groggy, that we carried around in a cake pan we'd just bought at the dime store across the street.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">With patterns and fabrics selected, she used to lay out the fabrics on the carpeted floor of the living room, pinning them out and cutting carefully. She had pair of dressmakers Wiss scissors which were never, ever to cut paper! Finally the day arrived when the dress was finished. Wearing it for the first time was so exciting. Who would notice? I felt like a new, special person, sitting in the 4th grade of Miss Dankowski. Sometimes, my mom made us a set of 3 "sister" dresses for each of her three girls. Often, when she sewed a dress for me, she'd sew another little matching one out of the sewing scraps, for my Ginny doll, with pockets!</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">She sewed in her bedroom, on the old, black, Singer, with gold filigree, that was her mother's. An electric pedal modified the old treadle machine, but it was the same one that was in her own mother's bedroom at the foot of the bed, where she slept with her mother. "No, my father didn't sleep with my mother then. They already had 4 children, and didn't have any other way to be sure they wouldn't get another one." Before she was 40 years old, when my mother was just 8 years old, her mother died.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">My mother and her sister, Marion, who was 2 yrs older than she, had to learn to do a lot of housekeeping in a short time. Pa, and her two older brothers were still home, and her mother's sister came to help. But, much of the housework eventually fell to the girls. "Thank goodness for the neighbor lady who showed me how to cook," my auntie Marion told me. My mother said it was her job to start the cook stove fire, and Marion would cook.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">My mother taught herself to sew, and knit. Later, she became a weaver.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">"The neighbors used to say, 'Give those Peterson girls a piece of leather, and they'll make you a pair of shoes', " my mom told me, with a little pride. I'd look down at my own scuffed, patent leather slip ons that I had cried to get, instead of saddle shoes in the shoe store, with a new sense of wonder. How could I "make" a pair of shoes? I firmly believed my mother could have.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Our school dresses were sewn and hemmed, and worn, and ripped and repaired, and washed, starched, ironed, and hung back in our closets, by my mother. I remember calling to her, in the morning, when I was getting dressed for school, "Can I wear the blue dress with rick-rack?" My mother, who liked to sleep in, called back sleepily from her bedroom across the hall, "No, not yet. Just wear the one you wore yesterday. I just ironed the blue one." Apparently my mother liked to admire a freshly washed, ironed dress in my closet for at least a day before it went back into use.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">I remember putting on my dress, and going in to sit on the side of her bed, so she could button up the</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">back, without leaving her bed. I could tie my own dress ties behind my back, as soon as I learned to tie my shoes.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"> I learned from my mother there's no shame to sleeping in. She also showed me how not to give in to fear, whether it was the Abominable Snowman that plagued my thoughts, trying to fall asleep at night, boys who bullied me at school, or the Cuban Missile Crisis. My mother refused to be scared. She loved to make things, and sewed clothes, drapes, upholstery, tailored dresses. She treasured fabrics, and collected the best of them. She loved French Vogue patterns. She made exquisite bound button holes. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">She had married, instead of going to college, which always bothered her. "Education is like a pair of pants," she quoted something she'd read to me, "if you're wearing them you, don't notice it, but if you're not, you really miss them." She read so much. We hated to see her start to read a book. She'd disappear for hours, and would barely hear us if we asked about supper. Supper was likely to be hard boiled eggs. For the record, my mother never liked to cook.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">When I can push back fear, or offer something to someone who I see can use my help, or when I stand up for someone who can't stand up for themselves, I know I learned this from her. When I feel pleased and excited with something I've just taken off my loom, I know I'm like her. She showed me how, if I decide to, I can learn to do anything I want for myself. Also, when I'm in a hard place, the only thing to do is to make the best of it.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Mom, you're still making the best of it.</span><br />
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<br />Avalanche Looms / Susan Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02555899151202475975noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7242093056074680020.post-71993601849695899022017-09-28T16:37:00.000-05:002018-06-03T13:35:13.010-05:00come on in my kitchen<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: large;">Make do. Get by. Take what you get, and be still. Words my grandmother spoke over coffee in her kitchen in Northern Minnesota. Or, other words my sisters and I heard in the kitchen, hiding under the table while my mother and her friends coffee-klatched and smoked, in the late afternoon, before the husbands came home. Cigarette smoke mingled with the scent of ironed, white business shirts wafting in from the warm, afternoon living room, where the ironing board was not yet put away. Lulled by the sound of women's voices, telling the truth to each other, we listened and waited quietly, so they wouldn't shoo us out.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">When they stood up to go home, we sneaked out and sipped the dregs of sweetened and creamed</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">coffee left behind in some of the cups, and developed a taste for coffee in the afternoon, and women's conversation.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">I have been weaving kitchen cloths these days. "You better come on in my kitchen, cause it's going to be rainin' outdoors," the old Robert Johnson country-blues song runs around my brain. I'm weaving the Swedish drall pattern, that keeps reminding me of some past I never had, and now the little offset, ghosting white cross, floating in a plot of gray plainweave linen. I'm glad to see it back again. The elements in my weaving come and go, reappear, reacquaint, recombine. Somehow, piece by piece, a fuller picture emerges. I'm always here waiting to see what comes up.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">I have an old cast iron flat iron, actually, a set of 2 of them, that have been an essential part of my studio for years. I use them to hold fabric down when I cut a dress pattern, or to hold a scarf while I tie its fringe, or an extra hand to hold paper, until I can cut a piece of tape to wrap a package. I have heard them called "sad" irons, too. I use them for many things, and together with an old piece of soapstone (an antique bedwarmer), I have the equivalent of a small cold mangle. Cold mangling is an old Scandinavian technique of smoothing linen, heatlessly, to burnish a sheen on linen fiber, and smooth the fabric. Flax can shine. It has grown in a short season, northern clime, and gathered long days of sun into its cells, which grow long in the midnight sun. When it is harvested, retted, hackled, spun, and woven, and then cold mangled, the luminous fiber emerges. The midnight sun has been gathered and held in the long fiber, the long staple, and then in the cloth. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">My own kitchen has a life of its own. Right now it's abundant with tomatoes, and a sack of just ripe pears from Anne-Marie's tree. On the counter is a big bunch of fragrant basil that Mary Lee brought yesterday, and eggplants and butternut squash from the Amish road stand. Pots and pans, bottles of olive and sunflower oil. A cupboard full of spices, nuts, and a half-full bag of chocolate chips. Zip-loc bags, aluminum foil, baking parchment. Good knives. My food processor, and my Farberware 4-cup superfast coffee percolator!</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">For me, the kitchen has always been a place of comfort and certainty, where women hold the room, where I would often find my mother. A refuge in any storm. Making these homely kitchen cloths, with their subtle gleam, soft hand, and mysterious past, is a balance point, a centering place, peaceful, like a kitchen. </span>Avalanche Looms / Susan Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02555899151202475975noreply@blogger.com25tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7242093056074680020.post-85044300043174455302017-09-13T15:55:00.002-05:002018-06-03T13:34:46.337-05:00Milk Path<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Almost forty years ago, when we bought the farm we still live on in Avalanche, we could see there</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">had been a little cow barn, across the spring creek. A stone foundation dug into the creek bank and the silo base, and silo top, were all that was left of it. We put a wire fence around that half acre, and put in a couple of sheep and some geese. The sheep lived in the old silo top with a fancy ventilator that now sat on concrete blocks on the ground. The geese had barrels. Years and years later, the sheep were gone, into our freezer, and the pair of geese (that multiplied into a flock of 26!) lifted off one fall day, forming a low flying V along Main St, turned left at the old store, and migrated south, 2 miles down the road, where they took up residence at the Serendipity farm and golf course. Good riddance! After that momentous event, the gate hung open, and the goose lot grew up in box elders and thorny ash.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Until we decided to build a building for my weaving workshop and store, on the best building</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">site in the lot, where the old 6 cow barn had stood. One other thing that remained of that</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">endeavor was the path between the backdoor of our 160 yr old farm house, and where the</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">barn door had been. Worn by others' feet, long ago, along the creek bank, I continue to follow it every day, as I go to my shop to weave. I could call it chores. It is my work, and livelihood.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">I think of it as the milking path, and since I warped my loom in the Swedish drall pattern, Jamtlandsdrall, I couldn't get it out of my head. So the first set of drall scarfs came off, and they're all called Milk Path.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">The drall pattern is an old Scandinavian favorite, from Davison's book. It was probably used</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">for utility cloths and functional textiles, towels and blankets. It's from Northern Sweden, Jamtlands.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">When I weave it, I have a peculiar sense of deja vu. Yet, I've never woven it before, nor</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">can I remember seeing anything that looked like it in my family's house. I repeat the traditional pattern, and the pattern itself is made of repeats. Weaving is repetitious.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">I don't envy the farmers who lived in this place, and made the path between the house and the barn. We probably wouldn't have liked each other very much. They were probably devoutly Christian, I'm atheist. They were not educated beyond the 8th grade. They were very poor. The family dynamics in this small town, from stories I've heard, may well have included spouse abuse, child abuse, incest, or a host of other regrettable human behaviors. People are people.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">I don't sense enlightened living on this farm, only poverty, and survival. Still, my feet fall along their path. The farm house, though not much improved, is now warm, insulated, electrified. There's a new kitchen, computers, microwaves, flush toilets, hot water, refrigerator, washing machine, drier, electronic devices, radios, and a large, flat screen t.v. If the weather is bad, I do have to dress up in boots, and coat, mittens, scarf and hat, to hike across the creek. Sometimes I need to shovel snow drifts from the path, or we put planks on the ground to walk on during the spring thaw and mud season, but otherwise, our daily lives are probably very different.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">What I may have in common with them is that they loved and grieved, worked, were exhausted, were too cold, or too hot. They ran around, they settled down. They were probably as amazed as I am when the giant pink moon rises over the hill, the way it did last night in the valley. The Big Dipper hangs in the same place in the sky above the valley, where it always does in September, the time of year I had my first born daughter. They probably listened to the owls hooting back and forth across the valley, up in the woods. They stood on the bridge and looked down on the same winding waters of the West Fork. They collected the delicate finch nests that blow down from the white pine growing by the house, and set them on the window sills in the kitchen. They dreaded floods. They waited for winter, watching for the signs of the seasons turning. They nursed their children through bronchitis and flu, head lice, pneumonia, poison ivy, and broken bones They buried some.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">In many ways, we're walking the same path, in the same place on Earth, repeating our tasks, wondering if anything will ever change. </span><br />
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<br />Avalanche Looms / Susan Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02555899151202475975noreply@blogger.com26tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7242093056074680020.post-67799501820412113322016-11-03T13:35:00.004-05:002018-06-03T13:34:22.382-05:00above us only sky<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: large;">My mom and I are at the house at the lake where she still lives with my dad, sitting at her kitchen table after lunch. My mom is looking at the <i>Ely Echo</i>, when a story catches her attention that she starts to read aloud to me: "Man Arrested for Killing a Baby Deer in the Quetico". The Quetico-Superior is the forest and lakes between northern Minnesota and Canada, the Boundary Waters, where my parents have lived for 36 years. They have decided to stay in their house by the lake for another winter. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The Quetico was closed to visitors in the late summer, after a strong storm blew down a lot of trees, and closed portages between the lakes. The newspaper story is about a man seen out in the woods, near Tin Can Mike Lake, without a canoe or a pack. Because no one was allowed out into the woods, the sheriff was called. The man had been seen holding a live fawn deer he said he had caught to eat, but he wasn't hungry, and decided to keep as a pet. The fawn deer was never found. The man was homeless, and had been staying out in the woods through the storm. He'd covered himself in mud, against mosquitoes.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">My mother looked up from the paper. "Poor man," she said.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">"Like Uncle Mikey,"I said.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">One of my mother's older brothers, Mikey, was mentally disabled since he was a child. My mother said he had a terrible adenoid infection, and a very high fever, when he was an infant." What's an adenoid? " we always wanted to know. " It's something here," she pointed at her neck, under her ear. The family always thought that had made him slow. As an adult, Mike had lived on the edges of town, not homeless, but in a rented room, over the Town Tap, or the Jolly Roger. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">His social security check went to the owner of the bar he lived above, who took out his rent, and gave him the small amount leftover, which he'd spend on beer. He sometimes had jobs shoveling for the County. But, he couldn't read, and was often a victim of bullies, in school when he was young, and when he was older, mean spirited adults. He was shy, and quiet. He also had friends, and protectors, including the bar owner, and a woman who worked there. She paid him a little to walk her dog when she was working. She was kind to him, and looked out for him. He always talked about Patty, and the little dog.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">My mom always worried about him. We lived in Michigan, then. Mike had always lived in Minnesota, and after the old man died, he'd lived by himself. In the summer, when our family went back to Minnesota, we'd try to find him. Often, he'd disappear if he heard my mom was looking for him. But usually we found him, after my mother, my sisters and I hiked up long, dark staircases, to a corridor and rooms that smelled like dill pickles, over the Town Tap. When she found him, all of his clothes, sheets and blankets went into a wash load. We stopped at the laundromat, on the way out of town, with Mike, who came along with us, out to the lake, where my mother would put him into a hot sauna. After that, he stayed with us for a few days. We showed him our comic books, and were curious and asked him once, at the cemetery, if he could read. He said he could, a little, and then sounded out a few names on headstones.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">"Mikey had a hard time at school," my mom said now. "The boys were mean to him. Marion and I tried to stand up for him, but we couldn't always be there." </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">She never told me about Mikey in school before.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">"He was in a special education class," she said. "The girls went to the home ec. room, but the two boys went downstairs to the janitors' rooms. The janitors and the boiler man took care of them, and let them help."</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">"Sometimes I'd see Mike coming down the hallway, in a big hurry. He wouldn't even talk to me. He was in such a hurry to get down to the basement. He loved that," she said. "They were so good to him, those men."</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">"And there was a woman on our block, who was the first woman to own a boarding house in town. She was very successful. She liked Mike, and felt sorry for him when she saw how the kids teased him. She felt so bad for him that she bought him a...," she looked out the window, at the far shore of the lake, "a-- you put your knee on it, and push it along with your other foot? "</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">"A scooter?" I said. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">"No, not that."</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">"A wagon?" I said.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">"Yes. She bought him a brand new, bright yellow wagon. He never had anything brand new, all his own before that." </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">"I think she knew our mother had died, and there wasn't anyone around but us kids. Pa was working in the mines, and over his head with the work of keeping the family together. Mike loved it! He pushed that yellow wagon up and down the block all summer. He wouldn't even let anyone touch it. It made him feel so good about himself, too." </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">"You never told me about the wagon," I said.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">"No? Well, she did that. Then somebody wanted to take a picture of us kids, to send to Finland. Walfred was already gone away from home, but it was Marion and me, and Mike. They wanted us girls to sit in the wagon, and Mike to hold the handle, like he was pulling it. He had a fit. He didn't even want us to sit in it. Finally, they talked him into it. We could sit there, but just for the picture. Mike held the handle, but he said he didn't have to smile."</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">I like all the stories my mother has told me about growing up on the Iron Range in Northern Minnesota. She has told me so many stories about the people in her neighborhood, the Finnish immigrants, the miners, the women who owned boarding houses, where she worked as a teenager, after school, making miners' lunches, egg salad out of hardboiled eggs and butter. She wasn't paid, but helped out, and took food home.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">She told us stories about the people she liked, and people she didn't like. People who were deaf, or drunk, or kind to animals. Two teenage girls who lived downstairs, who came up to help when my mother was born at home, the last of four children. Her Pa, blacklisted as a Finnish communist because he joined with workers who struck the mining company because of the low $2 per day wage. Her oldest brother Walfred who rode the trains out to Oregon one summer, coming home into the kitchen, so blackened with dirt and soot, her aunt, who was cooking, didn't even recognize him. Walfred, who was an Air Force pilot in WW2, shot down and vanished in the Pacific ocean, with just a few hundred more miles to log before he could come back home. How for years they dreamed he'd survived, and was still alive, and would come back in the kitchen door. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">The lake water, outside her kitchen window, glimmers across the ceiling above us. My mom looks back down and smooths the newspaper on the table in front of her, "Man Arrested for Killing a Baby Deer in the Quetico," she reads the headline again, then starts to read the story she's already forgotten. It's been a half hour since lunch, and I'd forgotten my mom has dementia.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">____ </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">"Happy Birthday, Mom!" I call her when I'm back home, in October.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">"Oh, is it my birthday? I guess it is. Thank you!"</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">"This year is an especially good year for you."</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">"It is? Why?"</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">"You get your birthday wish this year."</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">"What's that?"</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">"You finally get to vote for Hillary for President. You never thought you'd live so long!</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">And she's going to win. She's going to be the first woman President of the United States." </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">My mom has always been political, and realized she was a feminist in the 70's. Hillary has always been her favorite. For thirty years, at least, my Mom has had Hillary fever. She's always done so much for women and children, was how she explained it. She has had a Hillary bumper sticker on the refrigerator door in her weaving workshop for many years. Though she has a hard time remembering who the president is now ( A Black Man? ), she still plans to vote.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">"OK, Mom. Don't forget to do it."</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">"I won't."</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">"I'll call and remind you!" </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">"OK! " she says, and I can hear her smile.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">"Hillary. I was right on the mark, wasn't I?"</span><br />
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<br />Avalanche Looms / Susan Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02555899151202475975noreply@blogger.com23tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7242093056074680020.post-62781313338288291582016-08-03T11:14:00.002-05:002016-08-03T11:14:48.048-05:00Lucky Duck<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Found today in the potato basket in our back hall! Not the face of Christ on a piece of toast, but I'm a secular humanist, so this will do. A duck formed by chance out of a plastic thank you bag is my idea of a small miracle. </div>
Avalanche Looms / Susan Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02555899151202475975noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7242093056074680020.post-66617726970586216482016-07-20T13:01:00.002-05:002018-06-03T13:36:24.491-05:00Blue Thread<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">When I come back to weave in my workshop at night, the familiar room feels like a different place, where something unexpected might happen. Night is always a fertile time for me to weave. One summer night, when the air was humid, cool, thick, and velvety, and the darkness was inky black, I was weaving a length of 3/4 inch tape, and about to quit. It was a few minutes after midnight, but I thought I'd weave just a few more inches before I shut off the lights, locked the door, and found my way back along the dark path, cross the creek, and back to the house. The air was still, but a cool draft came down the east valley from the ridge, through the open screen, with fireflies lighting the course of the small creek behind the workshop, a chorus of night trilling tree frogs, and a dog barking at a short distance.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I'd been hearing all of this while I was weaving my tape, but the dog barking had caught my attention.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">The bark was sporadic, not urgent. I knew whose dog it was, and her name, Maggie, and that she was an old spaniel that would sometimes decide to chase me when I rode my bike by, trying to nip my feet. Sometimes she and the other dog that live at that house came up around my shop, chasing rabbits together, in the morning, but she never bothered me then. She was Daryl's dog. Daryl had a farm welding shop a half mile away, in a shed behind his house, across the West Fork. He welded equipment for farmers at night, after his day job. He wasn't married, and lived alone. He was still at work. The lights from inside his shed glowed brightly through the wide open doors, lighting the willow tree tops across the river. I didn't have to look to see that.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">This dog's barking was so familiar, a summer sound I remembered listening to when I was a little girl, on summer nights, trying to fall asleep, after long, dirty, barefoot summer vacation days, hearing all the night sounds: crickets, cicadas, barking dogs and trains at a distance. All the sounds mixed up in the dark, across the swamp and field, where we built our forts, fought with the boys, and exhumed old farm dump piles in search of treasure during the day. At night we played a wild game of sheep and wolves in the dark neighborhood, and pretended we didn't hear when our parents called us in. I've always loved the mystery of the night world, and always found it hard to fall asleep. Daryl's dog barking this night made me suddenly wistful, and long for one more evening of my own childhood. Instead I thought, I'll weave this. How? I picked up a shuttle, and there was a quill of thin, cobalt linen yarn in it already, and I thought, that will do. I hate to pick colors at night. I decided I'd weave one blue thread every time Maggie barked for five minutes. I watched the minute hand, and then started. Bark, bark, bark. Quiet, quiet. Bark, bark, bark, bark, bark, bark. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Whew! I was falling behind. A pause followed, quiet, quiet, quiet, quiet. I may have missed a few of the barks, but in the end I had a 2-inch section of tape, with some random thin blue lines crossing it. This was my record of 5 minutes of listening to a particular dog barking after midnight, at the confluence of the West Fork and Seas Branch river valley, July, 2015. I had a new measure on my tape without measure.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">I have a conflicted relationship to measure, and measuring. I usually have a tape measure, hanging around my neck, like a yoke, or a choke. A weave is one length on the loom, stretched tight. Relax the tension and the length shrinks. Tense up, and beat too hard, and the weave compresses. Cut it down, and it shrinks again. Wash it, dry it, and it grows smaller, or not. The task to weave a square, or two equal panels to a 1/2 in window width, or a pair of equal length curtains is fraught. Measure is a burden!</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">I started to weave my own measureless tapes, partly in response to my father, an engineer, who tried to instill in his family, along with his Lutheran faith, the idea that if a thing can't be measured, that thing does not exist. It was long ago, but I have been refuting that untruth for most of my life (also the Lutheran faith). Actually, important things do exist that can't be measured, love, hope, fear. Emotion is real. How we feel about our human experience may be the most consequential part of our living. Consequently, my tapes without measure hold marks of actual and conceptual events, but all of them ephemeral. Nothing that exists ever lasts, not even memory, is my corollary theory. On my woven tapes, I've incorporated marks for my actual waist size, my cat's long tail, the width of the stripes of woolly bear caterpillars crossing the road on the autumnal equinox between Avalanche and Bloomingdale, simple actual observable measures. One tape has the height of the largest morel mushroom we found this spring. It was a significantly big one. Recording and marking events is a human practice, an activity we engage in, to get ahead of the game. On ancient Scandinavian rune calendars, the marks may have told when to plant seeds, when to cut hay, when to spin flax, when to expect a spring thaw. What the marks originally meant fade as centuries pass, but the marks are still there, though we don't know who made them, and the meanings are lost. The desire to make these records is a record of the persistence of human need to try to capture the present, the thing we experience as reality, and carry it into an unknown and uncertain future. What persists, over time, is not the knowledge, but the enigma.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">What happened is that Daryl became ill, and died of cancer. His farm, and some others in the floodplain were purchased by the county. His house and sheds will be torn down. I don't know where Maggie and the other dog are, if still on the planet. He lived there, and the memory of him is now disappearing. But, each time I weave that 2-inch pattern of blue lines into my measureless tapes, I'm back in that night, when Daryl was welding late at night, across the river, and Maggie barked. The meaning is mine, and will end when I end. After all, I listened to the barking, breathed thick, midnight summer air, and lived five minutes of my existence, with all of my senses alive, trying to keep it alive in weave, warp and weft, weave, weave, warp and woof. Amused that it was the first time ever I wove a woof. </span><br />
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<br />Avalanche Looms / Susan Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02555899151202475975noreply@blogger.com28tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7242093056074680020.post-16035381399774238012016-05-18T14:42:00.001-05:002016-05-18T14:42:55.069-05:00arte Rose Wylie<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
Adding my 2ยข of opinion to an online discussion often seems like a good idea to me, at the time. So, but for the grace of Google, which has locked me out of commenting in my ScanWeave group, until I produce my long lost password, I'd have felt compelled to offer my take on a recent discussion: how often to advance the warp off the back beam, and how frequently to move the rocking pivots on the overhanging beater of the Scandinavian loom forward, for the optimal beat. <br />
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It turns out there are many aspects to the subject, which generated heated interest. Opinions vary from never moving the rocking pivots forward, from a Swedish weaver who averred that no Swedish weaver she knew would ever do it, to moving it alternately, while advancing the warp, every 2 inches, never mind the temple, also advancing.<br />
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Of course, this sounds like an exercise I could never accomplish, like bringing myself to a free handstand in yoga class, that would require coordination well beyond my current (or future) ability and concentration, both sadly in decline. It's probably better I can't comment, because I am unqualified. For the record, I've moved the rocking pivots on my loom rarely in my long weaving career, and when I did, it was only as a desperate measure, to eek out a few more inches of a warp that was coming up short.<br />
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In days past this kind of discussion would have preoccupied me. Should I pay attention to this? I am self taught and suspect (with substantial evidence) I may have quit teaching myself too soon. Maybe I'm not a real weaver. <br />
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But I am always interested in lively discussions by other, knowledgeable weavers, which I love to hear, and experience, if only vicariously, standing outside the inner ScanWeave circle. To be clear, the ScanWeavers have always made me feel welcome. I do share their intensity about weaving matters, and try to pay close attention to the finer points. But, I find my interests often lean in a different direction. My best hope at this point in my weaving career, is to be a competent weaver, no more, but certainly, no less. I weave everyday of my life. My genetic code has made me a Scandinavian weaver to the bone. I try to improve daily, or at least try not to lose ground.<br />
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The intensity of my feeling, and my urge to weave, conversely, increases steadily. This state of mind usually begins with an image, or a memory, a fragile apparition. I prepare my warps with as much planning and care as I can muster. I practice patience as I work out designs. I work deliberately at each step of the warping process, and try not to rush. At the same time, I try not to make stupid mistakes. I supply myself with the best materials and colors I can procure. I am finally able to develop very good, even tension, consistently, across my warp. Though I'm quite impressed with myself over these modest achievements, other qualities interest me more, and are what drive my desire to weave as often as I can.<br />
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Painters are often the source of my agitation, and tend to send me off in new weaving directions. Lately, my muse and model for all things artistic is the British painter, Rose Wylie, who likes a quality of "slightly casual misfits," in her paintings. My obsession with her painting is acute, and people close to me have already had their fill of it. I usually can manage to work Rose Wylie into any conversation.<br />
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<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMWSe0Mkzjg"> Rose Wylie</a> has a lot to say about her painting process. She prioritizes the "object quality" of her canvases, "the thread, the glue, .... the marks of registration." She cuts her canvases and pastes them on in a very casual, not precious way. She even used to paint, stacking her canvases on the floor, and sometimes even walk on them. This was not because of a careless approach to her work, but out of an intimate connection with it. Her work is both careful, highly structured, and meaningful. "In all the imperfection," she says, "the object becomes your own piece of work, it becomes very much a part of you." <br />
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What is more saturated with "object quality" than a weave? The beauty of raw materials, the feeling and shape that use and time add to the quality of a weave, the power of color and texture to surprise us, and change our perceptions. I also <strike>obsess</strike> pay attention to Rose Wylie's fields of color, the division of the canvas, the use of black line, broken lines, subject (memory)..... I'm in artist-love again! Seeing these images sends direct current to my brain as I weave, and technique is a far-off consideration. If I am making a good weave, while getting close to my idea, I've accomplished what I desire. What weaver doesn't feel that way about her work? Most importantly, if I burn this new imagery into my brain, how will it change my weaving? It will change it. I anxiously wait to see that result.<br /><br />
In recent years I have read some discussion of craft whose highest achievement is not its "finesse, polish, and<a href="http://craftcouncil.org/magazine/article/taking-skill-down-peg"> virtuosity.</a> " "Sloppy Craft" and Arte Povera offer pushback to the dominance of skill as the primary criteria in woven work. I don't mean to diminish the importance of skill, but also to beware of its tendency to overpower, and even hold back the weaver/artist from achieving what may be the better part in the work. <br />
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Maybe I should have been a painter, but I'm content to be able to call myself a weaver, even if it's just by the skin of my teeth.<br />
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Rose Wylie!<br />
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<br />Avalanche Looms / Susan Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02555899151202475975noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7242093056074680020.post-63746713285363903522016-04-15T12:26:00.001-05:002016-04-15T15:57:19.463-05:00weights and measures<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I don't know how much I weigh in stone, maybe 2, as in the above pictured. Just guessing.<br />
The days are progressing convincingly toward warm-spring, as we leave winter-spring behind. I read yesterday that the Sami in arctic Scandinavia counted 8 seasons in their year. Mud season is our equivalent to warm-spring.<br />
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There is just a little leftover snow in a few northside places. Multitudes of tinnitis inducing peepers sound off in the evenings, raucous birds sing for mates well before the sun has risen, spring beauties are showing, and geese and sandhill cranes are persistently setting on nests of eggs. Sitting?<br />
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I've been weaving spring scarfs on a fresh 26 yard warp, since Groundhog's Day officially marked the turn of my workshop calendar from winter to winter-spring. I put away cashmere, alpaca, and merino, yarns, and started in again on the perfect 4: linen, cotton, hemp and silk. This year I have new West Texas organic cotton from <a href="http://www.voicesofindustry.com/">Voices of Industry</a> to add to my usual Bockens. It is a beautiful and lustrous cotton, in milky white. I've been using it in overshot designs, which remind me of cake frosting, on wedding cakes, specifically. (We have been eating a diet free of lactose, gluten and sugar for the last 2 months, and I find my thoughts turn frequently to cake).<br />
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I've been very excited about this weaving, and apologize to anyone who has visited me in the workshop in the last month, if I have raved on about things weaving after you have lost all interest. Maybe it's the diet! <br />
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In the woods, I have confronted a large, placid raccoon that has me unnerved, and I am not usually worried about anything in the woods. On its first appearance, near where the turkeys danced, it simply sat and stared at us as Daniel and I walked by. Actually, Daniel decided to approach the sitting still raccoon, for reasons of his own, and when it didn't move away, kept approaching it. I offered an opinion, from further back, What if it's not well? It's healthy, he said, from ten paces in front of the beast. I walked away, and Daniel caught up with me.<br />
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It didn't run away, I said. Yes it did, he said. Later we encountered it, again, sitting near the same place. It stared, unmoving, while we walked past. The next day I walked up the hill road and took the same trail out. As I neared the place where the raccoon had been, I remembered it, and started peering under the trees. Thankfully, I didn't see it.<br />
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What if it's on the other side of the road? I thought, and turning my head, came face to face with the stare of the same raccoon, not 10 feet from me! Startled, I screeched a little, then slowly turned and walked away, not to appear as if I were running away. I thought it might feel like pursuing if I showed fear, and I wondered how fast a large, ill raccoon can run. <br />
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Truly, I haven't a clue what any animal thinks. After a while of brisk, and brisker walking, I hazarded a glance back, and saw no raccoon, teeth bared, giving chase. Then I ran. <br />
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<br />Avalanche Looms / Susan Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02555899151202475975noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7242093056074680020.post-59789895358065105272016-03-19T15:18:00.000-05:002016-03-20T16:48:37.474-05:00looking <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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One time, driving my teenage children home from school, I thought I saw a small red fox, running across a field. "Look! A fox!" I cried. "Mom, it's a Walmart bag!" they chorused. Of course, it was a Walmart bag, my eyesight not as keen as I thought. And I was the driver!</div>
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I'm aware how easily my powers of observation may be shaped by my desires. So, when I climbed the hill road last Sunday and saw a shadowy, hulking shape where the road forks, my first thought was that some inconsiderate had left a pile of trash bags on the road. </div>
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There were some low hanging branches obscuring the details, but what I saw on the next step was two turkey hens bobbing around a handsome-ish Tom, whose whole tail was fully fanned, while he twirled like a figure in a music box. It was momentarily mesmerizing, a moment when I wished for my camera, only to realize it was hanging around my neck, but the turkeys had already seen me, and vanished into the pines. </div>
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The reverse of my Walmart bag-Fox misperception! <br />
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The turkey mating scene was extraordinary, and showed me again, how I rush to assumptions, which prove to be wrong. Why assume at all? Why not just open my eyes and look at the thing before I have to know everything about it? <br />
When I was a young girl, I remember spending a lot of time staring, not particularly trying to make sense of anything I was seeing. I think that was a better way of looking.<br />
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Bee Yard Report:<br />
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Bill Pike showed up in the bee yard this week and opened up a bee hive to have a look. It's only March, but there were the honey bees, their back legs loaded like little golden drum sticks with yellow pollen. Where did they find it? Nothing is blooming here yet, only pussy willows. It's bee season, but I think they are still tapping the maples. Bill was happy to see the fresh activity in the hive, and happy to be back at his bee-keeping. He's spry and a few years past 80. He told me he'll keep bees as long as he can walk. In that case, it looks like he'll be at it for a good while yet.<br />
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Watercress is filling up the spring! So nutritious, so peppery, my spring tonic.<br />
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And, one last picture, seldom seen on this blog, my husband, Daniel, who planted our woods. <br />
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<br />Avalanche Looms / Susan Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02555899151202475975noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7242093056074680020.post-85627464308940722032016-02-06T12:12:00.000-06:002016-02-09T16:39:35.626-06:00Ground Hog Day Blizzard, 2016<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I have a banjo that I don't know how to play yet. I practice holding it, and look pretty good. It is still possible. When I can actually play the banjo, there are 2 songs I want in my repertoire: Cluck Old Hen, and Ground Hog.<br />
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<i>We ate the meat and tanned the hide,</i><br />
<i>the best shoe laces that ever was tied, </i><i>Ground Hog</i>!<br />
is the line that kills me. <br />
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I love this song, despite being vegetarian, if I don't count fish as living creatures. <br />
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Our Ground Hog Day blizzard was a doozy, and did not disappoint, after all the extravagant predictions. The world went white, and in a few short hours, we had our beautiful Wisconsin winter, at long last. I felt so sorry for my friends, posting pictures on facebook, of themselves sitting in hot tubs, sipping cool drinks, on Sanibel, or out on Key West walking around on a beach, doing nothing in particular.<br />
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We Wisconsinites in our Rightful Place had snow to shovel, and we got right to it. The beauty of snow laden boughs and branches was legendary. When the sun came out, on all that beautiful<br />
white, heaped and piled on every little thing, our spirits soared! <br />
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I took my wool rugs, mostly woven by my mother, out in that pristine, crystalline white. This is the kind of snow to pile on those woolen weaves and broom off. They'll look so bright after you sweep them with snow, my mother always said, and she did, and I do (and those rugs do look bright). <br />
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<br />Avalanche Looms / Susan Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02555899151202475975noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7242093056074680020.post-7365446904425255832016-01-05T16:19:00.001-06:002016-01-07T17:01:37.134-06:00snow on the hill<div style="text-align: justify;">
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It is time to take down the little tree in my store. Take off tinsel, cut paper snowflakes, folded paper stars, and put them away someplace that I can remember to look for them next November. This morning was finally cold and crisp, the way I expect January to be. When the sun finally rose above the trees on the hill it was after 10 a.m. The hill road and woods are full of soft, white snow now. Snow white is an intense color. The hollow owl tree's enigmatic runes caught my attention. Snow shoes worked.</div>
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A deflated Jesus Loves You balloon, that fell from the sky into the crabapple, was still tangled there. The steep hike made my hands too warm, so I dropped my mitts, where they looked like startled snow animals, about to run away. My, I was hungry! I came home quick, and made a little pizza, for lunch, glutenous, topped with anchovies, artichokes and wild leek pesto. </div>
<br />Avalanche Looms / Susan Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02555899151202475975noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7242093056074680020.post-85631417813994379872016-01-01T13:21:00.002-06:002016-01-03T14:31:39.300-06:00here we are<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Out with the old year, in with the new! At first there was no snow, and then a light dusting<br />
on Christmas Eve, so pretty! Then a blizzard struck. They called the wind Goliath. But it is still beautiful, just more of it.<br />
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The new town plow came out, and funny how glad I feel to see it clearing the roads. The plow guy I hire to clear my driveway missed the blizzard, because he is vacationing in Florida. His understudy plow guy is also vacationing, in Florida.<br />
<br />
The next alternate plow guy, under-understudy, had enthusiasm, but had not plowed my particular<br />
circle drive before, and so didn't know about my parking spaces, left unplowed. He arrived a day late, with 3 pages of driveways on his list yet to plow, and though I saw he started out confidently at the bottom end of my driveway, he ended by meandering up into the beeyard, where the trail ended! He backed out, apparently, and left quietly. So, I took my shovel to the end of the drive he missed plowing, and worked until I was afraid for my weaving arm. Actually, afraid for both of my weaving arms. It is trance-inducing work, like scything in the summer, and maybe weaving.<br />
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Chop, chop, chop the blade down into the snow bank. Scoop, throw, scoop, throw. I tested one of my winter scarfs in the process, and was satisfied with how it functioned, and how good it must make my shoveling style look! I hope.<br />
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I am ready to put on a new warp, today, and very indecisive. I'm looking at overshot designs, and then longing again for my old favorites, Goose Eye and Rosepath. New West Texas organic cotton from <a href="http://www.voicesofindustry.com/">Voices of Industry</a> will surely go on one loom, but the other....? Suddenly, inspiration strikes. "Linen! It's been so long since I had a beautiful, unbleached Swedish linen warp." I'm so relieved, and start rounding up spools, counter, tension box, making calculations in my book, already anxious to see the new weave! Just as I begin, I remember.<br />
<br />
Never, never put on a linen warp in January in Wisconsin. I know this, I know this,<br />
from so many sad experiences. I should have it tattooed on my arm, since I very nearly forgot it, again.<br />
<br />
January and February are too dry and cold, and linen will work with me only when it's warm and humid. So why do I always want to put on linen warps now? This is the time to let linen lie. Sigh. So, I decided to write this blog post instead, but now I must decide, if not linen, then what? And so it begins again.<br />
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Happy New Year, good friends, artists and weavers, careful readers. You are a real presence to me, and I envision each of your lives when I see your comment. I imagine you in your place, and I'm happy to know you, if only a small part of who you are. I have appreciated your comments and knowing some of you check here every now and then to see what the news is! Imagine what we can do this year, if we put our minds to it.<br />
<br />
Susan <br />
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<br />Avalanche Looms / Susan Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02555899151202475975noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7242093056074680020.post-85915000154646969522015-11-11T15:56:00.001-06:002015-11-16T10:39:16.726-06:00Counting my blessings: one, two.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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It must be the light, or staying up too late, because I never "fall back" from Daylight Savings Time easily. My intuition is off. To simply tell the time of day requires focus. My father in law said about his Parkinson' s disease, "transitions are hard." He was mainly talking about making it through a doorway without freezing up, but I take it as a truism, the human condition. Change is hard.<br />
<br />
Possibly, since it's the season of giving thanks, and I'm feeling pretty disheartened politically,<br />
I have been trying to keep track of what I am thankful for. I get lost in that, because everything<br />
is nuanced, good, but then again, maybe not so good. Sometimes it takes decades to know what the true blessings are. I weave paper and linen, and call it a House Blessing, because I think it's a good idea to make something to attract blessings, if possible. Like my daughter, who staying home from school one day, bored and sick, wadded a bunch of tin foil around some rabbit ears antenna on my old black and white TV, and brought in the miracle of a snowy, vaguely distinct picture.<br />
To see TV in our valley we needed a satellite dish, and we opted out. Even after Sofia tinfoiled the antenna, we still saw every program through a snowstorm. It was years before we knew what the cast of "Friends" actually looked like, not braving a blizzard on their couch, in their coffee shop. Jennifer Aniston! Get your parka on! By that time we'd upgraded our system to an old 10-foot tall antenna, leaning in a spruce tree in the front yard. One of the kids, usually Carl, had to go out in any weather, and twist and turn it, until we yelled from inside the house that the picture was pretty good!<br />
Is it any wonder that all my children have decided being urban dwellers suits them very well, thank you.<br />
<br />
But I have blessings to count, at least 2 of them, very unambiguous ones. First, my magic wet-dry, tangle free, hair brush from Bed, Bath and Beyond (my brothers-in-law call it Bed, Bath, and Boredom). The brush is amazing, even miraculous, and was worth the trip, guided by my daughter, Ursula and her smart phone, to a BB&B store on the crest of the ridge in Duluth. The <a href="http://www.thewetbrush.com/">Brush </a>looks like nothing special, with flimsy plastic bristles, a little cheap. But after I'd tried hers in my long, thick, strong hair, and it went through like butter and soft scrambled eggs, I was a Believer. This brush allows me to wear my long hair in a "messy bun" on top of my head, a good style for a weaver, without dreading the brushing. I'm also pleased to wear a recognized hair style, as opposed to my usual "hair style" which, if noticed at all, surely prompts the thought, "Oh, too bad, she's letting herself go." Oh, vanity! Now I love to brush my hair, morning, noon and night, no tangles, no tears! Bed, Bath, and Beauty. Word.<br />
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The second blessing was a gift to me from my 3 children, who pooled their money, years ago, and bought me an iPod Shuffle, in palest aqua blue, engraved with the words, Singing Teacher, which is another story, but which makes me weep a little just seeing it. The thing is, I don't know how to use stuff like this. I've kept it like a little shrine, but never hoped to be able to figure out how to get any music on it. Recently, one of the children asked to have it back, if I wasn't ever going to use it!<br />
<br />
Just like that I got music, iTunes, my computer syncing, docking, etc. all figured out. With music on the damn thing at last, I plugged in the earbuds, and took off up the road, riding my bike, empowered. I can still hear the river, cars coming by, the wind in the trees, distant planes, but now there is a soundtrack. It's like riding in my own music video.<br />
<br />
I peddle along the river, hearing "Let's Go Down to the River to Pray", and I feel like I'm the star of something. In the next few minutes I'm hearing "I'll Fly Away," just as an honest to goodness bald eagle flies off a branch, floats down in front of me, and glides over the river, and off across the corn stubblefield. A crow or a red-tailed hawk would have sufficed. Hallelujah! (I have to buy that and put it on my play list!) You know what? Just getting to live my normal, everyday life is the blessing.<br />
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<br />Avalanche Looms / Susan Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02555899151202475975noreply@blogger.com24tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7242093056074680020.post-40562385884678699342015-10-02T12:26:00.001-05:002016-01-08T11:17:59.743-06:00Things to Come<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The walk to my studio from my backdoor is just 50 yards, on the old milking path, all that remains of a long gone 6 cow barn, and over a small creek on a wood foot bridge. It's not a strenuous walk.<br />
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I have come to believe, that in my own best interest, I need at least 45 minutes of dedicated Exercise each day. To persuade myself to do this, I decided to take my bike out, on my way over to the workshop, and ride 4.5 miles up County Hwy S, to the next town, Bloomingdale, and back. I call it my commute. I do it everyday, not "every-other-day" or "3 times a week" or some other euphemism for "maybe I'll just skip it today". What I get from this "exercise" is to see the beauty of the river and the valley, in every light and weather, day by day, and to notice so many amazing details of life along the river, each day that I ride. My body appreciates the workout, and I am energized. All positive, and the cherry on top is that I get to weave when I get back!<br />
<br />
It's working pretty well, and the season isn't over yet, though I have needed my down jacket and mittens once already. Once I'm on my way, I'm glad to be riding. I rode my bike so much this summer that I actually broke my pedals off, and had to replace them! Lately, among the blackbirds and robins gathering to migrate, there have been so many other sights and signs of the season change. Woolly bear caterpillars have started to make their annual pilgrimage across the highway. I see them frequently, booking it across the road, some traveling east to west, while other caterpillars are equally determined to make that road trip west to east.<br />
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I don't know what makes the woolly bears cross the road. In country lore, the woolly bear caterpillar's rust-to-black fuzzy band width is supposed to foretell the duration and quality (bitter or mild) of the coming winter. I've been interested to measure their bands, and set about to do this on one of my trips to Bloomingdale. I have an interest in measurements that I can record for use when I weave my Tapes Without (numerical) Measure (which are my attempt to measure nothing less than life as it is).<br />
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Measuring woolly bears turned out to be a more difficult task than I expected. As soon as I parked my bike, took out pencil and notebook, chased them down, held the paper in front of them, to crawl across, so I could mark the band width, they would curl up, and refuse to uncurl while I stood, waiting. Of course, it was likely, that my uncooperative curled up subject would disappear under the tires of local traffic before I could even make my record. (I'm happy to report, all of my subjects survived).<br />
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After a setback of a broken pencil lead, and a trip back home to replace it, I was able to collect 13 measurements, last Sunday. Eleven of my subjects had very similar width bands, black head band, rust mid-sections, and black tail bands shorter than the head end. Two outliers: one caterpillar was all rust, and one all black, so cancelled each other out. It was a small sample, but I was satisfied.<br />
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I don't know what to make of the woolly bear measures with regard to the severity of the coming winter, but they are consistent. I know I will make a new set of Tapes Without Measure, with woolly bears included, and also add them to my Key of other Vital Measures, which now includes my cat Mikey's long tail, my own true waist measure, and 5 minutes of Darrel's dog barking across the river at midnight, in mid-July, when I wove one blue weft thread into my tape each time the dog randomly woofed. Literally, warp and woof. The warp is time, as usual.<br />
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In the old cautionary tale of the ant and the grasshopper, I am a true grasshopper when it comes to preparing for winter. But looking at that little code of blue threads on a future winter day, will recreate that warm and muggy, soft, summer night when I listened to Darrel's dog barking and wove. <br />
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<br />Avalanche Looms / Susan Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02555899151202475975noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7242093056074680020.post-70816396593695990872015-09-03T11:25:00.004-05:002015-09-03T11:36:20.137-05:00blue rail<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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So much for summer. Blue railing, Amelia Bassano Lanier, most likely the true author of Shakespeare, benignity, continency, Lowell Observatory, Bill Pike harvests his honey, linen on the line, and Mina Perhonen, too hot. </div>
Avalanche Looms / Susan Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02555899151202475975noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7242093056074680020.post-85148093335315894842015-08-16T15:08:00.000-05:002015-08-16T15:08:41.353-05:00on weaving<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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When I have finished weaving a small collection of 4 or 5 scarves, that seem to belong together, because of the warp and the color and design combinations, I list them for sale in my etsy shop. This most recent batch has materialized around old school, plaid dresses, that came to mind as I wove. I remember the school dresses my mother sewed for me at this time of year, no doubt, with white collars and cuffs, and me impatiently standing on a chair, turning slowly, while she pinned the hems. The afternoon light has shifted to a warmer tint, a light golden wash, end of summer. <br />
<br />
This is how I weave, always. Colors come from memories of light at different seasons, different times of day. There are combinations in my brain from my mother's kitchen curtains, or the wallpaper in my best friend' s bedroom. But the memory of color can come from anywhere, or anytime. I weave to hold it down, to see it better, to get closer to an emotion connected to the color. Often I can't identify where the color comes from that feels so familiar. Cloth carries feeling with its color, texture and design. We hold it, and it conforms to our human shapes.<br />
<br />
I never thought weaving would be so important to me. I'm a little self conscious to be so<br />
obsessed with it, and always wish I were a truly gifted weaver. I've been weaving many years, but I often feel clumsy at my looms. What I may lack in technical virtuosity, I make up for in feeling. I hope that feeling carries to whoever owns it. I want there to be something in the cloth that expresses the ideas that went into its making, even if the keeper has no idea who made it. I keep cloth like that, made by someone unknown to me, that radiates another human's imagination, and excites me.<br />
<br />
So, I make a series of scarves and put them up for sale, happy to think of them worn by real human beings, in places I may never get to visit. The workshop feels so empty then, and I wonder if there is anything left to look forward to. Then, slowly, something takes shape in my mind's eye, as I pick up colors again, and throw my shuttles. <br />
<br />Avalanche Looms / Susan Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02555899151202475975noreply@blogger.com20tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7242093056074680020.post-61493937215811560882015-08-05T22:47:00.000-05:002015-08-05T23:09:14.342-05:00summer things<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Amish built oat ricks on Salem Ridge this week look like shaggy beasts that might roam around<br />
when the moon is bright! I wish we would hear whippoorwill calls again in late summer evenings, especially since I'm not trying to get a small child to sleep. I hope they are only temporarily away.<br />
Some people who live in Crawford County, to the south, have told me they often hear them, and that they are incessant and obnoxious. <br />
<br />
I ride past this abandoned farm house and the old shed on my bike some days. At noon on a bright day, it's so dark inside the shed. Just this summer, the roof has caved in. The work in here stopped a long time ago. In the dim light, I see old tractor tires, winches, chains and dusty calendars pinned to the wall, coffee tins of tractor parts, and old cans rusting on plank shelves and window sills. It feels like a sunken boat.<br />
<br />
The curtain in the farmhouse window moved ever so slightly to the left as I was taking the picture, as if an unseen hand were moving it slightly to see who was outside looking in. I felt a cold shiver down my neck! I went around to the back side of the building then, and found a broken window letting a breeze into the old room, stirring the curtains!<br />
<br />
New weaving in my workshop, which is filled with a whole lot of summer light in the mornings. Also, there is my small savu-sauna wash cloth, included in the <a href="http://www.craftmuseum.fi/english/exhibitions/15_deep_roots.htm">Deep Roots Exhibit</a>, at the Craft Museum of Finland, until August 23, 2015. I am so pleased to show these weaves in Finland as part of this Scandinavian-American artists exhibit. My cloths are my tribute to my Finnish grandmother, Impi's life, in Finland, where she lived as a girl and young woman, before coming to Minnesota in 1917. I never knew her, because sadly, she died young, leaving her 4 children, and her husband.Avalanche Looms / Susan Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02555899151202475975noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7242093056074680020.post-87211056885584493512015-07-15T12:26:00.000-05:002015-07-15T12:26:28.553-05:00Loss<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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A loud crash on the porch after midnight, woke us up, but we didn't investigate. In the morning we saw the bench overturned, and the porch broom knocked down. My good cat, Mikey, did not show up for breakfast. Mikey is an orange striped tabby with polydactic paws. He has many toes, in fact, he has almost 2 sets of toes on each front foot. His paws are oversized, and fan shaped. On the points of his ears are several long sable tips, like fine haired paint brushes, that remind me of a cougar.<br />
<br />
He did not appear that day, or the next. I began to wonder where he'd gone, and walked all around to the sheds where he normally sleeps during the day, calling "Mikey, Mikey?" There was no sign of him, not hide nor hair. I rode up and down the road on my bike, looking into the ditches. No sign. He'd vanished, who rarely, if ever, in 2 years had missed a cat food dispensation on the porch. Mina and Mama Kitty were still there, but I realized now, I loved him best. There was none other like him. And now he was gone. Another day, and another, and I stopped calling for him, or looking for him, or expecting to see him. Deer wandered through the yard, the stray black, tailless cat came to sneak food, but no Mike.<br />
<br />
No Mikey looked in the kitchen window past the toast counter in the early morning. No Mikey annoyed us when he hooked his claws into the porch screen door, banging it open and shut to get our attention. No Mikey threw himself down in front of our feet as we tried to walk into the kitchen. My husband came home from the grocery with a smaller bag of Meow Mix. Mikey's disappearance was so mysterious, and sudden, timed with the fracas on the porch. What did it mean? We've lived here so long, and there has never been anything frightening on our back porch.<br />
<br />
Day 5. I decided it might have been a cougar attack in the night. I looked in the newspaper for possible cougar sightings in our neighborhood, but for once, even though this is the season for unverifiable cougar sightings (and UFOs), there was no mention of aliens or wild cats.<br />
<br />
I called my mother on Sunday. She is old now, and losing her memory. I talk to her about things she doesn't have to remember. I told her my cat disappeared. It felt so good to tell her, because she has always reassured me. That wart on my foot will go away. No, the Russians will not start a nuclear war, during the Cuban missile crisis. How to shut down a 5th grade boy who was bullying me. She was sorry. She said, "Don't give up hope."<br />
<br />
"But Mom," I said, "Country cats disappear. Your cats in Northern Minnesota didn't last too long." "No, they didn't" she said, "Pa wouldn't let them stay in at night, but Marion and I fixed up a place for them under the porch, and sometimes they stayed there." She used to tell us how her cat's ears would freeze in the frigid N. Minnesota winters, and get rounded-off, like mouse ears.<br />
<br />
That night, just before I turned out the lights, one week after the incident on the porch, I heard a small meow at the screen door, and I knew it was that gone away boy-cat, Mikey, come back from oblivion. Oh, joy! I let him in, and he seemed fine. No slashed ear, missing fur, or mark on him. He must have been on a sabbatical, or kitty rumspringa, trying out new worldly ways. I was so glad, I rubbed him, scratched his chin, picked him up, carried him around, squeezed his fat paws. I love the moment when the story turns, after all hope is lost. I love when the cat comes back!<br />
<br />
Of course, you know my story is about how my mom is disappearing, and that story doesn't have the twist, when her memory suddenly comes back. She will keep fading into the fog that gets denser all the time. Another time, and this good cat will disappear, and I will disappear, all good things, and bad, will.<br />
<br />
But, it was a pretty good week, my best cat came back, and my mom and I had a nice talk on<br />
Sunday. I'm starting to understand.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Avalanche Looms / Susan Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02555899151202475975noreply@blogger.com21tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7242093056074680020.post-38773583965080666552015-06-08T10:45:00.000-05:002015-06-08T11:15:28.120-05:00I think it might rain<br />
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In case it rains in the afternoon, I ride my bike up the road this morning. It's perfect weather now, with a soft summery breeze still damp from the rain last night, and fresh smelling, blooming phlox, wild wood geraniums, columbine, and ferns. <br />
<br />
A half mile up the road, a bald eagle swoops down and circles back across the river, scouting the fresh killed racoon, that already appears to have been dined on. I swerve around the carnage, and look into the clear, flow of the water of the stream beside the road now. Because I ride this way everyday, I know every curve and twist of it. I have it memorized.<br />
<br />
Next, I come to the circle curve, by Mary Lee's place, and now I'm high above the river that<br />
has gone straight. I call this the Zuider Zee. I've never seen the Zuider Zee, but I pretend I'm<br />
in Holland now, and there are some black and white cows on the polder. The river bank is straight along here, and grassed. It reminds me of a dike. I decide I don't have time this morning to ride all the way up to the abandonned blue school bus, with its faded, hand painted banner "Amnesty" and "Let Freedom Ring". I usually like to ride up as far as the Let Freedom Ring bus, but not this morning. <br />
<br />
Instead, I turn around at my favorite bend in the river, where there are rapids and open sky and clouds reflect in a smooth elbow of the flowing West Fork. I also see remains of a dead gray cat have nearly disappeared now, two weeks since I first saw it dead, beside the road. Dead animals are a sad fact of country roads. Once, when Ursula was still riding with me, in her seat on the back of my yellow Schwinn, we came upon a cow that had fallen out of the woods, down the shale slide, and rolled upside down into the ditch.<br />
<br />
She was struggling. We rode to the next farm up the road, and told the farmer. That was so sad, and happened over 30 years ago. Still, I remember that cow every time I pedal by that place. And I miss my little, heavy bike passenger!<br />
<br />
Maybe this afternoon I'll head up the road again, and see what's new.<br />
<br />
(also, some colors of cotton and linen I'm looking at, and of course, my peony in full bloom!)<br />
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. Avalanche Looms / Susan Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02555899151202475975noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7242093056074680020.post-79591480532452416442015-05-04T10:59:00.001-05:002015-05-05T21:57:47.165-05:00lost and found<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Spring is chaotic. The season when our kids went a little crazy, running everywhere, barefoot, and wild, up on the bluffs, or down the river road. Often, we worried a little at supper time when we couldn't find them. The campground fills up with fish camps and fly fishers, testing their rods and waders. I pump my tires and ride my bike up the road again. The Let Freedom Ring blue bus is my new turnaround destination.</div>
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We conquer our pessimism and plant a dozen red raspberry canes, unearthing, in the process, one of Grandma's long forgotten and missing sterling souvenir spoons, deep in the compost heap. I wonder how long it was lost there with another spoon, and how it got there, not pointing fingers.</div>
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The cats are content to sit on the back porch, and not rush in each time the screen door opens. The Dell ducks have survived, with No-Neck, still in charge of Peck Eye (the one-eyed duck from an incident with a sparrow hawk last year) and the 2 others. The fresh, unwashed eggs are so rich and delicious, though my vegan sister continues to warn me against them, because they are 3 times as rich as hen eggs. Ramps, or Wild Leeks are rampant in the woods now, and the kitchen is fragrant, or odorous, depending on your opinion of ramps.</div>
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<br />Avalanche Looms / Susan Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02555899151202475975noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7242093056074680020.post-544155467450729332015-04-01T10:46:00.004-05:002015-04-01T11:07:21.155-05:00no fooling<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Finished! Now I'm on my bike, singing, all the way up to Bloomingdale! Soon enough I'll come back to my bare workshop, empty looms, and start in again. <br />
<br />
There was an old man named Michael Finnegan<br />
He grew whiskers on his chin again<br />
They fell out and then grew in again<br />
Poor Old Michael Finnegan<br />
Begin Again!<br />
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<br />Avalanche Looms / Susan Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02555899151202475975noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7242093056074680020.post-70414542887466476962015-03-07T15:58:00.001-06:002015-04-01T11:08:24.568-05:00march wind<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Today winds are blowing out of the South. Soon maple sap will be dripping in the woods, syrup boiling in sugar houses, and trout season. It will still snow, a spring blizzard or two. The cold has been extraordinary this year, but it's a dry cold. I know I'll miss it. <br />
<br />
Last week, it was still terribly cold, but somehow I talked myself into walking up the road to the quarry, wearing an outfit that made use of a wool blanket and a large safety pin, on top of my usual winter regalia. Even so, my eyes were teary from the cold, and on the way back my eyelashes actually froze together.<br />
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Coming into my driveway, I had a sudden, distinct memory of my kids when they were 12, and 8, and 5, sitting on our back porch on a spring morning, playing with a box of kittens. It may have been that the light was similar, that brought the image back to mind. I thought of myself back then, 40 yrs old, frustrated and desperate for the family to "grow up" so I could have some time to myself, some time to weave. I also remembered that even as I thought it, I knew I'd miss days like that, when they were young, playing on the back porch in the sun. It was such an intense remembrance that I couldn't shake it all day.<br />
<br />
They are grown up children now, each living her/his own adult life. I might be able to persuade them to come back and play with a box of kittens on the back porch, but sooner or later, they'd want to go back to their jobs and homes. Having children, for me, has been the experience of putting myself out of the center of my own life, loving human beings so hard that it often hurt, and still always, always encouraging them to leave me, little by little. That's a pretty tricky thing to manage, emotionally. We want to keep who we love close, usually.<br />
<br />
Well, I got through that day without a tear. I wasn't sad. I have my workshop, full of projects and good looms, with good warps on them, and more to come. I am so fortunate. I have what I only dreamed of on the back porch with those kids that morning. I have what I hoped for then, and better. After all, I still have those kids, who are adults you'd like to know, if you knew them, and I am free to work. I am 24 years older, a lucky woman. <br />
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~~~~~~~~ <br />
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Item: In case you haven't seen it, Vibeke, the vivacious Norwegian knitter, tea and poetry lover who writes <a href="http://abutterflyinmyhair.blogspot.com/">A Butterfly in My Hair</a>, is having a Month of Giving on her blog right now. She has interviewed artists on the subject of gifts and giving, and asked each artist to contribute a gift each day in the Month of Giving. Leave a comment on her blog for any of the gifts you'd like a chance at winning. In a few days, one of my rag pot mats will be offered, with a small interview. I chose to give away the pot mat because Vibeke is such a great tea lover, and I imagined a hot tea pot sitting on it. If you'd care to read, comment, and enter to win, please do. There's lots of pretty things, and interesting people to meet over there. Avalanche Looms / Susan Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02555899151202475975noreply@blogger.com26tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7242093056074680020.post-50506724046962424112015-02-06T17:15:00.003-06:002015-02-08T13:16:41.260-06:00simply weaving<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
-17ยบ this morning, and I'm in love with winter, day and night. It's a wonderful time to weave, when there is fresh snow and sun, the shop is bright and warm, and there is a faint scent of my geranium, if the sun is shining on the plants. I love to weave paper flowers on spaced linen warps, on my old barn loom. Why I love to weave on this loom, though it is very rustic, a counterbalance, with just two shafts, is that it is very good for weaving plain weave and linen warps. Simple weaves.<br />
<br />
The loom was built by Norwegian immigrants to Coon Valley, Wisconsin, in the late 19th c. It was taller once, but its legs have been sawed. There are signs of a bench that used to be bolted to the front, but it has never had a bench since I've owned it. I taught myself to weave on this loom, standing up, weaving rag rugs, and I am strongly, affectionately, attached to its mass and homely beauty. It's called a barn loom, because it looks like it belongs in a barn, like a large, steady draft horse, ready to work.<br />
<br />
The solid warp beam, a tree trunk, grown on a Coon Valley hill over 100 years ago, and shaped into an octagon, has a 28" girth. The distance from the back beam to the front is long, and there is a lot of room to keep the tension on the linen just right. The overhanging beater, as it swings to beat the fell, makes a satisfying thump. While I needle in the paper yarn rya knots, the soft crinkling rustle of white paper sounds like gifts being unwrapped. A cup of cool water sits next to me on the breast beam, with a soft brush in it, to open the paper yarn petals. I feel like a gardener working in a winter flower garden. The lightness, and ephemeral appearance of the linen and paper garden is an unlikely product of the overbuilt loom that created it.<br />
<br />
The flower petals in this are made of strong, Finnish paper yarn, I ordered from Tampere, Finland. The paper yarn is threaded on a blunt tapestry needle, and tied into the weave as it progresses. I also used Japanese paper chenille, mohair yarn, unraveled plastic tarps, and white linen in the knotting.<br />
<br />
There is a story here, of course; but one I think I'll
tell some other day. Traditional Finnish transparency weaving is what
these come from, as well as Japanese suspended panel weaving that I have always noticed, and admired. <br />
<br />
When I weave paper and linen, in a grid like this, I think of windows, of air and light moving back and forth through the weaving, past and future, memory and forgetting. The blooming is imagination, and possibility. Sometimes the "blooms" are just 8 petaled flowers, but sometimes they are more like explosions. When I first started to make them, a few years ago, I wondered what I was making. I thought they might be the frost covered windows in the coldest corners of our house. But I change my mind, and find they hold many more meanings than that for me. Weaving them carries me away. <br />
<br />
(I plan to enter this piece<i>, Memory and Forgetting,</i> in a Scandinavian art fiber exhibit, which features an exchange exhibit with a handicraft museum in Finland. If accepted, it could fly to Finland next summer!)<br />
<br />Avalanche Looms / Susan Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02555899151202475975noreply@blogger.com21tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7242093056074680020.post-25849464171928037402015-01-08T15:24:00.001-06:002015-01-08T15:24:42.732-06:00potholding<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
I'm amazed to read about the present, sweltering heat in the southern hemisphere, Australia, for instance, while staring into the teeth of this "Alberta Clipper" coming down from, well, the finger points at Alberta. Thanks, Canada.<br />
<br />
A wind accompanies this snow, and below zero temperature, a strong wind that whips up snow dust tornados that whirl up and across the hay field, catching snow, loose leaves and twigs, sucking them high in a twisting vortex, before vanishing through the fence at the plum row at the top of the field. <br />
Dramatic, but largely an illusion. <br />
<br />
So. I am weaving potholders, a throwback to simpler times, days when I began weaving, a<br />
project of cutting rags and chaining them together, to weave into useful, and cheerful kitchen things.<br />
A potholder like this will not look the same after 2 decades of hard use, potholding, but then neither does this (speaking of myself now) potholder look the same. The rags here are cotton, cut at about an<br />
inch wide, the warp, 12/6 Swedish rug warp, black. The sett is 10 epi, but woven in doublebinding, an interconnected double-face weave, with two layers of rag, with only 1/4 of the warps showing on<br />
each surface. There are warp threads interwoven between the layers, and no fingers should ever feel heat. This is a favorite weave of mine, and my brain feels like a big snow whirly of fresh<br />
ideas while I'm at work. Let us not despair, for we are human, and we each have imagination.<br />
We can create what we can imagine. <br />
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<br />Avalanche Looms / Susan Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02555899151202475975noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7242093056074680020.post-49228717228552084422014-12-19T15:12:00.001-06:002014-12-19T15:34:20.795-06:00ashes, ashes<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
It's icy here, so I dumped the whole can full of wood ashes on my paths and the driveway, and then put it to the test. I didn't fall down and break my crown.<br />
<br />
Yes, I still prefer winter in the north. My friends are busily knitting their wool into things. I don't knit, but I love to see it done. I did once knit a sweater, on circular needles, but as I neared the bottom, I lost interest in the project. Which did not deter me from wearing it for the rest of the winter, with the needles all dangling down - o, down - o, down -o, with the needles all dangling down. (To be sung to the tune of Fox Went Out on A Chilly Night).<br />
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When the sky is clear, I love to see bright stars in familiar constellation, glittering at night in cold, dry air. I love the crystallized world, the way the creek bubbles under ice, with an edge that forms and reforms overnight. I look to see the shapes of leaves and grass in flowing water under the clear ice. I love the thick coats of fur on my cats, the stacked-full wood shed, the splitting block, the cold maul, which also serves to split a big squash, which I like to roast and eat, in winter, with butter.<br />
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I like my new, highly visible, lime-yellow down jacket.<br />
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Happy winter solstice, and remember the ones who've left us. I light a candle for them in a<br />
mason jar, when the sun goes down, and put it in the frozen fern bed beside the sauna.Avalanche Looms / Susan Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02555899151202475975noreply@blogger.com14