at the lake

 

 Now we are home from a visit to my parents at the lake up in Ely. We had a few swims and a sauna,  hiked a trail, drank some beer, and looked at the lake.  My mother has woven a pretty new rug in wool, with a violet stripe and some black and white checks.  She said,  "I wanted to let that violet wool be the star of this rug."

The design of this rug is so good.  She knows how to use plaids to good  effect, avoiding  dizzying optical effects, and creating a simple and clear graphic quality.  My mother has also been stacking in her winter wood supply for her weaving shop, which has only a woodstove for heat. Minnesota winters can be -40 degrees, and the snows are deep.

The pine woods smelled sweet in the mornings.   After the sauna, the lake water felt so  soft and silky on our skin.  The feeling is exquisite, and something  I look forward to  all summer.  The two ancient yellow folding chairs by the lake shore haven't collapsed yet!

a good day to wash rugs

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


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

Woman scrubbing her rug with a long handled scrub brush.


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

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

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

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

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

skellington

A new wool rug looked unpromising on the loom. I'd planned to stay with just one shade of green wool, but ended up using several very close shades of green instead. It was something I gave in to, against my own rule, and thought I'd have a rug I might want to hide. When I finally did cut it off, I was surprised to see how the greens looked like the shadowy spruce woods, and the song came in to my head,
"My girl, my girl, where did you sleep last night? In the pines, in the pines where the sun never shines, and I shivered the whole night through." The color of my rug is that old, dark and haunted Appalachian folk song.

The wool stacked up on the chair by the door was already making me think of a new rug.

wednesday work

A new order of blanket wool arrived: large soft pieces of gray, gray-blue, mushroom, basil green, soft yellow, and a beautiful bark-gray-brown. The sun lit up the stack, and I don't know which ones to start weaving first. My own rule on my Winter Rugs is to weave just 2 colors in one rug. I'm very tempted to put all of the colors in one long, long rug. I'd like to see that, I know. But I'm going to try to resist it, and attempt to stick to my plan.

Vote for Obama!

I finished a brown and gray-blue rug, dampened it, and dried it in the dryer. The lint trap caught a lot of wool fiber. When I shake it outside in the sunlight, there's no lint. It shrank from 50" when it came off the loom to 45", and became heavy, soft and drapable. I love the heft of these rugs after they're finished. I put this one by my bed last night, to experience the feeling of stepping out on it in the early morning. My husband must think I'm nutty, but he doesn't say so.

The milk weed pods are still pale green outside, but I found these from last year on my shelf.
Cotton wood, poplar, and maple leaves have been falling into the creek behind the store, and there is a pyramidal rock at the edge that I never saw before today. When I scoop pitchers of water for the flower pots on the porch, I smell mint. The path is a mint path. My weaving can't
begin to compare to the least thing I see on the path outside my back door. But, I did finish a new wool rug. It's a good rug, and feels good on bare feet.

black and white, and wool all over

Now I know it takes 5 lbs of wool blanket remnants to make this. I panicked when I began weaving it, thinking, what if I don't have enough on hand? and purchased an extra 20 lbs. I may be making a batch of black rugs in the near future. For weavers who might be interested, the rug is woven in a 4 shaft double binding weave (not a true double weave, because the layers are interconnected) but took at least 4 long days to weave. The rug has been dampened and tumble dried twice, at high heat, to full it, and to de-lint the cut wool rags. The rug lost 4 " in length, and 1/2" in width after drying.
Final measurement 29.5 in x 5.5 ft. This is the first in at least a pair to be woven before Sept. 1.

downstairs

Here is the start of a set of wool rugs, woven in Swedish double binding, a 2-layered block weave. I've been wool gathering, and winding warps, calculating, and threading for the last week, so I'm happy to be weaving at last. The blocks are 10" square, but I'm weaving them long so they'll be square when they're finally cut off the loom. To finish, I'll dampen them, then dry them in a hot dryer. I'm cautiously optimistic about the project at the moment.