Down the Rosepath

A rug is a path.  It is a record of many choices (color, texture, mood, balance) made by the weaver as she follows her hunches of which is the best way to go, what next, and next, and next.  Off of the loom, and on the floor, the rug is an actual path.  Wide enough for a person to walk its length, for a moment or two, along the path the weaver made.

Choosing to weave rags is also a path.

(Look at this! Artist, Rikkianne Van Kirk invited me to carry on about my Big Love for rag weaving in her new Redefine article series on Apartment Therapy Re - Nest  www. re-nest.com)

good weaving days

I walked up to the quarry this Sunday afternoon, in a perfect breeze, a perfect light.  I wanted to take a picture of the ferns that grow across from the quarry, and there they were, in softly filtered sunlight. Some butterflies were dead along side the road.  I've woven two new plain scarves, in linen and combinations of silk, alpaca, and cotton, but mostly unbleached linen. One is ferny,  greens and browns. The other is dark teal blue, browns and charcoal gray,  lakey.

Paint It Black

 

The store is painted dark now.  It smells painty.  The hooks are rehung, and the yellow cabinet by the front door again.  A new set of shelves are still in the works.  I'm starting to put merchandise on display.  I'm so pleased that the space is already easier to work with, and dedicated to textiles from now on.  The new wall color makes me feel very clear about what I want to see here. 

I made the pieced cloth lamp after seeing a beautiful collection of pieced shades made by Dutch artist Maartje Vandennoort  Like piecing a quilt for a room, why not cover  a lamp in soft patterns? 

Goodbye, Yellow Bird

The vibrant stack of fabrics were my purchases yesterday from Yellow Bird Art in Lansing, Iowa.  Yes, we crossed the Mississippi River successfully once more, on the steep and narrow, scary bridge.  Yellow Bird, sadly, is closing on May 15.  There are still so many beautiful fabrics to choose from, and at a very deep discount. It is never a better time to lay in a fresh supply of fabrics. Many of the fabrics to choose from are not easily available elsewhere.  This is a singular collection of fabric.  Yellow Bird has consistently carried the most interesting and highest quality of fabrics for sewing &  quilting, and I am very sad to see it close. Best wishes for a relaxing summer, Yellow Bird!  You created a wonderful place.

A new stack of my store postcards just arrived.  Waiting to see them is close to the excitement I used to feel waiting for our school pictures to come.  Miraculously, post cards take just a few days.

It shows my stack of weathered bee boxes, whose  chalky colors, dove tails, and rows of rusty nails inspired my spring/summer  linen, cotton, and silk Rosepath scarfs.

Thunder shower

It was suddenly raining this afternoon, with thunder.  A spring shower!  Here are my May flowers, off  loom now.  And, the stacks of damp bee boxes that keep luring my eye.

Looking Around

Today I finally finished sewing the Half-Woolly bag (half of a full Woolly Bully bag) woven in rosepath with wool rag-rya. Then I took my last cotton and linen scarf, with rosepath designs, and hung them in Mrs. Mamakitty's doorway for a picture. She paid no attention.

She needed a new bed of fresh pine needles, since the nights are cooling off, and the big pine tree is dropping its needles just now. After lunch she tried it out, and found it very suitable for an afternoon nap. This morning Sofia woke up with an extraordinary ringlet curl in her hair.

I then tried to call the congressional offices to register my opinion again that, as a self employed person, without health insurance, I support a strong Public Option for All in Health Care Reform. (My call got through, tomorrow I'm going to send postcards).

wax and wool

Though masses of Asian lady beetles (false lady bugs) have come flying in to plague us, it is still a great pleasure to print a new batch of wax bags for the store, and labels for rugs and scarves. I have been weaving my winter rugs with the new blanket wool, in the hushed palette of blue gray, mushroom, gray, cocoa brown and olive. Also a few of the short scarves with the simple yarn warp. The yards of spool knitted cord I made last winter have come in to use now as keepers to tuck the scarf into so it stays snug around your neck. Each scarf is lined with cotton velveteen, this one is a dotted gray. This scarf reminds me of the West Fork (the river that runs through Avalanche). It is a trout stream, so this is a trout scarf.

October, 5pm

We had our first, hard frost last night, and today the milkweed pod burst open. I don't know if these events are related. The breeze then began its work of emptying out the little fluffy parachutes. Milkweed is my new favorite color. My winter wool rugs are following the rich, subtle color I see in them. Which is not to say I'm immune to the brilliance I see elsewhere.

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.

Harvest

Tonight Dan brought home a box of sweet pears from a roadside tree. Yesterday and today the loggers have been cutting trees, skidding them up the hillroad, and laying them out in the field on top. I wound warp spools with 12/6 cotton for the new rugs.

Looks like rain

Bring in the clothes and pick the tomatoes because it looks like rain. In a few months the snow and wind may be blowing, and I'll be chipping ice off the step.

Native Big Blue

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

Early Fall

I rode my bike downtown (Avalanche, pop. 20 + or - ) this morning because the breeze was cool, and the sun soft. School has begun again, but I don't have any little children to put on the bus. It may rain this afternoon. Life here has never been perfect, but it has always felt right, and it's another good day to weave.

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.

bitter sweet chocolate

I have been weaving, in fact, I weave everyday. Here is my chocolate wool rug, the first in a series of 2 color wool rugs. The rugs are sized 22" X 3 ft, and 22" X 6 ft, proportions that I like in this style of rug, long and narrow. My next 2-color rug will be gray and olive, possibly.