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.

out of chaos

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

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

Sweets

Scarf No. 3 on this mostly silk Rosepath warp.  I'm really warming up to the seductive warm colors, with a little aqua for the sugar-on-top.  Figuring out color is always my first interest, and I usually try to make it more difficult, because the results are often more interesting, at least to my eye.  But even with a simple color scheme,  nothing is automatic about color and design.  There's always the chance of good color going bad.   Seeing the rags I used to start this scarf makes me feel itchy to do a little more rag weaving.

There was a torrential downpour on Friday the 13th, another flood in Avalanche.  It was a little scary. Soon after the waters subsided,  a sister, nephew, and son and brother in-law, came to visit.    Our table has been full of people talking,  eating good food, and laughing about I don't remember what,  but was very funny at the time.   The good feeling is what lingers.

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.

Black Alpaca + Linen

Crisp, cold and lots of sun today here in Avalanche. The creek froze over, except where we chopped a hole to the water for the birds and small animals to get a drink.  I  just wove this pair of wristwarmers, which are also the first project I've made in 2010.  They met the cold test.

Rosepath, with a 16/2 Swedish cotton warp, unbleached linen weft, and silky black alpaca

Tilleke Schwarz exhibiting:  Beware of Embroidery, Jan 15 to Feb 24, 2010 (wish I could be there!)
Sofia Arnold exhibiting:  Tory Folliard Gallery , Jan 8 - Feb 6,  Reception: Friday,  Jan 15 ( I'll be here!)

The First Straw

For anyone curious about straw weaving, this is one of the first tries I made with weaving straw wefts. This was rye straw and red Norwegian spelsau wool. The cotton warp was threaded in goose-eye. Later I used oat straw. Rye straw is longer, but oat straw crinkles up a little as it is woven, and glistens. Most of my other pieces were woven narrower and longer than this, as table runners. The contrast of black or dark blue wool with oat straw is my favorite, but white wool and straw is also beautiful. Unbleached linen, 16/2 , is a good warp choice. VAV magazine has several articles about weaving straw in their archives. Straw weaves are quite durable, and also may be washed. I think it would be pretty, and have recently seen (not sure where) some pretty straw weaves in monks belt.

Oat Straw

On the ridge this week, Amish farmers cut oats and bound them with a horse drawn grain binder. They built the oat straw bundles into ricks of 6 bundles leaning into the center, with one fanned bundle on top for a hat. Though it was sunny and warm at noon, by supper an inch of rain fell. Inside the ricks, it was still dry. The ricks look like little huts, or a whole field of shaggy six legged animals.

Sometimes we weave oat straw with wool, or cotton yarn, to make table mats and runners. Oat straw is shiny and gold when it's woven. It looks especially pretty woven with red or white wool yarn, in a goose eye pattern, or rose path. It looks prettiest on a candlelit table in midwinter, which is still a long way off.

Glad Midsummer

This is a sauna towel. I've been weaving linen in these long days just before Midsummer. Linen has a gleam that makes it wonderful to look at. If there is anything mysterious about weaving to me, it is the strange compulsion I have to touch the cloth, and watch it grow, thread by thread in the loom, to watch it change when it is cut off, to knot the fringes, pulling against the weight of a book, to hold down the raw, new weave. Washed and dried the weave pulls in, almost 3 inches from side to side, and 4 inches from top to bottom. The fringes are trimmed, and the trims are almost too pretty to throw away. The touch of the cloth becomes soft, and full. The light shines though it, and across the folds, in a way that fascinates my eye.

I like to make cloths for rooms that I imagine. This is a cloth to go on the blackened bench of an old Finnish smoke sauna that I saw one time. Miraculously, I found that the smoke blackened benches do not rub off.

Finch Style

Even though each finch pair tries to build its nest, fill it with eggs, guard it from predators, feed the insatiable baby birds, and then push them out at the most favorable moment, some of the best laid plans go awry.

This finch nest is a windfall, from Elizabeth's yard. Lined with long black horse tail from Elizabeth's horse, it's a beautiful "found" weave of gray grass and horse hair, carefully constructed by the finches.

Items

What's here today.

'Pickle' scarf

This is Kate's chair and table when she comes down to Avalanche to write. Today's scarf, 'Pickle' is just that, a mix of salt and sweet, spicy, herby greens and cinnamon, and a few dashes of cobalt in a mix of plain and fancy yarns.

Woven mainly of cinnamon alpaca yarn, from a local flock(?) herd (?) collective, mixed with other yarns: wool, bamboo, & rayon. Winding the yarns on my clothes pin shuttles has been working so well. They hold enough yarn, and fit on my Swedish spool winder, too. The rounded heads move easily through the shed, and they are nice to hold. The alpaca yarn woven in this scarf is weighty, textured and soft, with a nice drape because it is a twill weave.

Dyeing, again

My next rug is going to be a combination of shades of bright hungarian paprika red and dark chili powder red. I have an appetite for this color, especially at this time of year. I dye the wool pieces in approximately 1/2 yard chunks, to fit the stainless dye kettle I use. There are some variations between each kettle, which is an effect I try to accomplish by changing the color mix a little for each batch. The differences are subtle, but the mixture of close colors across the surface of the rug is much more vibrant than a rug made with a single color. Exciting the eye is what I'm after. My favorite dyes are Procion fiber reactive dyes, because they are quite safe to work with and dispose of, and are also very light and wash fast. With red, this is especially important. My wool rugs are washable, so I don't want any running reds.

The blanket wool I use is a beautiful quality, and quite thick to begin with. To make a 22" X 36" rug I need a little more than 2.5 lbs of wool. This is useful to know when I'm custom dyeing, because I don't make more than I'll be using.

Death Wish Bridge

We made a little trip to Iowa, crossing the Mississippi River at the dangerously narrow, and high bridge at Lansing. Crossing my fingers and holding my breath, lest we meet a large truck coming from the opposite side, we survived that one more time. Kathy, Jean and I then drove on to Decorah to the Norwegian Museum, Vesterheim. There we met Syvilla Bolson and her student Sandra, a weaver working on a traditional Norwegian weave. The 16/1 linen was set at 40 epi, in a 20 dent reed, 2 ends to the dent. There were six frames threaded, two for tabby, and four in the pattern. There were 1480 ends coming off the back beam, and presumably, all the way through to the front.

Sandra was very gracious to let us watch her, and I hope we didn't cause her to make a mistake!

Kathy and Jean peeked in the windows of the little house behind the museum, a house I believe brought here in pieces from Norway. It has a charming slate roof, and at one time, long, long ago I dreamed I would be happy if only I could live in a little place like this for the rest of my life. Maybe I would still.

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.