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The folios are cut off, and I took them outside for a photo shoot yesterday afternoon. First here's the "right" side or recto. Funny how my shadow always winds up in these pictures.
And now we have the "wrong" side, or verso. I used the interior of Ampersand House as a backdrop for this one.
Of course when the pages are cut apart and assembled, there will be no right & wrong. That's a comforting thought.
I love to see textiles folded and stacked up. Maybe that's why I don't mind doing laundry—a stack of dishtowels is a thing of beauty, IMHO. Imagine my delight in seeing the beautiful photos of stacks of indigo-dyed hemp mosquito netting on SRI Threads today. Do take a look. They will make your heart beat faster.
At breakfast yesterday morning Bruce paid special attention to the tablecloth (commercially woven, by the way). It's a cotton seersucker with very deep crinkles. He says he can see letters in the crinkles, and I'm half inclined to agree with him. I told him I'd give him credit for the discovery (There, Bruce! It's all yours.) I think I see a W, perhaps a Y, and maybe a K or two. Now to decode the secret message.
The final session of weaving folios for the new book is now complete. There will be eight folios in all. The next step is to cut this cloth off the loom, give it a steam press, cut the folios apart, finish the edges, and then assemble them in some order (this last will be the fun part). At that point I will be able to make a decision for the cover, so I have abandoned my previous plan of weaving the cover immediately after the pages. When I see the folios gathered in a semblance of a book, I expect that they will tell me what cover they want.
What can I say? This is the most absorbing weaving I have done in a long time. No computers, no lift plans, just me and the yarn. The time just flies.
Now a serious attack on the mountain of handspun. I've warped the Wolf Pup with black 10/2 Tencel at 12 epi. I'm doing weft-predominant random stripes of handspun in 2/2 twill. Every time I change color, I change the twill direction. When I first started weaving, skatey-eight years ago, I admired the striped weaving of a mentor. She did these very same 2/2 twill stripes in the most gorgeous colors. I vowed that one day I would do the same. That day has come. These will be pillows.
Let's back up a bit. Before starting the day's weaving, we went out to the liquor store for fortifications (we were out of Scotch). Parked outside the store was a snappy red convertible, but what really got my attention was this adorable sock monkey hanging from the rearview mirror. I've known some really cute sock monkeys over the years, but this little guy must be the cutest ever. When we left the store, car and monkey were gone. I hope they're having a nice day, wherever they are. Top down, sun shining. Hurricane? What hurricane?
The Wolf Pup loom was reserved for handspun shawls—I had put a dummy warp on it, and just tied individual handspun warps to that, to minimize loom waste. I'm now ready to move on to another project on that loom. Meanwhile, here's the last handspun shawl, in hundreds of shades of green. I took every green in my stash and threw it in this warp. Here and there is a blip of pink or bright orange for a bit of punch. It's been washed and is now out on the deck to dry. I hope the birds don't get at it.
And while in green mode, I had the urge to make a little book with some leftovers of paper. I haven't made a book in a while, and my skills are rusty. I'm having to relearn how to do the headbands. Still, not too bad. The covers are wrapped in green lokta paper with embedded leaves, and the leaf button fastener is ceramic.
And it looks like I'm not the only one who's weaving today. A sure sign that summer's coming to an end, even though it doesn't feel like it. Click to enlarge—this is a pretty nice construction.
And speaking of insects (I know, I know, spiders aren't insects, they're arachnids), several of you asked about yesterday's picture of a wasp's nest. I believe the critters who built this are organ pipe mud daubers. They are not harmful to humans and don't sting unless threatened. The holes indicate that the nest has been abandoned.
To all who asked—we are not in the path of Hurricane Irene, as far as I can tell. We live in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains in the northwest part of South Carolina, over 200 miles from the Atlantic coast. Tropical force rain and winds are expected in coastal areas of South and North Carolina.
Wherever you are, be safe.
Unrelated, but then again not really. First, my evening spinning (painted merino roving):
…and the condominium under construction above my back door:
Another nice weaving day. Well-behaved warp. No shuttles taking unexpected nosedives. The fifth and sixth folios are now woven. Another two to go. Then decisions will have to be made about the cover. But I'd like to see how the pages all go together first.
A couple of days ago, N. Miami (who is always on the lookout for interesting fiber content among all the automotive stuff - thank you, sweetie!) reblogged a great video about a bicycle loom. I traced it back to its source, and now offer the original blog to you: London Cloth Co. It's definitely worth a look, both for the videos on the foot-powered Hattersley loom as well as for the great videos on the sectional warping process at this startup micro mill.
I've woven a number of blankets for family members, partly as a way of using up some of my handspun yarn (which proliferates at an alarming rate). These blankets are strip woven in random width stripes, then sewn together by hand with a triple baseball stitch. My brother was the recipient of one of these blankets around ten years ago. He has moved around a lot since then, but I recently visited him at his current place, and I found that the blanket was alive and well, and being used as couch upholstery. His girlfriend's cat especially likes this arrangement.
And speaking of animals, I was doodling this morning and came up with this 8-shaft networked twill. I think it looks like rabbits!
If you'd like to try weaving the draft, here it is in wif format: Download Rabbits. It's for your personal use. Please do not republish without permission. If you sell objects based on this draft, please give credit.
Bhakti and I have been so gratified by the response to our book, The Woven Pixel: Designing for Jacquard and Dobby Looms Using Photoshop. We have had two successful editions sell out and have decided to go with 21st century technology and instead of printing more books we will offer a digital version of the book. This will be a win-win situation for all of us--especially our overseas readers who have to endure such high shipping costs from the U.S. The cost of the digital book will now be $125, payable by check in U.S. Dollars or by PayPal. There will be no shipping or handling fees. Buyers will have the right to print one copy of the book for their own purposes, and agree that the CD contents will be for their own use. Once payment is made, we will transfer the book and CD contents via a free on-line exchange. Details will be sent to purchasers upon receipt of payment. We have tried this method successfully for a few weeks and all our readers are satisfied. This will be the same edition as the 2006 book, which was written for Photoshop CS2. Although some items have moved to different locations in the newest version of Photoshop (CS5), we have not had any trouble using our Woven Pixel methods with this version. Although, we can not guarantee what the developers of Photoshop will do in the future, we can say our methods work in any version of Photoshop CS so far. To order the digital version of the book please email either Alice or Bhakti.
More pages are slowly appearing on the loom. Here is today's crop:
