Weaverly

Baking Bread

Catalina came over yesterday morning and helped me bake bread. It was a great way to start the year. We measured out the dry ingredients, and warmed the liquids to the right temperature.

 

We put everything together and kneaded the dough.

 

This is a serious business.

 

The baking sheets were carefully greased with butter.

 

After a brief resting period (for the dough, not for us), we formed the dough into interesting shapes.

 

Catalina brushed the tops of the breads with beaten egg.

 

Fresh-baked bread. Don't they look good?

 

Just a little taste (note the blue nail polish). 

 

Alphabet soup and homemade bread: an excellent lunch. 

 

Let's do that again some time!

 
Photos courtesy of Bruce. The blue and white bread cloth is handwoven from a design by Doramay Keasbey.

The bread recipe we used is this one, courtesy of Fleischmann's Yeast.

Looking Back, Looking Forward

I don't make New Year's resolutions any more, because my history of keeping them is abysmal. But I do like to pause & look around.

Looking back, on the wrong side of the cloth as it travels to the cloth storage beam, I see the point at which the cable failed. The long floats were not visible on the right side, but if I had peered underneath the web I would have seen this mayhem (green arrow):

 

The inch of plain weave marks the pause for repairs and the restart. All is going well now on this sample warp. It's a group of structure samples for an upcoming workshop. That's the looking forward part.

 

 And now my wish for everyone for the New Year: build bridges.

Your interpretation may vary.
 
 

Winter Afternoon

Yesterday we shut down the computers and drove up to just past the NC border, where there is still lots of snow on the ground. Near Tuxedo, on a mountain road, we came across this orchard. An animal had left tracks in the otherwise undisturbed snow.

I took most of my pictures from inside the car because it was quite cold outside and I was feeling thermally challenged, but Bruce was more intrepid. Here he is reflected in the rearview mirror; you can just see my hands focusing my camera inside the car.

 

This orchard is probably beautiful at any time of year (I must remember to go back when the trees are in blossom), but there is something wonderful about the bare branches against the snow.

 
 

Here Comes the Sun

The dobby is now fixed. The problem was a failing cable that was almost undetectable until it failed good and proper. It has been relaced. Weaving proceeds. There's not much to see yet dobby-wise, so instead I give you a cheery look at the Wolf Pup by morning light. Here comes the sun.

 

Being Pretzeled

Did you know that pretzel is a verb? It means to twist, bend, or contort. This morning I was pretzeled after threading three more inches of the black warp. Two thirds done. 

To straighten out, I'm going to the Y to swim laps earlier than usual (they close at 1 pm today). 

Season's Greetings to all!

 

Celebrating the Winter Solstice

To mark this shortest day of the year, I assembled some of my darker yarns for a group portrait. As you can see, they are not totally dark. I wish the same for all of us: more light, in every way.

Thinking Out Loud

I'm trying to coordinate the next two dobby warps in order to minimize threading time; I'd like to tie one warp onto the next, but they have different densities. The one pictured will be a black and white end-and-end threading, straight draw, to weave double twill dobby samples @ 60 epi. It's ready to thread, a total of 360 ends in six one-inch sections. It will stay there for a while.

But first, I want to weave a few samples on a plain 30 epi warp, also 360 ends. So I will be winding another warp of 360 ends, this one on my warping board, and beaming it on the plain beam at 12" wide. After the 30 epi warp is almost woven off, I'll resley it to 60 epi, insert lease sticks behind the heddles, and tie the black and white warp (that has been patiently waiting on the sectional beam) to the plain warp, behind the heddles. At least that's the plan. I figure that if I can describe it, I can do it.

______________________

The winter light, with the angle of the sun so low, is especially beautiful early in the day at my house. While I was deciding what to make for breakfast this morning, I chanced to look down the hall toward the front entrance, where my Wolf Pup loom resides (you can just see the red saddlebags through the doorway and reflected in one of the framed pictures on the left).

 

The door on the right leads down to my studio.
 

Just Missed This One

Yesterday as I was doing errands the weather worsened dramatically. My windshield started icing up and I decided to head for home. Ice and snow in upstate South Carolina is no joke, as we have no snow removal equipment, and in my neighborhood the power lines are all above ground. The county schools announced an early closing. Toward evening, the snow began, and when I woke up this morning the snow was—gone! We are so incredibly lucky. A few miles north of us it is worse, and I can only imagine what my friends in the Northeastern U.S. are experiencing. 

It's still pretty cold, but the sun is peeping out. I ducked outside and snapped some pictures of a camellia bush across the creek. How's that for contrasts?

 

I think I'll make a cup of hot tea and listen to the rest of the opera.
 

A Collaboration

I've engaged in a dozen or so collaborations in the past, and I'm in the midst of several right now, so I'm always interested in reading about how other artists approach the subject. For the past few months I've been following Terry Jarrard-Dimond's online documentation of Compositional Conversation; in this project 15 artists joined together in creating a single work of art. Today's post is the wrap-up of the project, in which the artists reflect on their experience. Pictures of the stages along the way are included. It makes fascinating reading. Check it out!

Yesterday Sandra pointed out that Flossie's left eye opens at a different rate than her right. Fascinating—I hadn't noticed that. So I spent more time looking at her picture. Yes, there is an asymmetry to her face. And considering that the picture was taken on a cel phone, it contains a lot of information. I worked on it a bit, cropping, eliminating the stripe on the left, enlarging, indexing to 6 colors, and reducing it to black and white.

Converting to black and white forced Photoshop to organize the color table from light to dark when indexing. Then it was easy to choose new colors in the table. Here is one possibility. Maybe for weaving in double twill? 

 

I've just received a Google Alert that there is a Picasa web album of the recent Fiber Artistry exhibition in Duluth, Georgia. One of my pieces, Hyacinth, is in the show. The exhibition was held in September-October of this year. There are lots of good pictures of many of the fiber entries (including weaving!) here. Enjoy.

 

Flossie

Not my cat. I've never had a cat. I'm just visiting. But if I were to have a cat, I'd like it to be like Flossie.