Weaverly

Baseball and Light

Karl played his first stint as catcher yesterday evening. He did well. Afterwards he described his gear to me in great detail, including how hot it was under all that padding in the 90º heat.

After the game, I managed to snag this picture through the chain-link fence with my phone. I love the glow of the evening light through the dust clouds.

Later on, when there was hardly any light left at all, this caught my eye:

He was waiting, but for what? This was at a slow shutter speed and an unbelievably high ISO, and was punched and pulled with Photoshop, but there is still something left that I like, in spite of all the mangled pixels.

Scranton, Pennsylvania

We switch drivers every hour or so. When it's my turn to be passenger, I sometimes play with my phone.

A Miscellany

Collected over the last few days…

First, the morning light, at least when I'm up in time to see it:

Next, some selvedge porn:

And now (it's that time of year again) my grandmother's chopping bowl and knife, as I make charoset. Because of logistical difficulties, we're having our seder Wednesday instead of Friday. BTW, I use honey, not brown sugar: 

There is daily progress on Dogwood. Slow but steady:

Aspect Ratio Samples

I've begun a new hanging, loosely based on this dogwood photo:

It will be placed on a patterned background, loosely suggesting a Japanese scroll:

I'm weaving it in a lampas structure, with two pattern wefts. First step is to make aspect ratio samples and test various weft combinations:

Finally ready to begin the actual weaving.

 

More Yellow, More Peach

I returned to the variable size spots, combined with stripes of solid granite; this time I opted for a butter yellow weft. The spots are only visible when the light hits the cloth sideways.

I like this design so much that I decided to repeat it, this time with the peach weft.

Meanwhile, underneath the loom, previously woven towels are making their way toward the cloth storage beam.

Peach

On the striped warp, moving on to a peach weft. Yesterday's towel was on its serpentine way to the cloth storage beam before I remembered to photograph it. Here it is on the "wrong" side; it's a mixture of granite and crepe blocks. 

More peach. Currently in progress, varied sized blocks of satin and granite weaves. 

I'm having so much fun with this warp. The loom is behaving beautifully. It's wonderful not to be fighting with my equipment. 

Green

For yesterday's towel I chose an olive green bamboo weft. The light stripe is a granite weave and the dark stripe is blocks of crepe (the green blocks) and granite (the dark blue blocks). Granite selvedge.

And in my back yard, the trees—which were showing their pale green baby leaves a few days ago—are now almost completely leafed out in full green. This picture is just at sunset, overlooking the creek.

Foxfire Museum, Part III

In a very dark log cabin at the Foxfire Museum, barely enough light to see where I was going without falling flat on my face, I took a picture of a crude handcrafted bench. When I looked at this exposure on the computer, I found more pixels there than originally met the eye! Instead of just a handcrafted bench, I saw that a loom lurked in the corner; I had never noticed it the day I shot it. There is the warp beam and the turning peg . No doubt there was a live tensioning system in place when the loom was in use.

Out in the woods, there was a little more light. It shone at a slant in the afternoon, throwing the texture on these leaves into high relief. 

Sunday I was back at work on the crepe towels. This one has a 16-shaft crepe on the dark stripe and bands of granite in the light stripe. The weft this time is light blue 16/2 cotton. The light blue brings out more of the yellow in the light colored warp stripes, for some reason.

Foxfire Museum

A quick picture from a rainy, foggy trip to the Foxfire Museum today. Great picture-taking weather! Mist, rain, mystery, color saturation. Couldn't ask for better. More pictures tomorrow.

 

Group Portrait

It's time for a group portrait of this week's samples. I used my desk lamp to illuminate these with strong side light, so that you can see the texture. 

I promised you another picture of this crepe after wet finishing. The difference is very dramatic.

It's a bit like a waffle weave, though the cells aren't as deep. This would make great dishtowels, if it weren't for the messy selvedges. I'll have to work on that.