Weaverly

Housekeeping

The Torah Mantle project is on hold until I meet with the Aesthetics Committee for approval of the sample. Meanwhile I'll be going back to work on the Gamma Series on the TC-1. But first a little housekeeping is in order. All my pirns are half full of bits and pieces of yarn from past projects, sampling, and who knows what. So I've got to empty them in some organized way before I go back to weaving. The yarn is too good to throw away, and I'll keep it for weaving separators, for embroidery, for future samples, and ???

Halfway done:

This is totally mindless work, but not unpleasant. It's a great opportunity for multitasking, so I am listening to Ken Follett's Pillars of the Earth on my iPod. No photographers lurking around today.

Sketchbooks and Multitasking

Sketchbooks

Last night at the Symphony, during intermission I pulled out my sketchbook and discovered that Little People had borrowed it and left a few surprises in its pages. I thought you'd enjoy seeing these. First we have football:

…and we also have golf:

Which brings me to the subject of my favorite web addiction, which is Urban Sketchers. This is a group of several dozen artists worldwide, who post their sketchbook pages from wherever they happen to be in their cities and towns. They draw in the streets, in cafés, in the subway, at the market, in the plaza, from the living room window… They are all different and they are all wonderful. It's like a fabulous journey without leaving home, in the company of very observant friends.

Multitasking

And now for the funniest picture I've ever seen. Bruce posted it here and you may recognize the subject. Scroll down to the third picture and click to enlarge. It is I. Could I possibly have been doing three things at once? It appears so. As I recall, I was watching a knitting video and listening to WeaveCast as I knitted. The supporting details are also revealing and very fibery. There is the wall hanging on the right, an early jacquard piece featuring my mother (headless, alas) and brother. Then there is the blanket on the arm of the chair, which is from Bhakti's jacquard Hanuman series. When you live with a photographer you never know…

Where Did The River Go?

Twelfth in a series documenting the Torah Mantles project. Click on Torah Mantles in Categories in sidebar to see them all.

UPS delivered a new supply of weft yarn just in time, and I was able to weave another set of samples with the improved tree design. This version is definitely better, and the trees look really assertive. But in the translation to a new tree design, something happened to the river in the background, and when the sample was washed the river seemed to disappear. Not to worry—when the piece was hung on the feltboard and photographed under lights, the river came back, although faintly. I rather like the effect. It is visible from a distance, and the trees still stand out. Next step is to see how they look in the ark, in daylight and by artificial light.

A Short 40 Shaft Video

This is an attempt to create a brief animation of a simulation of a 40-shaft draft. That's a mouthful!

Better Trees

Eleventh in a series documenting the Torah Mantles project. Click on Torah Mantles in Categories in sidebar to see them all.

After the samples were cut from the loom, washed, and pressed, the results were disappointing. The trees did not emerge clearly from the background. Back to the drawing boards, and I will be weaving another set of samples with this revised draft:

The background was lightened up and simplified, and the tree trunks were beefed up several pixels in width. I did like the aubergine weft, and will use it again.

Just Thinking Out Loud

You know, I've been thinking some more about that off the wall suggestion of producing a weaving animation, along the lines of the knitting video I cited the other day. There was a flurry of interest, in spite of some very valid objections, so I've created a new blog category, animation, in case any of you would like to keep up with this topic.

My concept of this project is that—since it would have to be accomplished with the help of many volunteers—it wouldn't necessarily have to contain a strong narrative line, like the knitting video does. It could be a collage of separate short sections, united by a common material. The common material could be, for instance, 10/2 cotton in black and white, white for the warp and black for the weft, and a common sett of 24 epi and 24 ppi. The warps could be 10" wide and contain 240 ends, not a monstrous commitment.

If the animation were filmed at 10 fps (frames per second), one weaver could weave 10 iterations of a series for one second of video. 60 weavers could weave enough for one minute of video! But clever videography could stretch out the time with creative loopings and repeats. Dobby weavers of whatever experience level and equipment type could participate. Project leader could assign drafts for 8 shafts, 16 shafts, 24, 32, 40 shafts. Each draft would contain 10 liftplan variations.

Here are examples of 4 progressive variations of a 16-shaft design, in broken twill. Click to enlarge.

I'm even thinking  of a way 4-shaft weavers could participate, by weaving black and white weft stripes of ever increasing widths. Or more confident weavers could design their own series. Each volunteer could sign up for any desired multiple of 10 weavings, each 10"x10".

And if larger more complex dobby pieces were woven by some of our "star weavers," they could be panned and zoomed in Ken Burns fashion for additional footage. If any of our jacquard weavers cared to participate, a single panel woven in the requisite black and white could be panned and zoomed, too. And the ultimate goal of all this foolishness would be a presentation of our movie at CW Seminars 2010. 

Just thinking…

Remembering

The current issue of the Complex Weavers Journal has on its cover Wendy Morris's beautiful photo of the late Peter Collingwood. In the photo Peter is accepting a gift in honor of his participating in the CW-produced DVD "Peter Collingwood, Weaver."  The Journal photo is of necessity black and white, and Wendy has graciously permitted me to show you her photo here in glorious color. 

The wall hanging is one I wove this year for Peter at the request of CW 2008 Seminars Chair Penny Peters. It was a labor of love. I composited various elements for the weaving file: some text (The A-Maze-ing Peter Collingwood, Complex Weavers, St. Petersburg, FL, 2008), some palm trees for our Florida location, a maze generated on an Internet maze generation site, and a photo of Peter borrowed from his website. The weave structure is lampas with a ground weft and two pattern wefts, one of them handspun. The piece was woven on the TC-1. Judging from this picture and from several emails he sent me, Peter really enjoyed it. I'm so sorry he's not still with us.

If you haven't yet seen the incredible DVD organized by Stacey Harvey-Brown and Wendy Morris and made available by Complex Weavers, go to the CW site for information on purchasing it. It's an amazing (A-Maze-ing) testimony to this incredible and generous weaver, and a beautiful record of his accomplishments.

Three Sample Wefts

Tenth in a series documenting the Torah Mantles project. Click on Torah Mantles in Categories in sidebar to see them all.

The following was written on Saturday, posted on Sunday.

I've woven two more trees with the three sample wefts. Here is the gold weft:

…and here is the aubergine weft:

I think this one says "tree" the best of all three weft colors. The light/dark interaction works. If this version is chosen, the main body of the mantles will look like this:

Here is another view of the workspace:

Well, enough weaving for today. I'm shutting down and going to North Carolina for a concert by some of my favorite musicians, the Keowee Chamber Music.

Visionary Knitting

I just came across the amazing video Les peaux de lièvres from a Canadian group called "Tricot Machine" (Knitting Machine). As David at Dare to Care Records, producers of the video, explains, “We actually shot our characters on green screen to start with. Then we edited, keyed and composited in AE to add the other elements like snow and stadium. We then outputed 723 jpeg of the clip to our knitter that used them as templates for the knits.” The prodigious knitter is Lysanne Latulippe. Stop whatever you’re doing, do yourself a special favor, and watch the video. Watch it in high quality mode if you have a fast connection.

Les peaux de lièvres

Some of Dare to Care’s other productions have a textile sensibility. Roam around their website for some cool clips.

Department of What If:

We weavers could do something along these lines. All we'd have to do is weave 700 or so iterations of a design, each one slightly different from the one before, photograph them, and assemble them into an animation. Any volunteers? Maybe a study group? A guild project? 

Trees Emerge

Ninth in a series documenting the Torah Mantles project. Click on Torah Mantles in Categories in sidebar to see them all.

I chose three weft yarns for the first round of samples, trying to pick up some of the colors already in the sanctuary.

The threading went very well—no errors—an auspicious beginning. I began the weaving yesterday morning. The trees for the border are starting to emerge:

I think that after the cloth is washed and steam pressed, and when it is viewed from the appropriate distance, the trees will emerge with more oomph (technical term!). I'll be sampling them with the different weft colors. The cottolin warp and pearl cotton weft really glow.