Weaverly

Out of the Dark, Into the Light

In this house, where we've been living for the past 35 years, the weaving studio is in the basement. In the early years, there was also a bathroom down there with an adjoining closet. We tore down the connecting wall between the closet and the bathroom, ripped out the fixtures, closed off the window, and converted the space into a darkroom for Bruce. He produced lots of good work there, in both black & white and color.

Then came the advent of digital photography, and one day we woke up to the fact that that darkroom would never be used again. Exit darkroom. The space was reconverted into a bathroom, albeit a huge one. I had always wanted a permanent place where I could photograph my completed weavings without having to go outside on a sunny day, fight with the wind, drag around the portable backdrops, etc., and here was my chance. I mounted a large sheet of black felt on one wall, purchased two inexpensive lights & diffusers on stands, and brought in my tripod. Now as soon as a piece comes off the loom, I whisk it into the bathroom, pin it up on the wall, put the camera on the tripod, and photograph the weaving.

The new window is a fixed piece of frosted plexiglass which lets in light but maintains privacy. In the early mornings, when the sun is just right, the light streams in and the bushes outside cast beautiful silhouettes. And the light hits the umbrella diffusers in such a way that they appear to be illuminated from within. I love my new photography studio (and having a bathroom on the same floor as my studio isn't bad, either)!

Now You See It, Now You Don't

As the fabric for the Torah Mantles snakes its way around the rollers, under the loom, and on to the cloth storage beam, it reveals an expansive view of its underside. The sinuous watery pattern, only very slightly visible on the public side of the cloth, is more apparent on the back. A mystery.

In other news, the real Homer weaver has been heard from! Read her delightful comment to yesterday's post.

And be sure to read Augusta Uhlenbeck's insightful comments on the post Damassé, Dec. 27.

On the Internet, nobody knows…

In that famous New Yorker cartoon of 15 years ago, there are two dogs in front of a computer monitor, and one dog says to the other, "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog." This perfectly encapsulates one of the charms of the online community, namely, that you can be whoever you want to be while online—young, old, male, female, a chatterbox, a sphinx, even a dog. 

When I began this blog, exactly one year and five days ago, I had no idea where it would take me. I have a sad history of startitis—starting projects and not finishing them, especially diaries and journals. Much to my surprise, blogging turned out to be not a pesky obligation, but a stimulus for other work, a way of staying on goal and focusing my attention. And a huge unlooked-for bonus of blogging has turned out to be the fascinating interchange between other bloggers (especially weavers) and myself. I've acquired so many new friends, some of whom I may never meet in the flesh but who are nevertheless real and important to me. Some of these people leave comments or send me private emails, and some just show up every day. I treasure them all. Knowing that people read what I write is such a thrill!

There is a little map on the sidebar showing worldwide locations of my readers. No names are mentioned, and the readers maintain complete anonymity, which is their right and privilege. Only their locations are shown, as little red dots. Most of these are in countries where English is spoken, as a primary or auxiliary language, which is what you'd expect for a blog written in English. The dots are clustered together just as populations are clustered, but there are some interesting outliers. One which has piqued my curiosity for many months is a dot in Homer, Alaska. 

Now, dear Homer person, please forgive me for singling you out. I know nothing about you except that you read my blog, and that's all I need to know. You are precious to me because you are there. But I can't help wondering about you. Since I have no actual facts, I must fabricate my own picture. I had the good fortune to visit the town of Homer four years ago, and I do have a mental picture of your landscape, so that's a start.

Now here's what I imagine: you are a 40-year old female, of medium height and on the thin side, with long brown hair and intelligent brown eyes. You don't like wearing makeup and your preferred clothing is jeans and an old college sweatshirt. Every morning after breakfast you go upstairs to your second-floor studio overlooking the bay, sit down at your loom, and weave woolen blankets on an 8-shaft loom. You favor fancy twills in reds and oranges, but use an occasional acid green for accent. When you tire of blankets, you weave gorgeous linen placemats in crackle blocks, in great demand at craft fairs.

But on the Internet, nobody knows…

Chair

Taking a break from the mantles, I'm revisiting a drawing I did a few weeks ago of my favorite chair. I've interpreted it for weaving on the 5-color warp (still a yard or two left!) on the TC-1. Here's the start of the weaving:

…and for good measure, a close-up:

Damassé

Here are a couple of drafts using satin and basket weaves, which I first mentioned a few days ago. The correct term for combining satin with another weave is damassé (whereas combining a warp-faced satin with a weft-faced satin is damask).

The first draft is for a straight threading on 40 shafts.

The next draft is an advancing threading on 40 shafts conforming to a network of 8-end initial. The circles in the lift plan were elongated 3x to match the fact that a single repeat of the advancing threading is 3x as long as a single repeat of the straight threading. The result: the circles come out round, sort of.

And here's a version for 24 shafts, straight threading.

Seven Trees

The weaving of the Torah Mantles. I'm so pleased at the way this is going, that I'll just let the pictures speak for themselves. Click on any of these to enlarge.

Weaving Haiku

Cold gray winter day—

Weaver readies her shuttles.

Bright basket of pirns.

The Persnickety Part

This is the persnickety part, before the actual weaving begins. First I weave a header in scrap yarn, then I weave a few inches at a time, also in waste yarn, to check for threading errors, tension problems, etc. There were two threading errors, which took some time to correct. Then I discovered that one of the rear shafts was misbehaving toward the right selvedge; I found that there was no heddle stabilizing the very end of that shaft. Duly corrected. There were three loose warp ends. Corrected. A whole morning gone! And I still haven't wound any pirns with the aubergine weft. But at least a psychological hurdle has been passed.

Satin and Basket

A few days ago I received the current edition of the Damask Network Newsletter, published by Damaskweavers' Network. As I have never done drawloom weaving, some of the material in the newsletter is outside my area of interest, but I always learn something from these folks. In this issue I was particularly drawn to an article by Augusta Uhlenbeck, entitled The woven Damask ‘digten’ in the Dutch Republic. One of the weaves Uhlenbeck describes in this article is a combination of 8-end satin and basket weave, combined for a matt-and-shiny effect on a drawloom. 

It was as if a light had gone on in a dark room. I had never considered combining these two weaves, but looking at the diagrams I could see that they would go together well. If I adjusted the starting and ending points of the satin, I could combine the two weaves so that the basket weave was inclusive of the satin, and could then be used for jacquard work or network drafting on a dobby loom, with perfect control of floats (no over-long floats at design edges).

For dobby weaving, satin & basket could be combined in a lift plan for straight threadings on a multiple of 8 shafts; or for networked threadings plotted on a network based on an 8-end straight initial.

I'll post some example drafts soon.

 

Longest Nights, Shortest Days

To all my readers in the Northern Hemisphere: whatever you celebrate at this time of longest nights and shortest days, I wish you good friendships, health, and happy weaving. And of course the same goes to you folks in the Southern Hemisphere, where presumably you enjoy longest days and shortest nights. 

Torah Mantles Update: the reed is sleyed.

To Janet, who wonders why I don't leave the sandpaper-covered breast beam off until after the reed is sleyed: I can rest my forearms on the beam while I am sleying. I am just tall enough. In a few more years, this may no longer be the case.  And yes, I do temporarily cover the beam with a towel to keep it from its flesh-devouring propensities.

And thanks to Desiweaver who added another title to my list of weaving-related fiction: Stand the Storm, by Breena Clarke.