Weaverly

People Who Make Music

Sunday afternoon we drove up to Asheville for a visit to two extraordinary people, flutist Kate Steinbeck, music director of Pan Harmonia, and her husband Chris Abell, maker of wooden flutes and owner of the Abell Flute Company. 

We've been enjoying Kate's music for years, with her group Keowee Chamber Players (recently renamed Pan Harmonia). It was fun to see her and Chris in their home environment. Here's Kate showing us her new studio space:

…and Chris chatting on the front porch (he doesn't really have a tree growing out of his head— sorrry, Chris).

And here's Tinker.

If you're ever within striking distance of Asheville, NC, you must catch a performance of Pan Harmonia. It's music of the most wonderful sort.

Street Photography, Cats, and a Birthday

Our son Erik has sent a link to the amazing story of street photographer Vivian Maier. She was a Chicago woman whose photographs of Chicago from the 1950's to the 1990's remained virtually unknown until discovered by accident by John Maloof at an auction. This is beautiful work. Take a look.

Last night's birthday party was a great success. My only pictures seem to be cat related; the first one is of Mimi's pussywillows in a strange state of blooming (I didn't know they did that), and the second is of Red Raider waiting for a chance to attack the new canary. I don't have a cat myself, and never had one; I have a secret fondness for them nevertheless. And Red Raider is an especially nice cat.

Karl pointed out that the birthday celebrant has only 26 years to go until he's 100. What a thought, Karl! 

A Very Fine Saturday

First of all—today's batch of bread came out well. Not like the last one, when I wasn't paying attention and put in a cup of instant yeast instead of a cup of rye flour. I won't tell you what happened. Use your imagination. But here is today's batch cooling on the kitchen counter. Doesn't it smell good?

Then while I was listening to Tosca I finished weaving the third of this week's handspun shawls and cut it off.

It will join its two sister shawls for fringe twisting when I get around to it, then they'll all have a nice soapy bath

 

Tonight: a birthday party. Can you imagine a nicer Saturday? Not I.

Organ Recital

Last night we attended another of the wonderful organ recitals at Furman. The Fisk organ in Daniel Chapel is a great instrument, and organist Edie Johnson was a treat to hear. The program included Bach and Vierne (not surprising), but the most interesting part of the program to me was Naji Hakim's "Hommage à Stravinski." The picture above shows Dr. Johnson rehearsing in the chapel just before the performance.

Registration is going well for the Photography for Weavers class at Weavolution (see sidebar). I'm looking forward to being an online teacher!

Xabathion Hemmed & Finished

Just cut off: Xabathion. It's posing for its first official portrait.

And a close-up. Click to enlarge.

I chose to keep the two layers (crepe and shaded satin) untied. The result is a surprising pouffiness; the crepe layer (black branches) shrunk a bit more than the satin layer. Nice textural depth.

Second Sample

After correcting the aspect ratio for Good Day…, I wove a second sample. Now the letters in the text are proportioned correctly.

Here's a closeup of the center section, showing the vertical line where the fold for the folios will be. On the right is the recto of the page, and on the left the verso of the next page.

There's a useful post defining recto and verso here.

We Go Online!

Just announced: my online class at Weavolution. I will be teaching Introduction to Photoshop for Weavers on February 8, 15, and 22 from 11:00am - 12:00pm Eastern Standard Time. This is a topic I've taught many times in workshops here and abroad, and will be teaching again at Southeast Fiber Forum in April. The three hour-long lectures on Weavolution will serve as a good introduction to Photoshop or Photoshop Elements for people new to digital designing, and a review for weavers already familiar with Photoshop. 

Topics covered in the three sessions are:

• Overview of Photoshop & Elements. Building Pattern Presets.
• The Design Process. Layers and Filters.
• Communication. Getting Photoshop to Talk to Your Weave Program and Your Loom.

For more information and to register, go here. Hope to meet some of you online!

Good Day To You My Friend

Continuing the great studio clean-out. Another carton of 20-year-old fabrics is going to GoodWill, along with 2 bags of knitting yarns. In the past month I have made two pairs of pants with fabric from my stash, and woven five shawls, further depleting the handspun stash. The space gained is amazing. With a clean worktable, I was able to unpack a 2-month-old shipment of paper from Talas and tear down paper into signatures for four books. Whew!

The timing is—well—timely. I've been invited to participate in an exhibition of artist books, and for this project I think I will do another book of woven pages, along the lines of Letters From My Uncle. I'd like to weave a text in double twill, readable from both sides of the page. For my text I've chosen a wonderful (wonderful to me—you may not agree) I've been saving in my junk mail folder. It's an internet scam, undoubtedly, and contains the most amazing flowery language. It begins: Good day to you my friend. It is understandable that you might be a little bit apprehensive because you do not know me but I have a lucrative business proposal of mutual interest to share with you. 

Here's a color simulation of my preliminary file, front and back. There will be three signatures, six pages.

This morning I wove a test strip for aspect ratio, and took a quick snap of it with my cell phone.

I'll have to do some adjustments. Width 13 7/8" , 880 ends, therefore 63.42 epi. Weft 112 ppi. 112 divided by 63.42 is approx. 1.77, which is the new aspect ratio. The original file is 1576 pixels long. Multiply that by 1.77 to get 2789. I'm rounding that down to 2784 so that it's a multiple of 24, which is the size of my pattern preset. So I will resize my file (Nearest Neighbor method in Photoshop) to 2784 pixels high.  

Aside: My blog is my working notebook, so please forgive the extra details today. I lose my notebooks all the time, but so far I haven't lost my blog!

To resume: I'm also going to invert the lefthand half of the file, so that the signatures when folded will all have the main text on the recto and the secondary text on the verso of the pages.

If you'd like to learn more about using Photoshop to design for jacquard or dobby weaving, refer to The Woven Pixel and The Liftplan Connection in the sidebar.

Two Riffs on Hyacinths

Branches, Layered

If you live in a northern temperate zone, as I do, winter is the best time of year for observing bare branches unobstructed by leaves. And if you're a Photoshopper (Photoshoppist?), and a weaver besides, you will probably be combining branch pictures in layers in preparation for new weaving designs.

But some days you really get lucky and the branches seem to compose themselves in layers without any outside interference. Today was such a day for me. On my walk this afternoon, I saw many examples of layered branches. Or perhaps I was just paying attention. Regardless, here are two especially good examples.