Weaverly

Miami Skies

Starting to warm up a bit. Here is some local color.

Blanket

Blanket woven in 8" strips. Hand spun wool & alpaca on a wool warp. Overshot & plain weave, joined with 3-step zigzag stitch. Circa 1980.

Curtains

Typepad has been awfully fussy about posting on the road, but I'm going to give it one more try from Miami. Here's a curtain from Erik's collection. Networked huck & plain weave, 16 shafts, linen & rayon, published in Weaver's back in the day.

Little Shirts

In the early Nineties, before I fell headlong into network drafting, I wove a number of 4-block double weave studies. Many of these found their way into Erik's collection. Here we are in Erik's airbnb cottage in Coconut grove, and I get to see these pieces again. An example:

If you're wondering about the weather in Miami, it's pretty darn cold, but I think today it will creep up into the 60's.

Floating Selvedges for Fly-Shuttle Looms

Helga has graciously permitted me to publish her diagram of how to set up floating selvedges for a fly-shuttle loom. Thank you, Helga. I think it's brilliant! 

If you'd like more information about this method, please contact Helga directly. 

 

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Floating Selvedges Again

Some interesting comments yesterday on floating selvedges. Jean is accustomed to enter the shuttle under the FS and exit it over the FS, just the reverse of what I do. But we both agree that the important thing is not to have to look at the shuttle, but let the hands do their thing by touch. 

Helga sent me an eye-opening comment via email. She pointed out that there is a way to use a floating selvedge with a fly shuttle, and included a diagram! I had no idea. My loom with fly shuttle beater has long since departed the studio, but if I still had it I would definitely try this trick. She has a lovely blog, by the way. As does Jean.

Keeping my fingers crossed with the 40-shaft dobby. A trip to the hardware store for a $2.99 item has (I think) put me back in business. Time will tell. The stripes based on 10-shaft granite are starting to emerge.

 

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For years I have avoided floating selvedges whenever possible. Too fiddly, I thought. In fact, I have taught workshops to introduce threadings that produce good selvedges automatically! But the more I work with granites, the more I realize I have to rethink my bias against floating selvedges. Today's baby blanket is an example. The floating selvedge, for those who don't already know, is a couple of warp ends that go through the reed but not through any heddle. They literally float in the middle of the shed, and the weaver passes the shuttle into the shed over a floating selvedge on one side and exits the shuttle under the floating selvedge on the other side. The weft then automatically catches on the edges with every pick. 

 

I am discovering that after a couple of hours the motions become automatic, and one doesn't even have to look at the shuttles; the fingers can feel exactly where the shuttle needs to go. Floating selvedges, my new best friends. The only downside is that you can't use them with fly shuttles. 

I am so grateful that the 8-shaft loom is working dependably. Things are not as rosy in the 40-shaft department. Maybe this week a solution will be found.

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An Eye and Some More Stripes

Ever notice how much the weather dominates casual daily conversation? Hot enough for you? Cold enough for you? Wet enough for you? Yes to the last one. I was cleaning up some of the dead limbs that fell from the trees after the thunderstorms a couple of days ago, and saw this beauty, with all its excrescences, lying in the gutter amid torrents of water. The more I look at the picture, the more I see a giant eye. 

Moving on…I was playing with the weather-inspired stripes from yesterday and tried to see what I could do for eight shafts. Here's the result. I'm thinking of rethreading the current warp, which is a long one, into straight draw so that I can weave this draft. Granite.

 

Here's a single repeat:

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Playing With Stripes

Yesterday I went for a walk as soon as the rain stopped and I was rewarded with some great puddles and reflections.

I cropped the central striped portion of the above photo and enlarged it…

…then blurred it…

…and indexed it to 3 grays…

…then straightened it up and saved it as a pattern preset…

…which, when shrunk or enlarged and repeated, can fill any sized space…

A pleasant morning's work!

If you'd like to learn more about how I use Photoshop for weaving design, check out the books in the sidebar.

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TMI and Shades of Gray

This morning as I was listening to the radio during breakfast, three alarms went off nearly simultaneously. First was the weather alert on the radio (We call him Lars because his electronic voice sounds Swedish to our American ears—with apologies to my Swedish friends). This was a severe thunderstorm alert for local counties. Second was our land line phone, with the same alert, this time in a neutral mid-western voice, with the same message. Third was my mobile phone, ditto. Five minutes later the same triple sequence occurred, but the message was to expect severe flooding in low-lying areas. 

Please understand that I am grateful for adequate warnings of these serious events, and I'm equally grateful that (so far) I am not experiencing the terrible results of severe weather. But sometimes there is just TMI.

Now it is raining heavily, and I think the worst of the weather pattern has moved on by. Here is what it looked like out the back door at sunrise. Shades of gray.

And modified to 4 shades of gray.

 

 

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