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Sunday we went to Table Rock Lake and did some easy hiking around the lake. The leaves are mostly all fallen now and the lines of the trees and contours of the land are more apparent. The brown palette is especially attractive to me.
The dried weeds and grasses are a garden in themselves.
I warped up another tablet project with my new palette. My hands are getting better with this forward/backward thing.
In the Running Dog & Ram's Horn patterns, as you may know, some tablets reverse often, automatically undoing the buildup of twist, while other tablets keep going in one direction, eventually building up so much twist that special procedures, such as weighting these warps separately and taking out the twist by hand. I've discovered, as many have before me, that if you reverse these "constant" tablets every so often, in a regular sequence, the twist can be neutralized. In this little band, I've reversed the twist of the selvedge tablets & the two center tablets every three motifs, introducing a little hiccup in the pattern; The swirls go clockwise for three repeats, then counter-clockwise for three. The loom's happy, I'm happy.
This time a real dog. Thomas had a very active Thanksgiving, and toward the end of the evening, he ran into the house with a toy duck in his mouth and collapsed into his favorite chair. Very appropriate choice of toys, seeing as he's a Lab.
This morning Erik packed up to return home, and posed in the kitchen for a quick photo with his early birthday present, a jacquard interpretation of his photo of Molli. Eleven shades of gray, folks.
Casting around for subject matter for a quick watercolor sketch in an odd 15-minute interval, I came across a red potato. My resident critic says it looks like a dog. No matter. The important thing is that I was in the moment.
A couple of days later the very same potato was peeled and cut up. Since it was already not your ordinary potato, a snapshot was called for.
And then a few hours after that, with the application of heat, the potato was looking like this, nestled next to the meatloaf in the baking dish.
I guess that's all you care to know about my potato.
Did you see the moon last night?
I'm so glad I had my phone in my pocket. And yes, I did stop to savor the moment.
But sometimes we're too quick to take out the camera. Here's what some people are doing about it:
Thanks to Danny Gregory for that link.
Happy Thanksgiving, y'all.
After three unweavings, which collectively took more time than the weaving itself, the 26" of tablet woven hatband are finished and installed on the hat. Click to enlarge. This project did much to build character in the weaver.
Still pursuing ease with the tablets. My goal is to weave a band long enough to go around a cowboy hat, with no detectable mistakes, in a technique with groups of forwards and backwards turning tablets (two packs) at the same time. If you've been there, you know what I mean. When I'm able to do that, then I'll try one with individually weighted border warps. That's what the big girls (and guys) do. It's always good to have goals. Meanwhile there's this. Three inches, no mistakes.
In shopping news, the Thanksgiving produce supervisors are putting out their holiday displays. There was this beautiful bin of Granny Smith apples yesterday. Don't you just hate it when they put those sticky labels on the fruit & veggies?
If I had nothing better to do, I could spend some time eliminating the labels with Photoshop. But I'd rather work on the hatband instead. There's a cowboy waiting.
The tablet weaving part of my weaving year has come around again. What I'm trying to do this time is rationalize (i.e., make rational) a system for warping and designing my own patterns in which a single thread is set against a background of three contrasting threads in each card. There are several good publications and articles about how to do this, but unfortunately (as all tablet weavers know) there is no standardization of drafting formats in the tablet weaving world. Well, I think I've figured it out to the point where I can explain it to someone else. I will eventually share it, and in so doing, probably add to the confusion :-)
The weaving, on the other hand, is pretty straightforward, unless, as happened this morning, I am interrupted by a robocaller telling me that I've won a free cruise to the Bahamas. If you look carefully at the following, you will see exactly where this occurred.
As it was pretty near the beginning, I decided against trying to correct it, and just barged ahead and ignored the error. I have enough warp so that the bad section can simply be excised.
It's going better now:
It's interesting but not surprising that some favorite themes reoccur periodically in my work.The sinuous line is a natural result of the particular tools I am using—single thread control (TC-1) and Photoshop. This is a lampas sample in satin and twill I wove yesterday:
and as I was straightening up the studio I came across these old friends from six or seven years ago, true double weave with twill in both layers:
Good news for people who might be wanting to order a copy of Network Drafting or Liftplan Connection from Lulu.com: they are offering a 20% discount until Nov. 19. Go to Lulu.com, search on Alice Schlein, and that should get you to the right place. The discount code, entered on checkout, is PRESALE20 (case sensitive).
Pianist Marta Felcman acknowledging the audience's appreciation after yesterday's concert at Temple of Israel's Music on Sunday series.
Scarlatti, Mozart, Nikolai Medtner, & Robert Schumann. An afternoon to remember. Thank you, Marta.
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