Weaverly

Find Your Best Cow

I am frequently entertained by the language I hear in yoga class. We in the class understand exactly what Kelly means when she says "Find your best cow." But if a stranger were to walk in off the street, they would find this uproariously funny. 

Another funny yoga expression is "cactus your arms." Sharon and Joy and Herman and I and the others understand this perfectly. But that hypothetical stranger would certainly wonder. For starters, who knew that cactus is a verb?

OK, enough of that. Here is my Thanksgiving loaf. It was gone in about 20 minutes.

And here is my walk in the woods. A tree really did fall in the forest. Right across my path.

On the loom, some samples of Summer & Winter weave. 

 

Signs of hope in the ever-changing  Department of Houseplants. It appears that my Christmas Cactus may actually bloom this year, for the first time since 2019.

Just finished reading The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos. 

Also finished reading They Came Like Swallows by William Maxwell.

Tempting Fate

My dear 16 shaft dobby loom, which I am trying to sell to make more room for other pursuits, does not seem to be attracting any buyers. I am now tempting fate by putting a new warp on it, the theory being that as soon as I start a new project, someone will snatch the loom out from under me. It has happened in the past, so why not again?

I'm tying on to an existing straight threading. I've developed a wonky version of huck that can be woven on this threading and I'm eager to try it out. The warp and weft spots are sort of offset from each other vertically and horizontally and separated by a bit of plain weave. If you happen to use a two-color warp and two other colors for weft, there will be four different and distinct float colors. 

Stash reduction is the goal here. I was able to empty seven or eight partial cones of 10/2 cotton on this chain. The color order in the warp is random and I will be using a single shuttle for weft, so my colors will be hit or miss for this adventure.

The warp is 10 yards long, and I was very happy to have the use of these weights to make the beaming go smoothly.

The bitter end.

And now the weaving has begun. My weft is pink cotton thick & thin yarn, and perhaps I have enough of it to weave off the entire warp. I think by assembling multiple panels of stripes in interesting ways, I can get a garment out of this. The fabric should wash up nicely in an interesting bumpy texture. Stay tuned.

In the Department of Books, I have just finished reading Shirley Hazzard: A Writing Life by Brigitta Olubas. It's a biography of one of my favorite writers.

The Winds of Change

 

Bhakti and I published The Woven Pixel in 2006 after two years of in-person meetings and intensive solitary weaving and writing sessions, in South Carolina and New Mexico, and via the Internet (pre-Zoom). We were overwhelmed at the positive response this work has received, from individual weavers and educational institutions. After the first two physical printings sold out, we decided to make the work available for download with the gracious cooperation of Kris Bruland at handweaving.net. It is still available for download there, after payment of a very reasonable registration fee.

Up until now, we have also been making the contents of the accompanying CD, with all 1400 Pattern Presets, available for a download fee of $100 USD. This has been a popular option for many of you. But things change, and Bhakti and I have decided that as of Dec., 31, 2023, we will no longer be providing the download option. If you are thinking of purchasing the Pattern Presets, now is the time!

The information will not be lost, however. We believe that with a careful reading of the text any weaver will be able to reconstruct the presets on their own, following the principles we outline in the book. So until Dec. 31, if you are still interested in purchasing the CD contents for $100 USD, please email aschlein at att dot net for payment instructions.

A big weaverly thank you to everyone who has supported us in spreading the joy of designing for jacquard and dobby looms with ©Photoshop. 

The View From Here

The other morning our neighbor, Charlie, phoned excitedly and told us to look at the buttermilk sky. So we ran outside with our phones and saw this:

I'd heard the term before, but never knew what it was. Thank you, Charlie!

It has really been the most gorgeous autumn around here. Morning walks are a treat.

So are late afternoon walks.

Dusk is nice, too.

And back in the studio, the stashbusting continues. I never thought I'd find a use for that awful pink, but voilà!

I'm loving my deep dive into four shafts. 

Don't Try This At Home

I was really loving this warp, but there wasn't nearly enough of it. So I decided to wind another warp to tie on to it, but in a finer grist of yarn. So I first resleyed the old one from 24 epi to 30 epi, then wound several warp chains from the finer yarn in various colors, to use up partial cones from my stash. The new warp is 10 yards long.

I then tied the new chains onto the old warp. Here's the situation seen from the back of the loom after the knots went through the reed and the heddles. 

The separate chains are shown here in their own baggies. It was a tangled mess and took two whole days to beam. 

There were several stupid counting errors to correct for.

If I had any sense, I'd have thrown the whole thing away at the start.

But I have a stubborn streak. And here's the new warp, ready for weaving.

It's 10/2 cotton at 30 epi. I'm weaving it here with 2 strands of 14/2 cotton/hemp for the weft, but will be able to use up all sorts of stash yarns on this warp.

The threading is blocks of rosepath and huck, and the treadling is experimental.

Four shafts.

A Bit of Stashbusting

I wanted to show you this picture I snapped a week or two ago down at the lake. I've been saving it, and I can't figure out how to incorporate it into a weaving-related narrative, so I'll just show it to you here. Because I like it. So enjoy. 

Now back to the business at hand. The new warp is wound onto my 4-shaft loom, and it's about time. There were many calculation errors, and I still didn't get the count right, but after multiple tweaks to the threading draft, it is now weavable. 

The treadling is very easy to memorize, so I am plowing ahead with this one sans electronics! 

In the Department of books, I have just finished reading Donn Tartt's The Goldfinch. It's a remarkable coincidence that this novel deals with the same subject matter as the previous book I read, Laura Cumming's Thunderclap: A memoir of art and life & sudden death. Both are wonderful in their own way.

Warm & Cool

In spite of what they say about atmospheric conditions in this part of the country, we do have some amazing blue skies sometimes. And at this time of year the complementary colors leave me speechless.

It's not surprising that this sort of thing happens:

Work in progress.

Going this way, maybe.