Weaverly

Chaos

Chaos. What do you do when the world seems incomprehensible? Wind another warp, of course.

And the next picture is not related to the previous. It's for a warp in the planning stages, and may never make its way to the loom. That's OK, sometimes playing with the software is a good exercise to clear the mind, like a certain unnamed puzzle everyone is playing these days. You know the one I mean.

I have just finished reading We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, by Karen Joy Fowler. This is the one about a little girl who was raised from birth alongside an infant chimpanzee, as a psychology experiment. Outrageous and compelling.

I'm also in the middle of The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine by Serhii Plokhy. This is a heavy going, as it is quite long, but I can't put it down. I'm learning a lot about my own family history here. 

Never Say Never

I'll never thread another black warp, she said. Never say never.

I absolutely wanted this warp, black and olive green, end and end, so I ignored my previous prohibition and wound it anyway. It went on the beam very smoothly, and here it is ready for threading.

Lo and behold, it was not that difficult. Something about the haptics of selecting the threads from the cross. Maybe it was muscle memory. Whatever it was, the threading and denting went quickly

Yesterday, after a few technical issues with TempoTreadle, which were quickly ironed out by the good folks at LoftyFiber, I was ready to go. It's a parallel or interleaved threading, aka echo weave, woven as doubleweave on 8 shafts.

Taking a break from the studio, I walked around the lake in spite of the drizzle. It was quite refreshing.

At the Sustainability Center the little black & white cat was as friendly as ever. She appears to be quite interested in tomatoes. 

Stopping for groceries on the way home I was stopped in my tracks at the bakery display, where a new batch of cakes had just been put in the refrigerated case. I didn't buy any of these, but I was sorely tempted by that chocolate ganache in the bottom row.

At the Intersection of Bored and Audacious

The last of the many tied-on warps is finished.

It's a faux huck on 16 shafts. It repeats every 112 picks. Straight threading.

And here it is after cutting off and washing. Very scrunchy, highly textured. Click to enlarge.

After all that purple, I really welcomed some complementary orange at this morning's breakfast.

Now for a brand new warp. Here's the audacious part. I wanted to blend a 4-shaft overshot and an 8-shaft point twill, so that I could weave both of them on a 16-shaft warp. It was a fun exercise, one that kept me occupied for an entire day. After blending, it turned out that 4 of the shafts were not needed, but in order to better distribute the uneven numbers of heddles on the remaining shafts, I doubled some of the shafts, and came up with the following really strange threading:

Maybe some of you math wizards can explain to me why the blended drafts originally required only 12 shafts. Be that as it may, here is the new blended 16-shaft warp. Point twill and overshot. Check.

More audacity: my Christmas Cactus has produced a February blossom! 

Contortions

Here comes the sun. This is easy enough to see if you are standing in the right place.

But it gets challenging if you try to look up at the sky while in an upright position. Very risky, actually. It was worth it.

You can be a contortionist if you try to photograph the reverse side of the cloth as it approaches the cloth beam. This is not as risky, especially in a carpeted room, as you are closer to the floor and don't have as far to fall.

No contortions necessary when photographing the top side. More blended overshot and rosepath. 

In the Department of Books, I just finished reading The History of Love by Nicole Krauss. Moving, funny, surprising, suspenseful.

In Limbo

Hard to believe that on the morning of January Sixth I was talking about dishtowels. Then all h**l broke loose. 

Obsessively stitching. Can't keep still. 

Cleaning up the studio.

Gazing out the window.

Finally put on a new warp this morning. A little sample of a new blended draft. Rosepath and overshot. The overshot is an original draft, entitled LinenPants. On this 8-shaft threading one could weave rosepath, overshot, or plain weave. Imagine.