Weaverly

Fringe Benefits

The gray warp is all woven and cut off. This morning I sat on the back porch and tied fringes. 

The paperback I am using as a weight is the first one that came to hand, a weighty tome from my cookbook shelf. The New York Cookbook was recommended to me when I was researching the best recipes for a NY style Jewish rye bread, which some in the North call corn bread.

Apparently the term "corn bread" in this context is not the Southern style made with mostly corn meal, but a dense rye bread with a little corn meal, and a good sour flavor. 

In her introduction to the recipe, Molly O'Neill quotes Terry Kornick, " My mother learned to make this from her brother, Izzy, who immigrated to New York from Poland, where he had been in the shoe business." 

That's what I love about this cookbook. It's full of little personal gems. Out of print, you can still find plenty of used copies. 

And now a closer look at the scarf. 

And if that's just too much orange for you, here's a little purple from yesterday evening's jaunt to the lakeside to see the iris in bloom.

Mother's Day Around Here

A gift of flowers. It's hard to take a picture here without a loom photobombing. 

My favorite lunch (hey, I get to choose today!).

A visit from the grandkids. 

A walk around the lake.

An astonishing rhododendron bush.

This ingenious bridge is the work of Furman student Isaiah Ives. It's constructed using K'nex building toys.

Irises everywhere.

And back in the studio, I dug into my new supply of lyocell and started a piece on an interleaved threading draft. 

I hope you're enjoying your weekend.

Revisions

The first scarf from the dobby warp has been cut off and washed, and it has a lovely hand. 

However, I do find the pattern to be way too elongated and the colors too restrained.

Revisions are in order. Here's the current screen in ProWeave.

And I did depart from stash-busting with a purchase of cayenne colored tencel yesterday. I'm using it as weft, and I've changed the design to interlocking circles. What a difference! 

The appearance of the cloth changes dramatically as you change viewing position. 

There's quite a bit of iridescence.

I'm having a good time with this one!

More Spring, a Towel, and a Heddle Vista

Ruth introduced me to a delightful place for a woodland walk just up the road. It's the Bunched Arrowhead Heritage Preserve, and as the name implies it contains a trove of Bunched Arrowhead. The BA's do not appear to be out just yet, but I hugely enjoyed the walk through fields, woods, and swampy parts. Spring!

I cut the first hemp towel off the Nilus warp, gave it a good washing & drying, and took it out on the porch for a photo. The cloth was quite stiff on the loom, but after its bath it feels soft and squishy, a perfect towel!

It's very vain, and wants you to see a few more pictures.

And a close-up, of course.

I usually don't like to cut off the projects one at a time, but I couldn't wait to see the finished towel. There's really not too much loom waste here, just a couple of inches lost to the re-tying. Now it's ready for a second towel, for which I have just enough hemp left in my stash.

On the dobby loom, meanwhile, I just noticed the intriguing arrangement of heddles as seen behind the reed. It's a kind of echo of the threading arrangement, and in certain times of day it looks just like the organ pipes on a large chapel organ. Or so it seems to me.

Moving On. Spring and All That.

First of all a big Thank You to everyone who tuned in to Textiles & Tea. I loved your comments, and I love being part of this great big warm inclusive funny messy community. To those of you who posted comments on my blog requesting publications: Please email me privately (email link is in the sidebar to the left) and include your contact information. I can't process your requests without an email address! 

And now a brief report from the outdoors.

Yes, spring is here, with a vengeance.

The area of the trail that was cleared of fallen trees is slowly being tamed, so that I can get through it without mud up past my ankles. All of this debris will be covered eventually by new growth. 

This pile of old vines and branches gladdens a weaver's heart.

And here's a nod to all you Formula 1 fans out there. I didn't know there were so many of you! 

A new warp is being wound on to the dobby loom. It's wool and tencel, end and end.

What would we ever do without lease sticks?

Beaming on.

Now a few weft samples. 

I finally chose some peach colored soy silk from my stash. This fabric is oddly iridescent. It changes appearance as you walk around it.

I'm seeing people here! That's a surprise.

This & That

Thank you, everyone, for your interest in my publications, particularly the newest, Amalgamation.  The best way to contact me for orders is through email, not in the comments to the individual posts. My email link is in the sidebar, to the left. If you leave comments on my blog without your email address, I can't respond to you!

Warping again. It keeps me grounded during these awful times.

For those who have asked about the weights, they are called SoftGrip Hand Weights. These particular ones are 2.5 lb. each. A quick internet search will bring up many suppliers. Or you could use milk jugs filled with water, or cloth bags filled with rice. But these are not as messy. Just sayin'.

Sample, sample, sample. Red cotton and yellow rayon in the warp, purple cotton weft

Interleaved non-parallel threading in ProWeave software. If your eyes are sharp, you can spot Uncle Potch's self-portrait on the far wall. Potch was my father's brother. The whole paternal side of my family came from a town in Europe called Lvov, now known as Lviv. 

You've all got your own favorite organizations for support of Ukrainian refugees, but here are two suggestions:

International Rescue Committee

HIAS

Straight Lines and Curves

No shortage of straight lines this morning at the Sustainability Center. More broccoli to come.

And for curves, I give you these...

...or these.

Meanwhile, I am still enjoying weaving dishtowel-sized samples on 12 shafts. This is a waffle variant.

And yet another waffle weave variant.

I don't know what you would call this. It started out as a 7-shaft point twill, and I amalgamated it & came up with this. OK, let's call it a crepe. Wet finishing will tell us more.

Another oddity which will  metamorphose into something very 3D. 

In the Department of Books, I have just finished reading Lucky Us by Amy Bloom. I loved her novel Away when I read it several years ago, and this one is equally good. 

The Way Forward

Sometimes I start a project from an idea of a color palette. That was the case this week.

The tree that had been blocking my path for the past month was finally being removed. Despite mud and tangled vines, I kept going anyway.

On the loom, the gold and lavender warp is ready to weave, and the threading is straight twill on 12 shafts, with 4 shafts remaining for the basket weave selvedges.

I'm using a variety of weaves for this one. Adaptations of waffle weaves and crepes. Some of them are 16-shaft weaves I found on handweaving.net adapted for 12 shafts.

Using up odds and ends of 10/2 cotton. My overarching goal is stash reduction.

I'm rather fond of these selvedges.

In Between Time

Everything's definitely in a holding pattern. The animals are trying to decide: is it time yet? 

The plant life has one foot in autumn and the other foot in spring. 

And the humans are confused. I think they are trying to figure out the shape of the new normal. 

In weaver country, nothing much has changed. Not so you can see on first inspection.

The striped warp has been cut off, washed & dried. Here it is in a heap, just emerged from the drier. 

In the Department of Books, I have finished reading Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God.

If a Tree Falls in the Forest

Yesterday I got almost this far...

...and this lay across my path and I had to turn back. 

I am such a creature of routine that I found it difficult to backtrack and take another path. But I don't clamber over downed trees any more. Crawling around under my loom to repair broken cables is about my limit now. 

Here's the first sample on my new striped warp. 

Not quite what I had in mind. I like it better with a black weft. It has a cottolin warp and I'm using odds & ends of cotton in the weft. Sixteen shafts.

Meanwhile, the 30/2 linen warp which had languished for weeks on the Jane (8 shafts) was finally finished and cut off. And not a drop of champagne in the house! Too bad. I braided the fringes, then into the washing machine it went. 

I hung it from the shower rod to dry. It was still stiff as a board, so I repeated the washing two more times. It's starting to soften up. I think after a steam pressing it will be the texture I was looking for. Warp 30 epi, weft 15 ppi. 


A closer look.

Here's the draft. It's a crepe weave on a straight draw.

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Just finished reading Whereabouts by Jhumpa Lahiri.