Weaverly

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.

 

Out Our Way

October around here is unusually colorful this year. We have blue skies, here reflected in the lake of course, and my friend the blue heron is posing fishing as usual. 

And fall color. Believe it or not I had to desaturate the color in Photoshop on this one because it was too glaring on my monitor.

The absence of color is also a color. Or something like that. She was very friendly although I just couldn't get her to smile for the camera. She was too interested in the little kids walking by. In earlier times I would have asked her owner to save some of the undercoat for me. I would have mixed it half and half with wool and spun it. Today I am happy to sit here and enjoy looking at this magnificent Samoyed. 

Meanwhile, back at home… 

That's what was on my kitchen counter last week, and all meal prep, such as it was, came to a halt until this warp was wound on. From my stash, handspun camel down plied with fine silk noil singles at 12 epi. It was a little scary, to tell the truth, but I decided to be gutsy and just plow ahead. And my weaving angels were looking out for me. I wove off the whole thing with the same yarn for weft, balanced plain weave. There was not a single broken warp end. First time ever. 

And here it is. I knotted the fringe during the first game of the World Series (yes, I stayed up for the whole game). Washed and steam pressed. It feels wonderful, soft from the camel down and just slightly scrunchy from the silk noil.

Blue. Not The Blues, just blue.

It's funny looking up at the sky. A skyscape, unlike a landscape, has no horizon. 

If you look down instead of up, it's easier to orient yourself. It's also easier to keep your balance.

Going indoors now. Here's the most recent lampas, cut off and roughly hemmed. 

And now by artificial light. But it's all lampas, with handspun wool (and sparkles) pattern weft. 

Now starting another lampas on the same warp. This one with two different pattern wefts in a (more or less) orderly sequence.

The brown is handspun Corriedale, and the gray is a combination of merino and Qiviut. 

In the Department of Books:

 

I've just finished reading Thunderclap: A memoir of art and life & sudden death by Laura Cumming. 

 

Puzzled

I've been raiding the puzzle cabinet across the street for some orphan jigsaw puzzle pieces that have lost their original boxes. What wonderful shapes! And sizes! I took a baggie of them home and glued them to cardboard, and have been using them as stamps in gel printing.

 

Here are some of the prints drying on my kitchen counter. They are printed on both sides and are the right size for binding into a small book. That will come later.

In the yarn department, some merino has been spun and plied, and will shortly get a warm bath.

 

A Tiny Book

Here's a little landscape oriented book (3"x 6") made from of scraps from a larger book. The cover is several layers of cereal boxes glued together, covered with gel printed paper. 

The pages are trimmings.

The endpapers are gel printed.

And just this morning, I spotted this butterfly perched on some scraps of plastic in a weed-filled lot. As I approached, the creature fly off, which was not surprising. But he/she kept going back to the plastic. Now I assume there was no nutritive value in the plastic, so what was attracting the butterfly? My only guess is that the bright colors were the lure. A creature after my own heart.

 

Just finished reading (for the second time—the first time was as a college freshman, while procrastinating about studying for exams) Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge. Not his best, IMHO. I can't remember why I loved it so much as a young person. 

 

Getting My Ducks (and Books and Other Stuff) in a Row

You may have wondered what has taken my so long. Well, I have been getting my ducks in a row.

In addition to trying to enjoy the beautiful fall weather, I have enrolled is a few Zoom classes to sharpen some skills.

One of them is a book making class taught by the always wonderful Ali Manning of Vintage Page Designs. 

My class project took advantage of some crinkled brown wrapping paper rescued from a yarn shipment. I painted the paper with watercolors and tried to iron out the crinkles as best I could.

This was a perfect opportunity to review my coptic spine moves, something I've neglected in recent months. The signature wrappers were also rescued from the scrap pile. I didn't buy a single new thing for this book! Extra points.

I also cut off the Daldråll pieces from my 4-shaft loom and spread them out on the porch floor for some quick snapshots. This is the version with Black Welsh Mountain handspun as the pattern weft.

And here is my variation with some unknown handspun, probably Romney, as pattern weft.

I much prefer the black version.

Back on the porch, my Christmas Cactus (mother plant and daughter just beside her) are enjoying their summer outdoors (thank you, Ruth!). It will be a shame to have to bring them indoors in a month or two.

In the Department of Books, just finished reading Seven For a Secret by Mary Webb. I was quite surprised to learn that there are at least six other authors who have written books with this same title, and probably many others. This one is--to put it politely--a little dated, but I did enjoy it.