Hey, wow, it's March already! What are you weaving?

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Artistry

Sally, This is gorgeous! I love it!

sally orgren

This is the easiest thing I have treadled for a CCW exchange in years! (I think I am mesmerized by the way it looks on the loom.)

And ironically, I have two JOY Tencel warps just waiting to be wound for our upcoming April workshop with Cathie and Diane. I have a 12 shaft pattern and a 6 shaft Dimity (which made me :-) when I saw the note from Diane on that draft!)

tien (not verified)

I finished my qiviut scarf! Here are two photos:

completed qiviut scarf

closeup of qiviut scarf

Re reed sizes - Erica, I use anything from a 10 dent to a 20 dent and generally round up or down to the next sett that goes evenly into one of my reeds. I think I have 10, 12, 15, 16, 18, and 20, and that covers most of the possibilities. I also own a 30-dent reed, but it's a pain to sley and not really necessary IMO. If I ever try anything at a sett of 120 epi (double weave with 120/2 silk?), I might use the 30-dent again, but that's really the only reason I can imagine needing it. The 20 is much easier to use.

Sally, nice curtains!! I love the patterning in the warp stripes.

ReedGuy

Hey! Cool curtains. :)

Like the muskoxen how they turned out tien. ;)

endorph

I love the button bobby pins and the curtain fabric is gorgeous!

Tien the musk ox are so cute what a wonderful scarf.

Congrats on getting back to the loom Laura.

Hang in there Cathie.

you all are so inspiring to me!

sarahnopp

This weekend was the first two days of a three day class with Mary Lane, learning tapestry from her. I have noodled around a bit with tapestry, and thought I understood a bit, but having her there to explain things in her way was a different level. Her experience and discipline offers a really a different approach to it than I have understoond from my reading thus far. I really liked how it made me dig to understand weaving structures differently. "Shed" is not exactly what I thought it was! 

I am tired from 25 square inches LOL It took approximately 13 hours  to achieve my wonky sampler with ever so many mistakes that I am going to treasure. I even got draw in, because apparently we forget old skills while learning new. And there was much laughing over how difficult it can be to do over-under or count to three. Next class is about working on our own designs, but I may do a bit more shading practice first.

And a picture of course. Because I achieved a curve I was happy with. Yay small victories.
 

 

sally orgren

" I even got draw in, because apparently we forget old skills while learning new" from sarahnopp.

Oh so TRUE!

Artistry

Sarahnopp - you said it so well AND with a healthy dose of humour ( which we need to keep sane !) Tapestry is hard! Good for taking a workshop from no less, Mary Lane par excellent ! Also your yellow curve looks quite nice:) FYI, my selvedges always go wonky when I try a new technique, drives me crazy. Tommye Scanlin in a workshop A while back taught me to put a warp end on each side of the tapestry woven into the heading not the tapestry. They serve as guide threads to show immediate draw in. I call them my training wheels,lol. Cathie

Erica J

I just read Laura's blog post on rough sleighing your reed, etc.http://laurasloom.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/cross-purposes.html

I want to go warp a loom now! Like right now, right now! :)

laurafry

Was able to dress the loom by myself. It is even threaded. Time to go sley and tie on. Cheers Laura Pics on my blog...

ReedGuy

Seems real quite around here. :)

I'm warping some soft 4/8 cotton (not rug yarn) for an afghan project in 5 end advancing twill.

endorph

quiet in here Reedguy - maybe that means everyone is really busy with weaverly stuff!  Laughing

tien (not verified)

I've been busy with some very weaverly stuff, but I don't want to unveil what I've been working on yet! I should be able to talk more about it within the next few days. But it is VERY exciting! :-)

As for my actual weaving, I have been working on the second qiviut scarf. Not as hard as previously - I had what I hope is a minor physical relapse, so I am taking it easy physically. Going to the doc today for my 2 week post-surgery checkup, hoping I didn't tear out any sutures or anything like that. I had no major bleeding so I don't expect I did, but there's always that nagging worry!

And I have been exploring Marian Stubenitsky's book Echo and Iris. I still need to do a lot more work to understand how it works, but I'm really enjoying looking at the pictures.

ReedGuy

I thought everyone went to their porches and gardens for the summer. Long way from that up here, but the snow is melting. ;D

tien (not verified)

You're right, ReedGuy! Here in my part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it was in the mid-80s yesterday. I had the air conditioner going full blast in the rear of the house, and opened up the front door (behind the screen door) and all the windows in the front of the house to try to cool things down. Unseasonably warm for us - we normally don't get this kind of weather until July.

But the plants are loving it! Our roses are blooming like crazy, the California poppies are gorgeous, and our artichoke plant is flooding us with tasty, tender artichokes. We pick them small and tender, so you can eat almost the whole thing.

Artistry

We are going to the summer house in Michigan today though it's still winter there. We don't care, love it year round. Gee Tien, hope you're o.k.! Can't wait to see your project that's under warps but take it easy. I love looking at Echo and Iris, so inspiring, beautiful photos, soon I'll dig into it too. Between tapestries ! I'm going to try to do some card weaving while in Michigan, we'll see how well I can concentrate. I've picked out pretty colors none the less :)

ReedGuy

Have a good time in MI Cathie. It is a nice spot in any of the northern parts I've been to at least. :)

Tien,  bet those greens are some tasty to. The spring greens we pick here in New Brunswick are grown in the woods, the osterich fern, when stil in fiddlehead stage. They are picked in May-June. I have also picked them in BC along the Skeena River in April, until I got into the stinging nettles. I was numbed for 3 days. LOL :D

theresasc

in SE Wisconsin - not a lot, just enough to make you want to pull your hair out.

Everyone has been so busy that I feel like such a slacker.  I have managed to wind a warp for shadow weave towels, but I have to finish something on one of the 8-shaft looms before I can do anything with it.  I thought winding the warp would get me back to the looms - hmmm.  So far that has not worked - LOL.

laurafry

I got the small loom dressed with another shawl warp yesterday so it is ready to go as soon as I find a round tuit. ;) Cheers Laura

ReedGuy

Hahaha! Sally  .....nice and warm here today, 50 F, snow's melting, sap's running. Of course it's all relative, better than 0F. :D

MMs-and-OOs-Ha…

Very nice! I have some qiviut fleece that remains unspun, PITA to remove the guard hairs. Your design reads very well. Very special.

tien (not verified)

Woo hoo! Two major pieces of good news yesterday:

First, I had my two week post-surgical checkup. Apparently my little "relapse" wasn't anything serious - in fact, the surgeon's assistant (who is a full-fledged doctor herself) was amazed by how well I was doing and the face that my incisions were fully healed. She said, "I'd be over the moon if every patient were doing as well as you at their two-week checkup." So very pleased with that.

Second, I got notification that my double weave placemats are semi-finalists in Handwoven magazine's Handwoven for the Home contest! So I will have to get them packed up and shipped out, along with detailed information on how to weave them. Very excited about that.

And I am making major progress on the Secret Project. I don't want to talk about it until it's finished, for fear of jinxing it, but I'm so excited about it I'm having trouble sleeping at night! (But don't worry, I'm taking naps during the day to make up for it.) I think I should be able to talk about it Wednesday or Thursday. Smile

Queezle

My month has been work intensive, but I feel lucky to have not had the medical issues so many of you are bravely facing.  I did finally get a sample warp off the loom, and am working toward a project. 

I did a small satin/sateen sample, and am hoping you all can give me some perspective.  I've always thought that this was a boring weave structure, and so this was the very first time I tried it.  Now I feel justified in my thought that it was boring.  I suspect that I am wrong, and I am hoping you can tell me why I should have more interest in it.

laurafry

Finished warp #3 post surgery.  Now have nekkid loom!  Tomorrow.  

cheers,

Laura

Artistry

Queezle, Why is satin /sateen not a boring weVe structure? Personally, I think, there is no other structure that can carry color the way satin does. Painted warps are sensational in satin.so are stripes. Also don't always think sheen, if you have a yarn you really want to show off , even a boucle!, the binding structure is such that the opposite element does not interfere. If I were doing a boucle, I would set up something else for warp, and use the boucle for warp sateen. I think the reall attraction comes( at least for me) is when you can start to do blocks , 10,15,20 shafts and color are magnificent. That is using a 5shaft satin. I spent years studying color and satin blocks , the possibilities are endless! Cathie

tien (not verified)

Satin/sateen doesn't (IMO) get really interesting until you have a dobby loom. Then it gets really interesting...because you can go gradually from a 1/4 satin to a 2/3 satin, then 3/2, and 4/1 - giving you four shades of a color blend. If you have ten shafts and a dobby loom, you can do two blocks of gradually shading colors. That is quite interesting IMO!

At the lots-of-shafts extreme, many jacquard weavers use satins as the base for weaving pictures. The nice thing about satins in that regard is that they don't introduce a design line of their own - while there is a very faint diagonal line in the stitchers, it's much less pronounced than twill. So when you want a chunk of a color without a distracting woven pattern, satin is the way to go.

I think satin is a pretty interesting weave structure, but on eight shafts or fewer 4-shaft broken twill is better, because you can get two blocks. You don't have as many options for shading, but you do get more pattern possibilities. 4-shaft broken twill is almost-like-satin but not quite.

So...I think satin is rich in possibilities, but you get a lot more options with it the more shafts you have.

tien (not verified)

Spent all day playing with katazome, the Japanese art of stenciled paste-resist dyeing. I made the rice paste resist, cut a bunch of stencils using my new Silhouette Cameo cutting machine, painted/applied netting to the new stencils, and used some previously-carved stencils to paste up some pieces of fabric - a sampler of sorts. Then I dipped some of the pieces into an indigo vat, and hand-painted some of the others. The results are gorgeous! They're drying now, but if anyone's interested, I'll post a link to my blog once I write up the appropriate entry. Probably tomorrow, as I'm too tired to contemplate it today.

And I had my two-week post-surgery checkup yesterday, and the doctor who looked me over couldn't believe how well I was doing! She was amazed that my surgical incisions were already healed, and flabbergasted when I told her they'd been that way for at least a week. I'm not fully healed yet by any means, but it looks like I'm substantially ahead of the usual pace. This makes me very happy. :-)

Artistry

I agree with you Tien! I've never tried the color blend I'm eager too! The binding points are either above the 45 degree line or below the 45 degree line of a twill, and as you say a lot less noticeable. The more shafts the more versatile with satin, and although you can get the dynamic design of blocks through twill on 8 shafts, don't forget Satin as a vehicle for strong warp color/ texture and the reverse for weft sateen.

Artistry

That is awesome Tien that you are healing so fast! I remember doing Katazome ( I believe it was) with John Marshall , a blue Moon ago. I would love to see your blog! Do you use a fruit based Indigo Vat a la Michel Garcia ? ( Maiwa) there are so many ways to do Indigo I always like to ask. I haven't found one that really works for me yet.

ReedGuy

You gals are real troopers, that's for sure, and recovering so well. I'd whimp out and probably vegetate for a couple weeks. :D

Laura, what is your red cloth? :)

 

Should have my afghan warp all threaded today. Nice to warp a thicker yarn for a change of pace. :)

 

sally orgren

Yesterday, I attended Laverne Waddington's lecture for the New York Guild, which was excellent. She will be teaching at the Mannings this spring, so if you know someone who has wanted to take a class with her, now is the time!

Today, a group of nearly 20 of us are visiting the International  Contemporary Tapestry exhibit to hear a specially arranged talk by curator Carol Russell. I attended the gallery opening, which was very crowded, so this will be nice as it will be more intimate, and as we are all weavers, the questions will probably be very interesting.

Finally, I realized last night I have warped/beamed 21+ yards so far this month. I went from "all nekkid" looms to having four up and running in what seems like a flash. More weaving deadlines are arriving in May, so the dust can't settle on these warps!

I will post photos as soon as I catch my breath and get a moment to download.

tien (not verified)

No - we spontaneously wanted a vat, so we used synthetic pre-reduced indigo from Dharma Trading Co, with soda ash and thiourea dioxide. No good for dark colors, but not hard to get a nice medium blue, and it was ready in about 40 minutes.

Artistry

Good to know Tien. Thanks ! I haven't found a way to get a really dark indigo. I know it requires lots of dipping. Probably need to contact Karren. I agree ReedGuy, our gals have been brave and as you say real troopers. I just hope when my turn comes ( soon) that I will follow thier good example! Sally, lucky you. Tapestry exhibit curated by Carol Russell and a lecture by her as well. That should be a treat! This summer after I get all fixed up and can weave again, i 've decided I'm going to concentrate on lace weaves. It's been a long time since I've done any. No tapestry loom at the cottage unless I bring one. I think this summer I'd like to be on the floor loom:) does anyone have Madelyn Van de Hooght's book on Lace Weaves? What do you think? I think I have an older book on lace weaves but I can't remember what it's called, go figure:)

Artistry

Oh, have you seen the Doumentary called "Blue Alchemy" it's about Indigo, The history, socioeconomic impact of societies around the world . How it's grown, all the different ways it's processed. It's fascinating. Out on DVD.

tien (not verified)

Are you thinking of Donna Sullivan's Handwoven Laces? That's the best book I know of.

Doing more katazome today. Pix when it's all done, I promise!

Queezle

20+ yrs ago I worked my way through much of Donna Muller's Handwoven Laces - it is an excellent book!

And thank you, Tien and Cathy, for giving me a new perspective on satin/sateen.  I had not thought about the different sorts of textures nor blocks if you have lots of shaft.  Very cool concepts - and reinforcing the sneaking suspicion that I harbor - that some day I will need more than 8 harnesses. 

Artistry

I'm away from home right now, but they are both ringing a bell. I know I have one or the other maybe both, lol! Queezle, I went from 16 to 24 just so I could have 1 more block of 5 shaft satin! I must say I don't want anymore shafts, well... If they fell in my lap :)

ReedGuy

 Cathie, I have Madelyn Van de Hooght's video and work book(s) on lace and Donna Muller's book as well. I learned from Madelyn's book easiest about Huck and Bronson, but Muller's book has more scope and all the same design theory and such.

ReedGuy

I ordered 6 of Dr. W Batements journals on different weaves he came up with. I assume it was his work anyway. The 7th eludes me, they are out of print. I got most from CVF. They are way cheaper than Amazon. :)

 

ReedGuy

I may have typo'ed there Sally. I ordered 5 I guess, missing a 6th. 'Extended divided twill weave'. I read someplace there was a 7th I guess is what had me bamboozled. :)

I did order one from Amazon, but it's $10 more than new from CVF. They are only $15 over there.

laurafry

Reed guy, I'm working on a run of shawls for the fall sales. Today I put warp #4 on and wove one shawl. It feels like I'm dawdling, but my body isn't ready to do more yet. I start physio on Tuesday and hope that will jumpstart things. Cheers Laura

Queezle

I've always wondered...  Among my weaving stuff (a box received from someone quiting weaving) is Park Weaves, based on Dr. William G. Bateman's Manuscript, edited by Virginia Harvey. 

If I can ever get to more than 10 minutes a day, I would love to go through and study this book. 

I am thrilled to hear that there are 5 or 6 more books!

Laura - your passion impresses me - take care of yourself - you , too, Cathie and Tien. 

My challenge is to figure out what to look for - sixteen shafts is double what I have now - that seems like plenty - but first I need to figure out how to find the time to weave more with what I have.  My remodeling projects eat into too much of my time...

Queezle

...and so clearly I am in need of The Efficient Weaver.  Smile

Artistry

The Efficient Weaver is a great DVD! If you haven't developed a really tightly organized system for yourself , this book is great! Even if you've been weaving for years I found tips that were helpul. Thank you Laura! Well I was able to work for 45 mins to night on my tablet weaving loom, so that's something! The colors are pretty:) My experience with monographs and books is to snatch them up when you can, so many go out of print and boy am I glad I have them now!

sally orgren

I think I have them all, as I made it a point to collect them at Convergence a few years back.

I think you'll love Bateman. He approaches structure methodically and using his own system, which Harvey "translates" a bit for us in the beginning.

Overshot weavers understand tabby and pattern pics, and we usually assume tabby will be 1 & 3 against 2 & 4. But what if tabby is something different for each block? The more shafts you have, the more fun Bateman becomes!

Also, HGA (Handweavers Guild of America: www.weavespindye.org) has sample books available from the Bateman series. Members can rent the sample books for a quite reasonable price. I was completely amazed to discover some of the samples in the collection I rented a few months ago were actually woven BY Bateman himself! The books do a pretty good job of showing the front and back of the most interesting fabrics, but having the actual samples in the colors and fibers they were originally woven in provides another level of understanding.

Also, Complex Weavers has a Bateman Study group, and they compile sample books of member's work based on Bateman drafts. That is a great source of contemporary interpretations of his drafts.

Yes, you'll have fun!

Artistry

Sally, It's so GOOD that you brought up the rental kits from HGA and Complex Weavers. They are amazing . They have one for the COE level 1 if anyone is interested. The range of subjects is pretty impressive, I thought.

sally orgren

and then ATE the lamb. A wet and snowy forecast for rush hour tonight.

I need a yarn recommendation... I am seeking a very thin yarn, white, with little, tiny, irridescent sequins spun into the fiber. It needs to be "lace" weight, or in weaver's terms, it needs to play well with a 16/2.

Does anyone know of such a yarn? And if there is a brand, will someone be selling it at Maryland Sheep & Wool?

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