Try Again

I have been distracted for a week by my son.  He came home for five days to get things in order for his move to Japan.  There were a lot of practical (read money) details to straighten out, but he is now safely with friends in Tokyo.  Next weekend he will travel south to his new job.
In the meantime, I have been endlessly fiddling with the Photoshop files for my Rock Creek pieces--both the new and the old.  The first try did not come out as I hand hoped.  It was difficult to "read" especially in the center image.  The second one was also not a great success.  I felt that I had dumbed down the image and taken out a lot of nice detail.  So now I have spent spare hours last week and this redoing the file.  I think I finally have it, but only the weaving will tell.

Above is the first trial.  It has some nice areas, but the design still seems fuzzy.

The second one has improved in the center image, but the other areas have a sameness to them and lack the red tones that I liked in the first one.  It seems too blue as well. So now I hope to get to the loom this week and do trial number 3.  I hope this revision will do the trick. 

Postcards and new friends

Over the Easter weekend Bill and I took time to work on our joint project.  Bill collects postcards, and he thought it would be fun to paper the powder room with some of his collection.  We have been slowly working on it for a couple of years.  So this weekend we managed to mount some more of them.  Eventually we will cover the walls above the chair rail.  So far we have only a wall and a half done.  So a visit to our powder room does not have to be dull at all.

Friday Karen Hampton came to visit.  She is a fiber artist who teaches at Howard University in Washington.  Her work is a marvelous exploration of her very interesting family in Spanish Florida.  Lots of images that are seen through layers of printing and embroidery.  It was such fun to make a new fiber friend.

Another friend sent me a link to Brown Grotta's blog.  You might want to check it out at Arttextstyle.  There is also a link there to the new show at the Textile Museum, an article about Lia Cook's recent work, and some stunning pictures of Grethe Sorenson's three large jacquard tapestries for Trondrud Engineering in Norway.  

New colors

I am trying out new colors for the Rock Creek Spring piece.  I am definitely not a "pink" person.  I won't even plant pink flowers in my garden, but the Eastern Redbud is such a striking tree that I have to make an exception for it.  Although it is hard to see here there are some outrageous purply pinks and yellow greens in this gamp.  The new leaves have the most amazing acid yellow green to them.  I hope I can capture that.

Time and designing

I always say that designing takes far longer than weaving.  The last two days have been justification of that statement.  I have finished weaving Rock Creek the second try, but do not have a picture to show you yet.  It is still on the loom.  The next piece is again Rock Creek, this time with spring images collaged and paper woven.  

I had forgotten how time consuming paper weaving can be.  

And for a bit of a change I have been designing new presets for four color stitched double weave based on five shaft satin.  There are 112 possible combinations. I am up to 32 now.  Alice Schlein helped me with the stitcher placement, when I couldn't get my mind around that. After doing some of these I now believe Alice and Bhakti did not charge enough for their book The Woven Pixel.  They take an enormous number of largely repetitive steps--except that one has to pay attention all the time, since (at least for me) it is so easy to make mistakes.  I am in awe that they put so many of these weaving presets into the book and CD.  I will use these structures in some other new work I am developing--not the Rock Creek series.

Moving along

The new version of Rock Creek is moving along, and I am designing another that tries to capture the elements of spring in the park:  Eastern Redbud, new beech leaves, and runoff from spring storms.  The initial design is done.  I now have to cut it up and weave it in the paper.  Then I will scan it again and start doing the modifications in Photoshop.  But the picture above shows the first design about 2/3 of the way. It looks like it will be easier to "read" than the first version.

Gambling

I should never be a gambler.  After fussing with various small mistakes in my warp I started to weave on Rock Creek 2 yesterday.  The four shuttles rotate in a particular order, and I knew the order.  I just did not know--and for some reason couldn't figure out--which one to start with.  So trial and error took over.  I had a 1 to 3 chance of getting it right the first time.  Wrong.  So there was a 1 to 2 chance in the second try.  No.  By the third try my odds were even.  But even there I was wrong.  So that left only one alternative, starting on the blue shuttle.  So I am glad I am not a gambler.  It could get expensive really fast.  You can see my trials at the beginning of the weaving above the orange hem.

I think I am getting a bit more definition in the design this time, but we will have to wait and see when it is off the loom.

Rock Creek, Woven, Rewoven

The next piece had a long gestation.  Four and a half years ago we had a fire and had to move out of our house for six months.  That was six months with no loom!  I had to weave something, so I took up collaging photos, cutting them into strips and reweaving them.  Never keep a weaver from her interlacements--too dangerous!  One of these was a study of Rock Creek Park near where we live.

Last month I decided that it would be interesting to see what the jacquard would do to this image.  I realized that there would be some degradation in the image due to the greatly reduced number of pixels available, but I had not anticipated that the result would be so hard to read.

So now that I have a new warp on the loom I am going to try again with slightly different choices for the 17 colors and a sharpened and reduced pixel count in the design.  Instead of using half of my ends (655) the new design is 328 pixels wide.  Then when it is blown up for weaving and the aspect ratio is adjusted there are always two ends and picks at a minimum in each color area. I have also made some adjustments in certain design areas to clean up the design.  It is a tedious process but somehow addicting.  Since the weather promises to be quite beastly out today with a big rainstorm, it will be great fun getting back to the weaving.