Irene is gone

Irene blew through, and we were very lucky.  We did not even loose power, although we would have if we had lived just 20 miles to the east.  All it left was a fantastic amount of leaf litter.  Since the weather has been so nice since then, it was not unpleasant to do the yard work to clean up around the house.  This is the view from the living room balcony.

Some fascinating upholstery

This was the upholstery on a chair in a small inn in Lubeck, Maine.  Thought you might like to see it.  It is obviously doubleweave, but how many shafts would it take as a dobby?  How many shuttles? Any guesses?  You can click on it to see it up close.  It was lovely on a small occasional chair.

Good news/bad news

The loom is down at present.  A new small part is due soon, and Vibeke and Co are always so good about helping to troubleshoot problems.  So maybe the loom will be functioning later in the month.  We are off for a driving trip to Maine for a week anyway.  That should be a nice break.


The good news is that I actually had one of my newer pieces accepted into a show.  It is the New York Textile Study Group show in Lower Manhattan, December 6 to February 19.  The piece accepted is "Pixilated Forest."  I am so pleased.  The juror was Rebecca Stevens of the Textile Museum here in Washington.

This is the homegrown image that I submitted.  But last week I had four of my newer pieces photographed by a professional.  Her work is vastly superior to what I can do myself.  I am looking forward to getting the CD so that I can apply to some other shows.

Inspired by science

Just like Alice is inspired by math in her weaving, I have decided that my next piece will be inspired by science.  I have always been in awe of the northern lights, aurora borealis, since I first saw them as a 12 year old in northern Michigan one summer.  So the next piece is a triple of three panels of aurora with phrases about the astronomy surrounding them.

With four shuttles in black, green, red and yellow there is an interesting palette of possibilities here.  

Should be interesting to see how this weaves with all that dither in the colors.  This may take awhile, however, since I may need to get a new part for the loom.  I changed some pistons that were not performing and seem to have done something to one of the connections.  So frustrating.

City Lights

The color blending piece is now finished as well.  I really am a klutz with sewing, but I get there eventually.  I like this piece for all the neat things I learned about color.  I am hoping it has made me more adventurous with the weft colors I choose.  I have called it "City Lights", because it began life as a blurry photo from NYC.  I am sure it was an accident, and the friend who took it meant to delete it, but fortunately he didn't.  And then, of course, I moved some things around in the file in the interest of a more balanced composition.

If you click and go in close, you can perhaps see the color magic.  For example, the frame is woven with red, blue and green on the black warp.  At a distance it is a nice lively gray.  Up close you can see all three colors.  Fun.

Rock Creek, Woven, Rewoven--April

How is it that I can be infinitely patient with weaving problems but not be able to handle sewing problems? I have been avoiding finishing my two new pieces all week.  They came off the loom last Sunday.  I finally forced myself to get to the first one today.  And then I made the dumbest errors in logic, when I put the backing on.  Well, anyway here is the finished "Rock Creek--April" with backing and finally photographed.

This is the one with the five weft colors: blue, green, brown, red and yellow.  I hope you can see the rushing stream and rocks in the center panel.  While I spent over a month reworking the design to simplify many areas, I still wonder if the design is not inherently too busy.  But it is done at last, and that is nice.

Color Blending

It really is amazing how those color lessons you learn in school actually work out. The brown areas in this piece are green and red wefts, and they look rather strange up close.  But from a distance they are definitely reading brown.  The frame is a combination of three wefts: blue, red and green so it takes on a slightly violet hue.  


It is such fun to weave something fast like this one.  There was minimal time spent in playing with the file--just some filters and a few colors changed around.  Nothing compared to the months I spent on the last one.  I think it would actually have suffered if I played with it too much.  The free and more spontaneous look would not have come through. 

And yes, there is a mistake about half way across--an end that kept coming to the surface and would not weave.  But I attached a small weight (large washer) to it, and it now is behaving itself.  

The other thing that was interesting was my choice of structure for the framing area.  I am undecided as to whether I will actually use the frame or just sew it into the lining, but I knew I wanted the design to be less than the loom width in height.  So I had to do something with the extra warp ends.  At first I tried an eight end satin in the borders. 

But as you can see the satin took up much too much space and did not balance the double weave twill in the body of the piece.  If I had kept this up very soon I would have had a severe tension and distortion problem.  So I picked one of the double weave colors/structures that did not figure in the actual image and placed it in the frame.  Of course it works fine, since it is the same as the center.