Forever Hellebore

This blog is primarily for my weaving adventures with just a dash of  personal. Its time to share that while I'm never a fast weaver, things have slowed even more around here. There's the normal spring time call of the house and yard, it seems my joints have decided to complain about their situation.

I've been  waiting to see a specialized surgeon for foot surgery, but now my left knee is singing a sad song. I've had it x-rayed and so will start the process with doctors and possibly a surgeon for the knee. Its OA or osteo-arthritis (same as my right foot) and all part and parcel of my SLE or Arthritis Lupus .

I've discovered that everyone in and around my age group has something to complain about so this isn't to illicit sympathy but to simply say,  that sometimes it hurts to weave, so I can't.... and as a result,  posting a weaving story can be slow.

I have been weaving but just for short periods with rest breaks in between! I should have some new for you next time...

So lets take a look at some other items that I've had tucked away waiting to share with you:

This is a pink hellebore that grows in our front garden. I took this picture at least three, maybe four springs ago and posted it here at my blog as part of a spring garden  camera walkabout.  Sandra Rude spotted it and asked if she could 'weave' it at some time. I said an enthusiastic "YES" and then waited.  It took a long time before it came up in the queue. Sandra's new AVL jacq 3g loom needed several tune up's and tweaking until it runs just right. Here is a link to the AVL web site with all of the looms specs  I did receive this computer adaptation of my image from Sandra where the color values are established:

The warp would be black and the other colours are all potentials for the weft. I must confess that I'm not clear on how the color selection works or even how many Sandra can use at one time, but the whole concept is just fascinating!

Here is a link to a blog post where Sandra attended a workshop and explains the method of using Adobe Photoshop and assigning colours.

Just before this past October 2012, Sandra emailed me that the weaving would be under way very soon and the weaving ready to ship before Christmas. It was fun to keep a close eye on the daily progress!

I was hoping to show you the weaving bit by bit as it was revealed to me but it seems that Sandra has had a photographic loss at her blog so there's text but no pictures.  Here's the only one I could find:

This one was taken by Sandra underneath the loom as the cloth is slowly being wound onto the cloth roll while she weaves away above!   Before too long, it was on the way to us and I picked it up at the post office.

Hellebore, woven by Sandra Rude, from original photograph by Susan Harvey

Sandra uses a stabilizer on the back of the cloth and so it can now be stretched over a frame. Sandra just recently sent me directions on that process and the special outer  frame the stretched image will 'float' in.  We may just get it stretched professionally! Until then its carefully rolled up and waiting....

This is one fleeting spring flower that will last a life time!

Then by way of a bonus for you, my brother was in England this past September and one of his stops was at the British Museum. He took these pictures thinking of my interest in textile history.

Ancient Minoan stone loom weights circa 2100-1450 BCE

Stone loom weights and spinning whorls...all found at the city of Troy 2600-2300 BCE

Kind of makes you glad we have the beautiful modern tools we have now huh?  If you love historical stuff like the loom weights above, then, if you haven't already, then you gotta read this book!

Caribbean Twilight

I have been spring cleaning. Every nook and cranny has been swept clean,  inside windows sparkle and now I'm pressing and re-installing the draperies after cleaning.  I must say it feels darn good!! I'm going to keep on whittling things down further by diving into drawers and closets in the coming days.

I'm continuing to downsize in the studio also and have vintage and even two antique books listed at my Etsy page.    The antique books are 99 and 101 years old!

So no new weaving has been under way but I have managed to finish off the last project from the Louet.   The loom is currently naked but I hope to beam a warp on her either today or tomorrow.

I had given you a sneak peek of the second color gradation scarf.  I used the eggplant (or aubergine) and magenta again but this time I teamed it up with azure and dark teal. I also changed the blending area in the centre to shorten up the sequence.  You have to love weaving programs as you play around and try different things long before you get to the loom or waste expensive yarns. Well, actually .. you can still get a pleasing draft on the computer and still have a disappointment at the loom. The mixing of colours and the play of light all have a hand in what counts as a success or failure, not to mention what you like or don't like personally!

I love the concentration of colour on the warp beam!

I had the scarves finished before we went to the birthday party and they only needed to be beaded and washed and pressed once we got home. Once again, I had no purple aubergine beads so had to go for the teal and turquoise.  Not too many of those to choose from either. I end up emptying my entire bead collection out on the desk and then spent much time reorganizing them that so I can actually find things!

I accidentally dumped an entire container of turquoise beads on the Berber carpet. I was down on the floor for about thirty minutes picking them up when Bruce found me and got down to help me.  I must have knocked them far and wide over six square feet. Now he's a real pal! They were the right color that I needed to use so I had to save each and every bead. I'm grateful I had vacuumed just the day before so not bring up too many surprises along with the beads!

I made a list of the gaps in my colour range and so will carry that list in my purse for future shopping trips. I had only one spool of thread that came close in colour too so there's another gap to fill as well.

I took pictures of the beading process and unfortunately I didn't check them on the camera as I went and it seems that none of them turned out. My camera settings had been changed and I didn't see that. Oh, well.... I basically followed my usual routine and that is found here .

So  the project basics are: 8/2 tencel, sett 24 epi, two scarves and samples from 6.5 yard warp. The finished dimensions were 7 inches in width and 71 inches in length, plus generous length of twisted fringe.
So here they are...

There is a beautiful sheen to the cloth that doesn't seem to come through in the pictures. Also, it seems to be hard for the camera to accurately get the colour mix and they are richer in person. The colours remind of what I imagine an evening twilight time by the Caribbean might be like.

Not sure what the next project on the Spring will be but if its scarves,  it will be a two scarf warp again. That way I get my mileage from the loom waste and not get bored with the same treadling or variation. 

To be truthful after doing my planning, colour choices and playing with it in PCW Fiberworks....then I see the first repeat on the loom and I'm ready to move on!  Crazy huh?  Newbie weavers can't wait to get to the "real weaving part" and later on down the road, somehow the picture can flip. The fun part is the creating and design. 

If you are still following written drafts, then make a safe, slow start to taking your weaving forward.  Start by taking a pretty draft you have used and familiar with and add in borders, or isolate one portion of the treadling and try that as your treadling plan. Try weaving as drawn in...   what ever takes your fancy, but try something different. 

That was my goal in the first few years of learning to weave. Each and every (short) warp had to include something I hadn't done before, either fibre, colour or draft. We can get stale when we don't push ourselves out of our comfort zone. The weaving takes on a sameness and next thing you know, you're avoiding the loom and you don't know why. That can be a good time to start an in depth study of a weave structure that you've always admired but have yet to do more than flirt with.   All food for thought....

Edit: Now I originally had an article written by Laurie Autio here but Ms Autio said the article was close on 20 years old and she wants to rewrite it to make it more current for today's situation.

I hope to be able to repost it at that time.... or link to another copy. Thanks for your understanding. 

Has It Been a Year Already?

This is our grandson Ethan and this picture was taken this past Friday evening. We had traveled to the Vancouver area and were staying with his parents, our son and daughter in law.  The first thing we noticed was how much he's grown. No, not the obvious growth that comes at this  stage, but he has long legs and appears to be very tall. It seems he got the "tall genes" from my side of the family and will tower over his mother in a few years hence!

Ethan is also starting to associate words with actions now and so is becoming a patty cake expert, high five's with the best, wriggle dances, and is almost there with blowing kisses when asked.  He has waving "bye bye" down pat. He's very curious about everything around him and it was a treat to watch him discover things and of course it all ends up in his mouth. He crawls like a pro and is lightening fast! You open the dishwasher and he's there in a flash. He's determined to see what's inside and dashes to help every time he hears the door open.  Ethan is very close to walking and that's when the fun and games will really start.

There was a party for the little man. A cozy gathering of 35-40 friends and family! DIL worked like a demon to get the house clean, decorated and the food organized and it turned out wonderfully...

And of course there was cake! Actually two of them. There were a lot of people!

They were both yummy but my favourite was the Italian cake that has a custard cream filling. I'll have to find a shop that sells them over here on the Island!

There were funny hats to wear and candles to blow out.... lots of people singing and taking pictures and then this....

It was inevitable I guess....it was all too much. Dad took him for a break outside for some fresh air and a time out from all the noise and people.  He came back his usual happy self and ready for TOYS!

There was quite a haul of toys for him to play with and much needed larger sized clothes. We got him an Elmo plate, bowl, cup and mini flatware set, complete with sippy cups. Some bright swim shorts for his tots swimming class, a toy train that recites the alphabet and some handwoven baby bibs (made by Martha of  Thistle and Rose Handweaving).  I had hoped to get a picture of him wearing one, but he pulls everything off and after the day he had, I wasn't adding to his over stimulation!

So why didn't I make them? Well, I'm really not much of a sewer and I had also left it too late to start a project. Martha's bibs are simply beautiful....  I know they will get a lot of use as Ethan is teething again and is feeding himself small food items, so meal times are messy!

Here I am with my grandson. He looked so grown up in his little shirt and dress pants. He had a clip on tie but that didn't last 20 seconds!

Thanks for indulging me this personal post.....it did have a small bit of weaving in it!
We had a lot of fun but it sure is nice to be home and we're still getting settled back into our routine... It seems that spring has hit here for sure and so besides housework and  laundry, there will also be window washing and cleaning off decks and tackling gardens. Weaving will be done on a break from the work.   We got to get caught up around here!

Back From Purgatory

Late last year I wove a silk scarf in this pretty eight shaft pattern and thought : "this is great! I'm going to weave something else with this pattern."  To be fair to my cranky lower back, I try to do double projects on the same tie up on the Louet Spring so I get more weaving and less tie up wrangling. 

So I got busy and wound a fine warp of 16/2 mercerized cotton (thirty six epi and roughly fourteen inches wide). Its a lovely taupe that Brassards calls Flax. The weft is a navy blue from Brassards also.   Beaming the warp went just fine, or so I thought. ( don't get too far ahead of me now) The Louet method is a snap.  Threading? no errors....sleying? well, three per dent and no issues there either.

So I wove away on what I like to call my Gothic Diamonds and there were no issues. This eight shaft twill runner was woven to fifty nine inches and it was planned to have a tidy twisted fringe and runner number two was to be woven in cream 16/2 against the flax, and have a hem allowance. One of each style, and light and dark. Perfect right? Not so fast....

I wove the hem allowance, then did some  lovely trellis hemstitching to mimic the pattern in the runner.   Then I ran of of yarn on my pirn and stopped to change to a new one.  It was a good time to leave the project for the day and I went off to make dinner. The next day I advanced the warp an inch or two and got started and that's when I noticed the tension on the right hand selvedge had softened. So I checked things over and weighted those threads and got back to the bench.  Then the left hand side went soft! What the Heck!!  I weighted those as well and wondered what was going so wrong and if I could make it to the end of the runner. I could have struggled through but the weaving looked dreadful. Fine threads are not forgiving of uneven tension and I wasn't happy either...

So next thing I knew I had scissors in my hand and was cutting away! What went through my mind was: "I do this for fun and this isn't fun anymore.... my time is more important "

Besides, once you have that first cut done....  then its really all over!

That's when it dawned on me that I had cut in the wrong place. It was only a scant 4 inches from the end of the runner that needs to have a twisted fringe. Oh, Crap!

So I cleaned up the loom and got it ready for another project. I did give the loom a good check up to make sure nothing was out of sorts but it seemed fine. I put it down to problems during beaming the warp. Subsequent warps have been fine and I've been paying better attention when loading the loom. I guess I got a little sloppy or something!

So this is all that's left of the second runner. It's become a sample stored in a binder, complete with draft and notes on the whole fiasco. If you look at the second picture, you can see the hem allowance on the right...hemstitching... then notice how the selvedge starts to go wavy with the tension problems!  If it can't be a good project, then it can  serve as a horrible warning not to get sloppy with tension when beaming a warp!

The runner with its clipped  too short fringe was folded up and sat on my sewing table for four months while I decided what to do. Normally I follow through with final finishing right away, so this was a first for me. Recently, my good friend Lynnette showed a neat method on her blog for a short fringe treatment and so I gave that a try.  I couldn't get it to look quite right, so I took it all out.  Then I tried simple finger twisting the warp bouts together just to see if it could be done. Apparently, if you went slow and took your time, it could be done. So, no fringe twister... and using my fingers and it slowly come back from the dead pile and purgatory!

Actually, if you didn't know the full story, you'd never know by looking at it....

As a bonus this time, I want to show you a silk shawl I bought myself from an Australian shop on Etsy for my birthday last month. I wear it with my black fine wool coat:

If it looks like there are feathers, you are quite right....

I wear it more bunched up and folded under the coat collar so the pattern isn't so much "in your face."  I've noticed that there are a number of "wings" on television lately:  the black crows of the Night's Watch on Game of Thrones, the Edgar Allan Poe's crow connection in the Following, and the perky 'angels' in the Victoria Secret ads.  I'm so right in fashion !    But more crow, and less angel.... :)

Eggplant and Olives

Well, I've been chipping away at these projects and showing you snippets....but the time has come for the big finish.

To be truthful I would much prefer to show you an entire project from start to finish in one post but I must multi-task in the studio .... and then there's that real life stuff to deal with too.
Is it wrong to envy weavers in eastern parts who have snow days still?  They can weave away guilt free!  I look out the window and the weeds smirk at me and the lawn is growing two inches a day.
Enough of my whining...

So last time I wrote, the first two scarves "Eggplant to Olive" tencel were off the loom and a new colour set under way. As part of the multi-tasking, I would take a break and work on fringe twisting.

I usually put on some snappy music to accompany the twister workout. It moves along nicely and soon, with many breaks for tossing a ball for Calli,  they were finally done. I rummaged through the bead stash and found I had nothing suitable to match the eggplant / burgundy. (There's that mysterious hole in the stash again.) I had various greens and even olive tones so I worked on the olive scarf first.

Then, time to tackle the eggplant version...

The centre colour is an old gold shade and so I decided to play off of that colour and I have a good selection of gold tone beads to choose from. I settled on gold stars and multi toned gold seed beads and kept it simple. The eggplant weft seems to suck the green out of the olive warp and tone it right down. That's because they are opposites on the colour wheel (well close enough).

Not long after that, I had a friend Lindi over and she was looking at the finished scarves that had yet to go into the laundry tub for hand washing. Now she's familiar with tencel when its all soft and drapey and so it came as a big surprise when she felt the 'loom state' cloth. Its stiff, bumpy and quite unappealing. I told her the washing and pressing is what really completes the project. Especially the pressing part! I hard press the cloth like no other owner of the scarf would ever do. I bear down with a steam iron and flatten the cloth. It sets the threads into place and from then on, just normal hand wash and a light press will be all it needs.

If you buy commercial made fabric its full of sizing and smells funny. You wash before wearing it or using it for sewing.  We do the same with our handwovens because they are not ready for use until you do.

In these two pictures above, I've tried to capture the cloth before and after washing/ pressing. The difference is noticeable!  See what I mean about the eggplant sucking the green from the olive?

So that's Eggplant and now meet its alter ego, Olive:

I really enjoyed weaving these  and looking forward to showing you the next set when they are done.  I'm half way through the second scarf , but with a trip away coming up soon, there will be a debut of an older project next time...

I'll leave you with a new studio acquisition (after all my sales!) My first Bluster Bay end delivery shuttle and some African wenge wood shuttles:

Its made from curly walnut and I can't wait to give it a try on the next new project!