Long Time No See!

I know I refer to photos below but the gremlins are preventing me from posting them here, alas.  When I work that out, I will add them.  Promise.

I know, I know, it has been some time since I posted here.  I haven't been idle, though.

I got back last week from teaching in Hartford, CT for a wonderful group of weavers at the Hartford Artisans' Weaving Center.  I have never seen so many looms in one place and there was a storage area with more of them which I did not see.  Wow.

I have been creating binders for some round robin workshops, and have boxed up those I am taking to Omaha, NE on Thursday.  I have developed a new workshop on profile drafting that is also a round robin and worked out the drafts and instructions for that one.  I will present it in late October in Albuquerque.  The Omaha weavers selected the workshop on structures to create dots.  The workshop in Hartford was partially that, and partially structures for stripes.

It took me a while to figure out how to import a full draft into my word processing program and then to design the pages to my satisfaction so that I could print them.

I realize that I have not posted photos of the radio grille cloth.  I wove one whole version of it then decided it wasn't just right (too light and the warp/weft balance was off) so I bought more thread and did it all over again.  The darker fabric here is the one that I sent:


The last time I posted here I showed hemp towels and the start of a very fine singles linen warp.  I sett the latter much too close and found that the threads abraded each other to pieces so that they turned to fuzz and then broke.  What to do!

I re-calculated the sett for what would be very close to plain weave which made the warp much wider than I usually make towels.  Then a suggestion from a friend (thanks, Rita!) clicked.  I will weave square towels of this fine, natural linen.  They could also serve as formal sized napkins and could be used either way or both ways.  It was a brilliant suggestion and got me moving back to the loom where I double-checked every thread to be sure that the broken ones were whole and in place and that the new sleying was correct.  Now the warp is ready for the shuttle.

Today, though I have spent most of my time sorting and packing examples for the workshop I am giving in Omaha.  I like to pack my "teaching bag" so that the first fabric piece is on top, the next one under it and so on.  And now that part is done.  Tomorrow:  packing clothing.

Meanwhile, I needed fresh flowers in the house and couldn't decide between nasturtiums and caryopteris, so I made bouquets of both.