Hello again!

Yes, I know, I have been away for a long, long time.  Life has a way of interfering sometimes....

I have been weaving:  the singles linen warp I last mentioned turned out to be nightmarish.  In all, I wound up threading it three times, sleying it four times and it was with great satisfaction that I cut it off when I had woven it off.  Uncharacteristically, I have not finished the cloth because I was behind on getting started with something I had promised.

About 20 years ago I wove some cotton looper rugs for a couple.  Repeated laundering and constant use had finally worn them out.  I needed to weave new ones for them and that meant dyeing the loops and ordering in enough warp in the correct color.  I got the dyeing done and the warp on and started and then had to prepare for some workshops.

I taught two round-robin workshops, complete with binders filled with drafts in plastic sleeves for two different workshops.  The first, in Albuquerque, was a workshop I was presenting for the first time. Tom Knisely had contracted to teach about profile drafting and blocks and then cancelled.  The workshop chair for Las Aranas Weavers and Spinners got in touch with me to see if that was something i could teach.  No problem!  I know that stuff cold.  What did take time was designing the warps, specifying the yarns, setts, etc. and preparing the notebooks.  The next weekend, having returned late Sunday night, I was in Winnipeg.  I had Monday and Tuesday to prepare (on Wednesdays I volunteer at a skilled nursing facility) and was off very, very early on Thursday morning, binders for the participants in tow.
I got home from there last Monday afternoon and did laundry and prepared for a program for the Mary M. Atwater Weavers Guild of Utah on Thursday night.

I love Albuquerque and have always felt at home there.  In fact, I spent the summers of 1964 and 1965 living there, enjoying the New Mexican food (different from Tex-Mex), the landscape and the cultures there.  I always thought I would live in New Mexico although that hasn't happened.

I had never done more than drive through Winnipeg (and that at night) before this trip.  My hostess there drove me to and from the workshop site through different parts of the city showing me that I missed a lot all that time ago.  I liked New Mexico because of the combination of three cultures:  Native Americans. Mexican and Gringo and thought the combination made the state very rich.  Well!  In Winnipeg there is a two week long festival that celebrates the different people who have settled there.  There are 45 different pavilions (half the first week and the other half the second) each featuring one culture of those that make up the city:  food, crafts, folk dancing, the works!  I think that is pretty wonderful.  I loved the folks I met there, too!

Since I have been home again I have been gathering leaves dropped by the huge, 153 year old cottonwood in my front garden.  I have cleared the front lawn twice and completely filled the 80 gallon yard waste bin with chopped leaves.  I could barely move it to the curb today in anticipation of Monday morning's pick up.  Not all the leaves have fallen but we have had snow for two days now with more to come tomorrow so I can't deal with leaves at the moment.  (I'm not sorry.)

Then tonight:  A Utah Symphony concert and what a doozy!  Our wonderful conductor, Thierry Fischer, programmed Stravinsky (The Fairy's Kiss), Ravel's Pavane for a dead princess (which I adore), La Valse (ditto),  Saint Saens' Piano Concerto Number 2 (yes!) and finally Ravel's Bolero.  From the audience reaction I must be the only person in the valley who is not crazy about Bolero.  I thought that if anyone could help me like it, it would be Fischer and he did a fine job.  I hadn't noticed before how Moorish the melody is and focused on that and on the various soloists from the orchestra, but I find it very repetitive and hearing it for hours for a year in my dorm at college didn't endear it to me.  In spite of that, I was a splendid concert.  Four out of five, isnt' bad, after all.

I am presenting a three day workshop locally next weekend for which I must prepare next.  I teach a lot of topics and this one is different from the last two so I won't be in a rut.  I am grateful for the work coming my way and am inclined to think based on my own experience, that the economy is improving.  I am very glad.

Now I have a question to pose to you, Gentle Reader.  I have been approached by Interweave Press about making a video that would fill two DVDs.  What is the topic you ask?  That is up to me, apparently, and I am handing the question off to you:  if you could see a video I made what topic(s) would you most like to see?

I hope next time to have some photos.  Outside it is night but very white, so there isn't a lot to show right now, which is just as well.  

I am home, except for next weekend, for a while now and hope to be more regular in my posts here.  Thanks for looking in!

Home from Omaha

I returned from teaching in Omaha late Sunday night, tired but happy.  I enjoyed the trip, loved the people I met there and am always happy to return to the Salt Lake Valley.  It is part of my home-coming ritual to applaud when the flight attendant welcomes the passengers to Salt Lake City.

If I weren't always happy to return I suppose I ought to consider living somewhere else and--because I love coming home--I think I live in the right place for me.  (I am not the first to say so, legend has it when Brigham Young came out of Emigration Canyon and saw the valley spread out below, he said "This is the right place.")

Since I have been home the usual re-entry chores abound:  laundry, banking, mowing the lawns, making a grocery list, visiting the library to return/check out materials and reassuring the cats who Velcro themselves to me that I am in fact home.

I have been trying to upload the photos I promised with no success.   I have done everything I usually do...?  Can you say frustrating?

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.

It's nasturtium time!

I know there are folks who look down there noses at nasturtiums, call them "nasties" and consider them beneath consideration, but I love them.  I love their bright colors, their circular leaves with veins radiating out from near there centers and their radish-like flavor when I put them in salads.

Once I ate the centerpiece at a place where all the fruits and vegetables were cooked to mush.  I was longing so much for fresh, raw food!  (Remember that, Jean?)

These are on my table in one of my favorite vases, one I bought in the summer of 1964 at a supermarket in Albuquerque and have cherished all this time.  It's a deep, deep cobalt blue and with all these red oranges, oranges, yellow oranges, yellows and pale yellows, the combination just sings to me.  If you look closely you will see the edges of the washed and ironed second batch of hemp towels:

The are just a few left from this batch.  If you think you would like to own one, click below and send me a message to that effect.

Here is a photo showing the patterns I still have:

Click on the photo to see them more closely.

In between I worked on replicating the grille cloth for a 1930 radio for a gentleman in North Carolina.  The first time out, I wasn't satisfied with the result and so I bought more warp and did it all again.  The second time I hit it right on.  The warp was tiny black threads and the weft a gold colored embroidery machine thread in rayon.  I am pretty sure that I duplicated not only the look of the original (minus the dirt and holes) but also the fiber content. 

Today I will sley a warp for some fine linen towels woven of a singles linen.  It is a wet spun (the smoothest and most refined) and about size 20/1.  The honey color is the natural hue.  I have threaded this warp similarly to the second hemp warp, a point threading with borders at both selvedges and at each end but of course the pattern will be different.  It's such a versatile threading!

I picked 5 green beans from my vegetable garden the night before last and had them steamed and on my plate wihin 10 minutes.  They were delicious!  I love green beans and also love to look at the 6 foot green tepees they make as they grow up the bamboo stakes I put in a circle and joined at the top when they were starting to grow well.  Except for the weeds, I love everything about my vegetable garden. 

It's still hot which doesn't delight me but the tomatoes and squash plants adore it so I am glad some of us are happy!



Still very hot and very dry

It has continued to be very hot here, hotter than normal, and very dry.  Most of Utah is going up in flames.  Besides being hot with very low humidity (8 to 10%) we are experiencing brisk winds.  All in all, it is a firefighters worst nightmare.

I live in the city and am pretty safe but the trees, plants, animals and structures that have been lost are many.  So far only two human deaths have been reported, but that's two too many.

Meanwhile I have been keeping the lawn mowed, the gardens watered, picking raspberries and making jam:

It makes sense to stay inside, out of the sun and heat, when possible and of course, I have done that, too.  The new hemp warp is well under way.  Here is the fifth towel (third pattern):

And of course no matter where I go, I am accompanied by my sweet companion, Bob:

I am eager to begin working on the reproduction of the radio grille cloth, but have to clear the loom first.  The threads for this cloth are all very small and will be a challenge.  I know I can do it, though.

Busy days

I've been working steadily and have things to show for it.  First, the hemp towels are woven, finished and ready to go to good homes.  I will keep one of them but that leaves six.  Here they are:

I am so pleased with the hemp yarn that I have beamed and nearly finished threading a second warp of towels.  Instead of threading a twill block pattern, I am threading the new ones into a fancy pattern, using 16 shafts.  You'll see them later.

Raspberry season is on here.  That means that every other day I need to pick raspberries and then make jam.  Yesterday I picked for several hours and made several batches.  The temperature got to 101 (Farenheit) which meant it wasn't pure joy picking them.  The humidity was just 5% and it was windy, to boot, which helped me a little bit but made the work of firefighters who are battling wild fires south and a little west of here very difficult.

There is something very satisfying about looking at jars of richly colored jam lined up on the table:

The entire picture, then, makes me feel as though I have accomplished a lot, even with the heat we are experiencing:

It's summer as the ripening raspberries attest, and I have a bouquet of Shasta daisies, larkspur and achillea (a variety called Moonglow) for my kitchen table.  None of the flowers are fragrant, which is too bad, but they are a treat to my eyes, nonetheless.

I hope to finish threading the towels tomorrow and also go shopping for the tiny threads I am going to weave into grille cloth for a 1930 radio for a man who restores them.  The threads are tiny, black in the warp direction, and sett quite closely.  Finding the coppery-looking threads that run in the weft direction may be challenging, but what's life without challenges?
(Boring, I suspect.)

Back Again

Where have I been?  Here in Salt Lake City, mainly.  How have I been? 
As my father would have said "as busy as an ant on a hot rock".  Yes, scurrying and getting things done.

When I wrote here last I was headed to the Art Ball at the  Springville  Museum of Art.  It is a formal affair that takes place every year shortly after the annual Spring Salon opens there.  I drove down that Saturday evening and mingled with the folks at the Ball and a while after I got there my friend, Lee Benion, also arrived.  Lee is a painter (that's sort of like saying Isaac Stern is a violinist) and a dear friend.  [She also makes Mom's Stuff a salve that smells of pinyon pine and works wonders. www.momsstuffsalve.com]  There was a light buffet and then the awards ceremony.  Lee got a cash prize; I got to stand up and be recognized.  Still, out of about 1000 entries, 224 were accepted and mine was the only fiber piece.  There were a handful of photos, fewer sculptures and just one fiber piece. 

I had a student here in my studio which meant finishing something on the loom and dressing it for her use and tidying up after myself.  I had been keeping my head down and working hard and tidying was needed.

In between I have been cutting the lawn, weeding, nurturing my vegetable garden, doing laundry, volunteering at the nursing facility, exercising  and spending one whole weekend volunteering at a festival in the heart of downtown.

Right now I am waiting to hear whether I have the go ahead on a project reproducing the grille cloth for some radios built in 1930.  I have done the analysis of the teeny, tiny black and gold fabrics so I am ready.

I have wound a warp using a fine hemp yarn, the first I have ever purchased.  It is 16/2 so is pretty fine and a light tan color.  It's nice stuff and I put on enough for six or seven large towels woven in a two block twill.  Here is how they look on the loom:

I'm hoping that the pattern shows up a little better in the lower photo.  The twill blocks form circles (almost) over and over again across and down the cloth.  I am weaving the fourth towel now and really want to see how they look after being washed and ironed well.  The warp is sleyed 4/dent but vigorous washing ought to even things out.  I believe that they will be very absorbent and perhaps rival the linen towels I have made and use with pleasure daily.

The raspberries are starting to ripen.  I had enough for a generous serving over my morning cottage cheese for two days now and took a close look while mowing in the back garden.  I might be able to make a jar or two of raspberry jam in the next day or so.   Oh, boy!