i won three skeins of beautiful roving - 70/30 merino/cashmere, 50/50 cashmere/silk and 50/50 alpaca/silk - via magic at a raffle for an excellent yarn store's opening in oakland. i will link to it elsewhere, and not here where they might think i used black magic to win the raffle, which of course i did not. it even might have been luck...but it was magic. steve won, too. it was great.
the roving has brought me to spinning, which i am going to learn to do toot sweet (tout suite?) so many weavers will tell you you just HAVE to know how to spin if youre gonna be a weaver...and theyre right, because it gives you the most autonomy in creating yarn. CREATING YARN! holy moly, that's the ticket right there.
it looks as though, down the line, in the nearish future, i will go to the southwest and learn weaving, from probably, the dine people. nothing actually points to this - i dont have a brochure or anything, nor have i started researching the actuals of it - but i have a feeling. and my feelings are usually right. feeling + visions = path to manifestation.
since i last updated i have made several scarves/samples. theyre samples because none of them are, in my opinion, sellable. im sure they are all actually sellable to somebody...but they were created to learn and to be given away. i dont know when i will be able to make art, in a production mode, with the purpose of...selling? blech, that's not right. an artist makes because she has to or else she will die. and im an artist.
First i wound a warp with this beautiful peruvian cotton that ive used before. it's super soft and i was practicing how to make a cloth with good drape that still has integrity. my work has been either sleazy or stiff, like tying a winter scarf into a bow, and i just want to be able to make something someone would want to wear. this has been hard for me because, to be honest, the way something fits, feels, or looks is a lot less important to me than the ashe it has. a big part of me just wants to make fetishes and another part of me wants to physically go through repetitive motions while counting and producing tangible patterns. doesnt hurt to look at color... i guess i have to give myself more into creating some luxury experience for the wearer. more pleasing? i want these wearable pieces to be pleasurable as well as protective. an idea i have to inspire myself to produce more for sale items are to think about a person and try to invoke their essence in a piece...i will probably just want to give them the scarf then... i'll have to do it with people's whose whearabouts are unknown to me. whereabouts wearabouts. the whereabout? wearabout collection by victoire swanson. gotta dream big, y'all, keep crackin yourself up!
so big. BIGGER. MORE FABULOUS. MORE ASHE!
i am desperate for this book:
http://www.viccisperry.com/index.php?id=6
DESPERATE!
anyway, the first scarf i made on set at 10 epi ended up looking a little punk. it wasnt sleazy except in a few isolated rows, and the variation in the way the threads came together looks neat. The pattern didnt show up how i expected at all (it was a huck lace, but i ended up weaving tabby for most of it) and overall it's too bare and light. set at 15 was much better. i only got a little out of it because the punk scarf is about 6 feet long. i gave the piece to my friend alex as a wrapping up somethin special cloth. it was soft, felt good.
i used some of the rest of that yarn to wind a (kinda ugly) warp with whitish/gray sides fading to a whitish/tan center scarf with a spot bronson pattern. this time i learned how to thread just for certain areas and tabby for the center, so the scarf would result in having two blocks of spot bronson on the edges. it was easy once i made a draw down. im really loving learning about drafting. i used this very soft chocolate alpaca that ive had for three years and would like to move on from.
here is a picture of my roommate wearing it. he loves a brown fit so i gave it to him.

then i made a scarf from this purple cotton flake (but they call it something fancier) from habu. i gave it to my sweetheart. i will get a pic to post.

i made a small rug for my friend's wedding...

and now im making a crazy wall hanging for thanksgiving called "coalminer's daughter" about navigating being white and female and conscious in this fucked up society in which i receive institutionalized privilege based on my race and rooted in the oppression of human beings. happy thanksgiving e'erbody! i have one day to make it. i did the rug in one, and i think i can work better now...i was really sick when i made that one...plus this is narrower.

falling asleep...GOODNIGHT!

I'm Back!!!

The cats, Sid and YoYo, OR, Frick 'n' Frack, are now about 7 months old. They are huge, happy and healthy, playing in the backyard as we speak and I am under-employed and weaving away. Since I last posted I completed three cut pile rugs using a double courdoroy technique from the Peter Collingwood epic tome, "Techniques of Rug Weaving.". It is basically a block weave, with threading blocks of either 3, 5, or 7 threads that create weft floats. I recommend threading in three thread blocks for a nice floor rug with a short pile. Seven thread floats creates a very clownish 70's effect, and even five is still a little too long for a floor rug. Three is perfect and you can really beat the threads with your head into standing up while the rug is still on the loom. The threading sequence and treadling are all described in Collingwood's book and are a little beyond the scope of this post (especially since it's been a few months since I wove them) but they are very simple and no weaver should be intimidated to try this! It was fun and successful and I would weave using this technique again to try even more possibilities of design. Here are two examples of the floor rugs I made.

This one I call Ellegua, in honor of the Haitain Loa of the crossroads. He is an intermediary between humans and the Gods, a trickster, a protector, and my special friend. If you make a shrine for Ellegua behind your door he will keep evil-doers from entering. I would love to put this rug behind my front door but with cats, constant traffic and three bikes coming in and out it would get more destroyed than it already is.This was the first pile rug I made and it was pooped on two days after I brought it home by the kittens. I hadnt even had time to do the hems! It never fully recovered and lives in my room now in a kind of wretched state. A shame, because it really was pretty!
Which brings me to a word about pile rugs: they can get really, really messed up fast. The more you walk on them, the more they lose their pile and collect dust and dirt way down deep. The pile seems to spring up again when vacuumed, but these are not for the precious. Unless you live in a child, pet and shoe free household, your pile rug is gonna get it. Luckily, they do love getting beat again and again, so they are long-lasting. AND one of the best advantages of weaving them is that you can do all your color changing on the front so there are no loose threads to stitch in on the back at the end!This final piece is a tapestry wall-hanging that I made in response to the Gulf Oil Spill. New Orleans has always been a huge part of me. I've lived there, many of my friends still live there, and I am always plotting in some corner of my mind how to return. It has influenced my art, my thinking, my soul in ways that are inextricable from the rest of my life. The oil spill affected me profoundly and I found that the only way I could not feel sick all day long was to make art. What resulted was this piece which features a cut pile wave of oil and the Louisiana coast in tapestry. It is the first piece I have ever had professionally photographed and I am very happy with the result. Oh! And it's for sale!!!!

kitten hiatus

i found a bag of kittens on my doorstep and my life is in total chaos. i will return to this blog when i can grab some shred of stability again. unraveling strings everywhere...

undulating twill

I have been working on an undulating twill pattern on my little 4 harness glimakra table loom. The warp is 20/2 pearl cotton in yellow and the weft is one 20/2 mercerized cotton in a dark almost black purple and one thread of 60/2 silk in a brighter, lighter purple. The tension is off one one side, or so it seems, so that the left selvedge shifts around as it goes over the front beam. It doesnt appear to have done that in the sampler but I only had about 4 inches in this same weft. My teacher told me to maybe put a cloth behind it as it goes over the beam, but I havent tried it yet. She said that is why she stays away from things like undulating twills, because they have to go over so many threads at once and they destabilize the cloth, especially by having many consecutive threads on the same shaft. It makes sense, and both yarns are slippery, but I want to make this work. It makes me get very nervous that it isn't perfect, and I almost want to stop, but the only way to get better is to just keep weaving. At least it will help me get my beat better. I'm honestly embarassed, this thread combination shows EVERY inconsistency. The upside is that it is very irridescent and the design features a psychedelic eye and star at different intervals, and those things together might coverup the imperfections in the final product.
The other upside is that this is the first piece I have made on my own where I tried a new threading, altered mathematically to suit my needs, wound a flawless warp of a finer than usual thread, made a bunch of new heddles and put them on this table loom, made a lengthy sampler of several different wefts and washed and dryed it before starting on the final product. Though it may not be the finest cloth in all the land, I learned a lot making it and...
listen to me,
this cloth is only 16 inches long so far. Why not finish it before I start referring to the experience of making it in the past tense!? I am a dramatic soul. It doesnt help to stare at undulating twills either. Im just figuring out how you can alter the way the round eye part of the pattern looks by changing which shaft you make your reverse at. Weaving makes me feel so good because I can follow a pattern really deep and then I start to see it opening up inside of me and I can see where it comes from and what its permutations are. Wheeeeeee.......Im looking forward to designing a draft of straight and undulating twills with a different warp color for each in the same cloth and treadling a straight twill with a weft color as the same as the straight twill warp. I think that will really make the undulating twill pop. Then you would get just some vertical stripes of the iridescent.
But first, Im going to do a plain weave. Nice, simple, good ol wool plain weave.

after the fact and pictures:
i only made samples with this and now re-looking at them i see where if i was being more consistent with my beat, and just an overall better weaver, I could still use this pattern and get something good. I made two small wall pieces, not even a foot each for my mom and a friend using a wool as a weft, which made the slipping much, much better.
Here are two pictures of the sample with purple mercerized cotton/purple silk weft.

You can see in the image on the right how the selvedges were slipping. It is a really cool design though!

NORTHERN CALIFORNIA HANDWEAVER'S CONFERENCE

I learned a lot this weekend at the annual nchc, held in santa clara. I didn't go to any workshops or classes (though I would have loved to), but I learned a lot about myself and the deep, dark pit of emptiness lurking inside me that needs to be satiated. Previously I had thought this void only could find temporary filling through drugs and sex, alcohol on a hard day and yoga on a good one, but now, I see, as my lungs get lined with microfibers, yarn will suffice.
Something happened to me at the conference that I have experienced before only in college, while at a precipice of shirking, or as an adult after a bender on the morning before work. I was standing alone, yet amidst many people, giggling in a high-pitch, nearly shrieking, while I considered spending every last penny of my savings, quitting my job and escaping to Mexico. I have always thought myself immune to over-spending. In my family it is a joke that although we are susceptible to nearly every other vice, we're not gamblers, and we're not shoppers. I have not bought clothes for myself in years. My mother has to drag me, a grown woman, to the clothing store once a year so I can be outfitted in more than rags and items I've found in the free box. I see my peers, young women in stylish threads - clothes that fit without ropes for belts, entire outfits without even one hole(!), "charming" dresses, shirts that their moms did not send them in a box after a sale at tj maxx (thanks mom!!! still got 'em all!) Those women buy their own clothes. They spend their money on them. They look nice. BUT I WILL HAVE YARN.

AND YARN I NOW HAVE. I'm not exactly sure what the repercussions of this spending vortex will be for me financially. My hope is that if I just keep working, a little wrinkle in time will open where it won't affect me in the long run. The repercussions in the world of my weaving are that I now have a stacked studio, with choices of bamboo, fine worsted wool, mercerized and unmercerized cotton, fat rug wool and the finest of fine silks and merino wool available to me for making 24/7. I have not really slept in days.

Perhaps because it scared me - the near out-of-control-ness I felt in that giant convention center room, dizzy from recycled air and lack of natural light, the din of all those women chit-chatting about warps and wefts. But maybe it was a weaver crone's parting shot as I made my final purchase, good goddess, nearing hundreds of dollars over what was supposed to be my final purchase..."IM SET NOW!", I exclaimed to her, as if I had to justify my purchases to the vendor selling them to me, "I AM TOTALLY STOCKED! I HAVE EVERYTHING I NEED!", my eyes rolling wildly, my smile stretching my jaw. "Ya hear that?", she said to a sister spinning nearby, "This new weaver said that she's set! She's got everything she needs!" And with that they both took to cackling loudly. "For now!", they both howled, as I quick grabbed another skein of 60/2 hand-dyed silk before she reached the final total.

All in all, the conference was a total success. Next year I'm going to enter some work into the juried competetion and sign up for one class. Highlights for me were the inspiring woven yardage in the gallery, especially the hand-dyed spot-lace silk "Sunset", the sweet dowey eyes of the alpacas (sweeter than any eye I have ever seen on any beast), getting to ride with my teacher, Maj-Britt Mobrand, who I relish spending time with, and of course, all the yarn.

brand new weavin blog

Oh Hello! I am so excited about this new blog that I think I will even use correct capitalization! I learned how to weave in 2003 and have been weaving off and on ever since, with intensity since 2007. I have woven on several types of looms and love it all. I'm not exactly sure what captures me most about this craft, but some of the words that come to mind are mathematical, womanliness and psychedelic. I enjoy repetition, ritual, symbols, color, and story-telling, and especially when they come together to make meaning, or as it's often called, art. I am so grateful to all of my teachers and weaving peers who have been inspiring and industrious women, each of them, and to the two exemplary men among them! Ive never met a weaver who didn't have some curious warp about them, and a sense of humor to match. I am excited to expand my circle of weavers as I enter the world of weaving online and with it, the world of insomnia. Though I have done several weaving projects, I am going to start at the present, and begin cataloging my work as it is now. I could spend the rest of my life rehashing the past and putting off my current projects, but I want to make this an active, up-to-date resource. My intention is to create a little space in which you might gleam a pick of inspiration, take a satisfying eye-bath in some color pools, commiserate with a fellow craftsperson, or, if you are my mother, read, "Hi Mom!" Thank you for reading. I hope that this space will grow as I do in my craft.