Make-y/Think-y
Sorry for the neglect, but I have been working on a couple of things intermittently while trying to meet the summer-y requirements of kids/dogs/gardens, etc. I am very excited by the arrival of my knitting machine, and have knitted (yet to be dyed) blanks to use as weft in the fabric samples for a coat fabric I am contemplating. The motif is flora-ish, but becomes abstract when repeated. It is in 16-shaft summer and winter and the idea is that I will use the knitted blanks to dye a very gradual array of stunning greens (let’s hope) for the pattern weft. I have a long sample warp on, and so far have just been testing different fibers, weights of fiber, colors, S&W treadling/tie-up options, etc. I can’t get a good pic of all the colors I have sampled, and my husband says the one above looks menacing. Does it?
Once I cut the first set of samples off, I will have a better idea of the color range I want and can proceed with the dyeing.
I am WAITING for my 20/2 unmercerized cotton from Lunatic Fringe to wind a warp for my Dimity study group that I am extremely excited about. The group includes some super weavers that I am honored to study with. One of these wonder women is not only the mastermind behind the group, but has done an extraordinarily in-depth study of Southern Dimity. Ute Bargmann, weaver, friend and fellow Conwegian has “translated” what we mortals would see as uninterpretable scratches and lines on old scraps of paper into drafts and woven samples of this texturally-rich weave structure. Come on Lunatics – get me my 20/2!!
I am also waiting for my new issue of Handwoven – to which I am a first-time contributor! I really want to see it as you can imagine. There was quite a bit of hub bub on WeaveTech about how the quality of Handwoven has declined, AND (is this too obviously self-serving?) I am tired of all the negativity. There was a lot of kvetching about how Convergence is not what it once was, and how Handwoven is not what it once was, but I will put it to you that maybe the real issue is that things always seem “different” , “less good”, “less exciting”, “more troublesome”, “more expensive” the older we get. Of course things change, but guess what changes the most? We do. There was a poignant story in our family when one of our “team” had to leave her house and move to a retirement community. We had all decided that we would keep the house for a period of time so that she could see how she liked the retirement community and still have her house to return to if she wasn’t happy. Well, she said “I want to go home.” So we took her home, and she said “NO, I want to go HOME!” Meaning she wanted to return to the way things were before – before frailty – before old age – before the need for a retirement community. Similarly, I think that all the griping about how things used to be better in the world of hand weaving has more to do with “going home” and less to do with the actual decline of X,Y & Z.
I want to go home too . . .
