THINKING ABOUT AFGHAN FROM HANDSPUN

Posted by Peg in South Carolina 

I love to spin.  I do not get a lot of chances to do it, but when I can, I do.  I rarely spin for a particular project.  I spin because I have found some fiber I love.  The result of this is that I generally purchase only 4 ounces of any given fiber and the result of that is that I never have a lot of yardage of any one particular fiber. 

Spinning this way has never bothered me.  Spinning, for me, is simply an indulgence.

A piece in the latest Spin-off magazine* about using small amounts of fiber in hand knitting projects got me started thinking.  What about modular knitting?  I could design a modular knit afghan, not unlike the one I knit for our grandson when he was born.

And then I thought about weaving a patchwork afghan.  But when I thought about sewing the pieces together, I balked.  So I thought about weaving long strips.  Still didn’t like the idea of sewing strips together.

So, what about putting on a warp with narrow or broad stripes of the different handspun yarn and then weaving with those to create small or large checks.  And what about doing it double width.  Voila.  The germ of an idea finally arrived.

*The essay is by Ingrid Brundin and is called “Making Shells—Using up small bits of handspun with modular knitting.”

Related Post: 
Reflections on the Baby Blanket

“Thinking about Afghan from Handspun”  was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on June 22, 2010. ©2010 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina.

CRACKLE AND INTERLEAVED THREADING

Posted by Peg in South Carolina 

I took the easy way to begin:  playing with my weaving software.  I took my basic 4-shaft crackle threading (threaded two units per block, the blocks lined up in twill order) and did all the transformations I could work out with my weaving software.  A very simple-minded thing.  But, after a lot of unpromising tests, I did come up with something.

I interleaved this threading with an 8-shaft crackle threading (also threaded two units per block, with the blocks lined up in twill order) and got this:

OBSERVATIONS ON THIS DRAFT

1. There are many weft floats that are too long.  Aside from the “rule” that crackle allows floats of no more than 3, some of the floats are just too long to be weavable, though at 60 ends per inch on a piece that won’t get hard wear (dressy fabric, for example, or an art piece) this wouldn’t be a problem.

2. The crackle threading is no more.  But then, the point of this is not to come up with a new “crackle” design, but to come up with a design that might make for interesting weaving.

3. There are groups of doubled warp ends.  They occur because the two crackle threadings are the same size and the units are threaded in the same order.  This would probably be less of a problem if the two crackle threading units were of different size and/or if the threadings were in a different order.  This is definitely something worth exploring.

4. The final threading has no warp ends on shafts 6 or 7.  This happened because the 8-shaft crackle threading was much longer than the 4-shaft crackle threading.  This means that both threadings should (at least normally) be of the same length.

5. The new tieup failed to include shafts 5 and 8 in the tieup.  They are there simply because I added them manually.  I found this a bit strange.

6. This is not a draft to be woven.  It is simply the beginning of a journey.

AN IRONY

It is an irony that the weaving software which landed me with carpal tunnel sydrome has now led my straight, head-on, into the wall.  Using interleaved threadings, as well as echo threadings, with crackle has been in the back of my head for a long time.  But the notion of pursuing it has frightened me because it is such unknown territory, at least for me.  To try playing with it would risk lots of failures with no promise of success.  In fact, the whole crackle-a-day project was kind of a setup to avoid getting into all of this.  And yet, that is right where it has landed me.

But as long as I show up for work each day and take each day one at a time, I will be more OK.

GOING TO WORK EACH DAY

Pressfield, in The War of Art,  has this to say about getting to work each day:

Nothing else matters except sitting down every day and trying.  Why is this so important?  Because when we sit down day after day and keep grinding, something mysterious starts to happen.  A process is set into motion by which, inevitably and infallibly, heaven comes to our aid.  Unseen forces enlist in our cause;  serendipity reinforces our purposes…..  When we sit down and work, we become like a magnetized rod that attracts iron filings.  Ideas come.  Insights accrete.  
                                                                                                     (p. 108)

Past experience has shown me the truth of this.  And even yesterday, when I had at last begun to take on the challenge, the serendipity began………..and I was once again happy.

PROTECTING MYSELF FROM CARPAL TUNNEL SYNDROME

I have put a timer next to my computer.  When I start working with weaving software, I will set it for 20 minutes.  I will then get up, walking around, stretch, including some specific stretches for carpal tunnel.  I will then return, reset the timer, and so on.

Related Posts: 
4-Shaft Crackle Threading Straight Draw
Beginning 8-Shaft Crackle
Resistance to Doing the Work

"Crackle and Interleaved Threading”  was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on April 1, 2010. ©2010 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina

MADDENED BY IDEAS

Posted by Peg in South Carolina

Maddened as in tormented! It all began innocently enough. I simply would find my mind wandering, as I wove, to thoughts of my next warp(s). Blues and reds. Narrower threading blocks. Similar to what I am doing, but different. All kinds of ideas floating around.

Then a notice from The Textile Museum in Washington, D.C. arrived. A request for fiber entries focusing on green. I discarded the idea…….but not the request……. I started thinking.

First, however, I rechecked the deadline. Deadline is not till January. I could do something interesting in this crackle. I have not a prayer in the world that I could weave a piece that would get accepted (one of the things you have to submit is your curriculum vitae!!! oh sure!). Still, especially considering how difficult green can be, I thought it would be worthwhile accepting the challenge. And glimmers of possibilities started to float into my brain.

Also occupying my head (I can’t figure out how there can be so much room in the poor thing!) is a knitted lace summer sweater—raglan, top down. All very vague. Except that the lace pattern will be a very easy one. But then my poor head got more and more engaged. I realized it would not take that much yarn so I could use some of my handspun. Realizing that pushed everything else out, including weaving. The result is that now ideas are now coming to a critical mass where I really have to start to the labor of the actual designing. Hard work. And I want to weave!

Then there is the “small” matter of thinking about and looking at some interesting yarns for knitting our son’s annual Christmas sweater. I have always used relatively inexpensive yarns. Partly because I haven’t trusted his washing. But I’ve learned I can trust it, so this year I have decided to splurge. And I am so excited because it will be a splurge for me as well to feel wonderful yarn flowing through my fingers and watch the rich texture developing. We are going to Charleston this week (and then again next week) for Spoleto. Charleston has a simply wonderful yarn store…….

Not to mention that I am following a bra sew-along and learning that I just might be able to make really beautiful mastectomy bras, and so am looking at patterns, fabrics, books………..

And the Marimekko knit that just arrived – destined to become (when?) a nightgown for my daughter…..

Sometimes creativity feels akin to madness. I feel I will burst if I cannot work on all of this at the same time.

This madness tends to happen when I’ve been away on a trip, even a very short trip. On the way back, as I sit in the car and knit, ideas start to flow. Slowly, then more quickly. That night I wake up with more ideas and thoughts. Once. Twice. Sometimes multiple times. I don’t write them down. I know they will still be there when I get up.

In the morning I sit at the computer and go through the process of getting everything written down and roughly organized. The madness begins to dissipate. I can get back to work.

Yes, we were away briefly this weekend………….(grin!)

Related Posts:
Focus: A Postscript
Weaving Art Pieces
Weaving Masterpieces

“Maddened by Ideas” was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on May 25, 2009. ©2009 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina

SKETCHBOOKS FOR WEAVERS

Posted by Peg in South Carolina

FIRST

Today is my birthday. When I came to my computer, there was a paper copy of the web page with the camera tripod I asked for. On it was written the note: “if you still want this, please order it.” Hurrah!

BACK TO THE BUSINESS AT HAND

Nigel had mentioned in an email a book by Kay Greenlees called Creating Sketchbooks for Embroiderers and Textile Artists. I purchased this book, perhaps six months ago. I skimmed through the whole thing and then started reading it. I stopped about a third of the way through and put it away.

I loved the book. It was beautiful. But how does a weaver create a sketchbook? The notion of drawing rocks or manhole covers, or leaves, or flowers and working from them to a weaving just didn’t seem to work for me as a weaver.

I had been following Nigel’s blog. He is using sketchbooks in the Bradford course. I knew that was part of the Bradford course. But still, though sketching is nice, I still didn’t see any real sense in it for weaving. Maybe for tapestry weaving. But not regular weaving.

And then Nigel mentioned the Greenlees book. So I got the book back out. I began to read it a bit more carefully.

Greenlees says that a sketchbook can be a written journal. In a sense, that is what I keep on the computer. So if I were doing the Bradford course, or something similar, I would have to transcribe the written sketches on the computer into an actual sketchbook. And of course it would include actual weaving drawdowns.

E-SKETCH BOOKS

This time I noted that Greenlees discusses what she calls E-sketch books. She doesn’t seem overly enthusiastic, though she admits others are. She discusses pros and cons and suggests things to keep in mind as the artist looks for the most appropriate software for her purposes.

One of her concerns is the ease of mark making. So she is still thinking of an E-sketchbook as a computer equivalent of a literal sketchbook. I am not concerned with mark making or making sketches in a journal. I am interested in collecting ideas, both verbal and visual.

Any mark making I might be interested in doing can be done in Paint Shop Pro and I can bring anything I do there into other software.

HUNTING FOR SOFTWARE

I have some journaling software on the computer. I tried it a bit. It is a good way to keep the kind of stuff you would keep in any ordinary Word or Word Perfect document. But it fails miserably as an art journal.

Why? You can’t put objects anywhere you want on the page. You simply cannot design a page. And you can’t look at two pages next to each other.

MICROSOFT PUBLISHER

A number of years ago I did a newsletter for our weaving guild in Atlanta. Always interested in new things, I purchased Microsoft Publisher. Easy to learn. Creates an effective newsletter.

Microsoft Publisher. Why not? You can design pages freely. You can view two pages side-by-side. So I went to work. And here is a page I put together rather quickly, just to see how it might work:

SOME OBSERVATIONS

The blue and pink lines are simply margin guidelines and do not print out. Also, the light squares around the various pieces of writing do not print out. They are simply guidelines.

And my name at the bottom is for the purpose of this post and is not on the actual page. Also, since this is the first page, only that page can be viewed. But when I work on the inside pages, then I can view the two pages side by side, as if I were looking at the real thing.

And of course, when I have filled a volume (I can add as many pages to this volume as I want), I can always print it out and have it bound. If I want to.

I can’t attach actual samples, actual yarns, actual leaves…….. But otherwise I do believe this offers exactly the flexibility I need to create a sketch book.

I checked the latest version of Publisher. Mine is 2000 and the latest is 2007. But the latest version has no advantages for me over my version to warrant spending the money.

USING IT?

Now what I need to do is to figure out a system for using it. Ideally, putting in something once a day would be great. But I do not have that kind of time. So I am going to have to do it like one day a week or some such thing. Maybe Greenlees has some ideas.

Or I could just keep it open on the computer. Right now that is a bit dangerous for the novelty of it keeps me at it to the point that it becomes a time waster. But the novelty surely will wear off (though the novelty of blogging hasn’t worn off yet……….).

Related Posts:
Playing with Color
PixeLoom, Paint Shop Pro and Gradated Warps
Painting a Mock-up – with Paint or Computer Software
Crackle Jacket: First Rumblings

“Sketchbooks for Weavers” was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on April 13, 2009. ©2009 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina

WAYS OF CREATING AND AN AWARD

Posted by Peg in South Carolina

A few months ago I found myself engaged in an email conversation with a composer who is now learning how to weave. This started me thinking about the process of creating .

I have begun to think in terms of two ways of bringing an idea into form.

COLLECTING MANY DIFFERENT IDEAS

One way is to collect a lot of different ideas. Ideas that may well have very little if any relationship to each other. This seems to be my way.

I collect ideas that come to me in the middle of the night. Ideas that come to me in the middle of a concert, ideas that have nothing to do with the music I am hearing. Ideas that come to me when a painting moves me. Ideas that come to me when I am planting a tree or a flower.

Similarly, I collect pictures that I like. I put pictures from magazines and catalogs that appeal to me in a large sketch book, sometimes making comments about what I found appealing. I make notes of pictures from books I own that I like. I collect images from the internet and keep them in folders in My Pictures.

What I then have is an array of possibilities. As I begin putting a warp on the loom, and work on the finishing of the warp just removed, I sometimes start looking at this array of possibilities. More often than not, I do not. In the process of the weaving of the warp I have just removed to finish, I have discovered the next project.

FOCUS ON ONE IDEA

Another way is to allow oneself to be seized in the moment by the idea that comes. To analyze it, research it, make notes about it, collect information, make sketches, and to continue this process until a veritable folder or notebook is created that can be filed away, to be pulled out at a later date. The notebook then contains enough material to begin the detailed work of creating the intended object. This is not my way.

Or is it?

By the time I have the warp of my current project woven, I already have a small folder with both information and ideas about my next project. I will have done research and made some tentative decisions about it. So the weaving I am in the process of doing is at the same time my inspiration for my next weaving. It contains the ideas for my next weaving.

COLLECTING GEARED TO A FOCUS

Why, then, keep collecting all these nuggets that I rarely look at? Well, I do look at them, but primarily for color ideas. But other idea nuggets get collected as well. Some of those nuggets get stuck into my brain and have an impact on what it is about my current weaving that is going to inspire my next weaving.

One of these nuggets I have is about double-weave, for example. Double-weave and crackle. One side crackle, the other side plain weave or twill. Both sides crackle, reversible. Both sides crackle, different colors on each side. Both sides crackle, but different block designs. Whether or not to stitch the layers. Interchanging the layers. Yes, thoughts about this grow increasingly intense. The point when it becomes more painful not to take up this particular gauntlet than to take it up is the point when I will begin serious work.

THE AWARD

Now for the award. This is an award that Leigh has gifted me with and I am very honored indeed. For this is an award having nothing to do with weaving but with creating community:

"This blog invests and believes in the PROXIMITY-nearness in space, time and relationships. These blogs are exceedingly charming. These kind bloggers aim to find and be friends. They are not interested in prizes or self-aggrandizement! Our hope is that when the ribbons of these prizes are cut, even more friendships are propagated. Please give more attention to these writers!”

I am passing it on to some other community-creating weavers:

Nigel, Kaz, Cally, Lynette, Laura, Janet

Related Post:
Multi-Pocket Folders
Organizing Projects: Part One
Why I Weave as I Do
Weaving as Exploration

“Ways of Creating and an Award” was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on April 2, 2009. ©2009 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina

BLOG POSTS TO VISIT

Posted by Peg in South Carolina

The first post, called Feeling Blue by Robert Genn is on color, specifically the colors blue and red. Robert Genn of Painters Keys has found himself using a lot of blue lately in his paintings and here he talks about the significance of his focus on that color. But he also talks a bit about red, which makes me happy, since red seems to be my focus right now. But I’m not particularly happy with what he says: “with red you are more inclined to be vigilant and careful.” His piece is tempting me to begin to work with blues. Which works best for you, blue or red?

With this next post, I return to weaving: Finding Your Way in the Dark – The Hawthorne Works. I loved this piece on the limitations of weaving software because I find this software infuriatingly unhelpful in my own weaving. I also appreciated his discussion on overcoming the difficulties of being able to see only parts of the piece one is weaving during the weaving process. The more one weaves on a piece, the more of the piece one cannot see. This is an important problem for a rug weaver who weaves on a regular horizontal loom. But it is also an issue I faced, for example, when I wove my recent art pieces. And I will face it again when I start weaving the next crackle shawl/sample. He has given me a camera trick I will want to try.

Meg, in her post called Mine or Someone Else's? has written an interesting post on what can be a difficult decision: should I stay in my comfort zone or should I leave it to try something that I cannot be sure will work out? I can’t imagine just totally leaving my comfort zone without at least some testing, but perhaps I am too wary. What ways do you have to help you leave your particular comfort zone?

Tien’s post, Heading into the Wilderness, is about leaving the comfort zone and entering the wilderness of the unknown. Why, she asks herself, does she insist on “…striking out on my own rather than following the path that is already laid out.” Her answer resonates with mine.

Related Posts:
Creative Intelligence and Weaving
Aiming for Excellence
Leaving the Comfort Zone

“Blog Posts to Visit” was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on March 10, 2009. ©2009 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina

BLOGS TO VISIT

Posted by Peg in South Carolina

To listen to and watch a wonderful talk on creativity, go to this blog post by Artist, Emerging: Creativity. There you will find a YouTube video—an extremely engaging talk on creativity by writer Elizabeth Gilbert. She presents a way of thinking about creativity that I was familiar with only from my reading on art in historical contexts, a notion that creativity comes not from within the artist, but from a “being” external to the artist. I was so enchanted with Gilbert’s performance and with the words that she spoke, that I could not stop watching or listening.

Kristin has been playing at making handwoven beads and creating jewelry with them.  I never would have thought!  Go take a look at her blog post here.

Amelia of The Bellwether has been running a series of articles on the rigid heddle loom.  A former rigid heddle weaver (I still have the loom so it may come to me again) who has tried a lot of the things she suggests, I find this a series not to be missed.  Not to be missed by a rigid heddle weaver.  Not to be missed by a would-be weaver.  And really, not to be missed by any weaver.  Whether weavers use a rigid heddle loom or not, I think that the knowledge that Amelia is giving us is worth our having.  I do hope that someday she edits these essays to publish them in monograph form.  It would be a treasure.  Go here to read her latest essay.

Thanks to Nigel’s Weaving Blog I have found a website of a young weaver who produces work that truly inspires me.  Her name is Ptolemy Mann and her work can be seen here.   I love her use of color and even more I love how she constructs the displays of her work.

“Blogs to Visit” was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on February 27, 2009. ©2009 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina

PLAYING WITH COLOR

Posted by Peg in South Carolina

A book I recently purchased is called Confident Color: An Artist’s Guide to Harmony, Contrast and Unity, by Nita Leland. I have enjoyed her earlier work and now am finding this book to be quite interesting. Or at least I find that it stimulates my thinking about what I might do with color in weaving. It is probably the photos in the book that are most important, but they are in the context of commentary, which is also helpful.

The picture at the top of this post I created in Paint Shop Pro, using a picture on page 44 as my inspiration. I used two processes. First I created the various squares and rectangles (but not the yellow not the little red square at the top right) with the rectangle tool and filled them with various colors using the flood fill tool. Then I did some blurring and applied some filters. Last I put in the yellow thin rectangle with its square at the end and then the dark red tiny little square at the top.

What is here is far less subtle than what is in the inspiring photo, but it gives me the general idea. The major issue, which I see only now since I have inserted it into this post, is that the yellow line should be farther down. There should also be a bit more pure black.

Despite the limitations of this interpretation, I still like it and think it would be possible to create a piece based on this idea. Not a literal interpretation, any more than this is a literal interpretation of the piece in Leland’s book.

What I am taken with is the use and placement of yellow and dark red. It could work in an art piece, but I think it could also work in fabric meant to be worn or used in furnishing. That would require repetition. But I would like to try it with crackle and see what I can do.

Here is one attempt with my weaving software:

The visual effect is far too much of a plaid and also the background colors are too spotty. The only colors which I want to stand out sharply are the black warp stripes and the bright red and yellow weft stripes. It is difficult for me to get this in the weaving software. But I could do better.

Of course, I have some other irons in the fire to deal with first.

"Playing with Color" was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on January 19, 2009. ©2009 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina