Cutting Off Warps

There are two reasons I cut off a warp - either I've woven to the bitter end, or a deadline makes it necessary to cut off even when there's still warp left on the loom.

This weekend, I had two goals: finish the Wood Series scarves on the 24-shaft loom, and cut off the woven pieces on the jacquard loom. Mission accomplished! We've got the Contemporary Craft Market show coming up next weekend (November 5-7) in Santa Monica, California, so between now and departure on the 4th, I'll be hemming and fringing like mad.

In the case of the 24-shaft loom, it was a case of the bitter end:



At that point, with scarf #5 rolling onto the cloth beam, the pattern is visible:



I cut off the 5 scarves, and piled them onto the ironing board in preparation for cutting them apart and beginning the fringe-twisting process:



They're in order from left to right, so you can see the progression of weft colors (although you can't see much of the patterns). Each is different, both in hue and in treadling sequence. I'm looking forward to getting the fringes done so I can wet-finish them.

In the case of the jacquard loom, it's the deadline that makes cutting off necessary (or desirable, depending how you look at it). Pictures to follow...

Wood Scarves 4 and 5

Weaving goes much faster with only one shuttle! I managed to finish #4 in the series, and get 800 picks into #5.

Here's #4 heading to the cloth beam:



The treadling is a sort of random wiggly networked twill line, which makes an interesting wood-grain pattern.

Here's #5. Pattern? What pattern? I don't see no stinkin' pattern!



The design is virtually invisible from straight on. If I walk around to the side, however, "Oh, that pattern!"



The treadling is big advancing zigzags, and the weft is a pale peachy pink. I forget what wood the dye came from; I'll have to dredge it up out of the archives so I can label the piece appropriately. For the Wood Scarves, I add an extra tag that lists the woods from which the dyes were extracted.

Sign of the Season

Almost overnight, the little maple in the courtyard turned scarlet:



To be fair, it has an excuse - the temp has dropped into the 30's(F) for a couple of nights, so it's now officially autumn-going-on-winter.

Dogwood Tree

This weaving is based on an image of dogwood blossoms. In the original photo, they're the peachy pink variety; here's how it looked after indexing to 9 colors (black, white, 3 greens and 4 peaches):



I wove a small sample (a strip out of the middle of the image) using what I thought were the right yarn colors, only to find that my delicate peachy pink faded into a dirty grey in the weave. So I substituted a bright orange-red, and I like the results much more, although it has lost its resemblance to dogwood somewhat.



I'm learning so much about combining colors in the weave so that the part of the image I want to stand out really does. The choice of hue and value is absolutely critical, and that's the part of the process where I'm most likely to fail. But then, mistakes, not successes, are where I learn the most.

Callie's Mexican Orange Blossoms

The image I worked on today is based on a photo by Callie Booker, shown here (top right photo of the group). With Callie's permission, of course! After messing around with the image in Photoshop and finally indexing to 10 colors (black, white, 5 shades of green, and 3 of orange) this is the result:



It was a good day for weaving - 1,000 picks in all - and all that's left is to weave the top hem. I took one picture of the lower part of the weaving, and another when I called it quits for the day:





A thousand picks is pretty good for a day's work, considering it meant handling 3 different shuttles, which usually means slow going.

Wood Scarf #3 Again

Here's a look at #3 on its way onto the cloth storage beam:



What looked (again) too subtle as I wove it became more distinct when seen under the loom. It's made up of alternating single and double oval shapes, each set a slightly different color than the next because the design lines shift up a shaft or two each time they repeat. These interleaved threadings are great for getting surprising variations with only as much effort as it takes to shift the design by a few shafts! Gotta love "easy!"

Because attendance was light today, with rain on and off the whole day, the moon is also completed, so I'm ready to start on a new jacquard design tomorrow. I've got at least 20 queued up, so it's only a question of which ones I have the right yarn colors for. The others will require some dye work before they can reach the top of the queue.

The most interesting (and interested) group that came through our studios was a small troup of Boy Scouts. The troop leader had phoned on Friday asking if it was okay for him to bring some Scouts on Sunday. Apparently, they have an ART badge, so Open Studios is fodder for the mill (as it were). The troop leader said it would only be 4 boys so of course I said "No problem! Bring 'em!" As it turned out it was more like 8 boys (aged perhaps 10?) and an equal number of dads and moms. The studio was quite crowded, and I think the parents got more out of watching the demo than the Scouts, but a couple of the Scouts asked very intelligent, to-the-point questions, so they were listening and watching closely.

Several of the moms & dads took away copies of the "Woven Portraits" flyer, so there might be some business to be had in future.

Open Studios Again

Today during Open Studios, I had two working looms to demonstrate on. (Last time, the 24-shaft loom was still being threaded and sleyed, so it was effectively out of commision.)

The moon is partly woven (see the previous post for the original image):



And the third scarf in the current Wood Series is partly woven:



The weft for this one is the darkest of the cones shown here.

Tomorrow is another Open Studios day, but there's rain in the forecast so the number of visitors might drop off significantly. Oh well, I'll get more weaving done that way! If I finish weaving the moon, I might be able to start another piece if attendance is down.

Back to the Wood Scarves

Today I finished weaving the last inch of the Petunias, and then the top hem plus a quarter-inch or so of waste yarn. I've chosen a monochrome image (hence single shuttle) to weave this weekend, so I wove the bottom hem of that and the first inch of the image itself. I'll be prepared to show the crowds who show up for the Open Studios Art Tour bright and early on Saturday how a jacquard loom works. This is the image (Luna, courtesy of NASA), indexed to 9 shades of grey, with 10-end shaded satin weaves applied:



After that I did a little light housekeeping, so the studio will be dust-bunny-free for the Open Studios visitors (how often does that happen?), then went back to the 24-shaft loom to finish Wood Scarf 2 and begin Wood Scarf 3. Here's #2 as it wends its way under the loom onto the cloth storage beam:



Not as overly subtle as I feared it might be. You can see all the color blends - mid brown warp, warm beige warp, cool beige warp, cool beige weft (just a tad darker than the warp it's closest to). I think these scarves will be very handsome after finishing, although that won't happen for a few days yet. I'm only on #3, and there's enough warp for five. Plus a busy weekend coming up during which I'll be lucky to get an inch or two of #3 woven.

Petunias

Early in the summer, I planted several baskets to hang in our courtyard. Oddly, the house is situated so that the main living areas don't have a view out to the pretty valley we're located in, so the courtyard is a major gardening effort. With lots of color in the courtyard, I can still have a nice view!

There were pale yellow petunias in one basket, combined with something of a violet hue (whose name I forget), that together really glowed in the summer sun. Before the basket faded into an unruly mess, I took a photo. This is the weaving based on that photo:



The colors aren't right - the green should be greener, and the violet more red-violet, but this is the best I can do for now. After the woven pieces are cut off the loom and finished, I'll post another picture.

The Wood Series Scarves

I'm chugging away on the 24-shaft loom, currently working on the second in the series:



The weft is a grey/brown that is very similar in color to the greyest of the warp yarns (see here for a picture of the cones of yarn before beaming). The effect is very subtle. I expect that after wet finishing, the scarves will just glow with slightly varying color in wood-grain-like patterns. Think fiddle-back maple...

The hand must be getting better - I was able to weave 1,000 picks today without any complaints from the gouty fingers. On previous days, I kept the count under 500; maybe the rest helped.

Good News!

I just received notification that one of my jacquard weavings, based on an image of an aspen grove, has been accepted for Craft Forms, the annual fine craft event at the Wayne Art Center near Philadelphia.



The exhibition, juried by Jane Milosch of the Smithsonian Institution, runs from December 3, 2010, through January 22, 2011.

The Wizard and the Orchids

I finished the Wizard Nebula weaving, shown here just before the top hem was added:



Still reserving judgment until after wet finishing. In the meantime, I've downloaded a few more NASA images - moons and planets - which may be more suitable as weavings. One of the new ones will become my sample on the loom during the next Open Studios weekend, coming up on October 23-24.

By the time I'd finished the Wizard, the woven warp had advanced far enough under the loom that I could get a shot of the orchids:



It's dark under there, but this shot at least shows nearly the whole weaving. I was afraid that the fern shapes would be indistinct, but there's no mistaking them!

Woven Space

Here's a peek at the first 400 picks of the Wizard Nebula weaving:



I'm nearly half-way in the design. At this point, I'm reserving judgement until after the cloth is cut off the loom and wet finished.

I like that the bright blue flecks of the stars show up, but I think perhaps the blue should have been a slightly paler shade. And the bright yellow could be a bit more to the gold, because where it mixes with the black warp there's a little too much of a green cast. The "safety" orange is about right...

In any case, as Laura says, "It isn't finished until it's wet finished." At which point maybe the fat lady sings, and maybe not.

Weaving Space

Although I have stacks of images queued up and ready to weave - more trees and more flowers - I spent some time with the NASA image archives and picked one to use as a sample. I'm curious to discover whether the space images will translate to textiles. Maybe they will, maybe not.

The image I chose is the Wizard Nebula. This is the original JPG from the NASA site:



And here it is after cropping, adjusting brightness and contrast, and indexing to 14 colors (some blues, some golds, some oranges:



Of course, after substituting weaves (10-end shaded satins with three wefts), we're back to the faith thing. "Yes, Dorothy, there is a Santa Claus; that mess of black and white pixels will really bring the right color to the surface in the right proportion at the right spot."



Here's an idea of what the pattern preset looks like. The left-hand columns are just a memory aid to me, so I can easily tell which weft is doing what as I create the weave; they don't get included in the fill pattern defined in PhotoShop. In this example, weft A and weft C are weaving 9/1 (warp-faced) satin, while weft B is weaving 1/9 (weft-faced) satin. The result is that B is mostly on the face of the cloth, and A and C are mostly on the back. There are variations of this for every possible shaded satin of A, B, and C.



Weaving begins today. Photos to follow...

Usnea Lichen

Like all lichens, usnea is a symbiotic composite consisting of a fungus and an algae. Because of the appearance of the material after it soaked in alcohol for over 2 years, I suspect that the alcohol dissolved the algae, along with its chlorophyll, leaving behind the structural material of the fungus.



My belief is partly based on the similarity between the color I got from the lichen (see below), and the color obtained from the chlorophyll extract I got from Michele Wipplinger years ago.

And how's this for day-glo orange?



The soda ash definitely intensified the madder, although it didn't ever get to red. I put another skein in that same dyepot this morning, with a little more soda ash, but it's looking like it's going to be browner than the one in the photo above.

Silk generally prefers an acid environment, but as long as no heat is applied, it'll be okay in this alkaline bath.

More Adventures in the Dyepot

One of the visitors to our Open Studios event, a man who belongs to the same woodturning club as DH, came bearing gifts: a bag of osage wood chips. I promptly filled a jar with chips, added alcohol, and almost immediately the liquid began turning a lovely clear yellow.



Today, I followed the advice of Neki and Deb, and altered the pH of the madder dyepot. First, while a new set of skeins of 60/2 silk were scouring and mordanting, I dumped all the ground madder bits that I'd saved from the previous batch, added water, and heated the whole pot to about 140(F). Then I let the pot cool, and poured the contents out through a strainer to remove all the solids. The solids went back into their jar, more alcohol was added, and the liquid is already turning a nice color:



As soon as the timer on the mordant bath went off, I put one of the skeins into the dyebath. The color was orange, so I added some dissolved soda ash to raise the pH. Still orange. More SA. Still orange, but with more of a red cast to it. More SA. I'll leave the skein until tomorrow, and decide if it the pH still needs to come up more.



The second skein went into a dyebath made from the liquid out of a jar of "old man's beard" lichen that covers the oak trees in areas where the fog comes in and raises the humidity level. It's been soaking in alcohol since just after we moved here (2.5 years?) and the alcohol had drawn out every bit of the mossy green from the lichen - it's now pale beige. I had expected the alcohol to turn the lichen rubbery and limp, but it's still crisp, just ghostly looking. I'll try to get a photo of the lichen "skeletons" tomorrow. In the meantime, this is what the yarn looks like with the lichen dye and a pinch of copper sulfate to intensify the color.



While all these things were happening in the dye kitchen, I finished sleying, tying on, and tensioning the Wood Series warp on the 24-shaft loom, and wove about 200 picks using the butterscotch gold skein dyed with Pink Ivory.

Madder Skein

This skein of 60/2 silk spent about 24 hours in a madder dyebath. I wanted a light value that would play nice with the warp yarn colors. I think this will do just fine.



There's still a lot of color n the dyebath, so it has been set aside until Monday, when I can wind and mordant more silk and be prepared to let it rest in the dyebath for days and days. I'll try the methods suggested by Neki and Deb in earlier comments to see if the resulting color is more red with a high pH.

Open Studios, Threading, and Other Pastimes

The San Luis Obispo County Open Studios Art Tour begins this weekend. We'll be open from 10:00 am until 5:00 pm Saturday and Sunday, October 9-10, and again the weekend of October 23-24 (same hours). If you're in the Central Coast area of California, please do drop by the studio. You can email me at sandra at 3springshandworks dot com for address and directions (it's easy - we're only 2 turns off Hwy 101, and only 1 turn off Hwy 41).

There will be woodturning demonstrations, and the jacquard loom will be up and running.

I'm hoping to finish threading the 24-shaft loom so I can show the difference between the patterning that's possible on a shaft loom compared to a jacquard loom. The warp is beamed:



And arrayed on lease sticks suspended behind the shafts:



And about two-thirds threaded:



The three warp colors together make a wonderful honey-blonde, which I think will be really lovely in the woven cloth.

While I thread, and listen to classical music on the iPod, I've got a skein of 60/2 silk soaking in a madder dyebath at room temperature.



I had hopes for a redder hue, based on the color of the liquid in the jar while the ground madder chips soaked in alcohol, but it's turning out to be the brick-orange hue, not red-red.

This is the second extraction from the ground madder, but the first alcohol extraction. I saved the dyestuff, and will try another alcohol extraction in an attempt to get that red-red. There's definitely still a lot of color in the material, so maybe it will just take more time to get the orange out and reach the mythical reds.

I'm hesitant to try shifting the pH, because often the resulting color will shift back again if the article is washed at a higher pH. If I can't depend on the color to stay a particular hue, it's difficult to sell to a customer and promise that the color she sees on the scarf is the color that will be there after the scarf is laundered. My tap water is slightly alkaline, like most laundry conditions, so I can be fairly sure that what's there now will be there after laundering.

Oh well, the brick orange will work well with the warp colors...

National Arts & Humanities Month

On October 1, President Barack Obama released a proclamation declaring October 2010 National Arts & Humanities Month. National Arts & Humanities Month was established in 1993 and is celebrated every October in the United States. It was initiated to encourage Americans to explore new facets of the arts and humanities in their lives, and to begin a lifelong habit of active participation in the arts and humanities.

Now if only we could reinstate arts education at the elementary, middle, and high school levels! Having been involved in the performing arts (in my case, music) from kindergarten through college, I feel very strongly that the confidence instilled in students who are exposed to the performing arts is terribly important throughout their lives, in both personal and professional settings. I know all too many adults who cannot get up in front of a group (even a group of their friends or family) and speak or perform without being overwhelmed by embarrassment and shyness. I truly believe that if they had been active in music or drama, an audience wouldn't faze them at all - it doesn't bother me, and I was terribly shy when I was young. But playing recitals from the age of 6 taught me that being in front of an audience doesn't have to be a scary experience.

Let's all support arts education!

A New Season, A New Warp

The past few weeks it's been really hot in the West - in the 100-105(F) range at our house, and even hotter in some parts of Southern California that are usually mild. The hot spell finally broke on Saturday with a big thunderstorm, resulting in a beautiful stormy sunset and a downpour. Autumn is here! Today the forecast high temperature is 62(F).



I'm about halfway through beaming the next warp on the 24-shaft loom, using these three wood-dyed yarns:



From left, Monterey cypress, cocobolo, and a light grey-brown walnut, all on 20/2 Tencel.

These are some of the wefts I will use (although I'm not sure about the very dark brown):



From left, dark walnut (probably with some iron added) on silk, black acacia on silk, black acacia afterbath with a pinch of iron on 30/2 tencel, and pink ivory on silk. The last one was a big disappointment: The wood is light pink, the dyebath was bright pink, but as so often is the case, the red component in the color is fugitive, and it all went down the drain. What stuck on the yarn was a pretty butterscotch gold. I put the rest of the pink ivory chips into the compost - gold is easy to get from lots of other sources.

If you want to know more about extracting color from wood, go here for a link to a PDF document that outlines the procedure I use.

Orchids

The image of orchids is now woven. I took one photo, when I had about an inch to go (plus the top hem):



I have another 8 images ready to weave, but don't have all the right yarn colors available for them.

This weekend, while dyepots are being tended to, I'll begin beaming the next scarf warp on the 24-shaft loom, for a 3-color Wood Series. The drafts were finalized this morning, and I have 4 of 5 wefts ready. There's a jar of ground madder root soaking in alcohol, and I've got a skein of 60/2 silk ready to mordant and then dye.