Free Stuff

Everybody loves free stuff, right? Especially free dye stuff!

DH has a tool with a curved blade that allows him to get a series of bowls (in decreasing sizes, one inside the other) out of one block of wood. Without this tool, the entire inside of the bowl becomes sawdust; with the tool, multiple usable bowls and much less sawdust.) He demonstrated the tool at his woodturning club meeting a few weeks ago, and since then we have had a steady stream of woodturners dropping by to have DH help them turn their wood blocks into multiple bowls instead of just one.

Today's visitor had a block of cocobolo, a relatively expensive hardwood from Mexico and Central America. The chunk he started with probably cost $100. For obvious reasons, he wanted to maximize his return on investment - each cocobolo bowl can sell for a lot more than that. I scavenged the small amount of sawdust and chips that ended up on the floor:



Some of it is now in a jar with denatured alcohol to extract the color. I suspect it will produce a color similar to a madder orange. I've used cocobolo as a dye source before, but it was a much darker piece of wood and produced a beautiful deep russet brown. This is somewhat paler wood, and will consequently make a lighter, more orange color.



Hmmm. Some visuals about the bowls would be a good idea. I didn't get a chance to snap any pictures of the visitor's cocobolo bowls, but here's a set of elm bowls that DH is working on. The largest bowl (still unfinished - he's testing several different finishes, which will be applied after a final sanding) is big - about 14.5 inches (37 cm) in diameter:



These 4 bowls, still in rough form, came out of the center of the biggest bowl:



Sort of like those handpainted Russian and Japanese dolls that come apart to reveal a smaller version inside, and another inside that, and so on...

Exhibit Candidates

Today's tasks, after returning home from a quick road trip to Los Angeles for a Designing Weavers meeting last night, were (1) to get the stretcher frames ready for the two pieces I've decided on for the HGA Small Expressions exhibit, (2) to get started on hems and hangers for the winery pieces, and (3) to do some studio cleanup. Now that the jacquard loom is empty except for the threads that will be tied onto and then pulled through once I beam the next warp, it's easier to get under there are wield a duster!

Stretcher frames and hems aren't really exciting image-wise, so here are shots of two more of the pieces that came off the jacquard's cloth storage beam recently - a dahlia, and some daisies:

More New Work

Here are two more pieces in the new batch that I'm really pleased with. First, the bamboo grove:



It's difficult to believe there are only 3 yarn colors at play here: black warp plus bright yellow and olive green wefts. The version of this image that I sampled with 3 wefts went into the "don't try this at home" pile.

Next, the wine barrel:



It almost looks as if you could get splinters, doesn't it? This one has 4 yarn colors: black warp plus rust, tan, and light grey wefts.

Working Through the Pile of New Work

Wow! When I unrolled the pieces that were slumbering on the cloth storage beam, there were 20 of them, plus several samples. A couple I'd completely forgotten about, so it was fun to meet them again.

It's been two afternoons' work to zig-zag the pieces so they don't fray during wet finishing, cut them apart, and then run them through the washing machine (delicate cycle) in groups of similar colors. Today, I began giving them a hard press, and took time out to snap quick photos of each one as it came off the ironing board.

I'm very pleased with the two images of the sycamore tree at Santa Margarita Ranch. Timing is everything - today was the day we had scheduled to go to the Ancient Peaks winery to pick up a wine club release, so while there I mentioned to the tasting room staff that I had just woven two hangings based on photos taken at the ranch (the ranch and the winery are under the same ownership), and thought it would be a courtesy to offer them to the owners before starting to exhibit them publicly. So now I have the owners' names and contact info, and as soon as the pieces are hemmed and/or mounted, I'll get in touch to see if there is any interest there.



The image of the upper part of the tree is about 16.5" by 19", and the image of the root of the tree is about 16.5" by 20.5".



I've still got 5 pieces destined for pressing, and then there's the hemming or mounting, so my work for the next few days will center on these tasks.

I think I've chosen the piece(s) to submit for the HGA Small Expressions exhibit, but I need to download the application forms and review the rules to be sure I've got the size restrictions right. Then those will need to be mounted and photographed for the application.

The curator of the Olive Hyde Art Gallery in Fremont, CA, has advised me that I'm in the Textile Exhibit. Because the deadline was extended until the 27th, I still don't know how many pieces, or which ones (I submitted 5 or 6 for consideration) but at least I'm in. So that's good news.

The next application on my list with an upcoming application deadline is called "Elements: Earth, Wind, Fire, and Sea" at a gallery in Thousand Oaks, CA. I still need to choose a piece for that, but I think it might have to be this one, don't you?

The Never-Ending Warp...

...finally ended, after some 8 months of weaving.

I wove one more vineyard-related piece, based on a photo taken early last Spring at a local vineyard, where the new "berries" (grapes are technically berries, and that's what they're called by the growers) were just beginning to sprout:



There was still some warp left, so I wove some samples for an image that I want to work with but don't have quite the right colors for - it's time to get the dyepots out - as well as another project I'm contemplating: a run of scarves with text as the design element:



The yellow-green sample is 5-end satin. Using a 20/2 cotton weft in this structure means the weft doesn't pack in as much as it should, so the weft should be finer and the aspect ratio will still need some tweaking. Also, the 5-end satin doesn't give as much contrast between the variations as I would like.

The red sample is 7-end satin, which with a 20/2 weft packs in better, but my sample doesn't use appropriate variations to give me legible text with enough contrast. I might try setting the next warp at 48 epi, and use 30/2 tencel for weft with a 7-end or 8-end satin. Another possibility is a very fine wool, which could be woven at a very open sett, thus creating a wider cloth for shawls...

This is the state of the loom right now:



The lease sticks have been inserted into plainweave sheds behind the heddles. After releasing tension on the warp beam, unfastening the apron cords and cutting off the knots at the back of the warp, I'll be ready to cut off the warp in front of the reed. Then the task will be to do the mending and wet finishing and hemming and/or mounting on canvas stretchers. There are a lot of pieces rolled up on the cloth storage beam, waiting to be dealt with, before I can start winding a new warp (whatever it turns out to be).

Well-in-Advance Planning

Last summer at Convergence, I was walking through the vendor hall, and a skein of 60/2 silk in the Just Our Yarn booth reached out and grabbed me by the elbow, shouting "Take me home!!" So I obediently took it home with me, and put it in a basket where I could admire the beautiful colors.

A few weeks ago, I saw a notice about an exhibit sponsored by Just Our Yarn, to be held at the Midwest Weavers Conference in June. The rules of the exhibit state (among other things) that 50% of the project must be made from JOY yarns. (Full information about the exhibit, including entry info, is available here.)

There's a weave structure I've been wanting to try: double-faced satin. I'm thinking of stripes of double-faced satin in 2 different JOY colorways, interspersed with stripes of sheer 120/2 silk in plainweave dyed a solid color. After contacting the ladies at JOY, I've now got two beautiful and very different cones of their handpainted 60/2 silk - the original skein, in dark blues and purples, and another that is mostly greens with splashes of earthtones.





From one side, the scarf will be thick, dense variegated blue stripes and sheer blue stripes; from the other side, thick, dense variegated green stripes and sheer blue stripes. That's the plan, anyway.



That's the skein of 120/2 silk, dyed with Lanaset navy with a touch of green.

Note the snazzy new cone adapters DH made. They're made of lathe-turned hard white plastic, and they fit permanently on the pirn winder. Because the original steel points still stick out, I can wind pirns or cones without having to mount or dismount adapters. The only size cone I've found that doesn't fit is the little white plastic cone from 8-oz UKI yarn packages. To wind one of these little cones, I remove the larger adapter piece, and orient the cone with its larger end on the smaller adapter piece; the smaller end engages the original steel point, so only one adapter piece is required.

We've turned the design over to Bob Kruger at AVL, in hopes that AVL will take over production. In order for DH to manufacture them for an acceptable cost, he'd need to acquire an expensive CNC (computer numeric control) lathe so that the various shapes and angles could be programmed in, resulting in a consistent product. Otherwise, each time he makes a set, he has to shape the pieces manually, which is very time-consuming (and thus expensive). Besides, he'd rather spend his time on his own woodworking projects, and not be a factory.

Wine and Dessert

The Veuve Cliquot was appropriately bubbly, the steak was tender, and the flourless chocolate cake was absolutely yummy! A 1998 Cabernet went beautifully with both the main course and the dessert.



On the weaving front, the barrel is completed. Here it is, with its top hem and some waste yarn to hold things in place:



The never-ending warp looks like there's enough for at least 1 tall plus maybe 1 short piece (or some samples) before it's time to cut off and rewarp.

Now Back to Our Regular Scheduled Programming

Still working on pieces for the winery market. Not working fast, as I'm trying to take it easy on my right hand, which got overused on the process of tying ikat tape on skeins (see this post) and subsequently got whacked by the skein winder running in high gear. The right thumb is still not a happy camper. A friend who's a nurse says I may have chipped the bone near the joint, but "don't bother going to the doctor - he won't do anything except maybe put a brace on it, and you can do that yourself."

I've discovered that when I work on weaving-related tasks other than actual weaving, they're always harder on the hands than shuttle-handling. Why is that?

Anyway, the current wine-themed piece is based on an image of an old, stained barrel. Here's the image, after manipulating in Photoshop and then indexing to 12 colors (4 tan, 4 grey, 4 rust):



And the lower part of weaving:



Now it's time to go enjoy the champagne, steak and asparagus dinner accompanied by an aged Cabernet, and a dessert of flourless chocolate cake. The cake has four ingredients: chocolate, eggs, butter, sugar. We added some unsalted macadamia nuts, so it's a whopping five ingredients. What's not to love? Happy Valentine's Day to everyone!

Breaking Ground on a Major Project

Yesterday, we spent some time in Morro Bay - on the ground, this time - where our friends Nancy and Jerry finally received the building permits for their new house on Friday. "Finally" because the application has been in the city planning commission's hands for a full year!

Their contractor is ready to go immediately. He moved a small tractor and a full-sized excavator onto the lot on Saturday, and will begin work bright and early on Monday. Nancy and Jerry held a "golden shovel" ground-breaking party on the site to celebrate.



They'll definitely have a good view of Morro Rock from their upstairs living area. The downstairs will be Nancy's studio (she's a weaver, spinner, and knitter), storage, and the garage.

Signs of Spring

The season's first daffodils are blooming on the bank behind the house.



In the front, overlooking the road and the neighbors beyond, the ornamental plum is showing off its white flowers trimmed in pale pink and deep cerise.

Up in the Air

Quite literally, as it turns out. Yesterday, a friend took us flying in his small plane. It's a Mooney Eagle, fairly recent vintage - I didn't know anybody was still manufacturing small prop planes for personal use any more, but this one is a 1990-something.



I got to sit in the copilot seat.



We headed due west from the Paso Robles airport to the seaside town of Cambria.



Then headed north to overfly Hearst Castle, situated on a ridge overlooking the Pacific:



After turning back to the southeast along the coast, we reached Morro Bay, with Morro Rock protecting the entrance to the harbor and estuary.





From there, it's a straight shot east to Atascadero, where we swooped over our house (the one on the uphill side of the road, with the newly spread redwood compost on the bank above the road):



Our house is only some 10 miles south of the Paso Robles airport, but on the way we passed over a lot of the area's vineyards.



The landscape for miles to the south, north, east, and west of this point are just the same - plots of vineyards stretching as far as the eye can see. Some on rolling flatlands, some on rugged hillsides, but vine after vine after vine after vine... and lots of good wine as a result!

Once we landed back at the Paso Robles airport, DH helped our friend push the plane back into its hangar, and we went back to our daily routine.

The Groom's Glasses

That's how far I got today before the light faded altogether:



The piece, with its top hem, was finished by dinner time.

Up to the Knees

My in-laws are celebrating their 60th anniversary this Spring, and I'm weaving their wedding portrait as an anniversary gift. The photo was not posed; the happy couple is walking back up the aisle, holding hands, with smiles on their faces. I thought it was a charming photo, and would make a good weaving. This is the original image, after some retouching to restore areas damaged over the years, some fiddling with contrast, then indexing to 9 shades of grey:



This afternoon, after more ladder holding (but no more acorn savings accounts discovered), I got back to the loom. (Hmmm...Ballast. Now there's a job description!) As of dinner time, I'd gotten just about to the knees:



The structure is 10-end shaded satins, with a weft of white Tencel on the black cotton warp.

I hope they like it.

Acorns and Woodpeckers

I've spent a good bit of time yesterday and today holding a ladder while DH climbed up to repair some problems with the roof gutter and downspout on the second story of the house. Although holding a ladder for someone 30 feet in the air can be unnerving, especially when the ground around the ladder is mostly concrete, some of the consequences were quite comical.

The most common bird in this neighborhood is the Acorn Woodpecker, a handsome, very verbal, well-named bird. Here's the male:



These guys live in colonies of 8 or more birds, with a complex social structure (all the mature females lay their eggs in a common nest, and all the juveniles and females help raise all the chicks). Their primary food is insects and fruit most of the year, but they store a huge number of acorns for the winter. Usually, the storage place is the tree that their nest is in. One of the oak trees next to the house qualifies as a food bank - each crevice in the bark has an acorn stuffed into it. And this variety of oak has deeply creased bark, so there are lots of storage places, without the bird having to do much work to make them - no drilling required.

According to the bird database at Cornell University, a tribe of these birds deposited 220 kg of acorns in holes they pecked in a wooden water tank in Arizona. Sometimes they store things in places they won't be able to retrieve the acorns from. I've found countless acorns "planted" in the orchid pots that spend the summer months on the second story balcony, some sprouting healthy little trees. DH found a lot of them tucked into a canvas tarp on a high shelf in the garage. The cheeky little devils fly into the garage, make a deposit, and then leave without even a thank you to the bank teller!

While he was working on the gutter and downspout, DH found a roof tile that hadn't been completely sealed, and underneath it were acorns. Lots of acorns. DH started chucking them over his shoulder, and the ground under the ladder was littered with at least 200 before he was finished. Two hundred acorns and one button. Why the button? Ask the woodpecker.

This is only a dozen of the carefully hidden acorns:



From the evidence of spiderwebs, some of the acorns have been in there for years - probably from the day over 5 years ago that the roofer finished the job and missed this one hole.

As DH worked, the air was alive with the chatter of woodpeckers plotting revenge. "He's stealing from our stash!"

Leftovers, Step 4

This is what my skeins look like today, partly dry:



The blue isn't nearly as bright as it looks here. My camera seems to like blue...

Oddly, some of the yarns didn't take the blue much at all in those ikat-tied sections that were exposed to blue, but not to brown. I remember once in a class with Michele Wipplinger of Earthues, we painted/printed/stamped a thickened solution of iron sulfate dissolved in water onto cloth, then painted dyes over that. The iron seemed to resist the dye in the same way a clamped, tied or stitched resist would do. I think what has happened here is that I used iron to darken the original wood dye, and the residual iron is resisting the fiber reactive dye. Memo to self: be sure to wash and rinse the woven scarves very thoroughly to prevent the iron from causing damage over time.

Other than rinsing the skeins and hanging them to dry, I'm trying not to do much that requires my right hand - the thumb in particular is still bothering me, so it's on medical leave for a day or two. Good thing there's the Super Bowl to watch, and guacamole to munch left-handed!

Leftovers, Step Three

Today, I rinsed the ikat-tied skeins and untied the tape. After partial drying, I got a good idea of how the finished color range turned out. It would be perfect if it were for me - I love those coppery, russet hues! But This is Not What the Customer Ordered. She wants brown, and brown she will get!

The skeins were dyed in Procyon MX fiber reactive dye. I always make brown by mixing orange and navy. Works every time, except this one. This time, the orange struck first, and the navy never had a chance to compete. I've no idea what happened - temperature right for orange, wrong for navy? Dunno.



So back into a dyepot the skeins went, this time a royal blue bath. The copper and russet are turning dark nut-brown, finally. I wasn't about to re-tie the ikat sections - my hands are still complaining about doing it once, so twice was out of the question. That means the ikat sections are now blue, green, olive, and purple (depending on the interaction of the blue with the original hues).

I'll post another picture tomorrow, when the final(!!!) rinse is done and the skeins have a chance to dry at least part-way. If anyone were to tell me that these poor threads have a single, solitary dye site left on which a helpless dye molecule could get a grip, I'd be mightily surprised! At least this time I'm pretty sure of the outcome. Like I say, sometimes my mileage varies from my expectations. That doesn't mean I'm unhappy or disappointed, just that it's going to take an extra step or two to get where I expected to be - making an end product I'm sure the customer will like.

On a more successful note, I've been notified that my entry in the Textiles in a Tube exhibit was accepted, so it'll soon be on its way to South Carolina. The piece I entered was Sunflower, pictured on the loom here and in the post before that. Now to decide what to enter in HGA's Small Expressions...

P.S. I forgot to mention that I've posted a couple of DH's spectacular rolling pins on the sales blog (see link, right-hand column). Mother's Day will be here before you know it, and these are really popular. Some cooks prefer the American type, with rotating handles, and others prefer the traditional French type, which is all one piece, so DH makes both styles.

Leftovers, Step Two

Today the ikat-tied skeins went into a brown dyebath. Here's the look partway through the process:



Since the original wood dye colors were a wide range of values, I don't expect them all to dye to the same dark brown - but I hope they'll get darker than they were at this stage. Time is an important factor.

However, even at this stage, the brown overdye has unified the hues and values greatly, and I know that I'm going to like the end result.

Leftovers

Every time I dye yarn for a project, I always dye some extra, just in case. In case my yardage planning spreadsheet has the hiccups, in case I space out when winding off skeins to dye, whatever. Like I said, just in case.

Invariably, I end up with leftovers. Being a packrat by reason of genetics, I wind those leftovers onto cones and put them into baskets, along with all the others dyed in similar colors. Over the years, I've accumulated a huge number of cones of miscellaneous yarn dyed with colors extracted from wood chips. A really large number of cones, but smallish quantities of each. Some of the yarn is 60/2 silk, some is 20/2 Tencel, some 30/2 Tencel.

I've spent a few hours winding skeins from these cones. Each skein is a different combination - 50 yards of this, 50 yards of that, less if the current cone runs dry. I used the warping wheel, and varied the skein circumference for each skein. In no skein does this circumference divide evenly into the planned warp length, but each skein totals over 1,300 yards of yarn, complete with lots of knots along the length. So an extra, smaller skein was created that I'll use for the replacement ends that will need to be swapped in every time I encounter a knot while weaving.

The next step was to use ikat tape to tie off small sections in each skein, hopefully randomly placed so that after overdying in dark brown, none of the resulting dots and dashes line up with their neighbors. That's the plan, anyway. As it happens, my mileage sometimes varies from my expectations. The skeins are wetting out in a dishpan overnight, and I'll do the dyeing tomorrow.



The reason for this particular recycling project is a request from a friend. More years ago than I care to remember, her husband bought a scarf from me as a gift for her. It was a faux-seersucker design with stripes of silk in black and grey (that wonderful neutral grey you get with logwood plus iron after an alum mordant on silk) and stripes of a wool-lycra blend, in both warp and weft. She has worn this scarf a lot, and loves it to death. However, she told me that as she gets older, she tends to wear less black and more brown, because brown isn't as harsh a contrast to her hair and skin tones. Sound familiar? Sure does to me :-) although when you start with red hair, it never turns silver-grey, just dirty blond...

In any case, whingeing aside, the plan is to end up with a dark brown warp of silk and Tencel, with bright dots and dashes of the original wood dye colors randomly placed on the warp. I've got some wool-lycra blend in a sort of tweedy latte brown for the shrinky stripes. The silk/Tencel stripes will be 2 inches (2 sections) wide in plain weave, and the wool/lycra stripes 1 inch (1 section) wide in either 2/2 or 3/3 twill or 5-end satin; I've allowed extra warp for some samples - oooh, the S word! Wet finishing will tell me which structure lets the wool/lycra shrink appropriately to get the desired seersucker effect.

Stay tuned!