Open Studios - Day One

First, the best news: One of the people who came to the studio today, walked in and said "That one's coming home with me." She was referring to the Golden Gate Bridge weaving. Wow! Was I delighted! It's always nice when a weaving strikes a such a strong note in an observer's heart. Plus, when it pays the fees for both me and DH to participate in Open Studios in one swell foop, even better!

In between visitors, I managed to  finish threading the scarf warp on the dobby loom:

The image I'm weaving on the jacquard loom as a demo piece is based on a NASA photo of Miranda, a moon of Uranus. Miranda has the most gnarly surface you can imagine, with crevasses that would dwarf the Grand Canyon by a hundred-fold if they were on our Earth. Inspired by Alice's explorations of families of granite weaves, I did some experiments of my own, hoping to come up with a series of weaves that would product more surface texture than shaded satins do.

Here's a cropped version of the original image, with the weaves applied:

and the first few inches of weaving:

and a closeup:

I'm not sure if this will be anything more than a sample - I'll have to wet-finish the cloth to see if it makes as much texture as I want, and if the floats are sufficiently tamed. But it's a good demo piece for Open Studios, because it's an image that needs only one weft!