Old Stuff...

Today was a beautiful day, the first day of spring, a perfect gardening day, and even I thought of venturing outside, but I've been feeling a little oozy from the antibiotics, so I stayed inside and worked on the website some more. (Oh, the tooth; it now transpires it could be a wisdom tooth, which I thought I'd had extracted decades ago! I was told sometimes a course or two of antibiotics can make the problem go away without extracting the tooth. I'm all for ooziness in that case!)

I went looking for nice photos for the website; most of the ones I liked were from 2007; I was equally enthusiastic about weaving and photography, and the house was tidier and, I hesitate to say, I had a wee bit less stash. I had some terrific pieces, if I may say so, as well as terrific pics of rather sad pieces. And some of the pieces I thought were poorly designed turned out to be not so bad; I might go into Red to make myself reacquainted with them.

(Not the pic, but the series of three of these.)

Lately I am interested in designing and getting a piece done, and everything I do is finished just in the nick of time (or later), I don't have many good pics of any of the pieces I've woven this year. The yellow pic a couple of posts ago is the one of the very few I like, so it's popping up all over the place. Must try harder!

However, I had taken some strategically out-of-focus pictures specifically for the website, (and things like business cards, brochures, posters, should I need them), and some of these finally got to see daylight. (The berry-colored banner at the top of this blog is one of them.)

I had planned to completely revamp and rewrite the web site, but whether I tried to edit the old version, or started typing on a blank screen, I ended up with pretty much the same thing. Likewise I shuffled the contents around a little to make it more interesting, but the sections more or less fell back into familiar positions. So I concluded Ben and I gave it enough thought at the start, and Martin Rodgers gave me very good advice soon afterwards, that I decided not to tamper with those sections too much.

It's mostly the gallery part that I hope to update often, and possibly add an exhibition section, but that will be in the next phase. It's a good thing I'm finally far more interested in weaving than in marketing, (took me eight years to get here), but I should keep working on the "business"side, too, incrementally.

So here's an idea: the next time you feel a piece didn't work well, stick it in the back of your closet and pull it out six months from now. I swear, you'll see lots of good things about it; from that distance, you can be more objective about your work. OR, if you have a digital camera or video, take deliberately blurred, "moody" shots; you could make good use of it another time.

Flickr

Ben told me his Flickr prompted him to renew his Pro account. This means mine is about to "expire", too, so we hurriedly paid for the Pro account today. We couldn't possibly let anything happen to the first SSVE, you know. (Ben thought if we let this payment lapse, the free account would allow no "collections" and up to only three "sets".)

We upgraded to Pro account when I was starting to think about upgrading my website. This must been a years since I thought of it. My current website sits in the server under Ben's desk, and among other issues, it's noisy and hot because it's an old "tower". Plus somehow we settled on a convoluted system where I created or revised the html files, Ben resized/repositioned pics, sometimes did other stuff to unify the looks, (even though we worked off a template he made), and then copied the finished file to the server, and finally updated my copies... Often I find one word I wanted to change, or a typo, or spacing anomaly, which had to wait until he was home to be fixed. You can see how it didn't suit my temperament. At least I learned Frontpage and Dreamweaver, but nigher were entertaining enough for me to enjoy the process.

So we've been looking at options, and though some WordPress sites looked breathtaking, and Ben even built me a prototype over one weekend, I just couldn't be bothered learning a new editor or set of vocabulary. So it's going to be on familiar turf.

I finished the draft today, both in English and Japanese. Not a lot of changes, virtually no pics yet, and nothing in the gallery, but it'll be easier to update, and this setup is easier to work incrementally, and I can update immediately. And we can shut off this noisy boy soon.

It was a semi-productive day.

This Will Have to Do

I am not displeased. I used the highest contrast (value and hue) yarn in the weft thus far; I wove my hither-to favorite 15-shaft structure, (which can still use some editing); the selvedge is a little savage, but this will have to do as my submission to the National exhibition, due Tuesday or Wednesday.

On to the next thing. I'm skipping the wider cotton warp I had planned for National for the time being, and working on a small merino commission piece, and cashmeres, after I borrow an 8-shaft table loom from Ronette, hopefully tomorrow night.

Colors

Ugh, I hate thinking about colors. I know a whopping majority of you weavers would writhe to think of a fellow weaver who isn't thrilled, even giddy and delirious, about colors; c'est moi.

I took a short correspondence course on colors in 2000 through the New Zealand national guild. It was a hard slog, (Nancy's wading through it right now), and though I enjoyed learning the theory, combinations and terminology, I now have a permanent pair of tinted glasses without which I cannot "observe" colors, yet my knowledge is minimal I can't understand/describe in those terms what I see. Or, the left brain can't allow the right brain to jump up and clap its tiny gray hands when it sees something pretty, and instead has to butt in and analyze why it produces a pleasing effect, to legitimatize the right-brain/gut-feeling appreciation. Alas, I don't want to spend the rest of my life leaning about colors, when I could be weaving.

This is one game my left and right halves can never play nicely together, but I need them to, to progress to dyeing.

So it is that with trepidation I went to my second Color Workshop yesterday; this time the tutor was ex-Polytech tutor, modernist painter and friend Errol Shaw. This guy is a deep man, and I might have walked into the workshop ready to be balled over by his philosophical observations and modernist inclinations, but I found he is a proper teacher, and I appreciated his allusions to music and cooking to make a point about colors and paintings. Needless to say, the rest of the class consisted of painters, some very experienced, and they were familiar with colors and color names commonly used on paint tubes. ("Ultramarine" is the only one I knew.) I did find the mood of the class overly painting-centric, (what else he could have done), in using tube names and specific properties of the tube-name-color, Needless to say, this was much appreciated by the others. However, he knows what I do, and he's seen some of my pieces, so when it came to individual instructions, he was able to speak to me at my level, and even better, he asked me what I liked/disliked about the experiments and how I thought I could improve on them, and he confirmed/corrected my observations and prompted me to do more.

I think after a good night's sleep I appreciate his instructions more than I did last night. My classmate Jo (also in my figure drawing) is going to see if a workshop of a recurring kind can be set up; regardless, I might go see him for private critiques so I can add a bit of spark to my weaving.

In Rose Shepherd's workshop I experienced pleasure because I stuck to abstract experiments; this time I had collected what I thought were as abstract materials, but I was unconsciously emulating those around me and spent much too much energy and time trying to make the experiments descriptive, and wasted valuable time. So, no pictures. And more homework.

What we learned yesterday were the eight color compositions: color-wheel-based, chromatic, achromatic, monochromatic, naturalistic, spatial, optical, and selected palettes. Most importantly, these are not mutually exclusive or clear-cut, but often overlap.

Next workshop is titled "Color and Expression"; the blurb says; "This workshop will to allow you to explore your personal and cultural response to colour through a series of creative exercises." That's going to be a loaded experience for me, I know it: I'd better start massaging my right brain now so I set myself up to enjoy it.

Spoiled

I may have a monumental toothache, but I am lucky, and spoiled. I have a husband with a day job, who not only approves and supports me in my weaving, financially and practically, but also comes home from work and cooks me dinner sometimes. I haven't got kids, so most of my time is mine.

Oh, sure, I can stand to live in a bigger house with space for more books; I'd love another computer-controlled loom; and I sure won't die if Ben's pay is doubled. I won't cry if you made me go on nice holidays more than once in a great, great while. But I have it better than most of the 6,718,428,132 people around the world. (It's scary going to this web site and pressing F5 and watching the number grow so rapidly.)

I was reminded of this when Sam, a classmate in my figure drawing course, casually confirmed the start time for tomorrow's color workshop; Sam is a mum so she has to organize her morning. And then by Taueret's comment here.

I noticed this morning the interesting glass in B Block (Visual Arts block) inside entrance doors. I don't think I want it in my house, but I love the fabric-like feel. Well, actually, I may not mind having this on my studio door.

Is This Getting Old?

You know... Operating heavy machinery... Big loom... Sorry...

Still Alive

I survived the day.

The Council man Gary was nice, but I don't get it; he didn't even look at the handrails on the stairs; he was overly concerned with the downstairs bathroom, which the other Council man Andrew checked thoroughly ten years ago. Whatever. All we need now is a certification from our tile guy Fraser that says he did membrane work (???) so the structure of the house doesn't get wet every time we shower. I can do that.

Then Joan and Win came over from Blenheim, and we had my mushroom soup (looked horrible, tasted almost ok.) Win traveled to Egypt and Joan to Northeastern and Northwestern China this year, and they had nice travel stories. Joan also showed me textiles she bought in China.

This was my favorite, an Indigo apron front. The center part is embroidered; the boarders woven on two shafts with pick up! Imagine that! She said all over town people were embroidering.

This is a traditional baby wrap, but these wraps are still in use. This piece, the corner was possibly worn, because there was a different fabric sewn, with the same embroidery work done to make the "ribbon" pattern.

And then I finished my last scarf. That will have to do for the National exhibition. It's considerably smaller and less-challenging. But it will have to do.

Tomorrow is figure drawing; Saturday is the second color workshop. I got the syllabus for Saturday, and I'm quite uncomfortable; tutor Errol Shaw broke down what we'll be doing in such detail it reads like a NASA schedule, or at least a Japanese train timetable. We are definitely going to draw, and paint. Yikes.

Plan vs Life

This is an unusually dull post, even for me, everybody. It's about a toothache. So I don't blame you if you don't want to finish. It just helps me concentrate on something other than the toothache.

The plan was to weave off the yellow warp last week, put on a wider cotton warp in scintillating color progression over the weekend, and weave the 15-shaft draft I made up for The Wall. That draft was meant to be an emergency draft, but it's my best draft to date. Around today or tomorrow, I was going to post it to the national guild (New Zealand Spinning, Weaving and Woolcrafts Society) exhibition, due next Monday-Wednesday.

The fact is, the yellow warp was heaps longer than I remembered, so after I wove the 11 samples, 15cm long, for the Cross Country sample exchange, due sometime last February-March-ish, I still got a proper scarf, and another.

By Monday I realized that I may not get around to warping and dressing the loom for a wider piece, so I'm weaving this last one in the 15-shaft draft just in case this is all I can finish in time (even though my form says it's about 30cm side). At least a backup, in case the wide one doesn't work out.

On Tuesday I cut in half and heated up a ciabatta in the oven. I was going to put sun-dried tomato spread, salami and leaves. While the bread was in the oven, I blogged a bit and bread got a little tough. But no worries, I went downstairs and ate it while looking at the piece off and on the loom. Well, the bread was quite tough, but the combination yummy.

That afternoon my teeth started to hurt, but I wasn't sure which one. By evening it was throbbing so I took two aspirin. It got progressively worse and I had to take a sleeping pill to go to sleep. But it got pretty bad so I resorted to this barbaric old Japanese pills that numbs the tissues inside my mouth; we use it maybe once ever five years, but we always have it, just in case. And ususally one-half does more than the trick, but that night, I ended up with something like eight in my mouth.

Wednesday was the pits. I was moaning and groaning because something about emitting voice produces nice vibration on the mouth/cheek area that seemed to soften the pain. I took some of Ben's regular Nurofen, and started to weave bright and early. After about 200 picks, I though I'd fall off the bench. Ben went to get Nurofen Plus (with codeine!!) and dropped it off before heading for work. I ripped right in, but they took two hours to kick in. You can only take two of these every four hours and maximum of 12 a day, for three days. And I don't think this is enough.

I rang the dentist, even though I knew he was in Europe for a month playing cricket, but I could have gone to see a locum today at 11 - except the City Cocuncil guy is coming to inspect a stairway and a workshop we got consent for... 10 years ago. The workshop was long done, (you know this because I've been weaving there for over five years) but we didn't want a stairway handrail (makes the stairs narrower) so we never installed it, AND the Council guy 10 years ago said it's OK as long as we installed it when we sell the house.

Since we have to replace the wood burner this summer, I thought it wiser to close any previous consent issues, so Ben installed the handrail, and that's getting inspected today, at 10:45. Besides, two of my favorite weavers are coming from Blenheim to have lunch at my house today; one's coming to see her dentist in Nelson apparently. So yesterday afternoon I made a creamy mushroom soup (and was sufficiently preoccupied) and then the rest of the day I squirmed on the couch, watched Oprah and read the NZ Listener (the lightest weight reading material I had). I intended to pick up and tidy the living room a bit, but I was too feverish I gave up.

So we'll see how today goes. Ideally, the Council guy will be happy how we've finished everything and close the case; Joan and Win will like the soup and we can talk weaving without my shivering or making inappropriate noises, and I can finish weaving the last scarf. Then I will go to figure drawing tomorrow morning, come home (canceled lunch with Rosie - I just couldn't see myself doing that,) wash/press the scarf. Come Saturday morning I shall post it and then go to my second color workshop. Or, I'll go find another dentist tomorrow.

But you know how life doesn't always work out the way you planned. At least I'm going though all my almost-finished moisturizers.

A Question I've Long Been Afraid to Ask

So... are all of you cat-people? Any other dog-loving weavers? Vote on the poll on the sidebar, everybody.

Donkey with a Beret

Having confessed to experiencing left-brain malfunction and eyesight problems, I astound myself in finishing six posts and adding another in one go. I am nothing if not garrulous.

But they had been on my mind. I hate posting a question and then not giving my thoughts; it feel irresponsible. I still have more on my list.

On Friday I was rushing to my drawing class when I saw this tree root; then, it looked like a reclining female figure; today it looks like a dead donkey.