"How Long Have You Been Weaving?"

This is another I don't know how to answer. I wove my first creation on 5 August 1995 on a rigid heddle loom. I bought a homemade 4-shaft jack and wove six cottolin napkins; then the loom collapsed. (I have to tell you this story some other time.) I borrowed a better 4-shaft Naggi (NZ) jack and contemplated undulating twills, but while I worked full time, I draped laundry over my looms.

In February 2001, I went to my first weaving workshop in Marlborough; this was my coming out; I declared/admitted to the world that... ummmm... I weave... And I had to learn how to read a draft in the first 15 minutes. I wove for a local weaver later that year for three months, throwing a boat shuttle for the first time when she asked me to sit at her loom.

Having woven two or three warps on 4-shaft, I went to Bonnie Inouye's workshop in Murchison in May 2002 to make up the numbers. I got Fiberworks PCW Bronze and a 16-shaft Thorp (NZ). I wove two or three warps. In August, I bought Julia Cameron's "The Artist's Way", and totally uncharacteristically, "did" the whole three months. (I'm still kind of proud of that.) 2003 was a bad with health problems galore, both of us.

Early in 2004, after being throughly disgusted with my inability to switch to a creative/artistic life, and thinking I can always go back to an office job, I got a part time job, where I walked like a zombie wondering what world I stepped into. Around August 2004, I was more or less asked to resign, and that was the best thing that could have happened. I have been weaving more or less consistently since the day after I left that job.

I made plans and wove to schedule in 2005; I sold my first piece in September; I got a piece accepted at the national exhibition in Wellington and sold that piece; I had three commissions and finished weaving the last of these at 11:30AM on Christmas Eve morning - I had seven guests at 7PM that night. In February 2006, I got my first award, the First Time Entrant Award at the Nelson/Marlborough/Buller Area Exhibition, and then had tendinitis from a gym machine that's not suited to people with short arms and couldn't weave for six months. And then of course I went to Randall Darwall's workshop in October 2006.

So 1995-2004 was the Dark Ages, but I feel like I'm cheating if I say I started in August 2004. "I have been weaving intermittently for a little over a decade," seems to be about right.

No Words Required

On our way home from the Marlborough Weavers' meeting, the sea of sheep parted and we drove through. My camera was in the bag in the back of the truck, so Sue kindly took these and sent them to me.

I love New Zealand.

(Note the appropriately faded shirt, the hat, the shorts; if dressed properly, he would have brown-and-natural wool socks and a brown pair of boots or black "gummies", rubber boots.)

"Why Are You Doing This?"

This is one question I don't know how to answer: why am I having an Exhibit(ion)?

I said I would to Lloyd Harwood of Arts Council and reserved the gallery last May.

In June I went to an Artists' Retreat and sat in a workshop for "craft" artists; the speaker was meant to discuss the ways craft can be shown/sold, and how we should approach galleries/shops. The message I (and as it turns out, quite a lot of people who attended) got, however, was a cool "Don't call us; we'll call you!" So I thought I needed to make the first move, so I can write it in my Resume/CV.

Last Sunday in Marlborough, Joan asked me the same question, and my answer de jour was: "I came to weaving late in my life; people my age have been weaving for decades, and I want to catch up."

Until last week, we had had a cool summer and I haven't spring-cleaned the fireplace because I was never sure when we would use it again. A week before I'm opening This Hoo Hah showing wool shawls, summer finally arrives full blast and it's hot and sticky and I wouldn't blame anyone if s/he thought I was demented for doing This Hoo Hah in the middle of a Nelson summer.

So, three days to go, I still have to weave one more, so out you go. Don't ask me such a hard question!

Support Crew

With the preparation of what I'm now calling This Hoo Hah, I am being encouraged and helped by many people, about some of whom I will be writing in some depth in the future, because I'm hoping, in spite of This Hoo Hah, they will stay my friends and artistic co-conspirators for a long time.

Today I'm introducing this guy. He has a full time IT job; he comes home, takes me to the Mega Store to buy material, builds/paints the rigs, and then cooks me dinner. When my mother visits solo, he makes us coffee and toast, goes to work, comes home, and seeing us in the middle of warping/dyeing/sorting yarns, cooks us dinner.

He never questions when I covet yarns or weaving books/software/equipment/loom but encourages me to get them. And he didn't mind when my weaving space crept into his workshop and finally pushed him out into the garage.

Weavers' husbands are a patient lot, but I have to say, I hit the jackpot with Ben. (And everybody thought we wouldn't last three months!)

Thank you, Ben. I am making you breakfast on 17 February.

Randall Darwall Update

This just in from the Great One: "Finally getting back to whatever normal is after 4 shows since NZ. Eek! ... Brian's show was wonderful - will send pix sometime. It just came down 2 days ago."

Ornament magazine Vol 30, No 1 had a 4-page article on the Philadelphia Museum of Art Craft Show 2006, in which Randy and Brian participated. There's no photo of Randy's work, but: "Randall Darwall, from Bass River, Massachusetts, is a studio clothmaker who designs as he works. "I particularly like the unpredictable potential that only the handweaver is free to explore in process," he says. He will use many different kinds of silk yarns "to make the color glow, to create depth and to record the motion of weaving."

This magazine is not sold in bookstores in New Zealand, so if interested, email them, attention: Stephanie Morris.

EDIT:

Randy Darwall passed away after a short illness either on Friday, January 13 or Saturday, January 14, 2017. (I heard on Saturday here in New Zealand.) There is supposed to be a memorial in the northern hemisphere spring. This is all I found on Facebook.

The Rig

Five of the seven pieces will be hung on what I'm calling the trapeze. Ben cut 16mm-diameter pine dowels to roughly 900mm in length and drilled a hole roughly 10mm from each end. I threaded a window blind cord into these holes and knotted the ends. Then we slipped the dowel through a plumber's insulation material, made to fit a 15mm pipe. This particular one is cut on the side, so we can slide the dowel (with the cord) through, and then remove the cellophane to seal the insulation material. But the real reason I selected this particular insulation is because it came in the least obtrusive gray, and the manufacturer logos were in slightly darker gray, so they will not show through the shawls. As well, I would have preferred to use fishing lines instead of the cord, but I was told by the hardware store man that fishing lines stretch and may not be ideal.

These trapeze will be hung from the ceiling, and the length of the cords will be determined in situ. The room in which these trapeze will be hung has a 2950mm ceiling, and I can't envision the best height at home.

Paua and Shawl/Candidate Two will be hung flat, similar to tapestry in a Medieval banquet halls; this part of the gallery has a 3630mm ceiling, and I wanted to take advantage of this height. This will be particularly effective in showing Shawl Two, which needs to be shown in its entirety (unfolded and un-draped) to show the color changes warp- and weft-wise. For now, we are have prepared two flat pieces of pine boards and three huge bull clips each to hold/clamp the shawls, and to secure the boards to the wall, but I am not sure if I want to use bull clips or wing nuts, nor whether to paint or stain the pine boards.

Shawls Five and Six

The third warp was in the less saturated mid-blue, (the darkest in the first warp), 100% merino wool, 110/2; the sett was 18 DPI; in 14-end straight draw, Shafts 15 and 16 weaving two ends of plain weave at both selvedges.

In Shawl Five (I've stopped calling them candidates now) I used possum/merino/silk in denim blue as weft. The piece was started and finished with a small section of modified #31216; the main weave part is a modified #30147, both from Kris Bruland's web site. The hot water from the tap was exceptionally hot on the day I washed this piece, so the cloth felted more quickly than usual. I like my possum/merino/silk yarn's fluffy feel, so I continued to full until the warp and the weft blended in.

Shawl Six's weft was the same possum/merino/silk again, but in light brown; the weave structure is what I've come to call a Doodle Weave.

Maryland/Colorado weaver Bonnie Inouye teaches weavers to play in the tie-up and in the treadling/lift plan. In my Doodle Weaves, I plot out a straight-draw 14-end twill, with as much difference in the two sides of the cloth as possible, for example 1-5-2-6 twill, in the tie-up, and then doodle in the treadling, drawing long and short curves. I also use different weft repeat options available in Fiberworks PCW, such as Drop or Mirror Repeat. When I think I have an interesting movement in the cloth, I change the draft from tie-up to liftplan, and check for long floats and tweak the design. In this particular shawl, I wanted long floats, and I think I allowed up to seven. I didn't want the weft to blend in with the warp, but rather sit on top, so I did not full the cloth as much as Shawl Five.

As I mentioned before, I hung five of the shawls in the basement to try to name them, and looking at them, I initially thought the less Randall Darwall elements I have, the happier I am with my cloth, by which I mean minimum hue/value contrast, and lack of movements. On closer examination, however, I think I have always tried to introduce some kind of movement when I modified weave structures. For example, Shawl Five's design moves two ends to the left with every repeat. And my Doodle Weaves is all about movement, so my cloth is not un-dynamic, but I use the weave structure to express movements.

In deciding to weave one more piece in Doodle Weave, I am trying to incorporate something of Randall Darwall, most probably Fibonacci Sequence in the weave structure. But I'm still doodling, and I've six days to go.

Remember Dianne?

I got another photo from Dianne; she says: "This is an image of three wraps on a turquoise warp, one with lots of Fibonnacci stripes (all that changing shuttles and ending off ends is slow work), the second I had some black add in threads which looked awful until I put in the horizontal bleeders and the third was reversing the 16 lag chain to make leaf shapes."

I agree with you entirely about switching shuttles and cutting ends. I have orders for tiny cashmere scarves with random color Randying but I really have to clear my head before I embark on those; once I start a piece, however, I'm away with the fairies and thinking happy thoughts.

And you talk often about the color of the sea and ask me about the Nelson sea; THESE are the colors of the sea on really hot days in Nelson!

Thank you for the photo, Dianne.

A Different Generation Of Weavers

Weavers often comment to me; "You must spend a lot of time on the computer." And, yes, I do sit in front of this screen a lot. I used to hear/read a little bit of cynicism in this comment, similar to being told off for watching too much television or playing video games. And not enough time on the loom.

But wait, I've been on email and instant messaging sine 1985, and I had to use the public fora for obtaining information for work. I've been peripherally in the IT industry from time to time, and I'm married to an IT guy. (In fact, the very first time I ever "spoke" to Ben was through instant messaging asking him if he wanted me to apply my portion of a fix from my computer or from one in his department.)

Furthermore, for about the first five years while I was a closet weaver, I found teachers in North America through the various weavers fora, which were already a busy platform in 1995. After weaving three warps on a 4-shaft jack loom, I purchased a 16-shaft computer-controlled loom, because if you live in Nelson, and one comes up for sale, you grab it. And I've been playing with weave structures on the computer every since.

I've always kept my weaving records on a spreadsheet, and this year, intend to build a database so I can search by weaves, shaft numbers, yarn sources, and link to my tiny but growing customer database. And now that I have a digital camera, a blog and a photo blog, I use the Internet to ask questions, compare notes, and hope to spread the joy and excitement of handweaving through the Internet.

So, even though I don't have an MP3 player attached to my person, (I don't even own one!), and even though I'm just a few years younger than many weavers I know, I am of a different generation of weavers, in that I use the computer extensively to help me in what I do.

And I don't have to feel bad about it.

Marlborough Weavers Meeting, 21 January 2007

After being their waif for six years minus two weeks, I finally went to a meeting of Marlborough Weavers yesterday; Sue and I are now their newest members. For this hermit weaver, it's a bit scary being part of a group at long last.

They tell me the meetings won't always be like this idylic, but I wanted to show you the "business" part of the meeting, (and this isn't even the beautiful part of the garden!)

Life is good; now back to my basement.