When You Weave And Then Dye....

If you weave something, say a woven shibori piece, and then dye, when does the wet finish take place? At long last I started thinking about shibori, because I have this vague idea and a long-term goal that I want to make something that will maintain its shape and shibori or plaster (the white stuff, not BandAid) are the only things I could think of, and I'd much rather do the shibori.

I suppose it's after the dyeing but before I take out the strings?

Textile in/and Art

I have been thinking about Joanne Mattera's blog post I mentioned earlier today; not about what I'd like to call myself, but about textile in/and art.

A while back I went to a John Bevan Ford exhibition at The Suter with Rosie. Among other things he often drew/painted woven Maori cloaks, not to record, but as a symbol. One of the reasons I enjoyed the exhibition was because he deemed textile as deserving of such importance in his art.

From what I've seen, when textile appeared in paintings, they either show the wealth of the subject, often kings, generals and churchmen, or depict women and their mundane lives, as in embroidering for the rich or mending for the poor. Rosie added that painters (and certainly sculptors) showed off their technical skills through textiles. But textile itself, that I know of, has seldom been the main subject of paintings.

As with any other craft/art, top recognized artists, the Living Human Treasures, involved in textile/art in Japan are men, (although there are many women practicing it.) So I don't associate textile so directly with women (ergo, domestic/mundane). This could be why I have difficulty understanding the low esteem assigned to fiber/textile art around me. Although I think the many nameless European tapestry and brocade weavers were men, too, weren't they? Or was the work actually done by women?

White I write, I'm melting listening to the Mark Vincent CD I got today from Australia; he's the freakishly talented 15-year old Australian singer. He sometimes sounds like Dean Martin, sometimes like a much younger Bocelli, and I look forward to Mark aging and living a bit. The production value isn't great, but this CD will make a great Rococo weaving background. Popera at its best. And the last track is Advance Australia Fair!

Book Lust

Remember I had great difficulty sorting my stash room this winter, partly because I had so many books? I gave away more than 180cm in width on the shelf, and sold about 60cm, but since then I bought 12 new books. (OK, two to replace the ones I gave my mother.)

I have to curve my book lust. Seriously. Even if, as Taueret once said, and if she didn't I'm attributing this to her anyway, "The more textile books you have, the better weaver you become." There is one book on Amazon.com that I've wanted for a year now, and it's now available used. Maybe I'll wait just a bit.

What Got into My Head?? (Or More LiIke What Fell Out??)

Connie Rose, on her Facebook, put a link to this post in Joanne Mattera's blog about whether a person is a (insert-media-or-method) artist, or just an artist. You'd think I would get worked up once again, but strangely, today, I wasn't. But the blog looks like an intelligent, worthwhile one!

I realized with all my issues and problems that I am just happy to be a person who makes things on the loom, and you can call me a weaver, an artist, or Larry, and it wouldn't make a different to what I do or how I approach my making. I just enjoy being someone who makes things.

Kinda liberating, isn't it, for a change?

This morning, for the first time in 18 months, I didn't want to go to figure/life drawing, and wanted to weave instead. But I did; I might just be starting to get a hang of looking at the subject long enough now, just, and I didn't want to miss the chance to practice again.

The double-width blanket is going well, very fast to weave and I'm constantly advancing the warp, but it gave me another idea and I'm making another warp to tie on to the current one; it's something my mom asked for a few years ago and I can't remember if I wove her anything on that occasion but it's a very textured early-spring-themed something or rather, with fine merino boucle both ways. And then, I want to do my wider, gold-and-blues/teals/greens Rococo swirly things again. Or something else.

Later, I happened upon a textile book I had never seen; it's "experimental textiles: A journey through design, interpretation and inspiration" by Kim Thittichai. I had seen her "hot textiles: Inspiration and techniques with heat tools" which intrigued but didn't interest me, but this one looks promising. I'm not sure if it's the book or where I'm at. So I got it as part of an early Christmas present from Ben. (But can I please gripe again that this book which from Amazon.com costs US$18.45 is a whopping NZ$60? Ouch!)

Have a read and let me know what you think about Joanne Mattera's blog post mentioned at the top.

I Want, I Want!

Look at these ornaments discovered via Desiree!! I've always love bird feathers and anything with bird feather motifs but these are beautiful!!

Murphy's Blanket

As in Murphy's Law. I've been working on a brother blanket to this one. I was so tardy when the Big Brother received his blanket, he was around 14 months; this wee brother is going to be around 19 months by the time this gets to him, however. And I do feel bad; how do you explain to a toddler the weaver had a bad year?? I hear there us even a little sister now! If the client wants a third blanket, tell me now! I might just tie on to this warp!

Even though I call them baby blankets, these are meant for toddling boys to carry them around, drag around, and do whatever little boys do, so they are not exceptionally soft. I imagine these blanket on the beach, in sand boxes, and even on paddocks.

As well, this client requests specific color schemes. So in the Big Brother's blue one, I used soft merino warps and sturdy wool called, in New Zealand, carpet singles. For this one, because of the colors requested and the range available from my warp source, I decided to go with a mix of nice and harsher warps and a softer weft.

The harsher warp (oh, but the gray is so beautiful!) was not nice to thread when my hay fever was at its worst, but armed with pills and spray allergy meds, and clad in an synthetic, long-sleeved apron and a shower cap, I persevered. (I couldn't use goggles because they fog up my glasses and I can't see!)

This is only my third double weave project. The first being this blanket for the same client, the second being Big Brother's, and though they're called double weave, I've only woven double-width weave outside one workshop. That makes this one the third double weave in four years. Read: inexperience and much too long in between.

I modified Big Brother's draft and made this one a 3/3 twill diamond. I copied the plain weave portion from the previous blanket, and reworked and checked the twill draft a couple of months ago. Or so I thought. When I started sampling, I got cylinders, so I corrected the drafts; the plain weave worked, but the twill was still cylindrical, so I corrected again; then I got two cylinders again! Two hours later, I finally got double-width plain and twill drafts.

While washing the sample, I forgot that the bottom of this sample piece is cylindrical, and panicked thinking its width shrunk to half that on the loom! What drama!

I like the darker, even-width weft better because the colors are saturated and the even size of the yarn doesn't distort the diamonds, but the lighter weft is much softer at 100% merino. I also have 10 balls of knitting alpaca that could do the job. It's thinner, about the size of the brown I used at the start to separate the warps, which may produce more attractive diamonds. But I'm yet to be converted to liking alpaca, so I didn't bother sampling. I'll decide whether the alpaca needs sampling, or one of these wefts is suitable after the sample dries completely.

Sometime during the flustered afternoon, I misplaced one of my two huge boat shuttles I use for fat wefts. I looked around, including tipping my huge fat wool box on the off chance I dropped it there, but no luck. It might well be during the next Big Clean when I can be reacquainted with that shuttle. Then I became unsure if I owned one or two of those shuttles! You'd think I'd know something like that like the ... name of my husband! Oh well, (and you know I wanted to use "h" in that second word instead,) I still have the first shuttle so I can work on this project. I hate getting old.

Weaving day tomorrow.

Red, White and Blue

Such a familiar color combination, but it works in so many variations. This was Nancy today at Lunch at Deville.

Not That One... No, Wait... This One... No, Wait...

In trying to investigate Log Cabin and Shadow Weave simultaneously, (Log Cabin on four or more shafts so I can add little areas of interest within a mostly Log Cabin cloth,) I'm starting to get ever so confused about the two structures, even while sticking to the Interlacement view on Fiberworks PCW.

I think I need to concentrate on one this week, but I'm also considering if there is even the possibility of combining them, and if that means anything.

Live is good; weaving is full of wonder! (And wander.)

Two More Mom Stories

American planes used to drop tiny pieces of what I assume are foils from air. It was to confuse the radar I'm told, but grownups weren't sure so they told the kids to run indoors if they saw shiny poisonous sparkles descending from the sky. Of course kids loved them, and rushed out to collect and stash them away in secret places. Mom did, even though she was in her early to mid teens.

Chocolates and cigarettes used to be wrapped in real foils when I was a child (not metal-treated paper like today) and Mom and my aunts were always super reluctant to throw away the foils, because they were metal and valuable, (metal got taken away to make weapons, but that's not unique to Japan,) but I think the sparkles from the sky was actually a happy memory for them. I used to collect my Dad's cigarette foils because they were the heaviest, and it smelled mysterious.

After the war, if you had friends in the occupying forces, and my uncle and his friend (for whom 45 years later I found myself working!) certainly did, you could get chocolates and silk stockings and American toothpastes. Mom and her aunts knew they were toothpastes, but the American ones tastes so good they secretly ate them, and used plain old salt to brush their teeth. In the 80's I used salt toothpastes, but they were scarce and terribly expensive and Mom used to laugh at the change of fashion. It's that Circle of Life again.

On My Calendar / Bamboo

Yes, it is, and on Ben's. Saturday November 28th is the Marlborough Weavers' End of Year meeting and there's usually plenty of fun things happening but I've never made it; often around that time Ben has to work a few weekends. But this year, he has the previous week and the Monday and Tuesday following off, so I'm coming. I haven't seen my friends since... NO!... when I pitched the Marlborough Weavers blog idea to them in February! Geez, I'd better make up a bag of things to show this year's effort!

* * * * *

I've been belatedly thinking about the environmental impact of weaving. This, I have to tell you, is one of the reasons why I never took up dyeing (so far). New Zealand and in particular Nelson sun is so strong natural dyes fade so quickly I never seriously contemplated anything but chemical dyes. Plus I have certain ideas of what I want my pieces to look like, and so far I've only come across commercially (so presumably harmfully but not as haphazardly as I would?) made material to enable me to make them at prices I can afford. Read: I haven't seriously looked into the environmental impact as I assume it's going to be very expensive and kind of dull in colors or limited in choices.

But last Sunday Claudia told me the environmental impact of cotton, lots of water and pesticides, and on Friday Ali told me the chemical treatment needed for bamboo and other new fibers concocted from natural material.

I'll tell you one reason I've been reluctant to contemplate bamboo. Traditionally in Japan, bamboo sticks about 6 ft long with one end sliced to an acute angle was a weapon. Women and children used them to practice the martial art of Naginata, a woman's sport. (By the way, Aikido is also a woman's sport in Japan, though it's practiced by both genders in New Zealand.) My mother's generation practiced the bamboo Naginata at school so they can fend of meat-eating (i.e. supposedly far more robust,) American soldiers and even B29s. See here or here.

I know I'm laughing, and so can you, and so are some Japanese blogs, but Japan was a very poor country until surprisingly recent times, somewhere between the '64 Olympics to the manufacture/export era of the 70's or 80's. But being civic minded and responsible, even the monpe-(peasant work trousers)-clad housewives and school girls had to take part in defending the Empire. And back there there would have been a bamboo bosh within walking distance from most homes.

But you can see how I associate bamboo with sharpness and hardness. It has antiseptic qualities and we used it to wrap rice balls, but nowadays you can buy plastic imitations in supermarkets, and I've even seen plastic and other imitation of lunch containers, (think ancient Tupperware). Real bamboo is not as accessible as it used to be, but to wear it as textile sounds too far-fetched for me. Apparently not so in Japan - it's a big hit and even my Mom loves them, and she nearly fell off the chair when I mentioned my picturing her with a bamboo naginata attacking soldiers.

Times change. And quickly. I've definitely been feeling reluctant to keep up with the new in the last few years. In some ways it further pushes me into weaving and old ways of doing things. And again there's that big circle, to use safer, more supposedly natural materials and methods to be kinder to the environment.

I know there are weavers using bamboo, too, now. Have you tried weaving with it?