3PM Saturday in Honolulu

And it's after midday Sunday here. It's a gray, unattractive day in Sunny Nelson and I'm struggling photographing my piece. Either that, or it's a surprisingly unphotogenic piece! But I promise I'll post soon.

Pics to Picks 2010: The Big Reveal

Back in March, 15 weavers exchanged visual clues to inspire and entice each other to design, and possibly weave, based on these clues. Ben picked names out of his baseball cap and matched exchange partners.

Here are the final results:

Lynn - Bety

Linda - Trapunto - Rose

Sampling - Sampling in Dec 2010 - Julia - Esmae

Desirée - Holly -

Shirley (Design and Color, P2P, Good Old "Birdseye")

Kaz (Print to Loom, Patterns for Print, Enjoying Images, her thoughts, and the scarves)

- Dana - Lynne - Meg


If you'd like to follow the progress of individual weavers, here they are:
(Blogs prefaced with * have had posts relating to this challenge since the Big Reveal)


Kaz's "curious weaver" posts tagged "Pics to Picks"

Julia's "Space and Structure" posts labeled "Pics to Picks"

Rose

Holly's "Honeysuckle Loom" posts labeled "Pics to Picks"

Lynn's "Linnet Knits" posts labeled "P2P"

Trapunto's "The Straight of the Goods" posts categorized
"Pics to Picks Challenge 2010"

Desirée's "hemvävt.net" posts tagged "Pics2Pics"

Bety's "deep end of the loom" posts tagged "Pics to Picks"

* Amanda's "Sampling" posts labeled "P2P"

Shirley Treasure at "Shirley Treasure"

Esmae

Dana's "A Cat in My Lap" Posts labeld "Pics to Picks"

* Meg's "Unravelling" posts tagged "Pics to Picks"


The Challenge Brief

The previous Links page


The Big Gallery Flickr sets for this challenge has been deleted; some of the links were modified. 

We are Weavers

We weave with shuttles. Maybe it's OK for us to go back and forth between our Left and Right brains. (Nope, still procrastinating getting ready.)

One Ring to Unite Us All

I just anointed myself Dame Rantsalot. I'm going semi-crazy because I'm very tired this morning but I have to get ready for an all day writing workshop, instead of staying home mending the supplementary warp ends in front of the fire and washing my colorful whatever-it-decides-it-wants-to-be. (Too tired to go all crazy; imagine a baby that wimpers a lot because s/he just wants to go to sleep.)

Images of dames and swards and mostly Elizabethan costumes made me think of big insignia rings, and fantasized going to Hansen's and asking to get a bunch of weavers' rings made to unite us all, but we don't need a material thing, do we, to unite us. Besides, most weavers aren't rolling in disposable income, I'd imagine. No harm in fantasizing.

My writing workshop is a short walk from here. I'll be thinking of you today. In fact, I might cook up some strange back story for some of your lives.

Friday

Color typing paper, color gesso, chalk pastel. Arm position was wrong and I lost the hand. But others in class are imitating the diamond shape and the jagged tape lines.

Color gesso on Jill's rag; chalk pastel, and possibly other stuff. The arm position was wrong and then I lost the hand. Where did you hear that before?? But an interesting background covers for me. Ronette is wondering how many will gesso fabric for next week.

I was called something this morning by an art student; "renegade", was it? Suddenly I remembered I was a renegade in the convent school, from age 7 onwards. So where did I loose it?

* * * * *

P2P. The exciting part is I'm getting links to everybody's final posts. And they are very exciting. As to my own, I had to cut off the warp this afternoon. The warp was indeed much too short, and I rejigged the warp once too many and the tension became too uneven to weave. I have 110cm woven, and a good length of potential fringe on one end, too, too long for my taste on the other. It could still turn out to be a gorgeous shawl for someone about 2 ft tall. Or a cat.

Disappointed, because it would have been a gorgeous silky scarf, but man, I learned a lot.

* * * * *

My wild tea cosy is kind of buried in a field of colors in the bookshop window. Disappointed, but hey, that's the way it works, isn't it? I'm too busy to worry about it.

Onwards and upwards. Tomorrow is the writing workshop.

Grrrrrrrrrr

No picture today. I'm too embarrassed. I'm having an old problem I thought I overcame in 2000 - somehow I measure the warp incorrectly. I wanted a 150cm piece, so with loom waste and sampling, I made a 220cm warp. The sample was approximately 25cm; the loom waste on this loom is minimal, but I suspect I'm going to be able to weave up to about... 120cm only - maybe less.

I had something like five consecutive warps in 2000 where I got pieces drastically shorter than I had planned, and I can't remember how or when but I thought I had overcome that problem. Come to think of it, I rarely make a warp for one piece only, rarely shorter than 8m, so I might have been getting around the problem, not overcoming it.

OH, BOY, AM I FRUSTRATED AND MAD AT MYSELF!! This was not a project I needed to make such an elementary boo boo, but what can I do? I'll finish it anyway, (OK, shorter weaving time, ha ha..) wet finish, photograph, etc. But I don't know if I can wear it. I looks like a Lilliputian table center, folks!

Pics to Picks 2010 Esmae Emerson

Today, I Have No Time to Work on This

Weaving Against the Clock

But resigned to the probability that I won't finish this in time.

I Recommend This Video/DVD

I viewed for the first time "Color Interaction for Handweavers" DVD by Donna Sullivan from Yarn Barn. Sullivan goes through a lot of information with woven samples, and she is focused on weaving and information specifically for weavers. About the first 1/3 is spent on very general color theory, but the rest focuses on fibers and how they react; colors under different lights, same colored yarns in different sizes and textures, etc.

What more can a weaver ask for?

Well, the DVD copyright is 2005, but it is in fact a copy of a 1991 video, so the sound is sub-par; if you have hearing problems like I do, you might have to play some sections over to hear what she says, at a rather old-ladyish volume. And the woven examples are very 80's. (Watch out for Sullivan's Big Bird jacket!) The DVD jacket says running time is 60 minutes, the inserted handout says 40; I think it's closer to 40. Still, the material is intelligent and focused, the samples pertinent to the points being made, and overall, a joy for weavers.

I recommend it. Check out your local/public, academic, or guild library to see if there's a copy hidden way somewhere!