The Group and a Conundrum / Spinning, Knitting and Colors / Garden

As I mentioned in the previous post, The Group met for the second time last Monday.  We spent an awfully long time discussing the group name, all of us aware it wasn't just the name under consideration, but fine-tuning what we wanted to do as a group and as individuals, and testing the group dynamics.  We couldn't decide on our name, but I think we all felt a lovely sensation of being in an encouraging, sharing, and creative environment.  We disagreed on a few things, and lo and behold, we came out happier at the other end of discussing our disagreements; I've never been in an environment like this.  For the first time that I could remember, I could voice my disagreements without feeling I wasn't playing nicely.  This was very liberating.

One of the things we discussed at some length was the diversity of interpretation and reaction to words: some words that brought surprising reactions were: sisterhood, boundary, and marks.

Private galleries in Nelson are closing down or being sold left and right, limiting the options for prospective group exhibition venues.  In fact, Refinery is the only one we could quite easily sign up for at the moment, but they are pretty much booked until the end of 2012, except an iffy two weeks here and a definitely one week there.  (From memory, they used to allow bookings in three-week blocks, but they're not doing this any more.) Ergo my little conundrum, whether to give my slot to the group.  And even though I've been working on WYSIWYG for 15 months now, I've really no preference or prejudices about going solo or group.  None.  What so ever.  As far as I'm concerned, for now, I can go either way and really enjoy the process and have a pretty descent exhibition.  Isn't this... novel?  Though I almost wished I had an inclination one way or another. 

* * * * *

I have been weaving the hard slog, I mean, hearts, blanket; I have enough warp left to weave a narrow but long-enough blanket for a single bed, so I might as well go for it.

For my own entertainment, I've been spinning and knitting. This last project was supposed to be a funny warm hat for my mother, but I think it's too small even for her small head, and it's not thick and warm in the way I envisioned.

 

 (This hat is much redder than either pictures: I several versions but my eyes aren't cooperating this morning, and neither portray the autumnal, harvest feel of this hat. The darkest red part is closer to cherry red. )

This is the first time I spun with a smidgen of design in mind; it was to be in gradation with the lightest oranges in the middle, but when I made the balls I wound them so the red bits needed to be knitted first on both balls, instead of them coming at the top and the bottom of the hat.    

I'd like to learn to card better, and looking at two video clips which Dot recommended, I have an idea of how to improve this.  I don't mind my yarn being inconsistent in width, in fact I love knitting with extremely slubby yarns, but because I have very little control, I've been creating more threads than yarns, and because I only have one set of knitting needles with which I can knit a circle, these threads are woefully inadequate.

The biggest reason for my lack of control is my speed.  I realized when I spin, I try to treadle/pedal as fast as I can; it's as if another, more athletic part of me takes over, and it's a completely different part of me than the one trying to spin with a hint of design in mind. I've tried slowing down my foot/leg, and being unsuccessful, I tried readjusting the various knobs to slow things down, but I haven't been able to decide what is the correct speed. 

I have considered taking a correspondence course on spinning through our national guild; I thought of the course a couple of times in the decade but it was never high on my list.  I'm brought back the idea to the back of the back burner, again, because I would like to be a better spinner, but by better spinner, I don't know what I mean and I don't know what kind of a yarn makes me happy.  I suspect, though, spinning could potentially introduce another "style' in my weaving repertoire - texture.     

But then there is my tendency to turn everything fun into difficult tasks when I want to be better at it.  Drawing is so far the only thing in my life I feel comfortable just doing, and never worrying if I'm good or if I've improved.  For now, spinning (and knitting) has been great fun, and because of the speed of my treadling, at time it's almost thrilling just trying to keep up with the speed without loosing the end of the yarn.  I'll keep the spinning course at the back of the back burner for now and attempting more crazy spinning.  Ditto with the knitting; no gauge, no measuring, no sampling. 

(Now, close your eyes and imagine a Punch or The New Yorker style cartoon of a little old lady whose leg is treading so quickly she's trying to keep up spinning at ultra high speed!  She cannot but spin in orange, do you agree?) 

* * * * *

I was surprised I carded, spun and knitted the latest hat in three or four days. My group members thought I was underestimating their work when I mentioned, (apparently, once again,) how slow weaving is.  But in my case, weaving does seem to be the slowest thing I do.

Oh, the things you achieve while watching the telly in the evenings! I think I need my Rigid Heddle to live in the living room. But next, I think I'll try a slightly more intentionally-designed hat for Mom.

So far, I've only ever knitted orange things, and the next hat will be in large part orange again.  But I am spinning some mostly white stuff, too; these yarns may finally go into my weaving, fingers crossed.  

* * * * *

I've been gardening quite a bit, mostly weeding and trimming, but before each rain, I've also been taking things out of pots and putting them into the ground.  The place still looks pretty shabby, but I now have pockets of tidied areas. And mounds of weed pulled but not cleared everywhere. I have a system, but my body defies system and logic some days, and I'm allowing even this, because some work is always better than none.

Signs of Life

I don't sit around staring sat photos all day, just in case you were wondering. As a matter of fact, I've been good about turning the computer off, and get this, tidying the garden in shorter spurts, so I utilize the rest of the day better, rather than being exhausted and sitting in front of the fire.

Yesterday we had the second meeting of The Group (name undecided), which I'll reflect on and post about a bit later. Suffice is to say, things are progressing nicely. 


But Pat told me to hurry up and either weave or cut off the hearts blanket warp, because I haven't wanted to weave it so I don't even go downstairs, which has halted my concentrated weaving period, and among other things, defeats the purpose of my taking a term off of drawing. Touché!


Meanwhile, changes are afoot. The Red Gallery has been sold (to two Nelson women,) and Jay Farnsworth will finish up at the end of June. It's an end of an era for her, Red, and me, but I'm happy for her as she is ready for the next stage in her life.  I will miss my "drop in" center, for sure, but hope to stay in touch in other ways.

Now I'm off for a couple of hours in the garden.

Choices

My laptop is temporarily living in the living room, and my P2P2 photo folder is permanently open.  I feel good that I don't know where I'm going with these photos at the moment, I play with photos for an hour, walk away to do other things, then revisit the images.

This morning I was taken aback at my selection of photos yesterday.  I had some I liked better,  but I chose those yesterday; isn't it funny? Especially for someone with such strong tastes such as moi?

This is the negative of the blue Honeysuckle picture, and my favorite yesterday in the shape/value department.  I love the different degrees of details, particularly the hint of unseen details.There is such movement in this as well, created by the different values of yellow, and perhaps the dotted-line-like details.  Can you hear the bumble bees?

Here is one interpretation, with more details in the medium range with a grainy, old look. (This reminds me Victorian hydrangea wallpapers in pinks, purples, blues, or all three. With floating ribbons.)

Here is another interpretation, a highly contrasting, crisp look.  I like both of these very much.

This is the positive of picture above the blue photo.  This was my favorite in the hue department. 

Here, I manipulated the negative further; when I manipulate saturation, contrast, and luminosity repeatedly, things I did not see start to emerge.  In this case, I did not pay attention to the difference in the shapes of the leaves and the boundaries of the different values; here here the shapes all but disappear and the flower sits in a pool of contrasting hues.

 

I'm still hung up on the blue/purple and yellow/gold/brown combination I liked in the monsoon cloud picture.  Here I played with Grand Canyon, but this weekend, I'm definitely learning towards dark blue/indigo and rusty golds.

Fighting Prejudices

We had a wee bit busy afternoon making four visits to three hardware stores looking for odds and sods we need to fix stuff around the house; the wonky kitchen tap, paint for outside window frames, cords for the bedroom shade which was so tangled we couldn't open it all last week.  And the "safe" algae and moss remover; it costs twice as much as the bleach-based product, but I want to protect the storm-water drainage and ourselves, so it'll pay off in the long run.

So it was nice to come home, light the fire, and sit down to play some more with the images.  A problem I often have is once I have an image/viewpoint/concept, which tends to come to me too early, I have a hard time thinking/seeing an image any other way.  So I've been creating what to me are some prejudice-busting images this evening.   I have about half a dozen to a dozen from each picture, and I can move on to manual/sketchbook manipulation of images. Maybe.

The top three are Grand Canyon, the middle three the cloud, and the bottom three the honeysuckle picture.

Playing

I haven't received my hardcopy pics yet; Amanda said she'd mail them to me on the weekend.  We had some misunderstanding about "posting", so I'm very appreciative she uploaded some on her blog and I can get started.  And reading posts by some who have started work, I've been anxious, a little bit, in the last 24 hours, to get started.  So I downloaded three photos from her post, (sorry, kitty,) and started playing a little bit.

When I was five, I vaguely thought Grand Canyon was "thataway", and I realize now I meant southeast of Tucson, Tucson being a smidgen to the right of Satuaro in this map.  I knew the National Park crossed a state border, and whenever I thought of a state border, I thought of the Arizona/New Mexico border, for no particular reason. What can I say, I was a kid.

This is Amanda's picture.

In my mind, though, Grand Canyon (and a lot of Arizona,) was salmon pink/orange, (a touch paler than the picture above,) except at sunset when it turned a darker, deeper orange, and then purple.  Above is a composite of the images I have in my mind.

As well, Ben has digitized some slides Dad took in 1963/64, which have discolored to this kind of pale shade of old.  (I will dig up some of the slides before P2P2 is over.)  It's hard to separate what I actually remember vs. what I rediscovered in 1976 vs. what I think I learned from reading and photographs.

Back in those days, Dad told me The Grand Canyon was a natural phenomenon, and explained how water can, over millions and millions of years, cut through rocks and "the ground" to gouge such a vast "groove".  I had to look down really hard to see the river at the bottom, which was just a glimmer a mile down.  He also told me because it's natural, the Canyon looks different at different parts of the park, (I can't remember the details,) and we saw some picture in a pamphlet (??) and we agreed we liked the deep, dark, rocky parts better.

As regards this picture, the colors in my memory are at the forefront of my thoughts now, but I intend to look into the value contrast as well as the horizontal and vertical lines and the fan shapes.

The Monsoon pic: above is the original.

I love cloud and sky pics, but I couldn't feel the three-dimensionality/depth of the clouds, so I manipulated it.  To you the clouds in the two pictures may appear similar, and I wonder if has to do with the very strong contrast Nelson sun often creates, but the bottom picture feels familiar, and realistic, to me.  Having done this, I really like the hues at the bottom - burnt orange, dirty gold, and indigo - though it makes this, to me, not-a-very-Arizona scene, and my loyalty is divided between the top 60% and the bottom 40% of the picture.

Lastly, the Honeysuckle.  Here is the original.

I have a hard time getting past the lovely orange in sharp focus, and the cool yellow-green in the background, and for sure I'll work with them, but I know there is more.  One thing at the tip of my brain, as it were, is the different degrees of how sharp the focus is, though I can't think of how to investigate this at the moment.

Has it been a Week Already?

Remember this?  This week, I made one for Ben.  It's wonky-looking, but a slightly better fit than mine and as warm as anything.  I wanted to steam-press to smooth out the fabric, but he likes it this way.  I'm all out of my handspuns but have plenty more sliver, so I am thinking of making a hat for my mother, who really feels the cold in the winter in their old house.

Mom and Dad visited a Kurume Kasuri weaver a couple of months ago, and this week I received these. The noodly-looking stuff is eight-ends of cotton, tied and dyed but never used.  The cotton on the cone is the cotton used as resist; previously dyers used soft cotton which broke easily for the purpose, but recently, Mom was told, they use sturdy cottons for resist.  They feels like those old cottons we used in rugs, When tying the resist, dyers don't cut after each section, but continue on using one long thread, and after the dyeing, they pull on one end and the resist-thread comes, showing the undyed area one after another.

Both these colors fall in the spectrum of color called "Shu" in Japanese, or the lacquer-red, but in the old days when folks referred to the color red, they often referred to these orangy reds. Mom said there were lots of blues, as well as other colors, all chemical-dyed, but observing my recent love of oranges, she went with this combo.  These yarns having a Japanese connection, I'm thinking of plain weave or perhaps Herringbone.  But the cotton on the cone is rather stiff, and I must figure out how to use dyed noodle warp; it's very long, each end is slubby but skinny, and I have to study the position of the dyed bits and consider the placements.

I've been gardening, too.  It's been cooler and the work easier.  I've been trying to get things out of the pots and into the ground, some have waited nearly a decade for this, but I'm not rushing.  Then, the night before last, we had heavy rain, again, and we woke up to the national news that a few families were evacuated down the road due to the rising river, and some highways in and out of Nelson closed or slower speed limits imposed.  Yesterday the sun was out, but overnight it rained again, and the ground is soggy this morning.  This means guilt-free weaving for the next couple of days.

Oh, and the weaving?  Well, I wove about 160cm of the second, gray, Hearts blanket, and instead of making it longer, I started another, (this time, once face on each side!) because it looked like I had enough warp for a third.  I'm seriously mystified now because I think I have enough warp to make this a really long one, OR, shock horror, possibly another piece after this.  I thought I made a 5-meter warp,  enough for two blankets; I'm afraid to go back to my records because it might say I have my standard 8-plus meters.

The second, gray, piece didn't have any tension problems, but the third, white, piece is being naughty,  I've done a few things to remedy this, resulting in the gray piece looking warped.  I must hurry weaving so I can take them off the loom sooner rather than later.  (Such slow weaving, though... Mumble, mumble...)     

Just this week, Dot told me about Campaign for Wool, and it was the first I heard of it.  Australia has already started (or finished?) their event, and it looks to me the events in New Zealand is mostly for the industry. Is there anything happening in your area?

Naughty!

The person sending me visuals for my P2P2 project is Amanda, and we've been in communication. Her/my envelope is en route, but she posted the photos on her blog, and though I swore I would be good and wait to receive the real deal, I cheated.  Here they are.

Amanda lives in Arizona, and she included two from there.  Long-time readers will remember Dad worked at the U of A Tucson for a year and I went to kindergarten during the academic year JFK was shot.  I've been going down memory lane all morning, remembering trips to the Grand Canyon, Mesa Verde, (two most memorable places the five-year-old me), the meteor crater, Bryce Canyon, (not in Arizona, but equally visually memorable.)  And the almost weekly drive to Saguaro National Park.  And all the "dips" in the roads that allowed the evening shower water to run and not flood all the roads.

1962/3 were the best year of my parents' lives.  They knew it then, and even I sensed it.  They were in their early/mid 30's, Dad had a relaxing research job, Mom was playing tennis every day, they had two cars, (unthinkable in Japan in the 60's), we lived in a small rented house with a dry garden, and they had to deal with just one kid.  I know they both wanted to stay in the US, (or go to Australia), but Dad respects such things as family ties and duty so we went home after three years "sabbatical" in the US.

Boy, we had a nice life.  And we lived every minute to the fullest. 

There is also a cat pic, and again, you might know I'm a dog person and my eyes are watering and scalp itching just thinking about Zip, so I think I'll give His Loveliness a miss.  The honeysuckle pic is a lovely close up, and you know I'm a sucker for these.  And it's orange, so there are many things I could do with this one.

After I get over reminiscing, maybe next week, I'll have some play with the three.  Well, they're really two in my mind.  I predict a long phone call home in the next couple of days.

* * * * *

This morning, 8:15AM.

Beloved: "Is there any more important envelopes to post/mail, or are you expecting something today?"

Wife of 21 years: "No, and no, thanks. Why?"

Beloved "So it's OK if I forget to check the PO Box."

Bewildered: "Do you plan to forget to go?"

Beloved: "Huh?"

P2P2 TOC

Follow Chronologically

Julie, in progress

Terri explores apples

Sandy's braid

Julie's choices

Amanda's sneak peak

Desirée has even more

Desirée has more thoughts on the matter

Alienore has her warp ready

Desirée shows us her cards

Kaz is getting ready for the Big Reveal

Julie has to make a decision

Amanda is plaid-ing

Sandy is nearly finished

Sampling has the solution

Sandy is a little sad

Cally's plain weave

Julie starts a blog 

Sandy's Warp and her thought and editing

Amanda's sneak peak

Alienore has added some thoughts

Sandy is getting a moving on

Amanda's stats and threading 

Shirley's designs

Michelle's start

Cally is ready

Judy's Leno success

Amanda's plaid color

Meg's half pat on the back 

Holly sewed and... finished one set

Meg's fits and starts

Judy has been distracted

Heidi and her feathery weft

Amanda's ideas

Holly's got another

Further development from Sampling

Cally's update

Meg is stuck

Judy's Round 2 sample 

Sampling's first idea

Meg's doodles by request, focus, and bad coloring, and going back on her words

Sampling is proceeding nicely

Judy's Round 2 Update

Meg is stuck, or away with the fairies, or cheating and avoiding

Sandy is home and has decided on... 

Holly has been weaving

Cally's "Better"

Geodyne is dyeing to move on

Kaz, Egypt, Japan and Australia

Holly's flowers

Terri's thoughts

Heidi and art

Shirley is happy with color matching, and even happier.

Kaz's quick experimentals

Meg ponders

Cally's floats

Judy's Round 2

Cally looks at her least favorite the most

Michelle gets mail

Geodyne doesn't like her sample??

Kaz's turn to explore

Meg admits thinking of more wooly fluff

Kaz has posted

Cally and a brain-ache

Amanda surprises

Geodyne is thinking

Terri receives

Heidi, feather, and straw

A walk in a rainy park for Meg

Alienore has been inspired

Amanda is noticing

Meg... has got some fur balls

Heidi receives pics

Cally's looking, and not telling us her favs/less-favs

Holly's second pic

Holly gives us a sneak peek

Judy's first round

Geodyne receives pics

Sampling's first thoughts

Cindy is thinking

Sampling is ready

Cindy gets mail

Desirée has posted

Shirley is thinking

Meg's just playing and playing some more and more and still more

Amanda starts thinking

Judy gets mail

Julie receives her pics

Shirley posts and receives post

Judy posts

Cindy makes contact

Terri gets started

Cally gets post

Judy has been instructed to have fun

Meg's disappeared down memory lane

Amanda picks her pics

Kaz is thinking... "beach"

Holly has resumed blogging for P2P2

Geodyne is ready

Cally is posting her envelope to Australia

Subtle Web, too, starts a blog for P2P2

Cindy starts a blog for P2P2

Meg is not pleased

Follow the Weavers
(Tag/Label/Category/Set information will be included in the links as they appear in the target url.)

Cally      Geodyne      Judy      Holly      Heidi      Sandy

Shirley      Alienore      Cindy      Julie      Chewiedox      Sampling

Amanda      Michelle      Desirée     Kaz      Terri      Esmae     Meg

The Brief

P2P2 or P2PII Roll Call

Registration has now closed, and you can see links to all participating weavers in the next, TOC post.  Thank you.

End of the Day

Of Tuesday, that was...
As regards Tim's scarf, I decided I wanted the creature bigger. The overall look to me suggests Temari motif, (of which I can't find a nice example,) but Ben thought it was a good thing. Mom's Hearts editing got progressively worse, so I needed to put it aside.

Not much progress here, but progress nonetheless. I love the color of this gray weft; the feel, not so much. But it's slow. And I'm not liking the set I selected for P2P. Not at all. Must edit.

But overall, a relatively productive day.