A Little More on Stephen's Farewell Scarf

This is the second, longer, piece on this monochromatic warp.  

I had never "seen" the thickness of anything I wove in cashmere until earlier this week when it hung on the back of a chair, and I glanced at it from the other end of the hallway while hunting for a suitable box. I should have taken a picture of it instead of just sighing loudly, but it was a sight to behold. In the end it went inside a beat up computer part (?) box Ben had, suitable to house a piece for his restructured-out, (don't get me started on this,) boss. I now realize how yarn-hungry the current projects are; on the third piece I chose a big ball and a particularly heavy cone, and still I'm going to be able to manage just about 170-180cm, using up both. This will be a big issue if I ever decide to weave to sell clasped weft pieces.

After I washed it and it finished up much nicer than I anticipated, (because that's usually my primary and only concern,) I started to worry if I chose this look/technique for my own creative ego rather than suitability/taste of the intended. Ben had said he wore conservative colors and always had a suit jacket. I wanted to make something special. So though the colors were conservative, but the overall look? Hardly.  

 

Ben brought it to work yesterday and gave it to the boss during morning tea, and texted me that it was well-received. There was some mention of the piece's versatility in casual and formal/work situations, for which I was glad because it wasn't just in my imagination it could go "outdoorsy or opera," the two ends of the spectrum of fanciness in my mind. OK, opera in NZ, where women don't wear lovely silk gowns. I've no doubt it also helped yesterday was the first cold day of the season. 

 

I'm having similar doubts about the current, third piece's colors, too. This is unusual as I was always pretty confident my giftees would like my pieces as long as I "got it right."I know. It's me, me, me. I'm not sure if this emerging doubt relates to my decreasing confidence in technique, aging, or something else.  

 

Clasped weft as a technique has pitfalls, and at least one of the biggie I know is built into the fact I use twill. I'm trying to make notes on all of them before I can decide how to improve/eradicate, or ignore; I'll write about them in future. For now I'm trying to concentrate on the third piece, and possibly another, short piece after that. 

The box was snug, and trying to fold the scarf as few times as possible, it turned out looking wrinkly all over, but it's a solid piece; I can be happy about that.

EDIT: the box actually contained car parts, says Ben. Even better, Stephen loves cars so much, he even brought his father's MGB GT from England. But I must add, it was a clean one, no oil stains or the like, just badly bashed in three corners.

Monochromatic Cashmere Warp Piece Two

Ben chose the second set of wefts, a blue-white and the same dark gray. I decided not to rethread because of time constraints; also because I wasn't confident if rethreading will necessarily result in better design/texture, and I didn't want to kick myself thinking I ruined it again. 

 

I didn't know this at the start, but apparently I wanted to create bigger shapes. It's much easier to do fussy zig-zag lines, while patience, dexterity and the ability to predict shapes/lines, are needed to make bigger shapes. Restricting myself to weaving 20-30cm a day, (which felt like a terribly bad use of time,) was a big factor in giving me headspace and practice smoother lines/bigger shapes.  

So I don't jinx myself, I started treadling 2-3-4-5, then changed direction twice, so a great majority of the piece was woven with this treadling. (And I'm still not sure why this is easier after all the years of preferring 5-4-3-2, but never mind, it works, I'll stick with it.)

I still don't have the ability to foresee where the line between the dark and light wefts go, and many, many times, I moved them, opening the same shed twice, thrice, or more adjusting. I never understood how changes in angle, (how far left/right the intersection of the two wefts are in relation to the previous pick,) will reflect in the longer curve of the line, so sometimes the move was too acute where I wanted more gentler curves, while other times the angle was too obtuse, or even not moving at all. I tried drawing lines on paper to see if I could understand better, but it didn't help much. I'm going to do some more drawing on graph paper, but also, I might start drawing cartoons, not for whole scarves but in sections where I want to reuse the shapes. For e.g. I liked this section, which looks like Casper and his unfriendly cohorts, or sharks' fins.

For variety, I did include some zigzags.

Towards the end, however, I was adamant I was going to tame the smooth lines, making the last quarter (bottom) boring in my eyes. Except... I got a cute hippo as a result. I know, now you can't unsee him, either, can you? Anyhoo...

First piece, right, washed/agitated again. Second piece, left, washed/agitated vigorously. Color sample, also washed/agitated a second time. Though both still wet, the texture is fluffier than the first piece after one wash, although still nowhere near the initial sample. White weft of the second piece is striking, but the light mid-gray of the first is nuanced and attractive. 

 

There is one problem, also, of weaving with clasped wefts in twills, which I learned when I wove in this style a few years back, but I haven't considered it in any depth. I'll show you in the post discussing the next piece. 

 

I got 213cm on the loom this time; 205cm in above pic, 204.5cm at completion. Just in time for Farewell Do on Wednesday.

Monochromatic Cashmere Warp Preamble and Piece One

Early this year I discovered I might need a farewell gift in march, and the potential giftee being a conservative/casual English dresser, I thought monochromatic cashmere scarf would be nice. To make it a little special, I had clasped weft in mind. And to make the fabric thicker and the weaving faster, I planned to weave in the "return trip" clasping, (I just made that up - is there a proper name for it?) i.e. two wefts come in from respective selvedges, are clasped somewhere in the shed, and return to their selvedges of origin, and beaten; i.e. two-weft thickness in each pick. 

I put on a monochrome warp I made a while back. It was too narrow so I added more black at the right; in my mind this ruined the delicate original intent, a mostly white and two pale grays with just enough black to keep the piece from floating away. Never mind, the purpose is a man's not-short (180-210cm) piece, and upon consulting some of Ben's scarves and the man himself, Ben and not the intended, 18-20cm-ish width was more desirable than 15cm-ish that was the original plan for the warp.

I threaded in a make-it-up-as-I-go undulating twill and sampled, but did not like the parts where two and three ends were threaded in the same shaft in succession, e.g. 1-2-2-3-3-4-4-4-3-3, so I rethreaded, varying these to, for e.g. 1-2-2-3-4-4 or 1-2-3-3-4-1-2-2-3-4, etc. I also left only one set of three ends in one shaft. In retrospect I'm not sure if this mattered; long floats fluff up wonderfully, and it might have been nicer to leave them, so there remains a possibility of rerethreading. 

For Piece One I used my favorite weft combination in the sample; the pale gray is so pale I had a hard time distinguishing it from white while in a ball or weaving. Soon realized I may not have enough of it to weave 180-210cm, and I tried to make it go the distance, using very little in some parts. I was ready to make this a short, 150cm piece, but in the end it grew to just 179cm off the loom. (I'm amazed how much darker the pale weft looks in the finished piece.)

 

I found the weaving labour-intensive, and on Day One, managed only 18cm. Days Two and Three I wove twice that much, which gave me all kinds of muscle aches, but worse, mental fatigue. On Day 3 I kept making treadling mistakes, (it's only 5-4-3-2; how could I go wrong?,) some of which I didn't see right away. In once instance I even liked the mistake and decided to leave it in, but now I'm not sure. I wove in that weird autodrive I mentioned in the last post. Around the middle of the piece, I changed the treadling to 2-3-4-5, creating a diamond shape; I was going to do this a few times, but since I made so few mistakes treadling in this order, I didn't dare change it back. This is peculiar, considering I've always woven one-directional twills 5-4-3-2 as long as I had this loom.

 

Days 4 and 5, it was better as I wove about 20cm each day. With both the body and mind in better condition, I felt nimble and wove more precisely. On Day 4, my design brain was working well, so I was making more interesting patterns. I also caught nearly half a dozen treadling mistakes, but I saw them and was able to fix them straight away. On Day 5, the mind-body synchronization was good again, but not so much the design brain, so I felt less exuberant, but thankfully not stressed. So the lesson here was, she shouldn't persevere. Which doesn't really go well with my temperament, but I'm sticking to it for the time being because it's a lot better than mending afterwards.

 

I dwell on mind-body synchronization, because I know this relates to aging, especially re. my mind, although I really prefer the word "senility" because that rings truer to me. Muscle fatigue from weaving, I have experienced for some years, (though hardly every time I weave,) and to some degree weaving consistently improves the situation, especially when weaving similar techniques on the same loom. It's purely a muscle/fitness thing. But the mental fatigue is new; it's not just being tired or bored and not wanting to think/write about it, but more like weaving and other thoughts wiped out cleanly on a chalk or white board! With my mother's lucidity fluctuating, (it's definitely weird more often, but she hides them so well, Sister and I can't quite pin down where she is at any given time, but only in comparison to other recent occasion.) I observe myself in the same psedo-objective eye, and can spot lucidity varying, the most annoying when having to think of how to do things I usually do automatically.

Lordy, I feel old.

This piece also became an experiment in the shapes/lines/motif, and instead of going for one or another kind of a look, I went for maximum variety. This "research" is on-going, so I'll write about it when I finish the warp, with better pics of the pieces.
 
Note to self: 179cm off the loom, 172cm after resting, and 166.5cm washed. Weaving width is 20cm; washed, 18.5cm. Shrinkage 93% and 92% respectively.

Two Blocks on Four Shafts that Weren't - Or Were They?

I was going to delete this post/draft as the outcome from this warp was disappointing, but in my continuing interest in, urrr... interesting four-shaft weaving, (if nothing else, I like weaving on my four-shaft jack,) I decided to keep it.. 

 

* * * * *   

This is the Nth piece in what was my for-Ukraine phase on the four-shaft loom. I got tired of Dornick, so I looked up Davison, and found two twill blocks on four shafts, ....., something I never thought about, and modified it to to make the pattern appear bolder.

It looked great on paper, or screen; Mom was impressed she could clearly see the pattern over not-exactly-clear Line App connection. 

In reality, it's not that the blocks are not there, but it's not as bold as I imagined, although in this pic, I like it better than in real life. After considering what I was happy to do, I settled on resleying and changing the treadling, rather than re-threading. In addition to the pattern not appearing clearly, my objection was the texture was akin to weaving done in thicker yarns in looser sett.

So this was the plan as seen on screen. After resleying from 18EPI to 20, I didn't sample but just started weaving. The weft is 2/24 mill-end merino in taupe, plied *3. It was still skinny and I couldn't see the pattern/mistakes while weaving, (so weird the "stripe" appears in the pic,) and this warp/weft combination turned out sticky. I could weave at most 25cm/day. Ben thought it was "plain", but more my style; I understood to mean it's an all-over pattern without a visual focus. 

Then I discovered a treadling mistake, unwove, tried to fix it, only to find out it wasn't a mistake??? So I wove on, but it still looked like a mistake, and tried to go back but the warp was so frayed it was impossible to mend. This was in September, and I thought to leave it for the time being, and then I did the cottolin warps, and... didn't get back to this until February!

By this time the weaving had become so onerous, I decided to cut it off and weave with another weft, a combination of two mill-end merino in navy and one variegated merino (??) a then-regular vendor sent it to me by mistake instead of my usual stuff. Weaving this was faster and I could see a little more of the pattern, but by this time reserve joy depleted, I was in a rush to finish. And this piece ended up not at all as soft and drapey after weft-finish as I had imagined. Also when on the loom I could not see the "stripes" that would have appeared because of the threading; these came to the fore only after washing/drying.

Never mind, at least it's in the shape of a big scarf. 

Still, the original taupe fabric had an unimaginably lovely, heavy-silk-like drape, so I decided to weave the rest of the warp to make warp end fabric, which turned out to be a bigger disaster. (And for once, I'm not exaggerating.) Also, no matter how gently I washed these, the weft turned fuzzy worn by the time they were drying. I like the taupe color, and I have tons of small mill-end cones, so I must experiment more to preserve the drape of this yearn in the finished piece. 

* * * * * 

As I mentioned, this warp was slow weaving, and I was very tired. Some days I was on what I can only describe as autodrive, but I wasn't sure if it was my body, head, or both. In the past, in washing my weaving I've been taken aback at the inconsistency in my beating, so much so that at times I wonder if I used yarns from a different cone/dye lot by mistake. Often this happens on Ashford table looms, so I blamed it on the short distance between the Shaft 1 and the breast beam, where I can see the cloth already woven to determine the beat of that particular cloth. So is it me, and not the loom? Looking back I can also recall at least two staggeringly inconsistently beaten pieces on the 16-shaft to my utter disappointment; one was intended as a present to a dear friend, another had silk weft and a fabulous hand. (I kept the latter.)

While weaving the warp end fabric with the skinny taupe weft, I notice one time the beat was much too tight, and the resultant fabric stiff on the loom. But as if in those fables where folks cannot stop dancing, my body refused to change the MO, and I kept beating hard. I thought a break may help, so I wound some cashmere wefts on the bobbin for the next project, and returned to weaving. This time the beat was so soft it was almost lacy on the loom. At this point it became not weaving, but the battle of the mind and the body, "me" reduced to a spectator. So weird.

I can recall once or twice in the past when I'm really tired, possibly after having been under the weather for a wee while, when the act of weaving felt just wrong. It wasn't good to persevere, unless I was working on a sample/experimentation, or a goofing-off project. I had made a mental note of it then, but had forgotten because I guess it'd been a while since I last persevered.

The only good things to come out of the body-snatched day was, this old wool warp and the skinny taupe weft combination produces the best drape woven in the super gappy, softly beaten way. Lordy, I even see the pattern! 

* * * * * 

I did enjoy the May-September mad weaving, though; I realized if I tried, to some degree, I can still weave one after another in quick succession. I never found/researched further how I could send these to Ukraine, and it's spring there now. But Esther, who always has calm, sensible answers, thought I should donate them to Women's Refuge where they will be handed to women (and children) directly, instead of Salvation Army, (usually my preferred charity,) where they will be sold to raise funds. With the cooler season coming up, this is a good idea, so I'll be contacting them in April/May, I think.

Good and Bad being Relative

Yesterday, I wasted a lot of time playing computer games, loitering in the kitchen, but I managed to wind the new tied-weave warp at the end of the day. And that got me back on the figurative loom bench, encouraging me to tidy up the basement a little, assessing my downstairs stash, (I brought down a lot of my default merino and all cashmeres so I can think ahead, and also keep busting Mom's wools and some silks in combination with them,) and generally look forward to weaving in the next little while.

 

Today, I wasted more time gazing at an art supply store's 20% off everything sale, even though I have enough for now and honestly had no intention of buying anything, but I managed to go downstairs to either start threading the warp, or continue weaving a brown piece I abandoned in September. 

This is the brown piece; it's on the four-shaft. In real life it's less gray, true taupe; pretty but unremarkable, more like fabric; very fine I can't see the design well; slow at 25cm/sitting; and the wool warp is sticky. It was Number-something in the series I was weaving with the intention of sending the whole lot to Ukraine, until I stumbled upon the issue of whom/where to send, and postage. But this piece broke my inertia. I didn't even want to look at it for a while. 

 

I tried to get back to it today because I need the four-shaft loom for a possible leaving-work-thank-you present in March; I'm about 83cm into this piece, hooping for 150-180cm, and there is another piece planned for this  short warp. I had "good" notes, so I didn't think it would be a big deal getting back, other than the slowness.

 

Well, sometime before or during my for-Ukraine phase, I gave the loom some TLC, and for whatever reason, possibly because it suited the project I was about to weave, I changed the tie-up. Not a great idea, when I've had the same tie-up since I got the loom in the first few years of this century. 

 

Strangely, I can't remember how it used to be tied, but a) I changed the plain weave treadles either from the outside treadles 1 and 6, to inside 3 and 4, or the other way around; and b) I changed what I call my twill treadles, which was always 1&2, 2&3, 3&4, 1&4 from the left, but stupidly I changed it to 1&4, 1&2, 2&3, 3&4. On top of that, in my notes I always write only my twill treadles. So with the current piece, the order is 4-3-2-3-4-1-2-3-2-1, which would be Treadles 5-4-3-4-5-2-3-4-3-2 if the plain weave sits on the outside, or 6-5-2-5-6-1-2-5-2-1 if it sits in the middle. See what I mean? Of course you don't! I was confused, too. Whereas when I was younger, I would have laughed out loud at my stupidity, in my dottage, (I've been collecting information to apply for NZ pension this week as well,) I couldn't see right away what the difficulty was.

 

And I couldn't remember what I had changed; I vaguely remembered switching back the plain weave to where it should have been; and instead of lifting to see where the plain weave treadles were, which would have taken 10 seconds, I kept weaving to see if the cloth looked right. After some weaving and unweaving, I wove with orange and yellow cotton in the treadling I thought was the correct one, so I can see the design better, but by then I was so frustrated I had to walk away. I want to re-tie to the way it's always been, but my body isn't telling me how it was. 

I thought I'd thread the cotton instead, and I knew the scheme for this project by heart, 1-P-2-P-3-P-4-P-5-P-4-P-3-P-2-P and repeat. Except I started looking at some old tied-weave drafts, thinking about how I wanted the diamonds to appear, and I found an anomaly there, too. This is an easier hole to climb out of because the main thing is to choose the appearance of the diamonds from the drafts I created some years ago. Oh, goodness, what is she on about now?? Well, I'll talk about this more later, but here are some pictures where I hope you see some diamond shapes. 

So, all in all, I made no progress today. Nada.

 

* * * * *

You may have seen the weather has been wreaking havoc on many parts of our North Island. They had one of those once-a-century rain and flooding, and a few earthquakes, and then came Gabrielle. There have even been death this time. Terrible! Meanwhile, we've only had some intermittent rain in Nelson when North Island was flooding, plenty of warning for 100km+ Gabrielle wind, but got a few showers, otherwise eerie quiet. 

 

Now let me move on to the title of this post. Hay fever started early in August this season, and aside from four or five days in August we had the rain and flooding, and an afternoon or three since, we had dry weather with more than usual wind. 

 

Symptoms started mild, which is why I didn't go off caffeine or dairy as I do some years. I was uneasy it started much earlier than usual, but with default meds at the ready, this was going to be an easy year. Until it wasn't. I noticed sometime in October/November the meds stopped working; again this has happened before, but usually much later in the season. The symptoms were still relatively mild, but I couldn't get rid of them regardless of the weather. And then the itchiness of the face, especially around my eyes, started to feel like a dozen paper-cuts; my usual non-descript face cream stung a little; and at times one or both inferior lacrimal puctum (lower tear duct) was/were red, hot, and kind of bulbous and a little painful to touch. That was a first in my 50-year career as a hay fever patient. 

Long story short, the wind kept blowing, the face kept itching, I kept scratching, and the areas around the left eye looked and felt horrible almost all the time. But it's hay fever, right? Sooner or later it's bound to quiet down with the season, yes? Do I really need to go see a doctor? Well, I'll go talk to the nurse next door, but she said the next step may be steroids. Ummm... No! 

 

I got in the habit of washing my eyeballs in the shower, like I used to as a kid after a day in the swimming pool. I hate that, it hurts, but I did. I knew it had something to do with the tear duct, so several times I chopped onions and stuck my nose right into the mound on the cutting board, but be it the eyes or the onions, nothing happened. I swallowed a huge chunk of wasabi paste, too, a trusty emergency hay fever remedy in dire cases, but that only gave me a stomachache. Meanwhile, other I think we had a relatively mild spring and a pleasant start to the summer, weeds growing everywhere and fairly robustly. 

Sometime in December, when my left eye continued to look, at times but not always, dreadful. One morning the right eye decided to match the look, which is when I told myself I needn't feel bad about the weeds, but to stay inside until this thing cleared. That was after another morning I had a hard time opening my left eye in the morning. This decision was a little disheartening but plenty freeing because as bad as our garden always looks, it's been ever so slightly better since Covid with marginally more year-round TLC dispensed. Now it's back to pre-Covid badness. I did contemplate seeing the doctor, but decided against it, again, because after all, it's just hay fever, isn't it? (If it happens again, I might reconsider, though.)

Anyway, last week, we had some rain; this is when North Island had the once-in-a-century rain, before Gabrielle. The air was moist with intermittent showers, temperatures high-ish with little wind; I noticed my left eye had been OK for a couple of days for the first time in six months. The paper-cut like feeling was gone, my face wasn't so itchy. I even worked outside for half a day, though I decided to come in before I overdid it. And it was like that for nearly a week. 

 

Then wind came back, blowing all the moisture away, and with it, my usual symptoms of less concentrated itches, stuffy nose, and sneezes returned. But the eye drops work again! I've never been so appreciative of run-of-the-mill hay fever symptoms, but hurrah for small wins! 

 

And when I chopped onions yesterday morning, at least the right eye filled with tears. 

Still, not a bad life when I find serendipitous harmony: a piece of paper I decorated in January to try to use up some paint and a ceramic bowl Esther gave us for Christmas a few years ago both prove I like blue-and-orange together.  

Further Thinking of Syrie

In early- or mid-February 2020, I hunkered down to reacquaint myself with the long-on-hold Syrie project. I imagined it would be a great 2020 project. I spent a week hunting down my notes, posts, and relics connected to the project; read; relearned; sorted loose ends to keep/discard; re-label relevant posts; and finally started a draft post.

At first it was a good distraction from the yet-named plague, too, which I didn't think would be a big deal in New Zealand, like the others in recent times, but with a lockdown imminent in Italy and the constant reminder diabetics were in increased danger, my attention moved away from the project.
 

My life-long interest in the plight of the Palestinians has remained, but news, and especially still photographs of refugees everywhere, wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Sudan, Rohingya genocide, the Southern border of USA, and Ukraine, Türkiye/Syria earthquake, and the plight of women in Iran and Afghanistan, strengthen my resolve to work on this project, maybe more than one, while my focus/attention shifts from war to refugees to women's place in society.  

 

For whatever reason I revisit the project, and the draft, this time of year like clockwork. In 2021, I did a massive revision of the draft, ending up with a skeleton of what I had deposited in 2020, erasing the many segue identifying the meandering paths I had taken. To avoid  further culling of my thought-history, I'm posting what's left of the Feb 2020 draft for the record.  

 

* * * * *  

 

 "Syrie" has been on my mind, without urgency but making its presence known, hiding but also making sure I see her face in my periphery vision, or right in front of me blocking my way, sneering at the neglect it suffered, in the form of a small angry girl. I need to record how we got here in order to progress the project.

Origin:
Middle East was often a topic at our dinner table due to Dad's interest in this history and politics of the Middle East, the Holocaust, Palestine, Gaza, Golan Heights. As a kid, I was aware modern turmoil was never discussed in my convent school, even as we studied biblical Levant. As a youngish adult I was for a year a translator at the Syrian Embassy in Tokyo, a month after Syria ousted Palestinians to Lebanon.

I've wanted to work on a project based on all Dad taught me, what I've subsequently learned, how history continued in that region, but I wasn't sure what to focus on, and what to make on a loom. Then came Arab Spring, when I genuinely thought we were witnessing one giant step forward, but it was instead followed by a spate of government retaliation, military coups, and civil wars. Which as you recall lead to explosive numbers of refugees in all directions, citizen groups helping as well as opposing them, but in the worst instances, the media reducing their plight to a handful of photogenic children. 

 
Buildings and Windows:

Early on, I was irate when image search of "Syria" yielded photos of eerily silent, almost interchangeable achromatic photos of city scape, buildings and rubble. (I should have kept screenshots, because in 2021 the situation is different.) Not that I wanted to see them, but I found so few of crying, screaming, bleeding, fleeing, and dyeing people; only the bombed out buildings.

I observed how the media covered Syria and the subsequent refugee crisis, and began contrasting what they reported vs. what they showed. I didn't record what I observed, but I grew more aware of the emotional manipulation and twisting of the coverage. 

 
Silent photos of the charred buildings stuck in my mind, and this is how I started developing my first idea of tall buildings with gaps where windows used to be. Rather than a monochromatic, monolithic, clean version in the news coverage, I wanted to use all the colors of flames/fire for the walls of the burning building, and gray and black for the windows for the absence of humans and noise. I also contemplated inserting shadows of humans or ghosts in the windows, or spilling out of them.  Not all the panels/buildings would stand straight up, some would be falling uncomfortably on top of the viewers, while others will have fallen and crumbled and obstruct the viewers' path. The media went with the silent photos, I was aiming for the bloody, sooty, loud, messy, smelly uncomfortable version.

This would also be an easy transition from Pillars visually and technically; the buildings could be in fancy Syria-inspired twill, (Umayyad Mosque, shell-inlay, Damascas Ware patterns, Palmyra archeology...) which would have taken some time to work out, but all structural elements, panels and the windows, would be rectangular.

Refugees:
Following the Middle Eastern and African refugee influx into mainly Europe, (as covered by MSM) came refugees on the Southern boarders of the US, child separation, families divided, records "lost", separate deportation, babies on trial, sicknesses and deaths, "undocumented", dreamers, aliens, (I was a legal alien for a decade,) documents, testimonies, words, how law categorizes/labels humans. How the heck does a babe in diapers testify in court in a foreign language? However you categorize, each and every human has a life story. How do we record them?  

I started to see another option for the project. I became obsessed with visualizing a two-year-old's testimony in court: how does the court stenographer type it? What does it look like printed out? I see a lot of spit, /m/ and /b/, blank terrified stares, chubby finger pointing, perhaps. I smell milk and pee and maybe even a little sick. 

I tried to visualize ways I could represent great number of refugees' stories, their testimonies. A big red, (blood, but why?) scroll with text lines in charcoal/black, sometimes mixed with childish doodles. And drools. Perhaps maps. Texts/lines in different languages, sizes, orientations. Maybe many smaller "pages", perhaps even bound in a "book". Perhaps with torn/burnt, or missing parts. For exhibitions, I do like to submit whopping big pieces, as large as the venue allows.

How much research am I willing to do to learn other languages and scripts, albeit in a narrow context?  *Do I search the Internet for real stories?

*How about the bureaucratic intermediaries' influences? 

*How accurate are their recollections? Have the stories changed in the retelling? Have details been forgotten?  

*Have the stories been colored by other factors, like difference in perspectives, influence of accompanying adults, interpreters and other government workers? 

*Border/social worker/interpreter/bureaucrat may not have the cultural understanding, in part or as a whole; have they maliciously changed the stories?

*What about the untranslatables?

*What constitutes the true testimony? 

 

Does the languages/scripts need be real? How about acemic writing?Is it still true if only represented in acemic writing?

 

What about that old idea of hiding codes in the structure of weaving?

The Name:
I wrote previously I call this project "Syrie" temporarily to get away from the 1980s American "Syria/Libya=Bad" mentality. Of course, Syrie is French; France colonized the country, which brings a whole different set of baggage, but for now, it's a handy, symbolic label that covers all kinds of thoughts/ideas/feelings associated with this project, so I shall keep it until I need a different one.

Brown Serviettes/Table Napkins and Kitchen/Tea Towels

This warp took a bit longer, but I'm finished. 

 

I wove two tea towels, one being extra long, and 10 serviettes, warp end piece shorter than the rest. From a 10m warp, I thought I'd get heaps, which is why I started with tea towels, but it was darned close at the end. Good thing I didn't weave more towels! At another time, in another headspace, I'm thinking of making an ultra short warp, or a skinny one, to use these up the rest of cottolin and some cotton to make useful things. These yarns make wonderful pieces, but they are dusty weaving and, goodness me, winding on the pirns, I'm happy to take a break for now.

These were woven with the same Swedish cottolins, 394 ends, 21EPI, just under 47cm wide on the loom, 40.5cm after wet finish, hot regular machine cycle, double rinse. They are rather genteel-sized serviettes; "Afternoon Tea Serviettes" if folks still lead that kind of life, but too robust in texture. What can I say, I made them, so they are functional. Ben thinks they can be used as lunch mats. 

For serviettes, I like no plain weave showing on the A-side, but to add that extra length, I hemmed it like tea towels. When I was pressing the very last piece, I realize I could have added warp ends to the two selvedges to add another inch to the width. Talk about too late! :-D
 

It may be difficult to detect, but I managed eight different color orders. (It's hard for me to see, holding them in my hands, too.) I had two weft colors, B and C, of large spools and two, A and D, smaller. Each serviette had 16 weft "repeats" (strictly speaking, not repeats, but variations; is there such a term as treadling blocks??) Using three colors in a piece, the color used in the first block and the last were the same, so I came up with eight ways to combine them, with B or C at the start/finish, so eight pieces are similar but not identical: 

 

  B-A-C-B-A-C-B-A-C-B-A-C-B-A-C-B

  B-C-A-B-C-A-B-C-A-B-C-A-B-C-A-B

 

and so on. Piece #5, I thought I'd be cleaver and weave backwards, (from the bottom of treadling,) which made it just in the reverse order of weaving from the top, Piece #3. Duh!

 

The previous lot of towels were slightly gappy at 21EPI, and I read on FB someone was planning towels at around 5 per 10cm, 25EPI, but these being serviettes, I stayed with 21EPI for softness. 

The two tea towels. The orange is ours, pure stash-busting, and I used up two oranges; I had to use some thrums for one. The four browns: my sister has been a pottery enthusiast forever, who, like my brother and I, started her dream hobby in her 40s. Her personal favorites are natural, earthy colors. In her clothes as well. For ages, I thought I'd like to weave a piece of cloth for her to put her work on when she photographs her pieces; I vaguely imagined undyed and naturally colored wool. I was thinking about that again when she sent me a care package a fortnight ago, and, one day while weaving I looked down at the current project. She may be a more plain weave kind of a girl, with less busy colors, but now at least she has one option.

Onwards!

2023 Resolution

When I was a kid, we had to announce our resolution/s to the parents in the morning of New Year's Day before we received New Year Money. Our resolutions weren't critiqued, nor was progress monitored, but not being able to announce one, or two, or five, was met with scorn. Well into my adulthood, I thought seriously about what I hoped to achieve in the coming year, starting around December 1. From memory, (though mine is super dodgy,) 2022 was the first time I had none and I didn't even fret about it. So, I was a little surprised when I woke up on New Year's Day this year and thought, "Yes, in 2023, I will get rid of stuff."

It came not from some abstract notion of decluttering but pragmatism, because I was having a hard time cleaning this house. Getting rid of stuff doesn't just mean discard; it means use up; use and don't replace, or replace with one rather than three; plus give away/donate/recycle. And I'm serious because, other than the kitchen and my closet, we have not cleaned our abode thoroughly, completely to my hearts content since probably the start of the pandemic lockdown. (We did a cracking job of the garage a year ago, but never got to Ben's tools because he just didn't feel like it. That quadrant is plagued with old cobwebs as a reminder.)

As such, I was pleased I got to work right away, starting small but rather consistently, discarding things we kept because they could be made into something interesting, but which for whatever reason had not been put away. And ceramic dishes and cups I broke but didn't have the heart to throw away just yet. At the same time, although tiny, I used up a few watercolor and acrylic paint tubes and mediums. (On another crusade, I'm trying to wean myself off of acrylic paint/mediums, and fancy pens, except perhaps a few gel pens.)

Then came that fateful last Monday. Ben and I had a moment. We admired, held our breaths, flittered hither and thither, whispered, stepped back, sighed, caressed, and had to make sure our feet were still on the ground. It lasted 80 minutes. 

See, we were going to drop off some lemons at Esther's, then go to the supermarket, and rush home so I can weave. Except she was in the front room, saw us and came out, in a handsome olive green mask, and lamented we were still in a self-imposed semi-lockdown, else we could have had a look at her pottery. I don't remember what I said, but half a nanosecond later, we were in her shed. I can't even remember if I asked Ben what he wanted to do. It was so easy to break our own rules. (Also, we hadn't seen her in person probably since late 2021.) We made ourselves terribly comfortable examining her work, opining, comparing, and ogling, and long story short, we came away with beautiful plates, bowls and cups. 

It's not that I didn't think about where we would store them. I was aware I was un-ridding stuff. I felt an acute shame how much I loved these "material things". And yet, and yet, her work is captivating. I could not suppress stories arising from somewhere inside me about the pieces. I was definitely on some kind of a high, but also appreciated the pieces dispassionately. 

 

And, oh, what joy they have brought to our home. Dinner these days start with Ben and I selecting which dishes we want to use. Together or alone, we take them out of the cupboard to admire them. And we smile. I used to be a staunch "sets" person, but Nelson being a pottery town, it's not rare to be invited to a table set with an eclectic mix of local ware. We, too, have collected these last 25 years; it suits my broad taste well. We liked what we collected so far, but I'm convinced her pieces upped the quality of our collection a few notches.

 

Plus, she's a darn good vegetarian/vegan cook and a superb baker, so we can't help hoping our cooking skills will improve by osmosis.

I've come to the conclusion objects that bring so much joy, make us think and discuss, (quite late into the night,) beauty and utility and colors and weight and texture, cannot be bad; that longing for such objects cannot possibly be anything but good. And if you think I'm hyperbolic, have a look at Ben; maybe it's hard to tell from his laid back demeanor, but something has changed in the way he looks at things, the way he talks about objects. And, oh, what a gift that is. 

This matte black plate with skinny stripes immediately evoked how I feel ab out my fussy twill; I had never felt a direct connection between something, anything, and my weaving before.

As for the resolution, well, thank goodness there are 11 more months to this year.

EDIT: Esther's Instagram, (which hardly does her breadth justice, but a taste.)  She also sells a small number of work at The Suter Store.

Passing

Before I started selling scarves in a gallery, a potter friend told me to never gift my scarves, nor to sell at "mates rates", because scarves where what I made to sell. I adhered to the first rule rather strictly, while the second, slightly less so for commissions pieces.  

I changed my mind about gifting five or so years ago when I discovered an Internet friend was dying of multiple heavy-duty illnesses, while being taken care of at home by his former-nurse wife. The timing followed Mom taking care of Dad, and quite a few friends and family being in the thick of it for their partners or parents. Anyone can guess how hard it is to be ill, but not necessarily how hard it is to care for someone 24/7 without a whole lot of help. 

Anyway, I withdrew a piece I called, "Mother of the Bride" from a gallery, (it was woven on the same warp as a bridal present commission,) and together with a warm, casual, short/wide, (perfect for under a cardi,) plaid piece, gifted them as Hers and His. 

I probably heard back from the Her right away electronically, but what I can't forget is a card I received sometime later, when she wore Hers at her granddaughter's wedding, reporting it became properly a "Grandmother of the Bride" piece. How sweet! 

 

She was great about updating His public, (they had lots of friends,) and they live/d life to the fullest whatever it threw at them for another half a decade.

* * * * *

Friends' mother had been unwell for a while, but declined rapidly in the last year. I'd never met her or her husband, but they live/d just down the road from me; even at my slow pace I could probably walk over in 15 minutes. I had offered our services during lockdown and afterwards, so this couple was always on my mind; so much so I often look/ed in the direction of their house and wondered how they are/were faring, even though friends had things so well-organized we were never called upon.

Anyway, she grew frailer last winter, so, again, I pulled out a comfy His, (similar style to the first His,) and finished a cashmere that had come off the loom but was left unfinished, and gifted them.

Not only did I receive a nice email from her, friends often told me what the mother said about her scarf, I almost felt as though I was there in her house. Apparently she wore it all the time, even in bed as I prescribed, and she treasured the lightness.

* * * * *

The first He, and the second She, passed away on the same day at the end of last year.
 

Awfully lot of friends, Internet friends, family of real life friends, and weavers I know (of) passed away in recent years. I miss them at different times in different ways. It's impossible to comprehend where they went; some don't feel gone at all. Come May, Dad will also l have been gone ten years, but I still imagine him walking around quietly, minding his own business, in our old house that's also been gone half a dozen years. In their absence, I must be good to the ones still around, and make the most of my time using up the stash.

When the Kids Leave Home

Very early on in my weaving life, I wove, probably on a rigid heddle, a spacy, gappy "shawl" using multi-colored fancy yarns with super skinny bits and large colorful bubbles. The ideas was to position these bubbles in a grid, although I couldn't articulate it at the time, let alone have the skills to execute the plan. 

 

I meant it for one girlfriend, who is tall, for one thing, but is more innovative in how she dresses herself than I would ever be. The moment I gave it to her, she scrunched it up and wore it as a scarf. I was startled, but impressed she knew instinctively what to do. The width of the piece suited her longish neck, certainly far better than my normal flat scarves; it was warm because of all the air pockets; and it was far too short for her to wear as a shawl. (I lengthened all my wider pieces thereafter.)

 

What a valuable lesson for a new weaver: once you give it to someone, it's theirs, and the piece takes on a life of its own in their hands, whatever I visualized while I made it. I imagine it must be like having your kids leave home. Parents do the best to prepare them for life outside the home, but once they leave, whatever success they achieve, even in unexpected (to the parents) ways, it's on them.

 

* * * * *

 

Every so often I like to watch the clip of Vincent being taken to Musée d'Orsay by Doctor Who and Amy. It doesn't hurt that Matt Smith is my favorite Doctor, or that Bill Nighy is one of my favorite actors. It is a well-choreographed tearjerker, made complete by Tony Curran's astonishing transformation into Vincent; I can't help feeling moved every tine.

 

But the episode doesn't end there. Vincent is dropped off at "Arles", (they combined Arles and Ouvers as one place,) and the Doctor and Amy rush back to the museum to see if Vincent lived longer and produced more paintings. Amy is disappointed he still died after "Wheatfield with Crows", (still disputed if this was the last canvas he painted,though.)

 

I see this as a nice bookend to maker's making. We can project anything we like to artwork or artist, even cook up an elaborate scheme like time travel, to try to convince an artist something they may not know, but we "know" though passage of time, but the artist remain true to themselves and will make/do what they see as best. I can't explain it better, except it's not just about tangible objects but writing/poetry/music/performance also. Something made takes a life of its own, independent of the maker.

 

* * * * * 

 

Of the five blue/yellow/gray tea towels I gave to friends, four are being used for different purposes; I was sent beautiful pics of two. The fifth, I bet, is super busy drying dishes and wooden spoons every day.