Sorry...

I'm sorry I keep publishing the Napier post when I'm still writing it. There is heaps to write, but I'd rather work, making drafts, writing down ideas, making warps, and weaving off pieces. Who among you told me to take my butterfly net to Napier? That's exactly what's happening now - trying to capture all the ideas before they fly away.

I've about two weeks for the crazy tea cozy, and three for Pics to Picks. So I need to get my act together and leave the new stuff until June. I have to see Ali, too, to make up for the session I canceled before Napier.

There is, I must tell you, a certain irony sitting in my stash room full of cones and skeins, mixing fleece/sliver/roving colors to create, albeit very slowly, even more yarns.

Saturday Daydreaming: An Island Holiday

I believe this is my brother's shirt from his wind-surfing days. I salvaged it from Mom's "To Cut Up for Rag Weave" box this January. The label says silk, but I'm not sure. I don't know why but I wanted to salvage it. I might even wear it while I'm working.

I'm dreaming of an island holiday, but I don't think it'll happen any time soon.

If you look at a map, you can see that New Zealand is not that far from a lot of dreamy places: Samoa, Fiji, Tonga, The Cook Islands, New Caledonia, even Niue, Kiribatu, Tokelau... kind of... Holidays on these islands are very popular during our colder months of July-September.

Doesn't hurt to close my eyes and listen to the waves or the coconut-shell ukulele, smell the flowers, and dream of big drinks with umbrellas.

Dylon, Again

I beared Kaz 3; Kaz 4 has been a practice in fine-tuning my stitching technique in creating shapes. Because the heart was so side, I split the shape into two and stitched two ... 'blisters', for want of a better term. Top left, the outline of the heart is distorted; this is where I stitched last and couldn't see the line nor the wrinkles. Otherwise, I'm pretty happy with the shape.

This was dyed in the brown solution I kept from Tuesday night, but diluted with hot water to raise the temperature. If the Kaz 3 looks like chocolate icing, Kaz 4 looks positively the color of diluted cocoa.

As for my poor poor shirt, it's been through the same weak hot chocolate bath, this time immersed without stitching or knotting, and it looks tired and dirty. But at least I can live with this duller blue. After it dries, I'll see if I want to wear it as is, or dedye it.

Dinner tonight is my second ever attempt at lasagna; because I revere the dish so much, I usually leave the cooking to restaurants and friends.

Tomorrow morning I'm off to Napier for the design symposium. I think I'm over my cold; at least enough to be in denial. I did something to my back this afternoon while packing. I tell you, sometimes life just tries to get in your way left, right and center, but I'm going to enjoy the symposium if it kills me. But I'm also packing a pillow, and some pain killers.

I'm off-line until Sunday night. Please make sure you have a lovely weekend.

Shapes

Having understood the basics of Summer & Winter structure and what Ali would like me to do next, I've been daunted by shapes.

Usually the way I make my draft is by deciding on the threading, (twill of some sort, basic and often symmetrical), make a few different tie ups, and then I draw curvy or jagged lines down the treadle plan. I observe the drawdown, but my shapes are created by the line in the treadle plan, almost as accidents. Whichever hand holding the mouse is often on autodrive and I am not giving it much thought.

What got me is when Ali said a while ago, "Now go and make nice curvy shapes," or something to that effect. I tried to make similarly light-hearted curvy shapes on PCW, on paper, or in my mind, but my hands don't move that way. And I've been a bit stuck.

For the last week, I've been filling in squares in grids, and trying to locate places of interest but that's not working yet, and I only see lines.

No, I take it back, I did come up with one usable base. But he's not exactly curvy to me...

Last night I couldn't go to sleep, and I noticed how lines curved to accentuate shapes on my down blanket, and I started taking pictures. We've done something like this in our drawing class, drawing lines to express curves. I love the curvy lines, I think I can draw them, but thus far they are not making any shapes I can see.

Next stop, cutting and tearing paper into curvy shapes.

Indulge Me

My sister started pottery lessons in March. It was a long time coming because she's always loved ceramics, and her mother-in-law has a collection easily exceeding those of most galleries or a small specialized museum. Not to mention our Mom is a bit of a connoisseur herself.

I'm so happy for her because I think she was a martyr to her two sons for the last 15 years, (OK, five,) and was becoming a little all-too-omnipresent mother, and our Mom has been trying to get her to find a hobby since Boy 2 started school. Sister did yoga for a wee while but it didn't last. Our biggest worry was she was never a boring or conventional girl before she became a mother, and we knew very well she needed a creative outlet.

This is one of the first two pieces she ever made. In her life. And it looks pretty good to me.

She's always been like that. Soon after she joined the high school band, she could and did sit in and play almost any instrument if they were short of players; one day she picked up a racket and started to play a proper game of tennis; in two years she spoke better French than me in my five; the first time she ever sat in a flower arrangement class she was asked how many years she'd been teaching.

I can almost see her direction. Her aesthetics is simpler than mine, less adorned, so I can see her going more natural, more accidental/serendipitous, (you can do that with pottery, I know,) and less shiny for sure.

For me, it was hard growing up with a sister 7 years younger who didn't seemed to need to learn or try hard at anything. Plus, she was calm, collected and mature; skinny, cute and nice. And a good cook!!

For her, it was hard growing up with a sister who constantly clashed with the parents, and our Mom telling her, "Thank goodness, you are such a good girl," almost every day. And feeling inadequate because she didn't pick up English as easily as I did; well, duh, she never lived in the US.

I love my sister, and I love that she finally started pottery. And this is a creative outlet our parents and her in-laws enjoy watching, discussing, and appreciating. And it was a long time coming.

The thing is, though, in spite of my having encouraged her alongside Mom, I kind of wish she'll never take up weaving. Because that's been the only thing Mom and I shared, and if Sister dabbles, she might be better than me, instantly. At least in my Mom's eyes. She was an incredible knitter, when she was in high school.

Oh, when do we grow up and be freed of our childhood fears and worries?

Good News, Bad News

The bad news is, I've been sick all day.

The good news is, that explains why my limbs were shaking uncontrollably yesterday.

The bad news is, I had to postpone meeting with Ali this morning, withdraw from a 3-week design session with Ronnie Martin starting tomorrow; I might even have to skip an art film tomorrow night. But I am going to Napier for the design symposium on Friday.

The bad news is, I had hoped to read some fiction today, but I couldn't be bothered with reading words, and I kept dozing off.

The good news is, in between dozing off, I gazed at the pictures on the Woven Shibori book, and because I experimented with shibori a little, the pictures make sense.

The bad news is, I discovered Procion dyes are no good on wool. I think Dianne told me this, but in my enthusiasm to downsize and simplify, I got rid of all dyes except Procion, and every one of them worked on wool.

The good news is, there is the Internet, and tomorrow, (or the day after at this rate) is another day.

Because I Don't Have Enough Yarns, Again...

Ben and I don't win stuff.

Well, I understand Ben won school honors when he was a student, quite a lot of them, but me, just once, and it was oh, so, insignificant.

If it's for a good cause, we still buy whole books of raffle tickets, but we don't win. Once, while we lived in Auckland, we won a trip to Golden Bay, just north of Nelson, (airfare on Ansett!), but they couldn't accommodate us when we wanted to travel, so we took parts of the prize after we moved to Nelson: two nights accommodation and a dinner. It was wonderful, but somewhat anticlimactic. And yet, I keep hoping, and continue to send for giveaways, especially when there is a book at stake. And we buy raffle tickets.

So, imagine me jumping up and down when I got an email from DEA Yarns saying I won a draw! For 7kg of yarns!! And other than the natural merino, I was asked to pick the colors, so they are definitely not stuff they are trying to unload. It even included 2kg of my favorite 2/20 cottons.

I must tell you Ben was even more excited than I was. It must have been the extra big box!

To Bear or Not To Bear

Another Dylon play session yesterday.

The words said "dark brown", but I believed the picture of a pine cone on the packet and thought I'd get a yellower, paler brown. Never mind, I love the rich, chocolatey color, and my gray-olive shirt turned out nicely. Except I intended the design to look like fluttering leaves, and instead, I have a March of the Amebae. (I'm trying not to think of cockroaches.)

The problematic second shirt, I really should have left it where it was looking lovely in pale Wedgewood blue. No, Ben didn't clean his engine or drive over it.

For this, and my third Kaz shirt, I used the ball method. I bunched up (is that the phrase?) each shirt into a tight sphere and put on rubber bands in different directions to hold the shape. The tiny Kaz shirt, I wound several rotations of polyester threads on top of the rubber bands and made a tiny tight ball of cotton.

My shirt, I intended to soak in the second batch, but I got a little inpatient and stuck it in with the rest. What a big mistake. I was envisioning this pale yellow-brown mist over the annoyingly vivid blue enough to take away the brash appearance. I've saved the solution, and am wondering what I can do. Of course there is the option of dedying because I found a tin of color remover, too.

On the other hand, I love the Kaz shirt that looks like a child had great fun with a bowl of chocolate cake icing. The decision is whether to put the bear or not. It's quite a clunky button for a wee child, and the button holes are drilled too low, so the bear is going to bow down, I'm quite sure. I might put bright color strings around his neck to secure it.

Awash

I did something a little over due; I washed some scarves that have come home from galleries and exhibitions in the last little while, just the stuff small enough to go into the downstairs bathroom sink. And, whoa, you know what, I'm not a bad weaver. The structures are secure, the selvedge are not bad, (well, not too bad; they can be improved; in come cases, much improved...) and the yarns I use are, except for one I liked for the colors, soft and luxurious.

This was nice after a morning of weaving and producing sub-par left selvedge.

I've got two big ones to mend, and then two new and three old pieces to wash in the bathtub later in the week. For now, lunch and getting ready to see Ali Wednesday morning.

I Can Do Short!

I love putting my tiny Kaz Project shirts into charity bins. If I wrapped them up nicely, I wonder if the charity shops will keep them as they are? I can think of two tiny girls and one getting-taller boy for whom I can make special ones!

I liked these two as they were, so no reduction in the cute button stash, however.

* * * * *

Massage Kathleen said I don't need "Women who Run with Wolves"; she was quite adamant about that. What does she mean? I'm wild au naturel?

Said Kathleen was also impressed with my upper body muscle tones. I haven't been to the gym in 18 or so months, but she still said I'm in a good nick - comparable to some men who go to the gym regularly, and she said it must be the weaving. Have you been told anything like that?

* * * * *

Our local Suter Gallery changed policies about a week ago, so we're allowed to photograph artworks. But they haven't changed the signs, and it takes guts to shoot up artworks. I haven't yet. But I need to soon.

* * * * *

I wove a bit of asymmetrical sample for Ali, and I liked it. Ali said I must blog about it, so: I liked asymmetrical.

* * * * *

Sunday night I casually decided I shall weave every single day if I'm going to write about being a weaver, even just a little bit. And I did. In fact, once I sit down, I can usually go for a couple of hours easily, so this should improve my productivity. It was easier than resolving to have x glasses of water every day - now I can't even remember how many I aimed for.