Keeping busy

I've started a series of root vegetables, or at least I'd like to think this is going to lead into a series.  I'm doing my best to juggle printmaking and weaving and not getting very far on either front.

Now that Maudie Mae is cleared of her last project, I've also started to weave the warps I dyed in the workshop, and since I think this is the worst one, I've started with it.

And anything that could go wrong, did.  I spaced setting aside a couple warp threads to use in event of breakage and the first thing I got was a broken warp.  Great I thought, I'll just shift everything to the right, and it went downhill from there.  Don't ask.  The repair took hours and I ultimately had to put the left threads onto the lease sticks and rethread those heddles.  I cannot tell you now many times I came close to just cutting it all off thinking of my mother's old expression - throwing good money after bad, only for me it was throwing time.

The loosely spun cotton was badly battered in the group buckets and the front ends were in pretty bad shape from me pulling them free from the knots. When I finally got the warp all set I advanced it and cut off about 15" so not only will these be skinny scarves, they'll also be short with just 4" of fringe.  The good news there is I won't have to twist it.

We just said goodbye to Ian's old friend John who was our first visitor of this summer, well almost summer.  Last year we took visitors to the High Desert Museum five times so this year we joined.  It was still too cool for the otters to be out and cavorting so these were the only ones we saw.  Attendance was good in spite of the drizzle.

It's really a pleasure to walk on the path along the irrigation canal and I'm trying to take advantage of it as often as I can.

Before long these geese will strong-arm their way into possession of the paths, to say nothing of the copious goose poop and it looks like there are going to be a lot of poopers very soon.  Click for big to see how many! Plus you really need a dog on a leash to avoid conflicts with the possessive males.

Like everyone else here, I'm struggling with spring fever and learned from last year that if you plant too soon, the last frost will get the last laugh.  So I hope I'm demonstrating patience by planting seeds indoors:  heirloom cucumbers, basil, tomatoes and next week I'll add zucchini seeds.

I swore I wouldn't buy any plants until June, but that was before I went to Costco and saw these pansies, day lilies and petunias, and against my better judgement, they are all in the ground.

I'm not the only one with spring fever.  Maddie loves sitting on the sill closest to the bird feeder.  This is the closest she'll ever get to it and she seems to be okay with it.

I ran down to the library after my art class this morning for some reference books to help with my project.  For whatever reason I looked up and noticed that there are different quotations on the building.  My favorite:  "Access to knowledge is the superb, the supreme act of truly great civilizations."  A man entering the building at the same time as me also stopped to look up and said - How about that?  They even used a living person!

Making Color

 Here are a couple of the finished pieces from my color reduction class that ended last week.  This is from Shari who is a fine arts painter.

This is Jim's, a former graphic artist.  We're given a piece of wood to carve and the rest comes from inside.  I thought their work represented them very well.

And this is my big red rooster, Mr Doodle Doo.  I want to do him again and increase the number of reductions but my attention has already been snagged by something else.

After standing on concrete for 2 1/2 hours the night before, I further punished my feet by attending Liz Moncrief's warp painting class the next day, from 9:00 to 3:30.  She sure made warp painting simple and not fussy at all.  The two colors on this are lemon yellow and aquamarine.  She showed us how to use pressure to squeeze the colors into a middle area where they blended to make a third color, in this case green.  It has a tidepool look.

We worked in teams and Heidi and I were just flying by the seat of our pants.  We chose Pagoda Red and Amber Waves for our second warp.  As Liz was mixing up the solution she commented that we were going to get a sunset.  After blending the color, I absolutely did.

This odd yarn was imported from France for Crystal Palace yarns and is 44/40/16 rayon/cotton/polyester.  I bought it from Mary Wonser last year for $1 at the guild's Weftover Sale and I no idea what possessed me to buy or dye it.  It loved dye, was an absolute sponge!  The dye struck instantly.  There was no negotiating with this warp!

As if I hadn't punished my feet enough, I went to Earth Day.  Ian had been there all day setting up and volunteering in the March for Science booth.  I came with my friend Joanie just for the march.  On remarkably short notice, we had a turnout of close to a thousand people, lots of kids and families.  Marching through town we had further support as the cars drove by, honking and drivers calling out their support.  Boy, were my dogs barking.

Joanie and I came at 2:30, the last half hour of Earth Day.  We were sporting our Team Campbell t-shirts at the March for Science booth.  The main Team Campbell was in Washington DC with subgroups in Boston, San Francisco and Bend.  Team Campbell was organized by Jim Behnke, editor for Neil Campbell, author of Campbell's Biology and also Ian's brother, which is how there came to be a March for Science and Team Campbell in Bend.

I was wearing my knitted wool headband that says "science" on both sides and itched like mad.  What a terrible idea!  Our "scientist" was Dr Chaput, professor of infectious diseases and anatomy and physiology, and she was great sport, answering random questions off the cuff.

I rinsed out the warps this morning and hung them over the ladder to drip dry, hoping to beat the rain.  They look pretty shriveled and pathetic at this stage.

They only look marginally better here, half dry, hanging in the guest shower.  I'm pleased with the tidepool and sunset colors.  The splotchy purple and gold is even uglier in real life.  I cannot imagine it being any less ugly after woven and I absolutely don't know what to say about The Coat of Many Colors on the right. Several weavers have assured me that the most disappointing painted warp often is the happiest result when woven.  I realize as I look at this that I have eight scarves to weave which sounds like an awful lot to me.

Still gloomy, still busy indoors

Last week I wound five warps for a warp painting workshop next Friday.  We are only supposed to bring four warps but after I finished this one, cone from origins unknown and person not remembered, I had cut out six knots and was having serious misgivings.

I dug through my stash and came up with these three balls of cotton knitting yarn, also "donated."  It's 100% cotton and a little bit stretchy for weaving, but it's a cellulose fiber class.  I wound a back-up warp just to be safe.

This is another rayon/cotton novelty yarn but without the texture.  A additional warp is already in a baggy, three 3" bouts of undyed Tencel to be painted.

I bought this cone of Crystal Palace for a $1 at the Guild "Weft-Over" sale last summer.  Liz Moncrief is the teacher and she suggested that one warp be already dyed, pastels preferred.  The yarn is 44/40/16 viscose, cotton and polyester, imported from France.  I suspect this cone has been around for quite a while - it came from the stash of a retiring weaver..  I'm really interested to see if there's a swan in this ugly duckling.

I'm happy to report that I have finally finished my NCAA sweater.  The pattern is called Quick Sand - click to go to the Ravelry link.  The gauge is 15 st. = 4" but I used Cascade 220 on size nine 9 needles and still got 16 stitches so went up a pattern size.  I like it so much I bought the designer's pattern called Fine Sand, gauge 22 st = 4" and have already started.

And I quickly knit this headband for the March for Science next Saturday on Earth Day.  The pattern is also on Ravelry.  Click here for the free pattern.

Last night was the first class of four on Color Reduction in block printing.   We used these 3" square pieces of Gomuban, (a malleable rubber tile) as an introduction to the technique.  First we carved out the white so that when the plate was next inked with yellow, the white would be preserved.  First it's yellow, then red and then blue, light to dark.  We carve on the block four times to get our final print and each "incarnation" gets inked and run through the press on the same paper, three passes through the press.

The blue over the red produces the appearance of black and is what makes it pop.  I really enjoyed the process.

I seriously didn't know what I was just doing - carving with no plan and on the last carving I got a bit over-zealous and carved away a part of this soft plate - oops.  I'm not as fond of my second try and see that I'd like more structure.  Tomorrow night we begin the first of three sessions to carve and print one print on 8 x 10" tiles.  We can chose Gomuban or Sheena wood and I've opted for the wood.  I've already got my sketch ready.

Hand Painted Warp

I've been considering giving the back-to-front warping technique another try, but it's been five years at least since I tried it last and I needed to refresh myself by reading that chapter in Learning to Weave. I was struck by Chandler's advice to unhook the heddle bar hooks and slide the heddles to the left. No more threading from the center to the left, and then back to center to complete treading to the right. A complex threading pattern has to be reversed in the second half and I've made mistakes right there.

I got this far yesterday and couldn't decide what weft color to use. I knew that if it was the same as a color in the warp, the pattern would disappear and be lost. I want to show off all of the painted warp so decided to sleep on it overnight.

I usually lash the warp onto the front beam but I learned about this technique on the Facebook 4-Shaft Weaving group and wanted to try it out. Dividing your warp into inch increments, if you swap the last thread in each bout with the last thread in the next bout, the yarns straighten out promptly and produce less loom waste. I did it today and was really pleased at how effective it is, but the problem is that I need fringe so had to insert several venetian blind slats before I could start to weave.

I woke up sneezing in the middle of the night and had to get up to take several Benadryl so I could go back to sleep. My mind wandered while I waited for sleep to come and it dawned on me that the best color for this warp is black and I was right! This is my first hand-painted warp and while I'd do it differently next time, I'm very pleased with my little peacock scarf.

Someone in 4-Shaft Weaving supplied the link to a blog post with two Laura Frey videos with techniques on threading.  She called it fool proof which is like daring me to make mistakes.  But I tried them both and cut my threading time significantly.  Check out the Joy of Weaving post.  The only problem with the loop over the threading hook is that it went so fast that I kept losing my place.  I'd be at the end of my inch of threads but with no pattern.  Highly recommended!

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