PROGRESS REPORT 25

A L I S A

Yesterday I went on a little outing with my little knitting/crochet group. We went to this very nice store called Camilla Valley Farms. It's an amazing little store in an outbuilding on a farm about 45 minutes away from where I live. The two best things about it are that they carry every colour of Jamieson's Shetland Spindrift - looking at that wall inspired me to pick up some yarn for a cardigan that I fell in love with. The pattern is beautiful and kind of different that what I usually make. I don't want to post a picture yet… I'll post my progress. The second amazing thing is that they are a weaving supply place and, holy moly, I'll be returning soon! I wish I could teleport Jenne here to visit the shop with me!

J E N N E

Sometimes it is like a domino run, one craft bumps into another craft, start working on a project and hey, I want to do this to use it in that.  After the halloween costume making hurricane that consumed my studio last week, I did a big clean up and picked up one of my spindles and felt like spinning again.  I found this electric pink roving that I had put in the sell/trade bin now it makes all the sense with the technicolor palette I am weaving now and started to spin it up.  I am rusty.  I dropped my spindle a lot.  But I spun enough to realize that its going to be my morning ritual - waking up early making tea and spinning for a half an hour before everyone is up.  Making the yarn I want.  Maybe to get to a goal of 100% handspun for weaving.  Slowly, with little steps.

PROGRESS REPORT 21

A L I S A

I have completed two circular weavings during our experiments. It's not nearly as many as I would have liked to. The good thing is that I have come up with a good routine to fit this exercise into my daily studio time. So, maybe this exercise ended up not being about weaving within a circle, but establishing dedicated time for a desired project. We're going to be moving on to new project experimentations soon, but I'm going to keep up with my "small weaving" routine.  I really like how I finished the larger piece. I used yarns to wrap around the interior wood of the circle to create a nice frame and hide some warping threads that were bugging me. It was fun adding warp as I went to create shapes and weaving within weaving. Branching off into other segments. I also used all hand-spun. 

J E N N E

I put a particularly gnarly pair of yarns on my loom as warp this week.  Knowing that one yarn was way springier than the other (3ply wool vs 2ply mohair and silk) but color wise and just need to go together wise are PERFECT for one another so I went for it.  What is not pictured is the crazy differential tension set up I made by putting a long shed stick from my bigger loom across the backbeam and under the springier yarn to take up some of that sproing so that it can become more reasonably even to weave.  It works, its not totally convenient and I continue to work in my jerry rigged, make it work sort of way. Its challenging but if it all works out like I have it in my head, its going to be crazy great.

PROGRESS REPORT 18

J E N N E

The sashiko stitching continues.  I keep most all scraps from other sewing projects and last week went through them and cut many into the same size to do some stitching experiments with.  I am really interested in playing with the colors of the threads vs the stitching and the combinations and possibly layers that will come.  This is another big experiment with a vague idea of what I am aiming for but letting the material dictate what will be done with it.  Yesterday Alisa sent me a picture of a poster on the wall at her school that says "Detach from outcome, commit to process."  I am really feeling that right now, freely experimenting with the materials I have and letting the process dictate where I go with it and what to try next.  

A L I S A

This is what my puppet looks like assembled. All the pieces that were in the last Progress Report all went into making Rocky the Goat Puppet. This is a final project for year three of my formal spinning education. I really loved how it turned out and loved the process of making it. The story of Rocky goes like this… When I moved back to Canada from the USA about 6 years ago, I was working at a yarn mill and totally getting into spinning and knowing how the textile and fibre arts work from the basics up. The mill was on a working farm that raised Angora goats for Mohair. Rocky was the first animal I ever saw being born and I really took a shine to him. I spent a lot of time with him over the next few years and the owners of the mill/farm gifted me all his fleeces. I have wanted to make this totem since then. The puppet is made out of his fleece that I was present for the shearing of and processed myself. Rocky started this amazing change in me to stay curious about materials and where things come from and to know about fibre animals and what goes into making yarn. 

PROJECT REPORT 7 - Circular Weaving

J E N N E

Still working on this one. Wrapping warp as groups is working really well towards the center of the circle.  I used embroidery thread for some of the weft and it so shiny compared to the wool - a nice contrast I want to play with more, maybe more in a monochromatic approach with the same color with a texture from using different fibers.

A L I S A

I haven't had much time to work on this piece, as I've been getting ready for school. I am excited to get back to it though. I'm really enjoying playing with adding warp as I go. I'm contemplating what to do around the edge of the hoop. I've noticed that I've warped in two different ways, one is quite visible and the other isn't. I'm ok with it, but wish I had of been consistent. This just means that I may have to add something around the edges, perhaps wrapping hand-spun to cover the inner wooden hoop, then framing it with the outer hoop. We shall see...

PROGRESS REPORT 17

J E N N E

Sashiko has become the work of the summer. I spent a week working on clothing for my daughter and I decided to make a dress with sashiko stitching on the bodice. With sewing you have transformative powers in your hands, in your needle and thread.  You don't have to follow a pattern to the letter or use the fabric as is.  I have been trying to use up everything in my fabric stash and in this case made a new fabric out of a cut of denim that honestly doesn't match the rest of the pieces of the dress. (Look carefully at the skirt fabric, its more teal and the back has darker pieces.  Maybe only I can see it, I spent years scrutinizing shades of color in my last job and years of printing color in the darkroom)  Add handstitching, or block printing, or any sort of surface design is a way to make something imperfect more imperfectly perfect - a sort of wabi sabi magic that I am completely embracing right now.

A L I S A

I've been taking this six year long course through the Ontario Handweavers and Spinners Guild in hand-spinning. It runs for 10 days a year in a beautiful place called Haliburton at a beautiful school up there. It is much more than hand-spinning though. I've been learning all about the properties of fibre, both natural and synthetic dyeing techniques, construction techniques and, of course, all aspects of spinning on a wheel. I'm going into my fourth year this year and I'm finishing up some homework. Homework for this course is pretty intense and very specific. The planning portion for each project is much more in-depth than anything I would do for work outside of school. This picture represents a fair amount of hours of work in fleece selection, spinning, weaving and crochet. It's going to be an angora goat puppet! I will post more pictures here as I progress….

PROJECT REPORT 5 - Circular Weaving

A L I S A

I've started a new circular weaving… well, it's in a circle. I've created a base that I'll add on to with additional warp and be able to weave into. I'm experimenting with layering warp with this piece. So far, it's a lot of fun and I really like it. I'm using all hand-spun and I'm also mixing yarns to create gradients. 

J E N N E

Weaving in a circular frame means you can branch out and add a warp here, wrap a weft there, till you are suddenly weaving in all directions at once.  Working on this at the beach today, I was thinking about how serendipitous and wild this little piece is becoming - I had a plan and now its telling me to do something completely different.  Experiment with filling the space.  I am not sure how much more I am going to work on this one (mainly because my tapestry needle is not fitting in the spaces of the hoop anymore - there is not a lot of room to work in a hoop this size that I've been just winding the yarn with my fingers in some parts) but I do know its come along a lot crazier than I thought it would be, and all the better.