Sandra's Loom Blog

A Couple of New Designs

2012-02-02T18:15:00.000-08:00

Not just doodles, this time. I need to get going on a series of iconic California scenes for a special project (then hopefully sales through some of the high-end galleries at the coastal resort areas).

You've seen two in progress - the Monterey cypress at sunset, and the Joshua Tree at sunset. Next up will be the Channel Islands image (California's Santa Barbara Channel, not the English Channel) that I posted earlier.

One more in the pipeline is an image of cormorants and surf at Big Sur:

And probably the most iconic of all, the Golden Gate Bridge:

This one is based on a photo taken by my sister. She flew for PanAm and then United Airlines for many years, and because she lived north of the Gate, she commuted across the bridge on a regular basis. This was taken before dawn, from the point of land to the west of the bridge - you have to drive through a long tunnel, then a winding road out to the point, high above the water.

I'm hoping to feel up to weaving soon. I've been away from the loom far too long, but until I have some confidence that I can remember which order to throw shuttles, the only fiber activities have been knitting-related. Over the years, I've accumulated some yummy knitting yarns, so I spent time yesterday and today sorting them into projects, yarns grouped with patterns and bagged up ready to go. What I don't use will go to the guild raffle or some other good cause.

Doodling Might Be Addictive

2012-01-31T17:43:00.000-08:00

Okay, I'll admit it, not "might be," "is."

I can't draw, so creating designs for the jacquard so far has been based on images - photos I've taken, or friends and family have taken, or photos I've trawled the 'net looking for.

Now, I'm seeing a way to use those images in an entirely new way, as the basis for completely abstract designs - but with no drawing board or paint brushes required!

Today's doodle started with another NatGeo image, this one of dunes in Algeria:

And the doodle, indexed to 8 hues (some shades of gold, some shades of rusty bronze, plus black):

Digital Dunes. A two-shuttle weave! I'm looking forward to it.

Doodling

2012-01-30T12:34:00.000-08:00

Okay, so I've caught another bug. I still have very low energy levels from the cough, so I'm not up to anything that requires much brainpower. Doodling is about as much as I can manage.

This particular bug is called Repper, an application for creating tiled images based on anything you import (jpg, png, bmp, etc.)

Following Alice's lead, I started with some very small tiles, suitable for copying into the liftplan for the 24-shaft dobby loom. In the course of several attempts, I managed to create a couple of crepe-like designs that may find their way onto the towel warp:

The first one uses 4-end twills; the second uses 5-end satin. Okay, all well and good - an interesting way to generate crepes. Fine, as far as it goes.

However, I think that Repper will become a very interesting part of my jacquard design toolkit! After mustering some brain cells, I imported part of this image of an ice cave (courtesy National Geographic Society):

In Repper, I created a single tile from just part of the image:

Then in Pshop, I doubled the tile and used a few filters to manipulate the image, and this is the result, indexed to 10 colors (4 shades of blue-violet, 5 shades of turquoise, plus black).

Kaleidascope Dreams. It might even make it onto the jacquard loom.

There's Good News and Bad News

2012-01-25T14:56:00.000-08:00

The bad news is that it's not a cold, it's whooping cough (again - the second bout in 6 months). According to the doctor, the pertussus bacteria is difficult to get rid of altogether - another cold may start it up again. This time, as soon as I'm off the antibiotics, I'll get vaccinated. This is really not fun.

The main reason it's not fun is that it's keeping me out of the studio for far too long due to low energy levels. Except for a search for surgical masks (aka dye powder handling masks) to wear whenever I leave the house, which isn't often.

So, I'm sorry I don't have anything to post photos of. However, and this is the good news, I'm doing a major clean-out of my textile library (books and magazines) and will be posting those on my sales blog soon. Watch this space!

Sample Blanket

2012-01-20T14:56:00.000-08:00

After a few failed attempts, I've got a new family of jacquard structures ready to test out. A cold makes my brain turn to mush, so figuring out the pattern presets for something that should be easy was a major challenge. In order to be sure that the structures don't have any flaws embedded in them, I decided to weave a sample blanket that includes all the colors (and combinations) I intend to use in the final version. Of course, mush-brain means I can hardly remember which of three shuttles to throw next, so one inch of weaving took a while.

From top, blue 1 + white 1, blue 1, 3, 5, and 7, tan 1 + white 1, tan 1, 3, 5, and 7, white 1, white 4. I've decided that white 4 needs to be a darker blend of tan and white, and will weave the rest of the sample blanket using a slightly revised version.

Until now, when I weave a design that wants 3 weft colors, I've used 9-end shaded satins, and that family of pattern presets have been thoroughly debugged. However, three wefts with this 16/2 cotton warp and weft means there's a bit too much space between the (for example) white picks, and I want the wefts to pack down more. So I made a set of pattern presets for 10-end shaded satins with 3 wefts. The numbers after the colors in the paragraph above refer to the satin type; 1 means 1/9 satin, 3 means 3/7 satin, etc. The biggest questions will be how much room the wefts have to wiggle with 10-end satin, and whether the backing on the finished cloth will help cure that.

Only time will tell. That, and wet-finishing, pressing, and applying backing.

Oh, by the way, the source image is a photo of the Channel Islands, shown below after significant modification in Pshop and indexing to 13 hues.

I'll weave it sideways, with enough border on all sides to allow it to be mounted on a canvas stretcher.

Towels Begun

2012-01-19T21:43:00.000-08:00

I'm feeling a little under the weather (the 3-year-old twins in the family have started pre-school, and guess what - they bring all the germs home with them) but managed to weave for a short while today:

Above is the overall view, photo taken when I had woven only a few inches. And a closeup:

This design looks very Scandinavian to me; diamonds with various "fillings." The sleying is uneven (5,4 etc. in a 10-dent reed for an overall sett of 45 epi) so it is difficult to see the pattern clearly - if the threading units (20) matched the sleying units (18), all would be well visually. I have several variations on this tieup and treadling, and will try them all on this warp. I have a customer who *loves* Scandinavian designs, so I hope she's going to like this one.

It's from handweaving.net, btw...

Getting Closer

2012-01-18T19:59:00.000-08:00

The towel warp is now tied on and a few picks of waste yarn have been woven to help the process of debugging threading and sleying errors.

I didn't get too much accomplished yesterday - the local cinema has declared Tuesdays to be $5.00 days. What a steal! Not just matinees, but any showing during the day! Even in the luxury theatre in which there's a bar and First Class seating! Wow! We'll be spending Tuesday afternoons at the cinema more often!

What did we see? The American version of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. We experienced the first volume as a book on tape during a trip to and from Montana. What a great voice reader! The 2nd and 3rd volumes we read as eBooks. Which Lisbeth do I prefer? I think Ms. Rapace in the Swedish version, by a very small margin. And which Michael? It's a toss-up. I like the Swedish actor, but Craig was very good too. The screenplay for the American version was more compact and to the point, where the Swedish version was closer to the book but spent time on unnecessary detail. I hope these film-makers intend to make films of volume 2 and 3, as well.

Sunset Revisited

2012-01-18T10:35:00.000-08:00

While taking a break from getting the towel warp ready to weave, I noticed that under the jacquard loom there's now a full view of the first sunset. The light under the loom isn't good, and the colors are a little off, but you can see the whole piece (including the top hem).

There's a wall directly behind the loom "driver's seat" so I can't get the camera far enough away from the cloth to use the flash (it washes out the color altogether). Without the flash the camera color sensors don't get enough light to assess the color inputs accurately.

However, as the cloth travels to the cloth storage beam at the back of the loom, it goes face down so this is the last look at the piece until I cut the woven work off the warp and complete the wet-finishing and mounting, which won't happen for some time.

Almost Ready

2012-01-13T18:44:00.000-08:00

Another afternoon, and the towel warp will be ready to dance:

I love the new, fresh, undiscovered glory of an unwoven warp. This one's threaded on a straight draw; I can weave anything on a straight draw, so I'm happily anticipating all the possibilities.

Which won't happen until Monday at the earliest, as we're otherwise occupied this weekend.

Have a great weekend, and you'll see some new towels emerge next week!

Another Sunset

2012-01-11T18:37:00.000-08:00

This one's based on a photo taken in Joshua Tree National Park, just northeast of Palm Springs, California. I began weaving yesterday afternoon, completed just a few inches, and then finished it off by dinnertime today.

Here are three views, in chronological order:

California has an amazing variety of landscapes, from beach to desert to alpine to temperate rainforest. Makes it a very interesting place to live and to travel.

Threading the Towel Warp

2012-01-08T18:23:00.000-08:00

Alice thinks the photo in the previous post is scary. I agree! I held my breath while winding the last section on the warping wheel. On the next-to-last group of four threads, I had to stop, knot the ends at the end of the bout, and wind the last group of threads from two cones instead of four. But it worked. Just.

Today, I'm merrily threading along. It's a straight draw, so there's no need to "treadle the threading," just pull heddles in order and thread. The iPod is playing jazz in the background.

In between the beaming and threading tasks, I've been winding off 1,000-yard skeins of Bamboo 12 (Silk City), dyeing it with fiber reactive dyes, drying it, then winding onto cones. Bamboo 12 is approximately the size of 16/2 cotton, so I'm using it as weft on the jacquard loom (which is threaded with black 16/2). These colors, plus two still to be dried and coned, are for projects that are in the queue for upcoming exhibition application deadlines.

Why am I using bamboo instead of cotton? Two reasons. This particular yarn consists of two fine 2-ply yarns lightly twisted together. Because of the structure of the thread, it spreads out and covers the warp more than a regular 2-ply would do. Plus, it takes the dye wonderfully, with no need to scour before dyeing, which cotton wants. And like Tencel and all the other regenerated cellulose yarns, it wets out very easily the minute it hits water. What the heck, I'm lazy. If it's possible to skip a step or two without sacrificing depth of color, I'll do it!

Towel Warp Beamed

2012-01-07T18:11:00.000-08:00

The two cones standing on the beam contain the only yarn I had left after winding the last section. The right-hand cone has about 12 yards of yarn in one long piece. The left-hand cone has several separate lengths on it, each shorter than 6 yards.

That should be enough to account for replacement ends when I encounter knots - and I know there are several of those in the warp.

Note to self: next time, wind off an extra hundred yards on one of the dye skeins!

Warping Towels

2012-01-05T21:55:00.001-08:00

This is the overall view of the operation. Here I'm winding 4 threads at a time onto the warping wheel to create a 1-inch section:

The cones are on the floor at the back of the loom, and the threads go up, behind, and over one of the warp separator beams (helps keep the threads from twisting around one another).

Here, 3 sections are wound onto the beam, and the section guides (made of vinyl tubing) are positioned for the 4th section:

The remainder of the day was spent debugging a problem with a jacquard draft. If you haven't used Woven Pixel techniques to work with weave drafts, the details won't be important. Only the frustration level counts! However, fortune bent my way in the end, and the problem's solved. Onward!

Sunset Woven

2012-01-04T18:42:00.000-08:00

The camera doesn't like this color range at all! Oh well, in any case the weaving of the piece itself is finished, as is the top hem (based on a scene-appropriate pebble beach):

By that time, the entire parrot's face was visible under the loom. The light isn't very good down there, in spite of an Ott lite I set on the floor a few feet away from the far corner and the camera flash.

This is the most complete view you'll get until the finishing and mounting is completed, which will be a while because I have several images queued up, plus a towel warp to beam...

Sunset

2012-01-03T18:12:00.000-08:00

I spent most of the day weaving away on the sunset (working image shown here). I stopped to take photos a couple of times. Here's the first 400 or so picks:

And at about the 800-pick mark:

Mind you, the colors aren't right - in real life, the gold is much yellower and the orange is much peachier. For some reason, the combination of overcast sky and camera settings didn't want to cooperate and show the real colors (in spite of some nudging in Photoshop).

Onward

2012-01-02T11:44:00.000-08:00

The parrot's alert expression is now visible:

I should be able to finish the weaving today, and move on to the sunset.

The State of the Looms, 01/01/2012

2012-01-01T13:07:00.000-08:00

Meg in Nelson NZ likes to see the state of everyone's looms on New Year's Day each year, so here's a look at my studio in California ( N 35° 29' 21.8544", W 120° 40' 14.6964").

The AVL 24-shaft dobby loom is empty at the moment, but there are at least 2 warps queued up, the first being cotton for towels and the second being silk in two colors for a series of scarves.

On the AVL Jacq3G I've got as far as the parrot's eye (working image posted here).

He looks like a very cheerful fellow:

I hope that 2012 will be a colorful, creative, and joyful year for everyone.

Preparations and Beginnings

2011-12-31T14:00:00.000-08:00

The cones of towel warp yarn are all ready for me to begin winding the warp. Can you tell which cones were originally bleached white and which were natural? Nope, neither can I. I'm guessing the finished cloth won't show any difference between them at all!

I still have to wind the matching (finer) yarn for the towel hems onto a cone, but I'm putting that task off until there's a need for weft :-)

In the meantime, I've woven the bottom hem (with '2012' in the signature line) and the first 400 picks of the parrot:

Some very interesting reading awaits, courtesy of some Christmas gifts:

After a brief perusal of the Summer & Winter book, I can see I need to do some exploration of turned polychrome S&W structures. Next year. For which I have the 2012 Handwoven calendar, at the bottom of the pile in the picture.

Happy New Year to you all, with wishes for a creative, colorful 2012.

Preparations

2011-12-29T18:18:00.000-08:00

After a busy holiday weekend, and several days catching up, I'm back in the studio with a variety of tasks that will get me closer to actually weaving real cloth.

I've woven samples of two jacquard designs to check aspect ratio, and have made the appropriate modifications to the loom files.

The first is for the parrot image (originally shown here) and the second is for an image of a sunset on the California coast. Here's the image, after processing in Photoshop and indexing to 11 hues, as shown in the color chips at the bottom of the image - 4 values of gold, 4 values of orange, 2 values of a bronzy brown, plus black.

After the sample, I've decided to use a more intense gold and a less intense orange. Both are available in the stash - no delay for dyeing the necessary colors.

In between weaving small strips, I'm winding the mint-green cotton yarn for the towel warp onto cones:

The cone winder (aka AVL pirn winder with adapters for cones) is on the corner of the worktable beyond the loom. The winder doesn't like to wind more than one skein onto cones at a time. There's enough resistance that the motor overheats, and after one skein, the motor is too hot to touch. So I just go away and do something else for a while to give it a chance to cool down.

No Weaving, Just Finishing

2011-12-21T18:50:00.000-08:00

I want to send the recently woven portraits to their recipients before we leave for Los Angeles for the holiday, so the last couple of days have been spent on finishing work.

The portrait of my Uncle Lewis and Aunt Dora is going to Dora, the sweetest woman I know, who lives in a nursing home following a series of strokes; Lew passed away in 2008, and I hope this picture will keep her company and remind her of the happy times they had together.

This long-ago portrait of Lewis is going to my cousin (Lew's son) as a thank-you for putting us up back in July during the Bellevue Art Museum show. I had woven a copy of the image before we added the new modules to the loom, but it didn't turn out well - the weft yarn shrank more in finishing than the warp, so the aspect ratio was way off. This iteration captures the image much more accurately:

And the portrait of Aunt Aileen with me and my sister will have to wait until after Christmas. I won't see my sister until January, which is good because I want to get this framed, which means a negotiation and a waiting period for framing.

If I don't have another chance before the holiday begins in earnest, I wish you all a happy holiday season (whichever flavor you celebrate). Spend time with friends and family, that's my recommendation!

In the Dyepots Again

2011-12-17T19:01:00.000-08:00

The silk skeins I measured out some time back finally found their way into dyepots. One skein will be a light periwinkle blue:

The other will be a deep blue that's somewhere between royal and turquoise:

These are 60/2 silk; the wefts will be 100/2 or finer, navy and some other hues yet to be decided upon. I'm getting ducks in a row, but not all of them at once...

Towel Warps

2011-12-16T22:17:00.000-08:00

The warp yarns for the towels came out of the dye pot and began drying today.

My first thought was to dye the yarns a very pale blue (to go with the various blues I have for weft) but the difference between the bleached white skeins and the natural skeins was much to obvious with a very pale value. I decided that if I needed to make these skeins a light value rather than a very pale one, it should contrast in hue from the weft yarns. So I decided on a light mint green. With this depth of shade, it is difficult to discern the difference between the two yarns, so I'm calling it an acceptable dye job. If I beam the warp with one end of bleached and one end of unbleached, the difference will be negligible.

The smaller skein on the lower tier of the rack is the 40/2 mercerized cotton that I'll use for weft for the towel hems. As expected, this skein took the dye more strongly than the unmercerized cotton. Not enough of a difference to be a problem, however, so I'm happy with the general outcome.

All these yarns were dyed in one big dyepot - over 750 grams of yarn, which is the biggest dyebath I've ever worked with, and my biggest stainless pot. It was a lot of weight to manage, but at least the yarn all dyed the same color, or near enough for my purposes.

Holiday Gifts

2011-12-15T18:54:00.000-08:00

This week I'm working on holiday gifts. The current jacquard weaving is a two-fer: half is a reduced-size version of the portrait of me and my sister with our Aunt Aileen (this copy is for my sister) and half is a portrait of an aunt and uncle. Lew passed away a couple of years ago, and this portrait is for his wife Dora.

After this pair is finished, I've found a charming photo of my maternal grandmother with her 6 children on a picnic. (Actually, it looks more like their back garden than the wilds of Montana where they usually hiked and camped, but since I wasn't there I can't say for sure...) I suspect that some of my cousins would like a copy of this group portrait. Here it is, indexed to 9 greys; it'll be woven in 10-end shaded satins:

In the dyepots, there are skeins of 20/2 unmercerized cotton yarn intended for tea towels, and skeins of 60/2 silk for scarves waiting for my attention after that.

After KPFA

2011-12-13T22:11:00.000-08:00

We had a reasonably good show; not a wonderful show, but a good one. At least the weather cooperated, unlike last year when it poured during both load-in and load-out. December in San Francisco is always iffy - it can rain, or it can be beautiful. This year, it was cool but sunny, i.e., beautiful.

We always have a double booth at the KPFA show - it costs less than a single booth at a big show like ACC, so there's plenty of room to spread out, and customers have room to move around.

KPFA is a listener-supported radio station in Berkeley, CA, and this is one of their main fund-raising efforts during the year. It's a good show, and a good cause.

The right part of the booth:

And the left part:

plus a closeup of some of DH's beautiful rolling pins:

These have been very popular. I'd guess that about half are sold to people who intend to use them in pastry making, and half to people who want them to decorate their kitchen counter. Doesn't matter - the rolling pins are fully functional, but also really gorgeous!

KPFA Craft Fair

2011-12-07T18:45:00.000-08:00

Our last show of the season is coming up this weekend. The KPFA Craft Fair is at the Concourse Center, 635 8th Street at Brannan Street in San Francisco, 10am to 6pm on Saturday and Sunday.

If you're in the San Francisco Bay Area, please do drop by to say hello! If you're not in the area, you'll be missing a great show...

Info at the KPFA website.