Blog Archives

manipulated by paper

2/27/2018

Last night I noticed that I'm almost at the end of Comic Diary #16.
YIPES!
Bone folder to the rescue.

For how would I make sense of my days
without Comic Sarah to give me perspective?

Though I"m in year 5 of this daily drawing practice
I've only been making my own books for the last 10 months or so,
and I have to say that experimenting
with paper, aspect ratio and binding methods
has added immeasurably to the whole business.

What I might have lost in consistency
(a lovely shelf with equal-sized Moleskines all lined up),
I've gained in the practice
of making time for crow quill, ink, watercolor,
of asking questions,
of trying to stay alert for answers.

What role, I wondered a few months ago,
does aspect ratio
play in the way I think about my days?

Turns out that when presented with a liner format,
my thinking, and drawing get...more linear:
this happened, then this, then this.
Duh.

(Cleaning aside--which I"m also supposed to be doing today--
I'm having a little envy of my last spring self
sitting in the sun...)

With a square, or nearly square area on the other hand,
I seem to leave more white space,
and am included to let a single image tell the tale of the day.

Paper, too, has a huge influence --
do pencil marks and watercolor sit on the surface
leaving time for me to adjust, erase,
and reshape then into a form that is particularly pleasing?

Or is every mark drawn instantly into the fibers of the paper,
turning each day into a palimpsest,
of me making my uncertain way?

The book I bound this morning
includes some hand made paper I bought in Mexico
when teaching there several years ago --
paper I had been saving for 'something really special.'

There isn't a lot of it (one folio per four folio signature),
but I'm curious to see how the texture will mess with my mind.

Even more,
I'm thrilled to know
that Comic Sarah
is worth the experiment.

Henry's Shop Shirt

2/17/2018

It’s 2 degrees F this morning in North Idaho with no shortage of snow
so the wool shirt Henry asked for last spring
that I finished yesterday,
is still just the thing.

His shop does have a wood stove,
but one wall is an old sail
and to actually get work done,
wool layers are essential.

A boatbuilder by trade,
Henry is also the son of a spinner
and a couple of years ago
he designed a spindle
that just happens to be perfect
for the yarn I like to make.

It’s called The Hepty, and I’ve blogged about it at least twice...
Indeed, many of the spindle photos on this blog are of Hepty #1
which I’ve used almost exclusively since I snatched it out of Henry’s hands two years ago.
(Once in a while he makes a few to sell-- the Heptys
in the photo above are waiting for their very own spinners--
and since I was visiting I got to try them all...)

At any rate, from Henry’s first casual request for a shop shirt
there was no question as to how I’d spin the yarn.

Since almost every knitting project begins with fleece,
I ordered one from the Ortmann’s in Wolf Point, Montana.
Their marvelous fine fleeces have been a staple (pun sort of intended)
of my spinning life for years (Cormo, Polworth, Debouillet),
and this time I chose a Targhee/Debouillet cross--
out of curiosity and a desire for something both next-to-the-skin soft and wearably robust.
The fleece was (and still is), lovely.

About 20 microns, it is soft and silky with enough integrity that my fingers
don’t feel like they are covered with sandpaper when I touch it
as sometimes happens with superfine fleeces.

It has, indeed, been a pleasure to work with at every stage

An early sample helped me to decide that the fabric I envisioned -
fine, light and very stretchy— would begin with three ply yarn.

Of coruse I was disposed to want a three ply,
as it is so easy to chain the singles from my spindle onto a plying stick
(at left in the photo below), and then add twist when plying back onto the spindle.

—note: I wrote about plying sticks in the same February 2, 2016 blog post linked above, so no need to click again if you clicked on that one!

The joy of this technique is that I can spin and ply each spindle full of yarn
with the tools at hand, wherever I am.

By fall — I had spun about 380 grams (13.57 oz)

I never did count the yardage, but I was pretty sure the sweater would be less than a pound.

Lobaria Pulmonaira (lungwort lichen), from a particular spot near our cabin
provided the dyestuff.
I went there for a few solo days in early December,
enjoying the full circle satisfaction of dyeing on a wood cook stove
using the same aluminum pot in which I dyed my first yarn ever,
while living in the tiny house you can see a couple of photos down,
back in 1985.

These lichens work best for me when there is direct contact,
but I didn’t want bits of lichen in the skeins
so put the yarn in a net bag
and the net bag in the pot with the simmering lichen.

The color was not as even as it would have been had I let the skeins float free,
but it is luscious nonetheless,
And certain amount of a abrash can be a fine thing
on an otherwise unadorned garment.

The structure is a simple top down raglan in the round,
all in stockinette stitch, which means i could read while knitting— always a plus for me.

The pattern is the shape of Henry with numbers based on the yarn I had made.

The final garment weighs in a 295 grams (about 10.5 oz)

It actually fits me (with a little stretch over the hips and extra long sleeves), so perhaps the next one will be me shaped, as I have 85 grams left over, plenty of fleece,
and a spindle that likes to be used.

But this one is Henry’s.
He has things to make in his shop.

Change of Palette (and brief tutorial)

2/13/2018

A couple of days ago I lifted the lid of my palette box...

and found this --
hidden at the bottom ,
the hues too bright for my mid- winter mood.

Natural Dyestuffs just do not mess around: madder, cochineal, indigo, weld on white yarn! Whohoo.

Might as well begin with ORANGE warp
(actually brighter than it appears in this photo)
because -- why not?

madder and weld

But first ...
since the last couple of blog posts have generated questions about beginning and ending yarn when weaving in the ends as I go, I tried to pause to take some process photos.
Alas, I didn't get as many as I intended as I slipped into the tapestry and
forgot I was supposed to be on the outside, explaining things.
But here is a brief, crooked (and slightly out of focus) explanation of one approach.

Using a needle, slide the blue weft through the already woven weft, parallel to the warp

Gently pull up until the tail disappears in the woven structure. Weave as needed.

The blue yarn hangs ready for re-threading so later, when I need it for the top of the window, I can slide it through the window weft and up to where I want to use it again (this instead of beginning a new piece of weft, which is awkward at any scale, but esp in something this small.
To finish, see next photo (but in pink).

Here I’m getting rid of one of the strands of pink using the needle technique. In the next (nonexistent) photo, I’ll cut it flush with the surface of the tapestry.

NOTE: If your weft is quite thick, this process can lead to bulky ridges in your tapestry and a potentially uneven surface. Much depends on the grist of both warp and weft, and the relationship between them. Every combination is a new experiment for me.

Below are a couple of photos of another way to start a strand of weft
(without the risk of added bulk).
Note how the wispy end of the lavender yarn (broken not cut),
drapes over the dark purple and is both held in place and covered by subsequent passes.

The photos also show the pink weft at the top of the house
ending with an ‘eccentric slide’ down the slope of the roof.

That's all for now...
Not sure why these bright colors and shapes are suddenly the thing,
but when color calls, what can you do but
release the tapestry from the loom and see what is next.

OH yes -- and for further reading (and visuals of other work in progress),
might I recommend the blog posts from January 2016?
I recently put the date links back up in the sidebar, and noticed that that month (and some of February too) has a lot of info -- including, in the Value of Value post, a downloadable PDF of a tiny house cartoon...
Presents!