Category: Comics

Short and Sweet!

4/13/2021

Oops!
Looks like a proper blog post
is not going to happen this week.

Time — sometimes
she just vanishes--
and she takes Energy with her.
Sigh.

Have you noticed this?

That said
after all the thread and sewing machine love last week,
I can’t not leave you
with this:

https://youtu.be/8lwI4TSKM3Y

and
a wee comic--
the only medium I’ve yet found
that allows me to do
all the things
at once.

11 Comments

thinking ahead, back then

3/9/2021

So you know what's cool?

Well, lots of things are cool:
spinning
and weaving
and looms
and friends
and solitude
and vaccinations
and sunshine
and rain
and baby plants
and one syllable four letter nouns...

Today, though
the thing that delights me
more than I can say,
is noticing--

that I no longer notice--

that I wear a hand spun/knit wool shirt
every single day
summer and winter.

Well-- truth to tell--
in the summer I occasionally wear
those handwoven linen
and linsey-woolsey shirts.
But still--
(and somewhat to my amazement),
I've made more than enough
next-to-the-skin-soft
wool shirts
to see me through.

And though I wasn't thinking at the time
about why it was possible,
one of my great daily pleases
these last months
has been dressing up for my loom every day.
And I think the loom appreciated my effort.

But I had forgotten--
until tidying up a stack of
"magazines with articles I wrote"--

that once upon a time
having enough such garments
was a deliberate plan--
my mid-life self
committing
to the sartorial comfort, pleasure
and general well-being
of me,
now,
at 60.

So golly thanks, former Sarah
for the serendipitous Magic Medium--
for the blissfully approachable Somewhat Slanted
(of which I now have five)--
for The Cloisters (pictured above)--
for Kestrals Alight back in 1996--
for all the unnamed others
(many of which I've given away)--

Notes to Self; hand woven tapestry; 25" x24"; wool/ natural dyes ©Sarah C. Swett 2015

--for all the glorious fleeces
(and the sheep that grew them)--
and for uncountable days and weeks and years
of pleasure--
past, present and future.

And yes, also for my Sarah-Dippity Skirts
which though they are not shirts
and were completely unplanned,
I nonetheless wear so often
that I'm now having to patch them.

So you know what's cool?
That the midst of one of the weirdest
and most unsettled
and oddly fascinating times of my life so far--
that even as I am taking a break from knitting
to rest and reset--
it is yarn, once again,
that is seeing me through.

Wintry ways...

3/2/2021

Listening to the snow melt...

Wow-
it's March!

How are you doing?

Me--I am well,
(how happifying is that?)
And the snow is melting!

It's amazing to be back here--
familiar and strange
at the same time.

I mean
after three months
there is so much to say,
and also, nothing at all.

For while listening
to other people express essential ideas
with perfection and beauty--

Bone; Hand Woven Tapestry; 3" x 4.75"; warp--wool; weft--hand twisted milkweed, used coffee filters (paper yarn); indigo; 2020

--I've been spending my days
with one word at a time.

Four Selvedge Tapestry--so much easier to unwind the supplementary warp when you can spread it all the way across the room!

I mean--
quag.
Isn't it lovely?
What a thing
to get to balance
(or try at any rate)
on its delicious
q-centric
syllable.

And really,
does a person really need
entire sentences?

Even my inner Storymaker
has been mostly OK with it.

She is all about words to be sure,
usually ready to cram in
as many as she can
(Verbs!!! Adjectives!!!!!
Parenthetical Asides!!!!),
but it turns out
that reading dictionaries
studying etymology,
and debating the merits
of this word
or that
is wildly entertaining.
(OMG--a double ff-- YES!)

Almost as satisfying
as having chopped
the ice dams
off the roof.

Now it could be
that writing this essay
back in December
for my friend Debbie Lee's
monthly blog: Witness Wilderness,
was all the Storymaker needed.

thaw; handwoven tapestry; hand spun paper (used coffee filters), wool; natural dyes (weld and Osage); 3”x 5” 2021

Or maybe she has just been biding her time,
waiting for the thaw
while the Luminist blissed out
on quiet(ish) winter days.

Either way,
we're decidedly out of shape
for this blogging biz
and it might take a while
to fully emerge
from our wintry ways.

Though I suppose that is
what spring is all about, eh?

seed; handwoven tapestry; hand spun paper (used coffee filters), wool; natural dyes (madder); 2.75”x 5” 2021

and....instead of but

11/10/2020

Lots of things happened in 2016 --
not least
that I built
my first backstrap loom.

Though probably not directly connected,
this elemental tool
has helped to see me through
some of the other world-rocking
events and emotions of the last years--
the reverberations of which,
(as you might have noticed yourself...),
have yet to settle down.

For these years have
asked-- nay, demanded
so very much --
not least
the development of
new levels of fortitude--

-- a massive amount of trust
in some absurdly fragile-appearing
threads of connection--

--and even some heart-expanding joy
when the threads
actually hold.

So it is with a peculiar kind of curiosity
that I remembered, just now,
that it has been just over four years
since I first leaned back against
my needlepoint strap--
and to spend some time thinking about
what has happened to me
since then.

Backstrap Dialogues p. 34

Of course it was tapestry
that started it--
the desire to begin weaving
with a single word
and follow it, letter by letter,
wherever the unfolding idea chose to go--
a deeply unsettling thing
for a person given to weaving
from carefully composed cartoons
(and thus even more worth pursuing).

The idea of plain plain weave, however
never crossed my mind.

Well, not until
the very second warp anyway.

And then --
well then I was a bit of a mess for a time.
A happy mess to be sure--
bounding back and forth
between delicious, weft-faced text
and luminous, drapy, open cloth--
yet also thoroughly confused
and bemused
by my new divided attention.

Luckily, I blogged about it at the time.
(three 2016 posts: One, Two, Three),
then wrote Backstrap Dialogues,
in order to dig even deeper
into what felt, in the moment
like uncertain direction.
"Who am I
to enjoy both of these?"

There were days, indeed,
when my head
felt as divided and divisive
as this country--
a place where "and" was not a thing--
my internal state
as seemingly unreconcilable
(and sometimes downright cruel)
as the national mood.

Backstrap Dialogues, page 9

Four years,
many many many yards of cloth
and more miles of yarn
than I can even begin to count later,
much has changed--
and much has not.

As thrilled as ever
by the breadth of possibility
inherent in the simple tools,
I now don't think twice about using
un-sized, super fine singles as warp.

Backstrap Dialogues, page 12

And in endless, in-depth conversations,
Luminist and Storymaker--
though sometimes not as polite
as they might be--
have, over time,
come to realize how
interdependent they actually are,
and to make space for
techniques, ideas and materials
one or the other
might once have disdained
(or, more truly, never even considered:
coffee filters? wedge weave? milkweed?
tapestry book covers? nettle baskets?).

Two Blue Houses (detail in process); hand woven tapestry; balanced plain weave weave; milkweed; backstrap loom

Though not always been a cakewalk
(as you might imagine),
even my tradition-bound inner Storymaker
has begun to concede
that tales can be told in many ways--
narrative, light and local materials
coexisting
in a single swathe of cloth.

And at least some of the time,
in a single human as well.

(Or heddle -- Margaret, with her sweet, bemused smile,
is pretty much up for anything--
the more untried, the better).

Two Blue Houses (detail in process); hand woven tapestry; balanced plain weave weave; milkweed; backstrap loom

I can only hope, now,
that the same might soon (someday?)
be said for this entire country.

For I do so hope,
along with the unmitigated joy,
brought by final ballot counts,
that civility, kindness
and attempts at being helpful
might be possible
in our government
and amongst ourselves.

Two Blue Houses; hand woven tapestry; balanced plain weave weave; milkweed; backstrap loom; 38" x 1.25"

Or, at the very least
that we can remember
that taking turns
is a thing.

milkweed 'n me

8/11/2020

11.8 grams--

a week's work.

Or, more truly,
a week's pleasure--

day after day
of long white fibers
making themselves known
a strand at a time--

beautiful bast
in a small clump
of Aphid-infested plants
my neighbor wanted gone.

For months --
nay, years--
I've been trying
to learn about local bast fibers--

Nettle, Dogbane, and Milkweed too--
reading the sparse literature--
mostly about working with Nettles
(thank you Allan Brown for your work)--
watching the odd video
(thank you Sally Pointer),
and trying,
with limited/mixed success,

to make friends
with these glorious materials--
one of which,
this week,
for whatever reason,
and rather against the odds,

agreed to work with me.

experimental distaff stick (vs baskety thing)--willow whip without bark from last week's post. For more on previous distaff experiments, type 'distaff' into the search bar above.

This is not even supposed
to be the right season--
not least because Milkweed plants
are essential to the entire life cycle
of Monarch Butterflies
(should Monarch be capitalized? Anyone know?)
and to cut down the stalks
before the butterflies have flown
is deeply irresponsible--
which makes me
insanely grateful
to my neighbor
and Aphids.

Well, truth be told,
I'm grateful, too,
to all the people
who have worked with
these plants for millennia,
as well as to all the plants
that have helped me,
in turn, to practice
and learn.

what was left in the combs after the long fibers were drawn through

And really,
how not to also be pleased--
in the moment
and in retrospect--
by my former self
for her persistence
and (sometimes painfully)
slow acquisition
of knowledge
skills,
familiarity,
dexterity,
and
dare I say,
patience--

all of which have helped
to make me available
for these beauties:
to the obvious long fibers,

to the 'leftover' medium length ones
that were ready to be re-combed,
drawn out into a form of top
wound on a wrist (vs stick) distaff
and made into lovely yarn themselves,

and to the shortest ones
which were just the right length
for a couple of easy-to-spin
hand carded rolags
and allowed for
absolutely no waste at all --
barring the now composting
scraped off outer green bits
and the drying-for-kindling inner stalks.

How lucky can a gal get?
(says she to her future self,
lest she forget, sometime,
how wondrous and generous
the world can be).

--and a sartorial post script--
You might well think my just-off-the-needles
Targhee/Debouillet/Cormo etc tank top is all I've worn this week.
And you might be right!
Also the blue pants. I have to say. Oh my word.
They come from MAIWA --first new pants in years and years.
A gift to my legs and butt, from me.
No promotion thing -- they have no idea-- I am just utterly in love.
Be warned -- there will be patched pants and long term mending
(as needed though none yet despite continual wear), in future blogs...

thoughts on a two apron morning

7/21/2020

How else but with two aprons,
to pick rapidly ripening raspberries

and carry a garden watering timer
(aka phone)

when neither your linen shirt
nor the hand-me-over-unfinished-skirt
you're wearing underneath
has a pocket?

Not that I couldn't remedy that.
A nice patch pocket on the skirt
would be the work of a moment.

And the shirt
is a continual work in progress--
the fact that it already has
a teensy tapestry pocket on one side
no reason to neglect the other.

It's just that I wear the shirt so often--
like every day I'm not wearing
the linsey-woolsey one--
that I just haven't gotten around to it.

Yes -- it's hard to tell from the drawing
that I'm wearing the linsey-woolsey shirt.
But it is only short-sleeved shirt I have,
so not a tricky deduction.
Besides, it was just a few days ago.

Also, though I occasionally
bend the absolute truth in my comics
(for narrative clarity only),
I generally aim for sartorial veracity--
if only because I love my clothes
and am oddly attached
to the idea that future me
might like to enjoy seeing them too
(while remembering what. weenie I am about shopping).

It also helps with the laundry.
("I seem to have worn Sarah-Dippity Skirts
in almost every drawing for this entire diary--
definitely time for a bath!")

But I digress.
Paper pockets
were the topic of the moment.
And they might actually be
a compelling experiment.
Though the coffee filter yarn
is itself pretty fragile,
especially as singles
(I can't imagine using it for warp for instance),
it seems to stand up remarkably well
tightly packed in a weft faced plain weave--
at least to the wear and tear
of life as a diary cover--
growing soft, pliable,
and almost leather-like
(if a little grubby),
with daily use.

And true shifu,
(woven from hand spun washi)
has been used for clothing for centuries,
so the idea is not totally outrageous --
except of course, that washi
(and the resulting kami-ito)
is often specifically made
for strength and longevity
while coffee filters are (usually)
single use items.
Though expected to withstand
boiling water and soggy grounds,
they are definitely not
as intrinsically strong as washi.
But who knows?
In case you haven't noticed,
my life is a constant work in progress --
my chief delights arising from
experiments with the materials at hand,
no matter the source.

And as we all learn daily,
you never know
what is going to happen.

Indeed, I'm super excited
about watching the evolution
of this diary I just made.
Not only do I get to play
with the wedge weave tapestry
I wove last May.
(2-ply vs the singles of the last one)--

but I also got (and get)
to see how the dog bane binding cordage
(made in the fall of 2018),
behaves with constant handling.
It's pretty rough right now,
but super strong
even if I did have to punch
extra large holes in my signatures.

Now what was this post supposed to be about?
No idea.
Undoubtedly something
satisfying and insightful
that would rock all our worlds--
though nothing could equal
the roller coaster ride
of real life just now--
my mind growing, I hope,
as strong and flexible
and welcoming of change and possibility
as dog bane cordage.
So a bit of paper-induced absurdity
never hurts alongside, say, things like
the recent groundbreaking
Supreme Court Decision
that almost half of Oklahoma
falls within a Native American reservation!

So I'll just end with this photo--
because it makes me happy,
and is a good reminder
to enjoy the hidden richness
in even the simplest
of moments.

ps. Tiny chair carved by Linda Ligon's grandfather in about 1915 --
and though this chair didn't start
Thrums Books , Long Thread Media,
and the once-upon-a-lifechanging Interweave Press,
Linda did, and all three make (and have made)
the world a better place for textiles
and their makers.

pps. Squash plant--a volunteer,
grown by itself from a bit of compost,
whose contributions to my world
are blossoming even as I type.

ppps. Because it has to be said:
Fuck Trump

a month in textiles and comics

7/7/2020

Oh goody--
back to the blog
after a whirligig of a month.

Except --
this business of typing words--
I think I must be rusty.

Or perhaps there are just so many
thrilling and important and true words
written by people far more eloquent than I--
shining light on our world
with magnificent clarity--

that for today,
I'll let the cloth
and
the comics
(and a few links)
say what I have to say.

Plantation Slave Weavers Remember by Mary Madison

(Listening to Rhiannon Giddens with Francesco Turrisi
and here with Yo Yo Ma)

Luminist and Storymaker from my guide, Backstrap Dialogues

(Ki/Kin Pronouns from Robin Wall Kimmerer )

And oh yes,
a chemo holiday
is an amazing thing.

a note from my younger self

4/27/2020

Dear Sarah,
I just have to ask--
why are you sometimes so rude to me?

"Why oh WHY did you do that thing
back when you were eighteen???"
you moan.
"It would have been so much better if..."

If what?
That's what I want to know.

I mean --
I'm the one who had the gumption
to learn how to spin
AS you might recall.

And also weave.

You know it's true!

Out The Window; hand woven tapestry; 9" x 9"; wool, natural dyes ©Sarah C. Swett 2008

Ok, so maybe I took a few chances--

Don't Look Back; hand woven tapestry; 9" x 9"; wool, natural dyes ©Sarah C. Swett 2008

--didn't always think things through.

Indigo Bath; hand woven tapestry; 28" x 48"; hand spun wool warp and weft; indigo; ©Sarah C. Swett 2003

It's not like a gal could --or would--plan
to find herself naked and blue
with nothing but a few strands of warp
to hold her up.

Sunlight On The Floor; hand woven tapestry; 36" x 24"; hand spun wool warp and weft; natural dyes; ©Sarah C. Swett 2002

But what could I do?
It was all so interesting.
And I was curious.

Blue Day; hand woven tapestry; 48" x 36" wool, natural dye; ©Sarah C. Swett 2007

I never expected
the hard parts.
I mean really -- who does?

And we sure ate well.

Anyway, you've got to admit
it HAS been really really interesting.

I mean,
what could better --

than to find yourself
a white-haired woman

Jane's Picnic III: Toast Marshmallows; hand woven tapestry (detail); 48" x 40"; hand spun wool warp and weft; natural dyes; ©Sarah C. Swett 2000

who gets to play
with fire and light?

If you think about it,
all I really did
was pick up that strand of yarn--

Casting Off: A Comic in Seven Tapestries -Pages 2-3; 10" x 10" x 2"; wool, natural dye, cotton/ hemp, thread ©Sarah C. Swett 2009

Casting Off: A Comic in Seven Tapestries -Pages 3-4; 10" x 10" x 2"; wool, natural dye, cotton/ hemp, thread ©Sarah C. Swett 2009

and follow it--

Walking The Walk 13" x 10" x 6" Hand Woven Tapestry Hand Stitching, wool, steel wire, stone natural dye

into the night

until one tiny house--

led to another--

Tiny House Book 2.5" x 2.25" x 1.0" Handwoven Tapestry Spun paper (washi) Coptic Binding (linen) Paper (Handmade by Velma Bolyard (flax, milkweed, cotton; natural pigments)

and yet another--

Blue Moon; Hand Woven Tapestry (four selvedge); Hand spun wool warp and weft; natural dye; 2.5" x 2.5"

and eventually
I turned into you.

So no more whining OK?
We have stuff to do.

love,
Sarah

ps
and don't forget
that I started working in the weft ends too
so that all of the tapestries in this post
(plus the bazillion others in the archive)
could be woven that way --
AND so that you could write
TUCKING THE TAILS.

I mean, it's not like the technique is limited
to the monochromatic/geometric stuff
you're doing now.
Right?

So come on --
let's mess around some more.
It's still so interesting.

the view from here

4/14/2020

It has been a full week around here.
Not that I went anywhere (who did?),

but two fresh fleeces arrived from Montana,
and fleece washing time
is usually packed
(especially when scouring delicious fine,
seriously greasy, Cormo and Targhee/Debouillet),

Happily, the results
are always worth the effort.

Clean soft fleece + a pair of perfect spindles
definitely equals contentment--
both for present and future me.

As it happens, however,
though I'll be drum carding for days
and happily spindle spinning
for months and years,
present contentment sometimes lasts
only as long as the time
between the completion of one satisfying task
and the moment of being
struck/taken over/flattened
by a brand new and un-ignorable idea.

Ok, yes, I know --
the coracle/mask I wrote about last week
was also an un-ignorable idea.
It, however (the pulled warp coracle),
did not grow to be a source
of long-lasting satisfaction,
while I think this project will.

What's the difference?
You might well ask
since it is so hard to tell in the moment.
With the brilliance of hindsight, however,
I'm pretty sure that I started the coracle/mask
as an attempt to relieve
the persistent, pervasive, fearful angst
of this moment in time,
(no need to explain further, methinks),

while carving a funky 8-dent rigid heddle
from a scrap of wood I found in the basement,
was pure, self-indulgent joy,
and joy, a rare and delightful thing,
is perhaps a more useful a source of angst relief
than all the reluctant mask-making in the world,
if only because it wells up from inside
rather than falling on one
like a mildewed, news-laden blanket.

At any rate,
hyperbole aside,
one way or another
making the rigid heddle
led me to a forward thinking,
elementally satisfying place,
where in fact,
I already rather badly wanted to be:

that is:
cross-legged on the floor,
weaving paper and linen
on a backstrap loom.

Not that I had a vision
of exactly that thing.
I've just been missing the feeling
of working on my backstrap loom,
and vaguely dreaming about
the kinds of things I might make on it--
while still cutting and spinning paper
with persistent pleasure--
and these two things
seemed mutually exclusive.

Mutually exclusive, that is
until I saw the tiny rigid heddles
that Kirsten Neumüller has been carving
from a fallen juniper in her back yard,
and was immediately smitten.

Now, I did try to set aside
my instant longing to make one myself
( "it's just an idea storm-wait it out").
But happily it was un-set-aside-able.

Indeed, in the three days since I saw hers
the thing shaping up to be a source
of idea-consolidating calm--
an unexpected doorway
to both immediate and long term pleasure--
like fleece and spindles
with the added benefit
of getting to make a half-assed
yet fully functional new textile tool.

And I am a total sucker for such things
as you may have noticed.

(If you're unfamiliar with Kirsten Neumüller's work, her beautiful, useful and charming book Mend and Patch: a Handbook on Repairing Textiles has just been translated into English, and though I haven't yet read her earlier book on Indigo, I can only imagine it is as good).

So that was my week
and this is where you find me today:
right back doing the things I have been doing,
with a slightly different perspective,
a cool new tool that keeps me planted in place
(except when I need to mow and dig in the garden)
and much less angst,
for which I am most grateful.

How's your week been?

the sublime and the ridiculous--our new best friends

3/17/2020

Gee Whiz --
is this wild or what?

Everything shifting so much
that it is hard to know
from moment to moment
what to think--
or even how I feel.

Sometimes,
happily,
it is all perfectly clear:
when in doubt
make stuff.

Then five seconds later,
my brain has gone racing off
on unhelpful imaginary voyages of its own--
and in an effort to calm it down
all I can do
(short of panicking about toilet paper),
is to remember how useful it can be

to notice how everything changes
when I shift my point of view
just a tiny bit.

In some ways
I've been in training for this time
all my life.

Decades of making stuff
makes it seem obvious
to turn to the work of my hands
when things are less than ideal--
as well, of course
as when they are bloody marvelous.

And spending my early twenties
on a ranch in the middle of the Idaho wilderness
where solitude was my daily companion
and I grocery shopped twice a year
(cuz, no road...or store...or people
or internet for that matter
since it hadn't been invented),
makes social isolation
still feel pretty normal.

And then there is the last six months (and counting)
filled with the extra special uncertainty
of my husband's pancreatic cancer diagnoses,
and the subsequent,
ongoing
extremely intense,
and astonishingly effective
(if seriously immune system compromising),
treatment.

At the same time
none of it is easy,
as you know,
and can't tell you how helpful
it has been
these many months
to draw that freaking out person
I sometimes am
(hard to believe, I know, but true ;-)
and to have a place
from which I can look back at myself,
and laugh, or commiserate, or whatever,
even while whatever it is
is still happening.
(Some day, maybe, I'll even share
a few chemo side effect comics...
but not today).

Today,
I want to thank you
for your company along the way --
and to say how much I appreciate
you coming here
and hanging out,
and giving me reasons
to keep sharing
the light in the shadows.

And I hope we can keep doing it--
today and in the weeks and months of uncertainty
that most certainly lie ahead.
For while it can be crazy hard
to be in the middle of something
with no idea
how it is going to turn out,
(as we all are now),

it is also wildly wonderful
to have companions along the way
who are also turning
their prodigious attention
to the making of things
that are perfectly ridiculous.

And really,
was there ever a better time?

ps. And now that I'm about to close
I suddenly remember how much
I also want to thank you
for all the marvelous comments
in last week's post,
and say that there is not much to
these curled wire hangers
beyond that they are made
from 16 gauge wire
I found in the basement,
that I gently unroll
then twist about with my hands
(and sometimes a cheezy pair of pliers for the tight curves),
until the thing balances--
which sometimes takes a while.

pps. and one more quick more thought
on perfectly ridiculous projects --
weaving a bag on box is a prime example --
and also terrific
if you want to try your hand at weaving
and don't have a loom--
but do have a cardboard box!

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