What's on My Loom?

I had already started a new tapestry last summer, but then I bought a new (used) small Shannock loom and just couldn’t wait to try it. So now I have TWO tapestries in process.

These are both in the Chaotic Fragments series. These will be #3 and #4. The first 2 of the series have been entered in Connections, the ATA Small Tapestry International Exhibit, so I don’t want to share them here yet. If they get in, I’d rather that people see them for the first time at the exhibit. If they don’t get in, then this can be my Salon Des Refusees.

The one I started second is way farther along than the first. This has happened before, and it always ends up confusing me, because in my head I have already named them. If I finish up #4 before #3, then I'll always mix them up. I’ll wait til I start getting bored with it then switch.

I’m hoping that having foot treadles will cause less wear and tear on my upper body (arms, shoulders, neck) in the long run. I am more used to weaving on my Gobelin style looms using leashes, but I think I can get used to the treadles. One thing I love is the little tool shelf where I can leave my fork, scissors, bobbins etc.

These Chaotic Fragments are excerpts from the Chaos tapestry. There are a lot of marks that are not easy to make in tapestry, and lots of eccentric weaving (where the wefts are not horizontal but instead weave at a diagonal angle).

I discovered long ago that too much eccentric weaving makes the tapestry lumpy, so usually what I do is weave a diagonal (eccentric) line, then weave some horizontal rows before the next diagonal. That seems to keep things from buckling.

Rug Hooking Tapestry Designs

It’s always hard to think of a good birthday present for a parent who has plenty of stuff already.

My Mom makes hooked rugs, and she and her pals love to tell people they are “hookers.”

Because of using a walker she had to remove her rugs from the floor recently. The top photo shows 4 of them rolled up on the guestbed.

Fortunately she also has many that hang on the wall or sit on tables, like the birds on the right.

One year for her birthday I gave Mom some of my tapestry designs.

I was curious to see what she would do with these designs from my Flora series.

Flora began with a pastel painting I found in an old portfolio. It came from the same time and place as the Tulipa series: the Duke Gardens, about 1979.

As usual, I made a color copy, then I cut out sections that I liked and wove them as Flora Fragments.

After I had woven 7 small fragments, I wove Flora, the entire image.

This was the first time I had woven from a pastel, and I figured out that if I used one strand of red and one strand of green together I could achieve that blurry effect where the 2 colors meet.

After I took pictures of Mom's versions, I thought that she had reversed the designs; I assumed it was something to do with how she transferred them to her canvas. Now I realize that in fact, both of my Flora Fragments photos are reversed. These are my own slides, converted to digital by a professional photography studio, years ago when I didn't have a digital camera. Apparently they had some of the slides backwards. I can't believe I never noticed before!

Mine were all woven in different sizes, but Mom wove them all the same size, about 3 inches square, and had them nicely framed. They look great hanging together on the wall.

I’ve always thought it would be fun to do an exhibit together, and maybe someday we will, but for now we can at least share a blog entry.

If you look over at the right side of my blog, you'll see one of my Flora Fragments tapestries, and here are two more.

Here are Mom's hooked rug versions.

What a Lovely Birthday Present!

Mom’s birthday fell on Election Day this year.

Since I’m spending lots of time driving to visit Mom these days, I amused myself by figuring out that this happens every 6 years, but that every 12 years her birthday falls on a Presidential Election Day.

Good thing I’m a reference librarian, because when I consulted a Perpetual Calendar, I discovered I was wrong, COMPLETELY wrong! I hate being wrong. I think it’s the leap years that messed me up.

There is a pattern; November 4th falls on a Tuesday at these intervals: 11 years, 6 years, 5 years, 6 years, repeat. I think that makes sense but I won’t try to explain it.

So, it turns out that this is only the third time in her 83 years that her birthday has fallen on a Presidential Election Day. The first time was the year of my birth, 1952, when Eisenhower was elected. The second was in 1980 when Ronald Reagan came into office. Good thing I didn’t know this before now or I would have been even more nervous.

Why is election day on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November?

Sadly, Mom didn’t get to vote this year, because she’s been very sick for 8 weeks, and we didn’t think about getting her an absentee ballot.

Once it did cross my mind, it seemed unethical to encourage her to vote, since she's extremely confused from large quantities of pain medications.

I know who she was planning to vote for, and I am so glad she got her birthday wish.

Happy Birthday, Mom. Please get well soon!

Weaving at Smith's Castle

For the second time this week, I took my show on the road. On Wednesday I gave a lecture and demonstration for the Cranberry Country Weavers Guild. It's always fun to talk about tapestry with people who already know how weaving works, and understand the difference between warp and weft.

Today I spent the afternoon demonstrating tapestry weaving at Smith's Castle, which is not a castle, but a very early colonial homestead. The land was purchased around 1637 from Canonicus, the great sachem of the Narragansetts, by Roger Williams, the founder of Rhode Island.

Williams was an early supporter of religous freedom ("forced worship stinks in God's nostrils"), and an advocate of fair treatment for Native Americans. He came to Rhode Island after being banished from Massachusetts for these radical ideas. Richard Smith bought the property, and died, passing it on to his son, and in 1675 it was the gathering place for an English army involved in King Philip's War.


As usual I enjoyed weaving in public, although it's hard to get good results while so distracted. One of my blades of grass seems to have taken a wrong turn. People were quite amazed to see me "weaving a picture," as I described it to the small children.

I always bring along a few small frame looms so people can try it out for themselves, and a lot of children did.

I had planned a simple image of autumn leaves, and for a change I used only 4.5 warps per inch in the hope that it would be easier for people to see what I was doing.

That's what you get on the Friendly Loom if you wrap 2 warps between each peg.


It's also what you would get if you just use the handy pegs for warping, but I've found that with the super tight tension I like, if I use the pegs, it makes the top and bottom beams tilt, and I worry that something will snap. So I just wrap it around instead, and then I can weave on both the front and the back.

I usually weave at 9 or 10 warps per inch, so this is a major adjustment. I was using a very thick bundle of weft, so the tapestry looks very wooly and textured, but with only 4.5 warps per inch, it was hard to get the resolution I like. I told one observer it's just like a digital camera, I was operating with way too few megapixels.

I explained that I was weaving with thick wool so the image would progress faster, otherwise it can be like watching grass grow. Then I realized that in fact, it WAS watching grass grow, since I spent most of the day weaving a few blades of grass!

If you compare the before and after photos you'll see that I did make pretty good progress.

There were 2 adorable adolescent Alpacas in the next booth, and at the end of the day I treated myself to some irresistably soft socks and a skein of gorgeous black alpaca yarn.

Unicorns Gathering in Scotland

The seven tapestries of the Hunt of the Unicorn, which are at the Cloisters in New York are being recreated in Scotland, as part of the renovation of Stirling Castle, where they will hang in the Queen's Presence Chamber. Historical sources indicate that there was a set of Unicorn tapestries in the castle in the 16th century. It’s an amazing undertaking, which will not be finished until 2013.

Three tapestries are already woven and on display in the Chapel Royal at the castle. The weaving is taking place in a temporary studio on the grounds of Stirling Castle, and also simultaneously, at West Dean Tapestry Studio in Sussex.

A few weeks ago I attended a lecture in the Textiles Department at the University of Rhode Island, by Louise Martin, the senior weaver on the project. The lecture was inspiring, and Louise is a delightful speaker who really brought the project to life for us.

The tapestries are being “reinterpreted” rather than simply copied, because the size is reduced to fit the walls in the castle, and the warp sett is coarser to save on labor. One fact I learned is that with the medieval tapestry technique that they are using there is no color blending of the wefts. Only solid colors are used. There are two different types of wool, however, which, when dyed together take the dye slightly differently, giving the weft more richness of color. Louise’s explanation of the color analysis was really impressive. After the slide talk we were able to look closely at woven samples, and yarns.

The public can watch the weavers at work, with well trained tour guides to describe what is going on and to answer questions, so that the weavers are not disturbed. I hope to visit next year.

For more details check out the Singing Weaver's blog.