awayuq

Babs learns to spin

Subtitled: Step-parents ROCK.

I had a great weekend. Totally. Hanging out with Mom and friend, eating good food, seeing leaf colors, visiting nice towns and a shaker village, eating more good food, enjoying a warm crackling fire in the evenings, resting, looking at the view, walking along country roads. Ahhh. A desperately needed respite.

Oh, and we made it to WEBS! It was *packed* on a Saturday afternoon. I've never seen it so busy. Good for them. Mom wanted to learn to spin, so I helped her pick out a spindle and that evening we came home and tried it. Here is Mom (Babs) with one of her first lengths of handspun yarn. It went quite well, considering that we have very different learning styles and that sometimes, just *sometimes*, Mom makes up these critically important competitions in which she must do everything better than her daughter Or Else. With the help of humor and detachment, we actually effected a skill transfer, instead of an emotional meltdown. Hooray!

Part of the good luck I am convinced came from my sweater. It is a sweater made by Mom for my birthday, and I love it! I love the color! It fits! I wore it all weekend. As I mentioned before, the nice thing about having a favorite color is that everything coordinates. Even the fiber I'm spinning is quite similar in hue. Fancy that. And no, I don't actually spin with my pinky in the air.

The subtitle refers to the absolutely awesome fact that Mom's friend handled everything-- the driving, the navigating, the restaurant bills, even the fee for my room at the B&B! Can you beat that? He is also entertaining, intelligent, resonable, and fun to be around.

All in all a successful weekend.

impending

Today I’m wearing ruffles, and loving them. Unfortunately my camera batteries died just as I was in the process of attempting a photographic record. In between packing lunch, getting dressed, and remembering the letters that need to be mailed, I didn’t attempt to rectify that situation. It will all be put right on Thursday at the latest, since Mom is coming to visit, and we must have photo capability for that. My mother’s yarn acquisition skills are finely honed. Let me amend that—her acquisition skills comprise far more than mere yarn. I expect there will be some serious purchasing going on. She is also bringing my grandmother’s wool rug, which she’s been trying to send me for about a decade now. I am a bare-wood-floors person, but my resistance finally wore down. And who knows, it might even go well in the living room. I have turquoise and melon walls, and the rug as far as I remember uses shades of those colors.

Luckily Mom’s friend of 15 years or so is coming too, a wonderful man who is funny and smart and artistic. I figure he must be at least part saint, to be able to live in close proximity to her for so long and not lose his mind and still be able to smile. Well, maybe he has lost his mind. But he’s still a lot of fun. So, if we can stay off of dangerous topics (would you believe what your brother said to me? You are just like your father… why aren’t you married yet?) it could be a decent weekend. At least I’ll get to go out of the city! And I have great hopes of being able to get some knitting done. I think I need a change of scene and some rest, because I’ve had several nights recently when I find myself on my bed at 8:30 with barely enough energy to get up and brush my teeth and crawl back under the covers. Perhaps that’s just an avoidance strategy. Because try as I might, I can’t get around the fact that an impending maternal visit sets me on edge. No-one can ever be sure precisely what this woman will do… will everything be lovely and entertaining? Or will there be undercurrents of accusation ending in a maelstrom of self-righteous martyrdom?

The best I can do is make sure to have knitting, spinning, journal, and a good pair of hiking boots close to hand. That way, should anything erupt, I have escape strategies. Deep breath. Everything’s going to be just fine…

fun!

Ruffles are finished! Pictures coming later, I hope. You know that feeling when you make something and try it on and the mirror says back at you, "instant favorite"? I love this skirt. It's funny, funky, comfy and green.

And I am so happy about finishing it this weekend, when not only is Boston crazy with various important events, but I personally have zillions of things to do, including writing for a teacher who drives me nuts, and preparing for a Mother Visit later in the week. Oh boy.

taming the ruffler

A couple of weeks ago a friend and I went shopping and I tried on a skirt I instantly loved. Green corduroy with ruffles-- this one. Alas, it didn't fit me all that well, and I rarely pay full price for clothing, so I left it on the rack and kept the idea.

Last weekend I visited my local fabric store, which is a cave stuffed with rolls and remnants and bolts, too many and too precariously stacked to see them all. Variety ranges from slinky slimy poly knit with sequins to upholstery fabric. On one of the remnant tables I found a couple yards of fine wale green corduroy. Hmm! It came home with me.

The nice thing about having a favorite color is that when you bring something new home, the chances of finding coordinating fabrics in your stash are very good. In this case, I found some rayon in a very, *very* close shade of green.

Which left merely the implementation of the idea. In idle moments I leafed through my patterns, and found none exactly right; so Saturday I made one up from a straight skirt pattern. Six gores, facing, no problem. One thing I do love about current fashions is that you can get away with just a waist facing-- waistbands have never been my favorite part of assembly.

Now, about those ruffles.

Many years ago I bought a treadle sewing machine, and it came complete with every known attachment and manuals. It was then that I became fascinated by rufflers. In the old manuals, they show how to create elaborate constructions all in one step. They claim that you can do operations such as gathering a ruffle, stitching it to a backing and applying braid on top of the seam, with just one pass under the presser foot. I haven't gotten that ambitious, but I do love the way the ruffler creates even little pleats in fabric. It's very cool to watch it work. Looks like a little beast, but it's quite ingenious. One of those purely mechanical gismos that make me smile. Anyway, when I bought my electric sewing machine, also many years ago, I specifially asked the vendor for a ruffler. What better place to use it than on a skirt like this?

It took us a little while to get acquainted again. I don't believe I've ever done anything with the ruffler except test it out and register amazement. The adjustments were not obvious, and I extracted the ancient treadle manual from hiding to help me figure it all out. At last, though, we got:

Ruffles! Enough to trim the skirt. It's all done, awaiting only the handsewing and the trim. I'm playing with different placements. I love pinning the ruffle strips in various arrangements and renewing my amazement at the tiny even tucks. Imagine doing the double-rows-of-gathering-stitches on all that-- no thanks. Technology is good sometimes.

do textiles change the way we think?

I had the opportunity to give an overview of Andean textiles to some students this week. It was a lot of fun. I love to talk about textiles, and the techniques from the Andes are amazing. Living in isolation from other ancient civilizations, they independently invented just about every weaving structure known, as well as several found nowhere else. Their techniques of knotting, netting, sprang, twining and looping are similarly remarkable. The civilizations of the Andes never developed writing texts on a flat surface (they did have means of non-verbal long-distance communication, a long and involved topic). I think this may be because they have so few flat surfaces-- their world is desperately vertical. Why would you invent a wheel if there's no smooth place for it to roll? Why would you invent something which takes place on a planar surface, when you don't have much experience of planes?

Be that as it may, I think it is clear that some of the most sophisticated thinking of ancient times went into these textiles. Not just the structural techniques, but the placement of pattern, a clear understanding of the yarn required for a certain effect. Textiles were the intellectual tools they had.

Do a culture's textile techniques affect the way they think?

How might you think of the world differently if you didn't have pencil and paper, only yarn to work with?

What would your world be like if everyone you met knew the weave or knit structure of every visible article of clothing you wore? And understood the connotations?

How would you record ideas if yarn were your primary medium?

I love it!

Life presses, and progress appears too small to measure. But I did complete the linen sample, and I love it. It's one of those rare fabrics that turned out almost exactly as I'd imagined. I didn't iron it for the pictures, because I rather enjoy the "natural" linen look. A summer garment out of this would be wonderful. However-- my sample was less than two yards long, and I was noting tension differences between the basketweave sections and plainweave sections by about halfway through. Clearly if any significant length of yardage were to be woven, those sections shouldn't be beamed together.

And-- my handspun didn't break! Not once!

inches

The first few inches of the linen sample. The basket weave portions should even out with washing. I've done several feet now, and am running into some tension problems-- I should have thought of this earlier. Because the handspun (the green single threads in the photo) interlaces much less often than everything else, it's getting slack. My current approach is to put a stick under the handspun threads at the back beam and weight it with fishing weights. It's helping. But the same problem happens in the basketweave stripes, though to lesser degree. Which makes me wonder how I would handle long warp. Perhaps it is time to get a second warp beam?

soaking

Last night I wound a bobbin with the singles linen and began to weave. Immediately I remembered why I always used to soak linen bobbins in water before putting them in the shuttle. I got a few inches done, but every pick the wiry yarn leapt off the end of the bobbin and twirled around the tension pegs. After a few inches I cut the weft and stuck that bobbin in a jar of water overnight. This morning's attempts were much easier. I love linen! It has a character which is not always easy to tame, but it makes beautiful fabric and is probably my favorite fiber to wear. The weave structure is coming out the way I designed it to, which is good, but I can't yet tell what effect the handspun will have, if any. If it just lies there like a slubby thread, it will still be pretty, but at some point in my weaving life I want to get a clear understanding of yarn energy.

Because the handspun is so thick in places, this is sleyed in an 8 dent reed, which means most of the fabric has a denting pattern of 3/4/3/4... the reed marks are very obvious right now, but I am pretty confident that they will wash out.

My mother is coming to visit me at the end of this month. She's a passionate knitter and has recently taken up Navaho weaving, so she can't come to Massachusetts without visiting WEBS. She told me to start making a list, as if I needed a list, or as if that would help curb the expenditures once I got there! Here's item one: check to see if they have very short reed pieces.

andante

Amazing how one short travel interlude can cast ripples of disarrangement weeks ahead. Lots of things intervened with the ordinary fiber activities. Including my own stupidity in scheduling an appointment last week during the usual Tuesday knitting time. As of this morning though I am happy to report that the lastest weaving sample is beamed, threaded, sleyed and tied on. Ready to start weaving.

I also got out the bolt of muslin and tore several long strips 18" wide. I'm going to fiddle around and see if I can't come up with some uses for narrow yardage other than the well-known ethnic shirt look. It's a bit tricky trying to drape stuff on yourself with only one pair of hands. I have to keep reminding myself that it's only muslin, it's ok to make a mistake! That's what muslin is for.