Weaving, day 4: Tie me up and beam me, Scottie

[altivo]

Early (before dawn) this morning I got up and tied the warp ends onto the cloth bar of the loom, adjusting the warp tension. Then I started weaving a header, which is a narrow strip woven with heavier yarn as weft normally, to space all the warp threads out evenly. At this point I discovered a mistake in the sley. Fortunately, it was just two threads that were crossed, but to fix it I still had to remove the header and untie one warp bundle, rethread the two offending warps in the reed, then retie and reweave. It's all set to go, though, as ready as I can make it for tomorrow's workshop.

All that was done in plenty of time for breakfast, after which I headed for the Farm Bureau to attend the guild meeting, since the workshop instructor (Margaret Roach Wheeler) was the guest speaker and I wanted to know more about her work. I'm glad I went.

She is an artist through and through, having started with painting and drawing before whe was a teen, and only later moving into fiber arts. She is native American by descent and has taught art at several native American high schools. Her weaving is impressive, if not quite the sort of thing I normally do. I expect to learn some useful things and perhaps get some new ideas from this. Her best work, in my opinion, is at the level of stage or dance costuming, drawn from native American art and symbol, and often using animal imagery. She showed us slides of what were essentially modern interpretations of dance costumes, in which the wearer portrays a wolf, a bear, a raven, or one of several other animals. The art and design is striking and instantly recognizable even when highly stylized. The owl, the wolf, and the snow goose were the best in my opinion, though she also had a magnificent dress based on the plumage of a loon, and dresses with capes shaped like folded butterly wings that she designed in honor of her mother.

All I have to do now is get together my shuttles and other tools and materials and pack them ready to go in the morning. This should be an interesting three days.

Comments

[farhoug.livejournal.com]

I guess it requires some juggling to get that kind of work to fit to the modern lifestyle... it feels like putting an illustrator of the old times to work in an one-hour-photo booth. Do you have a timeloop machine hidden in the barn over there? ;-)

[altivo.livejournal.com]

No Tardis, nope. Actually, there's at present a great fad for knitting here in the US, and in part I think it's inspired by the meditational quality of the process. It only moves as fast as it moves, and you have to adjust to it and deal with it. Weaving is like that as well, the main difference being the degree of complexity.

To equate it to a process somewhat more familiar to at least some folks, cooking takes a certain amount of time. Growing the beans or tomatoes is even more limited in terms of any capability we might have to hurry it up. So it is with weaving, spinning, and other such crafts.

[farhoug.livejournal.com]

Hopefully that fad catches too, it's a nice reason for people to wind down a little bit. And it produces some useful stuff too, all one gets from a lotus position is pain in the butt. Though, maybe that's just one pavement stone to the path to enlightenment... =)