Rose Tea & Velvet: Part I

In late April I took a workshop offered by the Portland Handweavers Guild: velvet weaving with Barbara Setsu Pickett. It was intensive and informative; if you enjoy lengthy preparations, slow progress, and sumptuous results, velvet weaving may be for you!

Woven fabric in a very basic form consists of a set of threads on the loom (the warp) and a thread that goes back and forth (the weft). The velvet structure that I wove has two sets of warp threads: a ground warp and a pile warp, which will become the fuzziness. You need LOTS more of the pile warp, so you can't just wind it on the loom with the ground warp.

Each pile warp is actually a bunch of threads. I wove what Barbara calls "macro velvet" which is a larger scale. The pile warp consists of a bundle of twenty sewing threads. There are six of these bundles per inch of weaving width; I needed twenty four for my sample. Each bundle is wound up on a separate bobbin (we used netting shuttles).

I brought blue thread. On a cone, since that has a lot of thread. My brain did not pick up on the fact that we needed twenty...or rather, I assumed I could just wind off twenty spools and wind my bobbins from that. Well, yes, but it takes ages and ages and even more ages. I wound my twenty spools--actually quills, pieces of paper wound into little tubes. And lo, the quills were too small to fit on the spool racks that were available. Fortunately Barbara had thread for us to use; I wound the majority of my bobbins from her thread.


But of course I absolutely refused to abandon the thread that I had so laboriously wound onto quills. At home that night I rigged up my own spool rack with an empty tissue box and an entire multi-pack of double-pointed knitting needles that I fortuitously had on hand, and I wound some bobbins. There is a fabric-covered brick at each end holding it in place (normally they are bookbinding weights) and I threaded the strands between several pegs on my warping board for tensioning as I wound.


It took ***exponentially*** more time to prepare all this than it did to wind the six bobbins I filled. I will not do it this way again. [The picture is not supposed to be sideways but that's how it loaded...]

All of these bobbins have to be organized somehow while you're weaving. That's where the cantra, or bobbin rack, comes in. The pile warps attach to the front of the loom along with the ground warp, and thread through the heddles that will lift them when required, and then each bobbin of the pile warp hangs over the cantra so they don't snag or get tangled during weaving.


I took the previous picture at the workshop before I put in the horizontal rod that brings the pile warp down to the level of the ground warp; you can see the rod added in this picture I took once I had this all set up at home after the workshop ended:


It is advisable to conceal this setup from cats.


[Drat, this picture turned itself around, too.]

As you weave and use up pile warp, the bobbins ride up. Pay attention or they wedge themselves into the cantra...unwind them to release as much more thread as possible, so you don't have to stop weaving quite as often.

This seems about long enough; the next installment will be about weaving, finally, after all this time setting up!

Settling In

Last Saturday was six months since I brought the sweet, terrified kitty home. She is a different creature these days! "Pet me now...but you have to follow me into the bedroom in order to do it."

A week ago Wednesday, Beatrice joined me on the futon for the very first time, hooray! She has since taken to sitting there by herself. "Why should I recline on the floor by you when I can sit on the futon?" Doesn't she look like an expert?


She is very snuggly in the morning, often curling up half on me, strategically situated to be sure I can pet her. And she doesn't automatically run away all the time anymore--sometimes she pauses and then stays put. Sometimes she flees to under-the-bed, and then pops back out. Not too much longer, and I expect she will meet me at the door when I come home, instead of sitting just around the corner in the bedroom doorway and watching intently to be sure it's me. Such progress!

And speaking of progress, there really has been textile stuff happening: velvet pictures are in the near future.

My Stripy Valentine

Apparently this is my 100th post. It's not the topic I planned - and it's also much more delayed than I had intended!

I am pleased to introduce the new kitty of the household. Please say hello to Beatrice:


She came to live with me nearly three months ago. I adopted her from the Cat Adoption Team, a local no-kill cat shelter that evaluates their kitties for personality, to make it more likely that they will stay adopted. I picked the personality that sounded most like Princess, part of the reason being that that kind of kitty can handle being alone a lot. Next, the kitty had to look NOT like Princess - and despite how completely different Beatrice looks, it was still really strange the first week or so to have "my kitty" mean a stripy kitty and not a fluffy black and white one. Part of my brain was seriously baffled.

Beatrice spent most of the first week hiding in the studio bathroom. She was *thrilled* for chin scratches and excited for petting - and would hide behind the toilet if my sleeve made the softest whisper. Eventually she skulked out into the studio, but it was too scary out there, especially if I was there, and she would run back to the bathroom for petting. Darting behind the toilet was her "reset" button every single time she got startled. After two weeks I opened the door to the rest of the apartment: her first exploratory foray lasted nearly 30 seconds before she bolted back to the studio, not venturing forth for another day or more.

After a month of nearly daily practice, she relaxed when I picked her up - she had purred before, but stiffened. At some point she discovered Under The Bed, which is now her main hangout. By about a month ago, she'd gotten brave enough to sleep on the bed with me, and will join me almost immediately. Last week she tried out my pillow.


Sometimes I can walk past her without her bolting away; under the right conditions she will even come to me for petting. It is very endearing to see her lift her chin for a scratch...when she's too far away to reach! And it's downright funny when she loses her balance because she was expecting my hand to be supporting her, despite the fact that I can't reach her. She's *very* relaxed when I'm horizontal in bed, and requests petting verbally. She is exponentially more talkative than Princess. "I saw you move! Are you getting up? I want breakfast. Pet me!"

The living room is still not popular as a hangout; occasionally late at night she will lurk just around the corner, but it's mainly so she knows right away when I'm going to bed. Mornings, there is sometimes good bird television:


She's not yet performing full Household Kitty Duties, but she's come a long way since the sweet, terrified kitty she was in November. She is super soft and ought to be sooo snuggly; I will have to be patient.

Oh my, she just walked into the living room! I said hello, and she's still sitting there. At the beginning, she used to run off if I so much as looked at her, never mind saying anything. :) Now she is ambling off behind the futon. It's so good to have a kitty again.

Getting on Track

It's been a good summer in some ways; we've had lovely weather, unlike the last two summers. I haven't been very productive, but I'm making incremental progress.

If you, too, have trouble sitting down and doing something because you feel there isn't time, check out the 10 Minute Muse. I now have a sketch that wouldn't have happened otherwise.

(I would feel more apologetic about the quality if it didn't actually improve the picture, in that it makes the pencil look more like the ink wash I actually wanted to use but did not have the energy to accomplish.)

Nostalgia

I've been "organizing" again, which at this stage is essentially moving boxes around, with very little that feels like tangible progress. But I did repack a couple of boxes - a few things to throw out, some to recycle, some to give away, and three boxes now fits into one (admittedly a tiny bit larger).

Anyway, one of the things in it was an art project from seventh grade, so maybe about 1982 or 1983, yikes... I made a house for Yoda.

Overview:

Interior shot, with fireplace (yes the chimney is real, so the fireplace would work) and hearth rug, and the bed:

The other side of the house, with the counter and storage areas:

A close-up of the accoutrements - lightsaber, the flying training ball [did Yoda even use one in the movie? I don't remember] and yes, stone utensils, made of shale:

And lastly, the Jedi master of the house. I was INTENSELY bored in Home Ec, which was when Yoda got a new wardrobe and soft goods.

(To further define intensely bored: 10 girls, two sewing patterns. You couldn't go on to the next step until EVERYONE had caught up. It took WEEKS to make one boring simple shirt.)

TAST 16: French Knot (etc.)

I am very fond of French knots. Take a Stitch Tuesday and highlights.

Started and finished today! Continuing the botanical motif as long as possible. Colors are waaay off in the photo; the background is more of a teal blue.

I'd kind of wanted to do a color gradation thing with the French knots, but that would have taken longer...maybe another time. I did already try it - yikes, about seven years ago, just about when the embroidery bug bit for the first time. In a Fibers class at OCAC the light went on: oh! embroidery does not have to be boring little floral things! And it turns out that how embroidery is pleasing is related to how drawing with a dipping pen is pleasing.

[Re-reading that it sounds funny - I was not enamored of the old floral embroideries to be found on family doily-type things; my OWN flowers are obviously okay.]

Anyway, here is the old sample:

And I finished painting the Vision Board:

I added some of the non-shiny paint to the in-the-way swirlies in hopes of integrating them. Dots, more rays. Anyway, it is not supposed to be art, it is supposed to be energizing. Horror vacui: yeah. I added bits until it seemed as balanced as it could get, and called it good.

After two nearly instantaneous failures of tape (including packing tape!) I gave up and thumbtacked it to the wall - outside the studio room, as it happens, where I will pass it coming and going, and can also see it from my bed.

TAST 15: Stem Stitch (plus lots of other things)

I finished this over a week ago:

(Get it? Stems out of stem stitch.)

I have strange issues with stem stitch. Like, I tweak it so it looks a little more like I want. A few years ago Kim was working on a really intensive embroidery project. She had decided against stem stitch because of some issue, and I said strange, I don't have that problem; I just change it thus and so, and she gave me a Look (we may have been on the phone, I don't recall, but I'm sure there was a Look) and said, "That's not stem stitch."

Anyway, when I started this one, I decided to change the stem stitch so I had a wide stem. About halfway down, I realized I was not doing stem stitch. It was satin stitch. So I was VERY CAREFUL and did the skinny stems really using stem stitch.

Lovely examples at Pintangle.

I have spent some time off and on with this old fabric painting/embroidery sample. At some point I picked it up again (Needs To Be Finished) and realized it was boring because of the colors. Added orangey red; much happier. (Need to re-start TAST soon, before I lose more ground in my catch-up.

I did some painting - these are stages one and two of my Vision Board, started during the Midsummer Muse teleconference with my favorite Muse. I need to finish up this weekend, but I will have to visualize very hard to channel sun energy because it is totally overcast with intermittent sprinkles and I am wearing a sweatshirt in order to be warm enough to have the windows open. My bare feet are on the chilly side, but not past the threshold where I need to give in and wear socks.

[this is one of those times I get really annoyed at blogger; it keeps rotating the picture]

I made the little spirally squiggles mainly because I intensely needed to use the shiny watercolors. I was sorry after I did because I soon discovered they are definitely in the way.

Last weekend, I went to the Black Sheep Gathering in Eugene, Oregon and had to bring some yarn home. It made me inspired to finally get the white warp finished and off the loom so I can weave ORANGE:

(Purple and green had to come along with orange.)

I cranked through the plain weave, but then I had to do something cool for the end - and wove twelve narrow tabs. It was time-consuming: two hours to weave three inches. The start was the slowest because I had to pay very close attention so that I did not accidentally join them together. Eventually it occurred to me that there were 24 selvedges instead of 2; not really a problem in 8/2 cotton, but it could be a challenge with finer threads. There were lots of tension problems for the last bit of the warp, but I didn't agonize over it, and as I hoped, it seems to have evened out after washing.

The tabs make me very happy.

Marking out the spaces:

Close-up:

Making progress:

Nicely-posed, nearly done:

Off the loom:

Washed: