23 Sep 2017

ETN: Crossover Borås – there and back again

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Since I last posted it has been my turn to go a-travelling. I’ve been a member of ETN (European Textile Network) for a few years now, but had never managed to attend the biennial conference. This year I finally decided it was time to do it – after all, who knows how easy it will or won’t be to travel to the next one – and as the plans took shape, they also got increasingly elaborate. S & I ended up making a one-thousand-mile road trip from Dundee to Borås (with the assistance of the Newcastle-Amsterdam ferry over the parts where there are no roads).

The outward journey was lengthened due to bad weather – in fact, from the lack of progress across the sea, I would have sworn we were going backwards – but these ferries are so large and stable that we hardly noticed the high winds. We *did* notice that we had to drive through the night to make up for lost time, but by day two we had caught up with ourselves and managed to cross the Øresund Bridge in appropriately Scandi-noir rain. Thereafter, alas, the sun shone on us for a week. We just had to grin and bear it.

I’ll need to organise my thoughts about the Crossover conference. There were two days of talks, giving me much to ponder on, and in addition I reckon I saw thirteen exhibitions across seven museums and galleries (not to mention two, or was it three, pop-up exhibits), visited three factories, two art schools and a complex of artists’ studios. So while I mentally process that little lot, you’ll have to make do with (mainly) photos of the sea.

 

 

When we planned our itinerary, I was a wee bit disappointed that I wouldn’t also be able to visit Väv in Växjö, which started last Thursday just as we were getting back on the ferry. As it turned out, Crossover was plenty for me, and by the time we were done I really, really didn’t want any more input!

“ETN: Crossover Borås – there and back again” was posted by Cally on 23 Sept 2017 at https://callybooker.co.uk

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11 Sep 2017

Surprise Visit

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I’ve finally managed to spend a whole week in the studio. In fact it was something of a necessity, as Scottish Water dug up our street last Monday and switched off the mains for 12 hours every day. Highly motivating! It’s lucky that the summer’s marking was already done and dusted. Instead there has been weaving, there has been winding of warps, there has even been impromptu shopping at the furniture recyclers next door for a stool at the right height for the Magic Dobby. And there have been visitors.

The first surprised party was me, when I received an email from Karen Marr, who works with Nadine Sanders taking weavers all around Scotland. Karen contacted me to ask if they might call in at my studio on their way through Dundee. She wanted to surprise Nadine and her group with an unexpected addition to their itinerary, so Karen and I were the only people who knew they were all going to be late for their lunch on Saturday… cue 14 more surprised parties! (And, by the way, they certainly earned that lunch, as the majority opted to climb all 112 over-sized stairs up to the fourth floor).

I quite often have weavery visitors from overseas but they usually come in ones and twos rather than dozens, so I was impressed that everyone fitted in to the studio (I hope there weren’t too many bruises discovered afterwards) and that there was air enough for all to breathe. It is always a treat to chat with weavers from other places, although on this occasion it was me doing most of the talking. Nadine asks very perceptive questions! Anyway, the visit was so much fun that I entirely forgot about taking any pictures. So instead here is a reminder of my recent holiday in the north, as I believe the weavers will be crossing the Kyle of Tongue on their route from Lewis to Orkney. Bon voyage to you all!

“Surprise Visit” was posted by Cally on 11 Sept 2017 at https://callybooker.co.uk

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5 Sep 2017

Put together

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I am very pleased with how this piece has turned out. It combines two of this summer’s new skills: painting a warp chain with inks made from natural dyes and using a supplementary warp to weave turned summer and winter.

The ground warp and weft are undyed baby alpaca, and the pattern warp is a 50/50 blend of BFL and silk. The pattern itself is part of my play with randomness: every row displays one roll of a die.

 

 

Things I am pleased about include: the colours and the sheen of the supplentary warp against the ground cloth; that I managed the tension of the pattern warp and the packing on the cloth beam, so that the finished article is a rectangle; and that I only had a couple of skips to repair on the back when I took it off the loom (I wove it with the majority of the pattern warp on the back).

The only thing that I am not delighted with is the quality of my selvedges. They looked lovely on the loom but are a bit erratic in the finished state, which suggests to me that my weft tension was also a bit erratic. Not very surprising perhaps, given my focus on other things, but I’d like to do better! And of course, I haven’t yet added freeform to the mix.

“Put together” was posted by Cally on 5 Sept 2017 at https://callybooker.co.uk

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30 Aug 2017

Supplementary warps

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…are breaking out all over the studio. I have a second back beam on the Delta,

where weaving is now underway. This fabric will be turned into cushion covers.

It’s a two-treadle operation, so yes, there have been a few errors. I think I am settling in to it, though (famous last words).

I just have one beam on the Megado so have to improvise a second.

The sloping back beam can be a bit of a pain when you want to clamp things to it, but the ‘angel wings’ are doing a good job of supporting my pseudo-beam (which consists of a couple of broken shafts) and I do like the way the excess warp can be kept off the floor. I’m ready to start weaving on this one tomorrow.

I like having more than one thing on the go, as it makes life more interesting, but I am a bit disturbed to realise that I currently have active warps on five looms. No wonder I am a bit confused.

“Supplementary warps” was posted by Cally on 30 August 2017 at https://callybooker.co.uk

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21 Aug 2017

Sea blues (and other colours)

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Alas, most of the time I lost was my between-marking-mountains time, so I had barely been back in the studio before the next avalanche arrived. I just had time to put a warp on the Delta in shades of sea blue and sand.

I finished off a couple of freeform samples, and started on another piece in lace, and have at last managed to update my website with some new dates for workshops, yay!

Then this weekend I finally managed to get out the dye pots for my first post-masterclass efforts.

I made several attempts at thickening the dye liquor with guar gum so that I could paint some sample warp bouts, and got every kind of consistency from weak tea to quick-drying cement before I hit on a process that gave me something useable. Here is a photo at the two-thirds-painted stage. (I seem to have had a bit of a phone camera meltdown as most of my pictures have turned out to be close-ups of my own thumbs)

And here is a finished warp bout. My skeins are still hanging up to dry.

I’m quite pleased with the results, and am itching to get back to the studio and put one of these on a loom. Just got to tunnel my way out of the mountain first.

“Sea blues (and other colours)” was posted by Cally on 21 August 2017 at https://callybooker.co.uk

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