the door is open…
Studio 412,
Meadow Mill,
West Henderson’s Wynd,
Dundee
12 — 5 pm Saturday 19th and Sunday 20th October
Come on in and say hello!
wild-eyed roundup
Half-way through a slightly crazy fortnight, so this is just a brief pitstop…
It’s teaching time at the university again and I’m at the helm of a course I haven’t taught on before while I batter my way through the administrative tangles of the new year. Life is a medley of chores mixed with existential questions. Like: why have they just sent me a new contract when I signed and returned one a month ago? Is it a routine snafu, or something I need to worry about?
So if I am not actually in front of students — my own or the university’s — I am working every hour there is either on the computer or at the loom. And the washing machine has broken down. This is poor timing, but not a bolt from the blue. It has seen 20 years of service and for a few months I have been expecting every wash to be its last. We are only up to our knees in dirty laundry so far… though the new machine isn’t due to arrive for another week and by then we may have completely disappeared from view. In case you were worried, I do intend to wear (a) clothes and (b) clean clothes for the Open Studios. No need to stay away on that account.
Oh, and in the midst of the work-and-laundry crisis, something went boom at the hosting company where my website resides. The server is now fixed, but a table or two in my database has been left a bit crumpled. I have several helpful people offering me incomprehensible tips on how to fix it, but frankly I am not even going to get to thinking about that for at least another week. It seems to me that things are actually working reasonably OK, in spite of the underlying errors, but if you have any problems… well, I suppose you won’t be reading this, will you??
In the good news department, my neck is much, much better. The physio gave me a weird stretchy thing to do 10 times every 1-2 hours through the day and it works a treat. I was weaving v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y at the start of the week, but am basically back to normal operations now. And as long as I’m not too lazy to plug in the KVM switch and use the desktop monitor for my laptop, I can manage at the computer for a reasonable length of time.
On the loom, well, I’ve woven six metres of fabric with the orange weft and have now switched to lilac:
And I have a new warp on the Megado, beamed and threaded but not yet sleyed.
“wild-eyed roundup” was posted by Cally on 12 Oct 2013 at http://callybooker.co.uk
WASPS Open Studios
The flyers are here, the flyers are here! It is only two weeks until Open Studios and I have a lot to do in that time… Goodness knows what state my studio will be in at noon on 19th October — but the door will be open so you will be welcome to come in and find out. I am busy weaving more of these…
…in new colours, some of which are still to be decided!
As well as the actual studios being actually open, there is a lot of Special Stuff planned for the weekend. I have already mentioned the themed ‘art trail’ (to which I am determined to contribute somehow or other), and the flyer says:
I must particularly recommend the reading session with Dawn Wood, who is an exceptional individual: she paints, she writes and she teaches microbiology. She has a voice you could listen to for hours. And she’s lovely.
Opening hours are Saturday 19th & Sunday 20th October, 12 noon — 5 pm. And the full address is
WASPS Studios
Meadow Mill
West Henderson’s Wynd
Dundee
DD1 5BY
In order to help visitors find their way to my studio I made up a wee Google map which you can see here. Parking at the Mill is theoretically possible at weekends, but it’s a small car park and gets very, very busy during Open Studios. The streets in the area have only limited parking, but there is a big car park nearby at Dudhope Castle. Anyway, it’s all on the map.
Hope to see you there!
“WASPS Open Studios” was posted by Cally on 4 Oct 2013 at http://callybooker.co.uk
slow, steady progress
Thank you everyone for the positive thoughts you have directed towards my neck muscles… we are definitely feeling the benefit. I saw the physiotherapist yesterday and I must admit that she has helped quite a bit too. I have the oddest-looking stretching exercise to do (10 times every 1-2 hours throughout the day) but it is very effective at loosening up the tension on my left side.
So my neck has been slowly improving and the weaving has slowly been growing. Extremely slowly on Monday, very slowly on Tuesday but only moderately slowly on Wednesday. (Today was a teaching-in-Glasgow today so I have spent the day talking rather than weaving.)
Unusually for me, I have been using a temple on this warp. It is quite dense so it doesn’t have a huge amount of draw-in without one, but as my shuttle throwing is still a bit wayward I definitely feel better for having the extra help at the edges. I find that the trickiest part is knowing where I am, when I advance the temple and most of the pattern near the fell is obscured. I should just do a repeat (or half a repeat) consistently, but my preferred amount is about 2/3 of a repeat so I have only my own contrariness to blame.
And in any case, after considering the options and doing a bit more experimentation to scale the pattern up, we’ve actually settled on a design where the treadling is very simple. But now I am accustomed to weaving advancing twills on the dobby I have become spoiled and lazy! I actually have to remember where I am in the sequence… what a shocker. I originally tied up all 14 treadles when I was trying out different options, but in the end only needed 8 so I have untied the others to reduce confusion.
The threading is what I think of as a ‘medium-slow’ advance. So, for instance, the first little group is 1-2-3-4 then 1-2-3-4 again and then 1-2-3-4-5 to advance one step. The parallel line is offset by 3 shafts, so 1 is followed by 4, 2 by 5 and so on.
In fact the edge of the cloth isn’t quite at the edge of the draft. I have been somewhat awed by the shrinking powers of the Venne cotton, and I wanted to be on the safe side when I scaled the draft up to full width. I sampled with 1508 ends, then dropped a dozen ends off each side — see the raggedy sample below — and the narrower warp actually came out almost perfectly on target (well, 1 cm over) so I decided to keep it.
The colours aren’t coming out very accurately in any of these pictures but the overall shot below is probably the least accurate… I include it anyway, because it shows that actual weaving really has been accomplished! In fact, there are a couple of turns around the cloth beam now.
“slow, steady progress” was posted by Cally on 3 Oct 2013 at http://callybooker.co.uk
Craft Scotland Summer Show
I’m delighted to announce that I will be taking part in the Craft Scotland Summer Show, a brand new selling exhibition taking place in Edinburgh throughout August. The show is timed to coincide with the Edinburgh Festival and it promises to be a proper feast of contemporary Scottish craft.
36 makers have been selected from across Scotland — you can see the whole list here — and the range of crafts includes textiles, ceramics, glass, jewellery, basketry and furniture. It’s rather exciting that, of the 36, there are three of us from Meadow Mill. Nicola Morrison and Joanne MacFadyen are both jewellers, and yours truly will — of course — be going in to bat for the handweavers.
The show will be open to the public every day from 2 to 26 August 2013. Opening hours are 11 am – 6 pm Monday to Saturday and 12 – 5 pm on Sundays. It will occupy the entire second floor of White Stuff on George Street, Edinburgh. As well as the craft itself, there are talks and events planned. I will update this post with information as it becomes available.
The event is listed here on the Craft Scotland website, so feel free to share the link with anyone who might be interested!
“Craft Scotland Summer Show” was posted by Cally on 9 July 2013 at http://callybooker.co.uk
