12 Jun 2011

brain ache

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It’s not a bright idea to try and get to grips with a new weave structure on a Sunday night. It is especially not a good idea to beat yourself over the head with a weaving book for an hour before thinking that it might be a good idea to check online for any errata…

Guess what. On the whole I’m rather relieved that it isn’t just me losing the plot, but I wish I’d thought of it slightly before I went cross-eyed with exhausted confusion.

And I know, I know, you’re all agog to know what structure it is and which book… but I’m not quite ready to reveal that information. It’s an idea I’ve been pondering for my P2P2 project, and it isn’t yet sufficiently well-formed to expose it to the light of day. Or I’m not sufficiently alert now to cope with the details. One or the other. Or a bit of both. It’s an idea which has several different parts and I need to get them all lined up.

However the volcanic warp is ready to weave. It was fun to make, because the colours are so energetic…

…and I’m pleased with how it looks on the loom.

I’m also pleased to be using echo weave on a more adventurous project. Whatever the results, I’m bound to learn something from the process.

“brain ache” was posted by Cally on 12 June 2011 at http://callybooker.co.uk

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6 Jun 2011

looking

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Some of the P2P2 participants have already made adventurous beginnings — you can see a chronology of the project if you visit this post on Meg’s blog — but I am still acclimatising. In order to facilitate that acclimatisation I have stuck the pictures on the wall above my desk. This way I can spend a few minutes just looking every now and then throughout the day.

I have developed favourites and less-favourites, and have been reminded of something I heard many years ago regarding idolatry. Idolatry is a strong word, but it is one you do hear in Scotland, where sectarianism is all too alive and well. However, you are advised to mitigate the risks of idolatry (should you be theologically inclined to worry about them) by concentrating on images that you don’t like. And I am starting to do that with my P2P2 collection. I am not ready to say which is the image I like least — in any case, I might change my mind — but that is the one I am concentrating on for now.

And speaking of looking, this month’s Online Guild workshop has caught my imagination. Isabella Whitworth, a fabulous textile artist and a valued colleague on the Journal, is helping us to develop the “Notebook Habit”. As one of those people who is very timid about drawing, I need all the help that I can get; so I am carrying my little notebook everywhere and snatching odd moments to draw lines. Next exercise: doodling to music.

“looking” was posted by Cally on 6 June 2011 at http://callybooker.co.uk

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17 May 2011

P2P2

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For those of you joining in the challenge and visiting this blog for the first time: welcome! I’m a handweaver, a PhD student and a person who tends to take on too many things. I missed out on P2P last year, but this year I’ve decided to embrace my tendency to overcommit and just sign up anyway.

And now we’re off! Meg sent the details through this morning and there are nineteen weavers around the world participating in the challenge. I’m not sure whether I am allowed to tell you who is on the receiving end of my envelope of images — perhaps I should leave that for the recipient to announce — but I will tell you that said envelope is heading to Australia.

I’m sorry about the coffee stain on Siberia, by the way. At least, I think it is Siberia – hard to tell on this rug…

“P2P2” was posted by Cally on 17 May 2011 at http://callybooker.co.uk

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26 Feb 2011

Unite

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Unite is an exhibition being organised by craftscotland, our friendly Scottish agency for crafts, and the Collins Gallery, an equally friendly Scottish gallery which has a particular slant towards craft. I’ve posted about some of the Collins’ exhibitions in the past, such as these sashiko textiles from Japan or the felt namads from Iran.

What makes me especially excited about the forthcoming Unite exhibition is that yours truly has been selected to take part in it. Yes, really. You can see the list of participants here. And looking at that list scares the living daylights out of me, as I’m going to be keeping company with some very illustrious names. However, that is largely the point of Unite — that it unites the newbies and the well-established masters, as well as the weavers and the glassblowers, the potters and the jewellers, and so on. The blurb says that “The makers have been chosen to showcase a range of work and styles across craft mediums, to champion the quality and diversity of Scottish craft and inspire audiences.” So even if I wasn’t in it, I would definitely be going to see it, because that is exactly the sort of exhibition I enjoy. Plus I do my day job in a building less than a hundred yards away!

To save you having to do all the googling yourselves, I have looked up the websites of some of the other participants. Some I know already but many are new to me, so there’s a bit of pre-excitement excitement in looking at the sort of work they do. I’m supposed to be busy doing other things, so I will just start you off with some of the textile artists I was able to find quite easily. The designations such as “weaver” are my own, based on what I see, and not necessarily how they would describe themselves, so if anyone wants to put me right please do so! Clearly I am biased towards calling people weavers whenever I can…

Joan Baxter, tapestry artist

Ingrid Arthur, tapestry artist

Fiona R Hutchison, also tapestries but other kinds of textile/paper art as well

Lauren Crawford, weaver

Emma Shannon, weaver

Taisir Gibreel, textile designer in print and weave

Karen MacDonald, textile artist

There, just a taste to be going on with. You’ll no doubt be hearing much, much more about this as the date (16th April) approaches.

“Unite” was posted by Cally on 26 Feb 2011 at http://callybooker.co.uk

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23 Jan 2011

huck lace draft

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The creative redhead who blogs at Handcrafted with Altitude asks whether I will share the draft I used for the crinkly merino/silk scarf in huck lace. The answer is yes, certainly. I planned a threading on eight shafts — and threaded what I planned — but after sampling I ended up using a very simple treadling that could just as well have been done on four shafts.

Here’s a glimpse — I can’t fit the whole thing into one screen snapshot so this is one half of the draft. The block at the left-hand side below (threaded 1-8-1) is the centre block and the rest of the threading is a mirror image of what you see to the right of that block.

I had a little bit of plain weave at the edge of each silk stripe and then 11 blocks of 3-end huck with the float thread on shafts 7 and 8 alternately. If you are not familiar with huck, then know that it is very, very simple. Each block is an odd number of ends (in this case, three) and consists either of shaft 1 alternating with an even-numbered shaft or shaft 2 alternating with an odd-numbered shaft. This means that the whole threading is alternately odd-even and makes it super-easy to weave tabby. Anyway, the merino stripes consist of four blocks of 3-end huck, using shafts 5 and 6 for the float threads. I had three of the broad silk stripes separated by the merino stripes and then a little strip of silk at each edge. I also included a bit of huck when I threaded the border strips, using shafts 3 and 4.

This setup gave me the potential to vary the placing of the huck floats and the plain weave in all sorts of ways, but in the end I treadled what is shown above: huck lace in the merino areas and the main silk stripes, plain weave in the borders. If I had only had four shafts at my disposal, I could have threaded the borders on shafts 1 and 2 only and just used two 3-end blocks (1-4-1 and 2-3-2) for all the huck areas.

Another matter from the crinkly scarf post on which I need to update you is the state of the letter tray. If you thought it had problems before, well, those problems have increased… by about two kilogrammes.

I may be wrong, but I suspect this structure (and its twin, which is out of sight behind the books to the right) was not designed for a household such as ours. The really serious matter is that the piece of paper sticking out from underneath Phoebus is my to-do list. It’s no wonder I am footling about on the internet because my proper tasks are concealed beneath a furry ginger bottom.

“huck lace draft” was posted by Cally on 23 Jan 2011 at http://callybooker.co.uk

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