Unplugged

It was only for a day, but it was so good, for that little while, to have an unbroken view of the sea, and hear the shush-shush of tide flowing in.

And it has been entirely too long since our room for the night looked like this:

There was also knitting.

Then guess what happened next...

Then it was evening, and then morning.

So appropriate to have a scarf modeled after a sea creature to knit.

The making of a weaver

This story has been in progress for a long time.  I've always known I wanted to weave.  But it took Golden Gate Fiber Insititute, Judith MacKenzie, and Laverne Waddington to make it all come together.

At GGFI in August, I took Judith's Color on Cloth class and dyed a warp, progressively tying resists and immersing in color.

Yes, that really was the first color.

Other lovely warps drying:

Compared to these, mine ended up looking rather dull, but I have to admit I was not giving it much focus.  I was concentrating on trying to finish the woven shibori piece that we had to warp, weave, and dye in record time. (Also trying to turn part of my hair indigo - thus the plastic-wrapped knob.)

When I got the warp home on its own, I decided it's not dull, per se, but subtle.

The woven shibori turned out okay, too.

I was actually very proud of myself for getting this done, to a decent scarf length.  It was an immersion in the deep end for a new weaver like me, but that was a great way to learn, and I deeply appreciated Judith's method and message of trust in simply getting me started and letting me do it.

Once home, I had to rig up a way to weave my warp.

I have no loom, and a longstanding interest in backstrap weaving, so the way was clear.

With the aid of Laverne's tutorials, I began to weave with a backstrap, practicing on a narrow cotton strip, then moving on to handspun wool.

Once I had this taste of backstrap weaving, I could not wait to start on my dyed warp.  It took some wrangling, since the warp yarns had gotten sticky with the dyeing, but I enjoyed this part, too.

This is the grey base yarn.  I also dyed 1/3 as many warp yarns over white, and when I prepared the warp for weaving, I integrated them as two stripes.

It was very slow-going at first.  With such a long warp, three times as wide as my previous one (this is about 12" wide,) I had a steep learning curve.  The cotton I'd used for a string heddle was sticking to the wool like crazy, so I eventually abandoned it for a new one made of plastic tape.  (The rejected heddle string will make an interesting addition to a yarn someday: pale blue cotton with felted rust-orange nubs every several inches!) Here is the plastic heddle, and some actual woven cloth, which was a thrill to see:

Making this cloth, and watching the colors interact as the weft joins it, has been a deeply satisfying trip.

This piece will be significant on so many levels, and I cherish every aspect of its formation, not least the people who have guided the way.

I think I'm more than halfway finished, adding a few inches each day.

Cross Country

This will be a quickie, since I'm falling behind with stuff I want to post....
We took a "driving ramble" trip with the Qatar Natural History Group last weekend.  Going directly across the country, from one side of the peninsula to the other, only takes about an hour on the highway.  Then we took off into the desert, in a big caravan - vrooom....

It was fun to get some experience driving on the sand: hard tack, soft sand, troughs and ruts and all. I was a passenger (and photographer) for the first half, then drove the second stretch.

Camels photgraphed while driving - do not try this at home.

They're relatively free-range, with herders gathering them together by night.

One woman spotted a camel skeleton, and we collected the various bleached bones.  That's the fun thing about the QNHG - everyone has their own specialty.  For some it's bones, for others it's fossils, or shells, or birds....

I thought this pelvic bone looked like a Star Wars helmet.  Or maybe the rabbit from Donnie Darko...?

The drive ended with a relaxing lunch at the beach. If you were able to see the land across the way (which we could, just barely,) you'd be looking at Saudi Arabia.

Bye till next time, camels...

Textile Society Symposium in Lincoln, Nebraska

(Warning: this post is full of intriguing links - you could get sucked into a textile abyss for hours on end.)

Quilt made by Nika Feldman and women from a beggars' encampment outside Kathmandu, Nepal

Two quilts made by the women in Nepal, and purchased by me - decorating my hotel room in Lincoln.

***

There was entirely too much going on in the space of three short days, 

all of it highly stimulating and full of beauty.  

I'm so glad I was accepted to present at this symposium, and thus stayed in the US to attend.

(My presentation was Spin Artists, and How the Internet Fuels the Art Yarn Movement, and it was very well-received.  So happy to have represented these artists to the greater textile-studying community.)

The image above is a stunning contemporary sari woven in Orissa - a combination of raw silk and blue-gray fine silk, with a metallic gold double-ikat pallav.  This was the best photo I could get in low light.

 The ikat saris and the work below were in various gallery shows pertaining to the textile theme.

 Jacquard-woven shibori by Catherine Ellis.

 Detail from Pauline Verbeek-Cowart's Jacquard-woven Silk Vortex.

Anna Von Mertens - Bachhus, after Caravaggio - hand-dyed, hand-quilted, quilt painting

(I knew Anna back when, before she was famous!  We used to talk about quilting, when she was just getting into it.  It's so great to see her work now, and hear people gushing over it.  

She is brilliant with color.)

***

During the day, we had concurrent sessions, which were very hard to choose from, including presentations by artists such as Kyoung Ae Cho and Rowland Ricketts, in addition to ethnographic studies of aspects of Muslim dress, felt-making in Kyrgyzstan, and Central Asian patchwork (mentioning all the ones I enjoyed the most, plucking them from among dozens.)

*** 

The brain was too full for words after a while, and this was a good time to go watch the Navajo women spin and weave.  This was a great opportunity to observe Navajo spindle technique in action, particularly the double-drafting method I've only seen in videos.

Grandmother spins.

Granddaughter weaves, her own striking design.

Continuing the Native American theme, we were treated to a dance performance by the Many Moccasins dance troupe, which was rich in textiles, impressive and educational. I enjoyed taking blurry photos of the dancers and their regalia in motion.

Finally, I attended a felt-making workshop taught by Janice Arnold, in which we learned basic press-felting, as practiced for ages in Kyrgyzstan, in addition to hybrid felting, which combines wool and a base fabric such as organza.

This was a fun and physically intense way to end the symposium.

 (we were working hard - 4 x 100 rolls, just to start!)

I finished the felting after returning to Doha,
and now it's drying in the hot sun.

Fall thrill

I'm enjoying the beginning of fall more than I can express, having spent the last couple Octobers in Doha, where it's still over 100 degrees (38 C).

Wearing a sweater, breathing cool air and seeing pumpkins

 - all minor thrills.

Fall decorations look particularly charming when they're outside a tidy Mennonite farm along the open Missouri highway.

And I like the light quality for knitting, too.