While couped up in the house after the accident I couldn't work on my weaving so instead I worked on some embroidery. One of the days I felt inspired to rummage through my hemming pile and found the perfect easy project that reminded me of my new adorable puppy. In my hemming pile I found my favorite house jacket that Ollie decided to taste. Back in March when I brought Ollie home for the first time he had a bit of a chewing problem. His favorite thing to chew is cloth, and he is amazing at destroying fabric. He only had this jacket for barely a minute but he had already chewed a 2-3 inch hole at the shoulder. The supplies I used were leftover bits from my stash. Leftover cotton fabric, and leftover weaving yarn. The yarn is from loom waste, the last part of the warp that can't be woven. I like to keep these yarns for embroidery, but it does accumulate quickly. This particular leftover yarn came from the 'Parallel Weaving' class by Linda Hartshorn back at the Convergence conference in July 2022, I wrote about it back in August 2022. First, was to attach the cotton fabric cloth to the jacket. Since the jacket is a heavier knit fabric I had two layers of the cotton fabric to give it some heft. Then, I did a blanket stitch around the hole to attach the fabric to the jacket and give it a vintage chaotic style. Once I had the fabric attached the bland cotton needed a little more spirit so I drew a heart pattern with disappearing ink. I filled the heart with satin stitches in a checker board pattern. I wanted it to look like a weave structure and a checkerboard is basically plain weave. Then to encapsulate the heart I did a double running (Holbien) stitch, giving it a border. It has rugged edges, which I personally like, gives it even more character. And it reminds me of how much my dog loves me, and my clothing, Ha! Also, reminds me to be thankful for what he has learned in the last six months. He still loves chewing but I've convinced him bones, antlers, and chew toys are the best, though he still gets into tissues if within reach, little steps.
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Hello infinite internet being, Since I'm sure no one is reading this blog anymore. Life's been a shit show over the last year. In 2021 I left my job to go back to college and try out an idea of teaching kids computer science through hand weaving. I thought I had a well structured plan but it seems life had other ideas for what would happen. Since leaving my career I have put the greatest dog in the universe to sleep, had my mother-in-law from passive aggressive-ville move in, laid my brother-in-law to rest, put my cat to rest, started a divorce, found out my mother-in-law would still be living with me post divorce, had an accident that totaled my car and the only way I found to make an income, and now my mother isn't healing post back surgery. Basically, I am full of emotional baggage from a rather tragic year. I suppose I did want to leave my comfortable job for something more fulfilling for my soul, but holy-firecrackers-on-a-stick! I didn't think I had to empty my soul first! I am still attending college but my studies have definitely suffered from all the chaos. Honestly, I don't really know where I'm headed with it. Today I tried the practice of being present, trying to limit my thinking to only what is currently happening and ignoring everything else. Of course there is a balance here, but the thought is to trust your instincts. Allow yourself to be in the moment and trust that you will do what needs doing. In listening to my mind, heart, body, and soul I have found that I really want to put into practice what I initially set out to do, mix handweaving and technology. I'll give myself a few months and if the rhythm and responsibility doesn't happen then I know I should only focus on schooling and leave weaving/fiber arts has a permanent hobby. But if I do find my stride in this endeavor then I'll keep going and see where it takes me. If I do continue to blog I'll need a new name. The 'Vader_Weaves' comes from my married name Valerie Ader, the Vader was a joke from my work email: [email protected]. Since I worked with a lot of nerds I was officially coined Vader in the office. Since it was so ridiculous I even had my profile picture on Microsoft Teams be famous paintings that were transformed to include Darth Vader. Better yet Danny and Valerie Ader is shortened to D.Vader, which is my home's router name, which I should also rename. Alas, that joke is now over and I must go back to the original joke of my last name being Good. Oh, I don't miss those terrible, head-shaking jokes. And for those Star Wars fans out there it is not lost on me that my initial last name Good it could be said that I was good and I went to the dark side to become Vader. Then just like in episode 6 I have finally chosen to be 'Good' again, but hopefully, I live longer than Vader post going back to the light side. With a new blog name what should it reflect? When I left Radia I had this grand idea of teaching kids computer science through handweaving. The main concept of linking Past with Future, Handweaving is our past and Technology is our future. Let's back track for a moment into my past to find a creative name. When I was in my early 20's I learned about spirit animals and found mine to be the spider. I have a very long story about the summer of spiders, maybe I'll write about it someday, and it is half of the reason I believe they are my bridge to the higher consciousness. The other half is that the spider makes connections between all things, such as linking the past with the future. Eventually, I learned of the Navajo story of Spider Woman. Spider Woman has many stories about how she wove the universe and instructed people to weave. Weaving together beautiful connections throughout the universe. Here is a good general story at the Navajo Rug website. Side note: Of course in my book adventures (which are numerous) I found a book of Spider Woman's stories from the Hopi Indians. I say all of that because I'm thinking if I do keep writing maybe my new blog name should have something to do with Spider Woman. Except I'm not sure if that would be culturally appropriate. I'm very white, and it was definitely my ancestors that destroyed the beautiful cultures of the Native Americans. So what right do I have to use the story. Would it be like a descendant from the Nazi regime deciding to practice Rosh Hashanah because they liked the story that surrounded the event? I'm not doing that! Which leaves me with a conundrum of what name I should use. Though, if I find out in the next few months this isn't for me then I'll have nothing to worry about. So, after a year and a half of emotional baggage I'm going to try making a hustle out of being creative. It is not the smartest thing to do, but having planned so much and seen it all fall apart any way, I figure why not try out something I've been wanting to do for the last 9 years of my life. At least then I can say I tried it and move on to the next thing whole heartedly. Over the next few months while I work to create, I'll be open to any suggestions for a new name for my blog. It'd be awesome if it had some kind of spider feature but I also don't want it to be a Halloween theme either. With Love, -Val Update 9/28/2023: My niece reminded me that I tried a blog when I lived in Washington and I called in the Crafting Traveler. Maybe that name is still available, it does fit me love of both crafting and traveling. I'm keeping busy this January between school, the new studio, and weaving. This week I've been organizing my new studio and getting exciting to finally have a dedicated space. I've also almost finished weaving my table runner but I hate it when my loom is bare so I switched over to designing my next project.The new studio is mostly complete. We had a long and heavy rain storm and found out one of the windows in the new building leaked. They came out and fixed it but now we have to wait for it to dry completely before we finish the painting and finally the window molding. In the mean time I organized all of my yarn up in the attic. All of my books are on the work table awaiting a huge bookshelf. And all my gadgets and looms are in the spots ready for assembly. There's extra stuff in there right now too since Danny's studio isn't complete yet but soon!! I'm weaving the plain weave portion of the table runner, or the back portion however you want to say it. Since I'm using doubled up thread it is a little slower than I usually go but I don't mind having something to weave any time is nice. Now I have about 10 inches left and I hate the idea of not having anything on the loom so I started designing some napkins that may or may not be napkins and may or may not match the table runner, ha! Basically, I took the pattern from Handwoven (Royal Table Runner N/D 2016) and I wrote down all of the blocks. Since it's an overshot pattern ever pair made a block so I had 8-7 , 6-5, 4-3 , 2-1 , 1-8 then made a simple block pattern. From there I used my fancy Fiberworks software to turn it into a Summer and Winter weave. Basically, I have the same pattern from the table runner but it is now turned into a napkin. Figured an overshot napkin would just catch on everything and I wanted something that would be structurally sound and show off a motif. The thing I'm worried about is the density. Summer and Winter tends to make a firmer fabric and I don't like the idea of napkins that hold their shape when wiping your chin. When I did my napkins last year with 20/2 cotton verses 10/2 cotton I turned out loving the 20/2 so much I gave up making the 5/2 that were apart of the experiment. That is why I'm a bit worried that a summer and winter weave might be too dense. With that said I'll be using a 10/2 warp and 20/2 weft. So maybe it will work out just right, except with Summer and Winter the weft threads slide behind each other almost like a doubleweave...but even then I'm dealing with a faux 10/2 weft (20/2 threads sliding next to each other). Hmmmm.... I wonder what would happen if I used the sewing thread for a weft??? Suppose I should at least warp the loom before I start over thinking the project any more.
Happy Weaving! Last night we made a fire in our hearth and, though I loved every second of it, we found out our chimney needs cleaned very badly! While watching the fire for the little bit I got I made more Celtic knots, learning about Romilly Allen's basic blocks.I'm in chapter 5 now of 'Celtic Knotwork' by Iain Bain and he is describing a person, Romilly Allen, who has defined a method of drawing knots by using simple blocks then repeating them or mirroring them. It's a wonderful concept, and rather similar to working with blocks in weaving but I digress. Iain covers only 8 of the blocks that Romilly discovered in his work, and he explains that there are thousands of more blocks that Romilly goes over. Here is block 1 and the variations of itself I played with. Looking at this I could also connect more of the centers and have a completely different look. Here is block 2: Having blocks that you know by heart would be very helpful when you start creating your own designs, so i love this method. I did have to laugh when the author talks about how he designs his own Celtic knots only to find out it was done 1,000 years ago already. Yep, know how that goes!
So that is what I'm up to, oh, and I'm still weaving away on the table runner that will be finished here in a few more days barring any other life events. We landed back in Santa Rosa on Thursday and I finally get to start weaving on the warp I made before we left. Now I have to decide what my weft yarns are using yarn that I can still get to.We left Washington at 9am on Thursday and drove straight through to our home. Since we had two cats I really didn't want to figure out a hotel room and both of them very much wanted to be home. Turned out that there is an 'Atmospheric River' going through California during our drive so we drove through the pass north of Redding, CA with high winds, rain, and too many semi trucks. We finally made it home around midnight where I got cleaned up and instantly fell asleep! Before we went north I had warped the loom with a table runner project I found in Handwoven Nov/Dec 2016 issue called the 'Royal Holiday Runner.' (this link goes to the Handwoven WIF library, not sure it works without a subscription??) I've been looking at this runner for a long time because I love the color play with the intricate patterning. Oh Bother! Looking at this image and relating it to what I have on the loom shows me that my yarn sizes are still off. Ugh! Since we're still in the midst of building my studio my yarn isn't readily available so I decided to use what was in the house and what was on my 20/2 or smaller shelf (since that was easy to get to). The warp is 10/2 cotton yarns and I got to use up some of the cones, woohoo! The background weft is sewing thread doubled and some 20/2 cotton yarn, and the pattern weft has been changed a couple times. First it was a variegated yellow/gold 5/2 acrylic yarn and now it is 10/2 cotton yarn doubled up, and now that I'm looking at the published image maybe I should change it again.
Guess, I'll continue to weave with what I have chosen as my weft and if it still doesn't work out at least I'll get some stress out with weaving something.
I do like how this project has you weaving up the overshot and then half way through you switch to just a plain weave with the main background weft only. Then you fold it in half and you have a backing already made in your chosen colorway. Great idea! Though I think I will want a longer table runner so I may just weave all the warp up in overshot and then find a fabric with similar colors. Or maybe make another warp and use the rest of the yarns to make a separate plain weave fabric for the backing. We'll see how much warp I have. Guess, I have a knack for half Saori weaving and half precision weaving! Ha! |
Author: Vader
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