The honour and the glory

The Royal Melbourne Show is on. It is where the country comes to town and we all get to understand it a bit more. It means more than rides and show bags. It is a demonstration of living crafts, the skills of the working dog rounding up sheep, the assessment of the quality of fleece, the breeding of animals, and cooking/baking skills.

There are also cabinets of lace work, spinning, knits, decorated cakes that are truly labour of love and obsessions. I have read about how the strict the rules are for the baking entries, the consistency of how even the fruit is spread out in the fruit cakes, the swirl of the colours in the marble cakes, and perfection of the shapes, etc.

I have noticed that the categories for weave have been slowly decreasing and the number of entries fluctuates. The amount of display space gets smaller. As a result, I try to put in at lease one entry each year, to demonstrate that there are still weavers out there, that weaving can be done with fibres other than wool. This year there is one cabinet. It is a terrible photo, the lighting is bad and it is in a dark corner.

However, luck is on my side, and I am proud to say that this year both of the Pic to Picks pieces were awarded prizes. The other entries are beautiful too and I would hate to be the judge.

The P2P piece was awarded first prize and best exhibit in its category. It was displayed in a separate cabinet that was brightly lit. I wish the other pieces could have had the same treatment! The P2P2 piece was awarded 'high commendation'.

PS: I did visit the cat pavilion and there is a 'pat a cat' stand. I could not resist! I do miss my sweetie so much........

P2P2: the big reveal

Finally, the piece is completed, washed and photographed.
The image:

The yarn:

wool, cashmere, silk stainless steel

Before wet finished:

After wet finished (in the washing machine):

The finished item:

I am really pleased with the finished piece and I only wish that you can feel it through the screen as the slightly felted cashmere and wool are gorgeously soft.......
Thank you Meg for all your work in organizing this and to everyone else for participating.
It is really interesting to different design process and results!


Apologies for the really dark/shadowy photo of the piece but it was already dark by the time I got home from work and can only use the flash!

Finally, 3 colours

There had been a few distractions since the last post.
I seem to knit or weave but had not seem to be able to do a bit of both at the same time. I wonder why? I got some Avril lamb linen left over from a friend's project and tried this pattern:

It was fun and quick! and made me feel like I achieved a lot while figuring out the next step with the P2P2 weave.

It had also been a while since I tried this technique, and I had to refer to the book to figure out how to do the 3-colour clasp weft properly. The knitting may just have been an excuse.......

I am happy with this, much more so than just weaving the green as per the last post. This green yarn is also a better colour and is not a super-wash yarn. It will be interesting to see how it behaves with the wet finish.
In using the green against the white, it also reminds me of this! the junction between the carefully raked sand and the velvety moss that grows adjacent to it.

Further development.....

After the success of last sample, I am trying out a different colour combination. It is the same black cotton warp, black cashmere weft, and a white silk SS weft. The white will crinkle up and look more like snow.

I am also introducing the highlight colours of the tree and bird but I have to test out what is the most effective way of doing that. 

This first attempt is just adding a new colour on top of the 2 base weft threads.

First idea........

I am back to weaving and I am not really missing the knitting at all!?

Funny how I seem to be in phases with these things. 

I finished the sample, if we can call it that. It measured off loom, 190cm long by 27cm wide and turned out to be a full size scarf.

The piece off the loom looks interesting enough with the gauze-like texture where the silk SS yarn is used. I wet finished it and the texture changes:

The silk SS yarn crinkles up and the cashmere fulls up nicely. The cotton warp remained quite stable and forms a good base for the wefts. I think it has only reduced in width as the overall piece. I will have to measure it properly when it is dry.
I am trying to figure out how it relates to the picture. (See previous post.) The bumps and lumps resemble the snow on the branches, I think it is a textural thing. 
I can see how Meg and Kaz work with the digital images and the translation that results from them but my designs feel more obtuse.
After seeing how this works, I have a couple more ideas buzzing around. They just have to stew a bit in my head and then, maybe another sample this coming week. I think I have another 2 meters of warp left on Chibi.......

Where did this come from?

I have packed away my knitting machine for the moment and am back on track with the task on hand. 

Somehow, this image has inspired the following weave but I am not quite sure how. 

I just started weaving. I have had the cones of yarn out for a few weeks now, just sitting there waiting for me to be ready. I am trying to use stash yarn only for this project. Somehow, I have been diverted from the original idea of woven shibori but I am happy with this so far.

As I was weaving this, I could not help thinking that the curious weaver will be frowning. Kaz is brilliant with colours and KaTe (the 8 shaft countermarche loom) has white warp with white weft on at the moment and now Chibi (the 2 shaft Saori loom) has black warp with black wefts.

The warp is the black cotton warp that came pre-wound on the loom. There is about 4 meters left on the back beam. The wefts are Colourmart lace-weight cashmere and Avril silk stainless steel yarn.
The funny thing is that you can't even see very easily how the pattern is developing without the contrast white paper underneath. I have only placed that there so that the photo would work!
I am just going to weave a scarf length sample, probably about 2 meters as I think that it will be an interesting piece in its own right. 
The plan is that when this come off the loom, I will wet finish it in hot water to wash off the oils on the cashmere and hopefully, it will full a bit and the silk SS will crinkle up.
I am already thinking about a second full sample and that it may have a bit more colour?
Come to think of it, my last P2P project had the silk SS yarn in it too!

P2P2: First thoughts

Just wanting to capture the initial reactions with each picture and see what comes to mind. For me, sometimes these initial reactions can be quite a (i) literal interpretation of the image or it can be (ii) an extraction of colours or patterns.

ii) I am normally not a bird lover but strangely this image is attractive. I love the background and the persimmon colour on the bird. I have no idea what type of bird it is but if someone can tell me, I will be grateful.

I can see some sort of woven shibori with a white background, dyed to the colour of the tree twigs/branches, a grey/black/brownish/greenish colour with some highlights of the colours on the bird somewhere in the piece. 

i) Literally this is a Saori clasped weft weave structure with the colours of the sea water, the foam and the various shades/tones of the sand, wet and dry. so far the most no. of colours I have tried in this technique is 3. I am sure in theory it should work with more colours but I can foresee lots of tangling issues!?
ii) Striped coloured warp with the colours as mentioned above and a broken twill weave pattern.

i) & ii) I can see a deflected double weave pattern speaking to me in the clouds. A combination of soft white fluffy yarn and pale grey colours. Actually the soft white fluffiness can be a variegated yarn with some of that sunset yellows and oranges. It is both literal and abstract at the same time!

There are 2 approached to this image. I can either work with the objects in the foreground or the pattern in the background.

i) The foreground reminds me of a combination of  diamond/rose path shapes with broken twill combination using quite strong contrast colours of dark and light.

ii) The background again is a Saori-style clasped weft weave structure that is quite free forming using white and various shades/tones of green and some yellow?

ii) I think that this will have to be a 'thousand flowers' weave structure with white, green, various shades of pink, mauve and deep burgundy. I used a peach blossom picture previously to design a broken twill scarf in similar colours so I probably won't pursue this image further.....

i) I can see the frills on the dresses and it speaks of movement. The Saori frilly scarf weave can apply to this with a change of colours to match those in the image. I am not sure whether this is literal or not anymore. 
* blogger had driven me insane with formatting so I will have to stop before I loose anything again or want to throw something at my computer.......

Pics to Picks Design Challenge II

Meg from unravelling has organized various virtual events over the years. I have previously participated in a couple of them. This year is the second Pics to Picks* and there are 19 of us participating.  We each send the name we are given a series of pictures (from 2 to 6) and we use them as a starting point for a design for weave. I think that this is an interesting design method and what is exciting is that it takes me out of my 'comfort' zone a bit and makes me push the boundaries or work with elements that I may not have otherwise considered.

You can have a look here or click on the poster on the side to check out the rules and what the others are doing and how everyone is progressing.

The following 6 pictures are the ones I sent to Alienore and hopefully she finds them inspiring!

There is also a secret to 2 of these pictures. I have actually used them for 2 designs previously and I wonder whether she would choose those images and what she may do with them if she did choose them. Of course, I am not going to reveal which ones they are until the very end......

The following 6 pictures are from Geodyne and I got them this morning.

I think this bonus image of Charlie, the ginger cat, who is just focusing on some thread is to give me inspiration! and a demonstration of how I should be thinking about the pictures!

* a pick is a pass of the shuttle in weave terminology, i.e. one weft thread, and pics is short for pictures.