Out of the dark

If the 'dementors' were to visit me on friday, they could have sucked the soul out of me easily. It had been one of those weeks, months.
I threw out 2 desserts and barely rescued the third. I cast on 2 items but frogged them as I could not get them to work. Things that usually make me feel better don't seem to have the same effect.

I know that it is up to me to change that feeling from dark to light. I know that it is a matter of time. It is winter. I feel cold and pain. I feel tired and can't concentrate. We are past the shortest day. There are 4 weeks till craft camp.

I need to make something, to weave something. I have been thinking about this piece for a while. I had to ask myself though whether I was just asking for trouble.
I wound a warp with this yarn: 24 epi, 21 inches wide, 504 ends, 3.4m long. I don't know if I have calculated the sett correctly. It will be a light fabric, I think.

It looks beautiful. Like bundles of noodles.

And then I started to prepare to thread the heddles. I don't have enough heddles on some of the harnesses. I forgot to count them before I started...... I am out of practice.

It took me a couple of hours to fix this. I could have threaded the warp differently but I wanted the option to do plain weave or twill. There is enough length in the warp to do some experimentation. In fact, I think that this whole piece will be an experiment. I am halfway through threading. I think that I may be ready to start weaving next weekend......

And the weft yarn - a special hand-dyed yarn ( フリスビー手絣) bought from Avril. I think that this colour way has been discontinued.

Things can only get better. Right?

Small Piece exhibtion: Amy O'Brien

Meg from New Zealand has organised a virtual 'Small Piece' exhibition and I am hosting Amy's woven piece on my blog. 
Amy is 10 years old and this is only her third time weaving at a loom. Amy wove on a Saori loom, 2 shaft with a pre-threaded black cotton warp. She brought all the weft yarn with her from home. She wove this last Saturday and it took her about 3 hours.

"The idea of a ‘do whatever you what’ weaving piece sounded epic, but what the problem was … what should I do? At first I thought an aboriginal flag, then I thought about doing bubbles. Finally I decided an ocean landscape. I weaved different blues and greens together so it began to look like the ocean. Next was the hard part I made a sort of hilly thing and made clouds and sky above.

By Amy O’Brien"

Weaving by Amy O'Brien, Photo by Suzie Fry

Small Piece exhibition

Last year, 2 pieces of my weaving were accepted into the 'Petite' exhibition.
Meg has organised a virtual 'Small Piece' exhibition based on that idea, small pieces of textile work woven on a loom.

I repeated the 2 pieces that were acquired by Wangaratta Art Gallery, and added another 2 pieces into the series. This series of work was inspired by a lecture at the International Shibori Symposium in 2011.

'Yoshiko Wada explained at a lecture on ‘Slow Fibre’ that we must understand our materials in order to create something special.

My work explores the notion that in understanding how these fibres, made of different materials behave on their own and their interaction with each other.

It is then possible to manipulate them with calculated expectations.'

All the pieces were woven on a 2 shaft loom in plain weave with various yarn bases made from plant, animal and mineral fibres. All the pieces are approx. 23cm x 16cm.

From Left: Plant Mineral i, Plant Mineral ii. Plant Mineral Animal i

Plant Mineral Animal ii

Plant Mineral i - detail

Plant Mineral ii - detail

Plant Mineral Animal i - detail

Plant Mineral Animal ii - detail

This last piece is also new and is inspired by the Tour de France; the category climbs that the cyclists have to endure and conquer.

Col de Noir ii

Coinciding with this virtual exhibition, I have actually entered these pieces in the Brunswick Street Gallery 'Small Works' exhibition. If you are in Melbourne, you can see these pieces in real life and they are for sale.