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........

Finally, before the end of the year........

This week had been monumental in the number of things that are being completed. However, the item of the most significance was this. I finally completed the Pics to Picks piece and I can say that it has been completed in the year that it was started!

I am not great at keeping records and as I was trying to use yarns and warps that were on hand, I could not remember how much black warp was on the loom. I knew that I had about 2m of the coloured warp and that I wanted the horizontal plane change over at about the halfway mark. As I kept weaving, I noticed that there was not that much black warp left on the back beam. This is a bit of designing on the run, so I made the horizontal layer change and hoped for the best.

There was enough coloured warp left to give a decent length scarf so I decided to keep weaving. As the warps were on 2 different back beams, I could cut the black warp off  and continued weaving until I ran out of the coloured warp as well.

I washed the piece in hot water by hand, and then rinsed and spun dry in the washing machine, hoping that the silk stainless yarn will do its thing and crinkle up. I can not describe my exictement when I got it out of the machine and it worked to my expectations!

I am pleased with the results and will definitely develop this idea/concept further.

Thanks, Meg for organising this, Esmae for sending me the picture and Kaz for leaving behind the demo warp from the ikat workshop!

Keep calm and keep weaving

In this period when it is sometimes called the 'silly season', it is nice to focus on something that is set up already. All I have to do is wind the bobbins and weave.

When I am weaving, the frenzy of Christmas approaching is somehow forgotten. I can put the multiple batches fruit cakes in the oven and forget about them for a couple of hours. No thoughts of shopping malls, supermarkets, etc. Just the shuttles going from side to side, and making sure that I have not crossed over the weft yarns so that the 2 layers remain separate on the edge.

For the black layer, the weft is of the same cotton. For the coloured layer, I am using a single strand of Avril's silk stainless steel in black. It will be interesting when wet finished whether there will be any textural changes.

Pics to Picks

As per the previous post, I decided to use the cotton warp left over from the ikat workshop. I also found another black cotton warp from a previous project of the same yarn type. What luck!

Then I got thinking, what about a double weave. I delibrated between a double weave where I can form folds on the upper layer and possibly with a twill weave structure and a plain weave on the bottom layer or this interlocking  structure as per the diagram below. (from the book on Doubleweave by Ursina Ann-Grishott)

Since they were already 2 separate warps, I wound them onto 2 beams. This will also give me the flexibility of re-threading and trying out something else if I did not want to keep with this idea.

The book also has a very good explanation of how the threading and treadling works:

I had cut the ikat warp in half and used the 2 parts to create a contrast at the vertical intersection and to make it a wider piece.

The ikat warp is slightly wider and will slightly extend beyond the black layer. For both layers, the weft will be the same black cotton. This is reminiscent of the texture of the canvase in the image.

I would have liked to at least started weaving to see if what I envisaged would work, but this is as far as I got.......

How things can change......

I was having a discussion with Michelle about how many things I have on my plate when I decided to actually get all those things out so that I can see them: then it is not just a list in my head that has grown out of proportion. I started rumaging in my yarn boxes to see what i can use for the pics to picks project.

What a co-incidence or how lucky can I be? you may recall how I mentioned that colour is not my strong point but I am working on it.......

This is a painted warp left over from the ikat workshop with Kaz. In fact, I have a suspicious feeling that this is the demonstration warp she did!

The colours are perfect!

So now the ideas for this picture has evolved. It is no longer a clasp weft structure but some sort of twill/plain weave/repp weave type structure.

When I examine the picture closely, I can see the texture of the canvase amongst the colours. I think that it will have a black weft.

Time will tell what it will become.......

Pics to Picks

I got my pictures from Esmae a while ago but have not had the time to do a post on them until now.
Machine knitting class has been taking up all my 'down time'. I have been doing samples in the evening after work, on weekends, and any spare time in between other things. It is wearing me down and I keep thinking of all these other things that I have on the go as well. Last sunday, I had 'stitching' group and managed to finish the linen jacket. I was so happy!

On friday evening, I skyped with Kaz and had a brief chat about the images I had received:

 menorah

Painting

meadow

mountains

I thought there is only about 6 weeks to go and I need to come up with something soon!

My first impression was that they are not images that I would normally use to inspire a weave design, but then, that is the idea! to do something different.

I look at them and can see more literal translation into weave patterns or structures. Kaz looks at them and can see the meaning and other connections with the pictures. She sees historic and cultural connections. I think that even if everyone who signed up were given the same images, the end results will quite be varied.

Menorah: some sort of double deflected weave, block design, 2 colours, probably wool for the deflected weave to work properly

John Papas painting: some sort of clasp weft soari-style weaving with the colours from the painting. I don't work with a lot of colours so the choice of colours is a bit 'scary'.

Meadow and mountains: I have not read the poetry component of the images but have focused on the colours and the shapes. They are calling out for a shibori weave dyed in varying tones of blues. A bit like an indigo process. In fact, I think that all the colours in the 2 images can probably be achieved through indigo dyeing.