After we learn, what do we DO?

After the learning, the challenge is to use, incorporate, combine, make something new, at least make something out of your own hands and heart, something personal, perfectly suited to you and your needs, using your own powers of adding, subtracting and incorporating; in short: creating.

Not just making. 

The quote above is by from Woven Thoughts by a weaver called Sara Lamb. I sat down with my morning coffee to read the first blog in my feed today and really paid little attention to the header (sorry Sara, it was early). It struck me as I read how important these words are for our approach to daily spiritual practice and larger acts of witchcraft or power. Study does really not add things to our lives- just to our heads.  The challenge of combining what we now do with what we might do is what brings our acts into the realm of personal and "perfectly suited to our needs".

Hat4. Sara Lamb 

Also, the pictures were gorgeous!

I was surprised then near the end of her post to realize that this post is about the making of woven artworks, NOT acts of spiritual enrichment!

These thoughts on learning new things and always striving to understand them but incorporate experience, once, twice... over and over into your practice and make each act of creation your own; each act of trying again a celebration of the last act really moved me.

They have stayed with me all morning, so I am sharing them with you as a weaver of spirit as well as cloth.

Sara Lamb is the author of the book Woven Treasures: One-of-a-Kind Bags with Folk Weaving Techniques by Interweave Press, and a DVD called Spinning Silk, also by Interweave Press. Her work is beautiful and her words are very inspiring.

The historical record

Japanese shibori fabric.  Precise tied resist.

Recently, I had the chance to reply to a friend who thought that it was vain to label her beautiful woven work with her name. I couldn't disagree more!

Kuba cloth called Kasai velvet, literally woven
 CASH in Zaire.

I am very interested in the history of textiles in several parts in Asia, Africa, the northern Americas and of course I often study how Europe influenced all of these cultures and their textile practices.

As a hobbiest, I am what is properly called a "living historian" but more popularly: a colonial re-enactor. We strive to get things as close to correct for the period as possible so that merely by looking visitors to our encampments and demonstrations can learn.

As a living historian, I (and others in my club) try to spend short periods actually living under colonial conditions as closely as we can represent them for the public. I do time studies on spinning, linen processing and  weaving and try to extrapolate how valuable a piece of cloth was to a farm household... you get the idea.

Tape weaving with linen thread on a reproduction 18th Century tape loom.

I am delighted to hear that your Aunt labeled her weaving with her own name- and Aunt Marvel was certainly the right name for her!! I'm glad you are doing the same. Because so much of the work of women was not taxed or marked in account books, the value of their contributions to the economies of the past (and today) are lost (read the diary of Martha Ballard in A Midwife's Tale by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich to get an idea of how important weaving was to a town's economy and how it was only peripherally recorded in the account books as raw materials ordered).

When you get your next set of labels made, may I suggest that you add your maiden name if Peterson is not it? Quilt makers have adopted this notion and it makes tracing an artist's contributions so much easier then we have two family names to search!

You are not vain, you are contributing to the historical record!!

Art & Love part 2

Watercolor study of reds.  I wrote "I love you" all around in the shape of a heart.

When last you saw the parts for the woven valentine I made this year there were cut strips of papers I have inked and painted, a love letter, some "I love you" messages and a big pastel heart.

The background is mainly light and the foreground mainly dark.  

The heart of "I love you" on the dark red paper overlaps with the red pastel heart on the long background strips, but after weaving a few inches I can see that it doesn't read as a heart.  The contrast of the light and dark highlights the weaving but the heart is too delicate.  It needs repetition, something to show the eye where to look for the angles of the heart design.

There are plenty of touches of orange in the paper, so I chose to paste a yellow watercolor heart cut from my paper stash onto the background.  I then repeated the pastel drawing of a heart on that.  That should do it.

The weaving pattern is called a 2/2 twill.

Strip by strip I cut and then wove my messages and images and colors together.  

I like the way the yellow heart is not traditional, but makes the whole thing bright and cheery.  Like a little sun.

I considered writing on the heart too, but I decided against it because this is busy enough.  

There has to be a few places where your eye can rest, not just work, work, work to read and understand.

Happy Valentine's Day.

Not just to my loves but to my readers and Valentine's Blog Party friends too!

Imbolc Par-tay follow-up

Gorgeous creativity poem to Brigid for over my loom from Kestril.

Beautiful yellow English primrose from Cat for the altar.

The ice bowl filled with holly twigs and leaves came out fantastic!  I have these little vintage silver stars originally intended for holding candles on Christmas trees.  I put one in the bottom of the ice bowl and placed the lovely green 8 hour candle on top of it. I love those darn emergency candles!

The reason I needed the star is because when I un molded the bowl/candle holder in the morning after it was outside all night to freeze it wasn't COMPLETELY frozen... It must have been just 32 for only part of the night.  The top 3 inches or so are frozen clear as glass- the inside and outside layers of the bowl are frozen in big crystals.  That indicates really slow freezing.  The water that remained in between the two shell bowl bottoms splooshed out into the sink.  Yay for me for unmolding this in the sink and not on the table!!

Big slow-formed crystals of water with gaps holding the star and candle.  So shiny.

The day began with good smells and presents!   We set ourselves up with Mimosas made with OJ and Prosecco and admired the altar and the day.  We spent plenty of the day catching up with family news and love life news too.  Kestril brought a wonderful mix-CD of songs about milk, creativity, growth... it was just great and everyone got one!

Our meal was a yummy 3 cheese quiche and these beautiful chicken pot pie muffins.  I made a bowl of sweet and sour cucumbers with dill and lavender using goldenrod vinegar I made in the summer.  I certainly need to get the recipe for those pot pie muffins!

Then we got raffia all over the place.

Traditional wheat crosses

 With instructions we shared a good time trying to weave wheat crosses for everyone.  The raffia went everywhere, but it cut easily with scissors so I was glad that was our choice.


Combinations of weaving, braiding and tying resulted in a bunch of awesome icons to hang over our doors at home.

 


No one was in any hurry to leave, and before we knew it the time was late.  What a good day!















The candle kept burning until I blew it out before dinner.

New Old Loom: its own little circle

To clean rust in these very tiny gaps (15 gaps per inch) I began with steel wool, then tried wire brushing after WD 40.

I am travelling around the edge of a new circle. Eventually, I will travel the smaller and smaller paths as I spiral toward the center of it.  I call this circle New Old Loom.

Weaving is a much used and often overused metaphor for working on your life, but like so many things, weaving comes with its own WHOLE LIFE. I was gifted a wonderful old floor loom (read about it here: Asking + Action = Attraction . So, I get to weave. Grow. Create and contemplate while doing it.  I have a New Old Loom and along with it I have been gifted hours and hours of assembly and rust removal. Contemplative time.

Next, I tried other grades of steel wool and tiny strips of fine sandpaper. I can make the outside shiny but the inside remains rough. I tested the "cleaned" spaces with the little piece of 40/2 linen, and it frays. As a last resort, Naval Jelly will turn the rust into a neutral coating that I can scrub off.  I taped the wrapped-thread rails to keep the Naval Jelly off them and followed the instructions. I include all of this because when I searched the web for hints on cleaning rusted reeds I found very little. Mostly, advice that it can't be done well enough and the reed must be replaced.  Plus, I find pictures reassuring, maybe the next reed cleaner will enjoy finding these.

I am trying to make the rust work as enjoyable as possible by lighting candles or incense, visualizing the wonderful woven goods that will roll from my beams after I have my darling's parts smooth, even having a lovely cup of tea handy. This last is kind of tricky because I am wearing a dust mask while I use all the steel wool and stuff. I could probably design a tasty tea delivery system to work with the mask if I weren't so committed to staying focused on this rust until it is gone. No distraction. No project hopping.

Project hopping will take me out of this circle and make me start another circle. I want to stay put.

Those would be some legendary parties, though.

This is where the biggest obstacle to weaving lies. While I rub and polish and sand and Never Ever swear at all I have my mind on a leash so it doesn't wander completely off and go shopping for the materials to build a yacht. Or a fence around our raised beds. Or teach the dachshund to balance on my big exercise ball. Wouldn't that be awesome? She could do it at parties and our parties would become legendary! Woah- pull back... It's kind of a bungee leash, so I am always having to pull my wandering mind back from somewhere where another project looks much better than this one.

The project my mind is on is seldom a project already underway. Those projects are not interesting and my skibbly little mind has explored them as much as needed because they were the mind-wandering destinations for previous hobby activities. Hobbies can eat your house, and vice versa, but I don't want to live without either one (I have friends who would happily live without a house if they could bed down in a Hobby Lobby or Michael's at night).

So, radio. I am not a big background sound person, but keeping the radio on might keep me from dreaming up a more compelling project than rust removal. Let's face it, after 4 hours of smoothing little delicate rusted reed fins and heddles replacing all the wax rings under the toilets is more compelling.

If I am going off on a non-weaving mental stroll and the radio doesn't work I want to at least redirect my head to wander over and think through some of those half done... mostly done projects I have that fall more firmly into the category of Home Repair and Improvement than Hobby. I often confuse them because I enjoy working on the house so much. Its just as satisfying as creating, just less portable. I hope this works, because my ability to picture how good it's going to look when the last piece of molding goes into place is blinding me a little to how many little "finish-ups" there are here. Stay tuned, Divine Reader. I pledge to report honestly on whether or not I am working on new or old projects.

Back to the rust part of the weaving circle.

After two rounds of Naval Jelly, the reed is covered with a film of black ex-rust and grey phosphorus coating. I can scrub this off the outside with steel wool and brass brushes (see the stripes where I tried each one), but between the fins the metal remains pitted and rough. It seems like the advice was right- if I want a reed this fine I need to buy a new smooth one.  Drat! 5 hours of subborn effort decides it. I will send for a stainless 10 dent reed