Waiting, Waiting and More Waiting

ASIDE-I have decided that creating posts is a grand adventure into the unknown and ever changeable.  My formatting never  stays where it belongs, never does what it should. Buttons take over-such as the underlining button or the colour button. There is no stabilizing the format so every time one opens my blog page the layout is ever different ever shifting-much like life. So instead of fighting the whole thing and becoming frustrated. I have decided to accept what ever it gives me as an ever-changing piece of random performance art that 
changes with each performance. 

"And He.." Last for the Shannock in my studio-finished 9inches by 24 inches
maybe 11 inches if I decide to not turn under bottom Selve

Fog and layers of ridges
Great study for
 transparencies

transparencies

Today and most of the week everything is or has been about waiting. Waiting to get stitches or at least the bandage off. Waiting for the loom to go.Waiting to buy tables and furniture for new looms and equipment. Waiting to warp two looms-again the bandages Waiting to leave for Arizona where I am teaching in Tuscon and Sun City. Waiting for packages. Waiting to finish handouts-still can’t type and I am definitely not going to do them on my i-phone. The screens way too small and the spelling variations can't be seen-at least by me.  Waiting to start my new piece, because those other things I am waiting on might show up and interrupt.   Waiting to take pictures of fog. I can’t reach the push buttons on the camera button on either camera.  The slipping in and out of images into fog this morning was/is incredible. A real reason perhaps excuse for  working with transparencies not that I need one. Sometimes reasons and logic help me to commit and get around to doing what I really want to do put have performance anxiety about whatever...  I really want to design  a landscape with ridges and trees and fog as a colour and technique study.  I wish I could remember who wove a piece of trees in fog with silk and wool, fog and the softness and silence of fog. It was in a show I was in at least 10 years ago.  It was such an incredible piece. Someone said it was stolen-so very bad. Been there done that.

 My typing and mouse usage leaves way too much to chance.


(This is just great.  I have managed to hit another magic button that  wants to save all of my typos and corrections.  And I can't find it to turn it off. How embarrassing!  Where is the sanctity of second chances without shame that the corrections one is able to do on the computer generally promote.)

Fortunately Most of the waiting is finite, just frustrating. Each minute seems a thousand minutes;lined up and disappearing into the future.

Waiting, waiting,waiting, more waiting.

Frustration, definition via the Internet;     Part of Speech- Noun; synonyms: annoyance, bitter pill, blocking, bummer, circumvention, contravention, curbing, defeat, disgruntlement, dissatisfaction, downer, drag, failure, fizzle, foiling, grievance, hindrance, impediment, irritation, let down, non fulfillment, non success, obstruction, old one two, resentment, setback, unfullfilment, vexation.   I really think it should have included the word waiting.

Surprise!!

Well, that venting feels better most of the  synonyms don’t fit my situation anyhow.

I need to create a hierarchy of waiting.  Perhaps, I can organize what I am waiting for by the amount of time I need to wait for the waiting to end. waiting like  Dante’’s levels of hell.  I really need to reread the Inferno again just for the descriptions of hell. I am sure there must be something about hell, procrastination and waiting. Or, perhaps, surely,  levels of limbo. 

 Limbo (Latin limbus, edge or boundary, referring to the "edge" of Hell) is a speculative idea.

Obviously written by  someone who doesn’t mind waiting. 

Enough Diva-ness  and word play for today.


WOW! What a difference a day can make!

       Yesterdays attitude seems almost funny today. Well-today it’s humorous-Yesterday not so. Waiting is over and now I feel a since of urgency. I can use my hand again. Finally discovered the complexity of my hand surgery. I have 4 incisions that are healing just fine- 4 in the palm and one at the base of my thumb.  Stings something fierce with the stitches out.

What Spider Women
could have told Ikotomi
and Icarus.

       Poor Dr. Yao-my hand surgeon- I don’t think he understand my obsession with tapestry weaving. He doesn't know whether to be amused or…? about my weaving and my schedule, or worried about my unsterotypical ideas and work.  At my age- and I don’t think that I am that old-I think he thinks a women at my age should be retiring and easing up. He always has this nonplussed look on his face when I discuss my tapestry weaving and how it affects my hands.  If I don’t weave my hands stiffen up. O well, if I were in my 30’s I might feel  the same way.exhibit
      Last week was even better
I won Best of Show at the Blue Ridge Hand weavers Exhibit. Every time I have entered-my second time- I have been amazed at the quality of the work in the show. The pictures they mount on their website are lovely and intriguing. To top it all off Tommye Scanlin had donated one of her Kudzu pieces to a fund raising raffle they were holding. I never win anything. I feel buying raffle tickets is  a donation-nothing more. I was so surprised when I won.

Tommye Scanlin.
size 20inches by 22inches. Image stolen from
Blue Ridge Hand weavers  exhibit web site. My thanks for its use

     Had a nice surprise today. My Handwoven Magazine  arrived and it actually has a  good deal of tapestry in it. It also contains a picture of So Many Chances and the colour is fairly accurate.  There is a very interesting article by Sara Swett on weaving lists. Sort of reminds me of the time I wove the scratch paper from my drafting table/ work table. See photo's somewhere below and out of place. They keep shifting.

Broken feather/ Broken promise

       I     with drew So Sought after from Small Expressions.  So all the prize winners moved up 1 level.  I am still a little angry at HGA, but not for the reason one would think. Prizes, getting into shows and awards have never meant that much to me. After the last 3 decades of entering shows I view it like a game of chance. I don’t stake how I feel about my work or myself on games of chance. They are more of a puzzlement to be figured out and be amused about the results.  I am angry because on January 4th I called the HGA office to ask  for clarification of the rules- the rule about a piece having never been published. I wanted to know if they meant published anywhere or just in HGA publications. On their advice and reassurance that it just meant HGA publications I entered the piece. I would not have entered that piece into the exhibit if I had been given accurate information. I am not so dumb to think someone wouldn’t have noticed let alone the ethics of entering a piece knowing it broke the rules-so not me. Cheating destroys the game aspect of entering shows.   The year before they took away my third prize because my framing was messed up in shipping.  I use the letter in my classes when we discuss mounting, shipping, and entering exhibits. Good workmanship is important to the whole experience of a tapestry. They hung the piece, but hung it upside down. I just can’t seem to win with HGA. I admit that the frame problem was mine, but still they should have hung it right side up.  I have been in Small Expressions 13 or 14 times since 1988- 20 or so years. O, well-asi es la vida de los esclavos-gr! Lol! It’s taken them until about yesterday to remove it from their web page! So now I get to answer 4 months of questions about what happened. Enuff!

 On to better more important  stuff.

  I did finish the piece on the Shannock.    I finished the sample, scrap,  portion of "And he..." I am just not sure how to define this piece at this particular point in time or if I'll ever attempt to show it or sale it-after all it is only a portion of the whole.    The piece itself is 9 inches by 24 inches. I still haven't decided how to finish it. Leave my name or turn it under. I love the over dyed indigo colour. Pat dyed the ton of the ugly yellow stuff I had purchased because it was cheap and i could afford it into a beautiful Indigo colour.Other then cheapness i have no idea what I thought I could do with all of that ugly yellow.   I, also,  need to decide how I am going to handle the two feet of selvedge on each side. The only thing I seemed to be able to do  last week was weave with my hand all wrapped up.   Now that I woven the sample no matter what the reason I wove the scrap, but  mostly because I couldn't  let go of the loom with an unfinished piece on it. (Interesting the spell-check brings up love when I click on wove. ) I can hardly wait to start the small format/ small scale version of the design.  It will be half the size this “and he…”  was intended to be.I have fallen in love with the colours.

Scroodle scrap paper from Maze Craze
1990

I love the colours in the  wing, but I did learn that it would have been much better to have woven the design the other direction. I wouldn’t have had to work so hard getting rid of the stair steps on the feathers.

 Learned not to use crosheen on the lace bits. It worms against the wool and even worse against the embroidery flosses.

Maze Craze late 1990

 I learned that I didn’t need bobbins. All I needed was to be able to hook the wefts with my fingers and pull. Valuable information  for those weaving with problem hands that i teach.  It does make one work harder to keep the weft loopies from forming in the half passes. There really is a very good reason for using bobbins as opposed to loose wefts hanging and butterflies. The bobbin helps control the tension of the weft threads as they are woven and come off the bobbin.  The bobbins also allow the weaver to control the twist and the closeness of the colour as it is laid in a pass. This then allows you to twist the weft bundle and change the density of the colour in mélanges and chenes.  I need to do some samples of this colour density thing  happening.

       Another lesson that I learned is that different rayon embroidery flosses weave differently. DMC rayon weaves thicker and has an almost nappy feel.  The ratio  is also different.  DMC needs  4  strands  instead of the 6 that Coates and Clark’s need at 20 epi.  At 10 epi it needs to be double that. Coats and Clark's rayon-especially in the black gets a flake or peel of something light grey when you weave at 20 epi. It’s a little like dandruff or dry skin. The same reason I don’t use quilting thread as warp, but buttonhole twist or  dual craft thread for warp at 20 epi.

Remembering spring as fall happens

      I really had fun with the gold in the scroll. I learned that filigree and loops need to be larger in scale  in order to allow the detail to be seen at 5-10 feet where the best optical blending occurs in the colour when weaving with wool at  10 epi.  On the other hand at 20 epi the scroll work can be much more delicate and should be much more delicate in scale, because people stand so close to the small work. They actually have a tendency to stand closer than necessary to get the optical blending.   One would think that if the optimum at 10 epi is 10 feet then it should be 5 feet for 20 epi. BUT, people don’t do that  with small format/small scale work, People stand a foot or two from the work.

 SO for my designs the colour blending needs to be finer with more bobbin blendings that are more closely related  to get the maximum effect of the optical blending.

 I ended up doing a lot of single wraps while working on the inner turns of the scroll. Next time I think I’ll make the scroll twice as big so I have two warp threads instead of one  warp thread. Live and learn. This gave me a lot of practice of sharing warp turns and shared warps. It’s fairly easy to hide the interlocks and weft turns if one remembers to watch the direction of the turn around loop  or the direction it goes around the  warp.  The turns and wraps need to extra dense so that they can pack down and help hide the sharing and the turns. The direction of the loops isn’t always consistent in which colour looks right in the sharing. It depends on if you are working with a hill or a valley thread. Turns and loop backs done on valley threads are easier to hide because the next turn or wrap drops down into the valley and covers the previous turning thread.  Doing almost anything in a valley is easier to cover because the next half pass is a hill thread drops down and covers.  In vertical soumack it works  in the same way. Drop the turning thread onto a valley warp and the next pass of weft will cover the turn-unless your working the weft with too tight or a warp tension too loose and that’s a whole other problem.

Chene's car seat

The other study that I am doing with the top of the selvedge is experimenting with soumack  and twined edges which I will then braid when I cut off the piece, which should be tomorrow. The loom is ready to go with good karma!!!

(This is just great.  I have managed to hit a magic button that  wants to save all of my typos and corrections. How embarrassing!  Where is the sanctity of second chances without shame that the corrections one is able to do on the computer generally promote.)  

Well as I began. It's all a great adventure...
cheers for now.

Functioning-sort of.

No name-finished before I left
one of three done on new Mirrix looom

So many things have happened in the last 3 weeks I feel like I am on sensory and emotional overload. So many good things have happened and so many not so good things have happened . I really just want to retreat into weaving and not deal with the rest of the world. There is a novel(Feehan’s Water bound) that I have been reading-one of the ones that I use to relax with-probably more related to the pulp fiction dime novels of the past-nothing else to recommend it-other then it holds my attention and has nothing to do with reality, but it does end the continual mind cycling that I can get into. The heroine is a high functioning Autistic. There are some  beautiful descriptions of her retreating  and what she is retreating into in her own mind.  Being soothed by pattern, patterns and flow of water and her internal world of colour and sensation

Kona Pink

Kona Orange

that I can identify with when I weave. So tempting, soothing, focused, and comforting. On the other hand she also reaches a point where too much external stimuli effects her in extremely negative ways. She retreats back into the patterns and her safety net regime. I think I am ready…My loom and all its promises is warped-unfortunately, it has been warped  for 3 weeks and nothing has had time to happen. The only thing standing in my way of weaving  is finishing this blog as per my promise to myself. Doing  it every 2 weeks that had has slid to 3 weeks this time with just too much and too many events happenings etc. . 

Marge and Chene-a visit both enjoyed for almost 2 years.
Marge helped me train him to be gentle with fragile people.
He always minded her and protected her from all perceived threats
-some times good sometimes not so good. 

Marge and favourite Hagen loom

By now many of you know that my good friend Marge Crueger died while I was in Albuquerque. Next week would have been her birthday. I am so glad I got to see her again and tell her much I cared for her before I left. I am re posting a couple of her pictures and a little of her work. She was so ready. She hated being bed bound and not being able to do something with her hands. She left a small tapestry undone that I will finish weaving for her as promised. She  hated the idea of leaving a tapestry unfinished so it's now for me to complete. .

4 of Marge's pieces including Skunk Cabbage

It amazes me how age effects different people. My Uncle Ray and Aunt Donna are roughly the same age as my father. They are still snow skiing and running all over creation. My father is the same age is house bound and can barely walk and function. He does love the puppy I found for him a couple of months ago. It is so odd watching people talk around and over him like he’s not there by people who are professionals that should know better. It’s like one becomes invisible when one reaches a certain age. it's either that or people lapse into baby talk with the elderly.  It’s no wonder that some of the old retreat into themselves. The bad part is that we do it in love, kindness and duty. I need to keep telling myself this while trying to deal with another family member. It all makes me wonder how Spencer and I’ll approach old age. Does make one think.

So Sought After, First place Small Expressions

All this has been tempered with the really great events of my life. My trip to Albuquerque was definitely beyond imagination. My show at Village Wools looked really good. I don’t usually do one person shows, because it takes so many small pieces to fill up a space. There were 19 pieces. I also had a piece in the ATA small format exhibit. There was some amazing work in the show. The catalogue is fantastic. They were able to photograph Kona Orange well. My colour palette can be difficult to photograph accurately. Who would have thought that the It’s about Time exhibit would still be going on after all these years or who have thought that the fundamental  nature(large format) of popular tapestry would have changed so much to allow small format!!!! It has gone from no venues to many venues-so cool-often in the same shows. Asa’s Rock's was in Bedazzled. In Small Expressions I took a first prize! I have now been in Small Expressions’ 13-14 times (I think) won a first(2?), second, third, and was disqualified for a third prize last year because there was problems with my framing. I saved the letter to use as an example about the wisdom of using good framing and mounting techniques.

Village Wools  Class, Albuquerque, New Mexico

My Village Wools class was so much fun. I really like teaching this class and will offer it again. It was fun working with students that had done some tapestry weaving. We were able to get in to more advanced techniques. The mind does some interesting things. There was this dressed headless mannequin that every time I would walked by her it was like it was a real person. It would startle me every time. It was like having an extra class member-rather spooky.

Favourite Cartoon found on my loom one morning in Albuquerque with Fluffy becoming Chene. In case you can't read the text it says Chene/Fluffy decided to test a long standing rule: Never mess with Grandma while she is weaving.

So many Clouds, taken in the midle of a cloud burst

Sadly the one class didn’t have enough students, but have been invited back to teach another time-date not set. Would love to teach again at Village Wools-so maybe…

Silver Repousse Milagros

In the Craft Museum in Santa Fe I saw some beautiful silver work both modern and several hundred Milagros.

More Silver Milagros

Detail of Irvin Trujillo's Ikat

The Whole Rug-Thanks for allowing me to use these images Irvin!

Chamayo purses woven by Shirley Gallegos

There were so many exhibits to see, but I did manage to see all of the tapestry exhibits. Really enjoyed them. It seemed that every place I looked there was tapestry. Many of the small towns we traveled through at several weaving shops with people weaving. What a trip! I loved seeing Lisa and Irwin Trujillo and Centinela . My husband now owns a T-shirt that he acquired from their shop. I have two beautiful Chimayo style purses for Pat and myself. The craft museum had 6-7 of his weavings of Irvin's. It was so nice seeing old friends at the ATA get together Saturday evening. I also enjoyed the lectures and the digislam. Attended lectures by Lynne Curran and James Kohler all work in such opposite ways. I could never work in either’s style or way. I prefer my contained disciplined  chaos.  The digislam is always a curiosity to me. It's nice to see the different styles of weaving. BUT,  I am with Lynn it’s really kinda of scary seeing small format work magnified so many times. Interestingly a good design will always be a good design no matter how many times it is enlarged. I had some interesting reactions to the majority of modern  South West weaving that  I saw. It has so little detail. It’s big bold, flashy, beautiful, erudite, but it  never seems to feel quite personal and then leaves me wondering. Intellectually I understand it and it's beautiful.  I never seem to feel that way about the more traditional SW weaving as embodied in the Trujillo’s weaving-both Lisa and Irwin’s and the historical work that I saw. I really loved the Ikat designs and was amazed at the skill it takes to get it right.

I acquired a lovely beater that fits my hand nicely and is the right size for my hand from Al Snipes. Thank you- AL- I love it. Your work is so beautiful. Also, the wooden needle that I am going to be sharing. I can hardly wait to receive the 3 other beaters that I am purchasing for my students to try-a left handed, right handed and an ambidextrous in beautiful cherry and walnut. Still love my Shannock and fork beaters. The shaping of All’s beaters may be a little easier on my hand though. I am definitely looking at more hand surgery in the very near future. My thumb decided to finish locking up on this trip.

Storm Clous and Hoodoos

Spencer and I had a lovely evening with Dianne Kennedy and her husband at Zia in Santa Fe. She was so full of historical information and first contact information that I am so interested in. We are going to try and hook up when I teach in Arizona in September and see the dancers in my break between classes. Spencer really enjoyed talking with you all to.

Hopi Embroidery or Brocade

When I was Albuquerque we went to the Pueblo Cultural center and I was finally able to get a closer non- picture oriented look at Hopi Embroidery. It is so related to soumack, but pictures of the finished product have always been really bad. I wasn’t sure if I was doing it right or which side was the right side. Just not enough detail. My picture that a friend gave me what seems like a hundred years ago-Sorry Yella, but you even apologized at the time. I can now say that I was/am doing it correctly. Waht a relief!!!

It’s going to take me weeks to sort all of my information out and get it in a useful fashion. I managed to overload both cards in my cameras-2 gigs each. There were many things I didn’t get a chance to photograph because it rained and thundered the whole time we were there. In Oregon when it rains I can still usually take pictures through the rain drops, but these were mega drops that flowed over everything. Next time I think I’ll borrow Kathy’s underwater camera. It would have been a great help.

Enough for now!! There is just so much more, but it was good to get home to Chene. I really missed my mutt. Ready for a ride in his carseat.
TIME TO WEAVE!!!- Besides-I have totally messed up the program I am working in and It's shifting all over the place.

Cheers,

kathe