Tag: Weaving

  • X Is For… X‑Acto, Crossings, and eXperiment

    X Is For… X‑Acto, Crossings, and eXperiment

    Some letters arrive with a whisper, and some arrive with a blade. X is the latter — sharp, precise, and full of possibility.

    In the studio, X is the moment where something shifts. It’s the cut that reveals the next layer. It’s the crossing where two paths meet. It’s the experiment that asks, What if I try it this way instead?

    X‑Acto

    There’s a particular sound an X‑Acto knife makes when it moves through paper — a soft, decisive whisper. It’s the sound of commitment. Of choosing a line and following it. Of trusting your hand.

    I love the way an X‑Acto knife demands presence. You can’t rush it. You can’t multitask. You can’t be anywhere except exactly where the blade meets the page.

    It’s a tool that teaches attention.

    And sometimes, that’s all creativity really needs — a single, clean line to follow.

    Crossings

    Crossings are the places where things meet: materials, ideas, moods, seasons. They’re the hinge points in a project — the moment when you realize the thing you thought you were making has become something else entirely.

    Crossings can be:

    • the shift from drafting to stitching
    • the moment a color palette clicks
    • the decision to abandon a plan and follow the work instead
    • the quiet recognition that you’ve outgrown an old way of making

    Crossings are where the work deepens. They’re where you deepen.

    eXperiment

    Experiment is the heart of the studio — the willingness to try, to fail, to try again, to follow curiosity instead of outcome.

    Experiment is:

    • cutting into the “good” paper
    • mixing inks you’re not sure will blend
    • weaving a square on the pin loom just to see what happens
    • choosing texture over perfection
    • letting your hands lead instead of your expectations

    Experiment is the antidote to pressure. It’s the reminder that making is supposed to feel alive.

    Together

    X‑Acto, Crossings, and eXperiment form a kind of creative triad:

    • X‑Acto gives you precision.
    • Crossings give you direction.
    • eXperiment gives you freedom.

    Together, they create the conditions for work that feels honest — work that comes from the body, not the performance of productivity.

    Today, X feels like a doorway. A small, sharp opening into whatever comes next.

    A Question for You

    Where in your creative life are you feeling the pull toward a new crossing or experiment?

  • Makers Monday – Progress Report on the Chakra Wall

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    The Chakra Wall is coming into focus. I\’ve been hanging the ojos (which means \”eye\” in Spanish) from a specific central spot and coming out of it to the right as though expanding from that origin point.

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    This is the wall I\’m using. It\’s late in the year here, when I took this shot; November is mostly rain and getting cold. It seemed like a good day to start the project so I came out and swept down the spiderwebs.

    Seattle actually has something called, \”Spider Season.\” I\’m not sure if this is a scientific thing or just something the locals say, but man. Those little girls like to weave themselves some web.

    My husband, who is not an arachnophobe like me, Dear Reader, told me that most spiders we see are female. The males are smaller and don\’t live nearly as long. I like referring to them as \”she,\” because it makes them less terrifying.

    The reason that\’s relevant is down on the bottom right of the image are some cardboard boxes used for landscaping (you put them down as weed barrier and put dirt on top of them); we have a truly epic-sized black spider living there. So brushing down the spiders with a broom is a life skill here – particularly if you want to create an art project outside in their demesnes.

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    I set the ojos down so I could see the ones I had completed so far. The ones on the bottom with the reds are for the Root Chakra. I have one orange one for Sacral, one with yellows (more goldenrod, really) for Solar Plexus, and a green one for Heart.

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    I originally wanted them to go up, but realized that physics is a thing. The porch only goes to the right just past the glass doors, and I\’m not great with heights. So for now, I\’m going out as far as I can reach from the ground, and later as I finish more ojos I\’ll involve the husband to help me with the ladder and a hammer.

    Next up are the next three chakras: Throat (light blue); Third Eye (indigos), and Crown (violets, white, and silver).

    Keep Making, my friends!

  • The Flora and Fauna Report – Progress This Week

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    The idea of the Flora and Fauna Report came from Julia Cameron\’s book, The Artist\’s Way. She describes getting letters from a relative that she described as a \’flora and fauna report,\’ because they were about all the goings on in and out of her life. I loved the idea, because all it asks of us is to show up as we are. Kind of like meditation. 🙂

    Today is a very cold and clear, sunny day in the Pacific Northwest. I am working on a chakra ojos de dios project, which I\’ll be sharing more about in subsequent posts; but today, I wanted to share a little of our goings on.

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    The cell booster is up! Man, that was an ordeal. We needed this part, and that part, and the other part; we thought we had everything and needed… two bolts.

    That\’s it. Two little bolts. No big deal, unless you don\’t have it, and then it\’s a big deal.

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    I added two more ojos to the project (the ones on the right); the lower one is for Voice and the upper right is for Third Eye.

    I\’ll have more in a series on this project, so stay tuned!

  • Gone Visiting!

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    I\’m back at author Delilah Devlin\’s blog today, and I have a question for you:

    Why Weave?

  • Friday Night Musings

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    I was chatting with a friend online this evening and shared a picture of my pin loom weaving box and realized I hadn\’t shared it on here. I haven\’t shared much on here recently at all, really.

    As we collectively learn to navigate our catastrophically changed reality with COVID, it\’s important I think to realize the collective stress we are under. It\’s attractive to fantasize about all the \”things\” we\’ll get done in this new in-between-time, but the reality is that stress seeps into everything like poison into a creek. Particularly for us here in the States, that new reality is horrific: as of this writing, over 150,000 dead and 5 million infected.

    I find it hard to focus. I am, though, keeping up with crafts. Oddly, I haven\’t been pin loom weaving this month but knitting – I\’ll post some pics of that at another time. What I wanted to share for now is a glimpse into my pin loom weaving because it\’s something I can do when my body is too stressed, my hands too sore from stress, and my brain unable to count for lace repeats.

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    As I shared the pics with my friend today, I remembered that I\’d started weaving for a purse to replace one that my mother crocheted. It\’s a project bag and it got so ratty and falling apart but I didn\’t want to get rid of it. It wasn\’t out of a pleasant sentimentality, since my mother was a horrible child abuser, but I still held onto it out of emotional attachment. I finally decided that\’s goofy, I don\’t want to drag around such negativity with me – particularly with my art.

    And thus the idea for a knitting bag was born. The weavies are done, and next up is to sew the pieces together.

    On the rigid heddle weaving front, we\’re getting ready to start our weavealong in the Yarnworker School of Rigid Heddle Weaving. (If you\’re a weaver, why not join us? More info here.) I\’m so excited because I\’m experimenting with some endangered wool called Churro. I\’ll post pics of that at another time. But I was noodling about my weaving tonight and recalled reading about Morse code weaving in the Inventive Weaving on a Little Loom by Syne Mitchell. I decided to look it up again and there\’s a Morse code translator! Check it out, here.

    I thought it might be fun to try weaving a poem, and I even have one picked out to play with. I\’ll keep noodling it and if it comes about, I\’ll share pictures with you.

    What are you up to these days, Dear Reader?

  • Playing With My Pin Loom

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    Today I took some time for Sunday crafting while I was watching and participating in the BotanicWise Allies for Plants and People Symposium. This year, the Pin Loom Weaving Support Group held a Weavealong hosted by TexasGabbi of Turtle Looms. The weavelong ran for six weeks and, though I did not finish on time due to the stress of the global pandemic, I\’m still plugging away at it. I made all the weavies called for in the weavealong, but I used to be intimidated by sewing the weavies together – part of the weavealong instructions.

    I\’m happy to say that I no longer am intimidated by this process! I\’ve successfully sewn Week 1, Week 2a, and Week 2b weavies together. And today, I worked on the extra project for Week 2, embroidering a weavie.

    This caused me some consternation, because my very first textile art was embroidery. I could not settle on a design I liked. I dithered and hemmed and hawed, and overthought, and finally, today, decided I\’d had it: JUST DO IT, as Nike says. Right? Right.

    Only problem was, when I started to embroider on a finished weavie, I couldn\’t get it under tension. It was flopping all over the place because the weavies are such loose-weave fabric, and I don\’t have a small enough embroidery hoop. A friend suggested putting the weavie back on the Zoom Loom, and thereby under tension. I tried that, but fabric off a loom settles and it\’s next to impossible to get it back to its former state.

    Then it hit me: why not make a new weavie?

    Voila.

    This time, I switched back to my main color, a lovely charcoal grey marino wool blend. Then I used my CC3 color (contrast color #3), which is a light grey variegated color, also a marino blend. I used a detail of a pattern from Alice Starmore\’s book, Celtic Needlepoint (if you haven\’t checked out her work before, you owe it to yourself to visit her site that she shares with her talented daughter Jade Starmore, Virtual Yarns). I added the year and then took it off the loom. I\’m really pleased with the final look of it. When it came off the loom, the threads relaxed and came together, so the needlepoint really pops.

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    Next time, I\’ll share some of my herbal adventures. I have some lemon mint infusion steeping on my counter overnight and tomorrow, I plan to make a mint syrup.

    What about you, Dear Reader? What are you making?

  • Writer Wednesday

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    It\’s Wednesday, and I\’m a writer. That\’s about the only reason the title is what it is, and because I couldn\’t think of anything else to use. Check-in sounded too session-y, and holy shit the world\’s on fire a little histrionic. Both are, however, true. So this is a Writer Wednesday Check-In Because the World Is On Fire.

    And in some ways, my sentiment is, Burn, baby, burn. It\’s well past time we reckon with the consequences of the genocide we\’ve committed against Black and brown people in this country, (I\’m in the U.S. if that wasn\’t already clear), and the convulsive changes occurring here and around the world are necessary for growth.

    Sure ain\’t easy, though. Mr. Floyd was laid to rest yesterday. I keep trying to write something coherent about it but run up sharply against the fact that the world doesn\’t need another horrified white lady extolling … well, anything on race right now. No shit, it was horrible that he was murdered. But the truth is, this has been happening for hundreds of years, in big cities, in small towns, and in rural places in the back of beyond. Like Will Smith said, racism isn\’t new, it\’s just being filmed.

    So how do we move forward from this moment? Particularly when we\’re gripped in a global pandemic and an environmental cataclysm that may make everything else moot if we don\’t get on it?

    I don\’t know. And that\’s not a bad thing, this not-knowing. It\’s not comfortable, I know that. But I want to invite you to sit with that not-knowing, that place between what we knew to be true and the place of what is actually true, or at least the next threshold. The more we can hold this place of not-knowing, the better we can listen and have a chance to really hear the lessons we\’re being called to learn.

    What that looks like for me is a couple things.

    One is, I learned a new concept this week: \”Performative.\” There are many kinds of resistance and, unfortunately, we\’ve seen a lot of performative acts over the last week and a half in the wake of Mr. Floyd\’s murder by white people. The most egregious example of this are the statements by NFL CEO Roger Goodell, where he apologized to … whom, us? the players? Colin Kaepernick? for censuring players for their peaceful protests of police brutality. Why is this performative? It cost him nothing. Mr. Kaepernick wasn\’t re-signed, and the fines paid by him and other players have not been returned, at least as of this writing. But it\’s on a smaller, more localized scale too. Many of my fellow whites have been vociferous on social media about the horrors of racism and police brutality, and there\’s a subset of these folx who are acting as though they\’ve just become aware of it. There\’s also a sense that this is what we\’re doing this week, but next week when something else comes into our consciousness we\’ll go do that and forget about Black Lives Matter. What makes it performative is this aspect of publicly doing it: \”See? I\’m a good person because I\’m shouting out loud how bad this is, and how much it hurts me to see it, and how enraged I am.\” I\’m not going to restate things that BIPOC folx have said better and more informatively than I can, and frankly we should be listening to them.

    Which is my point: I\’ve been very quiet the last week or so because I\’ve been sitting with my own racism and unconscious bias, and asking hard questions about why I\’m posting this or that? Am I doing it to keep the focus on BIPOC voices and activists? Am I doing what they are asking me to do as an ally, or am I doing things to make myself feel better or express my horror and outrage without realizing that the BIPOC community has been traumatized from watching on video Mr. Floyd\’s murder? The young woman, all of seventeen years old, who filmed the murder has been the subject of frequent harassment and has been made to feel unsafe. Is my jumping up and down going to help her? Or Mr. Floyd\’s devastated family and friends? I ask myself, if it was my family member murdered on a video went viral so that I see it everywhere from social media to the news to analysis shows, how would I feel?

    And so, I\’m quiet. Because I\’d be fucking devastated.

    I\’ve joined a private reading group to wrestle with these ideas and educate myself better. The book we\’ve chosen to read first is called How To Be An Anti-Racist, by Ibram X. Kendi. The link is to Chicago\’s only Black woman-owned bookstore. It\’s a safe space to discuss the ideas in the book as well as a place to ask embarrassing questions like, what do I tell my Black friend when her neighbor is acting badly? I\’d just call the police, but I don\’t fear that I might be shot if I did that. I\’m at absolutely no risk of it, and in fact depend on the authority my whiteness gives me. What does wipipo mean? Can I use it, or is that not a term that I should be using? How do I talk to my friends and coworkers of color about race? How do I not be an asshole when I\’m trying to help?

    There are many resources, and if you\’re looking for things, may I suggest you look to BIPOC leaders who have already written extensively on the subject? You don\’t need me, a white person, educating you on how to be a better ally. We, each of us, need to be doing that work for ourselves and listening to the BIPOC thinkers who are willing to talk to us about it. And we need to not bother our friends, neighbors, and family members with it – they\’ve been traumatized by the events of recent days. It\’s not up to them to educate us. And we need to be very suspicious of our own desires to ask them: are we asking out of a genuine desire to know? Or are we asking them in specific so they know we\’re \”enlightened and woke\” now? If you absolutely don\’t know where to start, check out your public library. They\’ve got curated lists and librarians willing to answer all sorts of questions for you.

    I know this is a long one, but thank you if you\’ve read with me this far.  I wanted to share, and I wanted to write about what\’s going on, but it\’s been really difficult to find my voice in the middle of what\’s going on. For that reason, I\’ve decided to coordinate a session of Finding Water starting this Sunday. There is no charge for it and the course will go for fourteen weeks. Head on over to our writing group site, Writer Zen Garden, for more info.

    Other than that, I\’ve been learning to weave and having a ball with it. I\’m also taking a class on Herbalism called the Science and Art of Herbalism, and I made some lavender tincture with brandy this week. It will steep for a month, and then we\’ll see how it turned out. I\’m going to start featuring more of that kind of activity on my craft blog, Knoontime Knitting. If you enjoy making things, I hope you\’ll come on over the join the conversation.

    I hope you are staying safe and healthy. COVID appears to not be going away any time soon, so make sure to strengthen your immune system and be smart about being out and about in public. Hug your loved ones close and keep on writing.

    Love,

    Noony

  • Slow Craft

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    Fast. 5G. Upload speeds. Download speeds. Streaming. Faster cell service. 24/7 news cycle. Always-on. Technostress is stress induced by computer use. \”Its symptoms include aggravation, hostility toward humans, impatience, and fatigue. According to experts, humans working continuously with computers come to expect other humans and human institutions to behave like computers, providing instant responses, attentiveness, and an absence of emotion.\” (1)

    I don\’t know about you, but I find that all exhausting. I use technology and have done since I was a teenager. But I find myself called to slow down in my craft pursuits. Take weaving, for instance. I enjoy pin loom weaving, which is what the picture above features. Popular in the 1920\’s through the 1940\’s, pin looms can be used to make clothing, housewares, toys, and other useful items. The standard size is a four inch square, though makers have created pin looms in a variety of sizes to satisfy inquisitive weavers.

    What is it about slow craft that\’s calling to us? There are now craft revolutions all over the U.S. and around the world, such as Seattle\’s Urban Craft Uprising. Makerspaces are independent and now even part of public libraries. People are merging craft with technology, bringing new ways to old.

    And for many of us, slow craft is the antidote to fast culture. We sit and chat, or watch streaming shows or listen to audiobooks. We meditate using fiber or wood. We dream on the canvas or with words on the page. We journal and take pictures with our smartphones. There are even classes on how to be a better photographer using your cell phone. All of which is designed to help us to slow down, stop running, and be in the moment.

    The act of creation is a radical act. It\’s saying to the world, this didn\’t exist before but I\’ve made it so. It is rule-breaking, not rule-following. It\’s not necessarily rebellious, it\’s simply outside the known. Sometimes it comments on the known and sometimes it finds the known irrelevant.

    During pandemic, I\’ve found myself returning to my pin loom. It calms me in ways that even my knitting can\’t – it turns out I can\’t count during times of high stress. I don\’t have to count to weave a pin loom square. My pin loom group is on Facebook (fast technology meets slow craft) and hosted a Mystery Weavealong that went for seven weeks. It was such a relief to get off work, wander over to my nest on the lounger, and weave squares. Not because I had to, or because I had something in mind – the mystery part of the weavealong meant that I literally didn\’t know what I was weaving until the very end – but because the act of making squares settled my mind and let me feel productive but not pushed to finish any particular project. Just make a square. Which color? The instructions told me. And through that practice, my mind calmed.

     

    Resources

    (1) Laudon, Kenneth C and Jane P Laudon: Management Information Systems: Managing the Digital Firm, c2007, Chapter 4, pg 156.

  • W Is For… Weaving!

    W Is For… Weaving!

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    Weaving is one of the oldest textile arts in the world. The most complicated looms, like the huge one featured in the movie Wanted, are the same in principle to the simple back looms used in the mountains of Peru for centuries.  The idea is you use something to put the warp under tension.  Shown above is my simple Cricket Loom, with the warp threaded and some of the weft worked.

    The thing I find interesting about weaving is that it\’s more complex, at least to my brain, than knitting.  I have to make peace with winding on the warp, and with the mechanics of the loom itself.  The process of actually weaving, meaning putting the shuttle back and forth, is relatively straightforward.  But, as my weaving teacher Natalie Boyett of the Chicago Weaving School pointed out, half of weaving is winding on the warp.  Accepting that, embracing it, helps one enjoy the process of weaving even more.

    What about you, Dear Reader?
    What unexpected thing has your crafting taught you?

  • I Is For… Inkle Weaving

    \"I\"Ever wonder where things like reins for bridles, belts, pet collars, and trim come from?  If they\’re not leather, they\’re most likely woven (though there are many other ways, for example, spool knitting, but I digress).  The type of loom used can vary, but here\’s what I find interesting.

    My weaving instructor, Natalie Boyett of the Chicago Weaving School, (and if you\’re here in the city, or visiting, and have ever thought about maybe learning to weave, go there.  She\’s hands-down one of the best instructors I\’ve ever had), showed me that weaving is one of the oldest textile arts.  Here\’s a brain-bender –  all looms are fundamentally the same:  they are designed to put tension on the warp (the length-wise threads) so that the craftsperson can put the weft (the cross-wise threads) in between them.  In this way, fabric is created.

    So what\’s an inkle loom?  It\’s a small, usually portable, loom that allows you to wind on a continuous warp, which means it can be really, really long.  The weaving surface isn\’t very wide, usually only a few inches, because the idea is to weave narrow fabric.  There\’s an example of one here.

    What about you, Dear Reader?
    What would you want to make if you could wave a magic wand and know how to use an inkle loom?

     

  • A to Z Challenge, Day 17: Q Is For Quesquemitl

    A to Z Challenge, Day 17: Q Is For Quesquemitl

    In my weaving class, I am making a quesquemitl, a type of poncho that is made from a continuous piece of fabric – and, thus, a popular choice for handweavers.  The photo above is from Wikipedia, of a garment on view at the Museo Popular in Mexico: \”Large shawl called a quechquemitl by Margarita Roberta Lucas Garcia from Tenango de Doria, Hidalgo as part of a temporary exhibit of crafts from Hidalgo at the Museo de Arte Popular, Mexico City.\”

    I love the yarn that I got to use.  It\’s a rayon with many different colors, as you can see from the spool here; however, from a distance it looks blue.

    I haven\’t yet sewn the piece, which means that will be my next project.  I\’m finishing the hand-sewn edge and then will baseball stitch the pieces together.

    I don\’t know how to baseball stitch yet.

    Guess I have my work cut out for me.

    What do you want to learn this year?
  • Weaver\’s Journal – The Fringe of Weaving

    Weaver\’s Journal – The Fringe of Weaving

    I\’m working on the fringe for the Belii Shawl and wanted to do a laticework effect with the beads.  Since the image I\’m using is from a book to which I don\’t have the rights, (I almost typed, \”writes,\”) I drew it for you here by hand:

    The top picture is straight fringe; the bottom one is the lattice effect that I wanted to try to achieve.  I used a fringe winder to ply the fringe together.  What that means is, you take the yarns that are the fringe and figure out direction they are spun.  All yarn has a natural direction of spin.  One direction spins it further, creating more energy in the twist; the other direction essentially unspins the yarn (and with looser yarns can cause them to fuzz up).

    When you ply fringe, you take two or more of the fringe yarns and twist them further in the direction of their natural twist, and then tie a knot.  When you release the yarns, after they\’re knotted, they roll together creating a pretty, and more stable, fringe that will not knot up when you wash it, for example.

    What my hope was, was that by taking yarns adjacent to each other and plying them together, I could create a lattice effect like I\’ve drawn, above.  What happened was that in plying the second row of fringe, it increased the twist of the fringes above it and when I released the yarns after the second knot, they twisted together, creating a mess and not a pretty, flat lattice.  I\’ll show you what I mean, and what I did instead.

    This is the second side of fringe; the yarn ends are longer on this side (meaning, the fringe is longer).  The fringe on the right has the first row of plying and beading done; as you can see, the beads are held in the middle of the twist by the energy of the plying.  (They\’re not so tightly in there that they cannot move; I suspect when I wash it, for example, I\’ll have to push them back into place.)

    The tackle box is there to provide weight on the main body of the weaving.  By doing so, the fringe has something to pull against when you ply it.

    This is the first row of fringe all done.  The fringe will be trimmed at the end, but I\’ll wait until I have the beads in place, (three rows in total).  The finished length will be between six and eight inches.

    In this view, you can see both sides of fringe as well as the main body of the shawl.  The loose threads on the body of the shawl will be snipped after its first wash.  I don\’t want to wash it until the fringe is done, otherwise the threads will knot with each other and make a mess.

    These are the tools I\’m using.  Clockwise from top left:  fringe winder tool, gold beads, scissors, COFFEE mug (if you don\’t think this is an essential tool at Knoontime Knitting, you haven\’t been paying attention), fringe comb, extra yarn, and purple beads.

    This is the first attempt at the latticed fringe.  As you can see, the second row of beading just causes the whole thing to twist up on itself.

    We tried again, this time with my instructor holding the yarns under tension.  It didn\’t help; as soon as we released the tension, they twisted together.  I need a sound-effect, like FOOP!  Foop, they twisted together.

    I put the tackle box on the first row of beading and made the second row of plies on the same ply as the first.  On the first row, I plied it 13 times; the second row didn\’t need that many because of residual twist; so I used seven twists instead.

    Detail of both rows.

    Final view showing the whole side.  I\’m really curious to see what it looks like when it\’s done and washed.  The fabric right now is thick and dense; it\’s mercerized (perle) cotton and it softens up after washing; I\’m curious what the hand of the shawl will be like once it\’s all done.