happy valentine's day

i did a little bit of nail bling for today; nothing too big. it's 24kt gold flecks and a pink heart. i noticed that the 24kt thing was popular in the nail circuit, and remembered i had some flakes left over in a jar from when i was in college and focusing on illuminated manuscripts.

i've got a couple of things i'm messing around with right now, one being spinning on my tulipwood jay spindle. it's bombyx silk and camel. it drafts smoothly and spins with a subtle tawny stripe. the other thing is i traded my violin for a ukulele; just waiting on some better strings, then i'll start to learn how to play it.

for dinner tonight i made vegetarian pot pie filled with asparagus, mushrooms, peas, onion, carrots, and beans, topped with filo dough, and served with rose wine. for dessert i baked white chocolate and cherry scones with strawberry rose champagne tea. the theme was hearts and pink. i used things i found around the house that fit into those subjects. it's really enjoyable setting the table for a special event, i should do it more often.

bits of before

i snapped some photos before i left, and have finally gotten around to posting them. the silk noil and color grown green cotton blend spun up with interesting texture and i think will stay a single. happily, the hue wasn't diluted much at all by the addition of the white silk. this is before fulling and enhancing the color by an alkaline bath.

although it has been finished for awhile, here is the silk cosy for my kuchulu spindle. bright yellow, and soft pink; the influence being from the kumihimo kaitei.

spin, spin, spin

yay! i completed my first ravelry 'tour de fleece' a couple of hours ago. all in all, i was able to spin a sampling of dyed bombyx silk brick, 25 grams of treenway silks dyed tussah roving, 25 grams of bombyx silk noil, 25 grams of treenway silks tussah noil, and a half sheet of mulberry paper. the mulberry paper connects with the silk theme, as silkworms eat mulberry leaves.

the interesting thing about these types of silk (the exception being the bombyx brick) is that as a single they are somewhat course feeling, but once plied, become soft and light. as well, the bombyx noils contrast more when blending with carders than the tussah, which is a finer noil.

as if a steady stream of spinning for the last 23 days wasn't enough, i've started carding a bombyx silk noil and green colorgrown peruvian cotton batt to spin this week. striking while the irons hot, and all that.

topsy turvy

spinning away on my drop spindle; this time tussah noil. it's drafting thinner than the bombyx noil, so the singles are finer. i've decided to play it safe and to divide up the fiber into two balls to ply together, rather than risk a center pull ball tangling. it should be interesting and nubby when plied, hopefully tomorrow. tour de fleece is over on the 22nd, so i should concentrate on finishing this up. fingers crossed!

challenging silk

as i've been doing a bit of spinning lately, i thought it would be fun to join the tour de fleece on ravelry this year. there's a wildcard team for jenkin's turkish spindlers; and as it's my spindle of choice, i joined them.

focusing on silk and different preparations of it, i've spun up some dyed bombyx brick, 25g of dyed tussah roving, and now some silk noil. the silk noil is the really interesting one, as it's spun similarly to short staple cotton. popcorn garlands come to mind when i look at it. i think i'll keep it as a singles. i have another bag of tussah silk noils which is smoother, no vegetable matter, and looks to be a longer staple length. which i plan on spinning up after this noil.

i love drop spinning; it helps me focus, work through my emotions/thoughts, and forms a kind of meditation practice for me. now if only it burned a significant amount of calories...

towering above them all

well, i received my newest spindle a lot faster than i thought! arriving in the mail on monday, i was able to ply the 1.4 oz of yak/silk singles i had just finished; it would have been a very near thing if i had to ply it on the lark (winding the plied yarn onto the whorl creates a lot more air between layers than singles, so the same amount is nearly double the volume when plied). the swan's shaft is maple, and the whorl is cocobolo. i won't have to make a spindle cosy for it though, as it's a little too big to make travel easy. so, i've started work on a cosy for the kuchulu instead.

sewing for utility purposes

usually i store and transport my drop spindles and fiber in a lantern moon basket i bought many years ago for my knitting. but then i thought it perhaps a little unwieldily for just carrying one spindle and some fiber which could easily fit in my purse. so, i devised and sewed a spindle cosy which could protect my spindle while it is in use, and so i could keep it in my purse unharmed by the other things lurking in there. it's weird actually that someone else hadn't already thought of a spindle cosy, they're very useful things really. there are egg cosies, and tea cosies, and though they're meant for keeping things warm, other things like sewing machine cosies are for protecting.

going with the purple and orange color scheme of the basket and knitting needle case, i used a pale blush silk, an orange shot cotton, and purple thread. the sides are padded with quilting batting and created separately, then bookbinding stitched together to form a pyramid, with the top left unsewn so the shaft cord can come through to aid with carrying. the cord is a kumihimo strap i had bought while in japan that could be attached to a cell phone; it slips on easily to the notch in the top of the spindle shaft. i'm really pleased that the colors matched so well; until this point i really didn't know what i wanted to use it for.

the bottom opens up and you place the spindle inside, drawing the strap through the opening at the apex. then securing the bottom flaps with buttons and a needle laced latch, your spindle and spun yarn is safe and secure from knocks and bumps.

i had sized the cosy based on the jay drop spindle, but i'm thinking it could easily fit the larger swan drop spindle as well. i'll know in a week or so. i'm thinking the idea for this came from looking at the new tea triangles which are slowly replacing tea bags. yum, tea...

silk doings

i've finished the woven silk shawl. i had wanted to bring it to colorado with me, but i wasn't done with the fringe in time. here it is in the sink, fulling. it's softer after the wash, a little less stiff, but still with some shape. though the muga and eri silk are soft and lustrous, the darker peduncle silk lends a fuzzy, slightly rough feel to the shawl which isn't unpleasant.

when i was at treenway silk, i picked up some more peduncle silk (the brown overshot thread used in the shawl above). as well as some spinning silk fiber, interesting double spun 60/2x2 yarn, incredibly fine 120/2 yarn, and recycled silk sari ribbons which i used for a small coiled basket bowl we crafted at the guild meeting.

i love silk; the smell, the crisp feel, the scrunch sound it makes when you squeeze a skein, as well as the softness, the luster, and the dual personality it has.

while in boulder i was also able to pick up some more texsolv heddles for the loom, giving me 125 heddles for each shaft. i hope it's enough for whatever projects may come!

work in progress

i've begun weaving again, first time this year. i mentioned this earlier, but after a slow take-off, i'm finally making some progress. something to do with 460 warp threads and only 400 heddles. so very, very thankful i realized it before i threaded too many of them, only a couple of centimeters. at 10 threads a centimeter.

i dug up the metal heddles that came with it and added some more to the harnesses. there's an easy way to do this and a hard way that only looks easy. after trying the latter, i recognized the sanity in doing it the correct way. the harnesses come out smoothly enough, even with the high castle tray which is on my loom (schacht thought of everything when they designed these things-the tray bottom pops out to create an opening to slide the harnesses through!).

this is the first weaving i've tackled with so many threads. you don't realize it until you have to go back and fix an error, be it threading, reed sleying, or confusion about the pattern. which brings us to todays happy fun! the piece is weaving with the lights and darks inverted, and i thought there was a typo in the book i got the pattern from, and spent a bit of time trying to figure it out, first by unweaving, then reweaving, then unweaving, then graphing, and eventually realizing i was looking at the back of the piece on the loom, and not the front of the piece as was photoed in the book. i think. blah.

i'm laying all the blame due to being rusty. i only wove five pieces last year, and those in the early half, and they were fairly easy patterns. all in all, though, i didn't have any threading errors once everything was tensioned properly, and that's a lovely moment!

studio time

after several months of inactivity, i've started a new weaving project. delving into stock on hand, i choose three skeins of silk; muga, eri, and tassar. the golden muga will form the warp threads, with alternating handspun tassar and creamy eri as the weft threads. it will be a diamond with borders pattern, and eventually a shawl. if all goes as planned it should be quite delicate and have incredible drape.

today i started threading the loom, the lighting was perfect to see the little threads, and the weather was just exhilarating; warm, breezy, and low humidity.

when planning a woven piece i'm constantly working on graph paper to get the math right, perfect the pattern, as well as charting out the varying colors and yarns being used. as a result, the bench in my studio gets a little untidy; yay for pull out drawers! just push them in and mess-be-gone.

i took a little break from weaving and photographed a clump of moss i noticed the other day. i could fill a memory card with moss and still want to take more photos of it. it's entirely too fascinating.

can-can

best in show sounded better than 1st place, so that's what i went with. i was being inspired by the more daring and colourful of the victorian tastes, as well as guavas. because the eyepatch is worn on a 3-dimensional surface, you can really see the beetle green backing fabric and deeper pink sheer ribbon peeking through from underneath the top layer; it made me think of petticoats and crinoline, which i love. this is one of my favorites.

honey bees are worth more than gold

i've found my new favorite drink, uji shimizu and cold almond milk; matcha, sugar, and milk, whisked to a frothy green. i tried it hot last night, and it was okay, but today i made it with cold milk and it is so very yummy!

i've started work on another eyepatch. the theme with this one is honey, and more specifically, the honey bee. i never really liked honey until i came to the south and tried the local tupelo honey; it's very sweet, similar to simple syrup or agave nectar. that was about seven years ago. i've since acquired a taste for acacia, sourwood, star thistle, and winter white honeys, as well as an appreciation for the bees which create them.

it's difficult to imagine what will happen to the honey bee in the future, and it's hard to not jump in and try to save them once you learn of the bad husbandry they've fallen under. a couple of years ago i read this controversial post about the honey bee, and it made me think. i've since learned more from radio casts, books, and magazine articles, but everyone needs a starting point. however, the book which made me love the honey bee was chalice, by robin mckinley. you may think it's hard to love an insect, but it isn't, not really.

i'm not quite finished with the bees on my eyepatch, i'm looking for black fresh water pearls for their heads, the ones i do have, being drilled in the wrong spot.

seashells on the seashore

the third eyepatch is a grouping of shell buttons and pearls. it was inspired by the artwork of nick cave. originally i had included the green crystal in it, but wasn't entirely won over; i like the piece more now, without the visual focuser of the blue green color. however, i maintained the hue in the backing fabric.

abalone and mother of pearl buttons are amongst my favorite; they're simple but lovely with the subtle rainbows which play across their surface.

progression

the next one in the series of eyepatches is about buttons. i love abalone shell buttons, they're so shimmery and opalescent. they're to be set against a pewter grey silk, with a grey green stripped silk lining. the green crystal is still up in the air, but i like the pearls spread throughout.

initially i wanted to use round buttons, but i came across these square and rectangular buttons at a knitting shop the other day and thought the effect could be interesting when paired with the few octagon and round buttons i already had.

patches, patches, whose got the patches?

so, the story goes, i was at the eye doctor's and i thought i would have to wear an eyepatch; all because of a pesky tear duct. i looked at the ones available and my options were black, black, or black. blech. so, as a result of my findings, i decided i would make my own eyepatches and make a diverse range of them which i could theoretically choose from depending on how i was feeling. nobody really wants to look like a pirate day to day, or an extra from kill bill. some would say it was vanity, i will say it's a chance to create art where there is a void.

the first which i created is based on a peacock. i love the little feathers from the body of the bird, so green and shimmery, with hues of bronze and blue as it moves. the tail feathers are always associated with eyes, so it's only fitting that i embroider one for the center of the patch. i love this one. the bronze silk which was in the sneek peek photo was used as lining for the inside of the patch, it picks up on the bronze colors at the base of the feathers.

pussywillows fascinate me. i love to find softness in plants, it's the tactile quality of them; this one in particular is as fine as any silk velvet. this one evolved as i was laying it out. my sketch was of decreasing sizes of pussywillows, ending in the middle. but, as i was adding the third row, i saw the eye of an owl. so, i went with it. using the downy feathers i had snipped from the peacock feathers, i lined the eye, and created an iris from a swarovski crystal button i've been hoarding for nine years, and a blue tinted abalone shell button. the addition of the pink swarovksi crystal for the inner tear duct was the finishing touch. this eyepatch is lined in a pale blue dupioni silk, tacked down with light brown crystals, like a star studded dawn.

luckily, my eye healed and i didn't have to wear an eyepatch after all! but, i'm still pursuing the potential in them.

tussah discovered

not all silk labeled tussah is of unknown wild origins; sometimes it is from the ricini or muga silkmoths. muga silk is a champagne hued silk which can be spun from a lovely soft cloud of fiber into something shimmery with warm tones. the ricini silkmoth produces both red eri silk and white eri silk, the former producing a mushroom hued fiber with lots of sheen.

i happened across 100 grams of both the muga and red eri silk from a fiber seller at plying the arts, last august. i chose to spin them up on my jay spindle, then plied together. right now i'm allowing the fiber to rest in it's spun ball form for a couple of days before i skein and give it a bath to set the twist.

the feel is so soft, so delicate, and the sheen is alluring. i enjoy spinning silk by drop spindle and it is a good use of time when things are slow.

feats of gene selection

the fiber compendium; for the pursuit of education and knowledge (f.c.p.e.k.) is coming along nicely. there are some gaps, but with more time and searching i can hopefully fill them. i'm really glad i decided to collect samples of so many fibers.

it's really remarkable how many types of silk there are, the different ways it's spun, and how all parts are used (waste, stem, pupae). there's definitely a "waste not, want not" mindset when it comes to this fiber. it reminds me of the way some of the native americans viewed animals; that by not throwing away any part of it, the death was not meaningless and the animals' sacrifice was respected. the life of the silkworm isn't wasted by it's death; oftentimes they are a food source, and the fact that the entire amount of silk it spun is used in some form or other is a great testament to how the people doing sericulture view and respect the silkmoth. peduncle thread, spun from the stems of the tropical tasar cocoon, along with ghicha, spun from the waste silk of muga and eri cocoons, were some of the more interesting spun silks i came across.

one of the things i had thought before starting this project was that there weren't too many cellulose fibers used for spinning and weaving cloth; only ramie, hemp, linen, cotton, and washi. but, i have more cellulose samples than animal fibers; baste fibers can be found in many plants, and the resourcefulness of humans is really inspiring! people have gone to great lengths to create cloth, from the attusi (elm tree inner bark) clothing of the ainu people of northern japan, to nettle fiber which has been used throughout europe for centuries.

with the animal fiber i've collected i found the different hair types within one animals' coat to be interesting; coarse to downy soft, strongly pigmented to lighter pigmentation, with a variety of uses for each type. browns, fawns, and creamy whites are the dominant colors in protein fibers. the brown hues lend the animal warmth from the sun in cold environs, and hiding ability amongst grasses and trees, whereas the white coloring, which is perfect for dyeing, seems to be a trait humans breed for (as albinism in the wild isn't really a common or safe trait).

the unique characteristics of the many natural fibers lend themselves to a myriad of uses, and i question why humans need to invent synthetics, when what is already there is so functional. with some better husbandry, more effective natural resource use, and respect for the organism which creates the fiber, many of these natural fibers can be just as viable as synthetics. some synthetic fiber inventions such as neoprene, are impressive, and needed, but to create a synthetic which does the same as a natural fiber just seems wasteful (and, like any copy, is never as good as the real thing, imho).

interesting reads:
an article about silk varieties, and degumming
the book, fibre facts, by bette hochberg
ebook, dictionary of textiles, by louis harmuth
"peace" silk, or the mythical perfection postulation

mixing it up

i wrote this awhile ago, but hadn't posted it.

i started my trained art life in illustration, using paint and paper. since graduating, i've slowly leaned towards fibers, and have focused on them in the last few years. every now and then i would take out the paints and canvas, work on a piece, and once complete, put the paints away again.

 the other day i had an inclination to do some needle lace, so i grabbed a scrap of linen, and practiced some lace edging. it was a small piece, and i wasn't really sure what to do with it other than find some way of framing it. riffling around under my bed, i came across two canvases i've had forever. ah, inspiration! i took out the paints again, and have completed two canvas's incorporating my fiber work. i like the texture of fiber, the color of paint, the mixture of flat 2-dimensional and the slightly more dimensional fabric.

is this the beginning? who knows, but it is fun.