weaving inspiration

My weaving is really taking over my creative time at the moment. Not completely dominating it, but I have been weaving pretty much every day since my last post. This is the result, hanging on the line to dry after being washed - I didn't even know you were supposed to wash things when they come off the loom, but it helps the warp and weft to meld together into a fabric. This was an experiment in colour and a practice piece to improve my understanding of weaving evenly, getting those edges straight and not loopy and finding out what happens when you weave colours together. I'm really pleased with the outcome, and have learnt all sorts of things. In particular, I was hoping for a more thorough blend of colours in warp and weft, but I've used too wide a sett on the warp, which means that my weft colours are dominating, though you do get a hint of the warp stripes running through.

I did have two days of not weaving though, travelling up to the big city to see two exhibitions. The first was the Anni Albers show at Tate Modern. A friend Steph and I had been looking forward to this for some time, she also being a stitcher and part of our little breakaway tapestry weaving group. We almost ran out of time, as it closed last weekend, but a quick bit of planning meant that we were able to get there on Thursday. The works on show were incredibly inspiring for a new weaver; each piece repaying close observation. For me that means pulling my glasses half way down my nose and getting it as close as possible to what I'm looking at - always a bit unnerving as I keep expecting a solicitous museum attendant to leap up and banish me for getting too close!

Her combination of colour, texture and technique was a real lesson in how to create beauty on the loom and, even more inspiring, many of her experimental pieces were woven on small simple looms, rather than the beautiful piece of equipment that greeted visitors as we entered the gallery.

Here, in La Luz (The Light), she has used a combination of linen and metallic thread to create a shimmering plane of colour and light - the central cross moving in and out of view as you change your position in relation to the weaving

Anni Albers. La Luz. 1947

In the detail here you can see how she carries the metallic thread across the piece so that it appears to be couched on the surface, rather than woven. The subtle colours and the way she uses differing weights and shades of thread enhances the sense of layers of light moving in and out of view

Anni Albers. La Luz. 1947 (detail)

This detail of "Two", which is woven from Linen, cotton and rayon, encapsulates the complexity of her weaving - I kept finding myself thinking "how on earth has she done that?" and wanting to look at the back.

Anni Albers. Two. 1952. Detail

Pasture, felt joyous - the wonderful play of green and orange, with little sparkles of white in counterpoint to the black thread beckoned me to close my eyes and imagine walking through fields of summer flowers.

Anni Albers. Pasture. 1958

Six Prayers, below, was a commission from the Jewish Museum in New York for a memorial to the Jews who had died in the Holocaust. They were beautiful to sit in front of, luminous, meditative, those wandering lines evoking lost journeys but also perhaps, curling plumes of smoke rising into the receiving sky.

Anni Albers. Six Prayers. 1966-7

By the time we had reached these weavings we had both come to the end of our museum feet, so parted ways, Steph going back to the station to catch a train home, and me walking down to the tube station to get a tube to my next destination, Russell Square, where I had booked into a hotel for the night (how very grown up!). This got me close to the British Museum for my exhibition visit the following day, I Am Ashurbanipal. I won't go into detail here; suffice to say it was marvellous, and fed my interest in all things Mesopotamian. But I was, of course, in one of the great museums of the world, and had been looking at weaving, so felt an quick visit to see the Coptic weavings would be a lovely counterpoint to what I had seen the day before. And they were, little snippets of colour and imagery, so fine you could hardly imagine a human hand creating them; so fresh and vibrant and full of delightful detail.

Having marvelled at these, I wandered through to the Mesopotamian and Ancient Levant Galleries, for some sketching and browsing. They are full of marvellous objects, including these curious half human half something entirely other figurines dating from the Middle Bronze Age (2400-2000 BC)

Weary at last with my wanderings, it was time to come home, but not before visiting my favourite image in the downstairs display from Nineveh. This relief of a captive woman bending down to give her child water is such a tender moment amidst all the killing and pillaging. I pay her my respects every time I visit.

You can see more of Anni Albers' weaving here, on the website of the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation

first "proper" weaving done

Se here are the three little mats I've just cut from the loom. They are all slightly different and by no means perfect, but I'm really happy with them. They all have a plain weave background with trees and snow in the "Branoe" or "Overshot" technique. The first, on the right just has a little row of white trees; the middle one uses a thicker, slightly crinkly yarn with a lovely sheen for the trees and snow, while the one on the left uses two strands of the same white that I used in the first one. All three have a dark blue warp; the first one uses a lighter blue for the weft, but the second two mix the lighter blue with the dark warp thread to try and suggest the darker sky. These two also have a border in a different technique using a pickup stick behind the heddle. 

I've learnt all sorts from these; how to carry more than one strand of yarn up the side (very untidily it must be said); that I needed to leave more warp between each mat to have a hope of creating a fringe (or grow mouse fingers); that I should have found out how to calculate the amount of warp you need before starting, rather than guestimating, hence there are only three rather than four; and what fun weaving is.

So now, instead of little fringes on each one I shall do my best to fold the fringe under and back each with some appropriate fabric, fused and then stitched on, which will be fun. Then on to my next learning project; the scarf of many colours. I'm really looking forward to seeing how these blend in the loom and to the more simple process of plain weave, but I may need to buy some more shuttles so that I have enough for each colour I'm using - I used bits of card for the shuttles on this as each used only a small amount of yarn. I'll also make sure to calculate the right amount of warp - which will involve maths; never my strong point!

So thank you to Kelly Casanova for her very fine tutorial, and for a very helpful post on good books to buy on her lovely blog. Did I need any more books in the house? Really? Of course I did, but I only bought two of her recommendations. I should confess, though, to a third book, very necessary as I and the good friend who sold me her loom are visiting London next week; first for this, and then, just for me as I'm staying in London overnight, this. So the catalogue on Ashurbanipal was a must, especially as I'm still musing and stitching on my Studio 11 theme of Mesopotamia. I will post on this when there's something worth seeing - honest! There's more musing than stitching happening at the moment.

"here's one I made earlier" - for Pen

A small needlepoint I made many years ago, designed to fit a little chair which came to me by chance and was restored by my ex, who still has a fine way with wood.

Weaving experiments

One of the things that I was really taken by in Bhutan was watching the weavers crafting their wonderful textiles. Their concentration, dexterity and sheer skill was mesmerising. You'll have seen some examples in my earlier post, and if you've been following for a while you'll have seen my experiments in tapestry weaving (really must post an update on this too!!), but this was weaving on a totally different level. A couple more pictures will give you an idea of the variety of the weaving in the various places we visited. You can find out more about Bhutanese weaving, for which they are rightly famed, here and I've embedded a video below.

On the loom - Bumthang weaving centre

These two are very similar in style, but totally different in their colours. I seem to recall that the one above uses solely plant dyed yarn, which may explain the more subtle colours, though we were assured everywhere we visited that only plant dyes are used.

On the loom, Yathra weaving centre

Horizontal looms - Bumthang weaving centre

tempting weaving wares - outside Kurje Lhakhang,

Thimphu - backstrap weaving at Gagyel Lhundrup weaving centre

Gagyel Lhundrup weaving centre - temptations

Lengths of cloth - Yathra weaving centre

What came across most forcibly when we were there was that all this lovely weaving was being done for a practical purpose. The cloth was being woven to wear and, in the case of the weaving centre in Thimphu, the fabric was of the finest quality, fit quite literally for a King or Queen. When we weave here in the UK, we are doing it for our own pleasure, leisure, artistry, but on the whole the result is more likely to be hung up on the wall, or be a transient item. We don't normally wear what we have woven. In Bhutan the national dress, Kira for women and Gho for men is based around the dimensions that can be produced by hand on a backstrap or horizonal loom, and this was very apparent in the more rural areas we visited.

Bhutanese weaving in action

So, where has all this led me?

Well, one of my good friends in our little tapestry weaving group bought herself a rigid heddle loom early on in our forays into weaving, but recently decided that she wasn't using it and would like the space in her study back, so offered it to me at a very generous price.  I leapt at the chance and have been practicing ever since. No, of course I've not produced anything remotely like the weaving I saw while in Bhutan, but I've been doing my research. I started by learning to warp up the loom using the very helpful videos on the Ashford Looms website and some orange and deep brown yarn, bought centuries ago and never used (it always comes in useful eventually, you know that). Then I just wove. I played about, experimented with alternating colours (more yarn stash busting) to see what patterns emerged; using a knitting needle to hold down some of the warp threads so that the weft went over more than one warp, making raised patterns on the surface; learning what the best way of keeping edges straight is. All tremendous fun and resulting in a four foot length of what vaguely resembles fabric - a sampler in fact to use a stitchy reference. The image below is from part way through my experiments.

Having taken this off the loom I felt it was time to be a bit more adventurous, so again trawled YouTube for instruction. I came across this delightful and very seasonal design by an Australian weaver called Kelly Casanova. So now I'm enjoying myself making little squares of blue with white Christmas trees on them, as per her very fine instructions. This is the second square - I'm hoping I have warped up enough yarn to do four of them, each one slightly different. You can see that my edges are a bit wonky, and I'm still very much a beginner, but at least this does vaguely look like something.

Once these are done, I have yet more yarn (no of course I didn't deliberately buy some) and will begin another larger project just working with several colours in both warp and weft to see where I get.

Watch this space :-)

Treasure for the New Year

Happy New Year to you dear readers, I hope your Christmases were good and that your year has started with all hope and happy expectation. Mine, of course, has started with the recognition that this will be my first full year of retirement and that I'd better get busy with all those projects I mentioned!

So, what is this New Year treasure? It is my Mum's diaries kept, with a few breaks (or perhaps lost volumes), from the age of 11 (1937) all the way through to when she was 80 and had the fall that was to mark her long slow decline towards the end of her life.

They truly are treasure, in large part because they are hers and connect me to her and to our family in such an intimate way. She grew up in middle class suburban Cheam, until they moved back to Hastings when she was 21. I know so many of the names and places that she describes from her own stories of childhood; I can hear her voice filling in additional details and feel her personality in what she relates here.

The first part of the collection is a lovely set of Lilley and Skinners (The Fashion Shoe Shop, 356-360 Oxford Street London) school-girl's diaries (and one schoolboy's). There are 6 of them, starting in 1937, so cover the period when war starts, through to 1942. My grandfather worked as a bookkeeper at L&S, travelling up to London and back by train every day, and working in a dingy basement. I wonder if he ever ventured down to the "buried street" mentioned here and here. 

Each diary has a set of pages at the beginning with "much useful information and many tables helpful for her work and play" including the Rugby Football results for the national teams, books to read, foreign phrases in common use and mensuration formulae, which I have to confess I briefly misread in the index, until I realised the unlikelihood of my misreading! 

I was pleased to note in suggested careers for women that, as well as teaching, nursing and domestic science, we could also embark on industrial welfare (if trained and competent), become pharmaceutical chemists, barristers or solicitors and even apply to the Institute of Civil Engineers, although a note here warns that "practical work is a real difficulty" and "women find posts more easily on the secretarial and commercial sides"

They all have a map of the British Empire at the back (of course)

And each week has a little illustration at bottom right, along with a small paragraph explaining the image. 1938's theme obviously relates to the British constitution so for the last week of November we have The Lobby of the House of Commons and explanation of the cry "who goes home?"

I have, as you can see, started at the beginning, the image above being from November 1938, where you can see her interest in school seemed to be restricted to music (she later went on to study at the Royal Academy of Music), dancing and, above all else, food - and this is before the war and rationing. I remember her stories of "starving" during the war and how cross she was that her father wouldn't sacrifice his precious delphiniums to grow vegetables to feed them. She has just started at a new school in September of this year, so perhaps the food was so much better than in her previous school that it merited detailed reporting.

In 1941 however, she also begins "My Journal" as series of notebooks that run from June 1941 to July 1953. These are, as their title suggest, more of a journal and contain all sorts of interesting detail of the life of a young woman growing through her teenage years into her mid twenties. They end on a very poignant note when her beloved dog Randy died. There follows a gap of four years then they resume, but once again in the more restricted form of week to a spread diaries and pocket diaries, and continue right through to 2006, a span of 69 years.

This is the project that I have been waiting to do for as long as I have known that I have this wonderful collection, which is quite a long time. I am nearing the end of 1938, the only mention of the impending war so far is that she was fitted for a gas mask in late September, but no comment as to why. I shall be transcribing for some while I rather think, and treasuring every moment of time spent with her.