Work In Progress

Work in Progress 48epi

Here is a close-up of a piece I am working on woven with sewing thread at 48 epi.   I did it with a new attachement for the camera in my I-Phone.  Details here in a different post.

Beetles at Rest

Beetles at Rest

Earlier this month I took off my first run at my next series of beetles off the loom.  Here's a photo of them resting.  The twenty beetles here were too big for my studio desk so I have them hanging off of a watercolor in the study.

Due to the sett and color selection they are much bolder & bigger than the previous series.  And after tweaking the designs, they are more anatomically correct...at least from an artists eye; perhaps not from an etymologist's.

As you can see I am weaving four at a time; each in slightly different colors.  I will be framing them in two different ways and keeping one set for myself.   I took these off so I can perfect the finishing and framing in case I need to modify the size of the final pieces.

Out with the Dust Bunnies

 Guess what I got for my birthday?  A Roomba! One of those small circular robots that vacuums your floor without you.   This seemed to be a perfect tie-in with my New Year's desire to keep my studio cleaner and more dust free.   And perhaps it would also be an enrichment activity for our chihuahuas.  How productive - weaving as well as cleaning!

 Here it is working in my studio.

Only problem - it sucks up loose thread.  Well you say, isn't that the point of a vacuum cleaner?  To pick up stuff on the floor - even thread?  But think of that thread which happens to be attached to a heddle ... here comes the Roomba...slurp...slurp...slurp... sucking it up...unwinding the thread effortlessly from the heddle... and so quietly until you grab it...or its all gone.  Then it moves on....relentlessly.

The Roomba next found a spool somewhere on the floor, a spool obviously out of my sight  I noticed later that the Roomba's wheels had turned from black to turquoise.  When I turned it over I saw a lot of turquoise thread wounded tightly around each wheel as well as all over the bristles.  Clearly, not thread I would be weaving with at any time in the future.

I have one re-cycling/re-purposing habit...I keep, collect and re-use my leftover Sulky thread... well at least those in colors I like. I like blue.  So I cut off the turquoise thread from my Roomba, packed it away like my other unusable threads...in Christmas balls.  The cleaning today yield two turquoise Christmas balls for next year's tree.  I usually don't fill more that one ball every couple months or so. Quite a productive day.

As for the chihuahuas, they don't find the Roomba enticing...but the Black & Decker Dustbuster continues to be their arch enemy.