Still time to finish things this year...

I have left the holidays behind and am focused on my creative side with a vengeance.

Just today I wove eight inches of taquete finishing two beetles leaving three more for my piece I'd like to enter into one of the Convergence exhibits. It looks especially good. Am looking forward to seeing it off the loom. It's about a yard long so I can only see what's visible on the outside of the front beam.

In addition, this week I have cut out over a hundred squares to piece together my lining material for my mystery story coat and today I finished making my silk mahjong tiles which will also be pieced into the lining.

For those mahjong novices, the tiles in the photo is a winning hand called the Sparrow's Sanctuary. It consists of fourteen tiles all in one suit - bamboos. For all the years, I have played mahjong, I have never had this hand. It's almost a hole in one if playing golf.

For those interested, these tiles were designed so that each tile has a slightly different background color. I scanned the tiles from my mahjong set and spent hours making them look the way I wanted them to look in photoshop. In the end they were printed on silk in my ink jet printer.

Back From Vista La La Land

I believe I have control of my computer again...after many hours of discussion with India, South Korea and the Philippines.

I have today successfully moved from Vista to Windows 7 and I now feel like that small Asian kid on the Windows commercial just smiling and looking dreamily happy in front of her computer. I even put a flower as my background on the desktop.

Needless to say, there has been little weaving here while in Vista la la land along with a bad back. But things are now improving.

Here's a photo of my continuing search for a line of scarves I would like to create...my Bug Scarves is what I call them. I have yet to find the right combination of yarn, sett, hand and time to weave. Here's a link to one of my samples. It wasn't quite right...nor was the one after.

The blue combination in the photo consisted of sewing thread warp with a 60/2 silk weft. The pattern and sett were nice. No separations. But not exactly the hand I wanted plus it took way too long to weave; 8 round trip passes to complete a square. I am patient but not that much. I had patience enough to complete only three small beetles. No way could I complete a scarf. I could make the beetles smaller but I like the size relative to the negative space.

The olive green and cranberry experiment currently on the loom has the same sewing thread warp but a bamboo weft. It feels fairly nice but one never knows until after you wash it. This is the same yarn I used in my woven mystery story. I should have a lot of bamboo yarn left after I finish some extra material for the sleeves.

This will be a laid back experiment, no rush to finish. But even now, I am not sure I have enough patience to finish a scarf. Time will tell.

At the Movies

Haven't much been into weaving lately... I hurt my back lifting a piece a paper and the pain seems to have sapped the creativity and drive right out of me.

But on a more positive note, my DH and our dogs sat down to watch Beverly Hills Chihuahua last night. Tippy, our three year old chi/min pin. mix was absolutely fascinated for about 50 minutes and then slept through the remaining 40 minutes.

We also have a chihuahua that looks just like the one on the screen. LOL.

End of the Warp...But not the End of the Story

ps - - I just updated the blog with a photo...my computer completely died several days ago ...again...this time data was saved but I had to reinstall all drivers and software...Vista sure sucks! Anyway this is a photo of chapter 10 I believe - where our hero begins to figure out who the murderer really is... I see you missed photos of the Ox Roast and Blood Drive and a few other chapters...oh well...you can 'read' it all later.

Well it was a productive morning...four hours of continuing education for my CFP as well as weaving to the end of my warp. I even had enough time to untie the shoelaces at the beginning of the piece; my least favorite task of all.

This is the loom with my woven mystery story on it. I never knew how much warp was on the loom since I had put it on years ago and forgot about it. But it turned out I had enough warp to weave up to the middle of chapter 11...only a chapter and a half plus an epilogue to go. But those pieces will have to be on a new warp along with a sample to send in with the entry form, a key to the characters and events plus some contrasting border material. I will tie it on...should be quite easy. Tie a new red warp to the old red, a new violet to the old, a new gold to the new, etc.

So before wet finishing I have a bit over 16 feet of yardage about 22 inches wide. I need to check all the edges of the correction tape that I wove in to make sure it won't come out in the wash. I am going to trim the ends of the bamboo weft which hang out the sides so they won't catch on anything. I quickly discovered that weaving in the bamboo ends messed up the pattern and distorted the stripes so I stopping doing that. I just tied off an old color at the edge and tied on a new color. There are lots of color changes and hence lots of loose ends. I will probably serge the edges so everything is nice and neat in the finished jacket....

I'll take a photo post wet finishing. It looks good now however, mostly greens and reds. I would have expected mostly greens and purples...given that the green is the hero and the purple is the villian but the reds look really good.

Ah, they all looks good. Should be a nice piece.

Chapter 7

Chapter 7 was so much more exciting than chapter 6. Have you noticed in most mystery stories about half way through there is some flashback or a long section describing the inner workings of the hero - what haunts her, what motivates her etc. Well, that part, which in my tale is chapter 6, is fairly boring to weave. Plus - I had two broken warp ends...

On a more positive note, here is chapter 7 where at their weekly mahjong game, our hero and her friends work through all the events of the past few weeks. By the third round they are surprised to realize who must be the murderer. Although it is hard to believe, the facts point to only one person -Irma's husband, Max.

As is all mysteries, there is a pivotal moment when the hero realizes she has been heading down the wrong track. This is my hero's moment. The phone rings...

And so begins Act III.

Chapter 5

Here is a photo of chapter 5 of my mystery story. Tomorrow I work on the word version of the story.

In this chapter the hero is curious about a clue which consists of a list of coded words and numbers. The hero and her helpers work to decipher the list and struggle to understand its significance. As everyone begins to realize the list's implications a growing feeling of fear and dread envelopes the group.

I think chapter 5 will be easier to write than chapter 4. It took awhile to even start writing chapter 4 although once I started it was quite fun. I had to create an entire society of weavers and all the interconnections between each other and the other characters I already created for the story. Plus, I didn't want any of them to be exactly like any of the actual weavers I know. And I seem to know a lot of weavers, being in three guilds and all.

It was kinda fun, but time consuming, to decide on age,names, personality, appearance, unique characteristics, how they talked, what type of weaving they focused on and what they brought to show and tell. The Westside Weavers Society ended up being fairly small but exclusive group; a dozen women and one man; all accomplished weavers. They did vote in one new member at the last meeting.

Writing is such a hoot!

One Done 11 to Go

I was inspired over the last couple of days. I designed seven beetles which are now ready for weaving. My goal is to get a dozen done in a fairly short time span.

Actually six are ready for weaving since I already finished one this afternoon. I took a close up photo of the back. It incorporates some of the patterns I displayed in my sampler. I am quite happy with the results. The photo is not the greatest...

What I now need to come up with is a notational system which I can add to my excel spreadsheet to remind me what pattern to put where.

An Analogous Sampler

Here is the same sampler as I did yesterday but in a dark olive green and the same medium avocado green as the last one. The colors in the photo are close but not true.

As expected the analogous colors merge into one another in a pleasant way.

Now I am off to select a beetle to design where I can try to incorporate these concepts.

A Split Harmony Sampler

Here is a small sampler I did in taquete with three colors of sewing thread. I wanted to see how many shades of purple and green I could come up with by varying the colors coming to the surface in each spot.

I was inspired by the woven tapestry on page 163 of the Fiber and Color book by Lambert. It was a piece done in red and green illustrating small areas of color producing optical mixing and larger areas creating color shifts by simultaneous contrast.

My piece is less than 4.5 inches by 3 inches but was quite complex to weave. There are sixteen permutations I came up with. I wove a solid purple on the edges and a solid green in the middle so I could more easily compare the permutations with the solid color.

This should be useful in improving my textile designs. In some ways the results are obvious...but this sampler is a visual reminder of the variety of shades of a color one can make by varying the quantity of a hue next to another. Plus, with the 'key' it will allow me to easily import the appropriate shade into my designs.

The results are so interesting I am going to do the same thing over in analogous colors of the same values to see the blending of more similar colors.

Chapter Four

I am running a bit behind schedule but thankfully chapter four is finally woven...

Chapter synopsis:

Our hero goes to her Westside Weavers meeting which is being held this month at her friend's house. As in most Guild meetings, there is much talk of fiber and other ordinary as well as curious things. She is most surprised to hear that her friend's house was burglarized and a number of items stolen. The entire Westside Weaving group tours the 'crime scene'.

Later that evening our hero discusses her growing suspicions with her husband over a romantic dinner.

Now onto the words...

A Stag Beetle

Here's my latest beetle. It's taken awhile to get it done due to all my other projects at the moment. This is a Cyclommatus beetle; one of the varieties of the stag beetle.

I experimented with this one to see the various effects I could achieve with the copper and 'black' I was using. You can see the effects at the edges of the beetle and in the larger portions of black.

Each pixel of color in weaving is composed of two passes of the shuttle with the given color; a round trip so to speak from one side of the loom to the other and back home again. The colors that rise to the surface are the ones you see; I hide the others underneath.

I was able to achieve a darker copper by allowing both the black and the copper to rise to the surface in the same spot.

I was able to achieve a subtle shimmer of copper in the black; like a shadow of copper by allowing the copper to rise to the surface along with the black on only one pass across of the loom. On the way back only the black rose to the surface.

I was able to achieve a mottled black by alternating solid black withe black and copper.

I am considering doing a little sampler so I can see in a more controlled way the impact of the various effects.

Chapter 3

Having finished weaving chapter 3, I have completed the weaving of Act 1 of my mystery story.

In this chapter we learn many curious details about the dead person found by the hero as well as a variety of robberies and thefts occurring through out Santa Monica. The curiosity of the hero grows as she is more and more certain that something isn't quite right. She feels a sense of dread as she commits to finding out what.


Now I am off to write it all down.

My Purple is Blue

I am playing around with the concept of simultaneous contrast with taquete in order to select the 'right' colors for a piece I have designed.

I haven't put any photos up since I have found it near impossible to photograph the color purple with either of my cameras regardless of the adjustments I make to the camera and light. It always comes out blue. Best I can do so far is to adjust the blues in photoshop but overall the colors are still no where close to true. I need to play around some more with the software and the cameras.

This is the best photo of the actual unwoven colors. I had them shaded from any direct light. They all shifted in color when woven.

Here is my sample woven with a purple background with a beetle in two near complements; adjusted in photoshop.

The hues, values and chromas do not look like they do in person. They have been impacted by the light, the camera, photoshop as well as the principle of simultaneous contrast.

Best to study the concept with the actual weavings in hand.


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Chapter 2

Chapter two of my mystery is written and woven. This chapter provides details on the suspicious circumstances surrounding the dead body which our hero found on the way to the Santa Monica Farmers Market.

Chapter One

Just completed chapter one of my mystery story in words and weft.

Chapter One takes place at a party. It's the 25th anniversary of Max and Irma. Max is a successful businessman. Irma is our hero's best friend and fellow weaver. The guest list is a who's who on the Westside of Los Angeles.

Here's what chapter one looks like in bamboo.

Ten Feet Off the Loom

Here are the ten feet of my labors over the past couple of months on my sixteen harness loom. Fourteen beetles and a dozen bookmarks for note cards.

I decided to cut the warp and take a look. I was starting to get worried that I was getting a bit crazy with my color selections. I had taken a more methodical approach to color selection as to hue, chroma and value and wasn't sure how they would come out. This more methodical approach was moving further and further from the anatomically correct colors of the beetles. However, I like the end results; more vibrant colors and more stunning designs. I will definitely continue along this path.

These are off to the finishing table and the remaining five yards of warp will be reset and be ready for more beetles as well as some experiments with simultaneous contrast.

Prologue

I have finished my first draft of the prologue for my mystery story. I am planning twelve chapters along with a prologue and epilogue. The heroine, a Westside divorce attorney has a loom in her office where she weaves undulating twills to clear her mind and solve issues on her complex cases.

Yesterday I finished weaving the prologue. Characters are depicted with weft color while a variety of undulating twills depict actions and atmosphere. In the prologue the characters are doing everyday things until a murder interrupts the peaceful atmosphere.

Here's what it looks like in both color and gray scale....and now onto chapter 1.

Characters

Here are the characters in the mystery story I am 'writing'. Perhaps I will call it the case of the undulating twill.

The sleuth is represented by the lemon grass green on the left with the sleuth's sidekick in olive green. The villains are in the various purples. Friends, helpers and innocents are in the the other colors.



ps. The colors in the photo are close except for the reds on top.

One More Beetle Finished

Here is the latest beetle I finished...but I must admit I need a break from beetles so I am focusing a bit on my writing in words and weft project.

My Mind Wanders

I spent the morning finishing up a woven beetle and before, during or perhaps after quite a bit of 'evaew-ing' I came up with two good ideas for the pieces for the Convergence 2010 exhibits.

It's tough for me to weave and have my mind wander...when it does I spend a great deal of time un-weaving. I can't listen to books on tape - even music makes my mind wander. Occasionally like this morning it is tough to concentrate on the pattern at hand.

Ah well, this morning it was worth it...two great ideas for two new pieces.