Weaving with Camel

Weaving in my studio

I am all ready for Christmas so I decided to warp my floor loom with some new yarn that Santa brought from WEBS.  It's a perfect concept; weaving by the Christmas tree with Christmas music playing in the background and a fire in the fireplace.

I have three cones of camel yarn which I received a couple of weeks ago.  Never woven with camel before.  Never touched camel before.  I don't even know if I am allergic to camel... seems a bit itchy... way different than the silk and bamboo yarns I have been weaving with for years.

I have both the warp and weft done in camel.  The warp is one shade.  It seems a bit hairier than the other two cones.  Not sure how any of this yarn will work; nor do I have a clue what to do with it.  I don't like just weaving for the sake of weaving so for now, I will assume this warp could turn into a runner.

Closer

This is a 'sample' warp; so I get to play.  I have no set pattern in mind. It's set at 12 ends per inch in what I believe is a huck lace set-up.  It's the same tie-up I used for some recent scarves.   I just went from two threads per dent to one.

I have woven over a foot so far trying out the three yarns as weft.  It does have a nice drape albeit itchy.  

And the colors are quite calming...a perfect pre-Christmas weave.  



PS  I plan on weaving a few more feet then see what a wet finishing will do... more later.

And even closer...
. 

A Bubbly Bug

My Bubbly Bug

This is a fun piece I created for the remnants exhibit, an exhibit of California Fiber Artists at the Harrington Gallery in Pleasanton.  I was challenged earlier this year to create a piece using bubble wrap.   And this is what I came up with!

It started with a photo my husband took at the UCLA arboretum of some ladybugs.  And it has morphed into a pixelated fiber creation of bubble wrap, men's silk ties, plastic fruit bags and old thread.  I created it in several layers if bubble wrap which I ironed together melting the plastic.  I later cut and collaged the three layers together and ironed the piece for the very last time.   See below on how each layer was created.



Do check out the exhibit if you are in the Pleasanton area...

remnants

An exhibit by California Fiber Artists at the Harrington Gallery

Firehouse Art Center

Pleasanton California

November 6th-December 18th, 2013

Colored fruit bags were cut up into small pieces
 and  dropped on top of the bubble wrap then melted.

Thread circles where placed inside
the bubbles of the bubble wrap

Men's silk ties were cut into circles
and put inside the bubbles

The Year of the Ladybug

It's the Year of the Ladybug! 

This is my favorite project every year...selecting a beetle species and weaving small specimens to put under glass.  This year I selected the friendly and popular ladybug.     Each one is slightly different in pattern, background color, warp color or simply that unruly warp catching the shuttle every once in awhile.

I just finished placing them under glass and now they are ready for the Designing Weavers Exhibit and Holiday Sale the weekend before Thanksgiving.  If your are in the Sierra Madre area stop by and sale hello to my ladybugs.

When:  November 23rd & 24th
Time:   10am-4pm
What:   Designing Weavers Exhibit & Holiday Sale
Where: The Sierra Madre Women's Club
             550 West Sierra Madre Blvd. Sierra Madre

Huck Scarves Just off the Loom

Just off the loom...

I always have a warp for scarves set up on my eight harness Gilmore loom. Sometimes I find it relaxing to simply throw the shuttle across the loom with wild abandon and not worry about which shafts are up or down or what dot of color goes where.

Here is what just came off...it is somewhat of a stash reduction project...or at least an empty the spool project.   I ended up with six empty spools which is good.  But there are many others in a variety of colors.    If I recall correctly its some sort of a huck variation...

I am vacillating on what type of warp to do next...I could simply tie on another warp which would allow me to do more huck or plain weave or sit on the floor and change the tie-ups and get something different...or I could start at the beginning again and do a series of those broken twills.  I really liked how that broken twill would pleat up and keep its shape.

Not sure what to do, so I will probably punt and simply work on my pelican tapestry.



PS  I am typing this while walking on my treadmill.   I've set up one of those treadmill desks for my computer.  It's quite amazing how easily you can do stuff as you walk along slowly on the treadmill.  I may try a bit of taquete on my tableloom and see if I can do that too while walking.  More later on that....

Dye Day - Silk Scarves

Lemon yellow to black

My weaving guild had a dye day last Friday and Saturday and we dyed silk scarves with Procion dye.   There were big mason jars filled with prepared dyes in lemon yellow, golden yellow, two blues, two reds and a #44 black.    We had ordered a significant number of silk scarves and were free to do whatever with them in whatever colors we wanted to create.  There were tons of jars in all sorts of sizes, brushes, rollers etc.  We had a steamer set up on a camp stove and a crock pot for steaming.

I wanted to explore the gradations between yellow and black.  I am supposed to create a piece in tints & shades of yellow and I am a bit embarrassed to say that I am not quite sure I can recognize a  shade of yellow from a shade of orange or a shade of yellow green.

To the right is my first piece.  I must admit the photo makes the piece look fairly ugly on my computer screen.  Yet in person, it is my favorite scarf.  It is pale and delicate in a beautiful yellow.  It is definitely a keeper.

I pinned the habotai silk scarf which was soaked in vinegar to two 36" x 12" stretcher frame so I would have more control over where the dye went.  Using lemon yellow and black I made a variety of gradations and painted stripes in the resulting colors.  I was simply mesmerized by the gradations.  Since it was warm this scarf was quickly dry so I did not have a lot of blending of the different gradations of color.  I also experimented in a couple of places with putting kosher salt on wet spots to add a different pattern to the piece.

Here are gradations of golden yellow to black.  

I next switched from lemon yellow to golden yellow and watched the avocado greens emerge in the gradations with black.   The scarf with circles used a flour resist which worked quite well.  I squeezed out the flour and water mixture out from a ketchup bottle and dyed the scarf with various gradations of golden yellow and black once the flour mixture was dry.  In two other pieces I painted a beetle on the scarf in black.  On the first one the scarf was wet and the dye spread while on the second one I let the scarf dry and painted the beetle on with a thin brush.  The last one  - the one on the left had a background from my leftover dye that had soaked into the table cloth on my table ... and then I started to use some colors which were just lying around whispering to me to use them up.

There were perhaps a dozen of us dyeing in a variety of colors so there were lots of jars laying around with 'unkown' colors.  I picked up a few and created the scarf below.

On Saturday we were cleaning up and threw all the greens into one jar.  I checked the color and had to make these two scarves in the remaining absolutely unreproducible fabulous green.

Quite a fun time....and I see more gradations of yellow in my future.

Collaborative Color Wheel

One of my weaving groups is going a collaborative project which began with the development of a communal color wheel out of scraps of paper during one of our monthly meetings.


We all brought small pieces of paper in each of the 12 colors of the color wheel and sorted them out into the 12 piles of color.  We had over 15 people there so there were a lot of scraps in a lot of different hues, shades, values and tints.

Next we broke into small groups re-arranged the colors back and forth between piles until everyone was reasonably happy that the papers were in the correct piles by hue.

Next we made quick small collages in each color. Everyone could select what ever color segment they wanted; take whatever scraps from that segment that they wanted to use and glue them however they liked.  Some colors were more popular than others and ended up having far more collages than others.

Here are the collages in each of the twelve colors of our color wheel and the resulting color wheel accomplished in less than ninety minutes.

Here is our communal color wheel of collages
with a little help from Photoshop.

I took the leftover scraps home and decided to play some more....

Here is what I came up...

Here's the color wheel based on all our leftover scraps of paper.   Brilliant!

Tie On a Warp - how much faster?

Weavers are an odd bunch,  They have odd habits, save odd bits of stuff, wear odd shoes and wonder odd things.  One thing I have often  wondered is how much faster tie-ing on a warp would be over simply starting a fresh and threading the heddles.   It is obviously faster - but by how much? This is probably not something the majority of the world has wondered about, but today I have the opportunity to check it out.

I have the end of warp I used for slap bracelets which I would like to continue to use and tie on a new warp.  The warp is on my Purrington 8 harness table loom.  I have done this before so it's no big deal. It's just a lot of knots to tie.  I would like to add another warp of the same size next to it so I can weave two slap bracelets in the same pattern at the same time.  I moved the existing warp over so in the end the entire piece will be centered in the reed.  So my existing warp is ready to tie-on.

My Purrington loom read to warp

I am going to put on the new warp first and time how long it takes.  Then I'll work on the existing warp. It should take longer since I need to go through the reed as well as the heddles.  I am interested in how much longer.  So in order to find out, I must get off the computer...

Pick Three!

Designing Weavers is having an exhibit at the Escondido Municipal Gallery to compliment the annual fiber and book art exhibit going on August 22-September 29th at the gallery.   In the past I have exhibited in the West Coast Fiber Book Art Exhibit but this year I simply ran out of time. So it's nice Designing Weavers will be able to have an exhibit along side.  

If you check out the postcard for the exhibit on the website you will notice Deanna's California Spring Sprang is on the postcard.  This was her 'exhibition' piece created during our color study of tetrads.  Congratulations Deanna! 

Anyway, this afternoon I need to select three of these nine beetles to show and get them in the mail.  They are each eight inches square mounted on aluminum.  The photo isn't the best; tough to get them all in the photo, appear square and be clear. This is the best I could do with little time, a headache and photo shop.   It's tough to pick since each is unique and each is special to me.  I'll probably select those that haven't been on a trip lately...

You'll need to check out the exhibit if you want to see which three I select.  Or wait until I go to the reception, take some photos of the exhibit and show them here. 

More about Me and My Beetles

I was interviewed by a docent, Debby Thompson about my piece in Small Expressions at the Long Beach Museum of Art.    If you would like to hear and see more about my piece, my studio and me check out the YouTube video she created based on the interview.  I think she has done a wonderful job.  What fun to have a hobby like video and to be able to combine it with a love of art to meet, interview and share  in depth insights of artists showing at the Museum.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mXiLJnYkJk

 Enjoy!

As you know I have one of my woven beetle pieces in the Small Expressions exhibit at the Long Beach Art Museum.  

In late May, I received a call from  Debby, a docent at the museum who was interested in making a video about the piece I had woven for the exhibit. Her hobby of making videos dovetails perfectly with the art and artists she has met at the museum.  She has done a number of YouTube videos about artists showing at the museum. I said, 'sure come on over'.  She spent perhaps an hour or so touring my studio and interviewing me and then went home and put together a wonderful video.

Here is the video she did about me, my studio and my beetles :  Nicki Bair: The Inspiring Weaver 

Small Expressions

Mr. & Mrs. Wallichii

One of my favorite species of beetles, the Dicranophalus wallichii wallichii beetle  is showing in the   Small Expressions exhibition being held May 10th-August 12, 2012 at the Long Beach Museum of Art in conjunction with HGA's Convergence® International Fiber Arts Conference, July 15-21, 2012. 

These two beetles, one male and one female, are flower beetles (Dicranophalus wallichii wallichii) woven in rayon and metallic sewing thread.  The title of the piece is Mr. & Mrs. Wallichii.

Long Beach Museum of Art

 This week I checked out the exhibit at the Long Beach Museum of Art and was extrememly happy with the pieces selected for the exhibit, how it was hung and how my piece looked.  Although there were not a lot of pieces in the exhibit, each piece had its own space allowing the viewer to get up and personal with it without being distracted by its neighbors.  


I always wonder about how my pieces will look in a museum setting since the light in my studios is not the best.  Although I have ott lights all over and never weave at night, sometimes it is a surprise to see how much more colorful and bright they are in a different setting. I visited the San Diego Guild on Mother's day weekend to give a talk about my work and the influence of my Mother on my work and again was surprised how much better my beetles looked under better lightening than that in my studio. 

First Quarter Recap

Christmas Balls Filled with Unwoven Thread

Taqueté Weaving Rule #25: Never re-weave unwoven thread.   

It's the end of the quarter and I spent this rainy morning filling glass Christmas balls with fiber.  The fiber is the sewing thread that I took out due to some sort of error I discovered while weaving taqueté.  Fixing mistakes is fairly simple with taqueté -put the heddles into their relaxed position, pull the threads out from each side, cut them off and start over with new thread.  I never re-weave with those threads - that would be so time consuming!  Plus, how else would I fill my empty Christmas balls?

I seemed to have been quite productive this quarter - 13 Christmas balls!    One specific beetle piece contributed at least half of the bounty.  At this rate I may have enough by December to fill an entire tree.  We shall see...

Pushing Through the Static

I have been running up close to my entry deadlines for exhibits.   Looming deadlines certainly raise the pressure...not a good thing when working with fine threads.  Usually I have things all ready to go quite early, not this year due to an extra special wee project that visited in the early months of this year.    But more on that later...

Beetles Resting

I have been planning a piece for the Glamour, Glitter & Glitz exhibit sponsored by Complex Weavers; the deadline is March 23rd.  Fortunately, the entire submission can be done on-line and happy be happy, my weaving just came off the loom.

There was some question as to whether it would be finished or simply chopped off the loom.   Static electricity made its first appearance in my studio and seemed to live continuously in my warp.    I have never had this problem before in all my years of weaving.  And naturally, I had a most complex weaving scenario going on, weaving three pieces at one time with four warps, seven shuttles and fourteen spools of rayon and metallic thread.  It seemed all threads would simply hug the warp, any warp, every warp...grrrr.... lots of messes, errors and re-do's.... spritzing every couple of passes seemed to help in the short term.  What would have really helped was a nice marine layer to roll in and fill our canyon with fog.

I am glad I simply pushed through the static and got this done. I want to thank my DH for sticking in there with all the consternation and swearing coming out of the back studio.   In the end, I think the three pieces will look absolutely exceptional once rested, trimmed, tweaked and mounted.

And for my color study group - voilá - a tetrad!

Spring is here...

How Lovely 100 Laces Can Be!

Winter is almost over so it's time to start planning for Spring.

 To me, Spring means Spring cleaning.  Happily, our closets and garages look quite respectable so this year I'll be focusing on my looms.  Time for each to have a good overhaul.  And that includes replacing those ratty old shoelaces and replacing them with nice smooth shiny new ones.  I just received my order of 100 from Nadine, the Singing Weaver.  She indeed has the best ones.   I bought a bunch of them years ago when I took her workshop and she showed all the various uses of the laces.

My table looms that I use for taquete work quite hard and the polyester warp is tough on those laces.  My tapestry loom starting needing laces awhile ago.  Indeed, I am always seem to be looking for a couple of shoelaces.  Sadly, my stash is now empty.    

I must admit to you, the thought of tying on a new warp with nice new shoelaces makes me feel all warm and toasty.

Undoubtedly summer is just around the corner.

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.

Sampling is my Rabbit Hole

Sampling for me is a rabbit hole...

I start off with a new concept and the intelligent part of me says sample to make sure you are on the right track.    Then, days or perhaps weeks later, as happened this time, I finally stop sampling; get focused and get back on track using little of the information I gleamed from sampling.    

I know I do this...and yet I keep doing it...leaving so much less time to work on designing the layers of meaning in my piece, which is by far my favorite part.

I am incredible excited about a concept I have for a new series of pieces.  I started planning  backwards this time since I wanted to make sure it would be easy to finish and be exhibit quality.  First I bought the frames and planned how to finish the piece...next I bought two potential linens for the warp and weft with the  texture I wanted...then I chose the weaving structure which would do what I wanted it to do....  At this point I saw the piece so very clearly in my mind.  Ah, now the intelligent part of me said...best to sample to make sure you get the right sett, warp and pattern.    

Above you can see the result of three weeks of sampling, warping, changing reeds etc.  Over 14 feet of Huck (3, 5 and 7 thread Huck) in a variety of patterns, warps, wefts, setts, reeds,  etc.  Once I started my curiosity took over.  I liked the very first pattern I tried...but I had to try all the patterns in my new book on Huck since I was curious.  Then I had to change the sett...the warp...then various combinations of both...

And in the end,  I chose to use cotton seine as my warp and weft,  which I did not sample.  A set of 10 epi which I did not sample.  And moved to a table loom instead of the floor loom where I did do all those samples.  

And although I am a bit behind schedule,  I think it will work just perfectly...

Beetle Coasters 2011

Just finished signing, buffing and boxing my beetle coasters for 2011.   I have two dozen ready for sale for the holiday season.  Each beetle is a variation of my favorite beetle pattern; all done in colors of the southwest.   This is my second year of doing these; and hope to do a different set next year.

I spent a great deal of time getting them 'just right' and now I know I will have a tough time offering them for sale...I would love to keep them all!  Each is beautiful as well as useful plus with their own box they are  'no brainer' holiday gifts.

Expect them to climb out of their boxes and be ready for viewing the weekend prior to Thanksgiving... here.

So Many Challenges

If you are in any artist groups, have you noticed that each one seems to be having a challenge of some sort or some exhibit or another that you need a create a piece for?  Seems like so many more than before.   I've always thought if you join a group one should participate otherwise why be a member.  Since I really like all the groups I am in, I have been quite busy.

Just within the last few days, I have sent in photos of recent pieces to three exhibits and I just finished a small fun piece for the challenge of the Southern California Handweavers group.  Here's my challenge piece after playing with the image in my new CS5 package.

For this challenge we were to be inspired by a quote about color...mine quote was by Jules Fieffer, who said  artists can color the sky red because they know it is blue.  Those of us who aren't artists must color things the way they really are or people might think we are stupid. 

I've always wanted to make a pencil holder for my studio...while on a trip to the North Rim & Bryce I took a photo of the cliffs from the Navajo Bridge... I had an empty loom...some leftover yarn...everything came together in the end.

Life works that way sometimes.