Warping Galore

Little Harrisville Designs at home...


Weavebird (and warping board) at studio...


LeClerc Colonial at studio.

Notice a theme here? Three looms and I'm in the process of warping *all* of them! LOL! (My thought was that, usually, I'd be warping/threading on one or so, weaving on others, so there's always something different to do, right? Not so, apparently!)

I'm under the gun, big time, and it's my own fault... I'm delivering an order to Art & Soul in Maynard this weekend, I'm going to be participating (by invitation, whoot!) in the deCordova Museum's Artists' Market and need to deliver a whole bunch of items by the end of the month, I've got a show in Holliston in late-ish November, the Winter Lights show at the Loading Dock Gallery at WAS in late November - December (even though I'm not listed on their webpage at the moment, hmph), and then two weekend-long Open Studios at WAS in December! Oh, and I need to follow up with 13 Forest, a gallery in Arlington, too. And my second lecture for the New Hampshire Weavers' Guild is in two weeks. Ahhhhh!!!!

Biting off a bit more than I can chew is always a fabulous motivator for me. Obviously. (LOL!)

OK, here's something to get our minds off the stressful couple of months that are looming (har) (yes, pun intended).

Yay Fall! (Can't believe how big they're getting.)

And, on a happy personal front - Mr. SkiingWeaver and I celebrated out 9th anniversary this week (more like 16, actually, but we took a long time to get around to making it official). We actually went out. Together. Without the kids. Had a conversation without somebody interrupting every three minutes. Wow. Thank you, thank you, Mum, for watching them!!

More photos of the Weavebird Project

Finally managed some more photos of the 16s advancing twill project. I'm still not completely happy with how they came out (I'll be redoing them!) - purples are so hard to photograph sometimes and the natural light has *not* been cooperative lately.

The scarf shades from deep purple at the edges through blue, teal, a couple shades of green, to a yellow-ish green in the middle (and then back again). I'm thinking of doing a warm colorway next (reds and oranges and yellows)...

A bit more detail, here:



Hung up in the common area of the Fourth Floor at Western Avenue Studios, just for fun:


Yup, the color more or less disappeared on this shot, but you can get a sense of the repeat this way (212 ends! how fun!).

And, lest we forget that four shaft looms can be an awful lot of fun, too, here's the project that's currently on my little loom at home:



Some sampling to begin (just a little - the warp here is SeaSilk and is *insanely* expensive!) - I settled on a silvery 20/2 silk for the weft, and am combining these nice little waves with diamonds for the center 30" or so of the scarf.

I'm also completely dying to post photos of a fun collaborative project that Bella and I are working on for Ms. Daisy (my next-to-newest niece and Bella's next-to-newest cousin, lol) - but I can't because her Mom reads my blog sometimes and I don't want to give it away! Working on *another* project for brand-brand-new great-niece Ms. Kathryn (born on July 5!), too... I'll post photos of both once they're no longer surprises.

On An Etsy Roll!

It's an Open Studio day at Western Avenue Studios today... And I'm actually wishing I were outside instead! It's beautiful out - 70s, sunny, absolutely perfect - and, not surprisingly, there aren't many people coming through the building. They're all outside gardening (as I should be) or kayaking (as I really want to be) or planning a cook-out for this evening. Hopefully Mr. SkiingWeaver is doing that last one!


This guy was on the front page of Etsy this morning! In this treasury. It was an Etsy-Admin curated list - thanks to whichever kind Admin liked my work enough to put it on the front page! That makes two Saturday mornings in the past couple of weeks. Crazy!

And I've sold five scarves through Etsy in the past couple weeks also - this normally only happens during the holiday season. Two went to San Fran (man, do I love that city!), two went to Texas, and this one:

Is on its way to South Korea! How fun, I love the global market aspect of Etsy... Thanks to it, I've sent work to Australia, France, the U.K., all over the United States and Canada, and now to South Korea.

Warping is underway on the Weavebird. I'd post a picture, but I left my camera at home, argh. Another argument for getting a Blackberry.... (Mr. SkiingWeaver calls them "crackberries" - lol.) And to think I didn't even *have* a cell phone until I got pregnant with Bella. Good grief, how low I've sunk.

Weavebird!

The Big Red Truck. With the Weavebird, in pieces, in my Mum's driveway in Orange, on the way home from Tom Beaudet's in Westfield, last weekend.

And, this weekend, I actually got my rear into my studio - and finished setting up my new loom! Hooray!

There she is, making friends with her big brother (my LeClerc Colonial 60"/12 shaft, in the background). Notice the purple laptop? LOL. (Florence Feldman-Wood, eat your heart out!) (Florence is the very lovely past Dean of the Weavers' Guild of Boston with a decided penchant for purple.)



Another view, with new shelving for my yarn stash in the background, and my inventory covered up back there (the studio can get dusty, I like to keep things covered except for during Open Studios).

The new shelving was very necessary - when Mr. SkiingWeaver and I tried to move my old wire shelving it fell apart! An avalanche of yarn. The kidlets thought it was hilarious....

Could actually use another shelf like this, there's no room at the moment for my Tencel, cotton, skeins of silk and cashmere, etc. Hmmm.

Anywho, I haven't warped the Weavebird yet, but do have my first project all planned out - an advancing point twill, in shades of purple/teal/green bamboo, probably just for me, since it will be the first project from the new loom and all. I'm dying to dive right into fine silk, but I thought maybe I should rein in the enthusiasm a little bit and just work with easy yarn for the first project or two...

But I did manage to get the loom to make tabby sheds, hooray!


1-3-5-7-9-11-13-15



2-4-6-8-10-12-14-16

Now I'm hoping I didn't get the pictures reversed. :)

SOWA - Pictures, Finally

Finally, a couple pictures from SOWA! The South End of Boston is a really cool, vibrant neighborhood, the South of Washington area is undergoing a rebirth of sorts, and I love that they have an open air market there every week over the summer now. The Art Walk coincided with the market's opening weekend.

We set up on Friday, in the midst of normal Boston workday traffic, it was a little crazy, but there was temporary parking for us, hooray!

The buildings where we set up - we were to the left a little bit of this picture, I just like the old brick smokestack here...

Here's my little set-up. Photographing indoors sucks, in a word. That flash just sucks all the color out of everything, doesn't it? The set-up worked out pretty well in the end, though. I'm not sure whether I'll continue to use hangers (like on the right in this photo), things do tend to slide off of them... And I like how the ladder display look. But the benefit of the hangers is that you can see more of the pieces that are to the rear. Hmmm. Must think on this more. The baskets hung on the gridwall worked really well for my eco-felt pillows.

I didn't do a very good job of getting around to take photos of other WAS people - but my friend Peter did! Check out his blog entry! (There's even a picture of me, eeks.)

I did manage a picture of my neighbor, though, the fabulous Ms. Vicky of Art by Verde:


Her work is just gorgeous. Love it. I came home with some of it. :) (One of the small landscapes to her left in this photo.) Vicky has a studio at Western Avenue Studios and was my first neighbor there (before she moved to the third floor, the traitor! lol!).

There was a *ton* of foot traffic through this show, but not a lot of bags going by, which means there were a lot of people just browsing. Not surprising, given the current economic situation, of course. I was pleased with how much I sold, in the end, especially since this really isn't the season that I sell well in, generally. Handed out a ton of cards, postcards and Western Avenue brochures, too, so that's always good, especially since last year people really *did* come back at Christmas time.

I also learned an interesting lesson, being next to Ms. Vicky - people seem to get stressed out about their booth location at a craft fair, etc. etc. Well, Vicky couldn't have had a tougher location, in my opinion (in the middle of a side corridor) and her stuff flew off of her pegwalls. Interesting, huh? A combination of really gorgeous work, that people really like, and reasonable prices (she paints a lot of small pieces, but she also sold one of her large pieces to a couple from Croatia!).

I'm trying to figure out how to apply this to my work... Weaving is very time-consuming after all, even if I am a fast weaver. It's interesting - I get two types of comments. Either raised eyebrows at the prices or comments about how *reasonable* my prices are. You can tell which group of customers know about fiber art/handwovens...

And considering my taste in yarn just keeps getting more expensive, my prices aren't going to be coming down anytime soon. I figure one way around it is to make sure my designs are interesting enough to make the pricetag not outlandish. And I'm also starting up a line of lower-priced, solid-color scarves, since I get requests for them quite often.

Anyway. The show was a lot of fun, and a really great way to try out my set-up, etc. I'll be there again next year, if they'll have me!

I Love My Studio...

So, I posted this scarf on Etsy on Tuesday:

And somebody bought it last night! That was fast. So, it's heading off to it's new home. While at the studio, I re-did some of the photos I took earlier this week...

And for some reason, I just really love this picture. Not even sure if it's a really good photo of the scarf for selling, per se, I just really like the little bit of the view of the frozen canal outside my studio window...

(This scarf is from the same warp as the one that sold, but the weft is grey instead of icy blue. Both are a turned Ms and Os structure, using Silk City's Bambu7 sett at 16 epi, using various shades of blue and gray and a bit of black to outline the cells.)

I love my studio on weekday mornings. When I scoot over there before 9am, I'm often the only person on my floor, and it's very peaceful, and it's nice to see the artists that work there on a daily basis making their way in, too. I really am looking forward to when Conall is old enough to go to preschool a couple mornings a week, so I can spend more daylight hours in my space - does that make me a terrible, terrible mother? :)

A New Twist on an Old Design

So, I've fallen in love with this fantastic Mongolian cashmere that I found, as you may have noticed... And I'm also still really intrigued with shadow-weave (most of my bamboo scarves that I made over the past year have been in various shadow-weave structures). I did play around with using the cashmere as the weft in some mixed-twill scarves, and liked that, but I really do enjoy designing/weaving shadow-weave a lot more than just twill. (Who knew I'd ever find a structure that would keep me this occupied!)

So, I decided to give a mixed warp of Bambu7 and the 2-ply cashmere a whirl... I normally sett my Bambu7 at 16 epi (a little loose, perhaps, but I like to give the yarn room to move when I wash it), so that's where I started.

There it is, going into the sink to soak! The black yarn is the cashmere, and I used a couple shades of Bambu as the lighter blues and greys (hard to tell in this photo). It came out nicely after the wash (it's air drying at the moment) and now I'm warping another one to sett at 20 epi instead of 16, just to see how it turns out. I'll keep you posted!

It's fun to be back to weaving a little bit after the busyness of last week... we have Open Studios at WAS this Saturday, but I have nothing, basically, to sell! Eeks! Ah well, it's always nice just to chat with the people that come through, and get some work done, too.

Open Studios Coming Up!

So, did everyone go shopping on Friday? I'm actually pretty proud of us for *not* going out shopping, lol... We did buy some outdoor Christmas lights and put them up, though, so that was fun. It even flurried here a little bit on Sunday (didn't stick though, rats).

And I sold the sister to my cashmere scarf that I posted about earlier. Barely got it listed on Etsy, and now it's off to Chicago...

Love that cashmere... I've got two with navy stripes in the works (too dreary to take good photos, waiting for some sun), and have some on my loom with yellow in the stripe that are looking pretty cool, too. I'm pleased - and they're fast to weave, since they're twill (my shadow-weave bamboo scarves take two shuttles, so they're a little slower). I'm hoping to warp and weave a couple more sets of the variegated rayon scarves as well. All this because we've got the Holiday Open Studios coming up at Western Avenue over the next two weekends - Saturday and Sunday both weekends, from noon - 5pm.

And, finally, I'll be delivering five pieces to a new shop in Chelmsford, hopefully today - one of the WAS artists is opening a shop about five minutes away from our house! How fun! (We live near the center of our town, it's nice to be able to walk to the library, the grocery store, etc.) Even better, her shop is *right* along the new bike path that is being built through Chelmsford (as part of the Rails to Trails network, very excited to have it here). So, while I wouldn't exactly recommend biking while wearing a scarf, it will be great exposure for her shop...

(Oh - and I'm about halfway through New Moon, the second book in the Twilight series... Jacob has definitely taken a turn for the grumpier, but I still like him better than Edward, lol! I thought I was going to finish the book yesterday, but I was good and went to the studio to weave, instead...)

A Colorful Weekend...

Our family bid farewell to a very beloved friend this weekend...

Mr. SkiingWeaver's purple car has gone to a new home! (That's little man Conall on his "bike" next to it...) The poor thing has been sitting in our garage for about three years, not working, until my brother Andy decided to adopt it and do the little fix-ups it needed to get back on the road.

I suppose it's a little silly to be sentimental about a car, but it was Carlos' first-ever car (bought when he graduated from college) and we drove it all over the Southwest when we lived in Austin. Many fond memories of road-tripping in the purple car to Taos to ski, or off to explore Mesa Verde and Telluride... But, it's good to see it out and about again instead of gathering dust (literally) in our garage.

I was obviously having a hard time concentrating on actually *weaving* at the studio this weekend....

But at least I finally painted my studio door! This is the inside view, looking out to the corridor - the door frame is a dark chocolate brown, the door itself is teal, and on the outside there's a border on the wall of the same purple as the pillar in the studio.

So, not particularly productive on the weaving front, but I still feel like I got something accomplished. We're having Open Studios the first two weekends of December (Saturday and Sunday both weekends), and I was really wanting to paint over the boring grey on my door, and get some color out in the hall, too... I have very little inventory for those Open Studios - eeks! - but I'm working on kind of letting go of the stress and just going with what I'll be able to get done before then... I've sold a whole heck of a lot of work already this fall, so it's ok if I don't sell much more... Or so I keep telling myself!

Spinning! And Weavers' Guild of Boston Sale

Can you believe how completely lame I am about blogging lately? I guess when things get hectic, this is one of the low-priority items for me, sad to say...

At any rate, in fiber news, two exciting things happened today. First, I learned how to spin! Really, really badly! But I think I may be hooked. I took a beginning spinning class at the Fiber Loft in Harvard, Mass., got my knuckles good and bloody learning how to card fleece and spun some really lumpy yarn on a Louet S10. Which came home with me after the class. (No, I didn't buy it, I'm just renting it for the month to try to get the hang of this a little better. I'll definitely look for one with two treadles when I buy a wheel...) The teacher said I took to it like a duck takes to water, but I think I'm going to need a lot of practice before I get usable yarn (I'm picky).

So much fun, and my respect for the fantastic handspinners on Etsy has gone through the roof. Like lovely Ms. Maple of North Star Alpacas - wow, how on earth does she get her handspun so beautifully even??


I mean, look at that! Wow. (And click on it to buy it!) I bow to a master...

The other bit of fun fiber news was that the Weavers' Guild of Boston annual sale was this week, Thursday evening through this afternoon. I just popped down to Weston to pick up my unsold items - and found out I sold 12 pieces! (Half of the items I brought to them.) I'm most pleased! My etsy shop and studio are going to be pretty darn bare again, and the holiday open studios at Western Avenue Studios are still coming up, gulp!

No wonder I haven't been blogging much lately... I'm off to make the rounds and read some of my favorite blogs, I feel like I haven't visited anyone in ages! I'm sorry!

Second Day of Open Studios - Wow Am I Tired

Phew, nothing quite like being "on" for two days in a row, I was really drooping by the time 5pm rolled around yesterday at WAS. I thought the foot traffic was a little lighter, but I still managed to sell two more scarves (despite the sparse look of my display racks - they really do sell better when they have company), and I wrote my first-ever wholesale order (six scarves, to be delivered on November 1st).

So, all in all, a very, very successful weekend! Man, though, I don't know how people on the art/craft show circuit do it. I feel like I could sleep for a week. But I get to do it all over again this coming Saturday for our normal First Saturday Open Studios. Here's hoping I can get a couple of pieces finished before then - my racks are looking pretty sadly bare.

The other fun aspect of the weekend was having my little loom set up with a play warp for people to try weaving on. A surprising number of people gave it a whirl - mostly kids, but some grown-ups, too. I had a huge amount of fun explaining a little bit and then watching them try.

It's interesting how you can kind of read how much information people want - some people just want to throw the shuttle, make a mess, and have fun with it for a couple minutes, others want to learn a little bit more about what makes good cloth. Also interesting to see that sometimes thinking too much about things bogs people down - some of the best novice weavers were kids that listened just enough but then didn't worry about things too much and actually managed to have a reasonably even beat and non-wonky selvedges. The whole experience made me realize that I might really enjoy teaching, some time down the line (enough on my plate at the moment!).

Busy Season?

Fall is in the air in New England... (Though, of course, as I write this, a warm front is coming through, bringing heavily humid air with it, yucko.) The leaves are already starting to change a little bit - kind of early this year, but not surprising after a very cool August.

We had Open Studios at Western Avenue Studios on Saturday September 6, and I swear if was the hottest day of the summer, it was horrible. Humid, rainy, everybody was sweating - not a great environment to sell scarves in!

But, when I got home, I discovered that a very lovely customer had purchased this scarf:

from my Etsy store. Excellent.

I shipped it off to her last Monday morning and then got a lovely note from her saying that her husband had appropriated it as soon as it arrived and could i please make another one for him? Even more excellent! so, I'll be making one in more manly colors (black, greys, blues) as soon as I can manage to finish weaving this warp:

I am seriously thinking of calling this series of scarves Not For the Faint of Heart or something like that. The colors are a lot of fun - black, purple, deep red, orange and bright pink in the warp, mostly purple and black in the weft with stripes of orange, red and pink at each end and in the middle. Yeah, it's colorful.

Apparently, I'm in the mood to work with bright colors. Does anyone else get those moods? I try to kind of balance out my color schemes for my store and studio, but sometimes i just a hankering to mix, say, orange and pink and make my eyes pop a little. And other days I prefer working with more serene color combinations...

Follow- Up On the Time Question - and a Teaching Question

First of all, a big apology to anyone who was looking for my Wednesday artist profile this past week and missing it... I was just swamped (and, let's admit it, completely lame). But, for a special treat, I'm planning to profile a weaver this coming Wednesday!

She is lucky enough to live near here!

So, folks, thanks so much to everyone who commented on the previous post. I took all of your advice to heart, as well as some wonderful advice from the EtsyFAST folks, too - and put it to good use at yesterday's Open Studios at Western Avenue Studios.

First of all, despite kind of a record low turn-out (it was kind of a yucky day here yesterday, it didn't surprise me that not a lot of people showed up) - I sold four pieces! I was tickled!


So, this scarf, among others, has a new home. (Always had a soft spot for this one - I wear it's twin sister that has a threading error in it - I took the colors from a painting that my daughter made.)

Secondly, I think I came up with a way that works for me to answer the dreaded "time" question. First, I changed my attitude and decided to attribute the question just to curiosity. Especially since during Open Studios my loom is right there, often with work in progress on it, of course people want to hear about the process. So, I spend a lot of time giving a quick run-down of the warping process and how a loom works to folks - it's really wonderful to see how interested people are!

And, when they ask the time question, I usually give a bit longer answer, based on some of the replies I got here, actually! Something like: "Well, I've been weaving pretty steadily for seven years now (funny how as a weaver that makes me a neophyte, but non-weavers think that's a long time, lol), when I first started it probably took me about 3X, though I didn't time myself then. Even a year or so ago, it took me about 2X. I've gotten really efficient in the past year and a half since I've started selling, though, and have my time down to X. Unless I make mistakes that need fixing..." (I'm a typical NorthEastern Yankee fast talker, so that goes by faster than it looks.)

OK, if you've made it this far - I have another question for you! Do you have people ask about you giving lessons? I'm amazed at how many people ask me if I teach when they come through during Open Studios.

I'm thinking that for the big Lowell-city-wide Artists Open Studios in late September that I'm going to bring my little four-shaft loom over, too, and set it up with a sample warp and let people have at it. We get a lot of kids through, too, and I think they might get a kick out of that...

I would love to teach someday, but at the moment, at least, I barely have enough time to weave! Maybe when both munchkins are old enough to be in school.

Any teachers out there? Do you give private lessons, one-on-one, or do you teach groups? I imagine it's a lot of work, but also really rewarding.

Anybody who happened to read my Endnotes column in Handwoven will probably realize that Rita Steinbach, my teacher at the Worcester Center for Crafts, was just crucial in giving me that push that I needed to move into designing my own work. (Thank you, Rita!!) Anywho, I would love to hear about your experiences!

Open Studios - A Success!

We had Open Studios from noon - 5pm today at Western Avenue Studios. I learned a lot - including getting a *lot* more comfortable talking about my work with people - and also made some newbie mistakes.

For example, when you sell things that people wear, it's a really good idea to have a mirror. DOH! (I had thought of that earlier, forgot to write it down, and then forgot it completely... I know what I'll be buying tomorrow to put in the studio...)

I sold this wrap! Gone before I even posted it on Etsy... I am liking having another venue to sell things through. Anywho, I'm glad I took some pictures of this wrap before it went to its new home. An absolutely *lovely* woman bought it as a present for a niece. What a excellent aunt!

Some really fun folks came through - a Cub Scout group among them! The little guys were just great, full of really intelligent questions about how looms work. I was completely tickled to have another wrap on my loom that I'm currently actively weaving (instead of threading), so I could show them how it works. Kids are awesome, they're so wonderfully curious about everything.

So, even though I didn't get much actual work done (though I did manage to work out a really complicated doubleweave draft for a custom guitar strap for fellow EtsyFast member Black Mustard), it was a really nice day.

More Studio Pictures

So, we finally got my big loom moved into my studio space...



Neato! And there's a LOT more room left near the windows. I'm seriously thinking of moving my little 36" Harrisville loom over there as well.


I figure if I keep the weaving stuff a bit more separate from the home front, I'll keep more of my attention on the kids while I'm at home, and more on the weaving while I'm at the studio... And there's always little things to do at home, too. Playing with drafting software, twisting fringe, taking photos to list in my Etsy shop, etc.

On another note - if you are a weaver/fiber person, or even just interested in fiber arts, go check out Leigh's Fiber Journal. Run, don't walk, to follow that link folks. Seriously, I learn something every single time I visit her blog. It is *awesome*.

For example - have you woven a bunch of dishtowels (or are you planning some?) and you're wondering how best to finish/hem them? Well, Leigh asked folks about that and then posted an amazing compendium of finishing techniques.

Settling In To My New Studio

I signed a lease on a studio at Western Avenue Studios late last month, and, on March 1st, it was ready!


Here are Carlos and the munchkins looking out the (huge!) windows at the canal. Which looks like this:



Neat, huh? WAS is in nearby Lowell, Massachusetts (about five miles from our home, nice short commute), and there are over 120 artists working in studios on four floors of an old, renovated mill building. Lowell was one of the centers of the industrial revolution in the U.S. Most of the old mill buildings were textile mills - how fitting! And many of them are now being converted into lofts, studios, and work-live studios.

Anyway, not sure if you could tell in that first picture or not, but the floor of the studio was in *really* really bad shape...

Eegads. Carlos has definitely won the Husband of the Year award... He spent the entire day last Tuesday sanding the floor for me - three different grits, a huge amount of work. I stained the floor in the middle of the night and we got a couple of coats of polyurethane on it before we left for the weekend to ski. And this is what it looks like now!

Hooray! Much better! I have started moving in - yarn, a work table, nothing too complicated yet. I'm hoping we'll get my big 60" 12-shaft LeClerc Colonial moved in tonight - right in front of those lovely windows, so I can look out once in a while as I weave. Very happy!

I've been meeting quite a few of my neighbors, too, they're all so nice! If you live in the area, WAS has Open Studios the first Saturday of each month, from noon - 5 p.m. It's definitely worth stopping by, just to see lots of artists at work (and to maybe buy something if it strikes your fancy!) - painters, photographers, jewelry artists, fiber artists, mixed media artists, one other weaver that I know of - lots of different types of art to check out.