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Over the Rainbow Blanket

First things first. Deepest thanks to each and every one who left such kind words and warm thoughts while I’ve been absent. I do believe that thoughts are things, and that they tranform into energy that finds its way to their intended.

Love to all –
Jane

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 Am slowling working away on the Over The Rainbow Blanket, between bouts of being in and out of town.

It had been a long time since using my floor loom, as most weaving these days I do on my Baby Wolf.  The Baby is much easier on my back.

Alas, Baby was too small for the blanket, and with all that’s going on in my brain these days, I didn’t feel sharp enought to doubleweave it, so here you have it.

Decided to just use a basic 2/2 twill for the structure as I felt it would give a softer drape when finished rather than the suggested plainweave that came with the yarns. I have noticed, that I’ve been having a hard time keeping my beat even – - can you say S T R E S S ?  It takes me awhile after I sit down to unwind and find my rhythm these days, but my sis won’t mind and am sure that she won’t notice.

I’ve noticed that the black threads are weaker, probably an artifact from the dyeing process.  My beater was not falling evenly on the fell line, and having ruled out any tensioning problems I noticed that it is a bit wobbly. So once the blanket is finished, it’s time to give the loom a long overdue tuneup.  She needs it.

Part of me has been procrastinating about working on the blanket. Normally, this would have been woven up in a day or two. However, every time I sit down and begin, the tears start to fall, and the reality that next year at this time, my sis won’t be here, breaks through. It’s as if by delaying the end of the blanket, I can forestall her end of the rainbow.

The cancer is very aggressive, and the latest results from M.D. Anderson Cancer center in Houston, indicate that it is moving very rapidly.  No treatments, and little time left. Her treatment plan is to live it up for as long as her body will cooperate. 

I can’t help but reflect upon all the women who came before me, when no one knew the word “cancer” — but who struggled with illness in times far more primitive. Does ascribing a word to something make it more real? I don’t think so. In many ways, verbal mediation strips the very essence out of that which it is attempting to describe. It allows one to remove oneself by a step or two from the raw experience.

The other day, someone asked me how my “looming” was going.  It struck me that sitting at my loom and weaving, I do, indeed have a lot of “looming” going on, while we are “cancering.”

Many heartfelt thanks to those of you who have left such kind words on my blog. I’ve read each and every one, and am always awe struck at the common threads that run between us all.

Loom on
Jane

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When is a blanket not a blanket? When it’s a transitional object. That’s a fancy term to describe a thing that brings one comfort when one can’t have the person who the thing represents or to whom the thing belongs.

A little over a year ago my sis was diagnosed with late stage aggressive ovarian cancer. After a great deal of soul searching on her part, coupled with my need to research any and all statistics on treatment options, and coupled with her partner’s overriding terror at the thought of losing her, she opted to give chemo a try after having surgery that removed a tumor the size of a nerf football. She named the tumor, “Wilson.”

Wilson left little furry, fuzzy tendrils inside of her. While she responded exceptionally well to the chemotherapy (which made her violently ill), we knew that even with the best odds she had only cheated Father Time out of about 3 years.

Father Time is a jealous soul, and once he has his sights set on someone, he can be very persistent.  On Christmas Eve, we found out that Wilson has invaded her liver. There is not a lot of time left. One thing about a failing liver, is that the person whose body it inhabits can begin to feel cold, and very tired and sleepy.

Growing up (and to this day) my favorite movie was/is The Wizard of Oz, and my favorite song is Over The Rainbow. My sis has always believed in the healing power of color(s). Put it all together, and I’ve begun an “Over the Rainbow” blanket as a suprise for her. Because in my mind and heart, I will always think of her as merely somewhere over the rainbow. When she feels a chill, or finds herself sleepy, she can wrap up in a rainbow where every single thread was touched and infused with love.

I finished sleying the blanket today on my floor loom. It is shetland wool, and bought in a convenient color gamp kit from the Yarn Barn in Kansas. It will full up nicely, and I’ll take it a bit further, and brush it out so that it is soft and snuggly.

Then, in a mere few months when she is gone, her partner of 18 years can wrap herself up in the warmth and comfort that had embraced her beloved.

The heavens will gain a brighter light, and the rainbows more luster when she joins them, but for those of us left without her, for a time (and perhaps a very long time) things will never be the same. She’s not the first person I’ve lost to death, nor will she be the last — but few have I loved so deeply.

When all the world is a hopeless jumble
And the raindrops tumble all around
Heaven opens a magic lane
When all the clouds darken up the skyway
There’s a rainbow highway to be found
Leading from your window pane
To a place behind the sun
Just a step beyond the rain

Somewhere over the rainbow. . . ~lyrics by EH Harburg and music by Harold Arlen

Take a moment to pour some love into what’s on your loom because a moment can be a lifetime if it changes your life forever,

Jane

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Imagine my surprise and delight while hemming this sample off the loom this morning, when poet, Elizabeth Alexander during the inaugural celebration recited a poem, one line of which was: Someone is stitching up a hem. . .

Those simple words touched me to my core, on this historical day. Here sat I, engaged in that exact, simple chore, while at the same time an incredibly complex and significant event was taking place that will change the face of our world. The mundane juxtaposed with the extraordinary.  I shall always recall exactly where I was and what I was doing when this 44th President was sworn into office. The joy at this new beginning mingled with the joy of being in my studio, listening to the radio, and giving thanks for how blessed my own life is.

Celebrate!
Jane

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Pixel pixies ate my post! So rather than reconstructing the entire thang (yes I did save a draft, but when I went to publish the draft — *poof* the title appeared sans photo and post). Ah well . . . such is the world of weaving and webbing: snags happen.

Have spent the morning winding (a little under 1/2) of the warp for my next project which will be the towels that I had hoped to get done in time for Christmas this year. Life interrupted, however, and the “new, more relaxed” me is going with the flow and just reveling in the fact that in 2009 I am not going to be working on major off-line weaving related projects. Instead I’m going to enjoy every possible moment in my studio. YAY!

With the New Year, it is time to assess my budget, and something has to go. Sadly, this year it is going to be my old friend, Handwoven magazine. Handwoven has been a part of my life for well over half of it, but sometimes friends outgrow one another . . . no hard feelings . . . and in this case, years of back issues with which to reminisce. In the past couple of years, Handwoven, to me, has become more like a website and has lost a lot of the depth that it used to have. Or perhaps, my own aesthetic has changed over the years. So this year’s budget will bring the English language version of Väv to my doorstep instead, accompanied by Jean Scorgie’s Weaver’s Craft.  Oh, don’t get me wrong, I’m not abandoning my old friend — we’ll see each other from time to time, and like old friends who have gone their separate ways, we’ll no doubt have much to catch up on. Our guild’s library has a subscription so I can check out the current issue(s) if there is something of interest therein.

In the meantime, I’d better go finish winding. These will be Huck lace squares, alternating with plain weave squares, set within windowpanes formed by the red accent threads. 10/2 white cotton, and 5/2 for the red to give the windowpanes a little pizzaz.

Weave like an Egyptian or ett Svenskt vävare,
Jane

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2009 marks the 50th anniversary of our local guild. It was my turn to weave a sample for our monthly newsletter, and I wanted to create something that would commemorate this milestone.

I’m a gal who loves intrigue and a good mystery and I thought it would be fun to create a code draft using PIKESPEAKWEAVERS50YEARS as the basis for this sample.   I sat down with pen and paper and began the process of deciding how I wanted to lay out the alphabet and numerals in order to minimize the number of letters that would pop up side by side and thus require the addition of a lot of incidentals.  

After a couple cups of coffee, and a pile of rejected layouts, I finally settled on one that was pleasing, had a small motif, and one that would lend itself nicely to placemats, scarves, napkins, and other small projects.

Warp:  10/2 mercerized cotton, color natural
Ground:  10/2 unmercerized cotton, color natural
Pattern: 5/2 mercerized cotton, color lilac
Sett: 24 epi sleyed 2 per dent in 12 dent reed
Ends: 462 +2 floating selvedges
Shafts:  4, Treadles: 6 (4 pattern, 2 ground)
Border: all 4 sides
Use tabby

Width on the loom: 19.25”
Width off the loom: 18” Length off loom: 15”
Finished Width: 16.75” Finished Length: 13”  

Tip: The treadling  for this design is a bit tricky, so I opened my Pixeloom software, put the treadling option as numeric, then opened a view of just the treadling. As I would complete a sequence, I would then change the weft color on the last shot thrown, save, and move on to the next sequence.  Upon completing that sequence, I would change the weft color of that last shot, and restore the color of the previous’ sequence last shot back to its original color.

You can see a treadling error in the first row of the motifs in this picture. I was too far past it to want to unweave, and it was after that that I began my tracking system.

What was really exciting to me, was the way that the ground threads slipped into place upon wet finishing, allowing the motifs to tighten up.  Working on this sample has inspired me to want to work more with this design to fine tune it.

This was such a fun project, and now I’ll use the rest of the warp to weave up some placemats. One of our guild members works at a shelter for battered women, and they are having an Empty Bowl fund raiser. Local potters each donate a bowl, and she asked weavers if we would donate handwoven placemats.

My beloved is home this week on vacation, and I’m enjoying my time with him. We’re two peas in a pod, so I love being able to have any extra time with I can. The New Year finds me with all major non-weaving projects done, so I am FREE FREE FREE to weave!  What a wonderful feeling that is, and I can’t wait!

 Wishing a Happy New Year to all!

Weave like an Egyptian,
Jane

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(used with permission from www.moonchildren.com)

Wishing you all a peaceful and joy filled Christmas Day! We are snuggled in, fireplace aglow, and sunshine glinting off of the snow. Life is splendid. . .

xoxox
Jane

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This photo is brought to you by Leigh. The rules were to go to my 6th photo folder and choose the 6th photo that was in it.  I recently changed computers (my old one was dying) and it just so happens that I have 6 and only 6 photo folders on this one. In my 6th folder were only 4 photos, so I chose the very last one.

This photo was taken while looking out of my kitchen window last weekend, on what I considered our first real snow of the year. We’ve had one or two lighter ones, but for me it’s not official until it completely covers everything. Oh, and this one covered everything to a depth of 2 feet by the time it was all said and done.

Outside of this window stands a Ponderosa Pine that is over 200 years old. It is H U G E, and combined with the scrub oak and berry  bushes that surround it provides a habitat for birds, deer, fox, porcupine, the neighbors’ children, and the occassional berry and bird feeder seeking bear. The branch in the photo is it’s very bottom branch which is about 12 feet from the ground.

Often, I feel as if I live within a Jan Brett storybook. I’m blessed to have a postcard view from every window in our home. My floor loom sits at a bank of floor to ceiling windows on the south side, and overlooks aspen trees, pine, and an open meadow space from which I can just barely see the top of a neighbor’s roof.

My weaving studio that houses my fiber, table loom, and baby wolf, has east windows and I love to take my coffee in there first thing in the morning when the light is just streaming in. My painting studio is on the lower level at the bottom of the south windows, and overlooks a sunken rose garden/courtyard. It would have been ideal to have it catch the north light, but the only window on that (coooooold) side of the house is the one in the photo above.

When I was young, my dream was to live in a cabin in the mountains, to spend my days painting, weaving, knitting, baking, gardening, and living a quiet, simple life. Now I am in the second half of my life, and while the “cabin” is way beyond those original dreams, the life is more than I imagined. Life is good.

Thanks, Leigh, for prompting a ‘count my blessings’ kind of day.

Weave like an Egyptian,

Jane <—- who is now tagging Cally, Trapunto, Amanda, DeborahBee, and one of my oldest friends on the ‘net (since 1996 when we were charter members of the Digital Divas), Silver.

In fact, it was for Silver that the photo was taken. She lives in Florida, but is a snow maven in her heart. We have a tradition that I send her a photo of the first snow of the season, so that she can drift into the image and “feel” the snow. Back in the day, we were bleeding edge digital artists and designers together, and then over the years both went back to analog pursuits. Silver is an accomplished artist, spinner, knitter, seamstress, outstanding tutorial writer, and still always has her pulse on the latest in the world of the digerati. Go visit her.

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So now and then we should turn from the clamorous present, and go back in thought to that quiet past where the roots of our being lie. There, is many a Half-Way House on the road; one of them might be called, “At the Sign of the Coverlet;” and pausing here we may recover certain lost things unknown to us or unremembered, but well deserving both knowledge and remembrance.  ~Eliza Calvert Hall, A book of Handwoven Coverlets, 1912

YAY! After many more hours immersed in Photoshop and up to my tuckus in .html coding, the modern interpretations of the historic coverlet collection are up on the PPWG website. You can view them here under “Quick Links.” They are in their own gallery, are linked to their historic counterparts, and the historic coverlets each have a link back to the modern interps. Whew! Naturally, I’m thrilled to have my contribution to the project finished. Why? Well, natch! Because I can now get back to my looms!

Meanwhile, back at the ranch . . . to commemorate for myself, this project that has become so dear to my heart as a weaver, I began a search to find my very own historic coverlet. The appreciation that I have gained for the place in our country’s history (think Civil War era), for the amount of time and the processes that were required by the weavers (think a year from start to finish for most non commercial weavers) and the love and care with which most of these “coverlids” were created, prompted me to want to have one of my very own.

And now I do! It will be arriving sometime in the next week. It was found in an old cedar trunk in Wayne County, Indiana (famous for its coverlet weavers) and is in excellent condition. It’s stucture is doubleweave, it has a pine tree border (one of my all time favorites) and without doing reasearch yet, I’m calling the main pattern “bird’s nest” which resembles a variation on the old Lovers Knot.   The various patterns have different names depending on the region at which they were woven. But, I will need to do a little more sleuthing. It has a hand sewn center seam which is very typical of the era, and the warp is linen, the weft wool. I will know more about the dye after I see it in person. These coverlets were most often woven in two panels as there were few if any “broad looms” available at the time, so the weaver was limited by the width of the loom. An interesting tidbit, is that in the South, to match the center seams exactly was considered ‘bad luck.’ (I’m thinking that that was a bit of blarney put forth by the old Irish weavers down there who needed to put a good spin on a badly matched set of panels. . .).

The weavers (at home) used to spend months growing the flax, retting it, spinning it into linen, carding the wool, spinning, and dying. Then she would either weave it up herself in the winter months — or send it off to a professional weaver who might charge somewhere in the neighborhood of 5-10 dollars to weave it up. A more well to do family might have the weaver come stay with them and weave up other linens as well as a figured and fancy (jacquard) coverlet.

While I appreciate the figured and fancy coverlets, for myself I wanted a geometric, preferably with a pine tree border (my own home is surrounded by pine trees). And there it was . . .  pretty as you please. And speaking of pretty, you will note that it has a dark (winter) side, and a light (summer) side. These old coverlets were also pretty heavy (this one weighs close to 9 pounds). This was not just a practical matter for warmth, but its weight also allowed for a smooth look on a well made bed. Under the coverlet was often a stuffed mattress, some type of sheeting, then a feather bed or other sack stuffed with warm material. The coverlet’s weight, helped smooth out the look.

Now for the part that just chaps my saddle (as they say where I grew up). One of the trendy things in crafts these days is to buy up these old coverlets and CUT THEM UP into pieces and then sell the pieces at a profit to crafters to become Christmas stockings, etc. (Thanks, Martha Stewart . . . grr). Now, I am not against taking a quilt or coverlet that is in tatters and salvaging it by creating something else from it. But to take these historic textiles (that are in good shape) and cut them up just makes me want to shriek. OK — rant over.  Although, I have heard stories of coverlets being cut into pieces and each piece given to a daughter upon the death of their mother.

The history of the American coverlet is so deep and rich, that what I used to think of as “old fashioned, colonial, granny stuff,” has now become a passion of mine. Whodda’ thunk?

Weave like it doesn’t matter if it takes a year from start to finish . . .
Jane

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N0, I didn’t drop off the face of the Earth. Nor was I abducted by aliens (that’s an entirely different blog!). No, I was not seeking dead people (that’s a genealogy joke, son). I was immersed in the lengthy process of creating web pages and an online gallery for the historical coverlet project that our local guild, Pikes Peak Weavers Guild, collaborated on with the Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum.

Some of you might recall my having mentioned it some months back. What an oustanding project this has been. Rather than recounting it all here, I shall just invite you to view for yourselves this fabulous collection. For those of you with a research bent, we have put the fabric analyses and specs in .pdf form to facilitate further study.

Behind the scenes of the gallery, there are over 880 photos configured and placed, over 700 webpages, 88 pages of scripts, 44 pdfs, (now you know why I have not been here!) and scrillions of hours of upfront volunteer hours that went into the project before we could even consider putting it on the web.

Dr. Sandra Hutton  compiled all of the data points from the analysis sheets for each coverlet and put them into readable form. Sandy’s forgotten more about weave structures than I will probably learn in my entire life. She was a huge help in collaborating with me on getting the photos prepared.

Within a day or two, I will have placed a list on the intro page of all of the volunteers from PPWG and the Pioneers Museum. But for now, I have poured myself a glass of wine, and just want to sit back and enjoy a job well done, and the fact that now I can Get-Back-To-My-Looms.

 Weave like an Egyptian, or a Victorian era weaver, or a Colonial era weaver if you’re in Oz. . .

Jane

PS:  Miss Peg, I’m going through serious withdrawal from your weekly bloglist!!  I’m going to have to just stay in my jammas with coffee, mouse in hand, and read read read! I miss all of my WeaveRing friends. . . *sigh*

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