c u r i o u s w e a v e r » Life

Pics to Picks Confidence & Time

curiousweaver — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 07:39:45 +0000

You may have noticed how most of my posts are up on the same day! This is because of extreme lack of time and lack of confidence. I’ve found this in others post’s too, which is a comfort.

Anyway, how do you design from an image when loom weaving has so many restraints and restrictions to imagery and placement. It’s these limitations that are part the creative aspect in this challenge. The designs going on in our heads are mixed with our technical knowlege of what is possible on our looms without setting out to create a full imagery in tapestry weave.

So I’d like to quote a couple of paragraphs from the great American writer – Annie Dillard in her book ‘The Writing Life’. Writing about writing she offers this as a comfort to others discouraged by their writing or thinking they just haven’t got it. Her brilliant style of writing strikes at my very core. Let me know what you think…

It takes years to write a book – between two and ten years. Less is so rare as to be statistically insignificant. One American writer has writen a dozen major books over six decades. He wrote one of those books, a perfect novel, in three months. He speaks of it, still, with awe, almost whispering. Who wants to offend the spirit that hands out such books?

Faulkner wrote As I Lay Dying in six weeks; he claimed he knocked it off in his spare time from a twelve-hour-a-day job performing manual labour. There are other examples from other continents and centuries, just as albinos, assassins, saints, big people, and little people show up from time to time in large populations. Out of a human population on earth of four and a half billion, perhaps twenty people can write a serious book in a year. Some people lift cars, too. Some people enter week-long sled-dog races, go over Niagara Falls in barrels, fly planes through the Arc de Triomphe. Some people feel no pain in childbirth. Some people eat cars. There is no call to take human extremes as norms.

Hope this makes you feel braver, as it did me.

Saori Children

curiousweaver — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 03:11:51 +0000

	Easter was so full of fun and activity. Not only did my daughter come home but also my sister in law with her three children. Any children on site get dragged into the studio for activities around here. Painting easter eggs, building with duplo, drawing pictures and, of course, weaving. Darby started weaving a flower garden on the Saori loom with her 3 year old, super inquisitive brother supervising. It is a few years since she first wove on this loom and I was amazed and very encouraged by her ability to work the pedals and shutlle so efficiently and f a s t!. She was also able to change the shuttle bobbins and pick up the shed she was weaving on after a change of colour quite intuitively. We had some silk flowers to insert in the warp to make the garden. I’m off to study Saori weave in Osaka later in the year….just can’t wait.
Darby and Lewis ‘working’ the Saori loom

Darby weaving flowers into the weave

In the Process: Web & DyeBooks

curiousweaver — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 10:44:06 +0000

I’m in the process of changing my web furniture around so you may ‘trip’ over some things at the moment! Hopefully it will all look better soon.

There has been a great dye workshop at the Online Guild of Weavers, Spinners and Dyers which has inspired me to revisit my dyebooks. I use fibre reactive dyes with both cellulose and protein fibres and I went through a period of trying to control my dye colours. The compilation of this dye book actually taught me about each of the dye colours I use and how much will produce the various depths of shading. Each little skein of 2/20 mercerized cotton weighed one gram. By applying different amounts of dye solution I was able to record the results. For the pale colours I had to use a syringe to measure accurately enough.

After doing all of this dyeing I now find I have a better ‘feel’ for the dye colours rather than getting down to exactness.

Old Bar King Tides

curiousweaver — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 02:22:14 +0000

The quiet, idyllic scene this morning on Old Bar beach disguises the power of the ocean against anything humans can build. Although this isn’t a fibre post, I live in Old Bar on the east coast of Australia and gain much of my inspiration from the natural and people environment here. This is one of those extraordinary moments of the natural which we see occasionally.

These few beachfront properties have been in jeopardy for some years, bit by bit the ocean claiming more of the land. But last night very big king tides arrived to finish off the job.

You can see here that the tide has now undermined this house and the stucture is starting to crack.This ironic thing about the situation this morning is a contrast to what the scene may have been like in Sydney where this situation has arisen before. There were no cranes or inspectors or anyone. Just a quiet beautiful beach with the ocean roaring to another voracious full tide.

Even the local real estate agent wasn’t perturbed or perhaps had that bravado of descriptive license that they have. No – not a ‘renovators dream’ but quite plainly stating the Absolute Beachfront value of the cliff face waiting to be swallowed up.

TAFE College Does Sorry Day

curiousweaver — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 20:36:43 +0000

Yesterday became Sorry Day for Australia. The parliament of Australia made a formal apology and expressed remorse and sorrow, for the policy of removing children from families – the Stolen Generations.

Significantly, Taree TAFE college marked the occasion for all of us to remember and release the burden of what has happened. Many Indigenous people have suffered and are still suffering from the result of these policies in our community.

Although symbolic in principle, a recognition and acknowledgment of this great suffering for so many people somehow signals a new beginning of moving forward in a way that makes the path clearer and more positive.

Adventures and Obsessive Textile Projects

curiousweaver — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 00:41:57 +0000

	I’ve been away on an adventure to Sydney. So I haven’t had time to update my blog. Somethings just have to go on outside the blog world. My best adventures were searching bookshops, galleries and libraries, followed by volunteering for MSF and a tour of the Sydney Opera House. I’ve always wanted to go to the Opera House and I finally saw inside it. The sail like roofs are covered in a white and off white tiling that could be emulated in weave patterns which I had never noticed before. You can also see my arty distorted Harbour Bridge photo taken from a room with angled glass at the Opera House. A glorious building inside and out with the Concert Hall a great example of the European/Australian experience. The concert hall was designed by an Australian Architect. However some aspects of the building surprised me, for example, the foyer had a very crudefeel about it – perhaps this is an Australian analogy too. I desperately wanted to look at the John Coburn tapestry but was taken to the Utzon room where a large tapestry of a painting by Utzon hung. Jorn Utzon was the main architect of the Opera House. The guide didn’t seem to understand weaving at all and said there wasn’t a loom big enough to weave it in NSW so the Victorian Tapestry Workshop did it.It was only woven in 2003. As is common for large tapestries it is woven from the side, not from the bottom as it is hung here. I don’t know where the Coburn tapestry is, as I believe two were woven especially for the Opera House. Aside from weaving along on the loom I’m enjoying a very weaver obsessive project. Cataloging all of my weaving books and information I’ve gathered over 28 years. I’ve kept a small Access database for many years but was always frustrated by its look and inadequacies for searching as it was a very general package. I started entering my collection into the library thing but it stopped me at 200 items and wanted me to commit to payment for the rest. The payment is small but I didn’t really want my collection on-line and I want to add lots of my own notes, annotations and even essays to the book entries. I also like to add where I obtained the item and what I was doing at the time. I know it sounds weird but books are my thing and give me great joy. I also wanted to enter all my magazines which contain so much valuable information and inspiration. This means adding all of the articles and keywords for searching on each one. A big job but very pleasurable. I’m also re-learning about my collection and what information I have. After much searching I decided on buying a copy of BookCAT. I’m really happy with it. I can have photos of all of my books, and add the articles of my magazines with notes/synopsis etc. It has a facility for developing your own catagories and subcatagories so I can really hone in on my information.I can even give them a star rating like Amazon.Also thank you to all who commented on my previous post. I didn’t think there were so many warp tie on methods around.
Over the Sydney Harbour Bridge

Seaching for books and books

The Sydney Opera house has weave type patterns in the roof tiles

An arty photo distorting the bridge because of the angle of the glass from a room at the Opera House


A large tapestry woven by the Victorian Tapestry Workshop (2003) of a painting by Utzon – the Architect of the Sydney Opera House.

My messy but valuable Handwoven magazine collection

Getting it all together in the BookCat database

Ship on the Beach

curiousweaver — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 06:44:00 +0000

	The storms down the coast of NSW last week have barely left a house or business untouched. Nearly every house in Old Bar was affected in some way but when the storm hit Newcastle and the Central Coast it really left major extended damage to property and restoration of essential services.Many are still waiting for power. One amazing consequence is the ship which landed on Nobbys Beach in Newcastle.Newcastle has many ships waiting to come into the port lined up but one got loose. These photos are the best I’ve seen of the enormity of the ship in relation to the landscape. Everyone who has been down to see it is overwhelmed.
Nobbys Newcastle

Up Close Nobbys – Click to see it larger.

Christmas and New Year Interlude

curiousweaver — Mon, 01 Jan 2007 23:36:03 +0000

	Christmas was full of activity and visits. First our daughters arrived, Michelle and Teresa with Dave her boyfriend then my brother and his wife arrived with Darby and Lewis in tow to delight us at every turn. So not much time or inclination for weaving temporarily! I start back today with a new warp to put on the loom. Thankfully we have had a cool Christmas, but I doubt whether this will last. The heat just drains the energy out of everything. The Online Guild of Weavers, Spinners and Dyers will start a computer weaving course soon so hopefully I can be on board for that.
Darby as Snow White

Lewis as himself

Emerging Humans and Textiles

curiousweaver — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 00:22:51 +0000

	Well the watermark design is now on the loom and weaving is progressing quite quickly except for a trip to Sydney halting its progress. But it’s all for a good reason. My new nephew, Lewis, was born! So it was a packed weekend of holding him, and then holding him again and again. And also taking his sister Darby ice skating. That was great fun. I’m overwhelmed by choice in shopping in Sydney so I didn’t manage to buy anything much – all I could think about was getting a double flyer for my single flyer spinning wheel. This is not something you can walk into a shop and see….I always have to do mail order. A blog entry on Leigh’s site alerted me to different possible spinning ratios. I always knew this but just thought I had to adjust my hands and treadling feet in expert ways! Now I discover that wheel ratios are higher and more suited to the finer yarns I want to produce. No more treadling off my seat. And the further good news is the availability of a double drive flyer unit for my old single drive Ashford is available. Now that’s a good product. One that can be adapted years on. Of Interest Check out Miniature Earth.
My new nephew Lewis

Dave holding the baby and Teresa and Darby on the ice

Ikat Designing and Deciding

curiousweaver — Fri, 14 Apr 2006 02:43:43 +0000

I’m designing a new collection of ikat woven bookmarks and deciding how to set up the ikat is challenging. I’m using colored pencils to get an idea of the colours and arrangements of the warp threads. I’ll probably use 20/2 cotton although silk is also a good option. The work will have a sett of 105 ends per inch and each segment will be dyed individually but united on the loom.

Lots of other projects are on the boil but not so interesting for the blog at this point, however, I’ve also been spending my time lounging around as you can see with this view at Forster, NSW. The weather is perfect at the moment – the greatest time of year here. Forever blue skies tauting you to go outside and stay there for the whole day! Textile projects need to be portable and adaptable at the moment.