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Archive for September, 2007

Sep 29

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The Medium of the Weaver

This is usually how my yarn arrives. In white or natural cones (or skeins). To your average non-textile type person it must seem drab, colourless and uninteresting, but for a weaver it is a cone of potential energy. This is the medium of the Weaver, much like paint or charcoal are to an artist.

This collection is a mix of different wools and crepes with some very fine (50/2) bamboo yarn shown. Sometimes a yarn will ‘speak’ to me and the bamboo seems to be saying "double weave" – at least I hope I understand it’s tactile, sensual language.

I’ve also added photos of how I am using a conventional temple on my current cloth.

As you can see in the first photo the wooden temple has a ‘nasty’ looking run of spikes underneath it which pierce and grab the cloth to stretch it widthways to its full width. This helps to ensure that the beat on the cloth at the fell is even and prevents selvedge threads breaking all the time if this is a problem – and it was in my case. This type of temple slows up the weaving process, but I didn’t have to replace any broken threads repeatedly.

This warp has given me loads of frustration but it was worth persevering with and I’ve nearly woven it all off. More photos soon as I’m on a couple of weeks leave – time for turning drab cones of yarn into exquisite textiles…or perhaps just dreaming about it!
The medium of the Weaver
50/2 Bamboo yarn ‘speaking’ to me about woven structure.
The nasty spikes on the bottom of the temple
Engaging the spikes into the cloth at each selvedge
Locking down the temple ready to weave again.

 

 

Sep 20

5 Comments

Adventures and Obsessive Textile Projects

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
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