Thank you so much to all of you who responded to ‘Weave with me‘. I’m keeping things relaxed and easy going so we can just enjoy our work as we can fit it into our lives. Weaving is too important to make it a stressed must do process.

Viv from Tasmania responded almost immediately and has a narrow warp set up on her loom ready to go. She prefers to sketch the weave to produce not small individual works for a journalling but for an eventual jacket. This makes sense and will appeal to many as a practical and usable outcome for their work. A detailed sense of wonder can still be used and even written about as the work eventually becomes a woven whole object.

Here is Viv’s woven detail – number one. I’ve included a black and white rendition as it offers another way of viewing texture and colour intensity and getting back to basics.

In contrast my weave looks a little conservative! I took a whole ball of Noro single ply wool and ran it with a red cashmere and a wine coloured lambswool to see how I could use the Noro effectively without too much striping. This is a real zen type of weave requiring little thinking…which I am particularly good at. I just randomly tied knots in the yarn and plopped them in any old how. What am I thinking when I’m weaving this sketch – not much, but just grateful for choosing weaving as one of my doing loves.

I must tell you that the finishing process with cashmere should be longer than cursory. To bring out the softness I agitated it in my washing machine for 10 minutes. Yes, it shrunk as it must to realise it’s true potential. Cashmere may not do its ultra soft handle without this treatment.

At the moment I’m accepting images of your sketches as we travel together for a while. For your weaves.