Things

All of the above has to be taken inside the NEC in Birmingham for the three day course and I know the car park is miles from the class room so I have to get everything into a wheeled suitcase. And I don't see how!!! Well, that is tomorrow night's problem. The course on Orthodox Binding is tomorrow.

My sister, Dorothy, has been here and we spent a lot of time sorting out and looking out things which we might take to the NEC class. This afternoon we went to Stonehouse to see an exhibition of quilts at Abigail's Crafts,. She agrees with me that the choice of fabric available there is exceptional. Of course I acquired some more!! This one was a present from Dorothy. She knows what I like!  If I size the books right, I should get two book covers out of it.

Wiltshire Guild

Yesterday I went down to Bradford-on-Avon (the South side of Bath) to see the Wiltshire Guild Annual Show - and to see Jackie Prohnert. The Show was held in the West Barn right beside the famous Tithe Barn. The West Barn would count as quite large except when seen next to the Tithe Barn which is enormous. The photos show the exterior and interior of the West Barn and some rather nice dyed silk which I bought. There was plenty to see, a lot of silk scarves, and woollen rugs all woven to a high standard. A lot of handspun mostly knitted up in cardigans, jumpers, hats, mitts et cetera. There is a sales table packed with small items like teddy bears, felted brooches, braids, skeins of handspun. With 70 members in the Guild, I find it difficult to see how they can keep this up year after year!! And I was told that they don't like items to be submitted two years running. They like everything for sale to be done in the last 12 months.

All very interesting and I guess a lot of work. There were at least four members of the Guild present when I was there and there must have been one or two upstairs teaching spinning. The Show is on from Tuesday to Saturday.

After that, it was time for lunch in a cafe at the Tithe Barn which was good and conversation with Jackie which was better. We had a discussion on guilt which I have been thinking about. I always thought this was my Church of Scotland in the 50s upbringing but not so. I now wonder if it is women who worked and are of a certain age group. Really I should have stayed at home and looked after husband, home and children - in that order. Now the habit of guilt is ingrained.  Michael goes to the Hospice on alternate Fridays. What happens if I am away and he wants to come home early? Shouldn't I be at home to receive him just in case? And in any case, what right have I to enjoy myself when he is so ill?  You can get in a real intellectual mess quite quickly.

I suspect that the one thing that keeps me sane is textiles. I can think about them without leaving the house. And do them of course. The indigo dyed warp is a real treat and will be threaded and sleyed today. 

The other thing that has kept me busy this week is becoming editor of The Shuttle which is the Newsletter of Kennet Valley Guild. The major problems are to do with me not being good at WORD. We always use FrameMaker here which is a much superior package for publishing and I can deal with that in my sleep. I could translate everything into that format and just do it in FrameMaker.  But a problem will arise  when someone takes over from me because FrameMaker is an expensive package with a steep learning curve. So I have gritted my teeth, allowed myself to swear, and done it in WORD.   So far so good albeit with a lot of swearing at midnight.

Books

I have read two interesting books recently.

The first is 'The Art of the Islamic Garden' by Emma Clark (ISBN 978 1 84797 204 0). I expected this to be a historical description plus quotations, plans and pictures. To a certain extent it is although there is far too heavy a reliance on the gardens of Alhambra. But mostly it is about designing an Islamic garden for the UK and in particular the Prince of Wales's garden. I don't particularly want to do that.  The whole book feels not quite right  somehow but I can't identify what I find disturbing. It is well written and has lots of quotes and photos.   I'd have thought this was a minority interest.

The second is 'Doubleweave' by Jennifer Moore which has just been published by Interweave (ISBN 978-1-59668-179-8). I can wholeheartedly recommend this book. She does concentrate on floor looms with treadles but what she has to say is clear and well illustrated, lots of close-up photos of woven examples. The book contains a number of projects which would be very useful if you were starting out on double weave. I gave up trying to design calladium leaves in double weave but, because of her explanations, I am encouraged to try again.

Course with Rayna Gillman

This is a scan of the bundled-up cotton which I tie-dyed in the indigo vat on Saturday. Now washed and ironed, the structure reminds me of ice crystals.  It will make a great book cover.

Next week is the NEC Quilt Show in Birmingham and my sister, Dorothy, is coming down to attend lectures and a 3-day course on 'Creative Cloth' with Rayna Gillman who wrote a fantastic book on that topic. Dorothy knew I thought highly of the book and persuaded me to attend as well. So I have started collecting the things I need to take with me - all laid out on the garage table. I decided I would take the two pieces of indigo-dyed cotton to do further work on and also three pieces of the cotton I space dyed some weeks ago. 

These have been ironed and rolled up round a cardboard tube. I managed to find 'the fish stencil', which I bought years ago. I would love to use it again. It is about 12 inches square. But the only way of getting all this stuff to the class room has to be a wheeled suitcase!

In addition to all this next week, I am going to a one-day class on Bookbinding at the local Technical College. This is about 'Orthodox  Bookbinding' as in 'Coptic Bookbinding'. I am not even too sure what the distinguishing features of Orthodox bookbinding are.  I have an image of a carved ivory book cover or one made of carved wood  with painted gesso additions! I'll report further when I know more!!

I have started warping up the Voyager with the indigo tie-dyed wool. The wool is really nice quality - 2-ply from Texere. I need the scarf completed by the September Guild meeting  and, in any case, I have to warp up for a course on Network Drafting with Alice Schlein near the end of September.

Indigo Dyeing

Five skeins of 4-ply wool from Texere dyed in indigo by Mary Jarvis. She very kindly did this for me last Saturday. All five skeins were dipped for one minute, taken from the vat, one laid aside then four dipped for 1 minute and so on. The colour gradation is very gentle. I have another five skeins of a different wool to do for Michael (this is all for tapestry). But he thinks a greater gradation would be good. I am thinking of another indigo vat in a week or two as there are several items I did not get round to.

Everything I dyed has been washed and dried. Yesterday I tidied up, winding balls and so on. One big problem was a skein of cheviot whose ties disappeared and left me with a pile of curly stuff. I did get it all wound on to bobbins. I wonder how it will weave up. Will it be a collapse weave?  I hope to put the tie-dyed warp on to the Voyager soon. 

I took over being editor of the Shuttle last weekend and need to get the next issue to the printer in the next few days but of course I could not access the Shuttle email and could not read previous versions of the Shuttle - due to not having a truly up-to-date Vista version of WORD. With Rachel Marsh's help (the previous editor), that was all sorted out last night and I stayed up to past midnight editting and wondering where the content was going to come from. Got up early this morning and worked on the photos in Photoshop but am not finished. I must get on!!!

Alan Plater

We have always been keen on Alan Plater and Michael recently bought 'The Beiderbecke Tapes' on DVD. We are watching one episode per evening - I had forgotten it was so funny. Now all I have to do is to lay my hands on a copy of Trinity Tales, Alan Plater's take on 'The Canterbury Tales'

I have in our cellars the technical files for 26 years worth of engineering work and decided that they will have to go so today a firm came round and removed 10 sackfulls for destruction - and I have only got to 1989!! I am going to be at this job for some time.

But between these pastimes, I have wound several skeins of Tencel on to cardboard cylinders ready for warping up the Megado. The warp is stripes of two different space dyed yarns from Just Our Yarns. The weft is a lurid pink Tencel (dyed with (Procion MX by me). I have decided that the pattern will be a 3 and 1 broken twill so that only a little lurid pink shows on the front surface. In preparation for all this, I assembled the roller temple yesterday and set out to mount it but found that there are problems. The position of the Megado breast beam and its supports is different when under tension with a warp!!! So I will put the warp on and then mount the roller  temple.

Madder.Weld and Indigo

Complex Weavers has a different piece of weaving on its introductory page every month and I keep an eye on this. It was quite aback-taking to open up the website last night and find myself staring at Bali H'ai, one of my South Pacific series!!! Well, well.

Yesterday was 'Dyeing in the Churchyard at Kennet Valley Guild. Here you can see, on the extreme left, the Burco boiler in which I brewed up an indigo vat, two spindriers , a rack of indigo dyed pieces and a grave stone.

I don't do an indigo vat often enough and suffer from severe fear each time. 'Will it work this time?'. I made up the indigo solution on Friday and took it with me in a sealed container. There was 600 ml of the stuff and the container travelled inside a bucket wedged in the boot of the car.  I got to Newbury at 1000 hours, started boiling up at once and inserted a cotton strip at 1130. Not many people had used indigo and a circle of dismayed faces looked at this pale green cotton strip when I took it out. It turned blue before our eyes and there were gasps. After that there was a queue. The shibori cotton fabric (from Sue Hayes) took indigo very well and turned a very attractive dark blue. 

Most of the dying was of skeins of silk or wool but there was some fibre (lower left) and some pieces of cotton fabric. At the upper left of this photo, there is a very dark skein of wool which has been dipped four or five times.

This is 100% cotton, rolled up roughly into a tight ball and tied very tightly with raffia, then dyed, only dipped twice. This is for book covers. I am wondering about overdying the piece on the right but I may feel different when it has been washed and ironed.

And this shows some of the results from the natural dyeing which was also going on using madder and weld. The dark green was the result of weld followed by a dip in the indigo vat. That dyeing was done by Ros Wilson.

I have brought home lots of skeins, some were not dry and are hung up in the garage. Today I will rinse everything and hang the lot up in the garage.

Verdict on day:- lots of people went home happy. But while the Burco boiler was fine, it was very large and I had only made up enough indigo for 8 litres of water. That really was not deep enough. I need to make up 16 litres. Memo to self. Indigo dyeing is not really that difficult and I should do it more often. I have all the necessary gear (not the Burco boiler!!) and, in any case, I never got round to dyeing everything I took with me, so there are prepared skeins.

Rosie Price has returned from the States after Convergence 2010 full of stories and bearing several things for me. A skein of lavender tencel/merino from Giovanna Imperia to go with the two I got in Tampa Bay. I have a great project for these three skeins. Peggy Osterkamp's new book 'Weaving for Beginners'. I hear great things about this. And various CD/DVDS including one about tapestry weaving by several individuals in New Mexico. I have not had a chance to hear all her stories yet. And when I got home, there was a package from my niece, Cally Booker who has also just returned from Convergence 2010, sending me a catalogue of the miniature tapestries and some really nice cards. 

A happy day. In addition to all this, the Kuala Lumpur lot are staying with us and today (Sunday) we have a conference call arranged to a travel expert in KL to organise a trip to North East Malaysia when I visit in November. Air tickets have been bought, and upgraded to Club class, day by day itinerary planned.  Last time I went to KL, I had to beg for a half day off to have a rest. This time will be no different. I must try to find out if there is any handmade paper about in Malaysia. 

At the moment, there is nothing on any loom!! I will put the indigo tie-dyed warp on the Voyager but intend to take advantage of Robin (son-in-law) being here to install the roller temple on the Megado today. Then the tencel curtain will get woven.