Best Laid Plans - -

I have been weaving away at the Fan Reed fabric and suddenly realised that I am nearly out of light orange weft. I knew about that so Plan B swung into action. I dug out the dye sheet (one of Ros Wilson's many excellences is that she insisted I keep records of dyeing!) and, oh yes, I need 150 gm of 2% KEMTEX orange for 75 gms of 60/2 silk.  So I make up a 75 gms skein of 60/2 silk and then look for 2% solution Orange in garage cupboard, none. Never mind, look for dye powder to make up a new batch of 2% solution - none. None, what do you mean none?  So Plan C is

- order Dye (done by FAX)
- wait till tomorrow to weave up remainder of orange weft because I want to take a lot of photos for my talk to London Guild and there is lots of light in that room before lunch.
- When that is done, I can finish off the samples for Fine Threads Group in either of the other two colours, brown and dark orange. Or possibly better use some yellow which I have from Handweavers Studio.

I have woven 60 cm of the 80 I need for the samples. Since the family is coming over tomorrow, I will only be able to weave in the morning.

I am going to have to post on Wednesday if Lillian is to get these by June 1st.  So I will have to do the write up this evening.

The weather continues fine as it says somewhere.

A big shock to my nervous system has been that a caladium has flowered. I am not at all keen on arum lilies - and that's what we have!! Unfortunately the flower went over very fast before I remembered to take a photo but another flower will be open tomorrow. 

Tree Paeonies

I am very fond of tree paeonies and we have several in our garden. This is my favorite. It looks like the famous rockii but is actually 'Shimane Hakugan'.  This plant is at least 15 years old.

When my daughter, Ruth, moved from Purley (South London) to Kuala Lumpur three years ago, she had just planted two tree paeonies, one of which was also Shimane Hakugan. Well I wasn't having that. The new owners might not like tree paeonies. So I dug them up and moved them to Malvern where they are flourishing.

There is a general feeling in the family that love of these plants tokens something not quite right with Mother's taste. Blousy? Over the top? A trifle uneducated?

Well take a look at two blooms, each eight inches across.

The plant is straggly and has nothing but bare sticks to show over winter. I have to prune it very carefully to keep it even down to this size.  And it does not pay the rent - that is, it does not have a long season or have interesting autumn colour.  But I forgive the plant everything for three weeks of these a year.

Thoughts on Sketch Books

My sister, Dorothy, told me some time ago that there was a Quilting exhibition on in Hanley Swan which is about two miles away from us. I don't even know where the Hanley Swan Village Hall is. I thought I would investigate and a Google search produced a time and date. It is the Region 11 of the Quilting Guild's Show so I will try to get there. But in the event above the Hanley Swan one in the Events list was a note on a show on in Ledbury this minute. Given that we have family coming at the weekend and Michael seeing his consultant tomorrow, I went this afternoon. It is a 'quilting' show by Sue Spooner and Helen Keenan. To me, they are rather painterly art works. Good Colour sense and well balanced pictures. However they had put out some sketchbooks. I can't resist looking at other people's sketch books. For years I have had a love/hate relationship with them. I am unconvinced that weavers can make much use of sketchbooks.

The ones at Ledbury seemed to be one sketchbook per series, say 'Storm'. There were some Postcards/photos/paper cuttings at the start with drawings interpersed. Then more painterly drawings and then samples. A set of different coloured organzas overlaying a textured dark material, samples of different materials and stitches. Building up to larger samples appraoching the final work.

Why is this no use to a weaver?

A weaver is stuck with a warp. Once you have decided the colours and the threading draft, you do not have much freedom except to change the weft colours/ thickness/texture. What is more, it is very time consuming to try out lots of threadings for one project and you are much more likely to select the draft based on previous experience. About the best you can do is use a weavette (small square of wood with nails in all four sides . You wind on a warp and insert the weft with a tapestry needle). That does not allow you to sample patterns because it is difficult to do much more complex patterns than two-and-two twill with a needle. It does allow you to see what the colour mix looks like. In a perfect world, you might do full scale samples but that takes time. I know that Stacey Harvey-Brown creates samples in a big way and finishes them differently. She just builds up a library which she can call on when needed. And Cally Booker did sketch books when doing the Bradford course. I don't know whether she has kept that up.

I have tried. I did do a weekend on story boards with Loraine McClean once, and while it was great fun, I never did any more.

And yet I love looking at other people's Sketch Books. Maybe I should try harder.

Coptic Book III

I do finish projects - honest. This is the Coptic Book using Michael's enamel samples mounted on sycamore board. The paper is handmade lokta and the thread is linen thread dyed green with Procion Mx dyes. Dimensions are 10 cm high by 9 cm wide.

I do like it.

I also dealt with endpapers (nice black and red) for Alice and decided that, if I protected the cover pictures with acetate, I could print on high class paper on the Inkjet printer. We are losing all the reds on the laserjet. So I will try that out before next Wednesday.

Fan Reed (5)

Two days ago I had a very courteous email from Lillian Whipple who is Moderator of the Complex Weavers Fine Threads Group. She very politely asked when my annual samples would be arriving. The truth is that I have yet to weave them but I have started (see photo above for proof). The samples are going to be from the Fan Reed length. There are 'folds' in some places. When the silk is off the loom, it relaxs and these all disappear. It is very slow weaving and took me 90 minutes to weave  one repeat which is about five inches. I need about a yard for samples for the Fine Threads Group so have promised the samples for June 1st which means at least two repeats a day.

Today I spent at Gill Arnold's doing the third day of the Dress Pattern Fitting Course. The result is great! But I still have to transfer the toile to a master block. I have the paper for that and must do it later in the week. However Michael is in Worcester Royal tomorrow for an MRI scan of his whole spine and later in the week we return there to see his consultant and discuss the results from the MRI scan.  I don't see a lot of spare time before the weekend.

I dyed the 8/2 Tencel with Procion MX dyes yesterday and have just taken the skeins out of their plastic bags and rinsed them. Well I needed to dye a few yards of linen book binding thread for the latest Coptic book and thought I might as well do the Tencel I want for a Devore project.  So I wound three skeins of undyed Tencel 50 gms each and dyed them in four batches. The only green Procion MX I have is Emerald Green which is not what I want. I mixed 5 teaspoonfuls of Emerald Green with one of Rust Brown. The linen has come out bottle green which is fine and the Tencel has come out sage green. Interesting, is it not? It so happens that these colours suit me very well.

An interesting thought occurred to me while dyeing.  Handweavers Studio calls the undyed Tencel 'ecru'. To me ecru is pale biege. The dictionary says ecru is unbleached linen or, when applied to other fabrics, the colour of unbleached linen. The point is that the ecru Tencel as supplied is bleached white so ecru is a misnomer.

Quilting Show at Malvern

 went to the Malvern Quilting Show yesterday. Just down the road for a mile to get to an International Exhibition! I can remember going several years ago and shutting my eyes to the quilts, all sentimental tosh. Not so today. Very high class. Not as big as the NEC Quilt Show in Birmingham in August but up along side it in quality. As usual no photos as I am not happy about that. 

I wanted to buy some fabric for covering Japanese style books and bought these from various stalls. Most are cotton but two are silk (top brown one plus the blue with cherry blossom one below that). One is indigo (top left). The lower left red brown is an ikat weave which I shall be using today on the book on caladiums!

I have been practising doing a cover for Alice in Wonderland. It looks like a black photo frame! The right hand one is complete and was printed on normal photocopy paper and the paper has creases in it. The one on the left is only the picture and is printed on card stock and has no wrinkles so I shall use that. What you do is 

1) cut a piece of 2mm grey board the right size for the cover
2) cut a rectangular hole in it, placing it carefully with respect to the edges . Call this the frame. The hole has to be just big enough for the picture to show through.
3) glue the picture to thinner card or board, in my case 1mm grey board.
4) cut the edges to match the frame piece
5) cut a piece of book cloth larger than the frame and mark on the back where the frame has to go
6) glue the book cloth to the frame with PVA, covering all the book cloth with PVA.
7) turn the sandwich over and cut across the 'hole' from corner to corner.
8) turn these triangular flaps in and trim them.
9) put the whole thing down on the picture and fold over the outer flaps to catch in the picture on its board. And there you are. It looks okay but doing front and back in the same piece of book cloth might present problems.

Association Exhibition

Today I went to Mansfield Museum to see the Association's Exhibition 'Kaleidoscope'.  I drove over to Leamington Spa, left my car at my daughter's house and was picked up there by Glenn and Chris Fletcher. The total journey took about two and a half hours. We went straight to the Museum in Mansfield and Glenn was very forebearing as the two women examined every item in detail and discussed how it was done!

My impression is that the standard is very high this year. According to the local Guild people demonstrating at the Museum, less than half the entries were selected. There was a lot of handspun which had been dyed with natural dyes and then knitted or woven. A wonderful range of colours. I have to report that sludgy greens and yellows are a thing of the past. There was a lot of weaving in fine silk (30/2 and 60/2) and a fine collection of tapestries. A spectacular tapestry was of koi carp with water ripples done in silver lurex by Jill Gerratt of the Isle of Wight. She also had woven a pair of mallards which was unfortunately right next to the koi carp. In any other situation, it would have been the star of the show!

Another Show stopper was a repp rug by Roseanne McConkey of Cambridge. This was large (four by ten feet?). Apart from the faultless technique, the colour selection was very fine.

Other notable items were
- a flower in split ply braiding
- a handbag woven in space dyed and ikat yarns
- a large transparent hanging in monofilament with cross-sections of mushrooms worked in Theo Moorman technique
- Several fine handspun (1 and 2 ply) Shetland shawls.

There were a number of knitted garments but no woven ones. Lots of woven scarves and a few bags but nothing sewn like a waistcoat, dress or jacket. Odd.

Has it inspired me? Well yes in an odd way. I was reminded by seeing a scarf in crackle weave that I have always meant to get to the bottom of that technique. So crackle weave will get added to my list of future projects.

You will note there are no photos here of the Exhibition. I took lots but I feel bad about putting photos of someone else's work in my blog without asking permission.

Home at six o'clock, tired but prepared to discourse at length to Michael on what I had seen.

The next two days are to be spent around the house. I have to turn out the spare room. I have already washed and dried the bedding. I need to do the Wokefield Park accounts and thenI can start on weaving/bookbinding et cetera.