In the Studio

Color Horoscope Weaving in Bambu 12 with a Woven Word weft stripe "JOY"


Woven Words in Bambu 12 with red recycled cashmere weft.

I don't know if I have ever talked much about Woven Words. Maybe it requires no explanation. Briefly, a color and number of warp ends (or picks) is assigned to each letter of the alphabet. The scarf above is the first in a series of healing scarves using words that sustain 4 friends of mine who are long term cancer survivors. The words in this scarf (from right to left) are LOVE, HUMOR, NATURE.

The Embodyment of Weaving Spirit

If you are looking to purchase a rug woven with tradition, magic and mastery, here is the place!

I accidentally erased this picture before, but I really like it.(both the picture itself and the fact one can see weaving signs posted along the road.

In the last post, I showed your Irvin's loom. This is Lisa's loom. It is set up in the main showroom.
In addition to rugs and hangings, they had a room full of these great coats. Looking back on it, I don't know why I didn't try one on. Next time, for sure.

I was so overwhelmed by the main showroom and my conversation with Irvin that I didn't get a really good shot of the space. There were piles of rugs everywhere, and the walls were covered with rugs ranging from traditional to contemporary designs all of which were filled with spirit.

Virtually---In The Studio

The most exciting thing happened today! Take a look here
All I will say is,"It is virtually as good as visiting my studio."
Oh, I just can't keep a secret. It is a 360 degree image of me x 3 hard at work.

EDIT: In case you want to know more about this amazing picture click here.

I cut this piece off the loom exactly 4 hours before the shuttle arrived to take me to the airport. As you may recall, this is bambu 7, sett 20 epi (with bambu 12 doubled for the weft). I washed it in the machine but decided to press it dry rather than dry it in the dryer. I wanted to minimize the shrinkage and to give the cloth an extra sheen. Bamboo yarn isn't as silky as tencel, but it isn't as wrinkly either.
Do you like the picture turned this way better?

Centinela Traditional Arts

For decades people have asked me, "Have you ever been to Santa Fe? There is lots of weaving there."

The only reason I can give for not having gone to Santa Fe before now is that I just wasn't ready.

Oops, I accidentally erased the first picture of the sign post for Centinela Traditional Arts, but I will put it in the next post since I have more pictures to show. Do check out their wonderful website though!

As we drove along the road (see tumbleweed), we passed a few other weaving places. My friends commented that we could stop there on our way back because they wanted to take me to the best one first.

When I walked into the building, I turned to the right into the weaving room rather than into the showroom. There were 4 looms. Pretty amazing! But the loom in the picture below was the biggest loom I had ever seen.
I backed away as far as I could, but I still couldn't get the whole thing into the picture. I believe it has a 12 ft. weaving width. When I finally tore myself away from the loom room, I passed through this entry space on the way to the main showroom.

This is merely a section of about 14 ft of ribbons, newspaper clippings, and historical information. I didn't take nearly enough pictures, but I had a lovely chat with Irvin Trujillo, the owner and main weaver. I believe he recognized me as a real weaver. At one point in our conversation, I proudly announced I had been weaving for 48 years. In his quiet and humble manner, he replied that he had only been weaving for 42 years and that he had started weaving when he was 11 years old. After I returned to Seattle and checked out his website, I discovered he was a National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellow 2007

If this doesn't make you chuckle, it certainly gave me a good laugh. It was like sitting next to a famous person on an airplane and talking with them the whole ride and finding out afterwards you had been chatting up the Queen of England.

The difference between New York City and Santa Fe: In New York when I told people I had been weaving for 48 years, they said "Do people still DO that?"

I am already planning my next trip to Santa Fe.

To be continued:

A Typical Picean Dilemma

The symbol for Pisces is 2 fish swimming in opposite directions.

I'm back in Seattle full of images and stories from my trip to Santa Fe, and at the same time I have so much to do in the studio.Do I write about my first experience in the Southwest chasing tumbleweed down an empty road?
Or do I get in gear and get my 2 empty looms warped?

For the first 24 hours back in town I was so torn, I did nothing at all. Then I couldn't stand having my looms empty, so I opted to wind and warp looms, moving forward.

Rather than decide in which direction to go, I will attempt to move forward and backward at the same time. As I weave forward, I will relate back to events of the trip. I believe this trip, although not a teaching trip, will prove to be life-changing and was certainly full of self-discovery.

Big Commission Takes a Holiday

It seems like a million years ago I started collecting cashmere sweaters to un-knit and use the yarn as weft to make a blanket. After I had collected 4 or 5 sweaters and took them apart, I put the skeins of yarn in my cedar chest and continued on my weaving journey. A couple years ago I was telling a friend about this great idea to make a blanket out of recycled cashmere, and she agreed and commissioned me to weave a blanket 90" x 100" that had the unknitted cashmere as the weft. These were the only parameters.

Slowly I began testing various warps to combine with the cashmere and finally settled on Bambu 12 doubled and sett at 24 epi. I ikat dyed a bunch of the bamboo and wove a 20" panel to see.

I wish I had time right now to re-cap or at least to give you the link to my older posts that chronicle the project panel by panel, but the airport shuttle will be here in less than 6 hours and I haven't finished packing and still have a couple more feet to weave before I can cut the piece off the loom (and I really want to take it with me).

I will attempt to fix the links whenever I get near a computer in the next couple of weeks. But the picture above shows some progress. I joined two of the panels together. I love the way it looks so much I decided to wear it as a shawl on my trip. It looks and feels quite divine. I am taking the other 3 completed panels with me and will join them all together in my spare time.

The delivery date of the completed blanket is August, and I have 4 more panels to weave. It is time to get busy.

I am sure you have noticed the narrow horizontal panel is longer than the ikat panel. Well, I fixed that right after I saw the picture (grin)

More Inspired By Bonnie

My Wonderful Turned Weft Ikat Adventure with Bonnie

by Linda LaMay

After meeting Bonnie at our Weaving Guild Meeting, and having seen so many of the beautiful Ikat treasures she brought to share, I eagerly signed up for a three day workshop. But as the day approached I worried that being a new weaver, and having never dyed any fiber, perhaps this class was going to be way beyond me. Was I ever wrong!

From the first hour of our workshop on Friday to the last on Sunday, Bonnie guided and encouraged us and freely shared her amazing wealth of knowledge. I learned how to wrap fiber with plastic as a resist technique, and to actually dye, dry and wind the fiber into balls to facilitate easy warping.

The most amazing step for me was learning how to arrange these lovely stands of color and pattern into a design of my own creation. Bonnie taught us to work in “phrases” or small groupings of yarn, to create groupings of 1 ½ to 3 inches of warp. By concentrating on a small section at a time, it was easy to get beautiful design elements which could easily be arranged and re-arrange until the perfect pattern emerged!

As I watched my towels grow on the loom, I was absolutely amazed at how much I had learned and how beautiful my towels turned out. I can’t wait to try this technique again.

I sometimes wonder whether its inspired by Bonnie, or its Bonnie's fault. :-) Bev Ryan

In your blog last month you said:

"One of the problems I face when traveling to teach a workshop is I go home and never know if the students ever finish their projects, what challenges they faced in the process, or how the weaving came out."

So here it is. I've taken 2 seminars or workshops with you at the So Calif Handweaver's conference. At Visalia last year I took Bonnie's the easy ikat and I did finish my scarf. It goes great with a denim jacket so that's how I photographed it.

A few years earlier I took one of your color workshops, find the colors within maybe? We did the cut up magazine collages and I still have my little collages. But what I really came away with was the realization that I had been consistently too quiet with my colors. So I decided I had to use black, red and purple. I did 2 smallish tapestries, one became part of a large unwieldy knitted bag.

And I think your workshops are great fun, by the way.