A Virtual Quilter Tells All

My recent absence has been due to preparing a new lecture. I went through ALL of my images (slide, print, and digital) and pulled out everything with a quilty look or feel to it. The slides won, so I had my digitals converted to slides. After this, though, I am definitely going the other way.
Here are all of my show and tell set out and ready to go. My presentation was to the Contemporary Quilt Art Association, so I wanted to get as close to that "place" where weaving and quilt making meet. I was surprised to discover that I hang out in that "place" quite a bit. The talk was amazing and went over very well, if I do say so myself. My intention was to entertain, inspire and motivate, and I was assured I achieved my goals. A VIRTUAL QUILTER TELLS ALL has now been added to my repertoire. Now I will have to create a workshop to go along with the talk.

Here is what is on Grace, the loom.

Here is what is sitting on my table. The balls of yarn are recycled cashmere. The book I just bought today, The Meaning of Trees by Fred Hageneder---botany, history, healing lore, had been calling out to me from the window of Rainbow Remedies. The red weaving is the bamboo/cashmere piece I just cut off the loom, and the ikat is from my last towel warp. A towel from the same warp has made it over to Stef's blog as part of the towel exchange

Suddenly life is very busy. I will make every attempt to keep up both in the blog and out there in real life. Among other things, I am beginning the run up to a Wrapped Silk Jewelry Workshop and a Keynote Address, Traveler By Loom. I will put links to these things as I go along. Now to inventory my jewelry supplies.

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)