Slow down, it’s summer!

Threading is slow business

Summer in Maine is so incredibly brief ….. I just want to stretch each day and make time slow down.  Luckily when I thread the loom or weave, I am forced to slow down.  There is no fast way to do these activities – without making mistakes!I am currently weaving cloth that will be weathered, rusted and aged after it comes off the loom.  My experiments with ways to transformed my cloth continue!

Frieda comes running

This weekend we head off for a month of living aboard our beloved Witness. Frieda is getting better about living aboard – even if it means using a carpet on deck for “her business”!

I hope wherever you are you find a way to slow down and soak up these beautiful days.

Rusted text

Quiet anchorage

Winding and dyeing warps

Skeins ready for dye sampling.

Warps wound, chained and ready to dye.

I’ve had the luxury of studio time this fall and have been working since November to set up the “Mother” loom, my 56″ 16H (but currently only using 8H). This is a long, labor intensive process that begins with winding two warps – one is the ground warp and the other is the supplementary warp. The warps for this new series of art works is 49″ wide by 9 yards long,  24 epi for the ground warp and 12 epi for the supplementary warp.Next I want to test how this warp thread will dye, so I wind small skeins to test color mix and intensity. This is all done by weight ratio, so I use a scale and a calculator to figure out how much dye for each skein. I also keep track of each dye bath, saving a small piece for my records.Once I am satisfied with the color I dye the warps, usually only putting one warp at a time in a bucket. This allows me to make sure that the dye is applied evenly to all the warp ends.

Warps are all dyed and drying on the rack.

Test skeins in dye pot.

In my next post, I’ll share how I wind long and wide warps on my loom.