This recent episode was compounded by some difficult decisions I felt I had to make. There are so many creative endeavors that I enjoy but I am older and slower now and I have to face reality even if it is painful to do so.  I no longer have the time and energy to do all the things I love to do. I have set aside knitting for a while and retained crocheting because I find it easier and more fun. But the big decision, the one that has caused me considerable angst is that I have decided to disassemble my cloth doll-making studio. I so enjoy making dolls and the process calls on every skill I ever developed and causes me to develop more. But I seem now to be well entrenched in the fiber arts of spinning and, in process of learning, weaving. In order to have time to accomplish anything in these areas I have to let the doll making go. I think one reason that I have felt such sadness behind the decision is that I did not have the chance to work through that activity until I was ready to move on. I made a number of dolls, took an advanced course learning to design my own dolls, and still had several dolls I wanted to make.  Because of illness I had to set aside  the doll making to take on some of my husband’s chores until he recovered,which he has now. However, I will not return to doll making. Fortunately, my daughter in law Tresa not only used to make baby dolls, but she also collects dolls, so when I asked if she were interested in taking over my doll making supplies she said yes. That helped the pain a bit and even though the decision has caused me pain I know in my heart it is a correct one. And I am confident that my beloved supplies and tools will be in good hands. And who knows? Tresa might even get interested in making crazy art dolls that I like so well, as well as beautiful ones. I set about separating out the things that will go to north Texas with Tresa over several visits.

Another thing that had temporarily been set aside was silk fabric painting, both because of lack of time and because after the wall street crooks debacle I felt I needed to wait for better economic times to buy the expensive French silk paints I wanted. Spinning and needlework could be set down at a moment and returned to easily and that has been my focus the last three years. Some time  during the tearing down process it dawned on me that the Procion Mx dyes that I used to create special fabrics for art doll skin and clothes would also work on silk and I have lots of those dyes. It wouldn’t be the hand painted scarves that I had originally planned to do but it could be fabric decoration and embellishment, and I saw a new door swinging open. I was reminded of the adage that sometimes one must let a good thing go so another good thing can come to take its place. That began the frenzy. While disassembling the doll making studio I have begun unpacking  the supplies to do silk screen printing,  carving my own fabric printing blocks, making permanent stencils, starting my dye notebook, getting familiar with their behavior on silk fabric, taking inventory of what I can use of what I have and the few additional supplies and tools I need to acquire. Then I saw that with an additive those same dyes would work on the wool fibers that I have here to spin and I can have the additional  pleasure of developing my own colors to use for crochet and weaving. I even have the silk screening supplies and just need to prepare the frames and boards to support the fabric. I already have a steamer, a silk frame, and tjantings for silk work with wax. It is as if most of my supplies including a large stash of fabric suitable for collage work were here just waiting for the right time for a new direction. And that is what I see and feel approaching, a new direction in my creative work.

In the process of going through  my fabric enhancement books I found one I didn’t remember reading, yet I know I did, for it was highlighted and underlined. It is on fabric collage for decorating vests, tunics, whatever. That grabbed my attention this time around because I love to collage anything and this would be faster than freeform crochet. Coupled with creating complex cloth (a term I learned from Jane Dunnewold who teaches such creative activities. Take a look at her website here.), spinning, weaving, crocheting, fabric collage, like doll making would call  upon multiple skills of using color, design, sewing, painting, carving, drawing, beading, and I would learn deconstructed silk screening as well. I began to get excited and the ideas began to flow. As usual, that resulted in several nights of being unable to sleep until three AM but somehow, because what kept me awake was creative thinking and ideas instead of worrying about something into the wee hours, I was not tired the next day.

Best of all, I have a friend who is also interested in working with fabric. Barbara is wildly creative and walking into her home is like walking into a new world of color, shape and beautiful design. She can create clothing patterns from schematics, something I have not done, and we plan to work together to improve our skills. It may be that her pattern making will inform my desire to make functional things now, things that will be useful as well as beautiful.  Good-bye is bittersweet, but it may result in increased joy for Tresa as she returns to doll making, and Hello has great potential for joy for me as I plunge into the dye pots and the printing paste and the satisfaction of cutting down on all the spinning fiber I have yet to spin and transform into fabric. And what is better than sharing such fun with a good friend?

I am still a rank (and I use that word deliberately) beginner at the Wolf Pup 4 shaft floor loom, which I have already come to love. I made a beginning sampler that had such dire problems that it ended up about place mat size instead of the lovely two yard sampler I had envisioned and attempted. I call it my sample-sized sampler.  I had warped (threaded) it front to back. I decided I want to learn to warp back to front.  I got Peggy Osterkamp’s excellent DVD on the subject. I wrapped a new sampler warp having no problem with the weaver’s cross and was able to decipher the group cross she likes to have at the end to put in the raddle, a device designed to spread the threads evenly on the loom,  for you non-weavers.  I wrapped it on a stick (for some reason called a kite stick by Osterkamp) to keep the threads straight and took it to the loom. And there the misadventure began.

Yesterday I indicated to Bob  in an email that there was trouble in the paradise of warping back to front using Peggy Osterkamp’s technique. I found it impossible to tie the end stick to the apron rod by myself. It kept slipping and falling off. Husband Farris finally held it for me, but these techniques are touted as one person techniques. Of course Peggy had no trouble at all on the DVD. I had tied the required string across the end stick to keep the warp from falling off. That should have been a huge red flag, the directions to do that, I mean. While trying to tie those blasted things together the warp ends didn’t just try to come off, they ended up riding on the string instead of the stick as they dangled. Repeatedly. But I went to lunch and came home feeling optimistic and began working with it all again. I beamed the warp,  and “yanked and cranked” to tighten it. Of course it didn’t tighten anything like Peggy’s  did in the DVD, straight and easily. But I kept on and then it came time to begin threading the heddles. I discovered that there is no point in having a back beam that is removable in this technique because of course the warp has to travel OVER said back beam. She wanted the shafts raised so I dragged two 25 pound bags of shot and placed them on the treadles (“you may  have to weight the heddles,” she said, as she quickly and easily placed a stick in her particular loom to prop the shafts up.) This is to get them at eye level for easy threading if you are sitting/kneeling down on her little special stool to which I would be permanently attached because I could never get up even if I could sit that low. I “raddled” and measured and centered over and over for what she called a 5 inch warp. Of course, it is off-center after putting all of it on the heddles and half of it through the reed so when I go back to the studio I have to move  50 threads to the right IF I can figure out why the center, which still measures the center of the reed is not the center of the warp, even though I started at the exact measurement she said to start. I worked on threading the reed until 1:30 last night when I discovered that the center of the reed is not the center of the not 5 inch, but (aha!) 8 inch warp that is on the loom. When I went to bed at 1:30 I spent about an hour reading Deborah Chandler’s back to front directions. In order to comfort myself, I had the most wonderful Swiss Omelet for breakfast this morning at County Seat Restaurant, and then when I went in to start transferring those threads in the reed I discovered that one of the bundles of yarn is LOOSELY TRAVELLING BOTH OVER AND UNDER THE BACK WARP BEAM AS IT  UNWINDS!!!!! How can it do that?????I stood there aghast and wondered  how that happened. The best answer I found was that it is the end bundle and although I put in paper folded in one inch on each end to keep the ends straight so they don’t slip off,  according to Osterkamp, they must have slipped off  the stack of wound yarns and I have a mell of a hess on my loom.

There are things I like about back to front warping. The yarn goes through the heddles first, that makes it easier for me to put it through the reed. I like that the yarn only goes through the loom once and one way, instead of going front to back and then having to come back through to the front while weaving. But I found the raddle a pain the neck, at least the one that came for this loom that has the cap. It is extra work  to use the cap; I would only use rubber bands and masking tape in the future if I am crazy enough to ever do this again, and it is difficult to put the raddle on the slanted back beam. I used Quick Clamps instead of putting the adaptation on that came with the raddle–that would have added another 30 minutes to warping time. If I accidentally hit a clamp it tended to slip on the smooth, polished wood. Of course, Chandler says set the raddle in the beater where the reed usually sets if you can’t clamp it to the back beam.

 I just had to try this technique and right at the moment I feel like a dedicated front to back warped weaver. And I shudder when I think that I still have to learn about floating selvedges and extra selvedge threads And supplementary warps, when  despite measuring umpteen dozen times, I can’t even get the warp beamed smoothly and the warp centered properly.

  Joyce once admitted to me it was nearly a year before they were comfortable with warping and threading their loom, and that comforts me much. I must add that they have larger and more complicated looms than I do. However, there must be  a serious defect in my psyche because I plan to go in there and transfer those pesky yarns in the reed one by one, and I may just cut off that end bundle–it is just a sampler, after all. I may never progress past Sampler 101.  I wonder why I love learning new things when it NEVER goes smoothly for me as it does for so many others. Nonetheless, based on past learning experiences, I suspect that one of these days I will be including pictures of lovely  projects woven on my beloved Wolf Pup loom.

I am glad my greatest talent is perseverance.

I watched him and Farris try to throw the weighted wire over the top of the oak tree without success until finally they went into town to a bow and arrow store called Knocked and Loaded, intending to buy a bow and arrow to send the wire over the tree, but came back instead with a burly man-sized sling shot. That did the trick and they got the antenna up, pulled it across to a tree at the top of the hill behind the house and although it is not as high as needed to get signals from Europe, he did achieve a 2000 mile radius with it. It was nice to see him get to play with his toys on the screened patio. Poor Stan was laboring over the computers, something Mitch usually  has to do. Stan is the acknowledged PC expert.

It seems that  ham operators now can either  talk over their mikes as usual or the signal can be received by a device that translates it into text. Mitch worked at his laptop using his ham radio much more than doing the old-fashioned vocal over and out thing.

Speaking of translating, Stan had an application on his phone that would translate an English statement into dozens of languages. It will do it either by sound or by text. I could have  used that when we were in Paris a few years ago.  No wonder I love electronics! I also learned that the electronic powers that be are developing “smart cloth,” fabric with circuitry in it so that one can be monitored for various health problems while wearing one’s smart cloth clothing. I hope it is priced so that more than the super rich can have those benefits.

One of my external hard drives had died and Stan took it apart to show me what is inside and how they work and I ended up with several wonderful collage pieces. In addition, there were three very shiny reflective discs that I immediately wondered if I could use to make into workable hand spindles. I liked the idea that I might be able to recycle the disc drives into hand spindles, tools to which I am also quite attached. The holes in the center were larger than those in the CD I made into a spindle, and I had to put a grommet into a grommet but with some pieces of dowel, some sand paper, small cup hooks, some glue, I ended up with three new spindles for less than three dollars. They spin surprisingly well. To put the groove in the side of the  disc for the yarn to travel in as it comes up from the shaft, I used my rubber lined ball vise, another tool I am attached to, and a handy triangular file Farris loaned me. It took maybe 15 seconds to make the notch for the yarn. I let the glue dry overnight and this morning when I took the spindles into the spinning room and was testing them with some fiber, two huge wild turkeys poked along the side yard outside the window, pecking around.

I have been working diligently on a weaving sampler, working through Jane Patrick’s excellent book on rigid heddle weaving. This time I am working with pick-up sticks. This is where the rigid heddle loom shows its power, because with the pick-up sticks one can make patterns that require many shafts on a floor loom. One pattern would have required a ten shaft loom, but with the rigid heddle and several pick-up sticks it was done. As I began to see the more complicated patterns develop I became well and truly hooked on weaving. And I ordered a four-shaft Wolf Pup LT floor loom. A small loom, it will be just right for my studio and it and the Beka both fold for storage if need be. It will be delivered in about four weeks and I hope to finish Patrick’s exercises before it comes in because that is another learning curve to tackle. I also have all the supplies and books and DVDs to learn Card weaving, but have not had the time to begin that learning curve. As I said, never a dull moment.

I have been totally uninterested in the royal wedding that took place today, but yesterday an email from daughter Camilla came in suggesting a game they were apparently playing as they toiled diligently at their respective jobs. It consists of using one’s royal wedding guest name in honor of the bride and groom. To arrive at that royal name,  use terms Lord or Lady and take the first name of one of one’s grandparents, add the name of one’s first pet and then add the name of the street where you lived when you were born. It was fun to see the names various family members and friends came up with.  I need to go start weaving so I can be ready when my Wolf Pup comes in. Until next time I remain
Yours truly,
HRH Lady Anna Charlotte Wendy NoStreets-Meeker
 (There were no street names where I grew up so I added the name of the community instead)

Not only did this result in my learning more about myself, it  simultaneously enabled me to develop my own style of writing, it helped me bring out my creative qualities, and at times served as deep self therapy. No one else ever saw the journals. I still write in a journal although not as often.

 Later in life I discovered the “Magic Book” technique, a type of image journaling that pulls from the subconscious, and it also had a magic, life-enriching effect and showed me that often my subconscious mind knew the directions I was heading long before my conscious mind knew. Briefly, although there are other aspects to it, in the Magic Book technique one just collects many, many images from many sources, just because they catch ones attention or one feels drawn to the image or one just likes the image, and they are tossed in a box for later use. After a series of exercises that taught me the technique, I began to create pages  by adding the images to the pages of blank books just as I felt like doing it, sometimes adding words or phrases or watercolor or other media to enhance or further decorate the pages. I seldom had a reason or a plan, I just did it, and it was amazing to see themes develop over time, to see repeating images appear, all leading to contemplation of why this was happening  and what they might mean. Some of the pages I  react to with a  strong positive  feeling  each time I view them, although I honestly do not know what they portray or why I feel so drawn to that particular page. I always feel strengthened after viewing those enigmatic pages.  One image that I cut out of a magazine and eventually featured in a prominent way on a page in my Magic Book was a tree that had lots of computers on its branches like hanging fruit. This was about two years before I gave any  thought to working on a computer, much less learning to paint digitally or to have a web site, etc. There were other “magic moments” that I can trace in my Magic Books that in retrospect, gave a hint or forecast of directions in which I would eventually go. The Magic Book helped me discover symbols that are personal and meaningful to me.

In a slightly different way, recently I have felt that same strange inner pull to something and I am curious whether it will prove to be a new source of enrichment for me. Without having heard of card or tablet weaving, I ran across something about it while researching Inkle looms and Inkle weaving. I felt  a strong inner  pull to learn more about card  weaving even before I knew what it is. At present  I am learning to do Inkle weaving, but  I have not felt that inner pull, or inner recognition about Inkle weaving.  I was researching Inkle weaving because someone gave me an Inkle Loom. Recognizing that intuitive interest or inner pull,  I ordered a DVD about Card Weaving  and immediately felt an inner excitement as I viewed the DVD  so I ordered a book about it and my interest increased as I read the history of card weaving. Because my friend had given me the Inkle loom, I began trying to learn to warp and weave on that loom and set aside the idea of card weaving.

Now I have temporarily set aside the Inkle loom and  I  just received my order of card sets for card weaving and I have turned again to reading the card weaving book and will review the DVD. It looks much more complicated than Inkle weaving so I do not understand why I feel this interior pull toward tablet/card weaving. It will be interesting  to see whether I can learn it, whether I will like it, and whether I will prefer it to Inkle weaving. My past experience tells me that the intuitive attraction has purpose so some time in the next few weeks  I am going to start trying to learn card weaving. I am just getting into learning to use my rigid heddle loom, and do not want to add anything new right now, but card weaving  is rather ancillary to weaving on the loom, so I may add it before too long. Life is such a grand adventure, with so many directions from which to choose!

Not having a fellow weaver or a weaving teacher in this area, I am having to learn all this through books, DVDs, occasional help from cyber friends or my cousin and sister via long distance phone calls, and by trial and error. I had never seen a table loom and wanted to see one.  I don’t even have a good yarn store within a hundred miles. A few weeks ago, though, I sent a letter to the Austin Spinning and Weaving Guild and asked them if there is a store in the area that sells looms and weaving supplies. I got a very prompt reply from a very helpful person who pointed me to the nearest well-supplied weaving store that is located between Dripping Springs and Wimberley, Texas. It is Old Oaks Ranch. Farris and I don’t travel much anymore and I debated whether I wanted to make a 200 mile round trip just to see a table loom that I was not ready to buy because I am still learning to weave on a rigid heddle loom.

One lovely day a week or so ago we did drive down to Old Oaks Ranch. It is a lovely place with spreading oak trees and a sculpture garden and picnic tables in the shade  of the trees and patio tables and chairs in the shade in front of the store. A great bonus is that it is also an Alpaca farm. The animals are ready for shearing that is scheduled for April so they were in full coat and looked so cuddly that I would love to have hugged one. I doubt the alpacas would have appreciated it. We could not enter the pastures but I saw a beautiful cinnamon colored one, and white ones, and brown and a huge sheep dog, and there is even an Angora rabbit there although it was hiding from the wind in its hutch so I did not get to see it. I had taken sandwiches and we enjoyed a cool lunch under the trees while watching the Alpacas roaming about.

All the above is lovely, but the magic is in the store. It is absolutely full of gorgeous colorful yarns and samples and the inventory is huge for this part of the country and well worth the trip down there. Sue Ellen, who owns the shop,  spent at least two hours with me helping me choose warp and weft yarns, and explained the shaft looms to me. Her friendly helpfulness  and generosity is a large part of the warm welcome one feels when one enters that beautiful shop. There was a class in progress when I first got there.  Other people who worked there were friendly and helpful and I felt a pang of sorrow that I was so far away from such a wonderful resource. Sue Ellen said if I have a project, I could let her know the colors I want  and she would snip sample threads and send them to me so I can choose the yarns I want. She also remarked that if I ever want a specific color of alpaca I can specify the animal, such as that cinnamon color I liked. They sell alpaca batts and top and had some ”raw’ fleece I wanted to sink my hand into.  I could have spent the entire day there just going from one part of the store to another to look at the beautiful yarns and other supplies. Sue Ellen had just bought a large inventory of silk blends that I wanted to take right out to my car, but I had to resist because I am still building my stash of warp yarns. My sister is planning to visit next week and we have plans to go back to Old Oak Ranch.

It was worth the trip in another way for me because after seeing a table loom I discovered that getting one would present problems to me because I do not have a table that would put the loom at a good height. After returning home I discussed this with my cousin Joyce and I have decided that if I do want to go on to a shaft loom I will purchase a four-shaft Wolf Pup floor loom. I don’t want eight shafts, and the Pup will be faster than a table loom and will enable me to create many patterns and use varied techniques. Joyce has a Pup among her collection and is very pleased with it. It is nice to have that settled. I have been learning hand manipulated techniques on the Beka loom this week and have enjoyed it. With persistence, I may yet learn to be a weaver!

I have been organizing my spinning and I spun and plied several ounces of Himalayan cat hair this week for the cyber friend who sent me the cat hair. One of her beloved cats had to be put down recently so I got busy and spun the rest of the hair and made a keepsake scarf for her. I hope it will bring her some comfort. I tried to add a picture but I kept ending up on a page with just the picture so I will have to study how to do that successfully some other time. Next I am turning my attention to spinning some of wools that I have waiting. Spinning soothes me so I look forward to a serene week ahead.

I had remarked that I think Facebook steals my blogging thunder somewhat because this week when twelve HUGE wild turkeys appeared in our front yard, I was so excited I immediately posted it to Facebook. Now I realize some of my friends who like wildlife are not on Facebook and so I mention it here. I need to decide whether to save information for posting here on the blog or whether to risk redundancy by posting it both places.

I am happy to report that persistence does pay off and  the warping the loom debacle reported in my last post did not recur and I have successfully warped and woven the second color sampler and have warped and am currently weaving a color and weave sampler. Warping the latter was not for the faint hearted, though, because it has syncopated colors in the warp and I did not know how to wrap that kind of warp and there were no directions. But my cousin Joyce and rigid heddle weaving guru  and cyber friend Joyce Brisbois came to my rescue. Joyce B. even took the time to take two colors of yarn and do a small warp with them, taking and sending me progress pictures so I can understand it better. Again, I am amazed at how helpful people of like interests on the web can be, and how friendly and willing to use their time to answer questions and help newbies.

We are waiting for the forecasted winter storm that is supposed to hit in the wee hours of the morning bringing rain and freezing rain, sleet and perhaps snow as well. I started the color and weave sampler this afternoon  and then decided to save the rest of it to work on tomorrow because I do not set foot out of the house if there is ice anywhere.

I have for the most part been a rules follower and if I am taught something in a class I usually think there is a reason the teacher taught it that way. Maggie Raghetti’s Crocheting in Plain English is a book that I found very helpful not only regarding crochet, but for anything that I do. Because Maggie’s theme is this is your project. You are the boss of this project. You are free to make it work in your own way and for  you.  Of course that is rather obvious, but what I gleaned from her is I am to do what I need to do to make it work for me and while there are certainly conventions that are necessary, there is a lot of leeway for  changing projects if they don’t work or don’t suit. Maggie went further and in her book teaches one to learn the structure of crochet; to understand crochet so one can make those desired changes with knowledge, and that is very important.

I thought about this in relation to another activity this week.    I have had a Navajo spindle for a couple of years and am just now beginning to experiment with it. Just about everywhere in my research I saw that these large supported spindles are suitable for making strong, large yarn of the type used for the beautiful Navajo rugs, although it is usually stated that they will also spin a nice large lofty yarn for other use depending on the fiber used.  One statement was that to spin a fine yarn with a Navajo Spindle would be like, and I am paraphrasing and using my own illustration here,  killing a fly with a sledge-hammer instead of a fly swatter. I was re-reading Connie Delaney’s excellent unfortunately out of print book, Spindle Spinning: From Novice to Expert and I was surprised to  read that the Navajo did not invent that spindle, although they made it famous. According to Delaney, this type spindle was first used by the Anasazi cliff dwellers to spin the cotton they grew and raised long before the Europeans came to this country and that archeological evidence indicates that cotton-weaving was well established among the Anasazi by 700 AD.  They used  spindles of various sizes that were supported on the leg much like the Navajo spindle of today.   Now, I learned  to spin cotton on a Tahkli, a tiny supported spindle used to spin  very fine (thin) cotton yarn in India along with the Charkha. I also am spinning very fine cotton (and silk) on the Balkan spindle that is extremely light (.4 oz.) and on the Spind0lyn, a tiny supported spindle that also spins very fine cotton. Cotton is very short stapled and is usually spun fine. And now I find that the Anasazi were using a large supported spindle to spin fine cotton! In fact, Delaney states emphatically that one can use the Navajo spindle to spin a variety of spinning techniques and fibers and that it can be used to spin fine fibers and yarn…fine cotton, and  knitting and crocheting yarn as well can be spun on the Navajo Spindle. I immediately tried it with the brown cotton of which I still have about 43 pounds, and it spins it with ease and beautifully. And TONS of cotton or wool can be stored on that large bottom whorl. It is a pleasure to spin fine cotton on the large Navajo spindle and I can sense the amorphous connection with the mysterious Anasazi people of  long ago. This was an opportunity to become the boss…yes, I  had to learn it from someone else, but I now have become the boss of what my Navajo spindle spins and I am going to try it with several kinds of fiber.

I added some more spindles to my collection. I obtained a Balkan double whorl spindle, and  an Ankha spindle (very light: .3 oz.) that has the whorl in the middle of the shaft. I bought a Ken Ledbetter high-whorl spindle that has a screw-on shaft and two extra shafts so one can spin cops on all three shafts and then make three-ply yarn right off those shafts that have been spun on the same spindle, which is supposed to make them more uniform. And it is beautiful–spalted maple with a crushed lapis ring.  I was torn between getting it and a beautiful spindle made of  spalted Sycamore wood with a tiger-eye jasper inlay–a center-weight spindle I needed (read wanted) to complete my collection.

I call Sycamores sacred trees. As a teenager and young adult I often sought out a favorite Sycamore by the bayou when my dog Inky and I would go out on the farm and she would worry the tadpoles at the edge of the bayou while I read and dreamed and was incredibly happy. Many years later my aged mother was in the hospital  for eight weeks and a family member was required to be with her at all times because she had an Alzheimer’s type condition as well as her illness. Our father was in his nineties and it took two of us to care for both of them during that time. For eight sad, miserable weeks that spanned Christmas,  my sister and I and sometimes my brother,  were away from our families and attending our mother whose condition in so many ways was heart breaking. It was a typical winter in Baton Rouge and it rained torrents during that time and everything was as bare and gray as my heart. Looking out of the hospital window I saw  in the near distance three white-barked absolutely gorgeous spreading Sycamores that stood out starkly against the gray sky and landscape. They comforted me because they were so stark and beautiful and they helped me recall that there are happier times. We have a lovely stand of them in our creek here at our ranch and I enjoy sitting there listening to the sound of the water and seeing their white bark and many-colored leaves in the spring and summer. 

Oh, I wanted that spindle made of my sacred Sycamore wood, but it was expensive and I needed to be practical and chose the beautiful maple one with three shafts. When he heard of my decision my husband said “Get the tiger eye and sycamore spindle as my Valentine’s gift to you.” Oh yeah, he is definitely my long-term Valentine!

 As  mentioned below in the post about spindles, I had such a bad experience with the low-whorl spindle that came with my learn-to-spin-kit that I decided I do not like low-whorl spindles. But after watching Abby Franquemont’s “Respect the Spindle” DVD and Barbara Clorite-Ventura’s “Spindles Around The World” DVD and seeing how much yarn they can pack on that  low whorl spindle and hearing them talk about how stable they can be, I decided to buy one just to have it in my collection. Kokovoko spindles spin well, and I went to The Woolery  (great people to do business with online) intending to buy one of Kokovoko’s low-whorl spindles. But then…and I know better than to do this…I decided to look at all of their spindles. Under sculptured spindles I found a low-whorl spindle with the whorl made of polymer clay in the shape of a lily pad with a beautifully colored dragonfly perched on the pad. I love the dragonflies we have here, some are fuchsia, some green, some blue.  I thought to myself,  ”It will probably get broken quickly,” and although I get enormously attached to my tools, I thought I would not be broken-hearted if it does break since I don’t like low-whorl spindles. Well, surprise. It spins well, and it is a regular workhorse! I really, really like it and hope it doesn’t get broken!

And then, seeing that Ventura was able to pack a toy football-sized cop of yarn on her self-made CD spindle I, who had previously disdained them, decided to make one, because I am beginning to spindle spin with a purpose and plan to spin lots of yarn using my hand tools in addition to my wheels. I made that spindle according to Ventura’s directions in just a few minutes and with a couple of dollars worth of supplies from the hardware store and it spins well and long and I like it very much and plan to use it regularly.

I’m not sure I’m da’ boss yet, but I definitely am making my fun activities my own!

Warped six colors on warping board, each color in a separate warp.

Chained the warps, six, one for each color.

Put yarn in slots of heddle.

Lost cross on last bundle, spent one hour untangling the yarn and the chain made to prevent tangles.

Amazed at how tangled the yarn became in approximately two seconds. Wondered what branch of science studies tangles.

Went to Google and asked.

Mathematicians—some say Algebra with an overlap in physics. Articles on subject of tangling written with our alphabet but with three inch words made up during the math person’s nightmares. (aimed at giving me nightmares as Trig did)

Tangling articles quickly go on to discuss Knot Theory. Had no idea there was such a thing in Math as Knot Theory.

 Re-wound last color on warping board.

 Put all six warps through slots in heddle, warping back to front. (loom is on stand)

Moved yarn to holes in heddle and proceeded to start tying the half bows that tie the yarn to  the front  beam.

 Directions say to tie first and last inch of yarn with heddle in neutral. Beka has no neutral shed block but I c-clamped a block on each side for neutral block.

 Directions say to raise heddle to up shed block to tie on rest of yarn to front beam.

Heddle keeps falling over. No way that heddle is going to set securely on a half-inch up-shed block with just the first and last  groups of yarn tensioned and a frame that slants down toward me.

Decide to finish dressing loom on table.

Piece of cake. A place for heddle holder (table), table is level so heddle balances on up-shed block.

Decide to try to weave using the Beka Rigid Heddle Loom hooked on table edge as Betty Davenport does in the DVD I am following.

Each time I moved or squirmed, the whole shebang fell into my lap despite the forked ends that hooked on table.

Glad I had seen Jane Patrick DVD on weaving on rigid heddle because she advised tying overhand knots in unsecured threaded yarn—in case heddle drops (must be frequent occurrence), one does not lose ones threading. I had the knots.

Twice the heddle hung its head in shame dangling against the blessed  overhand knots.

Decided best to return Beka to its frame since I seem unable to glue myself to loom and table.

Have to carefully loosen the front and back beams to put Beka back on the stand.

Whole front beam unwinds and heddle swings against overhand knots like a kid at the playground, the rainbow warp providing a beautiful background. Again thankful for knots.

I put threads in correct slots on front beam again, tie them in half bows, check and tighten the warp and then tie the yarn in bow knots. (I was able to do this after c-clamping the heddle holders to the loom) Loom looks pretty with the six color wheel warps and pretty little bows .

Weaving commences. Can’t get balanced plain weave with the cotton and the rickety loom frame that comes toward me  with yarn when I try to beat more firmly, despite the leg weight packs I have on each side of the bottom floor beam of the frame.  (The Harp frame did the same thing  when I tried my sister’s, so don’t blame Beka) .

Selvedges look pretty good; thanks Ms Davenport for your tip. Pretty good looking for only my third try.

Some slubs appear  but I decide I can learn to deal with them later. This is a sampler to learn to use the Beka in the most rudimentary way for a beginning.

Still no balanced plain weave but still, two inches of red, orange and yellow each of weft on same colors of warp. Weaving looks like it has been under a lot of stress, but then, so have I.

Become concerned because some long threads showing in lap even though should be tied in pretty little bow-knots and hidden around the other side of the beam where I rolled them .

Decide to investigate.

Very carefully loosen front cloth beam and sampler  immediately rushes off of the beam like a kid leaving school on the first day of summer vacation.

Heddle again swinging in the park with six inches of color wheel colors as a background.

For the fourth time ( I never tell the entire story—married to a retired lawyer) I return the threads to the slots between the teeth of the Beka cloth beam. They don’t look straight but by now I could care less.

After some deep thought I add a strip of masking tape over the top of the teeth of the cloth beam and roll it back on and weaving recommences.

Phone rings. Daughter asking “What’s going on?” I reply, “I’m working with my loom and contemplating taking out a contract on  your Aunt Lynette who conned me into buying this loom.”

She asks a few clarifying  questions and says,  “So it really isn’t Aunt Lynette’s fault but you are going to blame her?”

“Absolutely,” I reply.”What are sisters for?”

Weaving recommences.
Phone rings. Above-mentioned sister on the line, roars with laughter at my story. Then tells me that I am doing it the hard way. She thinks her shaft looms are easier than working with a rigid heddle loom. Maybe I should consider getting a 4 shaft table loom? I hang up.

I go to kitchen and pour a relaxing libation and get out phone book.

Yellow pages…c-o-n-t-r-a-c-t-s…

It occurs to me that the above description is an example of perseverance. Well, I did say it is  my biggest talent. A glossary should be included for those who don’t weave, but I have had a busy day of learning from sampling in weaving,  so a brief explanation: warps are yarns wrapped in a way to prevent tangling and so one can thread them on the loom.   The weaver’ s cross is a series of crossed threads that enable the weaver to put the threads on in the order desired; Heddles? In a  rigid heddle loom, they are, well, rigid frames with slots and holes in them to hold the threads and to lift and lower certain threads so the weaver doesn’t have to go over and under each thread when weaving.  Want to know more? Go to Google, you’ll be surprised at the new world you will find if you type weaving (or tangles)into the search engine.

The earlier  statements aside, this loom is very powerful when used by someone who knows what she is doing. I am determined to learn to use it and I plan to push it as far as I can. I am in a rural area with no fellow weavers and no teacher.  I have no plans for a table loom…although…Nah.

P.S. The joke about the contract did not intimidate my sister…she just called to say she is coming all the way from Louisiana to help me with my Beka. She has one and likes it fine. I am sure she is convinced it is user error and it probably is. I welcome all the help I can get.

In my artistic work I often find certain tasks very tedious. We all have the same 24 hours available to us so having no time for it reflects more on a person’s choice of how they choose to spend that time. I used to think I had no creativity or talent. I have spent a lot of time thinking about all this, mostly in relation to such statements as mentioned above.

I grew up in a rural area and there were no museums nearby. Art was not taught in high school, music was. So I had little exposure to fine art.  I took piano lessons for eleven years because my parents insisted on it and when I got older and wanted to quit, I was warned that I would greatly regret it and since I always want to avoid regret if I can, I kept on, learned very little and do not play at all. I did develop some music appreciation via  those lessons, but my heart just wasn’t in it and recitals were hours of hell to me. I wanted a greater appreciation of music but the course I took in college consisted mostly of the professor’s interest in medieval chants as sung at mass. I later educated myself more on classical music and other genres, including jazz, through videos, books and records. My biggest love in music is blues music; it is in the marrow of my bones. Yet I had no desire to be able to perform any of it.

Deep  inside me, though,  despite my lack of exposure to good art was an unspoken vague desire to learn to appreciate art. It must be in my genes.  When my cousin Joyce was first studying art I would try to pick her brain about what constituted good art. What I am slowly working toward here is motivation. It was not that I wanted to learn to paint, I thought I had no talent. I wanted to learn to appreciate art–I had an uniformed interest in art. By then I was out of school and had a job and then children and I let all that go for a while

Years later I met Pat, a watercolorist who had studied art in the Netherlands, and who was attending an art school where we lived.  Pat’s comments on art taught me the difference between art and just a pretty painting and I began to wonder if I could learn to paint. Pat agreed to take me on as her first pupil. She handed me a piece of paper and a pencil and put an acorn down on the table and told me to draw it. Wait a minute! I wanted to learn to paint, not draw. I learned they go together. I said I don’t know how. Pat said, “How do you know you can’t ? You haven’t tried.” That was the opening of the door to many new avenues for me because I tried and I did draw the acorn. Not a great acorn but a recognizable acorn. Pat went on to teach many students and I went on to twenty years of study and painting. And I am not any longer afraid to try to learn anything.

Motivation was there, deep inside me and I didn’t even recognize it. Look within, see if there is some vague interest…not just in art. Creativity can apply to anything you do. I know a woman minister who hugely creative in the way she ministers and presents her sermons. I know someone else who is so creative with the peace she creates in her lovely home and her beautiful garden that it is a rest cure just to enter into her presence and her home or yard. I know of woodworkers who have made beautiful tools that I in turn use to create other things. What is that deep interest you have not pursued but that persists inside you?

Here is what I did and do.  After I decided I truly wanted to learn to paint. I took lessons. I took lessons in doll making. I took lessons in knitting. I took needlepoint lessons. My mother and grandmother taught me to crochet.  I also took bridge lessons twice, but we won’t go deeply  into that because the bridge playing gene is not in my DNA or wherever genes reside.  If the heart for it is not there you will know it. If it is there, it remains despite formidable frustration. I did not have a deep motivation to learn bridge although I tried twice. I was doing it because my parents and aunts played and my husband played and I saw it was a good social tool so I thought I should learn. Notice that word should? Believe me, it is not the same as the word want. I wanted to learn all about art. I would rather go back to college and get a PhD than play bridge. Need I say more?

One crucial aspect of taking lessons and learning to express one’s creativity is one must develop a willingness to feel awkward and uneasy and discomforted as one is learning a new task.  I didn’t just automatically have that willingness, I dislike not knowing and looking dumb. But I was motivated enough to tolerate the discomfort of learning to do something new. It wasn’t easy. Let me state that more emphatically: it’s hard. But that phase passes.  Later I was studying with an excellent professional watercolorist and she wanted us to paint with our watercolor brushes, a full-leaved cabbage in a still life. I struggled and struggled and couldn’t do it. She had said she wasn’t as interested in it looking just like the real cabbage, she wanted our interpretation of it, and was more interested in what was on our paper than what was in the still life. I was at the point of frustrated tears because I couldn’t do it and after class I told her I was not going to waste her time or mine any further. She asked me to come back one more time and when I did she made a gentle speech to the whole class about how she asked for money up front so we don’t quit out of frustration and that she asked of us to stick it out the full twelve weeks and she could guarantee we would be pleased with what we had learned. I stuck it out. I was thrilled with what I had learned. When later I informed her that we were moving to another city this same teacher admonished me to continue to paint, she actually said you are too good to stop painting. One does not hear that often, and it encouraged me to seek out great teachers in the new city.

As for having time for it, I soon realized  that I would have to let other things I enjoyed go if I wanted to become good at painting. So I couldn’t meet friends as often to have lunch, I didn’t go to the movies as often (I loved going by myself because I have different taste in movies and TV than many people), I let good things go to MAKE TIME available to learn and do what I loved. My reward was the alternative consciousness and high involved in creating things.  I painted for myself alone and the process was enough reward.  There is nothing wrong with selling one’s creative products, I was fortunate to be able to just do it for the pleasure of doing it. I didn’t want to deal with selling things to the public.

Okay, we have a secret vague or even a strong desire, motivation, making time, tolerating discomfort. Here comes  something big. Perseverance. Webster says that is steadfastness. I consider it so important that when people say I am so talented I thank them and reply that my main talent is perseverance. What does that mean? For me, it means continuing to try when I fail over and over until I figure out how to do it. Some examples: I was told by a knitting teacher that I would never be able to knit socks because my stitches were too loose and too large. I found  another approach to learning to knit socks. I thanked that teacher and got books and DVDs on knitting socks. I got Knitting for Dummies even though I had learned to knit years before,  and learned there is more than just American/English or Continental styles of knitting, there is an Eastern or Portuguese style that suits me very well and I have made a number of pairs of socks on size one or two needles (tiny needles and stitches for you who do not knit). I had to tolerate the discomfort of learning a new style of knitting and the discomfort of learning to knit my first pair of socks. I wanted to learn to spindle spin as mentioned  in the first posting above. I struggled for seven months and could not do it. But the desire was still there despite all that frustration so I kept searching for a way to do it…that time it had little to do with me and a lot to do with  the unbalanced spindle that came with my how-to kit. Once I got a good spindle I was off and running–or spinning. Learning wheel spinning required that I just do it over and over–that is perseverance–and gradually I learned to spin on a spinning wheel. The biggest demand for tolerating frustration was learning to use my computer. I paced the hall and shed tears while learning to tolerate that discomfort. My husband kept patiently saying just keep at it (he wouldn’t touch a computer with a ten foot pole at that time). I learned to use the computer and that led to my learning to digitally paint on the computer, an activity that I absolutely loved. Yes I took lessons and studied books and CDs and DVDs, yes it was difficult but rewarding and fulfilling.  I am now embarking on climbing the learning curve to learn to weave. I had several failures at learning how to just wrap the yarn around the warping board, and my first efforts at weaving are pitiful yet I have an attachment to those poor things because I can see that I will be able to do it with perseverance and that I will like it.

 I have not written all this to discourage, but creative endeavor does not just magically happen.  Think about it. You already have the ability to tolerate discomfort while learning if you learned at school, if you learned a job, or learned to cook or use a telescope or build something. A statement in one of my art books was if you can write you can learn to draw. That impressed me. The idea that learning to draw involves the same curved and straight lines writing requires. It also requires learning to look at and see what one is trying to draw.  Someone else learned to paint portraits because she realized if her body could create images in dreams she should be able to create images with art supplies.

 There is a freeform weaving technique called Saori that is used to teach physically and mentally handicapped people to learn to express their creativity and themselves through freeform weaving.

You say you can’t do it? How do  you know you can’t? Have you tried?