Many projects, only two hands, sigh

In the midst of  number of projects, including a choice of which artwork  to put into the local artists' group September show, for the Festival of the Arts, meaning working on both dyed and stitched pieces at once, and then deciding. Then there's a bit of framing of the chrysanthemum piece, and the thought that, pearl clutching moment,  possibly I finished that Big Doorway, with a spot of paint, what a concept.  I agreed with all the blogistas who spoke up, that the arch shape needed more definition, and I applied some with copper paint...

But I'm also in my Personal Growth challenge: the cardweaving, aka another f.g.o...

Here's the bookmark I promised myself, worked with all the thread I had available, only a learning piece, needing contrasting colors. I hate pink and green together, but what could I do, it was there..anyway, this is double faced weaving, where how you string the cards makes all the difference to how the weaving works.  The previous attempts were about pattern weaving, where how you turn the cards is as important.

But despite the lumpiness of this little effort, full of experiments in turning, striping, chunking, forgetting to snug up the weft, and other such events, and foreshortened by a lack of thread, I have got a great notion of how to do double faced cardweaving. And if this looks rough now, you should have seen it before I trimmed up the sticking-out weft, and knotted off the fringes and combed out the tangles from behind the cards.  But look at my character, it's got abs!

Double faced weaving is the one where your pattern comes out on one side as the mirror image of the other.  The pink stripe on this side is the green on the other, I mean.  This works better when you get to actual shapes, which is my next goal, once my perle cotton thread in a bigger gauge arrives. Then I will have motif on background, where the colors mysteriously come out opposite on the other side, motif now the color of background and bg now the color of m.

But this is not really about card weaving, though I report braggily I worked this with sixteen, count them, cards.  Because double face works best in multiples of four -- making little square figures, or very symmetrical bigger ones, and stripes needing to be about the same as other stripes and predictable.  I now find that I cut cards out of any hankie box, food package, or small appliance box, before recycling the scraps.

What I found today in my weaving adventure was that once again process rules.  In most art, otherwise why bother, there are moments of the most piercing joy as you work.  

Contour drawing, where the shape comes to life as you study it and let your pen respond, stitching where you apply the principles of lost and found edges from painting -- I did this in the petals and leaves of the mum stitching, which is why it works without edging.  Each stitch was a minute part of the edging.  Goldwork where the stitching takes off and works for you, and you feel that generations of stitchers are there helping.

Every art form has this -- shibori dyeing at the moment of unwrapping, monotype making where you lift the print off the plate, watercolor painting where you paint the negative space (lost and found edges again), knitting where the lace magically appears, beadweaving where the design starts to show up as you go, any artwork where you juxtapose colors and shapes in just the right relationship for your purposes.  

And I find that in double face cardweaving it's when you turn the cards to change the shed and a lovely complete solid color, all the warp threads matching, suddenly starts to appear.  The next quarter turn gives you a mixture of both colors.  Then the next qturn and magic, the other color appears!  The excitement when this started to happen today has decided that I will do more double faced cardweaving, never mind the pattern card turning stuff for the moment. 

No pix of this since at the moment of discovery I was a) attached to the weaving and the door and b) both hands were fully engaged and c) Butler Mervyn Bunter,  crack photographer,  was out in the Lagonda shopping for thread for me.