Color, clothes, and other casual musings

I've been thinking about color, and clothes.  And colors I like together and some I really really don't.  Not in nature, since all the colors work, nor in art, since color carries meaning and structure.  In clothes.

Yesterday I was wearing a lovely bright green knitted jacket, a sort of mixed green yarn, but very cheerful, with a white turtleneck (of course, it's winter).  And I got thinking about what I like to wear and see together in clothes.

I love yellow and white outfits.  I know some people say ew, fried eggs, but anyway.  And I can't bear blue and yellow together, sets my teeth on edge.  And purple makes bile come up in my throat.  In fact just now as I was thinking about a purple jacket I have, it was cashmere, it was cheap, so I have it, I literally started to cough because bile came up in my throat.  This is all about synaesthesia, I guess.

I love various shades of pink, don't like red at all.  And I really really don't like pink and purple together.  I love blue and tan, and white and tan.  And black and tan with white.

And I don't at all like blue and red together.  They set up an optical dazzle I find upsetting. And red white and blue, oh well, it's important to allow for it sometimes, but it's not my favorite combo.

Neon colors are not for me at all, in anything, even in "nature" where it's hybridized flowers created to have dazzling colors.  Noooooo, thank you.  Especially not when it's zinnias and marigolds.

Some dark yellows give me a bitter taste, but the buttery ones taste sweet.  Literally.

The funny part about colors I don't like is that people have more than a few times noticed an absence of say, red or purple, in my wardrobe and thought, oh, a good chance for a present.  And given me red jackets, and purple scarves and other such things.  Not realizing there's a reason I don't have them!  but it's kind, and thoughtful.  I did have a red skirt suit, very posh, at one office period of my life, which was chosen to make sure I kept the attention of the meetings I was at.  It wasn't because I liked it much.  But it definitely served its purpose.

And moving briefly to art, here's a large piece I created many years ago, painted on silk. 

 

 To me it's hot and anxious and a bit disturbing, but it was something I needed to say at the time.  To my amazement when it was exhibited, more than one person said, oh, how calm and peaceful that is.  I'd like to sink into that scene.  Huh? 

I think they were reading the composition, long horizontal lines, which do denote a peaceful atmosphere, and I was reading the colors, so there you are.  You learn stuff all the time.

Jacket components, some of them

 This is where we are. Jacket bits. Top left, woven lapel. Not yet steamed. Top right, loom warped up ready to weave second lapel. Bottom left and right, jacket lower fronts.

You see on the left there the section that juts out? That will go under the arm to meet the back. 

But first I need to weave the second lapel. I'm slowed down a bit by needing to rest between spinning. So supplying the yarn to weave is slow. 

Weaving is easier, once I get the yarn spun, because I can do it with either hand, so it's not a constant demand on one arm or the other. Then I'll attach the lapels to the lower section on each side.

We'll get there! Watch this space.

Woven yoke progress

Still working on one side of the yoke, as you see.  The stripes are working nicely.  The reason you haven't seen spinning and plying posts in here, and not much weaving, either, is that I have a little shoulder problem which has knocked me out of spinning.  It gets okay, I start to spin, and it's gone off again.  I will get there eventually.  And this is as far as the first yoke has got, largely because I'm running out of yarn to weave.  Weaving takes quite a bit of yarn, especially when you're making it to suit.

But we'll get there.  Meanwhile, I have a cunning plan.  I'll get both yokes finished and attached, then join the side seams, and I will then have a vest.  I've already stitched the two backs together, and they work nicely.  So I can wear it as a vest while I get on with spinning enough to make the sleeves.  No need for it all to just lie around in heaps until every last little bit is done.

And it may be necessary to crochet some joining on bits to make sure the yoke and the shoulder fit together well. We'll see once there's enough put together.  Meanwhile, the back is looking good.

At this rate, this jacket will have incorporated almost all the fiber arts I know.  Up to now: spinning, plying, knitting, weaving, sewing.

Simple mobiles for everyone

This is a good time, ahead of Valentine's Day, which I hold this truth to be self evident, that it's a day for friendship, to hell with the Hallmark card assumptions about romantic relationships, you can enjoy it and so can your friends, all of them, single and otherwise.

And one thing you can make is your own decorations, at home, using what's there.

Sooooo, here's a nice thing to make, easy, and kids like doing this too, always a good point for grandparents wanting to occupy the little guys.  These are all mobiles which hang in a two dimensional plane.  Meaning, no balancing required as for "real" three dimensional ones which require a lot of skill and time to get the balance right.

 

 

They're all in my downstairs bathroom, hence the masses of other small artworks all round, mostly by me, some by artist friends who wanted to get in on the act.

The mobiles are simple: chopsticks or other long thin wood sticks, string, white glue, paper of any kind.  You cut shapes, two of each shape, however you like, and however you want to decorate them, or cut from origami paper or anything that can be glued easily.  

Then you create a hanging loop for the main stick, and tie strings of different lengths to hang down pleasingly in a design.  Then glue so that the string is captured within the two sides of each paper shape.  That's it.  And very pleasing they can be.  You can hang on a wall or suspend from a ceiling or shelf or anything you like, really.

And they are a bit addictive, I must admit.  I gave away some, at that time.  As you see, I used origami cranes, birds cut from a picture book, bits of my own prints leftover,  Arp- like shapes.  Whatever seemed like fun at the time.  Busted up unreadable old picture books can yield nice trees, houses, flowers, that sort of thing. And wrapping paper likewise. Colored newspaper sections about fruit and veggies. Watercolors that didn't make it.  Just look around.

And enjoy a bit of escapist fun.

Woven yoke under way

 

Here's the start of the yoke, and you can see what I meant about vertical stripes. The cardboard loom is a simple idea, and works fine. 

This is either the right or left front yoke, depending on how well it works when it's off the loom and in place. It's two sided, so it's about colors working together rather than the finish. There won't be a "wrong" side.

And here's the cotton yarn I used to warp the loom

It's not supposed to show through the weft, but it will blend in pretty well if any shows. With an irregular yarn like a homespun, you allow for it.

Very glad I settled on four wpi. It's working fine.

Meanwhile, busy spinning the yarn for the weft. 

Sharing a textile artist I hadn't known before, Amy Meissner

Just a quickie here to let you know of a textile artist you may know, but I didn't: Amy Meissner, a worker in textiles who emphasizes upcycling and honoring women's stitching work, into wallhanging quilts with all kinds of interest and ideas in them.  Did you know there was a repair culture? I didn't until I noticed her credentials.

Anyway, K. sent me the link, she never fails to come through with interesting ideas for me, and here it is:

Amy Meissner textile artist 

Weaving the yokes

So here are the two fronts, at least the bottom part, finished, needing to be steamed and blocked, which is why they look a bit irregular. They'll match once steamed. One needs ends woven in, too.  But after that, and after I join together the two backispieces, I will be finishing the front yokes.

By weaving a piece of weft faced fabric, i.e. tapestry, to create the shape. I had thought of knitting it, but then couldn't be bothered with the calculations needed to get the decreases right, twice, once left, once right.  So I thought, since I've been wanting to make a cardboard loom to shape for ages, here's the chance.

It did involve a bit of counting and figuring, but here's the basic loom shape, in matboard, a piece of which I found left from an old artwork, it pays to save stuff.

On the right, reading right to left,  you see the diagram I'm working from, which I made along the lines of a jacket that I have that I like the fit of, then the little diagram of the yoke itself, and the actual cut out yoke shaped loom.

 And the reason I marked it right and left is not that it matters to the loom, but that it matters to me to remember to have the right sides opposite each other.  Usually my finishing is good enough that both sides work fine, but you never know. I don't want to have two lefts or two rights.

I'm going to warp it with cotton twine I've used before with my rigid  heddle loom, and will need to notch it for the warp threads at regular intervals with the xacto knife you saw up there with the diagrams.  

I had thought of 8 wpi, warp threads per inch, marked as you see for study, which would work for the warp, but then decided my yarn is bulky enough that it might work better with 4 wpi, half the number of warp threads, so that the spun yarn doesn't bind up and stick out and generally not want to weave very well. And since tapestry involves completely covering the warp threads, hence the term weft faced, meaning everything you see is weft, it's better if the wpi helps you do that.  I can always change this if it starts not working.

I've cut the loom exactly to size and shape, and will have a good bit of weaving-in of warp ends to do once this is complete, but that's fine.  It's complicated enough figuring out how to weave it, without getting into four-selvedge calculations as well.  And getting it to fit on the lower sections happily.

I'll be weaving up and down the actual garment direction, which will be interesting, stripes going in a different direction from the diagonals of the rest of it. Also a traditional way of weaving tapestry, where you want sharp edges to your stripes.

I realize that this sounds a bit less comprehensible than certain politicians at the moment, but just let it flow over you. All will be well. You can enjoy the spectator sport of watching me wrestling with problems of my own making, so many of them are, after all.

But before any of this can happen, I have to spin the yarn!  Chop wood, carry water.