Experiment complete

The weaving is done. 4.75" x 2".

 I was able to do the fringeless finish at one end, but had to cut the loops at the other end to release the heddle. Knotted them, then wove the ends in. The heddle kept the margins even, a bonus.

Nice change of pace. Now back to diamonds and hexies.

Rough draft, paper weaving and transparencies

This is the start of some new thinking. Two printed silk images of the strawberry field piecing, over paper weaving of three other images, one new, two the paper backing from the silk prints.

This is where I decide how much is enough, how much more to do. But for now, this can sit a day or two, while I think about it.

I expect quilters would have got off the bus a few stops ago.

Using the paper shredder to make the weaving strips was quite exciting. I had forgotten that "auto" means "on without pushing a button".. so I plugged in, inserted a paper and roarrrrrr, spit, flitter, flitter, and there were strips all over the place. Ah.

After that I remembered how to lie in wait and catch the strips in a quick handful. And have it at "off", until I was ready, a  point which escaped me earlier.

Many art commitments, many simultaneous approaches

In the usual course of events in the studio, more like a four wheel skid, really, I was simultaneously thinking this morning about 

the paper weaving workshop I will be leading in September at the local Festival of the Arts, largely for kids, 

the current thinking about printing out my artwork on transparent silk, 

the other workshop I will be doing also in September for adults, on nature drawing.

And once again, it pays to have several trains of thought on the tracks at one time. I broke up that para so you could disentangle each train from the others. A literary signal box, you might way.

In the course of looking for the paper shredder and some interesting paper, for the paper weaving, and testing the shredder

 I found a stack of 3 x 5 cards, which I will use for the drawing workshop (like 5 x 8 cards, it's a golden rectangle, perfect drawing proportions). No pic of them, you know what they look like. 

And I found a painting of fish in acrylic on rough dark green canvas from a totebag, and realized this was a great candidate for a silk version.  

Also in the course of searching for paper, I disinterred several covers I'd made for artist books, which will do well to show friends in Creative Collective, and one or more of which will work at the end of the month when I assemble the month's plein air output into book form.   These are painted and printed and stamped and mounted onto either foamcore or cardboard.

So all these solutions came to me in the course of one search. 

You could say that chance favors the prepared mind, too, if you want to.