I finally got weaving

 Foreword:  If you came in in search of the information about next Saturday's museum presentations, scroll down to the previous post. It's all there.

 Meanwhile, in the midst of spinning and plying and looking at Rebecca Mezoff's tapestry weaving book, I got thinking about pockets for the jacket I'm making.  At first I had thought of diagonal knitted ones. But I also wondered about some weaving element.

 Rebecca does a lot of tiny works, as a form of note taking, like a knitter doing swatching.  So I thought about that, then decided no, I wanted to use the beloved potholder loom.

This is the one that everyone says Oh I had one of those when I was a kid, made my Mom a potholder, I wonder what happened to the loom..and it's really not just for kids.  It's a very nice little tool, particularly if you buy this kind, made in America with real metal with properly designed pegs.  I've made long pieces by crocheting together a series of squares.  And you're not stuck with squares. You can weave triangles or rectangles within the size of the loom.  Nora will show you how.  But here I wanted a square.

I used my trusty Tunisian crochet hook as a weaving hook, works a treat

I had to go back to Norah Crone Findlay for a reminder on how to get started warping the loom.  This is a lovely paperback, which I think I've recommended before.  She specializes in very clear useful instructions and photographs. 

She also has a YouTube channel from which I learned how to use paper clips to make a four selvedge weaving, which ended up being a purchase award piece at a regional show shortly after, and is now hanging in some elected bigwig's office, it being in a public art collection.  So there's that.  Here's me, at the gallery, looking gormless, and getting the official word that Red Building, tapestry, woven in embroidery floss, four selvedge,  had been selected.

Back to the potholder loom: here's how you go

And then, people think, well, this is all very well, but with yarn looped around on all four sides, how do you get the weaving off and finished?  It's like a crochet stitch, just lift up the first two loops, slide one over the other, pick up another, all the way round till you reach the starting point again.  When I do the corners, I loop twice, because there's a bit of slack where the yarn turned the corner.

And here's the pocket, steam pressed and looking okay, for an hour's work from thinking about it to looking for the iron

You can see how the yarn bloomed nicely and filled in all the gaps you saw on the loom.  I think I'll probably make another pocket, and line them so they don't sag in use.

Which will reintroduce stitching into my life, about time.

The potholder loom returns

Bit of spinning, bit of dyeing to get the yellow I need, then a couple of sections of the summer scarf I was thinking of before, when  the rhl turned it into a wall hanging. I'm just a helpless prawn of fate, I tell you.

There will be a series of sections, to be crocheted together in some interesting way I haven't thought of yet.

This is very airy. The Tunisian crochet hook is working as a  weaving hook. I also use it as a shed stick on the Hokett loom. All purpose tool.

And, when I found the potholder loom, I remembered the little motif, top left there,  I hadn't taken off it, so I did. This is handspun and dyed, and it will be part of something bigger. I think. Interesting organic shape.

I have three tapestries in the studio waiting to be framed, and I think all this may be displacement activity to avoid the dreaded, I mean great fun of,  framing.

Back to my own work, stitching and weaving

I'm back with my stitching, the doorway motif which was the polaroid transfer print, and with trapunto going on.  Here you can see some couching and beading in progress, and the small purple weaving in the background might possibly go with this stitching.

 Not sure yet, but I'll know more when I remove the stitching from the hoop and cut around it. The ragged edges of the transfer image won't be part of the finished work.  I might be able to mount the stitched piece onto the weaving, then frame them together that way. The weaving will fit into an 8 x 8 box frame.  Just a thought at this point.

I decided it didn't fit with the bigger work I originally had it in mind for, not right in spirit, so it will be a freestanding small work, possibly one of a series.  The bigger work has suggested doorways, but the overall feeling of it is different.

You'll see my latest toy there, too, my LED portable worklight. It folds right down to the size of a fat wallet, easy to carry about and work in places where the light isn't quite good enough for stitching. It has three light levels, and I use it at the brightest setting.  I'm an LED fan now!

And the dear little loom is another favorite tool, made in the US, yay, all metal, beautifully finished.  Designed largely for potholders, but I use it for all kinds of artworks.