Things have improved substantially over the last couple of days, and I’m basically back to my usual cheerful self again. The effectiveness of minor tweaks in medication make me wonder occasionally what is really going on in the brain – whether emotions and personality really are all delusions of brain chemical soup – but I went through that particular phase of psychological questioning a long time ago, and have no real reason to revisit my conclusion. It was pretty simple, and sliced the Gordanian knot of metaphysics quite neatly: without medication, I’m a basketcase. With medication, I’m a lot happier. Anyone who would revisit bipolar depression for philosophical brownie points needs immediate medical treatment (in more ways than one!).
At any rate, I now have a couple of projects percolating away:
- Making candied cherries for the fruitcake. I am now on the third day of the candying process, and the cherries taste terrific. I’m having a hard time not eating them all. Five more days of candying to go! I’m not sure my self-discipline will last that long.
- Constructing a cardweaving “loom”. It’s pretty simple, not dissimilar to this one. I’ve bought the various bits, cut the pieces of wood this morning, and will be assembling it tonight, if all goes well.
- Weaving the yardage for the dress (the main focus of this weekend, I think – I want to finish as much as possible before flying out to Laura Fry’s next week!).
- Making sun-cooked sour cherry jam. I was fortunate enough to find an affordable source for sour cherries! Berkeley Bowl West has them, for only $3.39/lb, so I will probably buy 10-12 pounds over the weekend and make myself a big batch of sun-cooked sour cherry jam. I think it will taste marvelous. I might make a cherry pie, too – Mike and I both love cherry pie.
- Reading through Peter Collingwood’s Tablet Weaving. It’s extremely well-researched and comprehensive – though it doesn’t help me with my immediate question, which is how to design the double-happiness symbol as a tablet-woven band. I’ll probably read more of the book on my way to Laura’s place next week (!!).
- Exploring the possibility of changing industries and becoming a textile designer!
That last requires a little more explanation…when I was up in SF last weekend with my mom, we went to Discount Fabrics for some buckram. I explained to one of the people in the shop that I was weaving fabric for my wedding dress (which fascinated him), and we got to talking. According to him, it’s definitely possible to make money in the textiles industry designing fabrics…so I am going to have brunch with him sometime soon to brainstorm about what I could do in textiles and how I could transition into something like that. Nothing definite, and it may or may not pan out, but if it does, how delightful!
Off to finish my cardweaving loom!
I had typed in a long entry but I forgot to plug in name and email, so WordPress ate it! I’d be happy to help and offer suggestions re: tablet weaving. I think that double-face would offer sufficient graphic complexity, while making a faster and sturdier fabric; brocade will let you do finer detail and use glitzier fibers for it.
http://www.cs.vassar.edu/~capriest/dfdt.html
http://www.weavezine.com/summer2008/wz_su08_MichaelCook.php
Making a distorted proportion graph will save you a lot of headache; I use 2.5:1 for double-face and 1.5:1 for brocade.
Tien, Glad for you that your world has come around right again! Re textile design. I’ve been reading Fern Devlin’s blog for a while now, and I would like to recommend it to you (and to anyone) who wants to know about the textile design world in NYC. See http://buyathread.wordpress.com/ You may either have second thoughts on a new career choice, or else embrace it. Sue in MA
You made a great choice of card-weaving loom design. Though I don’t do much card-weaving any more (I pretty much switched to inkle when I found that technique was much faster), I do love my “surf board” for the rare times when I want to make a card-woven band. Before I bought the SB, I had tried just about every available CW loom, to say nothing of weaving between two C-clamps and other casual configurations. The SB was the one loom that made sense to me: a comfortable distance for turning the cards (to me, using an inkle loom for card weaving fails on this point), a tensioning system that allows me to crank up the tension really high, and a simple way to remove accumulated twist if you’re not turning forwards & backwards in equal amounts.
My DH has a wood working shop… Guess what I’m going to ask him to make!
Seeing what you have designed for yourself and the care and attention you put into everything, I think you’d make a great textile designer. You have a wonderful imagination for unique fabrics.
Maybe this is why you were laid off.
How neat that you are on a card/inkle weaving jag – my friend had me show her how to use an inkle loom a few weeks ago and she has been cranking them out! Then there is an article about making silk bands and sewing them into a wee bag in the new Spin-Off that might interest you. When it rains, it pours!