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Back at (creative) work

I finished my hand-dyed bed linens, and they are fantastic! Here are the sheets:

And here is the blanket (plus Pepper the Professional Photobomber!):

Here’s what it looks like with the sheets turned properly down:

I LOVE it!

I’m planning on doing a second set of sheets, this one in blues and greens to match the blanket. More pictures once those are done! I may wind up mixing the sheet sets to have one blue sheet and one orange sheet in each set. Or maybe not. Stay tuned!

I’ve also gotten started on weaving stuff. (FINALLY!) You may or may not recall the series I’m working on, Unraveling. It’s a series of five images that starts with a woman screaming, woven in black and white, with the fabric slashed and frayed to reveal a layer of magenta cloth beneath the surface. Here’s the image I’m planning to weave – obviously it doesn’t have the double weave bottom layer or the slashes in it yet, but those are coming!

In the next frame, she reaches up a hand to her face and begins unraveling the frayed cloth, revealing a magenta mass of threads underneath. Here’s an “artist’s concept” (as they say) of what that might look like.

The next frame shows her as an unraveled mess of magenta thread, very loosely arranged in the shape of a face:

In the next frame, she is starting to put herself back together: a cocoon with a serene face

And, finally, the last frame shows her serene, with the magenta integrated, a single layer of cloth.

I handspun 1800 yards of superfine (the size of sewing thread) thread on a drop spindle while I was in Mexico, and will be using it in the magenta layer. It’s the “through line,” literally the thread that runs through the entire piece. It’s magenta because, on our last day in the old house, I arrived just before dawn to find a beautiful magenta glow in the sky over the home we were leaving behind:

After discussing the matter with Claude and doing some Googling for myself, I think those must have been the Northern Lights – the color is right and I can’t think of any other explanation. But it is practically unheard of to see the Northern Lights in the Bay Area, and to have that light up the sky on the last day in our old home? I took it as an omen, and I carried it with me all through my travels to Mexico. I literally spun it into a thread of continuity and contemplation:

I haven’t been able to work on the fabric design because I’ve had equipment issues (my pen display broke), but I should be able to start by the end of the week.

That may be getting ahead of myself, though. I need to set up the jacquard loom before I start weaving, and that’s gonna take a while. I have 1,320 heddles to thread, then debug (finding and fixing all the mistakes), before I can weave. I also want to replace 1,100 heddles with more durable ones. Finally, I need to wind and beam the warp for the project before I start threading. That’s a lot of infrastructure work, but it needs doing. And if you have to do something long and tedious, best to start right away. So I began winding the warp this afternoon. Forward ho!

The Megado? I have a project in mind for her, but I can’t finish designing it until I get that pen display. Soon, I hope!

By the way, I have decided to christen the Megado “Lady Lovelace” (after Ada Lovelace, of course). My jacquard loom is “Amazing Grace” (after pioneering software legend Grace Hopper). So now I have Lady Lovelace and Amazing Grace – which really ought to be the name of a rock duo. (Think I can get the Indigo Girls to change their name? 😉 )

And, of course, because no blog post would be complete without kittens, here are Nutmeg and Pepper, training for the North American Mixed Martial Arts championships! (All in fun – they chase each other all over the house almost every day, and there’s never any hissing. And all that kitten energy! They’re so much fun to watch.)

And all snuggled up afterwards.

They’re just over nine months now, and weigh as much as adult cats, so perhaps I should stop calling them kittens. But honestly? They’ll always be kittens to me.

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Unraveling (Or, Pilgrim’s Progress)

I’m making rapid conceptual progress on Pilgrimage. I’ve changed it considerably since yesterday.

I was really struggling with the center panels of Pilgrimage, which are about wandering. I couldn’t seem to figure out how to reconcile the idea of the inner struggle and transformation with an external journey and external challenge – at least, not in a way that satisfied me. So I had a long back and forth with ChatGPT (which is very good at brainstorming) and together we arrived at the concept of a different-but-same series, Unraveling.

Unraveling starts and ends at the same place as Pilgrimage – the screaming head to start, and the serene head at the end. However, it’s now about the deliberate choice to unravel the self you are in order to transform into something and someone new.

I also decided to make Unraveling much more weaverly. Pilgrimage was basically going to use the jacquard as a low-resolution printer, which is certainly doable but which is probably the least interesting use of a jacquard loom. (If you’re going to print it, print it.) I like the use of the medium much better in Unraveling.

But perhaps I should actually show you what I’m thinking!

Instead of a flat image of a face shattering, Unraveling opens with a face screaming, with portions of the face slashed and frayed to reveal magenta threads underneath. (The fabric is woven in double weave, one layer for the face and a loose, gauzy bottom layer of magenta cloth.)

In the next panel, the face lifts a hand and starts deliberately unraveling itself, pulling threads out to decompose itself into a tangle of magenta threads. It doesn’t look exactly like this, but you can get the rough idea:

This unraveling of the face isn’t a photo, though – instead, the fabric in the face is literally cut and unraveled, revealing a loosely woven magenta layer of cloth underneath, also partially unraveled.

In the next panel, the face has been unraveled completely into a mass of disorganized magenta threads, with just the suggestion of a face. The way I’m visualizing it inside my head doesn’t look much like this representation, but you can kinda get the idea.

Then, in the next panel, you see the face reweaving itself, thread by thread, integrating the frayed magenta threads into finished cloth. (No visual for this one yet.)

And then, at the end, you see the completely rewoven face, now with the magenta integrated and the face calm.

I like this story arc. I think I’m going to make it into a piece that is about 14 x 70″, which will fit into most exhibition size limits, and enable me to do five square panels 14″ x 14″. I wouldn’t mind making the panels a little wider, but for practical reasons 13-14″ is a good size. It would only require one module width on my TC-2 (14.5″), which makes warping faster, wastes less work, and allows me to weave something else on the rest of the loom.

While this work is emphatically not created by ChatGPT, it has been an essential part of the development process. It’s basically been the very patient person who’s willing to listen to you babble all day long about your project, offer suggestions, and not take it personally when you ignore all of them and go off on a totally different tangent. (My friends are patient, but they’re not that patient. Actually, neither am I.)

What I’ve found about working with AI is that it isn’t a replacement for a human being – it’s an amplifier. If you don’t think of it as an all-powerful, always-right being, but instead as a thought partner to brainstorm with and bounce ideas off, and to create the sketches you don’t have the skills to make, it can be a very powerful tool. It’s not a replacement for human judgment or creativity, but it can amplify what you do with them.

Anyway, I’m quite pleased with how Unraveling (nee Pilgrimage) is going, and I’m looking forward to refining the design and getting it ready to sample on the loom (once I get back).

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Beginnings and blades

I came to San Miguel de Allende with all kinds of plans. Explore the city, learn Spanish, meet people, find other weavers, get to know Mexico.

What actually happened: all the work I’d been too busy to get to during the summer landed on me like a ton of bricks. So I spent a lot of my first month working 12-14 hour days.

However, I did figure out the important bits: how to get around, how to buy food, where to find enticing restaurants, and most importantly, where to find a powerlifting gym. (Because working a 12-hour day means you still have 4 hours to get to the gym and do your workout. #noexcuses )

And I found some beautiful artisan work. I bought these Damascan steel knives at a small weekly market:

They’re both quite interesting. With the double-edged knife, the blank was folded symmetrically so that the left and right sides of the blade would be mirror images of each other, which is both beautiful and unusual.

The half-moon knife, which is called a mezquino, is for chopping up meat that’s cooking in a wok-like pan. From my point of view, however, the interesting part is that the Damascan steel patterning isn’t a water pattern, as most of them are. Instead, it’s concentric circles, as you can see more clearly in this closeup. (Click to see the larger image; the patterns are truly beautiful up close.)

To get this unique patterning, Marcelo made the knife from a motorcycle chain. The concentric circles are the links of the chain. Amazing.

I cannot tell you how much I love these knives. I love artisan work, I love innovative designs and patterns, and I love people with a passion for craft. I have a particular soft spot for Damascan steel – which, if you’re not familiar with it, is steel that’s been hammered flat, then heated and folded, over and over until it’s composed of many very thin layers. Think of it as a metal croissant. (Now there’s an image!)

Damascan steel used to be legendary for making the keenest and best-quality swords. I don’t know about that, but I find the patterning beautiful and envy the skills and labor that goes into it. In another life, I’d love to be a maker of Damascan steel.

The really amazing part, though, is Marcelo has agreed to make me a set of Damascan steel kitchen knives! A chef’s knife, a 5″ utility knife, and a paring knife. We’re currently discussing material for the handles. He’s got some beautiful woods, black horn, and…mammoth molars.

Slices from mammoth molars are flat-out gorgeous. Here’s a pic (from Wikimedia Commons) of a cross-section of mammoth molar:

For a girl who loves complex patterning, this is like moth to flame. I’m meeting with him on Saturday to discuss the knives, costs, and materials. I’m not sure I can afford mammoth molar handles, but hoo boy!

Regardless, I’m delighted to be getting such beautiful kitchen tools. I cook a lot and this will make for wonderful memories of my trip to Mexico, every time I’m in the kitchen.

But enough rhapsodizing about knives.

In the course of the past month, I’ve realized two things. The first is that I could live pretty well in San Miguel de Allende. The second is that I would rather live in California. I don’t have a ton of interest in Mexico and Mexican culture; if I were to move to Mexico, I would probably feel most comfortable living in “Americatown” – i.e., places where lots of American expats/immigrants live. This doesn’t seem like a good reason to move to Mexico. So I will likely go back to California and stay there for a while, at least.

Meanwhile, I have been making progress on Pilgrimage. I’ve decided that it won’t be five separate pieces, for practical reasons. The pieces are part of a group, and don’t have their full impact without the rest of the group. And it would be hard to get all five pieces into a show. So it’s much better to do five smaller pieces and weld them together into a single large piece.

Here’s what I’m currently envisioning for Pilgrimage:

  1. Shattered – a screaming face shattering, with magenta coming out of the cracks in the face.
  2. Threshold – a gate (perhaps a door) between the normal world and the spirit world. There might be a guardian at the gate – not sure yet. Magenta light flows through the path leading through the door, guiding the way.
  3. Wandering – this one isn’t really set yet. I’m envisioning a squiggly spiral maze with a circular chamber at the center, and a face that starts melting progressively (think “fun-house mirror”) as it passes through the maze. Still a lot of thinking and brainstorming to do on this.
  4. Metamorphosis – the face melted, almost into a puddle, perhaps in a crucible, glowing magenta.
  5. The Way Home – the face, now at peace, gently glowing with magenta light. The energy has been integrated and the spirit has found its way home.

I’ve been working with DALL-E (the ChatGPT image generator) to come up with conceptual images for the first and last pieces. There is still much work to be done in refining, planning, and designing the images – and this may all change tomorrow, I’m still brainstorming – but for today, here is the template for Shattered:

And here is the image for the final piece:

There is still much work to do, and I’m confident that this will all change as I work further at forging the concepts into finished work, but it’s a start.

I have much more to say, and many interesting discoveries to share, but I also want to get to bed. More later, hopefully, now that the work logjam’s been cleared.

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Following the Magenta Thread

It’s almost time! I’m flying to San Miguel de Allende on Wednesday.

I’ve been thinking hard about what to bring in the way of craft supplies. I’m not sure what will be available in San Miguel de Allende, especially since I’ve heard from local weavers that there aren’t a whole lot of weavers there. (There are plenty of weavers in Mexico doing wonderful work, but the biggest concentration is in Oaxaca, a long ways away.)

So if I want to be sure I have access to something, I need to bring it with me.

Left unchecked, this dilemma would undoubtedly result in two suitcases full of craft supplies, plus a small carry-on with a few clothes. (Because having to go around naked is far better than not having that fourteenth pair of scissors, RIGHT???)

After much thinking and journaling, I’ve concluded that, instead of trying to weave, I’m going back to my trusty spindle. The only thing I know for sure about my series Pilgrimage (see the full set of blog posts about it here) is that it will contain a glittery or glowing magenta thread as a “through line”.

Every piece will have that magenta glow somewhere, woven with yarn hand spun on my drop spindle. I plan to take that spindle nearly everywhere – when weaving, when going about town meeting people, maybe even in Spanish class, if the teacher doesn’t mind.

The magenta comes from the strange magenta glow over the house on my last day in the old place. Here it is again:

pre-dawn magenta glow over our old house

I have never seen anything like that eerie glow before. I’m sure there is some meteorological explanation for it. But before dawn on the last day of the house I’d lived in for 13 years? That’s an omen, a pointer beckoning to the new life. A signal for change.

So I’m making that magenta the uniting element for the entire series. Whatever the piece, it will have at least a little (possibly a lot!) of magenta in it, always leading to the transformational path.

Towards that, I’ve been sampling a lot of different fibers and fiber blends. Here are some of them:

sample skeins for my series Pilgrimage

The white ones were spun with the intent of dyeing the yarn afterwards, but I also dyed a bunch of silk bright magenta (the bottom ones).

All of the skeins have some form of sparkle in them. Mostly holographic silver angelina mixed with silk or wool, but also two tiny skeins of magenta plied with an iridescent thread.

Unfortunately, the sparkle doesn’t show up in photos, because sparkle is caused by tiny eye movements and the camera captures an instantaneous image. So it’s hard to evaluate them based on a photo.

Of the skeins, I like the top and bottom pink skeins best. The top one is two plies of magenta thread and one ply of iridescent thread. The bottom one is magenta fiber liberally blended with holographic silver angelina (sparkle fiber). I haven’t yet decided which one to use.

I’m currently in the middle of spinning a larger sample skein of the magenta thread mixed with iridescent thread. The thread I’m spinning is quite fine, about 11,000 yards per pound. (Sewing thread is 12,000 yards per pound.) So the 92 yards I’ve spun so far weighs only 3.8 grams:

bobbin with superfine magenta thread

I’m actually using two spindles to make the yarn. The first is my “walking spindle,” which I use on my morning walks. Since I occasionally drop it onto the sidewalk, it’s gotten a bit battered.

The second one is a beautiful spindle that I just got from Golding Fiber Tools, which makes gorgeous, one of a kind spindles that are perfectly balanced and spin nearly forever. It has a gold plated Tree of Life on the spindle whorl, which I thought was perfect for this journey. However, it’s so beautiful that I hate to drop it on concrete, so I plan to use it indoors.

Here are both spindles:

two Golding Ring Spindles

I’ve spun probably another 100 yards between the two spindles, so it’s just about time to start plying with the iridescent thread. Because plying on a drop spindle can be awkward, I’m going to ply using the tiny Electric Eel Nano 2.1 electric spinner that arrived a week or two ago. It’s small enough to fit into my cupped hands, so perfect for traveling.

Those tools, the magenta fiber, iridescent thread and angelina fiber, and some cotton carders (for blending fibers) are all I currently plan to take. (I am debating taking some additional white silk fiber and some dyes, but I think that would be gilding the lily.)

I’m also bringing my laptop and iPad, of course, and intend to sketch out my thoughts for each piece along the way. I will develop them into finished work once I’ve settled into my new home (wherever that may be!) and have my studio set up again.

Off to follow that magenta glow!

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Crossing the Threshold

I haven’t written much the last few weeks because the chaos has been insane.

However, the house is sold, and we’ve packed and moved all our stuff – a heroic effort. We’re both pack rats and we’d been there for 13 years!

Between the two of us we packed just under 200 moving boxes, gave away 30+ more boxes to Goodwill (the neighbors got plenty too!), and got rid of two BIG dumpsters’ worth of rubbish.

It is said that one learns a lot about oneself while moving, and this is true.

For example, I discovered that I have 28 boxes of yarn, weighing approximately 20 lbs apiece. That’s 560 lbs of yarn! And that’s AFTER selling or giving away another 80-100 lbs. That’s thoroughly embarrassing.

However, I must say….

I also discovered that I own 33 pairs of scissors (!). (Like tribbles, they appear to be born pregnant.)

Here are some of them:

The ones at top left are my favorites. They’re not great for cutting, but they are fascinating – a gift from a Tibetan lama friend, hand-forged in a small town in India.

Below is a better picture of those scissors. You can still see the grinder marks on the handles. Talk about “hand of the maker”!

I also found some “blast from the past” memorabilia. This, for example, comes from my trip to Southeast Asia in 2003. It’s from an adventure I had in Bangkok, where the best body painter in Bangkok agreed to paint me up as a barbarian warrior princess (and I wound up on the front cover of a travel magazine!). We had a photo shoot with various props. I’d completely forgotten about this one!

I also found wedding dress #1. I made this one myself, in 1994. It’s not bad, especially considering how inexperienced I was at the time. The beads have tarnished, but 30 years ago they were bright gold.

Doesn’t hold a candle to wedding dress #2 – but then, neither did the marriage. 😉

On the morning after we cleared out the old house, I returned before dawn for one last round through the house. To my amazement, the sky above the house was glowing a beautiful (and eerie) magenta, even though it was still quite dark. I have never seen anything like that before. Here is a picture – exactly as shot, and completely unenhanced.

This is inspiring a new series that I think I am going to call Pilgrimage. As I’ve currently conceived it (and this will likely change at least 30 times before I finish it, if it even gets finished), it’s a series of four pieces:

  • Threshold – leaving the everyday normal and launching into the unfamiliar
  • Wandering – exploring the new world (and maybe getting a bit lost!)
  • Cocoon – musings on what I’ve learned
  • The Way Home – settling into a new home and a new “normal”

So far I’m only thinking about the first two pieces. I am really struggling on the format and media – obviously I won’t have the jacquard loom, and probably won’t until the end of my journey, so weaving them on the jacquard loom is probably not viable. And I can’t fit too much equipment into my suitcase.

I’m thinking that the best format is probably tapestry, but I have not done tapestry weaving except for a brief one-month trial, and I wasn’t particularly fond of the process. That was twenty years ago and I might like it better now, so I am planning to put together a simple loom and maybe experiment a bit before leaving.

I have a vague idea that Threshold will start with that picture of the glowing sky over our old house (it really did seem like an omen!) and that the unifying theme across all the pieces will be a glowing magenta thread or path to represent the spiritual journey. The magenta glow will, of course, be handspun with a drop spindle on my morning walks, and will probably incorporate some sparkly stuff.

I haven’t had a chance to think it through any further yet – things have been way too crazy. This past weekend was the first breath of free time I had for over a month – and I spent most of it just catching up on sleep!

I am (hopefully) leaving for Mexico in exactly three weeks, so I don’t have much time to think things through. I think the most important thing to figure out is what tools and materials I should bring with me, and “wing it” later, within the limits of the things I’ve brought along. This is completely unlike my usual working style, so I’m feeling very rushed – and, frankly, pretty uncomfortable with the whole thing.

And that’s GREAT. The whole purpose of this trip is to explore new ways of thinking, doing, and being. This may not produce my best work, but it’ll engage me in a dialogue about my style, process, and beliefs – which is exactly what I am looking for, right now.