Dec 18, 2013

Happy holidays and rigid heddles

Visited my friend this past Sunday. We get together once a month to drink coffee, eat banana bread and knit. She wanted to learn rigid heddle weaving, so I let her borrow my RH loom last month and said if she needed any help, I'd work with her. Well, she did need help. When I got there, she had put the warp on the loom backwards (front of work tied to back apron  and vice versa). She was sort of almost in tears. I said no worries, we'd fix it. We took the warp off the loom and turned the loom around. So... in answer to a question on Facebook, on the rigid heddle page, this is how I tie little bundles to the back beam bar. We took small bundles of the warp, being careful to keep them the same length, tied them together, then lashed them to the back beam. These are thicker bundles than I would do, but that was her preference. Now, you can also tie them directly to the bars themselves, but I don't like the Ashford bars. They are rectangular, flat pieces of wood instead of dowel shape. I don't like this design at all, thus the bundles. Then of course she will sley the warp, and tie the ends to the front apron bar directly. 

This is an odd sort of way to warp I suppose, but I am used to warping an 8 shaft, 10 treadle monster of a Kessenich, so warping a RH is no where near as time consuming and tedious. Therefore, I don't mind taking extra time doing it. 


Another odd thing she did was this... instead of using brown wrapping paper or butcher paper, she used a bunch of cut up little cardboards. See how uneven this can be? You can use flat, narrow, even sticks, but these are totally uneven and cardboard has too much give. So we got rid of that hot mess too and luckily she had some brown paper on hand so we rolled the warp onto the back beam, tucking the brown paper in and around as we went. Hopefully, she will call me if she gets in a bind next time. 

And now... Happy Holidays from the kids of Messy Art! 



Dec 13, 2013

My apologies

I'm really sorry folks, but either I'm a dope (and how could that possibly be) or blogger messed up, but I see I've gotten many comments and didn't even know they were there.

So if I didn't respond, I'm sorry... I just didn't know it was there. DUH!! I'm working to see how this can be fixed in future.

Dec 11, 2013

Influenza fun!

Oh yeah, we're having some fun now.... groan. I've been sick since Saturday. So this is day 5 and I had to drag my diseased butt into work or I would need to get the dreaded "doctor's note". I was even willing to do that, but upon calling Dr. Ting, I was told he left town and they don't know when he's coming back. Nice. So needless to say, I've gotten nothing done really.

I cut the last warp off the inkle. I had experimented with this piece, using different yarns, and I wasn't happy with the combination or the colors. Yuk!

That was about all the energy I had. But on the bright side, I dug out a bunch of my old weaving magazines and got caught up on my reading.




Dec 4, 2013

The Thanksgiving break

...where I didn't do a whole heck of a lot. I was determined however to rest. I really felt I needed it.

Also, a bit of time was taken up with Christmas decorating. I LOVE Christmas and really love decorating my house. Above is my snowman collection...

and the Christmas village over the TV and the constant hum of football (just kidding Jer). The tree is up as well but I didn't take a picture yet.



This week in art class we looked at the works of the British sculptor, Henry Moore. I gave each child a palm size lump of air dry clay and, after showing them pictures of his work, asked them to make their own abstract sculptures. I told them that I didn't want to see any bunnies or kitties or anything like that and if I did I would smash them mercilessly! Bwa ha ha ha ha!!! I told the kids that I didn't want to be able to recognize their pieces at all. ABSTRACT!

Ok, I forgot my camera and had to use my iphone, which only seems to be able to upload pictures sideways. But they're abstract... does it really matter? Kidding. Anyway, I'm well aware of what terracotta looks like, and let me tell you, it's about as messy as it looks, but the store was out of white air dry clay.


Hmmmm.... this one is interesting.

Now I know this is not abstract, but it is gorgeous. The girl that made it is about 13 and a sort of  "at risk" kid .... she's at risk of choosing men poorly the rest of her life because the boys she hangs out with are total turds. Anyway, I praised her for this and told her she should keep up with clay and sculpting. You could tell by her reaction that she doesn't hear praise much and she was very proud of her piece. And it is experiences like this that remind me why I do what I do.