Prototypes

Am presently working on my postcard for the Twitter Art Exhibit. This year the exhibit will be held at the Trygve Lie Gallery in NYC, benefiting Foster Pride's Handmade program. 

This will be a quilted fabric postcard when finished. I feel like this is first in a series of quilts that I will call Sacred Waters. This is a 6x4 prototype. The H2Oh! quilt entry will be next, at about 70x90. Much larger but still examining mothers, babies and water in short supply. There is a sacred connection in this act of bathing your child. I remember the first time I gave my daughter a bath. I was terrified. But my mother showed me how to hold her little head up and what temperature the water should be. And I will be doing the same for my daughter very soon with her baby boy. 

Lucky us, we have plenty of water for our baby's tub. The women that will be in my quilts do not. 

Made a quick trip to the parsonage last weekend. We went for a little walk and discovered that there are wild peacocks in the neighborhood. This is the lovely white peacock that lives in our town.

And this is the cat who kicked the peacock out of her yard in our town. She was very miffed. 

The weather has been strange everywhere it seems. The poor camillia doesn't know whether to hold on or let go. We all feel like that sometimes, camillia.

H2OH! beginnings

I have begun planning a quilt for entry into the SAQA H2OH! show next year. The quilts are to interpret the importance of water in our lives.

Three ideas began to form in my head. Babies and mothers being ever present in my mind these days, holy water, and drought. I mulled these things over and over. I started thinking about places affected by drought and Africa came to mind first.

Mothers bathing their infants in countries where water is a precious commodity. And I could see in my mind, cracked dry earth.

Which then led me to think of flour paste resist. 

This is one of my favorite techniques. Nice and sloppy and messy! So that is where I am so far with this quilt.

Still working away on Clara's Many Moons. I'm sewing the larger parts together now and working on a border.

Well who knew

Howdy! Yes, I'm back. I came into the old Warped and Woaded blogspot to look for a picture and realized, hey... people are still visiting this site! What the heck?! Why not just come back here...I can change my mind right? I'm a woman.

Since it's been well over a year, let's play a little catch up shall we?
Biggest event... remember how I was saying there are no grandchildren on the horizon as of yet? Well, that's changed. We're now expecting not one but two grandchildren. One daughter is having a boy and the other a girl. Couldn't ask for any better than that!

I haven't been weaving. It's just too physically taxing. I have however been quilting. As a weaver, I was really missing that connection with fiber. Quilting gives me that.

Not much else is new. This feels pretty right coming back to the old blog. I think I just needed a break. So happy new year to all...may 2016 find you up and dancing!

Escape

We spent the weekend upstate. Had visitors too. Welcome guests

Jerry did some repairs on the deck. Some of the boards are rotting so we're going to paint on our next visit. Thinking green to match the house trim.

Went to the antique mall to get vases for the girls. Found this handsome little fellow and brought him home.

And speaking of vases.... I did some experimenting with cut flowers from our yard. The purple flowers are water hyacinth which we have in our yard in a little water garden.

These are the water hyacinth after they opened up. They are very pretty but they only lasted the day. Next day they were starting to close up. Not good for cut flowers. Too bad. I really like them.

We went for a walk at Dunn's Creek. I like to walk back in there. It's quiet and there are very few people around. I feel I need that more and more. The deer must have been having a party. Their hoof prints were everywhere.

Remembering...

This is a woven wall hanging that I made for my friend Jess back in July 2013. I've been thinking about her a lot lately...

Things always pop up to make me think of her. But lately, I had finished the Lydon book Knitting Heaven and Earth. In the book, the author talks about how she knitted a sweater for a terminally ill friend and how she felt she was trying to knit her friend to the earth. Then last week, I read an article in the new Handwoven by Jenny Pelc about weaving memorial banners for loved ones that have passed. Was I doing that with the wall hanging? I didn't think about it at the time, but I think maybe somewhere in my heart I was.

When I was getting ready to go for treatments back in July, I started crocheting a baby blanket. There are no grandchildren on the horizon as of yet, but I felt compelled to start this little blanket. I went to Joann's, bought 3 skeins of neutral baby colors and started crocheting. I just felt such a strong pull to do this. Maybe I was crocheting myself here to Earth. I need to stay here. I want to see the grandchild that this blanket will eventually cover.

My friend Jessica did not win her battle with cancer. She was 38 years old and left 2 beautiful and sweet little boys as her legacy. She has been gone for a year. I know she is ok though. More than ok. And here's how I know...

I have to back up first. When my dad passed 12 years ago (has it been that long?), we saw a rainbow on the day of his funeral. My mom said that was his way of telling us he was happy. A few years ago, I was at work and feeling very frightened and depressed about having an acoustic neuroma. While sitting at the information desk, a little girl who I had never seen before, or since, came up to me and gave me this...

...she said it was for me.

Shortly after Jess passed, I was walking along the beach and thinking about her. I sat down on one of the benches to rest and look at the water. I was thinking how much I wished she could tell me what it was like and how she was doing. I glanced down the beach a way and saw two people flying a kite. And guess what was on the kite... yes, a rainbow. And that's how I know Jess is happy.

Random weavings

Randomly woven scarf... I like the way it came out, especially the drape. I'm not sure if it is technically saori or not, since I've read that in order to be truly saori, it has to be woven on a saori loom. I wove it on a rigid heddle loom. I put the question to the Weavolution saori group as to whether or not a piece had to be woven on a saori loom in order to be considered saori. Well that's not exactly what I asked. I asked if there were any difference between the saori loom and any other 2 or 4 harness loom. I mean the weaving is either plain weave or 4 harness, right? I've gotten no response as of yet.

I really liked the way the weft undulated between the warp... like ripples across water. I used a very light beat to achieve a gauze-like feel.

The heel she is done! And the stitches all look right. Now to conquer the ankle

This is Paton's Kroy sock yarn, color Blue Strip Ragg, over dyed with black. I love the way sock yarn looks when it's over dyed.

I finally decided on how to use the little green ball of yarn... Potato chip scarf!

The heel

I've been working on the heel of my sock for a while now. It's taking me a long time because it's my first sock ever. And now it's going to take longer.

I realized a while back that my heel wasn't looking right. By that I mean it wasn't coming out in stockinette stitch like the rest of the sock. So I thought, "well, maybe it's supposed to look different", and just kept going. I was getting so caught up in the process (I'm definitely a "process" as opposed to "finished product" sort of a crafter...it's all about the process for me), and kept ignoring the little nagging voice in my head saying, "something is wrong doofus... something is wrong".  The heel was in fact knitting up in reverse stockinette. Finally good common sense broke through and I realized I would have to do the thing I have always feared most as a knitter... frogging... rip it! rip it! 

This was scary, especially since I have never frogged on circular needles before. I've never really done much frogging at all. So I did it. Took me about an hour to get the needles back on. My glasses are old and we're talking tiny, size 2 needle stitches. But I finally got the stitches back on the needles and started again.

Now, let me say why I'm glad this happened. Yes, glad. Because I was forced to do something I feared. Because I learned more about the anatomy of stitches and how to fix dropped stitches. Because I'm not afraid to correct mistakes anymore and I feel like that fear probably kept me from trying new things as a knitter. Kept me from pushing and learning new techniques.

And as Leonard Cohen says:

Ring the bells that still can ring

forget your perfect offering

There is a crack, a crack in everything

That's how the light gets in