Innholdsfortegnelse for January/February 2021 i Handwoven

STAYING HOME BECAUSE OF THE PANDEMIC has brought my personal stash of yarn into high relief. Well, that and the stack of half-finished projects that seems to follow me around. It felt wrong not to be solidly digging into both of them, but somehow I wasn’t. When the stay-at-home time started to stretch out seemingly without end, I finally called Rosalie, a fellow weaver friend, and asked if she would like to get together (socially distanced) and knit on Friday afternoons. Almost like having a friend to exercise with will prompt you to stay on track, having that time with her has been invaluable, not only because I needed the personal contact but because it gave me a reason to pull out my stash yarns and restart one large project…

A TRUE WISCONSINITE, Mary Burns set up her studio in northern Wisconsin in her grandparents’ house, a 15-minute drive from Lac du Flambeau Reservation and 100 miles north of Wausau, where she grew up. The soft-spoken, poised artist draws her energy and inspiration from the outdoor world and feels blessed to be surrounded by the woods and lakes she’s known since childhood. The large weaving studio she built to nurture her creativity is a safe haven where she can reflect on cultural or environmental issues she eventually incorporates into her designs. The studio conveys a sense of respect for excellent craftsmanship and reveals the weaver’s mindful approach to her art. Weavings inspired by the beauty of nature or the designs of Frank Lloyd Wright are on display for local art…

Full disclosure: I am a weaver but not a tapestry weaver. That means I’m not a Navajo rug weaver either. That’s by choice, having tried it. I decided it was too demanding for me and requires skills I understand but barely have. And so I truly appreciate those who do that type of weaving and the rugs that have grown from those skills. There is a reason that Navajo rugs set the gold standard for fine weaving, and reading How to Weave a Navajo Rug and Other Lessons from Spider Woman helps to understand how that came about. For me, there are three main elements to the Teller sisters’ telling of the story. First, of course, is the actual description of how to weave a Navajo rug. From building a…

You will need: Loom: 10" (25cm) or wider rigid heddle Reed: 15dpi (60/10cm) Background warp and weft yarn: Ashford mercerised weaving cotton 5/2 (100% cotton, Ne 5/2, 848m/927yds, 200gm) 1 cone #30 True Blue Supplementary warp yarn: hand-dyed silk boucle 1oz (28gm) Other: three pickup sticks, warp thread weights Here’s how: Total background warp ends: 120 Total supplementary warp ends: 14 (two in 7 slots) Total background warp length: 7ft/2.1m Total supplementary warp length: 10ft/3m Finished width: 7" (17½cm) Finished length: 53½" (136cm) Warping 1. Warp 120 ends in the 5/2 cotton, wind and tie on. 2. Place the first pair of supplementary warp threads through the centre slot. Repeat either side in every 5th slot for a total of seven pairs. 3. Tie the supplementary warp threads to the…

MARCH/APRIL 2021 Mid-Century Inspired We just can’t get enough of mid-century modern style and weaving. From the Bauhau-strained weavers such as Else Regensteiner and Anni Albers, who helped define the textiles of the era, to the fun and funky fashion, we want to celebrate the cloth and style of the 1950s and 1960s. MAY/JUNE 2021 Checks and Plaids Checks and plaids never seem to go out of style, and all of them are best when woven. Tartans and ginghams might remind us of our past, while other patterns are just beautiful in their complexity or simplicity. We want to push the genre a bit with new approaches to plaids and checks in this issue. SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021 Detail Oriented How do you make an ordinary weaving project extraordinary? It’s often the…

Tinker Schuman and Mary first met to discuss the Ancestral Women exhibit. Tinker describes the memory: “Mary and her husband, John, came to my house to show me her weavings, then we smoked the pipe. I felt honored that she asked me to be part of this project. When she asked me to write a poem, I had to pray and think about the very essence of these portraits. It all came together in the poem ‘Ancestral Women of Creative Spirit.’ It’s about our ancestral women, what they went through and endured when their children were taken away and put in boarding schools. They went through a lot of historical trauma, including alcohol and many issues that were prevalent at these times, and they didn’t have much hope. “The assimilation…

SHEEP ARE USUALLY FOUND GRAZING on lush pasture or rangeland. When I first heard of sheep that survive on seaweed, I had to learn more. These amazing seaweed-eating sheep are found on the island of North Ronaldsay, part of the Orkney archipelago north of Scotland. The sheep are descendants of those that Neolithic people brought to many parts of northern Europe. They are small, hardy, and well adapted to harsh conditions like the other northern short-tailed primitive breeds. Their wool grows in various shades of black, brown, white, and gray and can be blended to create variegated colors. They are double-coated, with an outer coarse fiber that repels water and an inner soft coat that provides warmth. In 1832, the political leadership of North Ronaldsay decided to convert the interior…

ARIZONA Fiber Creek Suite 123, 1046 Willow Creek Rd Prescott, AZ 86301 (928) 717-1774 fibercreekprescott.com Tempe Yarn & Fiber 1415 E University Dr Tempe, AZ 85281 (480) 557-9166 tempeyarn.com The Spinster 624 E Beale St Kingman, AZ 86401 (928) 753-3660 spinsterinkingman.com ARKANSAS Red Scottie Fibers 51 Eureka Springs St Eureka Springs, AR 72931 (479) 253-0711 redscottiefibers.com CALIFORNIA Cardigans Yarn and Fiber 3030 State St Santa Barbara, CA 93105 (805) 569-0531 cardigansyarnandfiber.com Dharma Trading Co 1604 4th Street San Rafael, CA 94901 (435) 456–1211 dharmatrading.com Hands On Knitting Center 912 New York Street, Suite A Redlands, CA 92374 (909) 793-8712 www.handsonknittingcenter.com/ COLORADO Lambspun of Colorado 1101 E Lincoln Ave Fort Collins, CO 80524 (800) 558-5262 lambspun.com Serendipity Yarn & Gifts PO Box 5120 Buena Vista, CO 81211 (719) 395-3110 serendipityyarn.com Shuttles,…

EXPANDING ON ESSEN In the September/October 2020 issue, Deb Essen elaborated on weaving design software programs as wonderful tools available to modern-day weavers. I couldn’t agree more with her! I have Fiberworks Silver on my laptop, and I love to design my projects with it. I would like to mention another handy-dandy feature of Fiberworks that I used to manipulate tie-up on a recent project. I had woven a set of four dish towels with two different tie-ups. After removing them from the loom, I realized that the back side of two of the towels with the second tie-up looked nicer than the front of the fabric. I decided to weave the next set of towels showing the nicer front. With just a click of a key (Change Face) in…

Have you ever looked upon a tapestry in awe of the imagery created in yarn and the skill of the weaver who accomplished it? The magic of this art form is revealed by tapestry artist, teacher, and author Rebecca Mezoff in the new release The Art of Tapestry Weaving. In her pages, tapestry is both a fine art and an accessible craft. Mezoff has taken years of experience teaching thousands of students and refined it into a thorough, clear, and methodical approach to the art and craft of making tapestry. Like all the best instructors, she gives the new weaver permission to weave less than perfectly when starting out, provides a solid foundation of technique, and encourages weavers to explore. Mezoff provides expert guidance throughout the whole process from choosing…

THE OTHER DAY, I WAS THINKING about our local farmers market. How lucky we are to be able to choose different varieties of tomatoes. There are cherry and grape tomatoes for salads, plum and San Marzano for sauce, and the big beautiful kinds that fill a slice of bread from crust to crust for that perfect BLT. All have been developed over the years for specific uses. My granddaughter, Imogen, though only five, has the same mindset as her Gumpah. Certain things only have a particular purpose. Imogen has a symbiotic relationship with a chicken named Olive. She feeds and cares for Olive, and her chicken lays a buff-green egg each day for Imogen’s breakfast. This works perfectly for them. As a spinner, I have picked newly shorn fleeces each…

CARTOONS ARE WORKING DESIGNS that serve as guides for tapestry, and they can also be used with other discontinuous weft methods of weaving such as inlay and the Theo Moorman technique. They are usually outlines drawn onto paper to be used on the loom, or they can be inked right onto the warp itself with the paper cartoon as a reference. Once an idea emerges for a tapestry and you’ve created the design, the next challenge is how to translate it to weaving. This is where cartoons come in handy. Here are my methods for making working cartoons. 1 Convert the original design into a line drawing by tracing or copying it. a Use tracing paper or the drafting film often used for technical drawings. If you will be attaching…

WHEN THEA NORTNESS, a self-taught and on-a-budget weaver in rural Oregon, saw plastic grocery bags accumulating, she thought “Hmmm, I wonder if…” Very soon thereafter, a series of charming and wonderful bags, no two alike, began to appear regularly at our guild meetings. Thea uses a T-shirt–cutting technique demonstrated at one of our guild meetings to make “plarn,” (plastic yarn) cut from discarded plastic bags. She sometimes works with a single-color weft for a bag; other times, she weaves multicolored stripes about 3 inches wide using different colors of plarn. Thea makes use of whatever strong warp yarns she has available—often from resale stores or weaver swaps—which adds to the uniquely quirky personality of every bag. Thea’s favorite choice for warp is nylon yarn because it makes the bags slightly…

EVERY OTHER MONTH, the Gourmet Weavers meet at each other’s homes in the northwest corner of Washington State for a meal and camaraderie. Generally, there are 12 in the group dictated largely by the number of guests most can accommodate in their homes. The meals are potluck with no rules, meaning one meeting’s meal may be made up of salads and another of desserts. At one meeting, all but one member brought a berry dish, making the purchased pizza contributed by a latecomer a welcome addition. Most of the members are weavers, or at least were at the start. Because interests change over time, today our membership includes fiber artists with expertise in surface design, knitting, felting, spinning, and embroidery. After the meal comes show-and-tell, which includes updating each other…