sometimes , not always, it pays to be bored

After all that weaving activity the inevitable crash down and bored syndrome kicked in. Being totally uninspired i took on menial tasks such as ironing and trying to organize chaos, but that was no help for boredom. On the contrary it aggravated it.
i was working on the contents of a drawer and found this gingham material that i had been shuffling around because i really hated it as it was a poly cotton blend. Being a fiber snob i had worked a bit with it mainly using it as a base for needlefelting and that's how far it had gone.

Nothing to lose here and as i've found that's really liberating. i also had a batch of pigment i had mixed with Golden Soft Gel Medium and GAC 900. Noticed the frequency of hot pink in my work lately?

i started mindlessly dabbing the pigment on the hated gingham and to speed up drying i used the heat gun. i knew the poly would react to the heat, but what i found was that where there was pigment it acted as a resist.
Was it actually the pigment?

Control experiment showed that it was not the pigment, but the gel. Hope you can see the effect in the above photo. It was printed in a twill pattern:) using a square sponge stamp and soft gel medium.

What i've found:

• contrary to common advice waggling the heat gun gives more control
  
• zapping from a grater distance than usual prevents scorching the fabric
• i've only tested a poly cotton blend other fabrics need to be tested to see
  
• if the process works
• color can be added to the gel medium thus getting a two for one effect
• speculating here- perhaps using a thicker gel might give a clearer resist .

If you take from here and experiment further please report. i'd really appreciate it.

i think this qualifies for April TIF don't you? :) Can you list all the changes?

neki desu

how to avoid carpal tunnel

i dislike twisting fringes as much as i dislike taking up hems. Especially when there are gazillion and a half very thin silk threads to twist together.
i have a manual twister and that was a lot better than nothing, but still time time consuming and stressful on my wrists.
Some time ago i located the hair braider pictured here and my life changed. Seriously.
It is one of the best gadgets i have, rival to my bread making machine.

Being battery operated the fringe twisting process, which is not a very creative one, is brushed out of the way pronto. The wear and tear on the wrist tendons is also minimised, and you notice no discomfort after a marathon session.

Operation is simple.
Take 2 bouts and secure them with the end clips, then push the button down and twist the bouts until they start curling on themselves. Then push the button up and the bouts ply on to each other. Finish by unclipping them and tyeing a knot at the end.
However, i find that for fine yarns i first twist and then secure both bouts to the same clip and ply the 2 bouts together, thus getting an untwist proof braid.
Do yourself a favor and get a braider.

Life is good :)

neki desu

finished

Shawl is already finished, with fringe twisted and all. How's that for a happy dance? Or two.
i'm very pleased with it because it was sheer joy to weave as the silk behaved, no broken threads and no problems. And i was weaving on a table loom!

Strange how actually manipulating the structure makes you more aware of what it does.

i'm also happy because the shawl came out looking like what i wanted, something simple and understated. It is very light, sheer and crisp, if you can tell from the photo. Feels as if one has wrapped oneself with a cloud.
The indigo dyed weft plays with the gold and brown from the kakishibu creating a bit of iridescence. The yarn irregularities and slubs add some sort of rustic charm.

Now i only need to go out this weekend and show off :)

neki desu

fujiro

Five dips in shikon and i only have fujiro, this light lilac gray.
i'm aiming for benikyou that beautiful, rich, dark purple. How many more dips?
How much patience?

neki desu

just another manic sunday

Have seven things/projects going at once. i'm on my last twenty centimetres of my weaving, started reeding for a loom controlled shibori, this time cotton. Dyeing two warp chains with shikon a.k.a.murasaki , two pieces of fabric already screen printed and batching, another already batched and waiting for some finishing touches and two more heat gun victims. Not to mention the dress i want to make.
As the saying goes, when it rains it pours.
In the middle of this frenzy i just happened to remember a passing comment on the rose photo that said it looked photoshoped.
Well, let's try that. By duplicating it and creating a contact sheet and then layers and filters and..and..

i got up to here

Warhol, but not quite.

i had downloaded a Warhol action, but half of the commands are in French and i haven't looked carefully at what they do in order to translate them and make them operative. Don't really know if that would work. Anyone out there reading this that has some insight?

i remember SharonB had a link to an application that warholized photos, but i got lost looking for it.

Anyhow since it's all out there i googled and got this link with a nice little application. Don't know if this is what Sharon mentioned. However, it's cool.
Uploaded the same picture and the application took care of the rest. One can even re shuffle until one likes the result.
Then one can save it to one's hard disk.

This is the result.
What do you think? Enjoy being Andy Warhol for fifteen minutes :)

Back to the loom. And have to check the dye pot too.

neki desu

Rain!

i hardly ever talk about the weather as life's too short to engage in futile talk. However this morning i woke up to a downpour.It's such a big deal because we are facing water restriction measures due to the drought. That means no dyeing folks and taking birdie like showers.
i rushed outside, camera in hand, and captured the first rose of the season haughtily flaunting raindrops on its petals. This rainfall won't drive restrictions away, but it will at least give the poor plants a break.

On to textiles. im going through this restrained beauty phase and take a look at the fabric i found.
Do not tell me it is not restrained beauty? A double weave fawn colored cotton fabric creating small pockets. The right boro touch,simple obasan charm with the pockets looking like mended fabric
i had woven this structure in a non utilitarian series and now i'm going to make a dress with this fabric. An A line over the knee number with a narrow stand up collar, something very Jackie Kennedy:)

neki desu

Enter TIF

i have been joyously weaving away and thinking-that's what i do when i weave- of changes but in the way of transformations. What it means, ways to carry out transformation, how those thoughts can be put into practice on textiles. Textiles per se are transformation moguls, from seed to cloth, from, grass to fur to yarn to cloth, from worm to yarn to cloth. Not to mention the vile synthetics, all those CHs and OHs chained together.

As weaver by trade and a purist at soul i fiercely resisted synthetics. But then a heat gun crossed my path and melted away my resistance. i don't think i'll ever weave with synthetics, but as far as transforming them into something else... Well what can i say?

Here's this week's TIF exercise, a heat shaped polyester organza island with plowed fields, rocks, hills and bays.
Quite impossible to fashion with cotton fabric, dont you agree?

neki desu

weaving on a table loom

Had not used the table loom in a long while,charmed by my dobby loom. And the thing is that it is not a hassle weaving on it. Actually, it has a very good shed, better than the dobby.Evidently it is not meant for complex weaving,or complex repeats.But for straightforward patters it is a 12 shaft beauty.

The silk yarn that has given me headaches in the past is behaving well here. Perhaps it is because of the dyeing, but on second thought this had also been dyed although not with natural dyes.
Silk here was dyed with kakishibu(persimmon) mordanted with alum and iron thus getting a coppery brown and dark chocolate brown. The blue is ai(indigo) in two values the warp a lighter blue, faded denim, than the weft.

It is a very unpretentious crepe weave, Oelsner's 867 that will give a soft texture after wet finished.
It is sheer joy to weave this wabi stole, simple, unasuming, the quality of the yarn doing all the speaking.
Restrained beauty.

neki desu

Change -a project

from this to this

i keep following this month's TIF concept with a twist.
Need a display case for your ATCs? Well, now you know what to do with a wooden wine crate! Buy cheap acrylic paint because you don't want perfect coverage. Thin it even more with water and paint carelessly, giving it a distressed look that goes well with the rough, knotty veiny wood.
Let it dry and that's it! Display your ATCs.
The bonus is that you need to drink all that vino :)

neki desu

Change

According to the Thesaurus:
change, verb1 definition: differ

accommodate, adapt. adjust, alternate, commute, convert, diminish, diverge, diversify, evolve, fluctuate, make innovations, make over, merge, metamorphose, moderate, modify, modulate, mutate, naturalize, recondition, redo, reduce, reform, regenerate, remake, remodel, renovate, reorganize, replace, resolve,restyle, revolutionize, shape, shift, substitute, tamper with, temper, transfigure, transform, translate,transmute, transform, transpose, turn, vacillate, vary, veer, warp.

verb2 definition: substitute

alternate, barter, convert, exchange, displace, exchange, interchange, invert, remove, reverse, shift, supplant, swap, switch around, trade, transmit, transpose.

from here to here
depiction of change

neki desu