Tag: colour

Busy

PiaAcid Dyeing

As I mentioned we’ve tried to do a few house things during the winter holidays this last week. What with an early, temporary spring – open jackets and all! Awesome.

We never quite finish my the list and I can feel that I’m getting to the end of my “go” where those things are concerned, I know I need a break. But a good chunk has been completed, including improvements on my tapestry loom, last bit tomorrow I hope. Bushes moved, that kinda thing, the house will be pretty orderly come Monday = room to play again. And there’s a reasonable view of what still needs to be done. Focus!

Today, just a few colour bombs for you all. Pretending this is indeed the first day of spring, not just on the calendar.

I thought I’d do little snippets and teasers here until I have time to talk to you again, but then I realized most of my wips have already been presented. So there will be limited entertainment until I can finish my drafts! Here’s a purple spacedyed warp that I was asked to show. More on the project later. I think I expected a bit more indigo, but that’s how it goes when you just wing it.

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Another splurge

PiaKnitting

Did a real live yarn shopping trip to the village to see if they had a bargain I could use for felted cat beds. So I ended up with this lot too, for another of those sweater dresses I like to use around the house in winter. I was actually looking for something neutral, but there wasn’t any just right in the perfect fiber and thickness. I didn’t want anything with tiny needles to take me 4 years of knitting!

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And in the 2 kr. ($0.37 / €0.27 / £ 0.22) button tray I found these, which I think could become tapestry bobbins when glued to a dowel.

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Last, but not least, I bought this really silly yarn for some kind of trim or Saori weaving. Or whatever. You know, the colour thing. Texture.

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Colour choices

PiaChit Chat

I’m completely ambivalent and scatterbrained when it comes to colour taste. I like all the bright shiny colours at once and I like the muted greys/browns, I come up with ideas in both groups and everything in between.

Most artists seem to pick a certain corner of the palette that they work in, making a coherent body of work with a specific “signature”. At least for a while. I can’t help feeling that I need to limit myself in order to not be all over the place and end up doing nothing but sampling. But I don’t want to. I want both the bluish slate greys that I love and the bark colours, fog and dusk, as well as the circus.

I experience this in all areas, paint, photo and fiber. It’s like a kid in a candy store.

My latest yarn splurge:

linea

And the next to last one:

arwetta

I write down all my notions and if I set out a block of time to work properly on each, never get another idea in my life, I’ll be done in about 20 years I think.

Do you think it’s possible to work without constraints like that and still master a few things? Because right now I just feel like I have a head cold (ok, perhaps I do, it’s been a while), I feel heavy and unable to focus as well as rearing to get started again. Everything in my head is stampeding, the desire to sketch, weave, paint, more weave, cloth and tapestry and a mixture of both.

And of course this kind of panic leads to absolutely nothing. I know I can only do one project at the time, and anyway I got some stuff to improve the homemade tapestry loom, so it would make more sense to leave it alone until it’s rebuilt. That’s at least 50 projects off the list for now. 😉

And this is why I never get anywhere. I can’t choose my topic, there’s not one that burns just slightly brighter than the others. I wonder why that is.

It doesn’t feel like an inner critic “you’ll do badly anyway” kinda thing. Possibly it’s the usual result of too much downtime and then trying to cram in all the things when you finally have a slot for playing. Having to build up flow from scratch too often. I’ll first try my usual method, I just wound a couple of yarn skeins that I forgot to when preparing for one yarn adventure, and after I hit send on this I’ll spin the fiber I started weeks ago that should could have been done in a few days. Sometimes a project will present itself when I do these preparatory things. I’ve already discovered during the course of this exercise, one of my conundrums: I want to use the Rigid Heddle loom for two different projects in particular, one could turn out to take a while. But I don’t want to rush through the other to get it done and free the loom. And I used to snort at people with a whole room full of looms, like you can weave on more than one at a time…

Then I just have to figure out what to do with the sketching painting urges. I so admire real artists who get up at 5 every morning and get cracking, putting in 6-8-10 hours of work a day without distractions. (Like, I just realized, no matter how my thumb is doing, I should be giving big brown pony a pedicure asap)

So I guess this pertains to both of my current Keywords: Focus/Intention and Health. Improve both and perhaps I would not have to reboot so often! Perhaps then, my colour tastes could simply be seasonal, and I would have time to exhaust one before the next fascination happened?

Do you ever put blinders on yourself when it comes to colour themes, or does it happen naturally?

Playing with tapestry designs that are totally out of my league:
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Working with keywords

PiaChit Chat

It’s funny how life tricks you sometimes. My keyword this month was Health, and I guess I was taking it dead seriously…

I’ve mentioned Pain – and there’s been a lot of it to focus on. I’ve had headaches going on for weeks, my recurring gut problem has surfaced again and no painkillers help with either. So I get really, really tired, falling asleep around 2 pm, drag myself around to do just a few things so I don’t get cranky AND depressed. 😉

Here I was thinking I’d do all sorts of clever meditations and evaluations, reconnect with that body and get us all ready to be tuned up. Well, none of that esoteric stuff, I just ended up going to the doctor’s. Further examinations await, in the meantime I just practise nursing unhealth, ponder and accept.

I hope to be back on line for more ramblings about taming the artist’s mind, digging into my own behaviour etc. soon. But right now I think I just need to leave all that difficult stuff on a shelf and do everyday plain things and thinking. When I’m not worrying 😉

My activities are plain too. I can’t get my mind into tapestry gear although I’m participating in a Ravelry challenge, this is as far as I got:

twal01

So it’s repetitive motion, simple designs, clicking the interwebs, reading when my head allows. (it seems to have cleared up for now at least) But it’s a great stash buster, this plain weaving. And if anyone has some advice on linen/linen warp/weft, I’m all ears, because that’s next! I can imagine some stretching and buckling, but how about shrinkage thrown into the equation?

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Selling scraps

PiaChit Chat

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Birdie mentioned whether I’d sell the plant dyed yarns I’m not using (especially if they were fabrics). Raquel always wants to make scarves from it. 😉 My reply was, that until now I’ve used cheap, scruffy wool in very small skeins, so not very interesting for knitting at least, and I’m not really sure anyone would want it if they saw felt it in person.

Since I’m changing directions slightly both with my dyeing and yarn crafting, I thought it would be fun to do a survey, not because I expect any who reply to buy anything, but to help me choose materials. For myself mainly, but yes, if I could hand over an unwanted skein now and again in return for the ability to buy a couple of new ones to modify, that would be awesome. Sometimes I have an idea but abandon it halfway not because I hate the result, I just moved on quicker than my production pace.

I’d like to do more silks – mostly yarn, since fabric is expensive, so probably small quantities for needlework. Which yarn weights and skein lengths do you stitchery folks prefer? Do you use wool, and then which type? Chances are, you can teach me which threads I’d like to use myself…

I’m also probably going to experiment with dyeing wool fabric. Either handwoven or what I find. There will be fabric ends leftover from my weaving of all sorts. Do people look for small amounts of handwoven for quilting or textile “paintings” like some use handspun and handdyed mini-skeins? Would be über cool to swap or see a bit of my stuff used in someone elses stuff!

In which case, what types of fabric do you look for, when you look?

Cellulose fibers such as cotton and linen are out of my league now. They are difficult to dye. I do not have the energy to go into it this year, or ever. It doesn’t feel important when I know I can make protein fibers shine.

I have considered dyeing larger quantities of some nice knitting yarn, because I had various requests. Problem is, people talk but they don’t pay up front and I can’t afford to stock up on many kilos of nice yarn. If I have to spin it myself I’m not going to part with it for “a friendly price”! And I’m not really looking to set up an actual shop for small items that demand too much time compared to their price. At least not at my current energy level.

So anyway, while I’m trying out this tapestry/artistic weaving thing with ideas of some embroidery on top or meshed in specialty yarns, searching for a path among different types of yarns than I’m used to, I basically would like to hear what everybody else out there likes for various purposes. I hope to narrow down my spinning and weaving baseline staple to a few things that I use 80-90% of the time rather than have 300 g of every fiber under the sun.

I also don’t know yet what I’m going to “major” in. Will it be weaving or making/designing yarn? Or is textiles simply my grounding exercise that keeps the more brainy creativities alive, such as photo(shopping), writing – and what about the painting? I feel like I’m trying various things out, like different semesters in an education, and eventually perhaps I’ll fall deeper into one than the others. Which means leftovers from the activities that end up on the back shelf.

minis1 cloth2 hankies2