Crafting Chaos

Woven universe progress pics

The Green Man is going along great. The Woven Universe…not so much. Here’s some embroidery I later frogged:

It was supposed to be symmetrical then just wasn’t. I tried to accept that but couldn’t let it go.

This spiral of creation is nice though:

And this little star and purple bit of space both worked out well:

My vision for this piece just isn’t matching the reality. SO frustrating! Artist angst…blah blah blah.

Add comment February 14th, 2010

Woven canvas

I finished my woven canvas and took it off the loom.

Most of the yarn is my handspun. The bright blue variegated yarn is leftover yarn from my Water goddess.

It’s six feet long and fourteen inches wide. I can’t believe it’s taken me since September just to weave the canvas. The show is in March-I’m feeling the deadline!

This piece is tentatively called Spinning Into Creation. The Goddess stretches her arms and galaxies, planets, moons and stars form.

I’m going to have parts of it coming off the canvas. I think that’s a cool effect.

Add comment January 7th, 2010

Warping my loom

I’ve decided to do a woven piece for next year’s Beyond The Fringe art show. This will be a space piece and I’m taking inspiration from the Hubble Telescope images.

I’m making this project long so warping it was tedious. There was tangle after tangle as I tried to wrap it up. Here’s an in process pic:

I had worked most of the tangles out but still had some in the middle. I wonder if it’ll get less troublesome with practice.

The warp yarn is Knit Picks Shimmer in the Turquoise Splendor. It’s 70% baby alpaca and 30% silk. The skein was 440 yards of lace weight and I used almost all of it. Abbey gave it to me.

Here’s the loom all warped up and ready for weaving:

The woven part will be the background-the universe or space if you will. Then I’ll embroidery or needle felt the Goddess creating planets, stars, moons and such. I’ve always thought the Big Bang was a spiritual act and am using that notion for inspiration as well.

Add comment September 9th, 2009

First weaving

My first weaving is off the loom:

I like this piece but am not sure what to do with it. Maybe I’ll just hang it up on the wall. A close up:

Weaving is slow but I think it’s because I have to manually move the header for each row. A header moved by a foot pedal would surely speed things up. I have a weaving idea for an art piece that I’ll hopefully start soon.

Add comment June 27th, 2009

Stringing the loom

Recently I strung up the loom for the first time. I used some Peruvian yarn a friend brought me back from her vacation. I got a little help:

Prana was in a cuddly mood:

This is just a practice run. I like my results so far:

2 comments May 19th, 2009

An early birthday present

After I gave Abbey her Christmas present she gave me a gift. My Xmas present hadn’t arrived yet in the mail but my birthday present came early. I opened the box and saw this:

I said “NO YOU DID NOT!” and then we both started laughing, laughing so hard we started crying. See, I’ve been resisting weaving because I already do so many crafts. I’ve looked at Abbey’s table loom and have been tempted but so far had managed not to buy one.

This is a vintage loom from the 70s and is made in England.

All the parts are here except the instruction manual. I found a blogger via Google that has this loom and she’s mailing me a copy of the manual. The kindness of the crafting community warms my heart.

There’s clamps to secure it down to a surface and a little hook to pull down the yarn.

How old do you think this yarn is? It feels old.

Here it is all together:

This is one of the funniest and best presents I’ve gotten. Now where am I going to put it? And find the time to weave?!

3 comments December 8th, 2008