January 2023 – Kate Alberta Weaving

Ngā mihi o te tau hou

It’s halfway through the first month of 2023 already, and February already seems to be getting too close. The weather has been all over the place, lovely sunny days, days that are just too hot and sticky to move and then heavy rain and wind. The poor old vege garden and fruit trees don’t know what is happening.

Weaving

I’m still working my way through Season 6 of Jane Stafford’s School of Weaving, I have a rather hopeful plan that I will finish all the lessons by the end of the month. Episode 6 is Crackle Weave which I hadn’t tried before so it has been fun experimenting with this technique and weaving some tea towels. Below are a couple of photos of the sampler I wove on the warp first. The towels are waiting to be hemmed and then I will take some photos of them.

I have also been experimenting with pulled warp technique, something I have wanted to try after reading an article on loom woven baskets in The Weavers Journal – Spring 1986 issue (you can find this issue here: https://www2.cs.arizona.edu/patterns/weaving/wj.html ) I put a narrow cotton warp on my table loom and used triple strands of 2 ply wool as the weft for an intial play. I made a couple of necklace pieces and then tried making a tiny basket which was fun though rather fiddly. I will put on a wider warp at some stage and try making a larger one.

Dog Tales

Rufus is mostly banished from my weaving studio as he has a tendency to stealthily pick up yarn and other things and head outside to chew them. I relent every now and again and let him in, and he behaves himself for a bit, then he gets bored and starts looking for trouble. Here’s a picture of him busy telling me it’s time to stop weaving and go outside and play.

Mā te wā | Until next time,

Frances

I had good intentions to post during November but now it’s December and that obviously didn’t happen. Better late than never I suppose, so here’s a quick roundup of what I’ve been up to.

Weaving

I finally hemmed the hand towels that were my first warp on my Mecchia dobby. They are already in daily use, replacing our rather worn out old towels.

I put a warp on my Ashford jack loom to work on the Summer & Winter lesson from Jane Stafford’s School Of Weaving. I enjoyed weaving the tea towels even though I managed to make a few mistakes, mostly due to inattention when weaving the tabby picks.

In the middle of November, I attended a workshop on Echo Weave, led by Agnes Hauptli. The workshop was organised by Creative Fibre Auckland, as part of their Spring Education Event at the Estuary Arts Centre in Orewa. I really enjoyed it even though lots of concentration was required.

Different treadlings on my workshop warp.

Reading

After the workshop I purchased a copy of Weaving with Echo and Iris by Marian Stubenitsky. It’s a pretty expensive book but it has a wealth of information in it and I’m slowly working my way through it.