Modifying Plans

I had this plan to weave a tablecloth with an excerpt from an online I Ching advice site that i got last week. It said:

"You have passed this way before but you are not regressing. This is progress, for the cycle now repeats itself, and this time you are aware that it truly is a cycle."

So I spent time doing it in various methods, including the diagonal word method described in Alice Schlein's new book, and finally decided on my own handwriting in a vertical column, with some circles at the bottom to represent cycles. My total pegplan was 2160 picks. I was assuming 20 ppi when I made the design, with 24 epi in the warp, so I designed it at a pixel aspect ratio of .833. Everything was going along fine--I finalized my image, saved it to my USB jump drive, and turned on my old macintosh, which has a driver for my AVL dobby loom. Then I realized that the computer was from an era before USB and I couldn't transfer the design that way. So I made a CD and saved the image as a pict file, since my old software uses that format, and discovered the old computer can not read the new disks. Uuuugghhhh....urrrrr....hmmmmmm.

I opened up the software and clicked in a simple 8-shaft satin/sateen block design and saved it. Probably it is a better image for a tablecloth anyway. Then I decided, why waste the electricity on such a simple design--so I hand pegged a chain of 24 dobby bars, and put it on the loom. Tomorrow I am going to put some floating selvedges on the loom and get started weaving. This is going to be my last weaving on the AVL, since the loom has found a new owner and will be moving to Maine. I have offered the old computer with the loom, but after my experience tonight, I have also suggested she rethink that offer and go with a new model and current software.

I am not giving up on that saying though--it is too good--and will weave it on my TC-1 as soon as I get back to that loom, which will be soon.

Table by John Parker

Detail of table showing some math

This weekend we went to the annual sale at the East Barre Antique Mall and saw some wonderful things in the booth that John Parker has, including the table shown above. The math on the table has a date from 1929 (or something like that) and it really reminded Mark and me of a weaving I did where I scanned the page of mathematical calculations for a jacquard as the background of that jacquard, and then imposed sketches I drew in Italian museums on top of the math. It was called Lucca Math. It was made and sold in the era of slides, so I don't have a digital image that I can post here. You will just have to take my word that this table and my weaving are first cousins.

Last summer temporary entrance to SAIC

I am posting an image of the temporary entrance to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago that I took last summer, as a way to announce that I am going to be teaching a three week intensive summer course there again this summer--June 1 to June 18, 2010. You can see a slideshow of the work produced last summer by clicking on the notice in the sidebar to the right of this post. When registration begins, full-time students at SAIC get to sign up first, but usually there is room for other students. Last summer about one-quarter of the students were non-traditional or attending other programs. It was a fantastic mix of people, all levels of experience, and I look forward to the upcoming class.