Damask Blocks

Weaving block damask tablecloth

My tablecloth fabric is coming along nicely, as you can see above. I love the image that contrasts the simple block pattern on the loom with the Uzbekistan ikat on the pillow I am sitting on while weaving. Isn't cloth amazing--the most inspiring visual media in the world and it can be functional too! I am using Borgs Bomullin (50% cotton and 50% flax) for both warp and weft--the warp is natural and the weft is bleached. It never fails to amaze me that a weaving builds, line by line, from bottom to top, and that all these individual elements become a strong, and sometimes beautiful, plane.

Personal shrine with Poppies

You may have noticed that I removed my silent auction weaving. It was a disappointment--not one bid. I am left wondering if my weavings are truly awful. Since my ego doesn't like that thought, I have decided that people like my ideas and writing (I do have almost 9000 hits on this blog), that I am respected as a teacher, and well, yes, my work is appreciated because I am invited into lots of exhibits. Apparently my blog is reaching this audience (which I appreciate, believe me, I love seeing the number of readers increase), but you must be different than the collectors' group. I am going to take a workshop this weekend, sponsored by The Vermont Council of the Arts, called Breaking into Business. Hopefully I will learn how to reach the collectors, as well as you, so I can continue to go grocery shopping and do my weaving. In the meantime, since I liked having an image of my work in the top right hand corner of the blog, I have decided to post a monthly detail from one of my weavings. Poppies, which was a generic version of the birthday weaving I made for Liz Billings, says "Poppies gently swaying, whispering happy birthday 2U." Right now it is hanging in our kitchen (personal shrine area) reminding us that spring is just around the corner.

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.

New Book by Alice Schlein

New Book by Alice Schlein

I was thrilled to get Alice Schlein's new book, The Liftplan Connection, this week. Alice and I wrote The Woven Pixel together, which was a wonderful experience, learning from each other as we offered information to others. I knew I would want to use her new book, so I started preparing a few weeks ago. I wound a cotton/linen warp and put it on my AVL dobby loom. My loom had been taken apart for quite some time, and when we moved to Vermont Mark and I got it mostly assembled, but it has sat quietly, taking up space, for the year and a half we have lived in this house. It is so nice to have an inspiration that made me want to use this loom again.

What I have done is threaded the loom on a 24-shaft straight threading, and first I am weaving plain weave (all those harnesses for plain weave!) to make curtains for Mark's studio. Then I can use the remaining warp to do studies using Alice's book, and then I can tie on a new warp and do some other work.

I fell in love with this loom when I first saw it--and I still think it is one of the prettiest looms around. But I have hardly used it in the almost 20 years that I have owned it. I remember early on, complaining to a senior member of the AVL team about threading the loom, how difficult it was for me, and his response was, don't you put on 200 yards and just weave, then tie on a new warp? I guess this was their intention, a loom for production weavers, but at that time I was usually making 3 or 4 yard warps, each different for my work, and usually threaded differently too. So no, I couldn't put on long warps and when done tie to it. In hindsight maybe I should have realized that this wasn't the ideal loom for my needs and just loved it far afar. But I didn't, I bought it, and have dragged it around the country with me, taking it apart each time, putting it back together, just to have it sit idle, but pretty.

I have tried to sell the loom on and off, right now it is on, and just after I threaded the loom (still a struggle, I just don't enjoy that aspect of working on this loom) I got a call from someone who might be interested. I have just started weaving and I do think the action is fantastic--so light to lift 12 shafts, and everything is working smoothly. I have a compu-dobby box for the loom, but since I am doing plain weave, I am leaving the manual dobby attachment on the loom until I have a need to do fancy designing in the lift plan. Even then, I might just peg some designs before switching out the dobby boxes. Meanwhile I am reading Alice's book and thoroughly enjoying it.

The book is not a replacement for The Woven Pixel. We have information in there for dobby looms, but not as much as for jacquard design. This book deals exclusively with dobby design and also it has more information on Photoshop Elements than in our book (though it is in there too). Personally I would recommend that all weavers have both books on their shelves.

AVL Dobby Loom

24-shaft compudobby,

currently set up with manual dobby

I got some offline comments from friends about my discussion about functional work versus my art work. I want to make it clear that I did not say anything about good, better, best in my comments. It was not a value judgement--but I definitely think the two types of work demand different ways of thinking and acting by me, and it was those differences that I was referring to.

Tutorial Teaching

Maybe you noticed on the right sidebar of my blog that I mention tutorial teaching. Some people have asked about it, so I will talk about it here. I taught weaving and textile design full-time for many years at several universities, and I also have done workshops at various summer craft schools. I think I have a gift for explaining the process clearly, so students absorb the knowledge and can really think through their ideas and move in their own direction. Unlike most people, I feel I started out as a great teacher and slowly became worst (most people I know get better with experience). When the term arrived and I no longer wanted to start from scratch with my syllabus, it became clear to me that I should leave academia. There is always a fresh group of people interested in teaching, and it was time for me to hand over the reins. But I do love teaching, watching as people's eyes go from confusion to clarity and joy (learning is joyful), so I began to think of a way in which I could do my own work, but also do some teaching. When we bought our house in Randolph, I felt this was a place I could make into a studio where I could invite others to come and learn--but on a very limited basis.

Over the years I have seen what others have done. I always remember a wonderful visit to Norma Smayda's Saunderstown Weaving School in Rhode Island. I am still envious of her sea of looms. Here in Randolph we have The White River Craft Center, a wonderful place headed by Kevin Hardy, a skilled woodworker and person of great compassion. Susan Rockwell energetically runs the weaving program, and many beginners go to her to learn. I knew I didn't want to have an open door policy, where students would use one of my looms over time, and I didn't want to set myself up in competition with The WRCR since I admire what they are doing. I also knew that I wanted to keep my teaching very contained. So I conceived of this idea of Tutorial Teaching where students came to me for a short period of time and I tailored each program specifically for that person.

Section from dobby weaving study by Bhakti Ziek

Although many people associate me with computerized jacquard weaving, and the book I co-authored with Alice Schlein, The Woven Pixel, I also wrote a book on backstrap weaving, published in 1978, co-authored with my mother, Nona Ziek. If you read my early posts, you know I own three Macomber floor looms (2 8-shaft and 1 10-shaft), two 24-shaft dobby looms (a small Louet and a 40" wide AVL), and one TC-1 loom. I also have lots of sticks for backstrap looms--so really my teaching can run the gamat from backstrap to digital jacquard. Teaching beginners is one of my favorite things, but so is going through complex structures for jacquard. Probably the only criteria I need for enjoying teaching is having an engaged student.

I am interspersing images from a dobby study I did this summer on my 24-shaft Louet to illustrate this post. I used the instructions given in the dobby chapter of The Woven Pixel to design and make my peg plans for weaving. Then I brought bmp files from Photoshop to PCW Fiberworks on a different computer, which ran my Louet loom.

detail of dobby study

In early May, Tommye Scanlin, an accomplished weaver and teacher in her own right, is coming to study with me for four days. In one of her posts on her blog, she mentions how annoyed she has been about the use of tapestry in relationship to jacquard fabrics. Although she comes from the traditional weft-faced tapestry tradition, and I am coming from the digital jacquard world, I share this annoyance and look forward to many hours of interesting conversation over the four days she will be here. Personally, I always like to say "warp tapestry" when referring to the structure used by jacquard weavers who use compound warps of multi-colors to make "pictorial tapestry" works. Words like tapestry have many definitions, but I still always think, without a modifier, it means a weft-faced plain weave, usually with discontinuous wefts. Anyway, Tommye has done some jacquard work at a mill, and it will be interesting to get her started with some weft-faced structures, like samitum or taquette, on my hand jacquard, TC-1, loom. 

Section of dobby study by Bhakti Ziek

When people come to study with me, they have a choice of staying with Mark and me (and the two cats and one lovely dog) or staying in local accommodations. There is a B&B half a block from us, another within walking distance, and an inn on the other side of town (not far). I always provide lunches, and all meals if the person stays with us. Of course I will cook according to a student's needs (i.e., vegetarian, sweet addict, localvore). I have learned I must make boundaries, which is good for the student as well as me, since I can be very intense--so basically my teaching policy is 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. with an hour break for lunch. I try to put a walk in there too, and if someone wants to go to the gym, I can take them as my guest to use the pool or use the fitness machines. In the evenings, students are welcome to use my looms or read my books (Mark is making shelves for the stacks that are filling the floor of the office/guest room right now), and I am available for help, but not too much. A good conversation and a bottle of wine is not too much.

detail of dobby study

If someone spends the money and time to travel here to study, they usually want to work with me for four or five days, but some students who live closer have come for two days. Since my fees are high, most people just curious about weaving, not sure of their commitment, would do better to find a local school for lessons, but of course I do think you couldn't find a better first teacher than me. As I said, I can work with you on any topic from backstrap to digital jacquard, and it can be focused on computer work too, i.e., using Photoshop for woven design. If you want more information, please email me at bhaktiziek@gmail.com. Since I need to balance out my own studio time with teaching, I can only take a limited number of students a year. So far, they have all been exceptional people.