Birthday Cake

It's always a good morning when I return to bed with my cup of coffee and read. It's a sign of relaxation and leisure. This morning I noticed that the leaves on the trees almost obliterate the neighboring houses and I am left with a view of the hill behind town that reminds me of the view from the bedroom of our former home in New Mexico. I always felt that hill was a protection, and watching the morning sun hit it and turn it golden was always a thrill. Selling that place, with a house that we built ourselves with great effort and hope, was emotionally difficult, and I think I managed it by denying my attachment. So it seems that as I settle joyfully into Vermont, I can relax my internal walls, and allow memories of New Mexico to return. I remember when I studied psychology in the '60's how taken I was by the theory of cognitive dissonance. Upon making a decision, one is at first overcome by the sense that you made the wrong choice, and then that quickly is replaced by a firmer conviction that you indeed made the right choice. So now I feel safe enough to allow good memories of New Mexico to return without it threatening our decision to move to Vermont.

I wanted to post pictures of my weft-backed double weave for days, but I didn't want my friend Sara Tucker to see, because I wove her a birthday cake. Yesterday, after the opening of Into the Woods, we had a joint gemini party. You can see her and her sister Martha holding the weaving below, as well as strawberry shortcake. 

Sara Tucker (r) and her sister Martha holding Sara's birthday cake weaving

I actually gave Sara the weaving earlier in the day, and she put it on the back of a chair as a display for everyone to see at the party. It amazed me how it fit perfectly, and suddenly I really could conceive of a furniture collaboration with Mark--something he has been interested in for a long time. I don't know how long it will take for that to take shape, but probably now that I can visualize it, it has a chance to happen.

Sara's Birthday Cake weaving on display for party

I also wove a birthday cake for my Aunt Bess' party, which will take place August 30th. She is going to be 100! I don't think Bess is reading this blog, so she probably won't see the weaving until her party, but if she is, then she can look forward to seeing it in person. I am posting both the front and back of her weaving, so you can see how different they are. I wove both birthday cakes face down, so I saw the colorful floats develop, not the sharp definition of the front. Both these weavings made me very happy. Pleased by the complicated structure that made the imagery possible, pleased by the thought that I was giving them to specific people who make my life better, and pleased by the silliness of them, which seemed perfect as a birthday present. At the party, my other friends lined up to tell me when their birthdays are coming, so they too can get these cakes. 

Front of Aunt Bess' Birthday Cake weaving

Back of Aunt Bess' Birthday Cake weaving

And besides having a pot luck with good friends and the most delicious food, much of which came from recipes in Deborah Madison's book, I received a wonderful old collapsible wooden ruler from the Sacca/Billings and an intriguing collage from Laurie Sverdlove, who co-curated Into the Woods with Dian Parker. They are pictured with Tom Batey (who did the card) below. I took this picture before the opening, which is good, because the gallery was packed for the next few hours and all my pictures just show backs of people. The show was appreciated by all and the hard work these three people did was justly praised.   

Right to Left: Laurie Sverdlove, Dian Parker, and Tom Batey, standing at side of Laurie's painting just before opening of Into the Woods 

So what was I reading this morning? Flatbreads & Flavors by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid. I haven't cooked from it yet, but I will. They are travellers and cooks and I relate to their writing. I go through phases where I stop reading and stop cooking, and life is a little duller for the lack of these activities. Getting ready for the opening and party got me in the kitchen, and eating Holly's foccacia with Liz's green cheese spread and Mark's lentil soup made me want to find more delicious recipes. Tonight I am going to try Alford and Duguid's Pizza with Rosemary and Garlic, and add the rest of the onion filling from Madison's book that didn't go into the empanadas. Ahh, good living! And just look at the poppies in our garden. 

Virtual Open Studio

Ideal breakfast nook

I came downstairs on Saturday morning to discover this beautiful vase of lilacs on the table. Our neighbor, Laura Morris, an avid and professional gardener/florist, put them there. They made this corner of display the ideal breakfast nook. I was too busy to sit and enjoy it myself. 81 people signed the guest book this weekend, but I think a few slipped in and out without signing. There was work shown on three floors, and each floor had a "host." Holly Walker greeted people on the first floor, my husband, Mark Goodwin, was on the second floor, and I was on the third floor demonstrating the TC-1 loom. I created a slideshow of the weekend (a Virtual Open Studio) on my Picasa site and if you want to see it, click HERE.

Map of First Floor Work, minus the labels

I made maps of each floor of the house, and labelled the art work and listed information such as size, date, materials, and price. I think only a handful of people noticed them, and maybe people didn't realize the work was for sale. I know our friends who visited from Utica weren't sure, and so I tried to place the maps in more prominent places on Sunday, but they still seemed to be invisible. Maybe our work was so brilliant the visitors didn't notice anything else. I prefer thinking that than entertaining the thought that nobody liked the work. Personally, I thought everything looked great.

Connie, Patty, Jane and Andy (left to right), four of the 81 visitors during the Open Studio Weekend (Jane and Andy are weavers themselves)

For the weaving demonstration, I had my Macintosh computer where I do my Photoshop work set up next to the PC which runs my TC-1 loom. Using the processes described in The Woven Pixel (yes, I did have a copy of the book out for visitors to see), I had four files open to show my guests--the original digital image of an Ottomon tile which I took in Turkey a number of years ago; the design file which had the tile reduced to three colors and a layer of descriptive words on top (something like "this is a demo during Vermont Open Studios by BZ in her beautiful Randolph studio with visitors watching"); the layered weave file where I could click pattern on and off to show people how pattern is placed over color; and the final bmp file which is brought to the PC computer. You can see these four files in the slideshow. I usually wove about ten picks each time I showed people how the loom worked, but it added up to a significant amount of weaving. You can see in the image below how much was woven, start and stop all the way, this weekend.

Demonstration weaving at the end of the Open Studio Sunday evening

Saturday afternoon I finally had a break and ran downstairs to offer Holly lunch. We both got bowls of yogurt, fruit and granola and sat out front. We were stunned to discover it was almost 5pm, and the lull was because Open Studio stopped at 5. Both days were busy, though Sunday morning started slow, with rain, but then became a glorious day and we had a steady stream of visitors. It was very exciting to have so many people interested in weaving. I even had a few visitors weave on the macomber loom I had set up in case anyone wanted to try.

Demonstration weaving finished today

This morning was another beautiful day in Vermont, so we took our dog for a ride and went to the book and plant sale in Tunbridge. We didn't get anything, but it was fun to walk down the street which was packed with people greeting one another. It was like that in our house this weekend too--it seemed like all our visitors knew one another, and perhaps in a few years we will know everyone in Randolph too. When we got home I went upstairs and finished the weaving. No visitors watching today.

Perennial Gardens

Standing Stone Perennial Farm in S. Royalton, Vermont

Lynne Hall, co-owner of Standing Stone Perennial Farm

I had another wonderful Vermont experience today. Our friend Holly Walker, who is such a wonderful potter, is also an incredible gardener. For months she has been telling us about a wonderful perennial farm nearby, and this morning she took Mark and I there. Standing Stone Perennial Farm was all that she had told us and more. We met co-owner Lynne Hall, pictured above, who went and got the paint buckets of actual paint used on her house so we could copy the numbers exactly. Mark has been spending hours each day at the Benjamin Moore site trying out colors that might work on our house, and Holly is doing the same, and we all responded to the colors Lynne has on her house. Then we walked the gardens and felt deep joy from the beauty of this place.

Holly and Mark at Standing Stone Perennial Farm, note color of house behind them

Holly came over the other day and walked our garden pointing out names of everything. She had already done this once, when leaves were just peeping out of the earth and everything looked identical to me. Now even I can see the differences. I had a paper where I had diagrammed the garden and now I adjusted labels, but made a mistake and wrote names from one area on a different page, and it was a mess. So I decided I would take my digital camera and photograph the garden instead. I do remember my mother, who loved gardening (and made me and my siblings do much of the weeding), starting in winter with catalogs and drawings and complex plans of color shifts and areas of constant bloom. The idea of doing the record keeping with digital images seemed so 21st century to me. Then Mark made a joke about me weaving the garden plan and it seemed so absolutely right that I am going to do it. I took tons of photos of the garden, panning from section to section, and then returning to do individual plants. Years ago I had purchased a Native American dye chart in New Mexico where they had swatches of woven cloth in the center and lines out to plant specimens on the sides. I figure my weaving will be some variation of that with overall plan and then identifying closeups. 

"My" Perennial Garden

Heuchera Micrantha (Palace Purple) in "my" garden

Yesterday I stopped to talk to our neighbor, Kelly Green, who was working in her perennial garden, and mentioned that I had taken digital images of the garden and was planning to print it out and label each plant. So Kelly sent me the following link to show me what she has done. It is brilliant. She uses Flickr though and I don't think Picasso has this cool ability to add notes when you hover over an image. I probably will just do mine in Photoshop. Then I can keep going and work on it as an image for weaving.

So walking through the gardens with Holly was a bit like walking in a foreign country, hearing language but not understanding a word. Proudly I could point to a few plants and mutter "Heuchera" or "Sedum--Autumn Joy" which showed I was paying attention the other day, and not all my brain cells have been fryed by playing too much solitaire on the computer. Because we plan to do exterior work on the house this summer, Mark got me to agree that we would only purchase something for the wooden barrel in our front yard (seems like all Vermont houses have these wooden barrels). So this morning was more about future additions to the garden. We did end up with a beautiful grass (Helictotrichon or Blue Oat Grass) that we can transplant to soil in the fall. Perhaps we have started a new tradition--each year we can get something for that barrel that will then get incorporated into the garden. Over time, with experience, maybe I can even call it my garden instead of "my" garden.

At my Open Studio next weekend Holly and Liz and I are going to premier our table setting collaboration. Please come and see it, and enjoy the walk around "my" perennial garden.

Comparison Charts

The Weaving Lesson: Warp-Backed

I have woven three weavings for my series, The Weaving Lesson, that are comparisons of the same starting image. Above is the warp-backed version, and below is the lampas comparison and a detail of it.

The Weaving Lesson: Lampas

detail of The Weaving Lesson: Lampas

The third one, a double cloth using 12-shaft satin structures, is finished, but still on the loom. I can only show a detail for now. I used two wefts, but changed their colors to delineate sections--the main weaving, an addendum, and then a second addendum.

detail of The Weaving Lesson: Double Weave

I can see the end of this warp. It was ten yards, which is long for me, but it wove quickly because I was interested in the work (plus I had some help from my two tutorial students). Thinking about involvement, engagement, and interest, I have decided that time is too valuable to squander on things that don't interest me. I could say it is aging that makes me this way, but actually I have always been following this philosophy. It didn't make sense to me in my 20's to spend my prime energy on a sensible career so I could be comfortable in my old age--travelling was much more enticing and in the end those years in Guatemala were crucial to my development as a weaver.

Now that I am old, it still seems crazy to spend my energy on something that seems like drudgery. I like to work, but I guess I made demands on that work--that it interest me. I also put a ten yard warp on one of my macombers last week, intending to do more place mats. The Vermont Open Studios is quickly approaching and I plan to have some place settings on my table that show the collaboration between Holly Walker, Elizabeth Billings and myself. However, I think now that my contribution will have to be selected from what I have already woven. And the ten yards on the macomber loom can be used by visitors to sit at a loom and experience what weaving is like.

Here is the totally inspiring view from the window at the top of the steps as you enter my studio.

View from my studio window

Intertwined

Intertwined

I cut the work off the loom today. Here are the two halves of Intertwined placed side by side. You can see the seam, which I will sew closed, but they match so well. I am very pleased. I am not sure if I will keep the circles at the bottom or not. First take, my thought is yes, but I will look at the piece in daylight with and without them and decide. This is the first time I created a larger work on my TC-1 by assembling two parts. I feel encouraged in the sense that there is no size restrictions now, and when I get the new warp on the loom (I am going to wind an end and end warp tomorrow) I will design a piece with even more components.

I don't feel so happy with the results of the weaving that incorporates the knotted warp, shown below. In the detail you can see that I have areas of warp floats, weft floats, weft-backed satin and warp satin (click on an image to see it enlarged). I liked the idea that these floats in the grid design would grow into the hanging warp and knots; but without the tension of the loom, the piece seems a bit soft to me. I will comb out the hanging warps and see if that, and time, improves my impression of it. I am not really disappointed though--I had an idea and I did it. I wasn't invested in the outcome of this weaving in the way I was with Intertwined. I really wanted that piece to turn out the way it did!

Knots

detail of Knots

I also met with Holly and Liz this morning to see how we were coming on our collaboration. Liz brought the designs she is preparing now for weft-ikat napkins, Holly brought some new plates she had done, and I had the place mats with lines cut apart and sewn. We ate fresh fruit salad and yogurt and sat and talked about the combination and how to proceed. We plan to have some finished results by the end of May.

Holly Walker (left) and Liz Billings (right)

Collaborative Place Setting

Setting the Table

This morning I met with Liz and Holly (see previous post) to work on a collaboration we want to do--Setting the Table. We brought work upstairs from Holly's studio that each of us were drawn to, and moved them around on top of studies of weavings that I had done and some ikat fragments and sketches for new ikat that Liz brought. Collaboration can take so many different forms. This was our second meeting, and we are feeling it out, trying to find the format that will work for us. We pointed out aspects of the work that we appreciated, saw how one fabric could bring out the details of a plate, where another would dull it. Finally we came to the conclusion that anything we did would be fine.

Does that sound vain? It was really more about appreciating the way each of us works, honoring our differences, giving credence to the different ways we work--trusting each other. In fact, the attraction we have for each other's work is probably one of the reasons why we want to do this collaboration. So we parted with a date on our calendar in March when we will bring new work together and have a more concrete discussion of what to keep in, what to put aside. 

I have flirted with functional cloth before but never seriously pursued it. Whether my weaving is functional or not, the hard part for me is getting started. I feel I know how to do everything, or at least if I am not sure of something I know how to research it so I can do it, but I never know what to do. What is worth making? If I was a writer, it would be like getting stuck because I wanted to write "the great American novel". You can't set out to do that, it is too overwhelming a prospect. Well, that is what I am like when I approach my looms--I always want to make something terrific, something beautiful, something admirable. In order to start, I have to lecture myself about making and expectations--to leave the expectations aside and just begin work. The work itself usually takes on a life of its own and begins to inform me where to go. When I used to do brocade and would be working with hundreds of supplementary threads, I swear they would tell me, "go left, go right, stop, add more..." There is a dialogue that happens between the process and the artist so getting to work is often the answer to questions of what to do. Begin and the answers will come. It seems always to be plural--never one answer but lots of possibilities, and of course you take one direction and that leads to more possibilities. It is quite a dynamic process, this making something.

In many ways, working with Photoshop with its layers and potential to save all the variations is a similar process of starting in one place and going forward to a point of decision, and then proceeding to the next decision, until you reach a place where you, or the work, says stop. In weaving, which starts at the bottom and proceeds line by line, you don't really have the option to go back (though of course there are people who do unweave; and there is always the option when the weaving is done to change it through other processes like embroidery or painting or cutting and collage). Photoshop lets you save the work at each decision point, and you can return to that after following another path, and try it again. I think it can become an endless loop of variations. One could stay with the same starting point and end up at different end results forever. Just like one could work with plain weave their whole career and never come to the end of its possibilities.

I don't know today where my part of the collaboration is going, but I will post here as it progresses and keep you informed. Someone wrote what a neat studio I have, and it is true, but remember I haven't actually started to work up there yet either. Just had the pleasure of placing things in what seems ideal position for now. You know how work goes though--looms will get pushed out, yarn will come off the shelves, and hopefully the threads will begin talking to me and telling me what to do next.