Soon to be flying!

Today I have got the first carpets for the guild exhibition.
(BTW - what is the difference between carpets and rugs?) Anyway, they have to be carpets - who has heard of "flying rugs"?

I haven't unpacked/unrolled them. I just ordered them in an arbitrary colour order:

There will be some more (my own magic carpets, for instance ;-), but they will arrive next week. The hanging will be on Friday next. Watch this space!

And here is the only sun I have seen today:

A true visionary?

The French author Jules Verne (1828 -1905) was a true visionary. He not only visualized the submarine, the airplane and the space rocket. In his book De la terre à la lune (From the Earth to the Moon, or Från jorden till månen), there is a chapter called The Cannon Club.
(I've better point out that I have the book in Swedish only, so the translation, and the errors, are my own)

"The Cannon Club

[...] When an American has got a fixed idea, he always looks for another American with whom he can share it. If they are three persons, they elect one as chairman and the other two as secretaries; the fourth member becomes press officer. When they are five members, they hold a board meeting. The Club is constituted.
[...]
A month after its inception, the Club had 1832 active and 3575 corresponding members.
[...] "

(illustration shows all members after a couple of months?)

(written by a Facebook refusnik, just so you know...)

Bird's nests, of course!

The question was what to do with the "bad" wool - the tangled, the parts with lots of V(egetable)M(atter), the short bits... The answer: bird's nests, of course!

I tried various ways of making them in an efficient way. The best(?) turned out to be: wrap some dry wool around a small ball, well above the equator. Take one plastic shopping bag, previously twisted into a sort-of-spheric shape. Transfer the bag into the "nest", put the whole thing into an old panty-hose. Tie with a string.
I got 10 "nests" into one pair of pantyhose. Put it in the washing machine. Out of the 10 I got 8 passable:

It can even be said that the VM adds to the appearance! (IMO, of course ;-)
Now, it I only could find out a faster way to make the eggs...

Transparent, but still double

Then there was this show. A group of artists, representing many techniques (from glass blowing to textiles via painting and woodwork), were to have a show titled "Transparency".
At first I wasn't very interested, but then I had an idea: a drapery, with the basket weave for the joined areas, and the occasional word printed on something clear in the pockets.

Something clear... like plastic? Would laser printed plastic survive washing? Or hand written with a waterproof pen? It had to survive pressing, too. Sampling, I found that waterproof pens apparently are only waterproof if used in the wrong place (like if you get a spot on the shirt). I found that laser printers are different - pieces from one printer survived, pieces from the other did not.
In the small samples the basked weave acted like in the first sample, that is: it was nearly invisible.

So I wove, placing various words here and there.
Then I wet finished the piece. Some of the words were still visible, and the one-layer areas were a lot more visible than in the samples...

So... why didn't sampling help? The only reason I can think of is that the wear on the printed words was harder with a whole piece in the machine. (But I had washed the samples, not perhaps in a full machine, but with several towels, at the same settings, in the same machine!)
Why did the basket weave areas become more apparent? Is it just size - that everything looks different on a bigger scale?

The next weave of this type has half-transparent plastic in the pockets. The idea is a triple helix, with two plastic pieces in the same pocket where the "helixes" meet. But I abandoned the basket weave...

I made one "worded" set to order. Most of the words were still visible after wet finishing, but I had to replace some. As I had used a mercerized yarn, it was possible to tease the plastic out (and in) without permanently distorting the weave in the pockets.

The coloured plastic is cut from cheap folders, the type that can take about 10 pages without overflowing. It will survive any kind of abuse - washing machine, any kind of iron, sunlight... and by doubling the colours it also becomes educational. (Several people do not want to believe me when I say that there are only 3 colours. They must not have been allowed to play with watercolours?)

Double, double... (next try)

So the next try was more... ordinary?
Straight pockets, plain weave between them, coins (but only at the ends).

The coins give a nice weight to the ends, and also add glitter. They are almost impossible to photograph, at least the glitter :)
Some examples:

(Yes, there are coins in there)

I have tried various "dragon scales" (fillings?), but coins still remain the best. I have tried sequins (for instance here), but they have no weight - and also do not like to be machine-washed, and can melt if pressed with a too hot iron.
I have tried finding mirrors, but can only find thick, single-sided and square. Had I found round mirrors I might have tried, but square with rather sharp edges seems to invite disaster.

I also tried stringing beads and let that pick "float" between layers, but did not like the results.

Another idea, still to be tested, is to have (coloured) warps floating between layers. Something like this:

As you can see, I haven't thought enough on this... but I think that at least the cross-wise one-layer areas have to be twill. -There are several more variations outside what is pictured here, including point threading/treadling. And it still remains to decide what kind of yarn would look nice for the "floaters".

Double, double...

toil and trouble [...] Scale of dragon [...]

As you may have noticed, I like double weave for achieving special effects in one item (as opposed to double width).
It started with a somewhat hazy idea: what if I could make a (scarf) with a pointy end, with kind-of-diagonal pockets, and put someting in the pockets, and...
More or less like this:

(The unwoven ends would be a fringe, which would be "pointed", too)

After fiddling with the structures possible, and the scale possible (I have "only" 16 shafts), I came up with these:

To make it more, er, interesting to sample, I decided on a singles linen 28 for warp, with a cotton 30/2 for weft.
The first that happened was that is was impossible to make the pointy end with a singles linen warp... more or less all "outside" ends broke when I tried to poke the shuttle through. Well, plan B, then: just make the full width from the beginning.
That worked, sort of. After all, it was just a sample, so I didn't have to weave a whole scarf, right?
In the first picture below is the plain-weave-for-the-joined-parts. It worked, it worked, hooray!

Here is the basket-weave-for-the-joined-areas sample:

Hmmm... interesting: it is nearly impossible to see where the single-layer areas are! Maybe something fun could be made out of that phenomenon...?

However. The basket weave version was much more difficult to weave. Where there are areas of plain weave with a "normal" sett, there are also areas where to judge the beat - with the basket weave areas it was all too easy to beat too hard.
And, anyway, the pocket size possible with only 16 shafts was really too small. For the "dragon scales" I wanted to stuff them with, anyway (10-öre coins).

So the whole ideas was shelved for a while.

Reflections on an exhibition

Some days ago, I went to the opening of a summer textile exhibition. The gallery in question has, since it's opening, made a point of mixing amateurs and professionals. All exhibitions have been "thematical". (In quotes, because I don't quite agree that, for instance, "textile" is, hm, narrow? specified? enough to constitute a "theme".)

Anyway. The contributors were told to write a short "narrative" about their relationship with textile(s). These narratives would be placed near the artefacts, the idea being that the whole exhibition should "tell a tale" about the relations between mankind (womankind?) and textile.

There would be (nearly) no judging - (you know: diversity, blah blah, personal expression, blah blah, connexion with foremothers, blah blah...)

In the hall(s), there were many textiles on the walls - embroideries, tapestries, rugs, tablecloths... Here and there, there were boards with quotes (generally only one sentence, maybe two). The quotes had the writer's name, and a number. The artefacts were not numbered.
In the biggest hall there was a big podium, on which many items of clothing were placed, together with several other items. In one corner, there was a sketch of the podium, with numbers. The quotes were placed beside the sketch.
There was also a big "divan" with a selection of cushions (20 or so), all very different. The result was a mish-mash of unrelated cushions, impossible to "see" (as there was another cushion half on top, an embroidered beside a printed and so on. No numbers, no quotes (that I could see).

So what did I learn?
- I learned that, probably, it is easier to build an exhibition if the theme is narrowed. (I remember one called "blue textiles" from several years ago, in a different hall. It consisted of everything from antique Asian textiles (blue, of course) to the latest (blue) jeans.)
- I learned that a "good idea" ("a mountain of cushions", for example) can turn out not ot be - and that it probably is a better idea to re-think the concept. (In this case, a wall of shelving with all cushions beside each other would have a) allowed many more cushions and b) allowed visitors to see them one at a time. It would still communicate "a plethora of cushions".)
- I learned that, if you ask contributors to write "about half a page", then either show that whole half-a-page or not. Cutting out one sentence will not necessarily be enough to convey the thoughts. The quotes could have been presented as a catalogue instead?
- It is also impolite to make identification impossible (ie having numbers on the quotes, but not on the artefacts). What if I had wanted to buy, or contact, the maker of that fantastic (say) tapestry?
- I also learned not to let myself be talked into something that I instinctively would not be part of. I will not enter any exhibition at that gallery again.

This nice little dragon adorned the park where we were having picnic on our way home: