The John C. Campbell Folk School (JCCFS) is a world apart. The first thing you notice when you get there is its natural and rustic beauty. There are trees everywhere and at this time of year, the rhododendrons and mountain laurel are blooming. The buildings are charming, too. They range in age from the orginal farm house built in the 1800s, through the community lodge and dormitories built by students and volunteers in the 1920s, to a new dormitory built last year. All of them reflect an Appalachian aesthetic that makes them blend in with nature instead of competing with it. Antiques and hand-crafted things abound, giving the place a very human feel. But it’s not just the stuff that’s different, it’s the people too. I’m not sure if it’s the beautiful surroundings, or because folks come to the school to persue crafts they’re passionate about, but people seem nicer here, more polite, more helpful. Everyone pitches in when there’s work or clean-up to be done. Over the week, it starts to feel like a community, as you get to know people over meals and stop by and see what they’re working on in the various studios. I’ve heard JCCFS described as sumer camp for grown-ups. That’s not a bad description. Everyone eats meals together and bunks together, and there are processes and procedures to help keep things running smoothly. For example, at meals one or two students from each table take the dirty dishes to the kitchen, and their reward for this is getting to bring dessert back to the table. There are evening activities of concerts and dances and readings. Then there are the unplanned nighttime events (like the Raku pottery students and their impromptu fireworks run.) One of the best parts for me is that it feels like a safe place: safe to try a skill you’ve never attempted before, safe to wander the woods alone at night, safe to leave your door unlocked, safe to take creative chances. I also very much enjoyed the fact that there are classes in several different disciplines going on at once. There’s something wonderful about realizing that makers are all the same, no matter if it’s a big burly blacksmith or a prim and proper lace lady taking a tatting class. For example, one morning the woodturners were chatting in the library in the community lodge and one rapsodized about a pile of seasoned mahogany he’d seen at this one lumber yard. I was struck by the fact that he could have just as easily been a weaver describing handpainted silk they’d seen at this one yarn store. It seems to me there are two kinds of people in the world: those that get that making things with your hands is necessary and good, even in our current Walmart era, and those that don’t. Some folks just aren’t happy unless they’re creating something. For me, it’s less about what I’m making than the act of creation itself. There’s a drive in some people to express themselves creatively. To leave a part of themselves behind in a physical thing that says, “This is who I was in this moment. I made this. I was here.”

I love the planet: I recycle, I compost, I wander around a 60-degree house all winter in a sweater to conserve electricity. But after three days of waiting, I’ve had to face an unpleasant truth. In the Pacific Northwest, the thirty skeins I handpainted for an upcoming rigid-heddle class at the John C. Campbell Folk School aren’t going to get dry on their own.  After three days of hanging in my bathroom, they’re still damp to the touch. Fortunately, I have a secret weapon. When our dryer died a few years back, I researched all the options and features that were on the market and discovered an amazing innovation: the shoe dryer.  It’s a shelf that fits into your dryer and creates a non-rotation platform on which you can put things.  Said things then get engulfed in gales of hot air and dry quickly without tangling, er…making a big thumping noise. I told Eric I’d picked the best option for our replacement dryer.  Unless he reads this, he’ll never know what the deciding factor was.  ;> I feel a bit guilty about the energy usage; when I lived in Florida, things hung outside dried within hours.  On the other hand, up here I don’t run an A/C in the summer, so I guess there are some compensations. And it’s a heck of a lot better than the time I spent the night before a class blow-drying skeins in my hotel room with a hair dryer…

Sometimes design inspiration comes from unexpected places.  This is a snapshot from some tile inside a McDonald’s bathroom.  Is it just me, or is this beautiful? It makes me curious: what’s the oddest place you’ve found a weaving-design idea?

Ever have one of those days where you just wake up and find yourself happy for no reason whatsoever?  I’m having one of today.  Nothing about my circumstances has changed: I still have deadlines hanging over my head, the laundry hasn’t magically cleaned itself overnight, my inbox is still scary-full, my workouts haven’t turned me into an amazon, and I have no idea what I’m making for dinner. And yet…I’m spending the day walking around smiling at folks, chatting up people in the grocery store, and generally spreading sunshine wherever I go.  Why could that be? Hmm.  The only thing that’s changed lately is that I’ve started spinning and weaving again. For a while after the WeaveZine 2.0 launch I was so busy that my own artistic pursuits got pushed to the back burner and eventually fell off the stove altogether.  It was darned ironic, let me tell ya, to spend all day working on creating weaving media and yet have no time to weave.  I love the work I do on WeaveCast and WeaveZine; it’s very satisfying, but just there’s something magical about getting your hands into fiber and thread. It started with the Eastside Spinners.  (I blame Marie, who is a total fiber-enabler.)  Hanging out with them got me started spinning again, and relit my obsession with charka spinning. What happens when you get obsessed with cotton spinning?  You end up with a lot of fine, singles, hand-spun cotton.  It took me a while to get my skills back, but several spindles on I’m back to spinning a fine even thread. The pirns above are destined to be weft on an upcoming project.  I’m not sure what yet.  I’ve admired khadhi cloth in the past, so perhaps that.  Or maybe I’ll try to do something interesting with the inherent twist of the cotton singles ala Eileen Hallman. So after things settled down with the website, and after I decided that for my own mental health and fun of my family, I would start taking weekends off from any kind of WeaveZine work: suddenly I had time to weave again! I struggled for a while with my weaving.  At first I was going to reprise the overshot bookmarks that were published in Handwoven, but nine yards of 2-inch wide overshot was just daunting.  So I wound on an additional six inches of 140/2 silk warp to make a scarf width.  I planned to weave words in summer-and-winter…only the phrase I’d picked out was long and the weave drafting quickly became boring and redundant.  And you know what?  After many boring hours of laboriously filling in little boxes in Fiberworks PCW, I just didn’t think my phrase was that clever any more. So I repurposed that warp a third time, working on a project that currently has my little geeky heart aflame.  I’m so excited about this one, that I blew through the drafting (taquete this time, instead of summer-and-winter.) I’m almost done threading, even after having to start over half-way through because I forgot to go over the back beam.  (How is it possible that an AVL production dobby loom doesn’t have a “get out of forgetting to go over the back beam free” feature like my Baby Wolf does?  Hopefully this got fixed in models after my 1984-era loom was built.)   This project I’m working on is for the Complex Weaver’s fine-threads study group (one of the deadlines, BTW.  Don’t none of ya’ll tell them I’m still threading, kay?) so I’m keeping the draft mum so as not to spoil the surprise.  But here’s a shot of the work-in-progress. The take-away?  Spinning and weaving can’t fix the circumstances of your life, but they sure can fix the happy!   P.S. Please forgive the grainy cell-phone pictures.  My main point-and-shoot is having issues with its battery and doesn’t want to recharge.

First of all, proof positive that Bonnie Tarses takes better pictures of Kai than I do. Secondly, I call the photo below “Bears don’t eat my garbage.” I live out in the boonies, surrounded by woods.  Last year we had a record four bears wandering our road, treating the garbage cans as their own personal buffet.  I like bears.  I understand that they were here first and have certain rights to the salmonberries and blackberries.  I do not, however, like picking up garbage every morning at 6am.  It’s just not a great start to my day. Putting the trash cans in the garage isn’t a great option, either, as one neighbor found out when they stored the stinky remains of a salmon dinner in their garage.  A louvered garage door is not much challenge to a hungry 600-pound black bear. An ecologically minded neighbor researched ‘bear-resistant” locking garbage cans, and came up with this brand as the winner.  Then she got an eco-grant to help offset the cost of folks in our neighborhood purchasing them (don’t I have great neighbors?) Judging from the tipped over can and the claw marks, the score thus far: Garbage can: 1 Bear: 0 Boo-yah! On the weaving front, I am puzzling out a draft for my first summer-and-winter design on sixteen shafts.  (Actually, it’s my first-ever summer-and-winter project, but there were sixteen shafts on the new loom, so it seemed like I ought to use them.)  The way I’m going about it is slow, first entering the design into the peg-plan, and then adding the tie-down picks.   I’m sure there’s a better way, but at least I’m learning  how S&W works. And finally, I’m not much of a cook, but occasionally I improvise something and like the results.  I’ve test-baked the following recipe twice and had it turn out tasty both times.  It’s my variant on oatmeal cookies.  I especially like the way the cranberries and pistachios look together.  Very colorful.  I call ’em “Cranberry-Pistachio Oatmeal Cookies.” 3/4 cup butter 1 cup all-purpose flour 3/4 cup wheat flour 1-1/2 cup brown sugar 2 small eggs * 1 tsp baking powder 1 tsp vanilla 1/4 tsp baking soda 1-1/2 tsp chai spices ** 2 cups uncooked oats 1 cup dried cranberries 1 cup hulled and chopped pistachio nuts

1. Beat butter for 30 seconds.
2. Add all-purpose flour, sugar, eggs, baking powder, vanilla, and chai spices.  Mix thoroughly.
3. Add wheat flour.  Mix thoroughly.
4. Add oats and mix.  Check whether the texture will hold together for cookies.  If mixture is too wet, add flour.  If too dry, add water or part of another egg.
5. Stir in pistachios and cranberries.
6. Form into pancake-shaped cookies and drop onto an ungreased cookie sheet.
7. Cook in a 375-degree (F) oven for 10-12 minutes or until golden brown.

If you make a big batch, they freeze beautifully. *My eggs come from my neighbor’s chickens, so they’re smaller than grocery-store eggs.  This is probably the equivalent of one large commercial egg. ** I use Trikona-brand “Chai Masala” that I buy in the international district in Seattle.  It’s traditionally used as the spices in Indian-style chai.  Its ingredients are listed as ginger, cinnamon, black pepper, cardamom, clove, and mustard.  So if you have to improvise, that’s a starting point.

I don’t know whether it’s the influence of the spinning book and DVD recently reviewed on the site, or the Eastside Spinnersguild, but I’ve become obsessed with spinning again.  Specifically, on my charka. It’s a Bosworth book charka, and I haven’t spun on it in about four years.  But when I was picking a wheel to take to the spin-in this past Saturday, it was the one I grabbed. It’s ultra-portable, and since Kai was going with me (part of a plan to give Eric extra writing time to finish up his latest novel) I figured the less gear I was taking with me, the better. I had forgotten how fun it is to spin cotton.  You cradle the fiber as gently as you would a newborn baby bird, pull back and let the twist pull the fibers into a line, then pinch the end and pull to attenuate, putting in tons of twist. Watching the yarn even out in this last step of the long draw is somewhat magical: lumps and bumps drift apart and become smooth.  At the end (if you do it right) you have an even and super-fine yarn. Living out in the boonies, I don’t often get the chance to socialize live and in-person with fiber folk.  So it was a treat to hang out with a lively and interesting group of spinners.  (That’s only half of them, the whole group is twice as fabulous.) Kai eventually got bored with helping turn the charka’s wheel, and so I gave him my cell phone and he wandered around taking pictures of things he found interesting.  Which is why this post has pictures (I was too busy spinning to take any) and why they’re all from a four-foot-tall perspective, in case you were wondering…     His definition of what was interesting at the coffee shop went beyond mere fiber. And speaking of things that spin right around (say at about 1000 miles per hour) Happy Earth Day! I’m off to celebrate by spinning some lovely organic cotton.

Hand-painting yarn is one of those things that never ceases to delight me.  Perhaps I’m just easily entertained, but every time I open up a hand-painted skein or warp, I get a jolt of surprise and delight.  The colors I selected have merged and combined in exciting and often  unanticipated ways. There are so many variables in hand-painting that you have to let go of expectations.  The color is affected by how much dye you put on, how hard you press, how far you take the color, which colors you place next to each other, how the heating migrates the dye.  Even a normally  scientific dyer like me has to give in to the whims of fate when hand-painting yarn. When I put the yarn into my dye microwave I never know exactly what I’m going to pull out. I dyed the skeins above for a beginning rigid-heddle class I taught in Seattle recently. When I teach—especially plain-weave projects—I like to give the students beautiful yarn to weave with.  To keep materials fees low, I buy worsted weight wool in bulk, with as much merino content as I can get for a reasonable price, and dye it myself. I always dye more skeins than I have students, using in a variety of colorways.  That way there’s something for everyone.  I’ve also found that starting a class by giving each student beautiful yarn that you hand-painted yourself really gets things off on the right foot. As I’m writing this, the class has happened and several of these skeins above have been transformed into someone’s first handwoven project.  I can’t imagine a better destiny for yarn. Looking at these smiles, I’d guess the students agree…   Happy Weaving!

This past weekend I cleaned up my studio.  It had gotten into such a state that it was hampering creativity.  So I packed up some gear to sell on ebay, carted off some yarn to a charity yarn drive, and in general tried to apply the idea “if you haven’t used it in a year, it should go.” One of the things I had acquired and not gotten around to using was a made-for-kids screen printing kit.  My orthodontist gives out “good patient” tokens if you wear your retainer, show up on time for appointments, etc.  This was put in place no doubt to inspire the kids and teens she normally deals with.  But ya know, some of the toys in the rewards cabinet were pretty darn cool, and she agreed that an adult could earn tokens if they wished. Kai was the lucky recipient of most of my orthodontic booty, but when I cashed in my last tokens on the day my braces came off, I “bought” the screen printing kit for myself. And it sat on the top shelf for six months.  Twice I almost used it as an emergency present for a kid’s birthday party, but each time my inner eight-year-old put her foot down and I kept it for myself. This week is Kai’s spring break.  And we have a lot of hours in the day to fill together.  So with the idea of using what I’ve got and having fun, I pulled it down off the top shelf and just dove in.  No plan, no project, no goal in mind other than using this kit up. It was entirely as cheezy as you’d imagine from the package.  Everything was made of plastic or foam.  Designs were precut stencils in girly themes of flowers and hearts.  The screen was a loose mesh that degraded quickly and was only held in place at the top and bottom, which mean that you had to fiddle with it constantly to keep it taut. I’ve taken screen-printing classes at college, and briefly in my twenties designed and sold T-shirts.  (In my twenties, I made and tried to sell a lot of stuff.  Once I even anodized aluminum using a car battery so I could dye it and make electric-blue chainmail.) Anyway, I recognized this kit as a cheaply made thing that would quickly convince any reasonable child that screen printing was a pain and a bother. Which was exactly Kai’s reaction.  He got one perfect print, then a whole bunch of smeary ones, got frustrated and called it a day.  (He talked me into cutting up the pillowcase with his one perfect print and sewing it into a treasures bag, so the experience wasn’t a total loss from his point of view.) Me, I was entranced.  There was one design among the hearts and flowers that Kai and I both gasped when we saw it.  A pattern of stars and spirals.  We’re big into stars and spirals around here.  That was the only design we used all day. Because I didn’t have a plan, or any expectations, I started goofing around and mixing up colors when I did a print. The way the colors merged together during the printing reminded me of a painted warp.  So I set aside the pillowcase I’d been experimenting on, and ran to my studio to grab up some painted-warp cloth I’d woven a while ago and never gotten around to making anything with. I didn’t give myself time to think “but this is my precious handwoven, what if I muck it up?” I just dove in and started screening on top of it.  (Channeling my inner Mollie Freeman, who does some beautiful embellishments on top of her handwovens.) And you know what, the handpainted, handwoven cloth was the perfect background.  The two layers of merging colors spoke volumes to each other, and also served to hide any irregular borders in the printing. If you look closely at the picture above, you’ll see that one star didn’t fill in, and the borders smeared a little, but that the overall affect is still gorgeous! Printing a block design on top of the cloth brought out a whole new dimension in it, and has me excited about making something out of it.  A jacket?  A tote bag?  I don’t know, but it’s to lovely now to sit in a drawer. I even used a tip from Mollie Freeman and carried the printing off the edge of the cloth so the design wouldn’t seem crowded around the middle of the fabric. (For Twitter followers, the tarantula that was field-stripped and fixed is in the upper-left of the picture above.) I had so much fun, I printed the whole seven yards. (Coming home from a trip and finding this drying in the kitchen is why Eric often wins the “my wife’s weirder than yours” talks around the office water cooler.) I used up all the ink, completing my only goal of using up the toy so I could get rid of it.  But dang, I had so much fun, I might have to see if they’ll sell me a refill pack! Huzzah for not overthinking and just going with it.  Sometimes diving in without a plan (or expectations) is exactly the right thing to do. Triva note: I just realized that the fabric I printed on in this post is the same fabric I photographed for the WeaveZine header.  I guess that’s appropriate.  WeaveZine gets a new look, and so does the textile!  I may just have to make myself a WeaveZine-themed jacket.  Wouldn’t that be fun to wear to a conference?

First of all, I’d like to say thanks to everyone who left an appreciative comment on the last post. Kai was pretty chuffed with himself after I blogged about his work.  He’d heard me talk about how WeaveZine is read by people all over the world, and immediately made the leap that this meant he was now an internationally acclaimed artist.  His comment right after I posted it and read it to him: “Finally, the recognition I deserve!” (It is possible that being the child of two writers/artists has affected his world view a bit.) For the next few days, as comments came in, I would call him over to the computer and read them to him.  And he was tickled and delighted.  He was one happy five-year-old boy. Which brings me to the next point.  There were some comments I didn’t read to him. When you’re reading something on the internet, or posting something on a website, it can be easy to forget that there are real, live, people behind the content. It’s also really easy (and many a flame war has been inadvertantly started by this) to write something in email or a comment where your intention isn’t 100% clear and without the context of body language and vocal tone, can be misinterpreted. When you’re writing a comment on this site, please be respectful.  You don’t have to agree with the content.  In fact, feel free to dissent and explain your reasoning.  We might all learn something new.  All I ask is that you think about how you’re saying it.  I want WeaveZine to be a place that folks feel safe sharing their work, whether that person is an established artist who’s been weaving for forty years, or a five-year-old boy. (And seriously, the little guy is picking up reading at a frightening pace, and I may not be able to gloss over things in the future.  ;> ) Here was something I saw in my window this morning that seemed like the ultimate embodiment of hope. It’s a cutting I took from my neighbor’s hibiscus plant.  I stuck it in some rooting gel about six months ago and basically forgot about it, occasionally throwing in some water as the gel was absorbed by the plant.  Somehow this little twig, with only two tiny roots, found the fortitude to create a bud and then flower. The snow melted, I can see grass. Could this be spring?

One of the wonderful things about having kids is seeing a bit of yourself reflected in another person.  My son, for instance, is as passionate about his yarn stash as I am over mine.  Watching him browsing the “three-dollar-a-bag” counter at my local discount yarn shop is a fun way to spend an hour. Of course, the other fun thing about kids is how they then take things in a completely different direction. I’ve taught Kai how to weave on a table loom.  I’ve shown him knitting with the following rhyme:

In the door,	(insert the working needle)
Grab a scarf,	(wrap the yarn)
Run back out,	(pull the loop through)
Before the cat barfs! *blatt*	(pop the knitted stitch off the resting needle)

(I’m not sure where I picked that up, possibly a Cat Bordhi book?  I don’t recall, but it really holds a kid’s attention.  I’ve had a whole room of kindergarteners in hysterics with that one.) I’ve taught him finger knitting and crocheting. But Kai has his own form of personal expression.  What does he do with his yarn: acrylic, chenille, and metallics? Builds giant room-sized webs.  He calls them his “traps.” They’re an interesting combination of geometry and art installation.  You leave him alone in a room for an hour or so with yarn and things happen.  Left in place, he’ll start tying in found objects (that’s probably the influence of the dreamcatchers his grandmother makes for him) and each one has a story. This one is also part mechanical device.  Here he’s showing me how you pull a thread on one side of the room, and a bell rings in the other. It’s not what I would do with yarn, but it’s an interesting artistic expression, and I feel lucky to have such a creative and sweet son. Of course, he’s pretty lucky to have two parents who—upon discovering that the living room had been converted into a giant labyrinth say—“Wow.  That’s so cool!” and admire the web and take numerous pictures instead of throwing a fit about the mess. We did eventually have a talk about art verses the need to “walk across the room safely” and negotiated a three-day exhibition in the living room, after which the project was recycled back into yarn. My weaving?  Today I’m weaving samples for a rigid-heddle class I’m teaching on Sunday.  Examples of things you can weave using two heddles: double-width, 3/1 twills, fine cloth, etc.  I love the fact that my work now means that I have to spend a certain amount of time weaving.  I get to be diligent and have fun; how cool is that? P.S. For those who asked: the sheep came through the cold just fine.  The sweaters, not so much.  But they gave their little polarfleece lives for a good cause.