Loom Work

I have a piece that has been brewing for over a year now, and I'm finally ready to get started on it. It requires a tapestry loom, so I bought some 1x2s and got started building. It is a very simple, rudimentary design, but it will be functional, and is as much as I could accomplish as the wood shop in my studio isn't accessible at the moment. I drilled the boards together so it will be able to be dismantled when moving. Another project I am working on will be stained, so I used the tapestry loom to do a test of the stain color. The color will work for the other project, so I have a bit of wood protection and test staining done in one go! I warped the loom in two sections so that I can do some tests, but I still need to get the shed stick and heddle bars set up and then twine the warp ends to set the spacing. This has been on my list of things to do for some time now and it feels amazing to have this physical loom after all of this planning!


Another item on my to-do list was unsticking the 8th shaft on my Baby Wolf. When the loom arrived, the 8th shaft would raise and then stick halfway when the treadle was released. My guess was that either the shaft or the metal track was a bit warped. As I can do nothing for the metal track, I sanded down the top left side of the shaft and was able to fix the stickiness! What a relief, as it made for very messy sheds and my needing to manually push the shaft back down into place. Now onto the rest of my never ending to-do list!

sanding on the top left edge

You can see extra space around each of the shafts, except the 8th shaft (furthest to the left).

Happy Friday: fiber in life

Here are a few photos of recent life, taken by Lydia. Although my life has a few separate categories, I try to live cohesively. Everything I do is related to everything else- my life informs my work and vice versa.

Edy exploring the wilds of a Brooklyn fire escape garden. Five basil, one strawberry, sage, zinnia, marigold, dieffenbachia. Love that cement wall.

Hand rolled/cut pasta as pattern, fiber, mark-making.

Frozen eggs for the pasta. I have never seen anything like this- due to a fridge on the fritz: spoils milk, freezes eggs.

Art for the Public

Recently I have been seeing a lot more graffiti around my neighborhood, and while I think tags are generally an aesthetic waste, I do love street art, stencils and graffiti murals. I'm planning on visiting this Os Gemeos and Futura mural on a public school- PS.11 on 21st St in Manhattan- what a lucky school!

On my morning walk to the subway, I happened upon this paste-up on an empty warehouse building, surrounded by new tags.

It made me really happy that someone is out there, thinking, pasting, communicating, provoking. It is nice to know that we are together in creating, even though we don't know each other; an invisible community of sorts. Community has been on my mind lately. I have been trying to meet and talk to more people, as I seem to be a bit of a recluse in my post-school days. I suspect it is my job and this city, but I am trying to make the most of it. It is just such an important part of making work for me- I love working around others: separate, but simultaneously. I need to feel the momentum around me so that I can let myself get caught up in the current. Trying to reconnect with hardworking friends from my past lately, as well as new ones.


These next images were taken at 266 West 37th St in the Garment District in Manhattan. This piece is called "Have A Nice Day" from Johannah Herr. This exhibition is part of chashama, an organization that turns "temporarily vacant properties into spaces where art can flourish." I had been hearing about them recently on blogs and websites devoted to the NYC arts, but I hadn't yet happened upon any of them. It was a fantastic surprise to find this piece tucked away in a tiny storefront, under construction scaffolding, across from a fabric store I was in. The garment district is certainly not known for its beauty, so such a find does not go unappreciated!

Cerulean Tea Towel Updates

Tonight I finished the 10 yards of cerulean and white towels. It feels a bit like victory! Now, onto washing and sewing. Onward and upward, continually moving. Hoping to have these listed by the beginning of the week.

Tomorrow I'll be planning and purchasing some much needed supplies for some upcoming work and then celebrating the weekend! (Before getting back to work for the weekend! Oh the joys of essentially working two jobs, although this one, I love.)

Creating Cloth: plain weave variation

Here's a simple draft analyzed from a 100% cotton swatch. I love how simple yet full of visual interest this one is. It is essentially a 2 shaft draft, but I laid it out on 4 for more even distribution of heddles. The warp is striped white/black which creates the check pattern.

Hot August, Ready For Fall

Something about getting things done makes getting even more done very tempting. I've been weaving as much as one can with a full-time job, wishing there were more hours in the day or weekend. I've been preparing to buy all my fall/winter yarn very soon, and I remembered a skein of brown and cream alpaca that I had bought about 5 years ago in Schenectady. I thought, I'm making all these things for work and business and profit, and I haven't made anything for fun in such a long time. So I went looking for this skein, to no avail. I made a major move about a year ago, and a lot is still in storage in two different states. I found this cream skein instead- something I picked up in school- by its cool, sleek hand, I believe it's alpaca. It already had been knit about 2" of a pattern from Mon Tricot Knitting Dictionary. I had stopped because of what seemed to be an error in the pattern- a lack of decrease to make a zigzag- it just kept adding stitches... so I decided to start again with this yarn- I liked the first section of the zigzag so much, I decided to continue it through the entire scarf. It is a raised and isolated rib- very lightweight and very plush. It is going to be such a delicious scarf, although probably won't be very long. Alas. I'll be happy to be knitting on the subway from now until fall- with circular needles being of the utmost importance! (straight needles take up too much space, and are a bit of a safety hazard during rush hour!) One more project to add to an already very long list. I'll just keep chugging along- momentum is key.

Creating Cloth: grey/white basketweave

I'm back in the swing of transcribing weaving drafts from commercial fabrics. This next one is a swatch that the company I work for can't afford to use, as it's from Italy. Basically, we'll see vendors who sell fabric from Europe so that we're up on the trends- then we take swatches and send it out for sourcing, to China if it's a basic or novelty woven, Korea if it's a novelty knit or woven, and Mexico and Guatemala if it's a basic or jacquard knit. The cheaper production price prevails always for a vast majority of the fashion world, always looking for trade agreement discounts (NAFTA, CAFTA) or fabric finishing tax breaks. Here is a two year old article on the garment industry. Based on what I know and have learned about the industry, it appears to be pretty accurate, even today.

This swatch is 60% wool 40% poly. It's gloriously soft in a wooly way, with such thin threads. I wish I had yardage to make a scarf or, if I had better tailoring skills, a jacket. This construction is a basket weave variation, the draft below:
6 shafts, 6 treadles, 12 thread repeat.