Warp-weighted loom

My warp-weighted driftwood loom has been part of my practice for ages now, but has been rather in the background for some time. On bringing it back into my studio after the summer away I decided to finish weaving the length of fabric as I no longer need it part done in my installation. I am really smitten with the colour and texture of my hand-spun Zwartble yarn, and the warm, live feel of it under my hands from the tensioning.

New Highland Contemporaries 2

My loom and film installation is on view in the New Highland Contemporaries 2 exhibition in Nairn this week!

 For details of times and dates please see here

One Week Left

Just one week left before all my work has to be spick and span ready for marking for the end of year three. I've spent most of this week sorting out and tidying up, cleaning the space and making final decisions about positions of everything in relation to everything else and sorting out technical problems with light and projector and film sound.

My studio is looking a bit empty in these photos. I've got so used to all the clutter of excess branches, baskets of wool, work table, wood shavings and scraps of fleece. Today I had to get everything possible off the floor so it could be washed. I want my white silk warp to drape and drizzle on the floor and I want it to STAY white!

I still have to get something up to block the sunlight out so that my film projection is visible.... Just as well there's still one week before hand in.

Spun Silk Warp

Stitching the silk warp

Silk warp waterfall

Today I finished warping up my hand-spun silk projector screen and stabilising the top with a red thread stitched through.

The flow of the silk laid over the table caught my eye. It reminds me of currents in a river.

Silk flow 1

Silk flow 2

Exploring Twist in Wild Fibre

Fine Roots

 Wandering by the Findhorn River on a rare and precious half hour off of essay writing. I can never leave my creative practice behind though. Every where I look I see things I could spin, things that will give my fibre colour, things that make links in my thoughts with my studio practice.

The driftwood piles left by winter floods are full of roots, from the finest grass roots hanging like tufts of sheep's' fleece to huge root balls of mature trees. So many different textures and forms.

This fine wisp had a red roots in it, making me think of my Red Thread/Common Thread. The red was coarser but stronger than the black, brown and sun-bleached blond roots.

Not all make me think of spinning and weaving though. Sometimes there are strange forms that call to me in other ways, like the spoon root I found today. Formed by a tree root forcing itself between two stones then being unable to force them apart in order to grow. When compressed or restricted, life-force distorts, warps and takes on unexpected forms.

A spoon root?

Some of the exposed roots suggest other uses than spinning, perhaps this one may become a dye vat stirrer...

Spin, Spun, Span

Spun Silk warp

 I am planning on projecting woven film onto this spun silk warp screen... The process onto the produced.

The balls of silk have such a lovely handle although every slight rough patch of skin catches on them. The visual texture of the silk is wonderful: wound into a ball, drizzled on the floor and hung shimmering from the Hazel wood rod.

I am interested in the visual play between the photo of spun roots on the wall, the shimmering spun silk and the wound ball of spun silk.

Spun Silk

Spun silk

Two beautiful skeins of spun silk

Plying Silk

 Finally all my silk is spun, plied and wound into skeins ready for washing, drying and winding into balls... My hands will be glad of the change as silk, so divinely soft and lush to the gently touching hand, is really strong and needs a lot of strength and tough skin to spin. It's easy to cut yourself on the tightly twisting fibres as you try to draw them out to spin a fine thread.

Studio wanderings

 Just looking at the interactions between space, shape and colour...

Fresh-cut Alder wood/Crottle dyed yarn

Big loom/tiny looms

soft lines/hard lines

Yarn stretched tight/yarn hanging soft

Spinning Silk

Spun silk: doesn't that conjure up something luxuriously soft and lovely? It sure doesn't make me think of something likely to slice my hands as I make it, but I have come so close to doing just that as I learn how to handle this delightfully soft but fearsomely strong cloud of fibre. The finer I spin the sharper it becomes. I can only work on this in short bursts as I have to rest my hands frequently: the strength of silk taxes my hand joints and muscles and I'm risking a flare-up of RSI. But it's so beautiful, so soft, so warm.... And I want it to make a projector screen from in my studio.

Weaving a Web

But hopefully not a tangled one....

First three lines of weft going in! Many technical hitches are emerging and the usefulness of doing prior research into technique is made very very clear.... But I am still glad I chose to do little research into the practicalities of weaving, but rather to let the materials inform the direction and lead the show.

And yet... I love the sticky stubbornness of the lanolin-thick unwashed hand-spun, the rough bobbles and slubs created by using un-carded fleece and the clinginess of the shed created by those two aspects interacting. It all feels interesting and full of potent metaphor, though I have yet to tease out the strands of that into a form I can vocalize. I guess the metaphor is a bit tangled up and sticky too, it may start to emerge as the fabric does.

Weighting a Warp

For several years I have habitually chucked my coppers into an old vase as I like to be able to close my purse easily and never can be doing with footering about with coppers in a queue at a till. I remembered that if one takes coins to the bank to exchange for notes then both 1p and 2p coins go in one bag and they can tell how much money is in the bag by the weight of it. This means that 12p must weigh the same whatever the mix of 1s and 2s. How useful!

So as it turns out, that stash of coins is perfect for weighting the warp of my loom - 12p per 5 warp threads tied up in a scrap of recycled fabric.

Wonderful how the softly falling yarn becomes a taught and springy surface as the weights go on.



The next step is putting the 'shed' in to allow the weaving to progress a little faster than it might otherwise. I have chosen this red thread to weave the shed from for two reasons.

Firstly Red Thread has come to have a deep significance in my work;  it stands as a metaphor for finding one's way through the creative maze, for the concept of 'a common thread' and for all the connections of text and textile through language and myth and story. I reached for the spool of red almost instinctively. The other thread I had to hand in my studio was an indigo blue and there was just no contest.

Of secondary importance to the symbolism of the Red Thread is the aesthetics of the colours; red felt like it belonged with the white-blond wood and the dark brown yarn. Second reason, yes, but also very important to me as I am very visually sensitive.

Gathering pace

Warp weighted loom

I am moving! The hours and hours of spinning have gathered my thoughts into a strong thread that I can trace out in my studio practice. I want to weave a length of fabric with text in it I think... Text in Textile. Both words share the root Texere: to weave.

I have chosen to build a primitive loom to work on as it feels right with my primitive hand-spun thread.

I gathered the uprights from the huge driftwood piles down by the Findhorn river as I don't want to cut down living trees unnecessarily. The horizontal pieces were coppiced ash and hazel from my garden.

There was a deep resonance to the act of hunting for just the right pieces of wood with forks just so, cutting them to size and carrying them home balanced on my shoulders. Another layer of linkage with our distant ancestors who made every inch of their clothing from scratch. It deepens my understanding of the intrinsic value of fabric.

Spinning a Yarn

Teasing raw fleece

 Using spinning to find my way back into my Studio Practice. Teasing out my tangled fuzzy ideas along with the tangles in the fleece before spinning both into a good strong coherent thread.