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

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.