Now Spring . . . . fresh beginning

Four months have slithered by since I wrote here. It turned out that with internet service only at home, being able to sit and write in the evening with distractions, interruptions, and fatigue to impede my thoughts, nothing happened. It was simply too challenging. But NOW I have internet service here at my studio (yup, extra cost), and writing in this blog, messing around with Handweaving.net, and doing business research and correspondence can all be accomplished as part of my work day. Much better!

I'm coming out of a creative slump, aka "fallow period". Not an unfamiliar situation, but one that I am not fond of while it's in process. The best part is this phase, when the slump is shifting and I'm suddenly (it seems) full of fresh ideas and a renewed sense of direction and goals. Already I'm mostly unable to conjure up the internal sense of the slump-time, for which thank goodness. Truth be told, I've gotten a lot of reading done -- some good, some pure lightweight -- and I've spent many hours happily knitting on a number of complicated large lace shawls, some of which are finished. Eventually, I'll have some photos of some of them here and on my website.

The new reconditioned loom I referred to previously is up and running, with a handsome scarf warp going onto it -- a five-scarf series I'll call African Savannah, which should indicate the kinds of colors. Rayon and cotton, hand-dyed by The Drop Spindle. The Big Loom is still sitting with a light teal rayon scarf warp partly woven; I think I'm bored with the colors, which merely means it's been there too long and I need to get it woven off. Both looms are threaded to 16-shaft twills, and each scarf is woven with a different pattern and a different weft, so each piece in the series is unique. (In nearly thirty years of weaving, I have never done the same thing twice.)

In January, I took a three-day workshop (sponsored by my Whidbey Weavers' Guild) taught by Bonnie Inouye, whose work I've admired for years. I spent most of the time working at my computer using her information to develop a lot of new advancing twill patterns. They're all stored in this computer, which is the one that runs my Big Loom, and gradually they'll be used in a wave of new work, some of it luxury fabrics for clothing.

The photo is one of the ones taken in late December; it's a hand-dyed silk scarf, in the Peacock series.