The Take It Further February Challenge is up. I’m not officially on the list, but I decided to crash the party by joining the Flickr group and doing it anyway!

The color option can be found at the February challenge page. My, those colors look familiar! I can use my stash. That’s nice.

The concept option is “What are you old enough to remember?”

This is going to be a fun month.

In a Minute Ago (the mother ship)
Take It Further Challenge Blog
Take It Further Challenge Flickr Group

I swear, this was not my intention of what to do with my unhatched chickens from the guvmint. But I couldn’t help myself. I was sucked in by forces way beyond my control. I am hypnotised. My jaw has dropped, and I am drooling. I feel quite faint.

This is the danger of the combination of the Internet, a paid off credit card, and a long period of denial.

I’ve been bopping around some fantastic web sites lately. Quite frankly, the only reason I haven’t spent more time on the art internet is because I find it completely overwhelming, as if I am looking into infinity. One of my earliest toddler memories is a cup with a picture of a cow drinking from the same cup with a picture of a cow drinking from the same cup with a picture of a cow drinking from the same cup… This has brought that feeling back to me.

Yesterday, I was farting around with my Sitemeter referrals when I found a blog called Joyce Makes Art by way of a Google search page in Russian for images of “Squirt.” Turns out that Joyce also has a cat named Squirt, and it turns out that she is a multimedia collage and fiber artist. So I was looking through her site when I clicked on this button and fell down the rabbit hole:

It didn’t take much to convince me to register for Keith Lo Bue’s Precious Little: the Poetics of Found Object Jewelry two-day workshop. Then I meandered my way to his virtual gallery and web site.

Holy crap. I feel like a stray dog and someone has offered me a cheeseburger and a warm place to stay.

So that I don’t follow Keith home wagging my tail, I am taking Sandy with me and he’ll explore the nearby museums while I am in class all day Saturday and Sunday. We’ll stay in a very nice hotel and enjoy Friday and our two evenings together.

I’m going to learn how to use tools and make art out of all the junk I have trash-picked, picked up off the pavement, cut out of magazines, and stored in little jars and bowls all over the house, all in the anticipation that one day, this time would come.

Not only that, it’s already February 1 in Australia, and so the February Take It Further Challenge has begun. Next post.

(This project is following the instructions for a tapestry box or bag woven on a cardboard box, as written by the marvelous Sarah Swett in the Jan/Feb 08 edition of Handwoven magazine.)

The yarns sticking out are where I sewed the ends back in behind with the needle. I snip these tails off. It’s easier to pull the needle out through the fabric that to try to poke the weft ends down behind the tapestry.

Progress up the sides of the box. This is the FUN part! I am having a blast, and it is hard to tear myself away from it.

About the yarns: most of these yarns were given to me by a weaving teacher. Apparently what happened was that a student had wound the warp for a large rug, and then had abandoned the project. Once a warp is measured off, you can’t really wind it up again because it will become a terrible tangle. Since she knew that I weave tapestry and can use cut lengths of yarn, she gave it to me. I cut off the ends and wound the lengths into balls. I can’t remember how long this took, but I must’ve had the patience of Jesus to do it. The wool is very coarse and must have been hand dyed, because there are undyed or lightly dyed places where the ties on the yarn were too tight. This wool would probably have been thrown out had I not taken it.

One of the yarns is leftover from an old tapestry that I wove many years ago. I remember that I dyed it on the porch at Lake Waccamaw, during a week when I was at the lake without a car, phone, or TV, with only the company of our dog, Janet Planet. It rained buckets non-stop for days, to the point that the rainwater rose up through the kitchen floor, the house having been built directly on top of a cement slab. It was one of the best weeks of my life.

This is an example of Slow Cloth, which I’ve been thinking about a lot, and will eventually post about. I’m thrilled that fiber artists are extending the philosophy from the Slow Movement to cloth. Of course, many of us always have, but I never thought of it in those words. How perfect!

The folks who know me through real life and my other, more personal blog know that the past six months have been kind of rough for me. I am feeling better and as you can see, I’ve got my weaving mojo back.

In September I was very excited to join a Flickr group project called Crafting 365, and it turned out that I just could not keep up with that. I’m a very OC type of person and when someone gives me a rule of a game or a project, I go all Monica Geller. Now that I’m on a roll again, I think that I’ve found a perfect project to help me keep my momentum going that is flexible and presents a couple of interesting prompts for a fiber design each month. It’s called the Take It Further Challenge, and I’ll begin it in February.

I really could say that my tapestry box project is part of the January project, and you know what? I think that I will, because I have often thought of John while weaving this box. He was such a cheerleader for my tapestry weaving and he would be delighted with this project.

The General Challenge from Sharon B:
“On the 1st of each month I will post key concept. The challenge is to take the idea, develop it and push it towards a resolved design during that month. In other words you interpret the idea and apply it to fiber or paper.

“Every month there will be two options.

“The second option will be a colour scheme or a design element like a shape, to develop into a resolved design. This means that if you don’t like the concept you can work the colour scheme or if you don’t like the colour scheme you can work with the concept. Or you can work with both.

The actual project you design can be any thing, in any medium or format you choose. It can be a crazy quilt block, a postcard, a journal quilt, a piece of embroidery, a sampler, a fabric book page or whatever sparks your imagination. It can also be visual journal work. In other words pages spreads of designs worked in a visual journal will be seen as a valid entry and included as one of the formats acceptable for the challenge.”

Then you blog or Flickr your progress and final result.

The January Challenge:
“The key concept for January is a feeling we have all had, the feeling of admiration for another. Ask yourself who do you look up to and admire? Why? What is it you admire about them?”

The colors for the second option can be found at the January Challenge page.

In a Minute Ago (the mother ship)
Take It Further Challenge Blog
Take It Further Challenge Flickr Group

The bottom is almost finished! I’m only stopping because it’s bedtime and I’ve sat in the same spot too long.

Since this is weaving in the round, like a basket with spokes, you need to put in an extra warp so that you have an odd number of warp ends. Here I ran it down through the edge of the woven part, turned it around, and pulled it back up through the cloth so that it would hold the tension and not pull out later under stress.

Those bottom corners are going to be tough. The top corners are already taking a beating because they were already worn before I started. I’ll put some T-pins in them and hope that will help. Next time I’ll be a little more careful when I choose my box.

Where I am starting this morning. You weave a little at the top edge because it is easier to finish a side weaving in the middle than at the top. When it relaxes off the loom and you full the weaving in hot soapy water, any spaces should fill in. This was a new tip for me.

A view of the bottom and sides in process. For the bottom weaving, there aren’t a lot of design choices. Solid or stripes, that’s it, because you need a stable firm structure.

In tapestry, the weft should cover the warp completely. For this reason, you “bubble” in the weft, and then tamp it down densely. Some people use forks or tapestry combs. I think that the best tools are your fingertips.

Just below the brown wool, you can see where I wove the warp that goes around the other two sides. Unlike the wool, it is woven tight and in the same shed as the previous weft.

This is why I can’t weave around the cats. (That’s Miss Lucy.)

Snow coming down now, and the temp has dropped ten degrees. ABOUT TIME.

Almost following the instructions in Sarah Swett’s article in Jan/Feb 08 Handwoven (note to self - buy an awl), I cut slits in my little cardboard box while listening to this podcast, starting at the beginning with Pride and Prejudice. I drew a swoopy kind of design on the box to follow if I feel like it, or not.

This kind of project proves that you don’t have to be rich to take up weaving as a hobby. I started with rags on a wooden frame with nails across the top and bottom. But as you start seeing what others are doing, it does make you want a “real” loom and more equipment and yarn, etc. I bought my first loom as a kit from Harrisville when I came into a little money. Then I traded it up for a 8 shaft Schacht table loom (which I don’t like) and bought a used 4 harness Baby Wolf from a friend’s mother. Now I’d love to get rid of both of those and buy one 8 harness Baby Wolf. But not for a while.

Anyway, I have no excuses for not weaving for a while, with a pin loom ready for weaving, an inkle loom mostly warped up, a floor loom warped with a scarf underway, and now working on this box loom. It’s my problem of getting things going - all ideas, little action.

Moving right along…

It’s helpful to see both the inside and outside of the box here.

Sarah uses a wool warp, but I’ve chosen to use a thick linen (or hemp, it is not labeled). A wool warp will blend into your weft much better, and would be much better if you plan to felt the bag. But I don’t like the stickiness of a wool warp, and wanted to try it this way. It’s like a recipe, I have to change at least one ingredient.

What about warping the sides, you ask? Well, you warp it as you weave the bottom of the box!

Sarah uses sacking needles, which would be perfect for this, with their flat tips and curves. However, I cannot find my sacking needle. This is typical. I can never find the kind of needle I need for these projects until I have given up and bought some more or have finished the project with a less useful needle. Then I put the new needles in a spot where I know I can find them the next time. Then I rearrange the studio. Does this happen to you? Ergh. So I may take up this project again after a trip to the store.

A 90% chance of snow tomorrow and tomorrow night, 1-3 inches expected, the last I read. That would be nice. I’d kind of like to make a snow sculpture. It’s been so long since we’ve had the right kind of snow to do that. Guess who I’ll make the sculpture of?

Perfect timing to run to the grocery store too, because everybody would have wiped out the bread and milk on Wednesday night in preparation for the ice on Thursday. This is a Southern cultural tradition. So when we made our beer run to the Teeter tonight for my 3-day weekend, there were no long lines and I was able to score a loaf of bread. And munchies. Wheeee!

I hope that it won’t stop my milk delivery tomorrow though. They have to drive a long way to the rendezvous point. Oh, it’s so mysterious and exciting - the life of a raw milk consumer!

I really do hope that I will manage to get at least one tapestry project started tomorrow. A recent article in the Jan/Feb 08 edition of Handwoven by the amazing Sarah Swett has very clear instructions for making a tapestry bag using a cardboard box for a loom. The bag is shaped as you weave it. She first covered this territory in Spin-Off several years ago and I always meant to do it. It is the PERFECT use for all this coarse wool yarn I have been given over the years by other weavers, back when I was doing a lot of tapestry and my back had not given out.

The little pin loom tapestries actually grew out of that back blow-out. I couldn’t do anything but lie down or walk for a while and a foam core pin loom was something I could manage lying down. I had this big tapestry project on a weighted warp loom (Navaho style) for years because I could never finish it because of back pain. I finally cut it off and most of this yarn is part of the leftovers that I never used for it. It was an abstract of a sandstone slit canyon.

My chiropractor and yoga finally repaired my back. I can definitely weave around a box, I think!

I’d like to hang out in the studio this weekend, but I’ll probably cozy up to the wood stove in the house. That’s another plus for this tapestry bag project - portability. The studio is too cold for comfort when it is not sunny because the little heater just can’t handle it. The electrical system has been acting very funky so I don’t want to overload it with another heater, although that’s what Sandy says that they used to do when he used it as his war gaming room with the boys.

(Seriously, don’t leave without checking out the Sarah Swett link.)

I also ordered some supplies from Eclectic Etc. Beads to make some earrings, since I assume that I’ll be hearing from Focal Point Gallery soon once they get ready to open, and it would be nice to have some new work. I don’t really care much for making earrings. What I love to make is intricate beadwoven bracelets and little bags. But I’ve got a pile of those already. The earrings sell. The bracelets, some, but not so much. The bags, not at all. That’s probably just as well until I get some bifocals!

Another project would be to photograph these bracelets and load them into my Etsy store, which currently boasts NOTHING for sale. In a way, that is appropriate for me, eh?