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?

Here they are, the first two fabulously ugly scarves, woven with the fabulously ugly yarn I hoarded for years because I couldn’t decide if it was fabulous or the most hideously ugly yarn I’d ever seen. Somewhere in the two studio moves the labels were lost, so I’m not sure of the content. I got the yarn at a swap, and at the time I was pretty snobby about natural fibers, but who knows where my head was when I voluntarily adopted this yarn. I might do a burn test, but the left one sure wrinkles like cotton. Anyway they look much more beautiful worn than this scan shows, and are soft and cuddly.

The left one is totally fab ugly yarn in a plain twill. The right one is tabby and alternates fab ugly and red cotton flake in the weft.

I think that I have enough yarn left to make one more, and my goal was to use every bit of it. If I was not lazy and liked math, I would have calculated first whether I had enough. But since I am a wild and crazy woman, I decided to live dangerously and do it this way. It was more fun because I approached it as a puzzle.

I decided to tie on to the original warp so that I wouldn’t have to rethread the heddles and reed. I had 82 ends at 12 ends per inch. First, I wound as much of the fab ugly yarn as I had for a length of about 7 feet. (Tying on to the original warp reduces the warp waste.) I had 54 ends, so I had to rework my warp design a little. I made the red and blue stripes wider to bring it to 82 ends, and I hope to have enough red cotton flake to weave the whole thing. Using this shareware WeaveDesign program helped a lot, and the design is below. The red stripe on the left is actually in the center, and it is symmetrical. We’ll see if the treadling drives me insane. Well, more insane.

I have it tied on the loom now and hopefully will begin weaving this afternoon.

Squirtley Dirtley O’Neill
July 1997 - December 27, 2007

The Story of Squirt

Here is the cover of Shuttle, Spindle, and Dyepot magazine (the official publication of the Handweavers Guild of America) from Summer 1998, when it published an article about John and his work. At the end of this post, you’ll find links to the article, which I scanned, and other links that I found about John on the Internet.

From 1993, for the Greensboro Weavers Guild “Whimsical” exhibit, John presented a woven shirt and a snake. John really liked snakes.

He is not in many of the Guild’s photos because he took most of them.

Here’s an excerpt from the introduction (exhortation?) he wrote to Greensboro Weavers Guild members about “Let’s Be Whimsical,” the group project/exhibit that the Guild undertook in 1993-1994:

To me, the word whimsy strongly suggests the word freedom. I like that idea. We as artists and crafts people need more freedom. Working in the medium of fiber we are all too often faced with restrictions and constraints of one kind or another…

Throughout history artists and crafts people have had to deal with their own set of circumstances and limitations. Many of their limits were self imposed as many of ours are today. We can gain a great deal of artistic freedom by observation and thought followed by action. We all want to grow and explore new avenues as we create. We probably all realize that nothing is really “new” under this sun. But we really can bring our ideas and materials together in fresh and curious ways - in visually intriguing and thought provoking ways.

For an invigorating and inspirational exercise I like to examine the stuff of the past. Past peoples, past cultures, past movements, etc. A virtual treasure trove of art objects and solutions to visual problems is out there, waiting for us to learn from and enjoy. It can be so satisfying and almost overwhelming to witness the range of artistic expression that has gone on in the past. These objects belong to all of us, many may seem outlandish or “whimsical” but each serves as a bench mark for all who seek freedom of expression. Enjoy the images.

We went up to Virginia to be with our family for the holidays. One evening we went out for a drive to view the holiday lights. As we took off my brother-in-law who was driving announced that for safety purposes he was issuing ‘back seat driver’s licenses’ to all passengers! Wow! What an idea! I must do that for our guild members!

My dear guild members, under the auspices of our Greensboro Weavers Guild I am pleased to issue your well deserved ‘Artistic License.’ Use it in good health and ‘Whimsically’ of course!

Thank you, John. I believe that I’ll dig out that license, dust it off, and put it to use.

John has a web site, but a hacker has inserted some javascript code to make a pop-up come up with every click. I’ve downloaded the files and I’ll try to recreate it on this space somewhere.

“John Skau in 3-D”, Shuttle, Spindle and Dyepot, Summer 1998 (in jpg format, sorry!)

Page One
Page Two
Page Three

Cranbrook Academy of Art - his alumni online exhibit

American Art Company - John discusses his work; click on the photos to see larger images.

Peninsula Fine Arts Center - a description and photo from a 2006 exhibit.

Wexler Artist Gallery - three more photos of his work

Blue Spiral Gallery, Asheville

“Rock On” at Theatre Arts Galleries in High Point

Artists rally to help one of their own, News and Record, June 12, 2007. There’s a wonderful photo of John weaving a basket in this article.

John’s obituary and guestbook in the News and Record, in which he is described also as “a stay at home dad, cook, and bottle washer.”

To be continued as I find more stuff…

Lesson learned tonight: Sometimes if you find an abandoned cute little project from years ago that looks easy to finish, there is a reason that it was abandoned.

We suppress painful memories.

May or may not work on this one some more. Turns out that my eyes can’t see the difference between the warp thread and the shadow of the warp thread. Dontcha just hate feeling younger than your body?

So, I finished weaving this hatband last night, and twisted the fringe, and I just happened to toss it down on this sketchbook that I bought in San Gimignano last year, and thought, “Hmm. That looks good together. I could sew stuff all over this cover really easily.”

I found some boarding passes that I had stuck inside the book, with the idea that I’d make it into a scrapbook about our trip one day. And I wondered, why haven’t I done this?

I had picked up the book to show some classmates how easily we could construct a book for a class project. See, the linen strings just wrap around the spine.

Groups of pages are folded and inserted behind the strings. They are easily added and removed and changed around. What was I afraid of?

The butterbeans are in this picture just because I love butterbeans. Intensely.

I sat down right there and did a sketch of a photo of some cypresses at Spannocchia. I loved the way the shadows crossed the road. It parallels a lot with the inner work I am doing now with my shadow self.

I think that this is going to be my next tapestry. I haven’t woven a tapestry in years!

Oh, and have I mentioned that I am currently insanely obsessed with the idea of book-making? That I’ve bought a book about altered books and two issues of Cloth Paper Scissors? That I brought home a slew of sheet music and other books to recycle from the free section of Ed McKays? That I’ve bought basic quilting and sewing supplies?

Uh-huh.

(Crafting 365, Day 12)

Spending most of the day in a soul-searching class left me in knots, but…

I went into my studio afterwards and finished the last towel.

Now I’m relaxing with a Yuengling!

365 Project Day Nine
yep yep yep
It must be done regardless of the outcome.

I measured a warp for two scarves with mostly the brown multi-colored yarn with tiny vertical stripes of the red and blue.

Don’t know what the mystery yarn is. The solid colors are cotton flake.