After the Rain

After the Rain is an exploration of the joy and growth that can come after difficult times. This collection was equal parts a reflection of the emotional experience of entering the wider world again (engaging in work and school and in person friendships) after years of quarantine and isolation with small children, a reaffirmation of my love for the tradition and craft of handweaving, and a self indulgent explosion of rainbows.

The warp is a combination of hand dyed and commercially dyed 8/2 cottons, the ground weft is a commercially dyed 16/2 cotton.

The pattern wefts are approximately fingering weight, the rainbow above is hand spun while the vintage rainbow below is handdyed commercial sock yarn.

This is woven in a slightly modified traditional overshot pattern known as “Sun Moon and Stars” which is #74 in The Shuttlecraft Book of American Handweaving by Mary Meigs Atwater. Like much traditional overshot, it was woven on a four shaft loom. I deeply adore the juxtaposition of a very traditional overshot pattern with modern color choices and hand dyed yarns, so you can absolutely expect to see more explorations of this in future.

The After the Rain warp was actually going to in a quite different direction: full of moody blues and explorations of mental health until my 4 year old daughter requested “a rainbow sweater with a hood!” I certainly couldn’t say no! And once I got dyeing, all I wanted to do was put rainbows all over this warp. Thus, After the Rain was born. This ROYGVBV set of colorways is what I’m using in her sweater, and there’s a few iterations of it in the shop.

This collection is comprised of both woven pieces coming off of the loom, and corresponding hand dyed yarns. It is a way of creating a collection that I hope to explore further, working within a theme in all of my chosen mediums and releasing them into the world. Someday I hope to have my ish together to release them all at the same time and debut the entire collection vs. letting bits and pieces out ahead of others. But I’m very pleased with it overall!

Plant Witch: Birch Bramble Reed accepted into "Entanglements" at FAA

Plant Witch: Birch Bramble Reed was accepted into the Fairbanks Arts Association juried show “Entanglements” this spring. The First Friday reception is this week, Friday April 1, from 5-7 pm. It will be on exhibit in the Bear Gallery through the end of April and available for purchase through the gallery.

Warp: Hand dyed long staple Supima cotton warp

Weft: Hand dyed rose viscose weft

Inlays: linen/mohair and Pima cotton

The ogham inlays in the piece represent birch, bramble, and reed for beginnings/new growth, harvest, and renewal..
The ogham for birch - beithe, symbolizes beginnings and new growth. It’s the joy of baby sprouts, of digging into still cold earth to plant this year’s crops, it is the hope and optimism of the beginning of the growing season.
The ogham for bramble - muin, symbolizes harvest, fruitfulness, and feasting. It’s perhaps the most iconic and eagerly anticipated phase of the garden’s cycle, providing the #plantwitch with ample opportunity to relish in their baskets and buckets and handsfull of produce.
The ogham for reed - ngetal, symbolizes renewal and healing, it stands in here for the fallow season of the garden after the lasts of the harvests.

Plant Witch represents the magic of growing things: seeds unfurling deep underground at Imbolc, sprouting at Ostara, blooming at Beltane, growing through Litha, harvesting at Lammas, preserving the bounty through Mabon, and deepening the compost at Samhain.

Tending a garden, cultivating houseplants, chatting with wild plants, befriending plant allies. Food and flowers and medicine and dye.

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Ombre as weft element: a cowl on Surfacing

This was a super fun cowl to weave.  I'd been saving up a very special yarn remnant to use as weft on it for months....

You may remember, way back last summer, I dyed the warp for Unconditional.  It was my entry for the Great Competition of Weavers at IBC Atlanta: the themed competition required an ombre and/or monochrome element in the submission.  Well, the structure I used required what is known as parallel threading - every other warp thread being color A and every other warp thread being color B.  One color was a deep maroon of mother's love, and the other warp color was an ombre grad from mostly blues to mostly greens.  The cakes of yarn are pictured above.  As I wound the warp, I wound the leftover bits onto a pirn to save for this project.  So the ombre that goes warp wise on Unconditional became an ombre that goes weft-wise on this cowl on Surfacing.

I love that the shift from blues to greens speaks to the heart of Surfacing, to that liminal space between the depths of the sea and the verdant hills above.  

This cowl is 100% long staple Egyptian cotton that is super soft and soapy.  It is one of the only pieces that will be publicly available in the shop off of the full Surfacing warp, although I may sneak in a scarf-only warp in the Surfacing colorways because there is just so much I want to play with!