Spark

In my head, Spark is one classy lady.  She shines in pearls and high heels, elegant and poised.  She loves a classic ensemble of blue jeans, a white t-shirt, sunglasses, and flats.  She’s the kind of woman you admire from afar, wondering how on earth she manages to be all that she is and when you get to know her you are blown away by her kindness, her caring, and her warm hugs.  

The Spring 2016 Great Competition of Weavers theme was “Under the Microscope.”  This competition was only open to OOAK (one of a kind) wraps, so this is the only piece of Spark there ever was or ever will be.  Spark is inspired by the process of mitosis.  

As the daughter of a biologist, I have many fond memories of peering into the magical microscopic world contained in a drop of pond water.  I was fascinated by “zoomers,” my childhood name for microbes that shot across the slide propelled by cilia or flagella or amoeboid movement.  Yeast was particularly cool to watch, because of how FAST they multiplied!  Dad was a PhD student in the early ‘90s and did much of his dissertation work on an electron microscope.  It lived in its own room down the yellow linoleum hallway and I remember being SO impressed by it and by what could be seen through it.  I was 5 years old. I remember the sheer magic of catching a “zoomer” when it was splitting in two, and it was this memory that I hoped to capture with “Spark.”  

I considered a black/white/grey grad in homage to the images that we see through electron microscopes, but at least in my memory, the early behemoth of a microscope I stood on a stool to peer into gave a blue cast to its images, and I chose to show this in “Spark.”  

Spark is woven in an overshot variation where the warp intersects with the tabby weft to make a ground of plainweave.  In this particular variation there are actually a few picks of basketweave (basically a doubled thread plainweave) in this ground cloth.  The pattern weft then floats over this ground to create the pattern.  The ground of plainweave means that this is a very strong cloth even though the pattern weft has floats that are longer than would otherwise be optimal for the purposes of a baby wrap.  

Funny story: when I first went to look at Maggie (my loom), her former owner – a weaver in her 80’s who had to retire from weaving due to degenerative arthritis in her hands -  asked me what I was most excited to weave.  I had just learned overshot in my weaving class and had fallen hardcore in love with the weave.  I told her that I was most excited to weave overshot.  Fast forward 8 or 9 years and this is the first full project that I’ve woven on it in overshot.  There are always oh so many tempting projects! 

I truly love this structure, and it is super fun and fascinating to see it come to life behind the passing of the shuttles but it is not a quick weave.  After each pick, the weaver sets down one shuttle, picks up the other and throws it, making sure that the two wefts stay cleanly wound around each other along the selvedge.  I set up my treadles so that my right foot was treadling the plainweave tabby picks, and my left foot was treadling the pattern picks.  Each single pattern repeat required 74 steps on the treadles.  I believe that I picked up speed the last meter or so, but I was averaging 10 inches per hour.  And that’s based on an hour of strict weaving, no pauses to check my phone or nurse a baby or repair a broken thread! 

I also love that the process of mitosis – the division and replication of one into two – speaks to this precious era of babywearing.  This blink of time when our children are so very little is when they learn to identify themselves as themselves.  Early childhood development experts talk about the process of individuation, that babies begin life with a recognition of mom as part of self and have to learn that they are actually two beings. Babywearing allows us to continue holding them as they undergo this transition into independence.  The 4th trimester and the concept of the motherbaby dyad are biological and psychological realities that I wish were better understood and recognized by our culture.  

Spark’s final measurements are 3.2 m stih weighing in at 280 gsm.She is woven with 16/2 cotton for the warp and tabby weft and 8/2 lyocelle (commonly known as Tencel) pattern weft.

If you are interested in following along more closely as things go onto and come off of my loom, please come join my Facebook group! I also post updates on Instagram. 

Owl Flight

OwlFlight is a very special warp. It is Avery's warp. Our piece of it will be our very first handwoven. And when her wearing days are over? I'll chop it and sew it up into a blanket quilt for her.  Should her tastes run girly, full of pink and sparkles, it will be an oasis of blues and whites and brown splashed across her bed. I admit to finding this prospect  slightly amusing.  When she spreads her wings and launches into the world, be it college or a calling, I will bundle it up to travel with her.  A bit of mama love, always and forever. 

Here is the story of how it came about. It gets a little woo-woo, just so's you know.  

Last October I found myself in Seattle, attending a prenatal yoga teacher training alongside my mother.  I'm a yoga teacher as well as a weaver, and my mom is a midwife.  Last summer Husband and I had decided it was time to invite another soul to join us on this life path.  I've always always known I wanted children.  And finally I was ready to choose motherhood.  Part of my preparation for the journey that is pregnancy and birth and motherhood was this prenatal yoga training.  It was wonderful.  I highly highly recommend it, if you are into that sort of thing! 

The weekend following the training, I attended a workshop on the Energetics of Fertility taught by a goddess of a woman named Taylor Phinny.  (Seriously, she's amazing and wonderful.  Check her out, especially if you are in the Encinitas, California area!)

It was a wonderful weekend: meditations to connect with the womb space, with the principle of Divine Feminine energy.  We spoke in depth about energetic self-care for fertility, about practical ways to honor the monthly cycle of fertility and cultivate the feminine self.  She gave me an energy healing session that I count among the most powerful healings I've ever received, clearing an energy block inherited through the line of my grandmothers.  

I saw my womb as Cerridwen's cauldron, awaiting souls to rebirth into this world of ours.

And then, in our final meditation together, she took me even deeper.  Guided me to a forest clearing where I met with my children.  Watched them from the trees as they played with other shining young ones, then welcomed them with open arms and teary eyes.  We sat together, walked among the trees, and then we traveled North.  They found their papa's sleeping self and said hello.  Bear hugs all around.  

Coming back to myself, to my body in the yoga room at the workshop, Taylor offered me chalks and paper.  And I drew.  Sketched out the essences of my children.  Soul portraits.

In those few minutes in deep astral/psychic meditation space, I knew these shining souls intimately.  Deeply.  Irrevocably entwined.  I felt them around me the following months, waiting for just the right mixture of genetics to choose to be conceived.  For a while I was equal parts terrified and excited, because I was nearly sure that two would jump in at once.  Twins seem like a lot of work.  I'm pretty happy they decided to take turns!  

Early in the pregnancy it was clear to me that the child I had drawn as an Owl in flight was going to be born.

Spirit drawing.  Soul portrait.  Yeah, I'm more than a little woo-woo! 

When I began contemplating what to weave to welcome the inhabitant of my womb into the world, I knew that it had to be this. Blues and browns and greys.  OwlFlight.

If you keep your eye on 14 Mile Farm in the coming years, I can tell you now that you will see wrap warps based on the soul portraits of each of my children! 

Warp Details: 10/2 mercerized cotton in herringbone twill.  

Wrap pieces as well as cowls will be available by draw. 

One wrap will be sent out as a traveling tester.  

If you are interested in hosting the tester and/or to be first to find out about pieces for sale, join the 14 Mile chatter group on Facebook. 

Good Night Moon

This fall I participated in the Great Competition of Weavers .  It was so so so much fun, and a really useful kick in the rear end to sit myself down at the loom!  It is a competition of weavers of babywearing wraps from all over the world.  If you are interested in such things, or would like to vote the next time around, go join Loom to Wrap on Facebook and keep an eye out for the 2016 competition(s).

The theme this time was "Children's Literature." Honestly, I was a little bit on the fence about whether I wanted to enter this fall.  I had only just found out about it, and with the baby on the way, I was debating the wisdom of diving quite so headfirst into such a project.  But when the theme was announced, I knew there was no choice.  I had to do it.  And I had to do "Good Night Moon" by Margaret Wise Brown.  I have to admit that I second guessed myself a number of times, most notably perhaps when the yarn showed up at my door.  The bright and primary colors used to illustrate "Good Night Moon" are SO not my colors.  I almost threw in the towel right then.  But I'm so glad I didn't.

I was an English major in college, and as such the word 'literature' has certain connotations for me.  I recognize that the genre of "children's literature" contains any story for children that is printed on a page and disseminated in the form of a book.  But for me, not any story would do.  Literature is somehow something more.  And you see, "Good Night Moon" taught me to read.  It was therefore the only book I could do.

I don't have any memory of not being able to read.  I remember not being able to write.  I have memories from an age at which I know that I was not yet reading.  But I have no memory of written words as a code that I did not understand.  My mother read "Good Night Moon" to me over and over.  Hundreds if not a thousand times or more.  She tells me that I had it memorized, that I would "read" it to friends and visitors before I had actually acquired reading as a skillset.  But between being read other books (lots of them!  all the time!) and a constant repetition of "Good Night Moon," I decoded written language and began reading on my own at age 3 or so.  So in a very real way, beyond being a great kids book, "Good Night Moon" opened my doors to the vast and wonderful world of literature.  

I wanted to honor the words of the story, somehow pay homage to the code of the writing that this book illuminated for me.  So in addition to choosing the colors of the book for the pattern of the warp, I decided to weave the story into the weft.  The weft alternates between black and white, and by a very happy accident this alternation along with the stripes in the warp combine for a gorgeous tartan effect.  

I assigned each letter in the alphabet a number, 1 through 26.  I assigned the spaces between letters the value of 2 and the spaces between words the value of 5.  And I proceeded to weave the letters in black and the spaces in white, spelling out the text of the story.  So if you were to spend the time counting the threads of the wrap or happened to have a scanner with the correct programming, the wrap can be read similarly to a bar code from tail to tail.  It begins "In the great green room...."

The colors of the warp are pulled from this page:

They are a stylized representation, perhaps a distillation, of the patterns of color as they move across the page (and across the width of the warp) from left to right.  You can see the stripes of green and yellow for the curtains, the little rainbow for the bookshelf on one side, and the blue and white stripes of the bunny's pajamas on the other side.

All in all, I'm very happy with how the design turned out.  I hope that someone enjoys the tartan wrap as a staple of an autumn wardrobe, as a Christmas-y accessory, or on a future trip to Scotland!  I'll be selling it via draw real soon on the 14 Mile Farm Facebook page.  

"Goodnight room, goodnight moon, goodnight cow jumping over the moon."