OwlFlight Flying

Three baby wraps came off of the OwlFlight warp.  One stayed at 14 Mile Farm to carry the little girl for whom it was designed.  One went home to a land of sand and saguaro cactus.  And one traveled the country.  

There's something very special about seeing my child using/wearing/snuggling a thing that I made. Maybe you know the feeling, too? I grew her in my body, my body feeds and sustains her, and these things my hands made are keeping her warm and safe. 

Resting on snow...

Mirroring the colors of the Alaskan cusp of winter-into-spring.

Visits with dinosaurs! 

And to botanical gardens...

Amongst the roses blooming in Oregon's spring.  

In midwestern grass...

And under prairie skies...  

Snuggling babies everywhere she went.

I designed this warp as my daughter's legacy warp (you can read the story here) and our piece will eventually be chopped up and resewn into a blanket for her bed.  It was the first baby wrap I designed, though the second I completed. 

It was a ridiculously rewarding experience sending a piece of this warp - a piece of my motherheart really - traveling to snuggle other mamas and babes. This one found a home with a mama for whom it is a special reminder of her grandmother, which warms my heart that much more, but I definitely plan on continuing to send the occasional wrap around the country (perhaps even around the world!) to soak up love in exchange for love.  

*Join us in the chatter group to hear about future traveling wraps!* 

Fire in the Sky

Oh my.  It has been nearly a year since I wove this warp, and now over a year since I designed it and I've yet to hit publish on its blog post!  This was my first go-round playing with the idea of the aurora borealis as inspiration.  I have another aurora warp coming up on the loom, so it seemed an auspicious time to finally get this one published.  

This warp is a dark navy blue with splashed streaks of color across it.  So many times when I see the aurora used as inspiration, the warp is a riot of (beautiful) colors.  But in the snow quiet wintertime when I step outside in the middle of the night and look up, I see the vast expanse of the dark sky held up by points of starlight and a swath of swirling curtains of ethereal color.  I wanted to mirror that relationship of vast dark sky to ribbon of color in this warp.  

The first wrap piece was woven with a black tencel weft.  The weave is a faux crackle algorithmically designed by Ralph Griswold.  The pattern of the weave reminds me of the stands of black spruce growing stunted and beautiful in the muskeg, and of the spiky patches of fireweed cropping up in meadows and roadsides.   It is visually camoflauged in this piece because the navy warp against black weft doesn't give the sort of high contrast that allows for a weave pattern to shine.  I do love the way that the interval of the pattern repeat and the random intervals of the pinstriped colors interact creating a visual effect of the ribbons of colors seeming to dance and move.

The second wrap piece had the added inspiration of a particular visionary dreamscape auroral display.  It was a really special piece to weave and it went home to the person to whom that visionary dreamscape was speaking when I witnessed it.  Such a magical experience to be able to pull that vision into cloth! 

I used cotton for the weft on this piece, in (mostly) the same colors as are in the warp and in a variety of techniques.  This piece was a total playground for me.  It was so much fun to do.  While it looks as though the weft may be hand painted, it isn't.  It is all commercial colors with the visual effect due to hand manipulated weaving techniques.  Clasped weft and alternating wefts, and alternating clasped wefts.  For most of this piece I had between two and eight shuttles going carrying different colors.  It was a totally improvisatory process, going through themes of color and technique, checking back in with the memory of that visionary dreamscape and moving into a new theme of color or technique.  

One of the things I most adore about weaving is the way that once you know what you're doing, once you know the container you're working in, you can change things up and play to your heart's content.  This was the same weave structure I had used for the prior warp, Field of Dreams, so I'd woven probably over 20 meters of this weave and had learned the structure inside and out to the point where I understood how it worked when I played with it.  In the photo below, you can see how I played with treadling to change up the visuals of the weave pattern.  This was another improvisation, like a harmony to the melody of the colorwork. 

I love including cowls and fabric for making other things on my baby wrap warps.  Not everyone who follows my work is a babywearer, and the children of  even the most avid babywearer do eventually grow up and grow out of 'uppies', so I love being able to have items that can serve a purpose in the lives of those who don't wear their young children on the daily.  I wove a set of cowls on this warp featuring weft by a local dye artist Bad Sheep Yarn. 

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 Draft Credit :  Handweaving.net CW108265, Crackle Design Project, Ralph Griswold, United States, 2004, #13482

Field of Dreams

Field of Dreams is the most recent warp to come off of the loom here at 14 Mile Farm.  Its woven in a "crackle" weave by Ralf Griswold. The warp is 8/2 cotton from Maurice Brassard.  

This wrap was inspired by the fireweed that blooms in the Alaskan summer.  

Fireweed covers the landscape here in interior Alaska in the summers.  It is a very resilient plant, the first to return to area after a forest fire, hence the name.  Each flower on the stalk fluffs out like a dandelion in late summer and is blown on the wind to reseed the land for the next year.  

It grows on roadsides, in meadows and fields, and covers the hill in our front yard.

The warp moves through spring to summer greens, with magenta and fuschia followed by the grey blues of a late summer sky, and natty pinstriping to evoke the the fluff of the fireweed going to seed.

Here we see the cloth building up on the cloth beam.  It is one of my favorite and most satisfying sights as a weaver.  You can see the weft change from the magenta to the greens.

This piece is woven with a magenta Tencel, and will be staying here with us.  The combination of the grippiness of the crackle weave with the glide provided by the tencel makes for divine wrapping qualities.

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A cowl in grey Tencel.  Tencel in a crackle weave is one of my new favorite things.  I love the play between the shine of the tencel and the matte unmercerized cotton.  So soft!

This piece was woven with a hand-dyed variegated Tencel weft in shades of green and will be flying to a new home.

I love the way that the variegated greens are evocative of the oh-so-green summer landscape that fireweed blooms against.  This weft came together even better than I had hoped.

Bands of magenta tencel in the tails of the variegated piece to highlight the bright color of the flowering fireweed.

The variegated weft was a joy to weave, always changing.  I see more hand-dyed yarns in the future here at 14 Mile Farm!