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

Surfacing: a story

Surfacing is 14 Mile Farm's tribute to the seal maidens in the folklore of my northwestern European heritage. I remember reading stories and tales of the Selkie as a child and they always left a taste of sadness, of longing, and great depth lingering like the taste of salt after a visit to the shore.  As you may know, the Selkie is both seal and woman.  She puts on her fur coat to swim with flippers amongst her kin and she takes it off to walk with legs on the land of men.  She is a shapeshifter, living liminally between two worlds.

The sea speaks symbolically to our emotions, to the tidal pulls of love and desire or sadness and grief.  In the same way that our inner workings of heart and soul may be invisible to the casual acquaintance, there are currents and cross currents, whole worlds unseen beneath the surface waves of the sea.  The sea is a great Mother, nourishing all her children who live within and about her depths.  She follows the pull of the moon, creating tides,  just as woman's womb follows the cycles of waxing and waning in the night sky.  The sea is deep, powerful, and ungoverned, as untameable as the soul.

The tales of the Selkie that I grew up on were tales of love and loss.  The Selkie would doff her sealskin to become a comely lass with liquid brown eyes and dance naked on the sand. She would fall in love with a fisherman or a farmer, a handsome lad from the village.  He would steal her sealskin and hide it in order to keep her on land.  They marry and have children and are very happy.  But as the years go by the woman grows first restless then sad, her eyes always drawn out to sea.  Neither her children nor her husband can comfort her in this nameless grief.  Then one day she finds her bundled sealskin where it was hidden by that handsome lad become loving husband.  She unwraps it down by the shore, puts it on, and dives as a seal into the waves.  Her children and their father mourn for her when she does not return.  But from then on, on certain days, a seal with liquid brown eyes watches the family from the rocks on the shore.

As a child I was captivated and heartbroken by the pathos of this story.  Now, as a mother and artist, I seek to bridge the worlds of shore and sea.  The Selkie is drawn by that which is most integral to herself, she surrenders to the deep sea-pull on her soul.

This warp asks the questions: How can we honor the work of the woman's soul?  How can we support her deep inner work without requiring the sacrifice of love and family life?  How can we create a legacy for our daughters that does not demand they sacrifice either themselves or those they love?  As mothers, how can we integrate the wild sea that pulls at the secret depth of the soul with the warmth of hearth fire and the home?

Surfacing will be woven in a network drafted twill evocative of waves.  The warp is 100% long staple Egyptian cotton.  There will be a variety of wefts including Seacell, Marine Silk, and 100% seaweed viscose.  I'm so deeply pleased to be able to weave with seaweed for this particular project.

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Artwork by Jessica Shirley.  Buy an art print here.

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