Saturday, October 20, 2012

Hagen loom for sale

A friend is selling her small Hagen tapestry loom; $250 plus shipping.  Let me know if you're interested and I'll pass along her contact information.

The Hagen loom is made in Norway and Noel Thurner at Norsk Fjord Fiber imported them to the U.S. for several years.  I have several Hagen looms myself and they're wonderful tools.  They come with a shedding device but I've also modified the ones I have so that I can use leashes with them.  Very versatile looms!

Here is a link to an earlier post in which one of my Hagen looms is shown.  The basic loom is the same as what's for sale but note that the photos are of my loom modified to have leashes rather than the shedding device that comes with the loom.  My loom is also on a floor stand which I don't believe is with the loom that's for sale.

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Voted early...

... with gratitude for a job well done so far and fervent wishes for four more years to complete the task!
Thank you, President Obama.


Monday, October 8, 2012

More with the large feathers...

... it's still not there yet but developing.  This is another Photoshop manipulation after today's painting session:


Friday, October 5, 2012

And so it begins again...

... designing for tapestry, that is.

I've been setting up looms to have them prepared for the next tapestry work.  I have three warps on three looms now, two of them 24" wide and one 48" wide.  Oh--I also have a 8" wide warp on a frame loom--can't forget that one!

My interest in feathers is developing into cartoons... I have one piece started on a linen warp, cartoon based on one of the drawings made while at the Lillian Smith Center earlier this year.  So far I've only gotten a couple of inches into it and it's waiting while I work on the development of a cartoon for the larger warp.

Here's a bit from the studio and the design process that's underway:


This loom has the linen warp, sett at 7.5 epi (every other dent in a 15 dent reed).  It's an 8/4 rug linen that I'm using.  Weft will be an assortment of Vevgarn and 20/2 wool.  The painting from which I'll be working is hanging to the right of the loom.  I haven't yet stitched the cartoon that's on Mylar in place behind the warp.

The larger design is developing on a large sheet of layout paper stapled to my wall...


The design began with sort of automatic drawing, scribbling with a large graphite stick held with my arm extended and large sweeping marks being made.  I didn't realize at first that the crossing over of some of the marks would lend themselves to being turned into falling feathers... but that's what's happening.

Once the feathers "appeared" I began to enhance the feather shapes:


Then today I added blue paint to the background... want the feathers to seem to fall from the sky.  My thoughts this morning about the piece arrived at the phrase:  "What if all the birds fell from the sky?"
And so I've continued thinking about that as I've worked today on it.  

I photographed the piece and did a bit of Photoshop manipulation to see it differently.  Here are a few of those versions; did twelve or so but will only show a few:


I decided to flip the image because it seemed to be falling more emphatically in this direction"


Solarization was pretty interesting... anything that causes me to look at the image in a different way is useful for me.


I'll return to the piece with brush and paint tomorrow to see how some of this Photoshop work might lead me along different paths than just my eye alone can find.

Hope to finish the designing for this larger piece by early next week and begin weaving soon!  October is a busy month for me outside the studio so don't know how much I'll be able to accomplish on the piece.  Will I be able to finish a large one by the end of the year?!