Spring flowers
The red roses are blooming.
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Archive for year: 2007
Pyrexplosion
I’ve always heard that while tempered borosilicate glass is hard to break, once you manage it, it can be really spectacular. Something about the way it’s made causes it to explode. I’d never seen it until today.
This was a four-cup glass measure:
More behind the cut
Silk Work and Card Weaving Workshops – California!
Howdy everybody!
I’m going to be in Santa Monica teaching at the Fabulous Fiber Fest –
http://www.thefiberfest.com/ this August 17-19.
It’s not up on the webpage yet, but I’m going to do a two-part hands-on workshop on card weaving.
Class descriptions follow behind the cut
Brocade graphs
I’m tucking these in here so I can pull them down at the office.
Gold of Assam
I found a sericulture collective in Cooch Behar that raises the elusive and *amazingly* beautiful Muga silk, Antheraea assamensis. They sent me a packet of samples. I’m SO buying some of this stuff as soon as possible.
Silk organzine sizes
This is really not of much interest to anybody but me and a couple of friends.
These are some silk organzines that I got samples of yesterday. Sea Line Silks
Sammons Center for the Arts – Sammons Jazz
A brief personal interlude – this is where I work!
It’s an arts center called The Sammons Center for the Arts; it’s in Dallas, on Oak Lawn at Harry Hines. It’s a renovated historic structure, and we provide office and rehearsal space for local performing arts groups.
We have a monthly jazz music series called Sammons Jazz.
New stitch markers
I’m part of a community called stitchswap – we make and trade stitch markers.
These are cloisonne beads; it’s great, because they’re substantial without being too heavy.
Saga Nishiki workshop
This past week, I’ve been taking a Saga nishiki (also: saganishiki) workshop with Mihoko Karaki. It’s a Japanese weaving technique that uses a gilded or lacquered rice-paper warp, and a silk weft. The design possibilities are AMAZING. The technique is uniquely Japanese, and is used traditionally to make handbags, jewelry, obis, and special shoes.
This is the words – Saga nishiki – written out in Japanese.
This is a piece of Mihoko’s work.
Needless to say, mine is a lot simpler – and riddled with errors in tension and beat. Although by the end of the workshop, I was getting to the point of a two-color inlay brocade design, and my beat was considerably improved. Here’s a shot of my warp – a rose-path design, before I got into the second color.
Needle sketching
I’ve been reading up on a style of embroidery called silk shading, thread painting, or needle painting. It’s a fairly realistic rendering style, using fine threads of silk or cotton.
This is more of a needle sketch, than a needle painting… I wanted to see if I could render this stargazer petal in silk. The silk is not my hand-dyed, it’s commercial Kreinik Soie Platte. I wish that I’d had a closer medium pink, and a darker purple-pink instead of the red – but, as a proof-of-concept type sketch, it worked out fine.
