"Welcome Back"

We think of it as an extension of the Guild: Filous Patisserie, Lygon St, Carlton.

Just to make me feel as though the feeling might be mutual, the greeting I got this morning when I lined up for my customary coffee and chocolate muffin, was "Welcome Back". Wonderful words, those! A great way to prepare for a day of creative, but exacting work. Dropping in at Filous before class became part of my routine for the Weaving Certificate at the Guild last year.

The routine goes something like this:

• breakfast of fruit, cereal and espresso at home some time between 7 & 8 am. Make that 2 espressos, it's Saturday, after all
• pack for class: books, pencil case, writing paper, graph paper, loom, accessories, lunch box and other sundry items . . . I always throw in a handwork project at the last minute, just in case there are a few spare minutes in the day . . . did I happen to mention I'm a bit of an optimist?
• plan to leave home some time around 9 am
• pack the car with aforementioned stuff: it takes at least one more trip and several more attempts at fitting everything into the car than I anticipate, even after doing it 17 times last year
• mental check on cash supplies as I drive off, resulting in side-trip to the auto-teller
• 20 min drive towards the city--usually a tram or two to negotiate along the way
• internal debate on the last section of Lygon St before reaching Carlton: "will I drive up the lane and drop off the loom, or just carry it across the road?" Today I decided to take advantage of the loading zone conveniently located at the door of the Guild rooms
• turn left into "Shakespeare St". I guess it's more than a laneway, but only just
• assess parking situation, while waving to various other students arriving at the same time
• stop when safe--today I was lucky, I didn't have to manouvre around many other cars
• quickly unload loom and (big) bag of stuff
• drive away, while greeting more fellow students
• cross Lygon St--negotiating traffic and trams--park in the all day free on Saturday parking area next to the Cemetery
• lock and leave the car
• cross Lygon St again--negotiating traffic and trams again, on foot this time

. . . it is at this point that Filous becons me! I have to walk past the door you can see in the pic above to get back to the Guild. I'm tired already! Class hasn't even started, and it's always theory first. I stop and join the queue. A smile and a greeting added to the coffee and chocolate muffin and I'm ready for a day of weaving. Five minutes to catch up with a few more of the weavers who have made the same decision makes me even readier. It's approaching 10 am and Gerlinde always starts on time. Ready, set. . . welcome back!

Pattern for an Evening Bag

I'm a practical sort of a woman. So, when I decided to make a pretty silk evening bag as my personal "choc-orange challenge", I wanted to be sure that it would be big enough to hold life's necessities. I'll let you speculate and debate as to what life's necessities might be.

I'd already decided on a pouch with a drawstring as the basic design. So then I noticed this ice-cream bucket. I'd been using it to give skeins of hand-spun that lovely relaxing little soak they get when I've finished working with them. I thought to myself, "Surely 2-litres is enough for life's necessities!", and when I converted it to dark chocolate brown silk with a ruffled drawstring top, it didn't look too bulky. So, now you know, the capacity of that silk bag is just under 2 litres, and that's enough.

My Loom

My table loom is an eight-shaft made by Eric Noble in South Australia. I think it deserves a post all of it's own, having served me faithfully through the past year. This one belongs to the Guild. I had it on loan for the Certificate course last year and I need to return it this week--hence my flurry of activity in finishing the project that's on it. I like it so much that I've bought one just like it.

Eric Noble is supposed to be retiring. I don't know his personal story, but like many craftsmen of his calibre, there doesn't seem to be a next generation ready to take over. So I wanted to make sure I got a loom made by him while he's still making them.

I wish I'd taken a photo of my loom when it arrived in the post. The packaging seemed to sum up this man's attitude to his work. He had built a cardboard box to just the right dimensions. Then he'd glued in blocks of styrofoam to protect any vulnerable places. The whole thing was tailor made to ensure everything arrived just right. And it was just right. I'm looking forward to many many hours enjoying his craftsmanship.

Back to the Weaving

The weaving course at the Guild starts up again on Saturday, and I've finally got back to my weaving. It's the supplementary warp, Turned Monksbelt, project left over from the end of last year and I've been meaning to get to it right through the holidays. But it's been one of those things that I kept putting off.

As soon as I started weaving, I remembered why I like it so much! The rhythm of work is great, and it's such a definite activity. I need a place where I can legitimately beat in a controlled and creative way, and weaving is it. Just to add to my satisfaction, the work grew at a great rate. I can see myself finishing it in the next day or two.

Here it is on the loom. I've raised the shafts holding the supplementary warp so you can see it more clearly.
The fibre is a mercerised cotton. I have to acknowledge the source of the contrast yarn because it's such a fantastic name. It comes from Lunatic Fringe Yarns! How good is that!

And to round off the mental health associations, I'm off to an exhibition of textile art in the city this morning. It's called, "It Keeps Me Sane. . . women, craft, creativity, wellbeing". What more can I say?

Power Tools

I ended up using my power drill to make the twisted cord for the bag. I was working with short lengths and wanted lots of twist. So this worked better for me than mucking around on the spinning wheel. This is a cordless drill which has been retired from active duty in household maintenance and is seeing out it's days in semi-retirement with my textiles. I also use it to wind bobbins for my weaving.

More is More

I've been playing with possibilities for the twisted cord to finish off this evening bag. I think in this case more is more!


The cord on the far right is 16 of the singles progressively twisted together. I think that will do. It will have to do because I only spun up a small amount of the choc-orange singles and now they're all gone. The chocolates are all gone too, but that I can fix:)

Choc-orange Challenge

I've just finished the Summer Challenge for my 3D5S group. The meeting was last weekend, and I didn't get there, but I had this project in mind and it turned into a personal challenge, so here it is: Choc-orange silk evening bag, with hand-spun wool cord. The choc-orange chocolate, courtesy of Ernest Hillier, a local chocolatier, no longer exists. I ate it as my reward as soon as I'd taken the photo. I wanted to catch some of the richness and sweetness of this particular chocolate combination, along with the extra tang that the orange provides.

3D5S--3 dimensions, 5 senses--is an inspiration group. We organise outings to inspiring places and then respond to our experiences in our art work--mostly textile art, but anything really. The break-up outing last year was to a chocolate cafe, hence my inspiration for this piece.

The summer challenge each year is to make a 10cm by 10 cm something in response to one of our group outings or a summer holiday experience. The challenge is designed to be quite broad in it's scope and in previous years I've made samples or fairly rough prototypes. This year I decided to make a real thing. I'm happy with the way the orange and brown silk interact in the bag and I quite like the cord I've made, but I'm not sure that it's strong enough for the bag--visually not physically. So I think I'll keep playing with that aspect. What I've got at the moment is a 6-ply cord--singles spun and overplied, then navaho-plied back the other way. The part I navaho plied was just the last bit left on one bobbin, the rest I've made as a 4-ply, but that definitely was too fine. I'm going to try twisting the cord--doubling it--one more time just as it is. If that doesn't satisfy me, I'll ply in an orange thread and see what that does to it. I wonder if that means I can buy myself some more lovely chocolates to eat as I continue to explore the possibilities:)