Peggy Osterkamp's Weaving Blog
"Weaving should be fun!"
I hope you’ll check out the close-up enlargements of the blue silk pieces in my recent posts (and this one, too.)
I had another photo shoot today. It was absolutely wonderful to see the close-up details possible with a digital camera and a great photographer who knows how to photograph textiles.
This piece is fun. Do you know what it is? (40 shafts! with a manual dobby–maybe not worth all the work pegging.)
You can find photos of my work that I added to the gallery by clicking on the heading “Gallery” on the home page. It is along the top of the page, under the photo–other topics are books, dvd, and the gallery.
Here is another blue silk piece from the same warp as Cloud Tiles I posted yesterday. The width is about 4″ (so you can figure the scale). It is a satin weave on 8 shafts. The center part I picked up with a pick-up stick.
I just put up new photos in the gallery section of this blog. I’m thrilled with the results of the photo shoot–the pictures look as good as the work! I have the final session on Wednesday. Look for more from time to time on the blog.
These are my first very fine silk pieces. They are damask–playing with warp face and weft face.
This is the scarf I wove with the Neal Howard painted warp kit. It was such fun to weave along and see the colors merge and change. I love wearing it as a sort of scarf-ruff.
I’m weaving a lovely warp I bought as a kit at Convergence in Albuquerque last summer. It was made by Neal Howard. She dyed three warps and told how to thread them in the heddles to integrate them. Each one is different, so it is great fun to weave along and see the color changes–in one or all of the stripes.
I’m not following her idea–so I’ll report later if my idea for the cloth works out. Dyeing is Neal’s speciality– I bought one of her jackets at the previous Convergence. She offers yarns and woven pieces.
This is a beautiful mingei spool winder, but it needs a crank and spindle. Japanese folkart is called Mingei and tools that were by hand for the home are examples (and textiles).
I have had this old spool winder for years–but the arm to guide the thread onto the spool was missing.
A friend made a new arm complete with tiny wooden pegs to attach it. When I bought it I loved all the gears. I tried to use it a few years ago, but without the guiding arm it was almost impossibly tedious to both turn the crank and guide the silk onto the spool.
So, I bought a new one from Habu Textiles in New York. It’s that winder I used for the skein that took a month to spool off. (see previous post) In the end, I sent the remaining skeins to Habu to spool off. I have several old wooden spools. they look lovely with silk thread wound on them just as they are.
A home was immediately found for the curtain stretcher! I couldn’t bear it just going out there to anyone. We call yarn and stuff like I’m giving away, “dead weaver’s yarn”. I’m glad I could pass on so much on my own steam. Today I took a workshop about silk–degumming and shrinking with overtwist yarns. It inspired me greatly. I’m glad I kept some of my overtwist yarn–but I gave away pounds of it. People were astounded that I wove my own cloth! I showed them the photos that are in the blog’s gallery. I know the silk in those pieces collapses a lot–so that with degumming and resisting parts of the cloth by clamping, I’ve got a lot of ideas swirling around in my head.
Here is a review of my show which goes until February 13, 2011 at The Tamalpais in Greenbrae, California. This is just what I would want a reviewer to say. You can see more of the silk pieces in the blog gallery.
“Many a critic has discussed where the line is drawn between art and craft. Peggy Osterkamp has crossed that line into the arts in her current show at The Tamalpais in Greenbrae. Her work ranges from richly textured, tapestry-like hangings to “critters” fashioned from her woven pieces immersed in water to shrink them into whimsical little pieces, to soft, pale, gossamer pieces which seem to float on the wall.
Peggy’s reputation as a teacher and author of numerous books on weaving is enhanced by her skill as a fine artist, and we look forward to more of her magnificent creations.”
My show has been a huge success and I’m thrilled beyond words. People are blown away by the work–they have no concept of weaving, let alone what I’ve done. This is my first one-person show and I really do feel like an artist. I’ll post more photos of some of the pieces. The show is at the Life Care Community where I moved in April. I hope to get people here interested in doing some handwork soon.
Here is “Pink Creature”–a piece woven with high twist wool thread and sewing thread. It was woven as a flat piece in an open weave then put in water–Pink Creature is the result of these two steps.
Photos of the installation are in a post dated January 6. Also, see photos in the gallery.
I’ve always been fascinated by illustrations of fan reeds in books. In Japan, I purchased an obi woven with one. I also saw another style which I am calling a “special” fan reed.
The reed must raise and lower to accomplish the variety of spacing. Overhead beaters are ideal. I’m still trying to figure out a way to use one with my underslung beater. At any rate, I do love the wavy lines in the
obi that are caused by the reed. Only a portion of the obi is woven this way; most of it is woven with the wefts going straight across from selvedge to selvedge. Maybe someday I’ll get to my photos from the Japan trip and show cloth woven with the “special” fan reed.
Here are photos of two silk pieces in the current show. Others can be seen in my blog’s gallery. They are sheer silk with the threads as fine as hair. They look smashing in the show. I hope you like them. The Veil got Best of Show last year.
Here are two more installation photos. The top one is in a nice hallway leading to the auditorium. The lower one is the wall opposite the wall with the silk pieces–in my previous blog.
Here’s a shot of the silk pieces in the show–they look wonderful–I am thrilled. People are blown away by them. More exhibit photos soon.
Since I’ve been working with silk threads, people have asked about silk worms and silk cocoons. Here are some cocoons I brought from my studio. You can see one where the silkworm escaped leaving the cocoon so it can’t be unwound because it isn’t intact. The others are whole. The colored cocoons were dyed at a place I visited in Japan. We reeled the silk off of blue and yellow cocoons and the company knitted up the thread
into the green scarf in the photo. In another post I’ll send pictures of mereeling green silk from blue and yellow cocoons. The gold silk I previously unwound from a skein onto a Japanese spool is the natural color of the cocoon. A friend sent it to me from Cambodia. One fine strand of silk is made from unreeling many cocoons together at once. These fine threads are what I used in the pieces in the gallery.
I have two cats–this morning I heard scratching noises by my spools of silk thread. I have wound two more spools and each one has a thread sticking out from it. Joey was trying to get at one of the threads! Yikes, I said and covered them up. He kept hanging around, wondering where his precious thread-toy had gone!. After all my work, having a cat snarl the threads up again would have been awful. Molly is seen investigating the first spool on a previous post.
I’ve been winding more of these lovely Japanese spools from cones of fine silk. They are so nice to look at–“thread-sculptures”, really.
I’ve been showing people the spool of silk thread that I made from that skein which took a month to unwind. (See a previous post.) They love the full spool as it is–as a work of art. I’m beginning to love it, too. I’ve been worrying about what I can weave that will be as beautiful as the silk. Now my thinking is to weave something, but leave a lot on a spool because it’s beautiful that way. The silk came from Cambodia–the gold color is the color of the cocoons–the threads are c9omposed of 20 or more filaments (cocoons). The thread is slightly slubby and many were stuck together with the sericin from the silk worm. This is what makes it so lovely, I think.