kitty: oh no.......

So it is true, another knit/spinning blogger has bit the bullet and started weaving. For the last 2 weeks I have been carefully setting up the threading of my loom for my first project. So the picture up above really isn't much to look at. I just need to finish the other half of the beater and I am ready to start. All my headles are strung. I am using an old dry spun Irish Linen that from what the teacher guesses was probably from the 40's or 50's. The studio that I am studding at has a quiet old candy room where there is yarn on spools dating back until the 30's. As you can imagine the room is quiet magical, but quiet dirty and dusty as well. I am just amazed that the facility has had a rebirth the last two years. Before that it had just sat dormant for many years. For the weft, I am really thinking about using some of the Habu silk that I have in my collection. I have a brown and a pumpkin orange. I really haven't decided on the weave structure, but I have been reading a lot about the design philosophy of Anni Albers. There is something really magical about her and her husband's work. "A longing for excitement can be satisfied without external means, within oneself; for creating is the most intense excitement one can come to know." -Anni Albers What is amazing is how many of her designs we really take for granite as part of our mainstream textile designs. She taught at Bauhaus for many years and then moved to the United States and lectured at Black Mountain College in North Carolina. “the thread should speak for itself, that somehow the hand of the artist, the hand of the craftsperson, the hand of the weaver wasn’t going to interfere with how the thread wanted to be seen,” - Matilda McQuaid, a Cooper-Hewitt curator for the Anni Albers works. I have been finding a lot of resources about her weaving and textile designs. Here are a few: Analysis of Anni Albers 3-ply Tapestry A diagram for one of her tapestry Ancient Writing at the Smithsonian American Art Museum - The piece reminds one of a rosetta stone of an unknown languagee. On Weaving (Dover Craft Books) by Anni Albers Publisher Information: Dover Publications 2003 (My nighttime reading as of late)       Anni Albers by Anni Albers, Nicholas Fox Weber, Pandora Tabatabai Asbaghi Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation; New Ed edition (July 2003) (My nighttime reading as of late) Anni Albers and Ancient American Textiles: From Bauhaus to Black Mountain by Virginia Gardner Troy Publisher: Ashgate Publishing (August 1, 2002) (trying to get inter-library loan)       Anni Albers by Nicholas Weber, Nicholas Fox Weber (Editor), Pandora Tabatabai Asbaghi (Editor) Cover Image Pub. Date: October 1999 (trying to get inter-library loan) Woven and Graphic Art of Anni Albers: Essays by Nicholas Fox Weber, Mary Jane Jacob, and Richard S. Field by Nicholas Fox Weber Pub. Date: May 1985 (trying to get inter-library loan)   I can only imagine how magical it would have been to take a class with her in NC. I really want to do one of her simple 4 harness designs, we will see if I can do it. Maybe it is only a newbies dream, but we will see. I could really fall in love with weaving I fear. I do have a couple of looms in the basement so that doesn't help at all with the looming fear.