Fabric cut off loom at KMA

Didn't get much personal weaving done this week. With DD not being able to drive right now, I drove her to practices and performances and physical therapy appointments and doctor appointments......need I say more? So, never having seen the Vagina Monologues, I wasn't sure what I was in for, especially since she wouldn't practice in front of me. It really is good. It's so much more than the name says. If you have a chance to see it, please do. This year the featured country was the Democratic Republic of Congo. Back in my day, it was the Belgium Congo. We spent 5 years there while I was a child. My sister was born there. The program had a nice little feature on it. So, there was one name missing from the program. You got it, my DD!!!! After the first performance I found the director and asked her if she had anything against a homeless lesbian (DD's part). She was puzzled til she found a program and then was mortified. The second performance they announced it before the play started plus they gave us 10 programs with the correct information in it. I do want to mail one to my Mom and sister since they'll be interested in the information. So that's over! Next step, hopefully will be the surgery to repair all the mess that's now inside her knee! Once surgery is done they said she'll have to use crutches for a month with very little weight on that knee and then 2 weeks walking with the crutches. She hasn't used crutches in a couple of weeks now so it'll take some adjusting to get back into the swing of that!

Thursday was my morning to weave at the Knoxville Museum of Art's Wind, Rewind exhibit. It's always so neat to get in there and see what the weaver before you wove. The last row was gray! I am not a gray or black person. However, in the spirit of what Ann Wilson told us, I thought for a minute and then figured out what to transition into my colors. It was a rainy, dreary, cold day. So I got into the theme of flowers and wove red, orange, orange/yellow, and then yellow and into green and brown and then decided we were by the ocean and got into blues and some blends that suggested white caps. It was great fun!

While I was there an art class from UT was there winding bobbins and experiencing the exhibit. I asked one student if she knew who Nick DeFord was. She had him last semester, LouAnn! They were there quite awhile, wandering in and out.
Other people came to wind bobbins, 3 generations in one family. Another, pretty macho guy came in and I explained about winding the bobbins and then signing the book to be part of the permanent record of the exhibit. I think he liked that idea because he sat down and wound 2 bobbins!

I was there from after 10 til a bit after 1:30. This is how the loom looked after I was done. You can see going around the breast beam, my ocean and then getting back into flowers and then just some fun colors that blended nicely.

Underneath you can see the yellows to reds and the 2 turquoise combinations I did to blend from that gray!

While I was there and actually, for the past week or two, they'd been trying to decide when to cut off the fabric from the warp beam. It doesn't look like there's that much on there but if you saw behind the cloth it's mighty close to the harnesses. I guess if they'd thought this through, and maybe next time they'll do that, if they'd threaded on the last 4 harnesses instead of the first 4, they might have been able to weave the whole fabric off without cutting it off. But then, who'd have thought?! I wouldn't have.

Here's another view of the cloth. It's so hard to get a good picture! You also see that temple on the bench that we've grown to not mind as much as we'd thought we would!

Friday Christy Matson was weaving. I think she's from Chicago? She was given the honor of cutting off the fabric. The idea was to leave a long tale, at least a foot, I suspect and then wind it off onto a roll. She tied the warp back on and weaving will continue. After all, they put 50 yards on the loom! I'm not sure how much they will get done before the show is over. If there's warp left after that we are to continue weaving as we can to get it all done. I'm glad it's not going to be my job to merge the 2 pieces of fabric! That will take a long time of needleweaving the warp thread from one section to the other, both ways! It will be interesting to see how it all get together structurally.

They were hoping to keep it on for another few weeks because they have some VIPs coming to lecture at the museum. However, in another way, perhaps they will see the cloth on a table, partly unwound for their benefit?

Two weeks from now we weave again. Thursday afternoon Pat took over to weave the rest of the day. I wonder who's going to weave the next time......

Carol