Makers Monday – Progress Report on the Chakra Wall

The Chakra Wall is coming into focus. I’ve been hanging the ojos (which means “eye” in Spanish) from a specific central spot and coming out of it to the right as though expanding from that origin point.

This is the wall I’m using. It’s late in the year here, when I took this shot; November is mostly rain and getting cold. It seemed like a good day to start the project so I came out and swept down the spiderwebs.

Seattle actually has something called, “Spider Season.” I’m not sure if this is a scientific thing or just something the locals say, but man. Those little girls like to weave themselves some web.

My husband, who is not an arachnophobe like me, Dear Reader, told me that most spiders we see are female. The males are smaller and don’t live nearly as long. I like referring to them as “she,” because it makes them less terrifying.

The reason that’s relevant is down on the bottom right of the image are some cardboard boxes used for landscaping (you put them down as weed barrier and put dirt on top of them); we have a truly epic-sized black spider living there. So brushing down the spiders with a broom is a life skill here – particularly if you want to create an art project outside in their demesnes.

I set the ojos down so I could see the ones I had completed so far. The ones on the bottom with the reds are for the Root Chakra. I have one orange one for Sacral, one with yellows (more goldenrod, really) for Solar Plexus, and a green one for Heart.

I originally wanted them to go up, but realized that physics is a thing. The porch only goes to the right just past the glass doors, and I’m not great with heights. So for now, I’m going out as far as I can reach from the ground, and later as I finish more ojos I’ll involve the husband to help me with the ladder and a hammer.

Next up are the next three chakras: Throat (light blue); Third Eye (indigos), and Crown (violets, white, and silver).

Keep Making, my friends!

Makers Monday – Ojos de Dios and the Chakras – What Is a Chakra?

I thought I’d take a moment and discuss Chakras, so this project makes a little more sense.

Chakras are an ancient concept from India that were developed 1500 to 500 BCE (Before Current Era). They are conceived as wheels, and are seen to be located in the human body. In general, there are seven chakras in the body:

The Root Chakra – grounding, connection to the earth
The Sacral Chakra – primal relationships, sexuality, creativity
The Solar Plexus Chakra – will, intent, personal power
The Heart Chakra – relationships, love, friendship
The Throat Chakra – speaking our truth
The Third Eye Chakra – clear sight, vision, intuition
The Crown Chakra – connection to the divine, collective consciousness

The seven chakras have all sorts of things that are representative – sounds, colors, concepts, etc. For our purposes, the colors are the most relevant:

The Root Chakra – reds
The Sacral Chakra – oranges
The Solar Plexus Chakra – yellows
The Heart Chakra – greens
The Throat Chakra – light blues
The Third Eye Chakra – indigos
The Crown Chakra – violets, whites, silvers

I’ll show you next week how some of these are coming together in practice, and how they look on the wall with each other.

Makers Monday – Ojos de Dios and the Chakras

I’ve talked about ojos de Dios, or eyes of G*d, before. I enjoy making them, because they’re relatively simple to weave and they adapt to many different uses. They can be made for prayers and spells, protection, to commemorate new projects or milestones, and for art.

I had a dream recently, where I saw a series of ojos on the side of the house. When I woke up, it was as though I could still see it. It felt so vivid and real, I walked outside to look.

I had to laugh. The place where I’d seen them has two big windows right in the middle of it.

Hmm.

But there’s a large wall on the back of my house that would totally work…

And thus, a project was born.

I thought I’d share some progress pictures. It feels so good to start making things again. I look back and my pictures and it’s not that I haven’t made things; but I’ve definitely felt stuck for a long while. It’s been so fun working on a larger project that will take some time to complete.

This one is for the Throat Chakra, also called the Fifth Chakra. It’s about using our voice and finding our power.

I picked a luminous black filament with blues and pinks for the center. It’s not coming through very well on the camera, but it’s eye-catching.

I also varied the weave; that part toward the edges by wrapping around the arm of the ojo without weaving across. This presented more of a gap in the weaving.

I forgot to weave the hangar like I normally do, since I didn’t want to use the center black yarn. It’s too springy and also a very thin filament, not robust for hanging in weather.

I tied the last two yarns to make the hangar, which is something I don’t usually do but I like how it came out. I used an overhand knot at the end to make it hangable.

Next Monday, come back and I’ll share the wall and the beginning of the Chakra wall.

Cheers!

~Noony

The Flora and Fauna Report – Progress This Week

The idea of the Flora and Fauna Report came from Julia Cameron’s book, The Artist’s Way. She describes getting letters from a relative that she described as a ‘flora and fauna report,’ because they were about all the goings on in and out of her life. I loved the idea, because all it asks of us is to show up as we are. Kind of like meditation. 🙂

Today is a very cold and clear, sunny day in the Pacific Northwest. I am working on a chakra ojos de dios project, which I’ll be sharing more about in subsequent posts; but today, I wanted to share a little of our goings on.

The cell booster is up! Man, that was an ordeal. We needed this part, and that part, and the other part; we thought we had everything and needed… two bolts.

That’s it. Two little bolts. No big deal, unless you don’t have it, and then it’s a big deal.

I added two more ojos to the project (the ones on the right); the lower one is for Voice and the upper right is for Third Eye.

I’ll have more in a series on this project, so stay tuned!

Saturday Craft Circle

I got some new yarn from KnitPIcks called “Oceana” in the “Spirulina” colorway. It’s worsted weight, 54% superfine alpaca and a new fiber, 46% SEAQUAL (R) YARN, which is reclaimed plastic from the ocean. It’s got a nice loft and halo. I tried several needle sizes (4 was way too small and 9 was way too big); size 7 seems to do the trick.

Here’s the detail of the “Vertical Lace Trellis” stitch from Barbara Walker’s stitch guide, volume 1 (the one with the blue cover). I really like how it is coming out. It’s got a great drape, and the halo makes it soften.

Here’s the completed swatch. I’m thinking of making a top-down cape or poncho, haven’t decided yet. We shall see.

Friday Night Musings

I was chatting with a friend online this evening and shared a picture of my pin loom weaving box and realized I hadn’t shared it on here. I haven’t shared much on here recently at all, really.

As we collectively learn to navigate our catastrophically changed reality with COVID, it’s important I think to realize the collective stress we are under. It’s attractive to fantasize about all the “things” we’ll get done in this new in-between-time, but the reality is that stress seeps into everything like poison into a creek. Particularly for us here in the States, that new reality is horrific: as of this writing, over 150,000 dead and 5 million infected.

I find it hard to focus. I am, though, keeping up with crafts. Oddly, I haven’t been pin loom weaving this month but knitting – I’ll post some pics of that at another time. What I wanted to share for now is a glimpse into my pin loom weaving because it’s something I can do when my body is too stressed, my hands too sore from stress, and my brain unable to count for lace repeats.

As I shared the pics with my friend today, I remembered that I’d started weaving for a purse to replace one that my mother crocheted. It’s a project bag and it got so ratty and falling apart but I didn’t want to get rid of it. It wasn’t out of a pleasant sentimentality, since my mother was a horrible child abuser, but I still held onto it out of emotional attachment. I finally decided that’s goofy, I don’t want to drag around such negativity with me – particularly with my art.

And thus the idea for a knitting bag was born. The weavies are done, and next up is to sew the pieces together.

On the rigid heddle weaving front, we’re getting ready to start our weavealong in the Yarnworker School of Rigid Heddle Weaving. (If you’re a weaver, why not join us? More info here.) I’m so excited because I’m experimenting with some endangered wool called Churro. I’ll post pics of that at another time. But I was noodling about my weaving tonight and recalled reading about Morse code weaving in the Inventive Weaving on a Little Loom by Syne Mitchell. I decided to look it up again and there’s a Morse code translator! Check it out, here.

I thought it might be fun to try weaving a poem, and I even have one picked out to play with. I’ll keep noodling it and if it comes about, I’ll share pictures with you.

What are you up to these days, Dear Reader?

Playing With My Pin Loom

Today I took some time for Sunday crafting while I was watching and participating in the BotanicWise Allies for Plants and People Symposium. This year, the Pin Loom Weaving Support Group held a Weavealong hosted by TexasGabbi of Turtle Looms. The weavelong ran for six weeks and, though I did not finish on time due to the stress of the global pandemic, I’m still plugging away at it. I made all the weavies called for in the weavealong, but I used to be intimidated by sewing the weavies together – part of the weavealong instructions.

I’m happy to say that I no longer am intimidated by this process! I’ve successfully sewn Week 1, Week 2a, and Week 2b weavies together. And today, I worked on the extra project for Week 2, embroidering a weavie.

This caused me some consternation, because my very first textile art was embroidery. I could not settle on a design I liked. I dithered and hemmed and hawed, and overthought, and finally, today, decided I’d had it: JUST DO IT, as Nike says. Right? Right.

Only problem was, when I started to embroider on a finished weavie, I couldn’t get it under tension. It was flopping all over the place because the weavies are such loose-weave fabric, and I don’t have a small enough embroidery hoop. A friend suggested putting the weavie back on the Zoom Loom, and thereby under tension. I tried that, but fabric off a loom settles and it’s next to impossible to get it back to its former state.

Then it hit me: why not make a new weavie?

Voila.

This time, I switched back to my main color, a lovely charcoal grey marino wool blend. Then I used my CC3 color (contrast color #3), which is a light grey variegated color, also a marino blend. I used a detail of a pattern from Alice Starmore’s book, Celtic Needlepoint (if you haven’t checked out her work before, you owe it to yourself to visit her site that she shares with her talented daughter Jade Starmore, Virtual Yarns). I added the year and then took it off the loom. I’m really pleased with the final look of it. When it came off the loom, the threads relaxed and came together, so the needlepoint really pops.

Next time, I’ll share some of my herbal adventures. I have some lemon mint infusion steeping on my counter overnight and tomorrow, I plan to make a mint syrup.

What about you, Dear Reader? What are you making?

Slow Craft

Image of pin loom woven squares.

Fast. 5G. Upload speeds. Download speeds. Streaming. Faster cell service. 24/7 news cycle. Always-on. Technostress is stress induced by computer use. “Its symptoms include aggravation, hostility toward humans, impatience, and fatigue. According to experts, humans working continuously with computers come to expect other humans and human institutions to behave like computers, providing instant responses, attentiveness, and an absence of emotion.” (1)

I don’t know about you, but I find that all exhausting. I use technology and have done since I was a teenager. But I find myself called to slow down in my craft pursuits. Take weaving, for instance. I enjoy pin loom weaving, which is what the picture above features. Popular in the 1920’s through the 1940’s, pin looms can be used to make clothing, housewares, toys, and other useful items. The standard size is a four inch square, though makers have created pin looms in a variety of sizes to satisfy inquisitive weavers.

What is it about slow craft that’s calling to us? There are now craft revolutions all over the U.S. and around the world, such as Seattle’s Urban Craft Uprising. Makerspaces are independent and now even part of public libraries. People are merging craft with technology, bringing new ways to old.

And for many of us, slow craft is the antidote to fast culture. We sit and chat, or watch streaming shows or listen to audiobooks. We meditate using fiber or wood. We dream on the canvas or with words on the page. We journal and take pictures with our smartphones. There are even classes on how to be a better photographer using your cell phone. All of which is designed to help us to slow down, stop running, and be in the moment.

The act of creation is a radical act. It’s saying to the world, this didn’t exist before but I’ve made it so. It is rule-breaking, not rule-following. It’s not necessarily rebellious, it’s simply outside the known. Sometimes it comments on the known and sometimes it finds the known irrelevant.

During pandemic, I’ve found myself returning to my pin loom. It calms me in ways that even my knitting can’t – it turns out I can’t count during times of high stress. I don’t have to count to weave a pin loom square. My pin loom group is on Facebook (fast technology meets slow craft) and hosted a Mystery Weavealong that went for seven weeks. It was such a relief to get off work, wander over to my nest on the lounger, and weave squares. Not because I had to, or because I had something in mind – the mystery part of the weavealong meant that I literally didn’t know what I was weaving until the very end – but because the act of making squares settled my mind and let me feel productive but not pushed to finish any particular project. Just make a square. Which color? The instructions told me. And through that practice, my mind calmed.

Resources

(1) Laudon, Kenneth C and Jane P Laudon: Management Information Systems: Managing the Digital Firm, c2007, Chapter 4, pg 156.

Saturday Check-In – News from the Endless Knoontime

It startled me to find my last post was in 2016. It’s so easy to let ourselves be distracted by the shiny things and the squirrels. I’ve been thinking a lot about that recently, this conflict between output and inflow: output is our own creative production, and inflow is the overwhelm of media consumption. I’m certainly not the first person to talk about this; Adam Alter did a TED Talk on screen addiction in 2017 that you can check out, here.

Any veteran journaler will tell you, it’s the questions that are the key. Asking ourselves good questions can be the difference between skating along the surface of our thoughts and diving deeply into them. WHY do we step away from craft? Why do we stop writing/making/playing? What moves us off our center? It’s easy to blame something outside of us, but as author and creativity specialist Julia Cameron points out in The Artist’s Way, we use crazymakers to block ourselves or to stay blocked. At some point, we have to put the responsibility (note I did not say blame) where it belongs, and take it back for ourselves.

Hence, this post.

My friend Sunita, over at ReaderWriterVille, does a thing she invented called “Weeknotes.” In them, she converses about her week. I love the tone of them: compassionate toward the self, optimistic toward the future, and supportive of positive, outward productivity. It’s in that spirit I offer today’s post.

It’s not like I haven’t knit or made anything for three years. A lot has happened in that time: the American presidential election disaster; my husband nearly bled to death (he’s okay now); all three of our publishers went out of business; we moved cross country 2,000 miles (about 3,200 kilometers); I started a new job that turned out to be a horrible fit and then got a new job (which I love); and I had a cancer-scare (I’m all right, but found some other stuff and am in the process of getting well). Making, of necessity, became smaller – was it “of necessity” because of something external, such as me deciding it to be that way? No. It just organically happened, because I couldn’t really focus on anything larger. I did nearly finish the Hue Shift Afghan in the Jewel colorway (available from KnitPicks as a kit, highly recommended and I’m making the main rainbow tinted one next); but need to finish one final edge in black. I made Rachel a vest, but need to finish sewing it together (it literally is half-sewn along one side seem; WTF?). I learned pin loom weaving (which is actually loads of fun and there’s a fun online community, here; and I just found a rigid heddle weaving school today online, here). I started designing not one but two lace shawls (those of you who know me are probably nodding and saying, “Of course you did, Noony;” I get it, I really do), and then stopped, completely, until all I was doing was pin loom weaving.

Slowly, I’m edging back toward making. I’ve learned some things. For me, a stable home and a stable day job are necessary for creative output. I find they settle and ground me in ways I don’t always understand. I wish I was happy-go-lucky, totally Zen and able to produce in any season, but I have found through long experience I’m not really one of those people. I do knit, and have done so through serious adversity, but having a stable home (which includes my family) and job (so I am not scared about where rent is coming from) is critical.

So what have I been making? Well, I don’t have a ton of pics in one place, which is part of this attenuated interregnum. But I do have a semi-circular shawl I’m designing on the needles and the name makes me laugh. I was thinking one day recently about vegetables, and manifestation, and how I want to eat more veggies and like them. I want to want to eat more veggies, is probably a more accurate statement. Then I thought about manifestation, and practicing the reality that I want to bring about. I had the yarn in my hands. The yarn is green. Then the squirrels took over and…

The I Love Broccoli Shawl Is Born

It’s going to need some serious blocking, but this is a semi-circular shawl based on Elizabeth Zimmerman’s “pi shawl” formula. The yarn is from Australia and is a lovely cotton blend that looks like it’s got mohair in it, but doesn’t.

I’m using a size 3 circular after quite a bit of trial and error as regards needle size. This is a yarn that color pools but even so, is quite lovely in stockinette; however, I think this type of faggotting really shows it to advantage. The predominant stitch is from Barbara Walker’s Volume I stitch dictionary, and is “Vertical Lace Trellis.” It’s only a four row repeat, two of which are purl across, so it’s much easier to work than it looks.

Other than that, I don’t have a whole lot of insights to share or profundities to drop on you. I just really miss blogging, writing, publishing, knitting, and making all the things. My squirrels got into the grain bin and have pooped on the good sheets in the linen closet. For the most part, I think I’ve gotten them wrangled, but I’ll refrain from any sagacious pronouncements of “I’m back and this is what I’m doing;” I’ve done that a couple times during this latest interregnum and have regretted it because it presages a dry spell.

So for now, I’ll close with this: thank you for visiting, and reading, and leaving a comment or two. I’m glad to be here, and I’m glad you’re here. Now. Let’s go make stuff, shall we?

Make Something Monday – and I Cleaned Out a Bin!

Yesterday, I got a wild hair to rummage in my craft storage bins for some yarn that I bought waaaay back when I first started to knit. I put it away, thinking I’d make a sleeveless sweater or something for the holidays.

Only, I’d bought four skeins, which isn’t enough for a sweater.

And so it’s languished in the bin for ~cof~ years ~cof~. I also got some very difficult, fussy eyelash yarn of an eye-catching red. I tried mixing it with this gorgeous stuff and it looked awful. Rather than looking like a fur border, it looked like, well, a mess.

I’m not sure what magical alchemy happened yesterday. Mercury is retrograde; maybe it’s that. No clue. But in I walked to my office, let my fingers do the walking through my binventory (I made up a word!!), and voila – new project glee.

Only one problem. What the eff do I make, if not the sweater I’d been procrastinating?

The yarn is a lovely, skooshie Plymouth 24k in a red and gold, complete with gold flecks. I could do a rectangular shawl with thin tassels, (once I learn how to spell tassels ~fail~). I could do a necklace or beads.

Hmm. That’s actually not a bad idea. I have four balls of it; I could use three for a triangle shawl and the one remaining ball for some jewelry.

I started with a garter stitch border and then started yarn over increases three stitches in on each side. When I had enough of an edge to make the point strong, I started two yarn overs in the center. I’m going to do Little Arrowhead Lace from Barbara Walker’s Volume I, and then in the center, I think I’ll do budding branch once I have enough on either side of the center spine.

Oh. As I’m writing this, there are really two centers, one on either side of the spine. Hmm. I can do buds, but have them mirror each other. Facing center, or facing out? I’ll noodle on that, but I’m thinking facing center.

I got pretty far yesterday.

And I did not allow Kolya to eat the yarn. Or chew on the needles. Or steal the project bag so he could gnaw on the plastic.

Right. I decided to be a textile artist in a house full of cats. Brilliant.

What are you making this Monday?

Knoontime Knitting

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