Tuesday Knitting Group, Textiles and Tea Polly Barton

The Tuesday knitting group was fun, with a new member, also bears! I played with the bears.

Chat ranged over Hoopla, Libby, reciprocal library cards, mammograms, backstrap weaving, Aran sweaters, comfort dolls, the symphony, Amelie, Sissi Imperatrice, Babette's Feast, bread baking and more.

Then home to Textiles and Tea, with Santa Fe based Polly Barton, a great weaver of fine silk thread into ikat pieces. The warp and/or weft is dyed or painted to create the image, very painstaking and beautiful work.

She learned in Japan along with studying the tea ceremony, same spiritual force behind it all. At one point she was admin in New York to Helen Frankenthaler, and familiar with her sister, Gloria, who was a great weaver.

She recommends a book on ikat seen here. There's an image of her in Japan working with her teacher to organize a warp, and another of her current studio showing the hundred year old kimono loom she weaves on.

Polly younger, at work with her teacher in Japan

Polly now

In the background is her kimono loom, a simple floor loom, demanding all the skill from the weaver.

Here's a warped up loom with the image under the threads as the guide to painting the shape

Great afternoon, Tuesdays usually are.

Happy day everyone! Make all the things. Or just think about maybe making all the things. 

Meanwhile today's resistance was messages to all my MOCs demanding they speak up to stop ICE from opening Fort Dix  (NJ military base capable of housing 3,000 people) as a detention center.