It's a conspiracy...

It appears that all of my fiber is conspiring to keep me focused on spinning for the TdF, so I've been spinning and plying. So far, I've 

Blue/blue; blue/purple; purple/purple,
plus a lemon from the garden

• Finished spinning a 4 oz braid of a blue wool and silk (?) that I'd been taking with me to spinning demos 
• Finsihed spinning a 4 oz braid of a purplish wool and silk braid from Twisted Sunshine
• Plyed both of the above into 2 ply skeins. So I have one skein each plied with itself and one skein of them plied with each other. 
• Finished spinning and partly plied 5.8oz of BFL/silk from Wonderland Dyeworks in BFL/silk
• Started spinning some yummy Alfalfa green merino/silk from Abstract Fibers. 

Friday night and Saturday, I'm staffing our guild booth at a local music festival, so I'm guessing I'll get a lot of spinning done; if I finish the green, I'll move to something else. One of our volunteers doesn't have a portable project so I warped up the inkle loom for the first time with a pattern from this site; I need to work on my selvedges. Maybe it's the novelty, or maybe it's that I need to leave it mostly not woven for the festival, but I could just sit and weave on this...

First Inkle band! The selvedges will get better.

Conspiring against me are the rep rug; I have the warp wound and ready to go on the loom; I started to do that today but I have 27" lease sticks and it's a 30" rug. Drat! I've been meaning to order new lease sticks, so it's not like this is a surprise or anything. The other conspirator is my knitting. I'm so close to being done with the section on the Pebble Beach Shawl that I have ripped out repeatedly but yet I just looked at it again yesterday and I'll need to rip back 6 rows. 

On the food front, I'm going to do a deep dive into Mark Miller'cookbooks. I made the Grilled Salmon with a corn and chili salsa from the Indian Market Cookbook; served it with kale from the garden and a nice albarino. Then I made some plum ice cream (plums, cream, sugar) from The Perfect Scoop; a total treat and a happy vivid pink color. I'll be cooking from both cookbooks again when DH is home again.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

Finally a project on the Gilmore

I
I feel like I'm having issues getting things going again after traveling... I feel like I'm not doing anything. Which is one of the points of this blog, to let me know exactly how much or how little I'm doing. Since I returned from Italy, here's what I've been working on.

Cooked dinner for two chefs (intimidating!!!). I spent a lot of time fussing about the menu. It was fine, but I've made better. I think the pickled onions, home made salsa, and hand crafted tortillas elevated it a bit.

I painted two closets! Not that this is a big thing but it's time consuming. So I'm including it.

I finally threaded the Gilmore! I got up at 5am the day I left for Florence and wound this warp; I wanted to be tired when I got on the plane. It's Chiku bamboo from The Fiber Lady, in a gold/tan to blue dipped skein colorway. I threaded 270 ends at 30 epi and wove alternating 1/3 and 3/1 twill blocks; it starts with about 8 inches of checkerboard, then the stripes get longer; at the center I wove a bit of checkerboard and reversed it. This pattern was the recommendation of the ladies I went to Italy with . The scarf is now in the collection of my darling husband.

I started the Tour de Fleece; I finished the singles on the wheel and started a new 4 oz braid. I'll document that at the end of the Tour in it's own blog entry, but here's a photo.

In other areas:

• The Pebble Beach Shawl is still in progress, I think I'm about 1/4 done.  I keep having to rip some out and redo it.
• The skirt is stalled until the shawl is done.
• I fished out the blocks I pin wove, and tried to line them up. Will try again tomorrow.
• I'm trying to work out the directions for the rug that wants to go on the loom next. I think I have it figured, so I should be ready to wind a warp.
• I put edging on the piece I want to mosaic... Will check it out tomorrow then decide if it's good enough or if I have to pull it off, it's not that even.

My final post on Italy, after the tour is over....

St. Francis wore this!!!

Tuesday, June 12 was the final day of the tour, and the five of us took the train back to Florence; Sarah barely made it off the train after she settled us in! In Florence we said goodbye and went our separate ways. I hadn't looked for a hotel until we were in Perugia, and a terrible time finding a hotel for less than $1000 a night in Florence at short notice!  I ended up staying at the Hotel Veneto Firenze, in a quieter neighborhood a little further from the city center.  It was not as nice as the other hotels on the trip; my favorite part was the tiny shower, so small that if you dropped your soap you had to turn off the shower and open the door to bend over to reach it... but the bed was comfortable and the air conditioning worked, so I was happy.

During my last day and a half, I visited the following, and photos from these days are here.

First, I visited the Leather School, where students from all over the world learn how the Italians work in leather. There's always students on duty working, so you can watch how it's done, and an amazing selection of leather purses at good prices. The school was founded by the friors at Santa Croce after WWII to teach orphans a trade, and is in a fabulous old building... I was tempted there to buy a purse there, and in some on the leather shops in the area, but managed to hold out for hours until I was compelled to buy one by a street vendor.  Italian leather is the best!

Angel wings!!!

I went from there into the museum at Santa Croce, but not the church; my eyes were tired of Renaissance ecclesiastic art, plus I was in a sleeveless shirt and forgot my shawl... but check out the belt and clothing fragments from St. Francis...

Closeup of tablecloth

The Church of San Marco was fabulous! Beautiful frescos, interesting tomb, and the organist was practicing... The museum behind it was outstanding.  The upstairs monk's cells all had frescoes in them with religious themes to encourage contemplation. Two particular things struck me here; first, the angels wings look a lot like marbled paper and I particularly enjoyed looking at them. Second was the aha gob-struck moment when I saw more than one painting the included a tablecloth woven  in patterns that Marta had said were Perugian, and that looked just like what she had woven! On some of the other photos, you can clearly see the eye pattern.

Angel wings, eternal...

I arrived at the Museum of Archeology at exactly the right time to view the normally closed 3rd floor... I'm not sure why it was closed, but it was just one woman, one guard, and me. Their collection of pre-Roman, Etruscan, and Roman antiquities was stellar; they have much of the archeological relics the Medici family collected over the centuries.  In the courtyard, which was sadly only open on weekends, are mock-Etruscan barrow-type graves. Check out this lion. And it seems like angel wings hadn't changed much since Roman times...

I wandered about, my brain full, and wandered into the beautiful Orsanmichele... No photos from there. Finally, pizza, Chianti and gelato at My Sugar for dinner, then I said goodbye to Florence.

These posts are late coming out, nearly a month; and I wonder what I missed by not posting as I went? In return, I certainly gained some perspective.  For the next trip, I'll come armed with a keyboard!

Italy Textile Tour, Anghieri and Perugia

The next morning, we left our temporary home in Florence, to visit Anghieri on the way to Perugia.  Photos for these three days are here.

View from the private living quarters upstairs from Busatti's.

Anghieri is a hilltop town that's listed as one of the most beautiful villages in Italy.   Leonardo Da Vinci painted a commission here, to commemorate the Battle of Anghieri, but the fresco was lost; it's rumored to exist under another painting. We weren't able to get in to see the painting that may or may not be covering Da Vinci's work; they were closed while we were there, but we were able spend an amiable half an hour wandering through the small medieval streets before our appointment at Bussati.

Want...

Bussati's history is on their website and worth reading; it's interesting how they've adapted to their changing customer base over the last 8 generations, encompassing 2 world wars, and changing political and economic climates. Currently they have a lovely premium weaving operation, partly in the basement of the old Palazzo and partly at a nearby manufacturing facility. They make fabrics and housewares, primarily in cotton and linen, in historic, traditional, and modern patterns, some with exquisitely hand crocheted or pulled work borders. The showroom is astounding, and anything you see can be made to order in a large range of colors, and relatively any size. I was eyeing this historical textile, in a different color, for a table cloth...  We toured the basement weaving room, filled with assorted equipment including a wool picking machine, but mostly automated jacquard looms, controlled by the ever-present punched cards. Giovanni, the patriarch of the family fired up a selection of looms to show us; it was Saturday, so the plant was not in operation, but he wanted us to see the machines working. You could see his love for and pride in his family business shining in his eyes as he answered questions about the looms, the family, and the business.  After the tour, Giovanni and his son Livio showed us around the private living quarters of the old Palazzo, where generations of his family have lived, with a stunning view of the city walls and valley beyond; showed us ancient family business journals supporting their pedigree in the textile realm; and treated us to some homemade Vin Santo and biscotti. After the tour, we walked to an excellent eatery and shared salads, pastas, and pizza.  After eating too much at lunch, I was forced to choose between returning to Bussati's to procure some table runners, or poke around the beautiful town. In all fairness, the rest of the group was ready to leave, so it was just me itching to walk to the top of the hill, and ramble in search of arrow slits and city walls, so I reluctantly climbed on the bus and we left for Perugia, assuming I would find something as delightful and lovely there.

After we checked into the recently remodeled Locanda Della Posta hotel in the old town of Perugia, I immediately went outside to check out the street fair going on. There were booths selling all manners of arts and crafts, and people in medieval costumes demonstrating medieval crafts. Check out this wonderful woman spinning wool on her drop spindle! Then I heard drums...
Linn and Eleanor and I followed. After some time and a lot of yelling, posturing, and other shows of testosterone, heralds came out blowing horns, and official looking medieval guys came out followed by men with flags; the flag bearers then started waving the flags and throwing them high into the air, and catching them. It was just like the videos I've seen of the festival in Sienna that accompanies the horse race; or that scene in Under the Tuscan Sun. It was pure magic. 

In 2016, Perugia began a medieval festival to celebrate an event that happened in 1416. Considering they've only been doing it for three years, it's remarkably well organized and staffed with costumed volunteers. After a couple of glasses of Rosso di Montefalco at a local wine bar, I asked one of the minstrels if I could look at the fabric of his jacket; he told me his girlfriend's mother had made it for him out of fabric a friend of hers had woven; it was a beautiful textures fabric, exquisitely sewn with novel detail, like the split sleeves.  I imagine the seamstress hearing how foreign women had stopped to admire her handiwork, and being pleased with herself.

What a treat it was to see the festival! It continued on the following day, and some of us attended some of the events, but I'll go back to what was on the tour agenda.

Three brief words on my hotel: Fashion over Function. Don't get me wrong, it was beautiful, newly renovated, and in a great location. But in my ideal world, Function and Fashion are inseparable soulmates.

This attempt at restoration failed three times before
they had a priest come bless the process

The next morning, we met Giorgio of Studio Moretti Caselli at the Perugia Cathedral for a quick tour before mass; the Studio had restored several of the windows in the cathedral. After leaving the cathedral, we took a detour by Pasticceria Sandri on the way to meet Giorgio and his wife Anna at their studio; definitely worth a stop if you're in the area. I had one of those tasty little rice pudding like pastries that was a joy to eat in the morning, and a coffee. At Studio Moretti Caselli, we learned about the process of painting images on glass; the technique fell into disuse at one time and was re-discovered by the founders of the studio in the mid 1800's. Basically, they start with purified ground glass; mix in a pigment, then fire it just enough to melt the glass but not enough to alter the pigment; they paint and re-fire the glass many times (I think the number 50 was mentioned) until they get the effect they're looking for.  The lead grout is routed to add strength (obviously) and also to enhance the image. The building is a 15th century Baglioni family residence (the rest of the Baglioni family buildings were destroyed after an unsuccessful fight with the Pope and the Rocca Paolina, a massive fortress to force Perugia to behave itself was built in its place; you can still walk through the basements of the Rocca Paolina which stood for very few decades before destroyed by a rebellion). A couple of the rooms still have the original frescoes and period furnishings.  Aside from restorations, Studio Moretti Caselli does some stunning original works; they glow in a way that I can't describe, you really need to see them. After the Studio tour, we walked a short distance to the Basilica di San Domenico, and viewed more of their restoration work. 

Next up was lunch; because of the festival, several restaurants were serving medieval menus. Starting with cured meats, cheeses, and olives, the meal progressed to zuppa di fave e piselli  (fava and pea soup), then cinghiale alle olive (boar stew with olives) and fegatelli all'alloro (something made of pork liver, roasted, and put on a stick). (Thank you Sarah for the picture of the menu!) It was really tasty, and I've actively lost in recipe translations!

After lunch, some of us went to archeology museum, located in the old Convent of San Domenico. They have an amazing collection of Etruscan artifacts, especially from the old cemeteries of Perugia, and a stellar view of the Etruscan city walls; also some partial Roman era mosaic floors. After the afternoon gelato, we returned to the area around the hotel to observe more of the festival.

I can't resist a mosaic floor.. this fragment made me happy.

A question about Italian gelato: how do they get the fruit flavors to be so intense? One of the answers is that gelato is normally not as cold as American ice cream, so it's easier for your non-frozen taste buds to pick up on the flavor. But that's not the only thing. We spent a fair amount of time pondering this, without coming to any conclusions.

On our last day in Perugia, we visited Giuditta Brozetti, an old church now being used as a production hand weaving workshop. Marta, the owner and head weaver, told us the story of the building, Umbrian textiles, and the hand weaving company founded by her grandmother that Marta still runs.  Marta had just received a special award: Maestro d'Arte e Mestiere, which she explained as a big honor akin to being a white rhino...  She was referring to herself as being one of the last of her breed, but I didn't understand the implications of the award until I researched it later. This effectively designates her as a Living National Treasure, comparable to Japan's Preservers of Important Intangible Cultural Properties. It's a pure delight to find this type of designation in a country other than Japan (Italy also recognizes artisans in the areas of food and wine, which speaks to it's cultural importance), and a pure honor to have spent time with Marta. 

This old church feels like a sacred space honoring millennium of weaving and I was struck dumb with reverence watching Marta as she glowed with passion for her craft.

Marta showed us the traditional four shaft loom that women

worked on in their farmhouses, and some of the traditional local patterns,  then showed us the exact same patterns in paintings dating back to the Renaissance. She's woven textiles to reproduce some of the textiles depicted in those paintings. She described to us how the intricately patterned cloth was made in the Renaissance (too long to type here, ask me if you're interested) then how it's made on jacquard looms.  We then looked at the old jacquard looms, all hand operated (with two flying shuttles!); the hand operated card punches, the warping mill, the hand cranked bobbin winders... 

Marta, however, faces the same problem I've heard from artisans on three continents so far; how to keep the traditions alive while adapting to modern sensibilities and modern markets, while competing with inexpensive goods and dealing with shrinking sources of raw materials. I'm sensing this is a world wide trend.

After lunch, I wandered some of the back alleys of the city, looking for an Etruscan well (it was locked up on Monday afternoons); I walked to the top of the city walls, and looked out over the plains, trying to get my mind to settle, then went to see the Etruscan arch, one of the old city gates. I visited the Galleria Nazionalle of Umbria, which had a large collection of ecclesiastic art and a few very old textile fragments, similar to what Marta had woven. 

That night, we met up as a group for our final dinner, and made plans to return to Florence by train the next morning.

Kudos to Sarah and Simon for a phenomenal tour! I had frankly worried that nothing could live up to the tour I did of Kyoto last year, but honestly this did. I give it an A+, all thumbs up. The agenda was well thought out and we had access to an amazing and varied set of artisans of a caliber you don't often meet.  There was enough downtime to sit and mull over what we'd seen, or sight see and shop, if that's what we wanted. They gave us maps in each location, personalized for us, showing major sights, artisans, friendly restaurants, ATMs, and so on. My only complaint? TOO MUCH FOOD!!! But I can hardly blame the Tour Studio for that.  If you are reading this and thinking of booking a tour with them, and I can answer any questions, please comment on this blog and I'll be happy to respond.

And thanks to my new friends Gretchen, Eileen, Eleanor and Linn for being so kind to adopt me into their tribe. These are women I'd happily tour with again. Hoping it may happen someday!

Italy Textile Tour, weaving at Fondazione Lisio

Founded in 1906 to keep alive the art of hand weaving with fine silk and precious metals, Fondazione Lisio offers classes and courses of study, and also does commissions. We were here to learn about and weave on 100+ year jacquard looms.  I'll talk about two things here; one is what I saw at Lisio, the other what I did at Lisio.

Photos from these five days are here.

The jacquard loom revolutionized the manufacture of complicated woven materials in the first decade of the 1800s; it essentially allows individual threads on a loom to be controlled by holes punched in very large paper cards. Jacquard wasn't the first to think of using cards this way... several prior looms had used cards but failed to automated the process; Jacquard's mechanism allowed for very complex patterns to be woven relatively quickly, and by one person. For more information on the loom, what it did to the weaving industry, and how that led to modern day computers, I'd recommend Jacquard's Web.

???? Yeah, that's what I was thinking...

Our experience with jacquard looms started with a tour of the facility, followed by some textile analysis, discussion of the weave structures we'd be working with, some strategies to design thread tie downs to enhance the look of the fabric, and different ways to tile repeating designs; a lot to cover in less than a day!  Eva, our instructor, spoke near perfect English, and was clearly a master of her craft.  Wow.  I'll admit some of this went right over my head... Then we got to meet the looms, and try a few picks of damask and a few picks of velvet to get a feel for the weaving process and the huge looms.

There was a decision point here... did each of us want to weave the pattern that was already on the machine? Or design our own? I decided I wanted to learn more about the looms, and poke around the facility, and not design my own pattern. The rest of the group ended up designing their own patterns, and I eavesdropped and spied on what they were doing so I would understand the whole process.

Machine to lace the cards together

First they drew their patterns on paper, and input into a computer program. When the pattern was what they wanted, they punched the cards for those patterns, checked the cards, and sent them through a giant sewing machine to stitch them together. I don't have a photo of the card punch! But this is the big sewing machine...

The cards were then loaded on to the loom and tied into a loop, and the weaving commenced. Sounds easy, right? We were working in very fine silk; approximately 200 warp threads per inch; so even tiny designs took 50 or more cards for a two color design (one warp color and one weft color) and double that for one warp color and two weft colors. This process took the group about 3 days to accomplish, with many of them just getting weaving on the last day.

I loved this loom...

Meanwhile, my loom and I were getting to know each other...  I was weaving damask on this loom.  I could easily stand under the light bar on the front.  The two ropes advanced each of  two mechanisms on the top. The smaller back mechanism controlled the 8 shafts on the loom, and  the larger front mechanism read the pattern cards and controlled groups of threads. In this particular configuration the two ropes were attached to  one treadle. I'd treadle to advance the mechanisms, throw the background color, treadle to advance again and throw the pattern color; each row of the fabric was two weft threads.  Make sense?  I was happily weaving along...

Then weird shit happened!! The pattern stopped advancing and all I was getting was plain weave. I continued to weave for about an inch, then waited for Eva, who was helping another student...  While waiting, I closely examined my loom... and sure enough, found what was keeping the cards from advancing. On my loom, the cards cascading down would occasionally jump of the rail, and literally get it's knickers in a bunch, if a loom had knickers. After Eva fixed the problem and then had to resync the two card decks, I kept a careful watch on my machine behavior and either climbed up the ladder to fix the cards when they misbehaved, or stopped until Eva had time to look.

A largeish section of my silk fabric, 

which I am delighted to have woven. 

These machines are tetchy. First, they're old, and were not made to the more exact tolerances that modern machinery is; that and they've been in use for a long time, and their wear profile would understandably make them behave differently. Second, they're made for production use; experienced weavers take a few days to get to know the peculiarities of a machine they're never woven on. Don't treadle hard enough?  Maybe you don't advance to the next card. Let the pedal up too fast? Maybe the hooks that control the threads jump off their rails and you don't get the right pattern. There's a lot of moving parts, and a lot that can go wrong.  So many new things to remember, so much that can go wrong.  I was in heaven! Machines like me!!!

There's photos in my Photos album of what the others wove, including some absolutely grand elephants by Gretchen, and some cut velvet woven by Eileen.  Eva, Sarah, and my co-weavers were concerned that I would regret not designing my own piece, and there was a moment where I wished I'd gone through the entire process including design, and punch cards, and so on. It didn't take me long to realize that what I wanted was to get to know a loom, and that coming up with a design and working under pressure to get it up on the loom would have made me stressed and cranky. I'd love to come back for a week or two and go through the whole process... Maybe at a cooler time of year!

This weaving was hard work; they're standing looms, and require that you stand with one foot on the treadle and one foot not while leaning in to push the beater forward and throwing the shuttle. Oddly enough, it's the standing leg, not the treadling leg that got tired. So I spent some time walking around the rest of the studio.

Setting up a loom for velvet (not the red velvet)

There were machines to wind warps, a two step, two machine process. There were machines to wind pirns, and machines to wind warp bobbins for velvet. There were looms with velvet on them, looms with fancy brocades on them, and a computerized jacquard loom where a student was weaving a lovely picture of Mount Fuji; she's the person who designed the pattern I wove. One of the more interesting projects the Foundation was working on was a commission from a museum in Dresden; they were weaving 100ish metres of plain red velvet and plain cloth of gold for a restoration project; I found a video in German detailing the work. The velvet had to be made the same as the original; so it had a twill ground cloth (instead of plain weave) in a pinky color, instead of red like the warp that was cut. I watched the weaver on one of the velvet looms as she tied on new warp bobbins for the velvet... I think it took her 3 days.  The manual labor boggles the mind, even for someone used to making things that take a lot of labor.

I also wandered the halls looking at framed samples of some of the fabrics, some of which I photographed, others I did not. There's some amazing work there. And a amazing workshop, where one of the weavers gets drafted to fix things.

The rhythm of the day was breakfast, shuttle to Lisio, weave, break for pastry and coffee, weave, break for lunch, weave, break for chocolate and a coffee, weave, back to the hotel, drinks and gelato for dinner.   Add in periodic wanders around the building, and that was pretty much it. At the end of the day, my mind was completely blank, wiped, tired. I ate way too much of the pastries Simon got for us every morning, and the wonderful lunches catered by a small local restaurant. Does it get any better than this?

Towards the end of the week, after class, Eileen and I walked out to Bacci Tessuti to look at fabrics... I found a lovely denim blue wool linen blend... and bought 3 meters of it to make a jacket in my tailoring class this fall. When I showed it to DH, I commented that it would make a lovely summer weight sport coat for him, if he could find a tailor... So now we're looking for a tailor and I need more fabric. This is not a problem that worries me.

On our last night in Florence, after we'd said good-bye to Eva and to Fondazione Lisio, we had dinner at Il Santo Bevitore. I had a delightful fish dish with a fried squash blossom, but the real highlight of the dinner was some amazing hand cut pasta with a light amazing sauce over a wood pigeon ragout. There was just the right amount of sauce to highlight the pasta, cooked to perfection, and the ragu was so tasty...  It was lovely with this Chianti!
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