Bon Voyage

It's been an odds and ends sort of week.  The garden is totally in, but no indigo sprouts yet...just the always eager radishes.  Apparently permanent metallic markers are far from permanent (above).  The amorphous blob of cellulose seen below is a 16 layer piece of joomchi.  Done all in one shot, it works...but I think I know a more effective method.

Tuesday saw a visit from the gang in Acid Mothers Temple.  The show was great as usual (below), and Michelle had fun goofing around with them the next day.

Below is an in-progress shot of some custom business card sleeves.  Two-color joomchi made with hanji from Paper Connection.

My intertubenets communication may be greatly disrupted during the next two weeks, as I will be on the road in Korea.  I'll post when I can, but I won't be checking e-mail on a daily basis...so don't bother.

Annual Indigo & Paper Day

Thursday brought a plethora of cool stuff.  First, my indigo seeds from Nancy Dorrell arrived.  I bought a gallon bag full...she kindly sent about three gallons of odds-and-ends seeds.  These will just be broadcast-sewn, rather than mess with seedlings at this point in the growing season.  With a little bit of attention, these should yield a lot of dyestuff and a lot of seeds to share next year.

Evening brought dinner with friends (old & new), and Aimee brought more indigo seeds (!) and an assortment of papers.  I'll add the seeds to the intended field of indigo tomorrow...and I've already been using some of the paper for joomchi.  It seems to work well, with no surprises or weirdness to speak of...but then again, I'm the guy who can joomchi Rives BFK, so one shouldn't expect any bumps in the road.

The night wrapped up with a new friend acting as a conduit to my childhood stomping grounds, via a client of his that grew up in the same area!  Talk about bizarre.

Staging

The indigo has sprouted.  A couple hundred seeds is certainly a lot less than the ounce I tried two years ago.  Unfortunately Rowland didn't have any extra to sell this year.  My goal is to get a sufficient number of seeds to spread the love locally next season.  Fingers crossed.

I've also got veggies, toraji (balloon flower), and black Hollyhock sprouting.

Above is something new in progress.  As always I seem to have a dozen or so things in progress.  I'm not allowing myself to start anything new until the current projects are wrapped.  I need to clear off the work tables before I leave for Korea.

Below, a detail from a finished piece for the Morgan's Revive and Renew exhibition.

Thanks to Bunny for the Italian treats, and to Dean for the Nepalese textile!

Odds & Ends & Odds

The ConEd evening classes have finally wrapped up.  Above is a mediocre-quality detail of a nuno-felt piece.  The iPhone could use a macro lens and some image stabilization...

Saturday brought the first joomchi workshop of the season.  Students working studiously, above and below.  A few familiar faces from past workshops were present...including one woman who took my very first joomchi workshop back in 2008.  I found it very satisfying when she pointed out how much the course material has evolved since that first try.  And one could hardly ask for a better teaching neighbor.

Below, one of the two ubiquitous sample tables.  I always feel like I should have more samples.

And I pulled-off a tidy little four-color repeat pattern demo for my class at KSU.

Selamat Jalan...

I found this little gem last week when I was looking through a book on sprang.  And there are real live catalogs for the Morgan workshops.  I'm busy gearing up for my Joomchi workshop at CIA this weekend, so not much time for other endeavors this week.

Arduous March

The last couple of weeks have been a bit distracting, but work is still getting done.  Above, a detail from a tapestry sampler.

And there's this.  I started it last Fall.  I think it's done.  Maybe not.  I'm on the fence.

Blast!

The ARM loom is threaded.  Now it's just a waiting game until the control head is ready to cooperate. I wish someone would invent a wi-fi control head to replace the old Patronic system.  The data transfer from computer to loom is like The Jetsons to The Flintstones.  Another year or two and the technology gap will be too big to overcome without a modification to the control head.  So somebody get to work on that.

Above are a couple of drawn joomchi collaborations.  Maybe it'll go somewhere…maybe not.  Worse case scenario, I end up with more samples.  And I do need to replenish my sample supply anyway.  I dropped off a fat stack of joomchi at The Morgan, so if you're curious stop in and give them a fondling.

Above and below are the first successful tests for something really amazing.  I've been prepping for the Nuno felt portion of my felt-making class, and kept thinking about the misleading description of joomchi being "paper felting"(…sorry, Aimee and others…).  The reasons joomchi and felt form are entirely different, but I was convinced that there had to be a way of creating a laminate fabric with wool and paper.  After some experimentation I finally arrived at a method for making a fabric that is both joomchi AND felt!  I'm sure others have wondered about this, and maybe even found a way to do it…but I can't find anything on the Interwebtubes, so until someone corrects me (...and, please, don't hesitate to correct me…), I'm going to be terribly immodest and claim to be the first to do this.  There.  It's done.  I was the first.

For those curious about learning this technique:  There isn't room in the already scheduled itineraries for my upcoming joomchi workshops, but I plan on running it as a backyard workshop in early August.  There will be a proper e-blast before the end of July with the scheduling details, however, I'm willing to compile a tentative enrollment list if anyone is eager to get onboard.

Now, back to the ARM loom.

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UPDATE:  There is now a mechanical failure occurring in the ARM loom's lift system (most likely the solenoid control circuit) that is unrepairable by the likes of me.  So I cut my warp off, and I'll set it up on my small loom at home.  Sometimes the older methods are more reliable.