Wednesday, January 14, 2026

Horizontal Color Stripe Experiment #2

 For this one, I chose a photo with less orange and more blue. It's a winter sunrise, shot from the back of my goat barn.


I cropped a small section with colors that appeal to me. 


I didn't tweak the overall color this time, but followed the same steps as last time to create my stripes. 


As a standalone design unit, I can't think of much to do with it. My first idea was to change the width of the stripes for a towel or throw rug shape. I did this easily by elongating the image.


From there I experimented with duplicating the image and playing around with the arrangement.



I like it! And it's something I never would have come up by starting from scratch with just my brain. 

One thing I'm realizing is that this is a different way to approach color choices. I typically start with a weave structure and choose colors for it. My problem, however, is that I always seem to gravitate toward the same colors. With this exercise, I had a different starting point, and ended up with colors I probably wouldn't have selected otherwise. And I could apply these colors and stripes to almost any weave structure.

It seems like this experiment is opening up all kinds of new possibilities. 

Posted by at 5 comments:
Labels:

Monday, January 12, 2026

Color Experiment: Horizontal Stripes From Nature Photos

My goal here as to experiment with ways to create color stripes from photographs. I could just eyeball it, or choose arbitrarily, but I wanted to try something more methodical. The color placement in nature photographs seems random to the eye, so I was curious if I could find a pattern in there.

Here's the original photo.

From a series of sunset photos on my photography blog.

My first step was to enhance the colors in GIMP photo editor.


This is probably closer to what my eyes actually saw. JPG images are actually camera edited images, where the camera makes guesses about adjusting things like light and color. I find that my camera usually gives me somewhat washed out looking images on the laptop I'm using. So almost every picture I take, I correct more toward what looks lifelike to me.

Next I cropped a section of the photo to work with. 


Then in Gimp, I added a transparent layer on top of the image.


From there I used the "select" tool to make lengthwise boxes on the transparent layer, roughly the width of the color stripe on the photo. 


Then it is was a matter of using the color picker to select a hue within the selection, and then using the fill tool to fill it in on the transparent layer.



Here's what I ended up with.



I'd never guess it was inspired by a sunset. Do I like it? I'm not sure. The width of the stripes was arbitrary, as was which color I selected with the color picker. I think it is about as random as I've ever done, and I wasn't even aiming for random. For that matter, the colors seem anything but natural, don't they? But there they are, after sorting through a number of digital pixels.

Here's what it looks like when repeating the pattern four times (2 across and 2 down)



And here's the pattern x 16 (4 across and 4 down).


A pattern emerges with the repeats of the stripe sequence. 

Cropping a different section of the photo would give me different colors and a different set of stripes, as would using a different photo. 

My previous methods of working with stripes was either evenly spaced, evenly balanced, or as a Fibonacci sequence. This give me another design option.  

Posted by at 4 comments:
Labels:

Friday, January 09, 2026

2026 Goal: A Year of Permaculture Weaving

Last time I was able to share that at long last, I will be able to get back to weaving. No more packing things up and shuffling piles around so we can finish remodeling and upgrading our house. But where to begin? I'm not one to make new year's resolutions, but I do make goals. Something that has been percolating in my mind for the past couple of years is permaculture weaving. 

What is permaculture? It's a food growing / landscaping / life style design and maintenance system based on natural principles. The word was coined by the late Bill Mollison from the term "permanent agriculture." It has been promoted and adapted around the world. You may recall me mentioning Permies.com from time to time. That's an online discussion forum about all things permaculture, including the fiber arts. 

So here is the list of design parameters I want to include
  • fiber content: Ideally, handspun. But I have a large collection of cotton and wool yarns, some handspun but much commercially spun. To start, I'm going to include the commercial natural fiber yarns. 
  • color: I already started dabbling with this last year with my nature's color palettes. 
  • shapes: This will probably take some defining for this project. To start, I've been collecting photographs that feature stripes or bands of color on my photography journal. How I'm going to apply them to weaving will be part of my challenge.
  • patterns: Natural patterns are a key element in permaculture design. More soon.

My guiding principle is that each of these categories is taken from or inspired by nature. 

Okay, so there's my introduction. As soon as I hit the "publish" button, I'm committed!

Posted by at 3 comments:
Labels:

Wednesday, January 07, 2026

2026: The Year of Being a Weaver Again?

Once upon a time, my fiber journal was my main blog. Then we bought our homestead and there was so much to do that I created a homestead blog. One of those things to do was repairing and upgrading our 100-year-old house. Seventeen years later, the interior of the house is almost done! With every room we've worked on, I've had to pack things up and pile them elsewhere. Between that and establishing our homestead, my fiber arts activities have been off-again / on again. 

2025 was mostly an off-again year, although I managed 28 fiber blog posts. Late last summer, when Dan started on the front bedroom where I set up my Glimakra, things were packed up again and piled up in my sewing room, so my table loom and supplies were harder to get to. That led to a loss of momentum for weaving the samples for the project I was working on. 

Happily, that front room is finally almost finished! 

A newly redesigned and rebuilt closet gives me all
sorts of storage space! (Before and after pics here.)

I've reserved getting excited about it until just recently, but now I'm starting to think about new weaving ideas and goals. Getting back to work on my fiber stash too. It needs to be turned into yarn! 

Anyway, I'm hopefully back to fibering and fiber blogging.

Posted by at 6 comments:

Monday, November 17, 2025

Brother Blankets Sample #2

Sample #2 for my Big and Little Brother Blankets

  • Yarns: Hobby Lobby Baby Bee Sweet Delight
  • Yarn size: sport weight
  • Sett: 10 e.p.i.
  • PPI: 10
  • Structure: Plain weave
  • Pattern: Every third warp end is solid green. The other two and the weft are the multi-color variegated yarn.
  • Width 
    • on loom: 15.5 inches
    • after finishing: 14 inches
  • Length: since it's a sample, I didn't measure the length
  • Wet finishing: same as sample #1
  • Weaving notes: 
    • When I measured the warp, I used two variegated skeins starting with the same color, so the colors were wound in pairs.
    • Other than that, I didn't line up the yarn's color changes for either warp or weft in any planned way; the color changes were long enough to create the plaid look as it is. 

It definitely has a different look than sample #1.

close-up of sample #2

The solid green stripes break up areas of solid color. Even though I didn't plan the plaid, you can see from the first photo that a definite repeatable plaid emerges from simply using the yarn as it comes off the skein. 

I like plaids, but I think the close-up view is more interesting than see it from afar.

Posted by at 4 comments:
Labels: ,
Subscribe to: Comments (Atom)