Thursday, December 20, 2012

Where to go from here?

I have been at a funny crossroads of sort lately, not sure what I want to do, not sure where I want to go.  I have been so overly focused for the last few months (since about May), that I feel a little bit lost and out of sorts lately, especially with all the sadness that has happened in the last week.

So... I turned to my personal library.  I decided to start learning about crackle weave.  At first when I started reading about it, it seemed SO confusing!!  I just didn't seem to understand anything!  But the more I play around with it on some weaving software, the better I am understanding it.

By the way, a friend on Ravlery showed me this site by pixeLoom.  It has a free download to try out their software before you buy it.  And the free sample is so very comprehensive!  You can do everything, except save and print.  I am really enjoying just playing around and getting to know the software.


Here is my first attempt at traditional crackle weave using the software:



What I also like about this software is that you can treadle 2 or more treadles at once, as for skeleton tie-ups.  I didn't do that here, but it would have been so super useful when I was working on the snowmen project!  However, you can also change the size of threads on this one, like for the pattern weft, and that is a very handy tool to have!



Here is an attempt at crackle weave, treadled as overshot:






What I would like to do is just play on my loom for a bit, trying out all the different ways to treadle crackle.  I know nothing about it, so it's kind of intimidating, yet also very intriguing!  I am thinking of starting out with a gamp of some sort, playing around with color and treadlings.


Here is crackle treadled as  paired summer and winter:


This is just way too cool!  Now, I just need to save up my money so I can unlock the saving and printing features.... because you can never trust technology!  Even though I am not closing the program on my computer, if the computer were to crash, I would lose all my work because I can't save it yet.


PS. Too colorful?