Masquerade

Sometimes we collaborate.  Glenn and I work in very different styles and seldom work on tasks together.  It is what has helped keep us married for almost forty four years.  But once in awhile, we get a wild hair to do something together.  And that is what happened this year.

He belongs to The Big Island Woodturners and they have a major wood show each spring.  This year it is starting in February.  We decided to enter a piece that used his wood turning and my fiber arts.

He turned and painted four masks and finished off a willow branch.  

In the meantime, I was busy on the loom.  The shawl that was to be the background for the masks had a warp of silk yarn that I had purchased when I was in Tokyo four years ago.  It came as a light beige and I wanted purple so I first had to dye it.  This was the first time that I had dyed commercial yarn.  I was pleased with the result.  The weft was a very fine silk yarn that Glenn purchased for me when he was in Okinawa.  This picture is of the shawl when it was on the loom.  The fine gold threads that you can see scattered in the cloth were also silk that Glenn brought back from Okinawa.

It took me a little over a month to weave the shawl.  I had some slight problems with keeping the tension even and tight, but nothing compared to an earlier project that I did.  To see that project you can go to the Hawaii Handweavers Hui gallery page.  It is near the bottom of the page. 

Here is a picture of the finished shawl and another of a close up of the shawl.  I was pleased with the final result which was a gauzy fabric of purple and blue with just a hint of gold.

Finally it all came together this past week.  Here is a picture of our finished entry for the wood show.  We are calling it Masquerade.