Thinking of Spring on a snowy day

It snowed last night (the first true snow of the season) and today I'm hibernating, drinking tea, making croissants from scratch, sewing white gauzy curtains for the windows, and weaving a test warp of springtime colors. Although it's still January, I'm dreaming of Spring- I already have a container gardening plan for the small deck and a seedling calendar for the beginning of March.
This test warp is an exploration of familiar structures with new colors and patterns. Hopefully this Spring will be a productive one.

Windsor's orange & gray waffle scarf

I love this time of year.  I've dug out warm scarves and coats, and have been baking bread and making pots and pots of tea. It has been really lovely to see autumn unfold a bit more visibly here compared to the last apartment. The trees out my windows had an amazing display of red and gold leaves, although they're gone now. Yesterday I happened upon boughs of blue spruce, tied them to the back of my bike and made wreaths with neighbors!

I've also been weaving up a storm, and the latest is a waffly pumpkin orange scarf that is perfect for containing heat! It is next in the series that draws inspiration from squares. I made this scarf with a traditional waffle weave in mind, but created a different type of cell structure. It is made of wool and mohair, with yarn from NY and Russia. I made one for myself because waffle is my favorite weave structure, and have been wearing it around town. It is so warm and soft. I've put it the other up for sale here.

New work and website at julialines.com

I have been working on a website change for some time now, and it's finally presentable! I used Cargo Collective for the structure of the site, and it was liberating to be able to have a site that allows me to go beyond my basic html and web skills, but still allows me to fully edit and customize it. Take a look at some new work, and revisit some of the old!

Second Wind Farm and llama wool

My friend Tim has created an October tradition called "Chubbs Farm" bringing together friends, pie, llamas, and his family dog, Chubbs. His parents moved to a farm in central New Jersey some years ago and they now have four llamas, six hens, two kittens and the aforementioned pug Chubbs. It's a pretty glorious day for all, especially the "trip to the country" feel about it. The llamas had been shorn in spring and I bought some second-cuts (the fiber cut from the second passing of the shears) from all four llamas. Tim's mom has the first cuts separated out by llama (including photos of each) and it was awesome to know who it came from and to see the color and fiber differences. If anyone is looking for beautiful raw llama wool in first or second cuts, let me know!

Eduardo is a cream color (look at that face!) and a Heavy Wool llama.

Carbon Footprint is a black llama with a white chest (a little tuxedo!). He is a Silkie llama.

Jim-E (Extra Extra Read All About It) is a multi colored fellow- white with a brown/black saddle. He is a Silkie llama.

Clemente is a reddish brown reverse appaloosa. He is a Heavy Wool llama.

I'm planning on felting tea cozies with this wool. (I'm also hoping this inspires me to start felting again.) The new apartment is much much colder than the last, and the tea cools down so fast! We've also gone through an enormous amount of tea already, and have found a favorite tea shop. Premium Steap at 111 North 18th Street in Philadelphia was recommended to us by some dear tea-loving friends, and the woman who runs it is really knowledgeable and helpful.

Map-Walks: Manhattan to Brooklyn

I've continued the Map-Walk project I started in the summer of 2010, recording walking as mapmaking and creating accompanying maps through yarn, flipbooks, woven grasses (Weaving the Grasses of America), and video. I see now I only posted the other flipbooks on flickr, and that my website is horribly out of date! I have been working on a new one behind the scenes, but I'd like to be finished before I make it live. Hopefully I'll be able to pull it off for this weekend.



Tyler School of Art recently had a call for entries for a 30 second film festival (30 SFF), and I entered a fragmented sampling of map-walks across Brooklyn and Manhattan (including a piece over the Manhattan Bridge. The films were screened last night in Stella Elkins Tyler Gallery in Philadelphia. It was a truly helpful exercise in timing, rhythm and editing (a change from flipbook editing!). These 30 seconds are certainly more sketch than finished piece, but seeing it on a big screen allowed me to step back and evaluate what was and was not working, even down to the smallest details.

Philadelphia, although the fifth largest city in the country, has a decidedly different urban makeup and structure than New York. This may seem like I am stating the obvious, but I find it fascinating that something as simple as the kind and frequency of noises on the street, the sidewalk material, the pedestrian density noted through sound and speaking are all indicators of a certain urban personality. These small elements are a dirctly related part of the conversation surrounding architectural choices, urban planning, and transportation infrastructure within any given urban space.


flipbooks corresponding to their walks- from top to bottom:
Times Square to Herald Square

Penn Station to West 23rd Street

Union Square to East 19th Street

(flipbook showing the steps and accompanying sky)

Philadelphia First Friday

One of my "new year's" resolutions (in this new life in a new city) has been seeing more art. Somehow despite my best efforts, I only inconsistently made it out to New York galleries during all the time that I lived there. But now that I've moved both getting out more and galleries to the top of my to-do list, we're getting somewhere. I've resolved to try to make it to most First Fridays in Philadelphia. For October's, I went first to Old City and wandered around and then went to 319 N. 11th Street which holds a number of galleries (including Vox Populi and Grizzly Grizzly) and studios. My favorite piece of the night was Katie Murken's Continua on the second floor. Seeing it first online did not do it justice. The tall dyed columns were beautiful in the details, and her specific color choices were better appreciated in person, as I suppose is to be expected. They were interesting on their own, but I absolutely loved the next room, filled with embossed and printed diagrams showing which hues were chosen for each dye lot and the ratios of each color based on the rolling of a die. I love seeing process and decision-making in the work itself, and I think she did a particularly good job of it- deliberate decisions shown subtly with consideration for process' place in the work. It completely made my night.

Soft Heathered Blanket

After weaving a pair of double weave blankets a year ago for two weddings, I received a request for one more in custom colors. The customer wanted a mix of blues, purples and one green to be muted by greys, creating a soft heathered look. The warp is 100% mercerized cotton and the weft is charcoal cotton/wool fleece. The blanket measures 48 x 72". I loved the finished look to the cloth- muted, but still colorful (grey is one of my favorite colors!) I sent it off a few weeks ago, just as the seasons have turned. Although I am still having trouble with my sticking shaft, this blanket went much more smoothly than the first two, and I am thinking of making myself a blanket in 100% wool- perhaps in orange and cream. We'll see!