debor049

It's almost launch time.  There are a few more things to add to the pile, mostly 'personal' items.  The next six weeks are going to be crammed with deadlines, mostly of the teaching sort.  It is very exciting to see the growth in interest in the Olds Master Weaving program , and the desire for weavers to understand the craft more deeply.  At least, it's exciting for me.  I hope the students also find it exciting! The level one class beginning on Monday has 11.  Level one in Cape Breton has five, with room for more.  Level two Cape Breton has nine, possibly 10 as one more person is contemplating joining us.  The classes at Olds College proper during Fibre Week are filling - level one has 12, which makes that a full class (although I have been known to accept one or two more rather than disappoint.  Plus I have a teaching assistant in Olds, so could potentially take a couple more.) Level two and three are running during Fibre Week as well....

My life seems to alternate between the calm before the storm and...the storm. I wanted to use a 'cartoon' I saw on the internet about what your plans are and reality.  My plans being a nice smooth path to my goal.  Reality being a mountainous up and down over and around numerous obstacles kind of journey. But you get the drift... This morning I was chatting with a friend about how we always seem to be juggling way too many balls, wearing way too many hats.  We agreed that if we didn't we wouldn't likely get off the sofa of a morning.  Some of us just keep having Really Great Ideas.  And then of course, someone has to implement them, right? Also, this morning, I have been shooting off emails and messages about the conference, the classes, and a friend about the progress being made.  Oh yeah - and weaving on the above warp. The good news is that the class manuals for WA are scheduled to be delivered today.  A Just In Time delivery if ever there was one....

In the face of - it seems - rising stress, increasing darkness, people going through tough times, I choose to light as many candles as possible. Thoughts and prayers are just the first step.  Lighting metaphorical - or even real - candles is a first step.  The next steps are up to each and every one of us. I try, every day, I try to choose kindness.  To encourage.  To accept that people are having difficulties I may know nothing about. As a child I was taught that God helps those who help themselves.  So if you believe in a God, pray.  But don't pray for God to 'fix' what is broken in this world.  Pray for the strength to fix what is broken.   Pray for understanding.  Pray for those who have things more difficult than they should be.  Pray to open your eyes to inequity - and the way to make things better, even for just one person. The world may be breaking, but we can mend it.  Light a candle.  Be kind.  Lift up those who ...

Wayne Dyer had a talk he would give on the stages of human growth.  The last one, according to him, was mentoring the next generation(s). I feel I have entered this stage of life.  And that is why I am committing myself to the Olds Master Weaving program (almost) exclusively.  (I will, from time to time, continue to teach the local weavers via the guild I belong to.  If anyone wants to study with me, they are more than welcome to come here!  Or one of the Olds programs I am teaching.) Being a mentor does not mean you have reached a certain chronological age.  Rather it means you have reached a stage where you have a deep level of understanding that you can convey to others. People tell me I can do this. More importantly, I feel I need to do this.   After being in this business for 4+ decades I have a great deal of experience.  I also have a sense of what new(ish) weavers need to learn, even if they don't know that they need to learn it....

People adapt their processes to suit their personal preferences, the yarn they are using and their equipment.  I tend to weave within a fairly narrow range of yarns.  I'm very comfortable with them, know their limitations, how they will consistently behave.  (Doesn't mean they are always the same, just reasonably consistent!) The above photo is an 11 meter long warp.  Half of it, actually.  The finished warp will be 24" in the reed.  With such a width, I only wind half of it, or 12".  The max width I will do on this warping board is 15" at 20 epi +/- I tie off the four 'arms' of the cross, not the waist.  I used to just tie the waist, then would fight to find the waist and deal with how the threads became compressed.  So I take an extra few seconds and make four ties to save that PITA level I mentioned in yesterday's post.  Extra time at one stage to save time and PITA levels at the next is not wasted.  IMHO.   Notice that...

It seems there is nothing like a group of weavers discussing how to dress a loom to create controversy! There are the front-to-back and then the back-to-front disciples.  Both are absolutely convinced - it seems - that their method is the best thing since sliced bread. When I learned how to weave we were taught to use a raddle to spread the warp out to it's weaving width.  I did that for a while until I was shown how to use a reed to rough sley.  For a year or so I followed that process.  I got pretty good at using either a raddle or a reed. Then I started beaming front-to-back and did that for a couple of years.  It worked ok with some limitations. Until. Until I changed what I was doing and it no longer worked.  Well, it did, but the 2/20 mercerized cotton I was then using for warps snarled and tangled and it took literally hours to beam a 10 or 12 yard long warp. At that point I switched to sectional beaming and never looked back.  For literally dec...

I have never been one to rush into a decision.  Well, hardly ever.  So I spent a lot of time thinking about the post I wrote yesterday.  Thinking about how much energy I may - or may not - have in the coming years.  How most people my age have long ago retired from their job/career.  About what I want to accomplish, really, and truly, with the rest of my life - however long that may be. The past few years I have cut way back on my teaching.  I have threatened not once, but several times, to quit teaching altogether.  But then my health would take an uptick and I would look at my dwindling bank balance, check my energy levels and think, oh sure, why not?  And book another date with another guild. But after writing out just the next four months of my year with all that is scheduled?  Looking in the mirror and seeing someone who has fought the good fight, but who is getting tired?  Who would like, once in a while, to not have rolling dead...

Yesterday I had a good chat with the nurse practitioner as we seek to find balance in my treatment - sufficient drug to control the cancerous cells, not so much that I have to deal with adverse effects.  To that end, I am now on one capsule per day.  I am really hoping that this works because there is nowhere to go from there... In the event that I will still have some degree of adverse effect to the drug, I am having to also tweak my life.  The things that are important become clearer when 'normal' changes to something...less... My long range goal for the past few years has been stash reduction.  So I will continue to work on that.  As I use up the things I'm not all that fond of, I am hoping to pare my stash down to my favourite yarns and not have these other challenges staring at me from my shelves. The next six months are getting very crunchy with deadlines but roughly these are my priorities (I tend to use this blog to sort out my thoughts and make them mor...

When some people find out my preference for spreading the warp to it's weaving width is rough sleying there can be a variety of reactions. One is, why do I 'waste' time sleying the reed twice?  If I'm sleying the reed anyway, why don't I just cut the loops and dress the loom front to back?  If I prefer back to front warping, why don't I just use a raddle? The answers to those questions take longer to explain than a short answer, which is, this is the method I have tweaked to fit my needs and it works best for me. How I got to that conclusion takes much more detail. The warp above is an example of how spreading the warp using a reed is most definitely rough .  I'm aiming for 24 epi, but I have - mostly - wound two ends at a time.,  Except for where I haven't.  This means that in order to rough sley there is a bit of mixing and matching going on. I don't have a six dent reed wide enough, which would be the easiest size reed to use.  I have two six dent...

Choosing a life of textiles doesn't mean that there was no stress.  Oh my, no!  But it has been a different kind of stress. And my days have been filled - not just with dealing with that stress - but with textiles.  Yarn.  Creativity. As a child I assumed that being an adult meant I could do whatever I wanted to do, instead of what the adults around me told me I had to do. What a shock!  What a surprise!  Adults have responsibilities to a level I could not - as a child - imagine or comprehend. As an adult it now fell on my shoulders to pay the bills and keep the home fires burning.  So to speak. By choosing to do that through the life of a creative person, I simply exchanged one set of stressers for another.  But the daily grind was now  of my choosing, not dictated by a boss who had their own level of responsibilities and stress to deal with. I became my own boss.  Therefore I set my own agenda in order to meet my schedule, my long term...

I was 19 - and in Sweden, a trip I'd worked hard to make happen the year following graduation - when the first intimation that my life was about to change significantly occurred.  My father was gravely ill. When I got home about 4 weeks later, my mother finally told me dad had multiple myeloma and the prognosis wasn't good.  He hadn't even turned 50 yet. My intention to pursue higher education had to be scrapped.  There would be no money for tuition, textbooks, food, shelter.  Instead I went back to the telephone company as a long distance operator. While the job paid good money it wasn't much fun.  It was very obviously a dead end job as technology was already creeping in.  It was also dealing with people who varied from kind and polite to rude and stressed, at times, down right abusive.  And at that point I was once again a 'new hire' so wasn't getting full time hours and pulling the 'nasty' shifts - the split shifts, the early morning shifts, the ...

When winding this warp I apparently missed a Peg.  Decided I could live with a shorter warp rather than try to fix it.  

As I go through these books I am constantly amazed at how the threads can be made to move through the textile and the cleverness of our ancestors who figured this out. This is a small table runner and rather than work with a bazillion bobbins, the lace meanders back and forth to create a much larger textile with a more manageable number of bobbins. While I can't yet quite follow this diagram, I get just enough of it to be blown away by whoever figured this out. After seeing Ivan Sayers collection of lace at Fibres West, the fineness of the threads used, and the designs that were created, usually in very low light conditions, I can only offer up my respect to the (mostly) women who made these lace textiles. And, while I am intimidated, I am also inspired to dig my pillow and bobbins out.  I just wish I didn't have so many crunchy deadlines right now.  But never mind, I have the books and I can feast my eyes on these incredible patterns and - who knows - set up a pillow for a ve...

Community.  A banding together of people with like interests or living in a 'common' area. Weavers are rare these days.  I have constantly been greeted with blank looks when I tell people I weave.  Not only do I weave, but it has been my profession for 4 decades. When I took my first weaving class I had no idea what I was getting myself into.  Truly.  It was only that I saw possibilities.  Potential.  For living a life filled with intellectual challenge, creative boundaries - and how to push beyond them. I had no idea I would also find community. By and large weavers have to be some of the friendliest, helpful, supportive group you could want. I have seen this over and over again as I have traveled, meeting 'strangers' but treated with kindness at every turn. And so it is happening again as we push our way towards another Olds class.  Looms have been loaned.  Ground transportation freely offered.  Strangers - friends, just not met in per...

This weekend the local guild is having a workshop on twills. I really love designing with twills.  You can keep it simple, ramp it up, make it over the top complex.  Yes, even with 'just' four shafts. The design we call Swedish Snowflake here in North America was originally made popular by Margaret Atwater.  But her version of the threading was not...elegant.  In fact it was extremely difficult to thread and treadle.  And it was for eight shafts. Along came David Xnaxis (apologies if I've spelled that wrong) who saw the symmetry and twill progressions that lay scattered through the threading, shuffled shafts and hey presto, the sense of the threading and treadling was revealed.  His conversion is the one we use most often now. My personal take on Atwater's version is that she did a fabric analysis of an actual piece of cloth, and because there was no software to easily shuffle shafts, her draft stood for many years. But - eight shafts.  Many people hav...

I love deadlines.  Especially the sound as they Swoosh by! I knew that this spring was going to be crunchy with deadlines and I am now in the thick of them. The first level one class is a 'go' and as much as can be done, has been done.  My tickets are booked, class materials sent, accommodation and ground transportation pretty much organized.  Still a few details to work out, but those are best done once I'm there. But now it's time to deal with the next set - Cape Breton.  Dianne was bold and booked another level one the last week of May.  I still haven't heard if there are enough people registered to make that a go or not, so here's a shout out to anyone on the eastern seaboard -  Level one, with moi, May 28 to June 1.  The student accommodation at the Gaelic college is the usual sort of student rooming, but believe me, you won't be spending much time in your room!  :D  The food is decent and location quiet. Level two in Cape Breton is pro...

There is a persistent 'myth' about counter balanced looms.  Well, two, actually. One is that counter balanced looms cannot weave 'unbalanced' weaves.  The other is that they can only be four shafts. I have tried to explain on chat groups and such that this information is not correct.  These comments are more correct for roller type counter balanced looms, but completely incorrect for looms with pulley and lever systems. This morning I pulled Jane Evans' book A Joy Forever off the shelf to look for some information.  When I opened it, the paperback book spine finally broke completely.  Since the pages are 8.5 x 11", I grabbed my box of plastic pocket pages and a binder and started carefully pulling the pages apart and inserting them into the pocket pages. As I was doing this, the above diagram caught my eye.  I have been using Laila Lundell's Big Book of Weaving diagram showing how counter balanced looms with horses can be 6, 8, even 10 shafts.  This on...

I've said it before and will say it again - more than once, guaranteed.  If you can't be perfect, be consistent. One of the reasons attempting for 'perfect' is counter productive is that our materials are rarely perfect.  Yarns spun from fibres are reasonably smooth - or as smooth as someone can make them considering that spinning short staple fibres into a perfectly smooth yarn is pretty much impossible.  Which is why yards per pound are generally known to be approximations. The extreme close up of this twill (with points) shows just how 'not perfect' a cloth can be.  Looking at the twill line this closely it is very easy to see the slight undulations of the twill diagonal.  (Biggify the photo to see the entire photo.) Am I worried?  Not really.  This slight amount of deviation from a 'perfect' angle will pretty much even out during wet finishing. Silk is a slippery fibre, especially a cultivated silk such as this is.  Those tiny little variation...