debor049

The past week has been pretty fraught for many of my friends.  I have also been struggling. I post this reminder that we need to help each other.  Support each other.  That in order to banish darkness, we need to have more light.  Using our light to light someone else's candle costs us nothing.  Zero.  Be kind.  Share the light.

My dining room this morning. Foreground - last of the green shawls being fringe twisted. On chair - shawls ready for wet finishing. In bucket - four shawls to be fringe twisted. On bucket - stack of table runners needing to have their tags attached and pricing affixed. What is just out of sight on the blue chair is a stack of knitted shawls that need to be blocked. Waiting in the wings - my chequebook to be reconciled to my bank statement, stack of bills waiting for cheques to be written.  Then a trip to the bank to pay them. In the studio - well, lots more, because I'm still trying to weave more for craft fairs.  But also a box of homework to be packed up and mailed.  And, oh yeah, mark to be submitted to the college - next on my list, I guess. One of the reasons I keep track of how long it takes me to do tasks is so that I can allocate my time in order to get everything done that needs doing. The creation of textiles is labour intensive.  It takes time.  Lots ...

I have been weaving long enough that I was part of the growth of weaving in the mid-70s, part of the shrinking of practitioners, part of the recent growth in interest again. As such I have a library of books that span all of that time. One of the things the level one Olds students do is write a comparative book review - comparing two books to the course curriculum.  Mary Black is frequently one of the two.  Also Debbie/Deborah Chandler/Redding. Mary Black wrote her book in the 1940s .  It was always intended to be a textbook, and it is reflective of the time it was written.  In other words, it's dated. By the time Redding's Learning to Weave was published I had already been weaving for quite a few years and I didn't see the need to purchase a beginners book, so I don't actually own that one. My weaving class textbooks consisted of Mary Black's book, Shirley Held's book Weaving and M. P. Davison's green book.  Regensteiner's book was also recommended as a...

As I was twisting the fringe on a shawl this morning I started thinking about how fragile the web is when it is cut from the loom. The threads are no longer under tension.  The threads can easily be pulled out of alignment.  Slippery yarns like this rayon can slither and slip.  The weft yarns don't want to stay where they have been placed but start to fall out of the web entirely. Fragile. Once the fringe (or raw edge) has been secured in some way, things are better but the cloth still won't - can't - perform its function properly.  The threads, warp and weft, are still individual.  They have no cohesiveness.  No strength.  They are interlaced but that web has no structural integrity.  It is fragile. Weavers have to wet finish their results just like potters have to fire their bisque, glass workers have to anneal their glass, etc., etc., etc. Almost every craft I can think of has to 'finish' their product in some way before it is finally done, don...

end of a towel showing part of the motif and the hem area... One of the things that really appeals to me is how the threads march steadfastly in order as I weave them into the cloth. Yes, I know about the threading error in that block.  No, I'm not going to 'fix' it.  It won't affect the function of the cloth and I have decided to accept it as my unique maker's mark.  Yes, I know I'm lazy and I should have re-threaded 2/3's of the warp to fix it.  No, I didn't feel like it.  Which just goes to prove that I am not, and never will be 'perfect'.  Yes, I know some people will judge me.  That is their prerogative. I have spent many years of my life making sure every textile I produced was 'perfect'.  IOW, without obvious error. However, there comes a time when another part of you says, you know what?  I don't have the time or energy for that level of 'perfect' for this warp. When it came to this warp, I felt ill (from the adverse e...

Climbing onto my soap box... These are Color Catchers.  Today I've been wet finishing a load of red scarves and shawls.  I knew beforehand that the weft on these items bled copious amounts of fugitive colour and it needed to be dealt with in the wet finishing. If all I had done was wash this load of cloth, there would have been a significant amount of dye left in it and any friend or customer who owned one might have had a really nasty surprise when they tossed it into their laundry. So no, wet finishing isn't 'just washing'.  Wet finishing means that if there is fugitive dye, it is - as much as humanly possible - removed. Wet finishing allows the yarns to shift to areas of least resistance so that weave structures like lace weave, deflected double weave, honeycomb, waffle weave and others will develop to their finished state. Textiles that rely on shrinkage differential will not look anything like they will coming off the loom and after wet finishing. Wet finishing may...

Plain weave doesn't have to be 'plain'.  And 'simple' isn't always 'simple' to achieve. One of the things that endlessly fascinates me about constructing textiles is how the layers can be peeled away, revealing another dimension of the craft. It is the very exploration that keeps me getting out of bed of a morning, wondering what discovery will be presented today. Sometimes it is how colours interact.  Sometimes how different textures can be created.  Either by texture in the yarn itself, or through how the threads interlace. When I first started weaving I was particularly interested in weave structure.  My former favourite colour was white - usually on white.  And the 'interest' was in how the threads moved, combined, shifted as they made their way through the cloth. I never really got comfortable with weaving plain weave until I got comfortable combining colours.  In many cases, the 'best' way to combine them was one on one - plain weav...

Then... When I first took up weaving, intending it to be my profession, I resented the fact that the stereotype of a weaver was a little old lady in running shoes. Now I are one. The above photos are from a conference held in Victoria, now a very long time ago.  How do I know?  I was a brunette.  It may have been 1984, but memory fails on this one. I taught the first workshop ever the month I started weaving class.  The fact that it was a spinning class and I knew very little about spinning was kind of incidental.  I knew more than the others in the room and that was all that mattered.  But I had my first taste of what it would be like to involve myself in this world of teaching about textiles. Since then I have run the gamut of being valued...and not.  I have stories.  Oh my yes, I have stories. Dini Moes used to say that 'comes from far away, tastes better'.  And that seems to be in large measure true. For a great many years very few people...

Over the years I've seen the debate on tensioning or not tensioning a warp during beaming.  One view is that beaming with zero tension is 'equal' tension. Unfortunately while that may be correct, it is not particularly helpful in many instances. In my observations, beaming with zero tension may work in a narrow range but may very well stop working when that narrow range no longer applies.  (And yes, I tried beaming with zero tension - once - and it was a disaster.  That warp eventually wound up in the round bin as a sacrifice to the loom goddess...) Let me give some examples: Let's say hypothetical weaver has been weaving with 5/2 cotton, mostly short warps - 5 yards and under.  And beams with zero tension and has perfectly satisfactory results.  Let's say that said hypothetical weaver wants to up their game and decides to use that 5/2 cotton and make a run of tea towels, decides to wind a warp of 15 yards and beams it with zero tension. This may not work so we...

"One reference says it has to do with the blacksmith trade. A skilled blacksmith has "a well-trained apprentice who maintains such control of the bellows and the placement of the irons that each is ready in turn at the anvil and hammer...'Too many irons in the fire' would mark an inefficient smith or one with an unskilled apprentice. Figurative use of either saying takes us back only to the middle of the sixteenth century." From "2107 Curious Word Origins, Sayings & Expressions from White Elephants to a Song and Dance" by Charles Earle Funk (Galahad Book, New York, 1993)." As a self-employed craftsperson, I frequently have many irons in the fire.  Just now for example? Craft fair production.  With the craft fair season beginning in October, I have had to keep an eye on my inventory of hand woven textiles, try to gauge how many place mats, table runners, tea towels, scarves and shawls I might possibly need for the three shows I am doing this yea...

When I helped organize conferences previously (1980, 1985, 1995) there were few resources other than pencil, grid paper and a very large eraser.  By 1995, I had a personal computer, but there were very few tools for conference planning - in fact we had a registration program custom written for us to use.  But spread sheets were rare and we scheduled workshops and seminars the old-fashioned way. This time?  Things have changed. We also have more resources on the ground and are taking full advantage of them! The Civic Centre can hold 500 (plus, but we need to reserve some seats for the vendors and guests) and we are planning as though we will fill all of those seats. Registration will be done on line, which will take an enormous load off of the committee.  Instead of continually crunching numbers, the site will track registration, give us seat counts for the various events, and just generally make our life a whole lot simpler. In addition, the site will collect the fee...

Yesterday I posted about yarns that are 'tender' and need special handling.  This yarn is not tender but it still needs special handling. Even though it was stored in a plastic bag, the bag was loose and during transportation, the coils of yarn around the cone loosened to the point where it was pretty much impossible to find the end of the yarn, and trying to unwind it would have turned into a nightmare of snarls and tangles. In the end when I gently grabbed the snarl of loose coils and gently pulled them off the cone and onto the table, there really wasn't all that much in terms of yardage - certainly well under an ounce of this 16 ounce cone. Stripping the loose yarns off the cone took less than a minute, the value of the yarn was very low and many minutes of my time (not to mention the frustration of trying to salvedge it) were saved. I used to work with this quality of yarn all the time when I wove for the fashion designer.  In point of fact I bought this yarn from her ...

magnification of seine twine and a 2 ply cotton yarn - seine twine is generally made up of several plys and much more tightly twisted and an 'ordinary' 2 ply cotton yarn At a recent class I talked a wee bit about working with 'tender'* yarn.  About how more twist will make a short staple fibre (like cotton) stronger.  But that with the addition of more twist, absorbency will be compromised. What makes a yarn 'tender'?  It depends.  (OK, now you've all had your drink...) Short staple is one thing that will contribute to a yarn being 'tender'.  A longer staple fibre will produce a stronger yarn - if all other things are equal - than a shorter staple fibre.  Examples would be things like quiviut, cashmere, cotton.  A singles yarn will be more tender than a plied one.  A thinner yarn will be less strong than a thicker one. So, when working with a yarn that is likely tender, can you use it in a warp?  Well, yes, but you need to treat it more gent...

I keep two planning calendars - one for this year, one for next - to record events and remind myself of deadlines. Even though I am cutting back on teaching by no longer accepting guild workshops, it seems I still manage to fill my calendar with dates.  These are just the potential teaching events coming up that I know about.  Of course they all depend on getting sufficient students to 'go'. Olds Master weaving level 2 and 3 in Cape Breton in May, the conference here in June, for which I'm scheduled to do three seminars (in addition to the organizational duties of co-chairing - which  ought to be pretty much over and done with prior to the event - one most fervently hopes), Olds level one (I haven't been asked yet, but I'm reserving the dates in case) and John C. Campbell again in September. In addition to that I have craft fairs in October and November - how many and where are yet to be decided.  I'm old enough now that I tend to reserve that decision until af...

morning mist at the folk school This was the first time I'd been at the the John C. Campbell Folk School in September and it was quite different from the previous times in Jan/Feb/March. The mornings dawned with mist and heavy dew on the grass, but it was in the 90's(F) during the day and very humid. The studio is air conditioned and at times, walking out of the studio into the thick air outside was a bit of a shock for this northerner, but the walk between the studio and the dining hall was a welcome break from the thick concentration in the studio. My cough and voice improved over the week and we decided that I had not actually caught a cold but with all the 'adventure' of the stressful flight, spending hours upon hours in airplanes and airports, then the off-gassing of the new windows and caulking where I was staying, I had been having a massive allergic reaction.  I may have a touch of bronchitis, but will wait a few days and see if it all settles down.  The cough ...

We are using Mary’s dining room table as a staging area.  Mary is the best studio assistant ever(TM) and has gone out of her way to run and fetch things for the students.  I packed very light for this trip so I don’t have a large suitcase filled with materials and gewgaws like I usually do, plus I was running low on Mason’s line for lashing on.   On top of everything else, the stress of missing my flight, having to stay overnight (an unbudgeted expense), then multiple flight delays and at least four gate changes sending me chasing all over O’Hare airport, and I came down with a cold.  Too late to cancel now, we stopped and got boxes of tissues, hand wipes and masks for anyone who wants to keep my bugs at bay.  I will wear one when I’m not lecturing but my voice is weak and a mask will further muffle my voice.   I am feeling somewhat better today so I’m hoping it won’t last very long.   But I’m very disappointed in catching a cold while travelling. ...