debor049

Friends are those who, when you only see the darkness, will light a candle for you.  When beset by doubts, they will lift you up.  When you need a hug, will hold you in their thoughts if they cannot physically reach you. To everyone who responded to my survey - thank you for responding.  You have lit enough candles to help me see my way...

As I mentioned previously, after wringing my brains out for the better part of four + years, off and on, I became completely devoid of of any kind of perspective on what I had done. Today I took a wee look at the manuscript and - while there is still work to be done - and I'm not entirely sure - still - that it is going to be of use to people, I'm in way too deep to stop now. Ms Editor has 'notes to self' sprinkled throughout and I can see where she is going with those notes.  However a book is a static thing and weaving is active.  How well will my words and the photos illustrate what I am trying to convey? I just don't know. However.  However, I do have the DVD that was done for Interweave Press .*  I am hoping that between the book, the DVD, the video clips I've loaded onto You Tube  and these blog posts, that people will be able to figure things out and find the best practices for their own approach to weaving. Ms Editor has commented that it might be possi...

My little library with electric stapler used to staple the samples into Magic in the Water One of the things I did in high school was take typing and a class called Office Practices.  The latter class looked at various things one might do if they were working in an office -  double entry bookkeeping, using a calculator (before there were digital ones), maintaining files, working on large projects that required research (pre-Google).  I also acted as editor of the school newspaper, writing and typing the content onto Gestetner stencils. When I left high school I worked a variety of jobs, mostly office work because I had the training in terms of typing, filing, bookkeeping, developing a budget, reading financial statements and so on. So when I became a weaver I already had experience in running big printing jobs, researching for big projects, knew how to touch type at a fairly decent correct words per minute. It wasn't that big a stretch to begin developing class handouts f...

Page two of the Table of Contents. If you heard a squee, that was me, downloading the professionally edited rough draft of The Book. I immediately hied myself to Staples, where I printed it out in all it's full colour glory.  And gulped at the price.  It was a cool $125 to print it out, double sided, hole punched, full colour, currently 204 pages, 160+MB file. Given that, plus we still don't know final cost via the website, my checking the prices of other weaving books...and I'm going to have to go higher than planned in terms of retail price.  Ruth has done a great job of detailing the contents on the contents pages (there are three), which should make finding what people are looking for a lot easier. There is still work to be done but at some point you just need to see it on the page, especially if the whole point is to offer print-on-demand. We are more or less set up for the first craft fair of the season.  Taking a closer look at the binder full of pages is goin...

A reminder today that even though it feels as though I'm swimming upstream, the stream will end, the deadlines will come - and go - that I can only do the best I can do.  And that I don't need to do it all by myself. As women, conditioned to taking care of everyone else, we forget to take heed of the flight attendant - when the oxygen masks drop, put yours on first.  If you help everyone else before you help yourself, you won't be able to help anyone at all, very quickly. One of the reasons I love the fibre community is that it is comprised of a large number of strong, capable women.  Women who take care of each other.  Who encourage and support each other.  We are very much a community. Tomorrow will be fraught for me.  I have to get to the lab to do the blood work needed before my cancer clinic appointment.  I have a flu shot booked for 11:30.  And Doug will be unloading and starting the set up of my booth at the university by himself while I go...

One of the most difficult things about writing a book - any book - is the fear. Will readers be disappointed?  Will I deliver content that they want to read?  Will they be satisfied with the price they have paid for the book?  Will they tell their friends it's good...or bad? I am not alone in feeling this.  I follow a number of authors on line and most of them, in one way or another, have to grapple with this fear of failure. A work of fiction takes - typically - a year, sometimes longer.  Technical books can take a lot longer.  A friend was involved in writing a textbook for higher mathematics on a rather esoteric aspect of the science and it took them (there were three as I recall) three years from conception to publication.  She got the first actual in print books last month. An archeologist I follow on Twitter is in the process of writing a book on latest developments in her science and it took her a year to write it with publication date next Augu...

The photo is a scanning electron microscope image of a single silk filament.  It is finer than a hair and deceptively strong. Our world, our society is made up of strands of connections in so many ways.  None of us is singular.  We all interact with others, sometimes forming close bonds with them, sometimes lives becoming twined with another.  As the silk filaments are grouped together, they grow first into a yarn, then several of these yarns may be twisted into something larger - and even stronger - than just itself, all on it's own. Well, my project has done much the same thing. It started with an idea.  An idea that grew and expanded, originally from fewer than 100 pages to now?  Potentially over 200.  It has grown with the input and energy of others.  First my alpha readers who gave me crucial feedback.  And I continued to add information as I thought of other things that really needed to be between the covers of one book. Much of what I ...

The deadlines have been rolling by and it suddenly occurred to me today that it is (gasp!) six weeks to anticipated lift-off aka publication day. (looks around desperately for a paper bag to breathe into...) With that realization now a conscious thought instead of an 'in denial' thought, marketing the book has been much on my mind. I know a lot of people are like me - they want to have technical books on real, actual paper.  I know this because about 60% (or more - I've lost track) of the sales of Magic in the Water via the Blurb website  have been print-on-demand rather than the pdf download. As I wove this afternoon, I thought about that fact and also that I will have a booth at the conference where I could sell actual print copies.  The conference will have an author signing event, so they could even get a copy signed. Then I thought about all the people (I hope!) who might want a paper copy but won't be able to attend the conference.  And I thought that I could p...

I took a 14 week course on marketing back in the 1990s.  One reason I took it is because I'm not - never have been - good at blowing my own horn.  I am an introvert, plus I was taught that 'ladies' never put themselves 'forward'.  Conditioning that reinforced my introverted side of not wanting to be in the limelight. The very first week the presenter defined marketing as the simple act of sharing information.  Suddenly marketing started to make sense to me. With the rise of the internet my introvert self has had a much easier time in terms of 'sharing' or marketing myself.  Because of course my products are an extension of myself.  And since my stated aim right from the get-go was to sell my products, the job isn't done until the products have been purchased. 'Selling' a conference is no different.  It is a product, a commodity, that we hope people will purchase.  But a conference is so much more than merely a product.  A conference is also a...

As we continue to work on the conference I have had time to think about this community of textile creators. One of the things that appeals about conferences is the opportunity to meet other like minded people in real life.  To have actual conversations as we fondle each others cloth.  Exchange the 'weaver's handshake' (gently rubbing the cloth between your fingers). What brings us together is our passion for textiles.  Our curiosity about how threads are made, then turned into fabric. Material used to be a trade good.  Anyone interested in how this can play out, Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond Series has one book of the series where an expedition to Russia is mounted with cloth in the hold to be traded for Russian furs.  In North America, Hudson's Bay blankets were traded for beaver pelts.  And so on. Human beings have been playing with 'string' since the dawn of humanity.  Elizabeth Wayland Barber has a number of books about historic textiles and the role th...

In the most recent issue of Handwoven, I have an article about Bronson Lace One of the things I did was to use two different colours, one in the warp, one in the weft.  They are closely related, and the difference in colour really doesn't show in the photos they included in the article, so I've posted a close up here so that people can see how the two closely related but slightly different values look. The pale value will 'advance' while the darker value will 'recede'.  Therefore the centre block will have a somewhat three dimensional look to it - subtle, but there.  Closer, the difference is much more obvious. This is something that weavers can do to make their textiles more visually interesting.  Rather than use exactly the same colour warp and weft, two slightly different values of the same hue can provide more depth to the cloth. Using two - or more - hues of the same value (blues to greens, perhaps), well mixed will also make a cloth have more life to it th...

While I was out of town, total page views of this blog rolled over the 1.5M mark. Several friends have asked me that, now I'm 'officially' semi-retired (if I keep saying it often enough, I might actually come to believe it?) what's next? Well, frankly, I don't know. So, what does 'semi-retired' actually look like to me? It means I no longer try to import and sell my own hand dyed yarns.  Stopped doing that a few years ago when I had to decide if I imported more or just dyed what I had and either sold it or wove it up myself.  In the end, I wound up selling some, but weaving most of it.  I still have some left - too much to give away/donate, too little to try to weave it.  It may show up in my 'worthy cause' shawls that I've been knitting and donating to fund raisers for organizations/causes I feel will benefit by selling or auctioning the shawls.  (The latest batch will be going to my local guild to sell at the craft fair and/or the guild room sa...

The end of the day, the workshop nearly done.   The topic was lace weaves but we (I) wandered far from the topic on more than one occasion.  Because weaving encompasses so much more than just getting the threads woven.  So I did my usual soap box routines...ergonomics, position and posture, wet finishing.  Because these things all affect either our ability to keep weaving, or the integrity of the cloth.  Because it is all of a piece.   This was the last guild workshop I intend to do.  It was bittersweet.  The Weavers taking the workshop ranged from fairly new to weaving for a long time, per usual.  But they were all of good cheer and we laughed and learned.  And I almost (almost!) started to regret my decision.   It was the best kind of workshop and I will miss the experience.  But having limited energy, my resolve to focus on the Olds classes tapped me on the shoulder to remind me that this is where I need to place my time and...

This weekend is Thanksgiving here in Canada. While there are many (too many!) things that still need improving in this world, it is always a good idea to stop for a moment and recognize that there are still things to be grateful for. Randomly opened a book of quotes titled A Grateful Heart and this one was revealed: Give us thankful hearts...in this the season of Thy Thanksgiving.  May we be thankful for health and strength, for sun and rain and peace.  Let us seize the day and the opportunity and strive for that greatness of spirit that measures life not by its disappointments but by its possibilities, and let us ever remember that true gratitude and appreciation shows itself neither in independence nor satisfaction but passes the gift joyfully on in larger and better form. W. E. B. Dubois. While life is never always perfect, all of the time, and we may not have everything on that list of Debois', it has been my journey through life to try to find the silver linings in the cl...

Autumn is well advanced for us now.  The glorious fall colours are mostly over their prime.  Now comes the interlude between that burst of colour and the coming winter season. This morning it is raining.  A steady, gentle rain, welcome because summer had so little of it.  But it brings a chill that seeps into the bones. My plans were to weave up as much as I could before I left on Tuesday, but the fall I took on Wednesday has nixed that idea. Two falls in five weeks has shaken me up well and truly and while I could have woven on the AVL, my hands were also torn up and my neck and shoulders were tight and sore.  Weaving on the AVL would have been possible...but over all a bad idea.  My body needed time to rest and heal. Instead I have been vegging and doing not much of anything, trying to keep my foot elevated as much as possible.  On the other hand (heh) there was time to work on things I had been putting off - my sales taxes, conference budgeting, and...

Two face plants in 5 weeks.  I think there is a message in there somewhere. It looks bad, and it is, but mostly because my immune system is compromised due to the cancer drug and the medical professionals looking after me are taking every precaution. My knee is scraped up pretty seriously and the heels of my hands are tender.  So - all that weaving I was going to get accomplished before I left for the Island?  Not gonna happen. OTOH, I have administrivia for both the conference and my business to get done, so yesterday I worked on the budget for the instructors and today I will be working on the awards list for suggestions to give to the guild assisting us with that part of the conference. And I will just ignore the fact that I won't be getting much else done for a while. I go back Sunday morning for the dressing to get changed and then Tuesday I leave for Courtenay.  I'll be asking to pre-board.  Because steps are difficult and I'm walking sloooowly.  But ...

I use this blog as a diary.  A place to work through my thoughts - which can oftentimes be quite scattered and need to be corralled.  A way to sort through the emotions of a situation to discover what I actually think about something. This summer has been...challenging.  In addition to the general stress of living and trying to keep my business running, there is the on-going struggle with adverse drug effects.  Then nearly four weeks of smoke pall.  I'm allergic to smoke and was aware that I was struggling with that, but not how much until I left for a couple of weeks and my body was able to breathe again without also inhaling what is, for me, a fairly significant allergen. The drug I'm on has a list of adverse effect and I am having a lot of them, the most annoying one the sinus drainage, the second most annoying one (the two flip-flop on the list daily, sometimes hourly) is the feeling of being too tired to do much of anything. I told a friend last night that ...

The colour of these shawls is more green than grey but apparently my ipad didn't 'read' it that way. When I fringe twist, I don't hemstitch on the loom.  I just weave in 'waste' yarn to keep things in place until I can get the twisting done. After wet finishing, I then trim the frayed bit off to make the fringe look neater.  The untrimmed fringe is above, the trimmed below. Doug got a lot of pressing done yesterday so today I'm trying to 'finish' as many things as I can because he needs to start packing the inventory up into shipping boxes for transport to our first show - Artisans of the North at UNBC Oct. 27/28.  The following weekend will be Studio Fair Nov. 2, 3, 4.  Both of those shows are here at home.  We then have a week to prepare for the show in Calgary - Art Market, Nov. 15-18.  The 'final' show of the year will be the guild room sale.  This is where I will deeply discount end-of-line designs, 'seconds', as well as offer so...