debor049

Creating a book isn’t much different from creating a textile.   There are stages to go through.   The first seed of the idea.  Contemplating the potential of that seed.  Outlining what the completed book might look like, in broad terms.  Then refining that broad scope into greater detail.  Ultimately doing the work of interpreting the concept into words that you hope will make sense.   Once you have mostly written the words there is the search for intent being made comprehensible.  There is the polishing for clarity.  Then the search for typos and mistakes of grammar.   With each examination of the manuscript, you reach a stage of done-ness.  Of being 95% ‘done’.  Done that bit.  Each pass through you feel a little more confident it is readable.  Becoming more ready for the light of day.  And public opinion.   Then photos are taken, edited, slotted into the text.  Diagrams are drawn and also inserted. ...

Over the past couple of days I have been going through my inbox, deleting some of the +7000 emails that have been living in there.  I would watch the number count grow and think to myself that I really needed to deal with it because a lot of them are 'spam' or lists I'm subscribed to.  Some of them I want to stay subscribed to, many I need to unsub from.  But with all the stress of the past two + years, I just hadn't been able to work up the energy.  Reviewing these emails reminds me of what I was dealing with two years ago and puts things into perspective. I leave tomorrow for San Jose and one final meeting with my editor, after which it will - hopefully - be all steam ahead.  The week between getting home from Calgary and leaving on this trip was mostly playing catch up - on my bills, on my emails, on my sleep and energy.  Once again I was reminded that my energy levels are not what they were even two years ago and I have to ration my activities in order ...

It has been literally months since I dressed the AVL.  Long enough that when I went to do it, I had to really stop and think about what I was doing.  It no longer came naturally to me because when you don't use a skill...you tend to lose that skill. I had left the warp beamed, ready to thread and only felt able to do the threading over the past two days.  Everything seemed to go smoothly enough with the threading but I tear the loom apart to thread.  In order to get close enough to the heddles, I take out the sandpaper beam, which means taking the auto-cloth advance apart.  Then I remove the beater top and the reed, pull a small stool close (the sort of rust coloured one just visible to the right - the red stool is the one I sit on to weave). Yesterday I finished threading and decided to leave the rest until this morning.  At which point I completely forgot what I did next.  So I re-installed the sandpaper beam and auto-cloth advance, then put the reed...

Edited to remove bad ASCII art and hopefully be clearer... As a brand new weaver I had the good fortune to take a workshop with Peter Collingwood.   He showed us how to centre a warp in the reed without using any math.   I have never forgotten it and use it every time I dress the loom. Say you want a warp 10" wide and your reed is X length. Lay a measuring tape along the length of the reed (in this case the reed is laying flat because I'm about to rough sley the warp).  So lay the measuring tape with zero at the left end of the reed.  Pinch the measuring tape at where ever the reed ends.  Let's say 36" just as an example. With your right hand pinching at the 36" mark (the end of the reed) move your left hand to the 10" mark.   Now still holding both points of the tape - 10 and 36 - bring your hands together and align the 10" mark and the 36" mark, effectively folding the tape together. By moving your left hand to the 10" mark, you have subtr...

It is very true - no warp, no weaving.  If you don't have someone to dress your loom for you (and some people actually do have someone to do that for them) then you have to just get on with it and get it done. Today I felt able to tackle threading the AVL.  Unfortunately my body has gifted me with a new challenge - threading the AVL I kind of drape myself over the beater and that position now causes my right hand to go numb.  Yay for body issues?  However, my knee is lovely, thank you.  Quite happy to lower myself down onto the low stool I sit on, bend sharply so I can fit into the small space at the front of the loom.  Win one, lose one? A few people say they don't find threading a loom uncomfortable.  I...am not one of those.  I have never found the position to thread any loom comfortable.  At all.  There is only 'as comfortable as possible'.  Therefore it seemed to me that if I couldn't find a comfortable position, I needed to ge...

"Oh you're a weaver!  You must be sooooo patient!" Um, no.  No, I'm not. So when I run into times like these where I'm waiting for the clock to tick, the calendar to turn, I have to remind myself to keep going.  This too shall pass.  Doesn't mean I'm liking it or taking it with particular good grace, but if I remember to just keep going, that does seem to help. I found the above fridge magnet at about the year anniversary of my brother's sudden death, when I was dealing with adverse drug effects.  It has stood me in good stead when I broke my ankle (it's temporary, it will heal, you will walk again, weave again, it's temporary, just let your body do what it needs to do, it's temporary). Then again through chemo, through more adverse drug effects, through by-pass surgery. I leave in less than a week to go through the final edits of the manuscript.  The foreword has now been written and is being incorporated into the ms.  Three reviewers have...

some of my stash that needs using up We are home from Calgary and the last 'big' show of this year.  The guild will be having a sale in the guild room and I have a small number of 'orphans' and end-of-the-line textiles that I will put on deep discount, but that weekend is more a time to sit and knit or spin as traditionally not very many people come.  It's a quiet weekend when I can contemplate what is to come. As mentioned previously (probably way too frequently!) I have been spending a lot of time thinking about the next few years - what they will hold, what I will be able to do. Long car rides are also a time for some contemplation and the 13 or so hour trip yesterday provided time for us to discuss what the coming year holds. First of all...(ta-DAH) the book.  I leave in a week for San Jose (bringing filter masks because they are still under the same kind of smoke pall we dealt with over the summer and masks are getting hard to find down there). I have to follow...

Change can be difficult.  Letting go of the known and familiar, making different choices, not knowing if they are the best, right or correct things to be doing.  Not knowing what the future holds, how the changes will affect ones life, ones income.    The decision to semi-retire has been about two years in the making.  Between the house renovations and all the upheaval that entailed, mom getting sick and dying, the return of my cancer...there has been much to contemplate.  Each time I analyzed what was happening, the conclusion was the same:  something had to give.   Giving up guild workshops was a push/pull question.  Without the income, could I still keep going, financially?   Without the stress of all the administrivia, would I have more energy?   Would I have more time for the more intellectual approach to weaving that drew me into the craft in the first place?  If so, what would that direction look like?  Would there ...

November 11, 2018. My father has been dead for 43 years.  He died the month I started my weaving career. For some reason, this year I have been thinking about him - a lot. He served - reluctantly - in the Canadian Armed Forces.  He was first generation Canadian, born in a little village about 20 miles south of the town I was born, raised, and still live in.  The smaller photo is him, around 14 or 15, the larger at 21 in his uniform. The fabric is his medal patch.  See the empty spaces?  Family myth has it that upon being demobilized, he took all the 'medals' and handed them back, keeping only the insignia of his service. He served in the Aluetians (first born German extraction citizen meant keeping him away from the European front, I suppose) and then was sent to England in preparation for D-Day. For many years the CBC aired a series on World War II - my father would sit in his recliner, focused intently on the screen.  My brother and I had to be quiet beca...

...begins with a single step... one of the projects included in The Intentional Weaver Step by step.  Writing the words.  Polishing the words.  Polishing some more.  And yet more.  Designing samples to illustrate the words.  Weaving the samples.  Photos, photos, photos, diagrams.  More editing, more polishing. Yesterday?  ISBNs.  This stands for International Standard for Book Number.  It is a way for publishers, libraries and bookstores to identify a very specific book.  Titles are not copyright-able so there are frequently books with the same or very similar titles.  But they will have unique ISBNs. I am waiting on the publisher/printing company to get back to me with a quote on price and delivery of actual printed books.  This is one of the services they provide.  They will do individual print-on-demand and pdf versions, but they will also print multiple copies. I had hoped to get this information before we le...

I have always been someone who had a plan.  Who then set that plan into motion.  When I ran into roadblocks, there was usually some way around them, under them, sometimes even...through them. I was talking to a friend recently and I started working out when the last time was that I felt functional.  When I had drive and energy to implement the plan I was currently working on. That isn't to say that over the years I haven't had issues, just that, given enough chemicals, I could keep going.  My last major setback prior to the time I last felt functional was 1994 when I was rear-ended. which meant a double whiplash injury to my neck.  The first one happened when I was 18 and was a side-to-side injury.  The one in 1994 was a front to back whiplash which meant my neck was really in bad shape.  But again, I did the therapy, took the chemicals and eventually (mostly) recovered from that even though it took several years.  Whiplash - the gift that keeps o...

Two yarns.  Both cotton.  Both weighing in at 3360 yards per pound.  Are they the same?  Are they? This is the sort of thing I am hoping to spotlight in The Intentional Weaver, for those people who want to really understand what they are doing, perhaps design their own textiles, and are looking for answers to the question, why?  Why does this yarn behave differently than that yarn.  Why does this weave structure have a different epi/ppi than that one?  How is it possible to take one yarn, use different densities and wind up with a range of different qualities of cloth?  Why is this loom (rising or jack action) different from that loom (sinking or counter balanced loom) - and why does it matter? How come my selvedges are never as good as I would want them to be?  Why is my beat so inconsistent?  How can I weave longer without having pain?  So many questions. Many of them I have addressed in this blog, but blog posts are not A Book....

This morning I commented on Facebook that one of the things I was bringing to the craft fair was my knitting. Someone objected that craftspeople who want to sell their things must not do such things because they must engage with their customers. Happens that I agree completely with that observation. I always take a corner position (when ever possible) and set up so that there is good flow through traffic.  My textiles need to be hung up as much as possible.  I always have a mirror so that potential customers can see how a scarf/shawl will look, worn. I try very hard to say 'good morning' or 'hello' at the very least, pointing out the mirror for try-ons or volunteering the information that the place mats and tea towels are machine wash and dry. But I am an introvert.  Engaging with so many people all day long, in noisy, sometimes crowded venues?  Is very wearing on me.  It sucks the energy right out of me.  And then the times when it's so quiet that people a...

Standard 2:2 twill - enter shuttle from right hand side and the threads will all weave into the cloth. Twill with basket weave selvedge.   I routinely thread twill from the rear most shaft coming forward to the front.  The tie up is as shown (for either counter balanced or jack/rising shed looms) and I treadle beginning on the right side of the treadles, entering the shuttle from the right to the left. Some people don't like a twill selvedge for some reason, so it is possible to do a half basket weave selvedge.  But it still means a two thread 'float' at the selvedge. The only time you need to use a floating selvedge for twill is if the direction of the diagonal changes -  in other words, you change the direction of the twill line.  In this instance I use a herringbone or dornick threading and treadling. By skipping an end in the sequence you wind up with a slight line at the reverse in both threading and treadling, but you don't need the floating selvedges...