Next Warp

Sorry about the out of focus picture.  It looked fine on the camera screen and in the thumbnail, not so much here.  :(  However the point is to see the colours, which at least do show.  From this bin I will be making up a warp for sample #2 for AGY:L&H (and a little cotton, too).

In the interest of keeping the price of this publication as low as possible, I decided that, where appropriate, I would use cotton as companion to the linen and hemp.  The weft for this warp is a cotton/hemp blend but it is only available in natural so in order to get some colour into the cloth, 2/16 cotton is being used for the warp.  I will use cotton with some of the other yarns I have decided to use as well.

There are days when I feel like I should have titled my blog Confessions of a Weaving Heretic.

We began the Weaving Boot Camp at John C. Campbell with a look at some of the always/nevers that crop up from time to time in the weaving community.  (Feel free to share the 'rules' you have successfully bent or broken in the comments.)

If you are a regular reader of this blog you will know my list of studio 'rules':
1.  Never use a knot where a bow will do
2.  If you can't be perfect, be consistent
3.  A thread under tension is a thread under control
4.  It isn't finished until it's wet finished
and the newly adopted #5 courtesy of Cally Booker
All else depends

So we looked at some of the set in stone rules that sometimes appear on the chat groups or guild meetings and talked about the specific circumstances where those 'rules' would apply.  And where they didn't.

It is my belief that these 'rules' came about because someone, somewhere, had a truly horrible experience and in an effort to spare everyone else the same sort of grief shared their new found experience, urging everyone to always/never do such and such.

When I come across this sort of blanket statement my first reaction is to wonder what the circumstances were that gave rise to such a generalization.

Such sweeping statements such as 'never use hand spun for warp'  are perplexing because for the first 36,000+ years of textile construction hand spun was the only yarn available.  Obviously humans used hand spun yarns rather successfully, given the archeological record.

So I tell my students, find out what gave rise to such admonitions and find out if they are applicable to what they want to do.

Ultimately, choose your expert, with the aim of learning enough that you become your own expert.

FYI - I've been booked to return to JCC the week of January 12-18, 2014 for another 4.5 day Weaving Boot Camp and a 2 day workshop, topic to be decided.