The More I Learn...

   ...the more I realize how much more there is to learn.  

The trip to the coast was complex and things happened that I need to cogitate on.  Pretty sure there will be future blog posts that will arrive at some point.  For the time being, they are still simmering.

In the meantime, my editor has been beavering away on the ms and is nearly 'done'.  She will come over later today and we'll take another gander at it and see if there is anything else that needs to be done.

Truth to tell, there will always be *something*, but at some point you just have to stop.

In the meantime, I've been working on my marketing plan and it is time for a 'teaser', an 'amuse bouche', an indication of what a reader might find between the covers of this particular book of essays.

What follows is a cut/paste copy of one of the shorter essays.  I asked my editor to choose a shorter essay because a blog doesn't tend to lend itself to longer form writing.  Still, I wanted to be honest about what a potential reader will find and the most effective way is to simply share one of the essays.  

There are still a few more days to opt into my offer for the pre-publication special offering.  Email me (laura@laurafry.com) with the subject line 'lagniappe' before midnight July 4, 2023 (Pacific time zone) and you will receive a print copy of the book, signed, plus a free tea towel (of my choice), for $68.00 (Canadian!) which includes shipping from me to you via Canada Post.

The deadline is to have the ms uploaded to blurb by end of day July 4, 2023. I will order a 'sample' copy to make sure all is as it should be, and once I have seen it, I will order the pre-publication copies.  Generally it takes about 10-14 days from time of order until I receive the books and as soon as they arrive I will get them signed, parceled up and to the post office as quickly as I can.

Regardless of what is happening on blurb, I will still do the zoom book launch on July 9, 2023.  My plan is to read one or two of the essays, and then throw the meeting open to 'ask me anything'.  I will have some things to share (show and tell).  I've made an event on Facebook, but will also share the zoom link on here, most likely on July 3.  I realize that a lot of people will be busy and don't expect a huge number of folk to attend, but I've got the professional zoom account, rarely used for the past year, might as well get some use out of it.  The plan is to record it and post to my You tube channel for people not able to attend on the day.

So, here it is - one of the essays from Stories from the Matrix; weaving a life:

MAKING CHOICES

As with anything - everything - to do with textiles, when it comes to fibres, there is a spectrum.

The first division is the categories of fibre sources.  We have two to choose from - natural and synthetic.

Natural refers to fibres that are available from the natural world, while synthetic are those fibres that have been made from chemicals.  The difference is that natural fibres will degrade back into their constituent molecules while synthetics won't.  If they are 'plastic', they are 'plastic' for pretty much ever, no matter how small the pieces that they break down into.  We now call them 'microplastics' and worry about the pollution hazard they are in our waterways and the fish we eat.

Under the heading of 'natural' we also have an outlier - regenerated cellulose.  The cellulose in these yarns is not naturally occurring but has been broken down into a viscous solution and then spun using a spinneret.  Generally, in North America, these yarns - regardless of their cellulose source - are legally required to be labelled 'rayon'.  In Europe, they might be referred to as modal or viscose.  Regardless, they will break down into their 'natural' parts thus loosely fall under the heading of 'natural' (although some fok dispute this).

As a new weaver, I made the decision that textiles were meant to be ephemeral, and so I would work primarily with 'natural' yarns.  I have, from time to time, used synthetic yarns for special effects.

After decades of weaving, my stash is not only deep but broad, and I currently have rather too much rayon (from various sources) in my stash.  After finding out how bad for the environment and the workers who labour in the factories manufacturing rayon is, I have decided to weave my rayon stash but not replace it.

Under the umbrella of the 'natural' label, we again separate that into two categories - protein and cellulose. Protein fibres come from animal sources, while cellulose comes from plant sources.  There are also regenerated or engineered protein yarns that come from soy and milk casein.  These are frequently marketed under names such as milk 'silk' and soy 'silk', but they aren't actually 'silk'.  'Seacell' is regenerated cellulose form seaweed.

Protein again gets broken down into more categories - the extruded fibres (moths, spiders) and fibres grown on the surface of an animal.  (There is a rare fibre harvested from a mollusk.  It's not extruded but grown from an 'animal', and I'm not sure where to place that, but it's extremely rare, and only a few weavers have access to it.)  We further break down those animal fibres into wool and hair.  Wool and hair are different in their structure, but all of them come in a variety of qualities and characteristics, and suddenly we have a vast array of different fibres to choose from.

Extruded protein fibres (silk) will not full.  Some wool fibres will full, but not all of them.  Some hair fibres can full, but not all of them.  Some of the hair fibres that will full need to be heavily processed to get them to full.

Cellulose fibres will not full.

There seems to be some confusion about what will and what will not full because during wet finishing, all the fibres absorb water and swell or 'bloom'.  If the cloth is given a good hard press as part of the wet finishing process, the swollen fibres (ideally still damp from the initial wet finishing) will flatten and expand into the spaces between the threads, adding stability as the warp and weft threads lock into each other through the process of compression.

Fulling, on the other hand, is a completely different process where the fibres migrate within the spun yarn and entangle, then lock into place through this entanglement.

When it comes to spinning the fibres, we again have a spectrum with a 'worsted' process at one end and a 'woollen' process at the other - with a myriad of options between the two.

And then, we have the actual thickness of the yarns being used.

A thicker yarn will behave quite differently than a thinner yarn, even when apun from the same fibre in the same type of process.  The degree of twist may also vary, and a tightly spun yarn of a size will behave, feel and even look different from the very same fibre spun to the same size but much more loosely.

I tell my students very flippantly that it is very difficult to make thin cloth from thick yarn, which is not to say you can't, but you will have to work very hard to do it usually in the compression part of the wet finishing process, or, if it's wool that will full, in the fulling.  Except that part of the fulling process means that the cloth will be even thicker, so again, we are back to compression in the wet finishing.

And then, of course, there are all the variables that can be played off against each other - smooth/textured, thick/thin, protein/cellulose, shiny/matt.

The last two options are density and weave structure.

The more interlacements (plain weave is the maximum that can be done), mean more stability.  When the density is also high, the cloth becomes quite stiff, which can be detrimental to some applications.  It will also be better able to resist abrasion, so it will wear better in applications where that can be an issue.

Density is also a sliding scale from too open to be useful because it has no structural integrity, all the way to too dense to easily weave and too stiff to be useful for things that require drape.

The fewer interlacements, the more density is required to keep structural integrity, which is why recommended epi/ppi is also a sliding scale.

How can a weaver know what to do?

A new weaver can rely on someone with more experience than they have.  But that can also be somewhat problematic.  As a newer weaver who had not done a lot of weaving of overshot nor used much acrylic, I joined a 'friendship blanket' project, in part because I knew I would learn a lot and I would wind up with a lovely souvenir blanket made by myself and 11 other weavers.

The most experienced weaver designed the project using yarns that she was familiar with decided on an epi for those yarns, wove a sample and sent us the weaving directions.

An acrylic yarn was used for the warp and tabby weft with a merino wool used for the pattern weft.

I hadn't woven with the acrylic yarn before, so I went ahead and wound my warp based on her information, including to 'use a moderate beat'.

Turned out my 'moderate' beat was a lot harder than hers because my 'square' turned out rather 'flat'.  I had to re-do my first square and figure out that using those particular yarns at that density for overshot, my beat had to be very gentle - more of a 'placement' than any kind of 'force'.

It was a good lesson for me to learn as a new weaver - that everyone is just a little bit different, and we have to take the given information and double check it against our own processes to get the desired results - in this case, a 'square'.

Ultimately the most effective way to learn is to weave 'samples'.  There are caveats with this, too, however, because it's weaving, and it depends.

When I get a new-to-me yarn, I will wind a warp at a density I think might work, 10" in the reed about 3 meters long, weave plain weave and twill, perhaps a couple of other twill variations, cut off and wet finish.  From that sample, I will then wet finish to compare the difference between the weave structures in the two different densities.

From there, I might design a project.  If the project is to be a much wider warep than the samples, I might open the density a bit, knowing that a wider warp will provide more resistance to beatin in the weft.  Or I might use a temple in order to obtain a denser quality of cloth which might be better able to be cut and sewn, especially if the yarn cannot be fulled to increase stability.

A sample can be something 'useful' - a scarf, a tea towel.  A sample doesn't have to be 'just' a sample.  On the other hand, for the final level of the Guild of Canadian Weavers master level program, I wove literally dozens of samples in order to experiment with both density and degree of fulling.  I have 3 large binders full of samples that I can refer to in order to better choose an appropriate density for those yarns.  For years I dragged them to workshop (when I drove) so that students could benefit from the work that I did in weaving those samples.

All of these factors are why the only correct short answer in weave is 'it depends'.  The weaver can adjust what they use, adjust the density, adjust the weave structure and adjust the wet finishing.

It depends.

(edited to fix introduced typos)