Solstice

For years my personal 'new year' has begun at the winter solstice.  But I am reminded that as we mark the winter solstice, the southern hemisphere is marking their summer, and vice versa.

In some communities, such dates were marked with fire - fire to bring the light to banish the dark.  In April one year I was in Sweden for the spring equinox and they also used fire to 'encourage the sun' in its annual journey from dark winter and then back to spring. 

Humanity is built on light.  When things seem dark, we long for sunshine.  We long for illumination.  Sometimes we do that by lighting candles or huge bonfires.

And so, today, in the northern hemisphere, we mark the summer solstice.  The day when the earth changes from lengthening days to shorter daylight hours.

We are not half way through the calendar year, but time as we know it is a construct, one that ignores the fact that the summer solstice is truly half way through the annual journey round the sun.

And what a year it has been.  Nor is it over yet.

We are living through 'interesting times'.  May I live long enough to see things get better for those who are hurting.

Peace and good will to everyone. 

Creativity

This draft was created a number of years ago - in fact many years ago.

It was for the master level of the Guild of Canadian Weavers certificate and is a draft for huck lace, incorporating spot, lace and plain weave areas.  Many hours were spent running through options and placement of the three different weave structures in order to create a textile that I would be pleased to weave.

Weaving software doesn't take the creativity out of weaving.  What it does is allow me to run through a lot more options before settling on what I am going to put into the loom.  After using weaving software (Fiberworks for anyone interested), I am pretty good at getting what I want - or something that I am willing to spend the time setting up the loom and weaving.

For the GCW tests, I relied more on my own knowledge and less on resources, but I'm not above using shortcuts, referencing drafts that already exist, tweaking them to suit my purposes.

So it was with the warp waiting in the wings.  I tend to use the time during which I'm weaving off a warp to think about and design the next one(s) in the queue.

Right now I've pretty much accomplished my goal of emptying (most of) the pirns of their 2/16 cotton, but there are still some left to do.  So I'm still in tea towel mode.

My goal of weaving down my stash has progressed nicely and I'm beginning to see gaps on the shelves as the tubes reduce in diameter, some of them even emptied.

Now that our province seems to be suppressing the Covid-19 here, we are slowly beginning to look to the future and what that will mean.  The two major craft fairs are cancelled, but the guild still needs income.  So one guild member is looking at potentially opening an on-line sales page on the guild wetsite.  We are also discussing how and if we could or should hold sales in the guild room.  Personally I think it could work if we think it through (and yes, masks in the room will be required - we have a number of immune compromised guild members).

Human beings are resourceful and adaptable.  I am quite sure that in the face of a pandemic virus with no vaccine and no 'cure' - yet - that wearing masks in public will become accepted as normal.  As one health professional commented to me, maybe if people get into the habit of wearing a mask, cold and flu season will be less severe, too.

We take safety precautions every time we get into a car - the car itself has been engineered to provide more safety in terms of construction, and we wear a seat belt.  We wear safety goggles, hard hats, and protective equipment without thinking too much about it.  Maybe masks will join the rest of those items and we will all be better off for them.

edited to add the photo of the silk scarf...

Procrastination

Procrastination.  It's a thing. 

There are times when I find myself not really wanting to do something, finding all sorts of distractions for not Doing The Thing.  Dragging my feet.  Shoving That Thing aside, over and over again. 

The more I shove it aside, the less I want to actually do it.

Over the years there have been all sorts of things I really did not want to do, but must.  And every single time I have learned that the reluctance to just Do The Thing becomes bigger and bigger and the less inclined I am to just Do The Thing.

I always have an excuse, oh my yes, I do.  Sometimes the excuse is legitimate.  But most frequently it isn't.  I allow the more 'interesting' distractions to push the thing I do not really want to do aside until it goes 'critical' and I must Do The Thing.

And every single time I find that the thing I did not want to do really wasn't all that bad, once I finally forced myself to just Do The Damned Thing, get it done and over with and out of my hair.

So I tend to cope with those projects by setting deadlines.  Goals.  Telling myself quite firmly that I must Do The Thing on such and such a day, have it complete by such and such a date.

Being self-employed for 40+ years, I have had to be firm with myself over and over again.  I have worked hard at my craft, figuring out the principles and honing my skills.  When I set my mind to getting something done, it may not bring me 'joy', but it brings me peace of mind.

Now that weaving is my hobby, I have let a few things slide.  This week I am getting one project completed, and hopefully once it is done I can do the next more interesting thing.

My goal of weaving down my stash continues.  I am pleased with the design for the next tea towel warp, but first I have to do the things on my current To-Be-Done list.  Now that I'm getting down to the dribs and drabs of the tubes of 2/16 cotton, I should begin to see some real holes open up on the shelves. 

The Best You Can

"Do the best you can until you know better.  Then, when you know better, do better."  This quote from Maya Angelou is one that resonates with me daily.

We come into this world a 'blank slate' upon which our life experiences write themselves.  We learn how to navigate the world.  We make mistakes.  We get taken to task for them, or we get away with making them, thereby learning nothing except that we got away with it that time.

There are things in my past I would love to erase.  Times when I was unkind or cruel.  I try to remember them so that I don't repeat them.

I consider myself a 'nice' person.  When I am thoughtless and someone calls me out for being thoughtless, I don't like it.  It is uncomfortable. 

But. 

But.

It is a wake up call.  And I need to pay attention.

We are living in 'interesting' times right now.  If you are white, I urge you to think about how your life is different from that of a POC.  While life may not be everything I hoped for, I know for certain that my life is not being made worse because of my skin tone.

As someone who strives to teach others a craft, I sometimes run into a student who gets defensive because I provide them with information they did not know.  That challenged their assumptions.  Instead of adding the knowledge to their information bank, they sometimes argue with me.  They want 'proof'.  They want 'citations'.  I'm a weaver not a medical person.  That doesn't mean I can't understand basic ergonomics and what will harm a body.

This past week I had a wake up call of my own.

With the new loom, I sit in a different position and the mechanics of the loom are different from the AVL.  The Megado is a much taller loom and while I always did 'perch' at the AVL, the design of the Megado means that my old position was a little bit different from what is needed at the new loom.

My body has been abused with years of repetitive motions and I have injuries that need to be protected.  So it happened that I began experiencing lower back pain.  Nothing seemed to make it better, nothing seemed to make it worse.  But I was in low grade pain for a while, treating with pain killers and anti-inflammatories.

A few days ago I was weaving on the Megado with the problem of this low grade pain simmering in the back of my brain.  Sub-consciously I did a wee inventory of my body while I wove and suddenly I realized that I was not engaging my abdominal muscles.

Huh.  I would have thought doing that simple 'clench' would be automatic but once I noticed that lapse, engaged the muscles, my back started to settle down.  Not right away - of course not - inflamed muscles take a while to calm down.  But that night I didn't have quite as much pain.  Over the next three days the pain slowly died down.

Changing attitudes about things like white privilege is like inflammation in muscles.  You need to be aware of it.  You need to consciously act to prevent it.  You need to repeatedly address it.

None of that can be done if you continue to ignore the underlying cause and just treat the symptoms.  Because pain killers and anti-inflammatories were only a treatment of the symptoms, not the cause of the problem in the first place.

When you know better...do better...

Not Perfect

The colours in the photo are not quite accurate, but pretty close.

This warp was a bit of a departure for me as I haven't been doing over all designs like this much.  For a while I've been doing large 'fancy' twills, or block twills.

This design has always appealed to me in part because of the nice curves, in part because it looks like scales or small feathers.  In my head I had been thinking of it as peacock feathers (the small ones, not the large 'eyes') but the colours aren't quite right - too subdued and not very brilliant in hue.  When I posted this photo to Facebook, someone commented that it was mermaid scales. 

They aren't 'perfect'.  I know where the 'wrinkles' are.  But they are pretty good and overall, I'm pleased with them.

With the AVL I used to be able to keep weaving for up to around 40 yards before needing to cut the cloth off the storage roller, and even then, there was no need to re-tie as I would cut off at the beam down at the back of the loom, not up at the front of the loom.

But the Megado doesn't have a cloth storage roller, and I was getting tired of 'fighting' with the growing roll of cloth and needing to fuss with setting tension every time I advanced.  Finally decided to bite the bullet and cut it off and re-tie - see if that would make the second half of the warp easier to set tension on.

It was also past time I needed to deal with the rest of the warp on the Fanny, so it made sense to cut off the 10 woven towels and get them wet finished so I could begin hemming them while I tackled the warp on the other loom.

The warp is the usual 2/16 cotton, but because the weave structure is based on a satin, I increased the epi to 36 and it looks like it is the correct density.  I didn't have any trouble beating more or less to square and maintaining a consistent beat.    Or close enough.

These will go up for sale on my ko-fi account when they are hemmed and given their final press.  They will be the same price as the other towels, which is a bit of a bargain, given the extra work involved - more ends per inch, more picks per inch, more yarn per towel.  But they should be ready soon-ish if anyone is interested.

Exploring Options

Just because there is a pandemic and civil unrest doesn't mean that life for some stops.  While we can try to advocate for people who are suffering, it's also good therapy for me to continue with my weaving practice.

So here is an example of drawing on a historical resource:  Patricia Hilts Ars Textrina submission from December 1990, volume 14 from Nathaniel Lumscher's book published in 1708.

The book is a volume of drafts, most of them for 8 and 12 shaft looms with a few drafts for 16 and 20.

Thumbing through the book, looking for inspiration for the next tea towel warp, I came across one that I sort of liked given the yarns I wanted to use next - 2/16 white, bleached and natural (because I don't have enough of either for a warp and because if one colour is good, two is better.)

The original design was a bit 'blocky' but I know how to move blocks around so I transcribed the draft as given exactly, then moved the blocks around where I wanted them, then changed the shape of the blocks from the tables in the corners to roses, separated by tables.  Then repeated it all until I had the length needed for a tea towel.

The length is a bit on the long side, so I may cut back on the hem areas, or I may adjust the centre of the treadling.  Or I may just leave them really long.  To be determined.

Certainty

Certainty is very comforting.

Certainty can be a powerful 'drug'.

It can also close a mind to additional information.

In weaving, new practitioners want to know The Answer.  They want to know what to do.  They don't take much comfort being told 'it depends'.

Just like in life, weaving is chock full of variables.

In the photo above (which regular readers of this blog will be familiar with), two yarns are shown.  Are they the same?

Quite obviously - not.

And yet...

Both yarns are spun from cotton.  Both yarns have approximately the same number of yards per pound.  Frequently weavers assume that they are in fact identical when, upon closer examination, they are obviously not.

When the differences are pointed out to them, some people get quite defensive because they didn't know.  As if their certainty was some kind of character flaw and they can't accept that their certainty was misplaced.  Misguided, even.

When all it means is that they were not completely informed, which is nothing to feel shamed about, just, you know, accept the fact that that certainty was based on incomplete information, and now that they know better, they might want to do better.

Because that's the thing.  Life is all about learning more.  Doing the best we can until we know better.  And then doing better.  Making more appropriate choices, based on the more complete data.

So when someone says they don't know something, and they are given more information, the appropriate response is to not chastise the person doing the informing.  The appropriate response is to thank the person for taking the time to educate.

When white people say they don't see racism, the reason is because they are not the ones being discriminated against.  When POC report constant harassment and suppression, white people need to take a moment to see what is happening.  The appropriate response is to look at their own attitudes and examine how they feel when another black (or brown or whatever 'non' white) person is killed/injured, ignored or verbally abused in public.

And again I suggest white people who do not understand racism in North American society seek out and listen to what Jane Elliott has to say.  Because maybe it will make more of an impact coming from a white person than the hundreds of black people who have been trying to get the message out for decades.

The first step is to set aside certainty and open ones mind to more information.