And Now, Twill

 

before compression

 after compression

Yesterday I did the twill example.

Now, plasticine isn't a true example of what happens in the cloth.  Plasticine is, for one thing, not thread but plastic and 'stickier' than yarn would be.

But when trying to upscale to show what happens, I had to make choices about what to use to illustrate the effects.

The thing missing from this example, is, of course, the fact that the threads did not get agitated so that they could move to areas of least resistance.  The plasticine has zero twist energy so there is no hidden 'engine' driving the movement of the threads in the cloth.

Even so, the before compression looks 'thready' while the after looks more cohesive.

When I pulled the 'finished' samples off the plastic, they did, in fact, stay together, not fall apart like they would have done without the compression.

I'm not saying all cloth needs compression.  All I'm saying is that weavers need to consider the role of compression in the wet finishing process, then do what is 'best' for their cloth.

After doing a Zoom lecture last week on wet finishing, I'd like to bring the options and advantages of wet finishing to the attention of all weavers.

To this end, there are the classes on School of Sweet Georgia and Long Thread Media, plus my book, Magic in the Water.  The current book doesn't have the actual fabric samples, but close up photos of the samples.  The original copies of Magic do come available from time to time, usually in weaver's estate sales, and they usually sell for about what the person paid for it.  If you can get it for less, you should buy a lottery ticket.  :D  Or get the book without the samples as per the link above, either pdf or magazine format.

Hard to believe it's been 22 years since Magic was published...

Under Pressure

 

plasticine woven into plain weave*

after compression

I bought some 'proper' plasticine yesterday and today I rolled out some 'threads' and wove a bit of plain weave with them.

The goal of doing this little experiment was to try to show how the threads flatten and spread out into the empty spaces between each other when they are exposed to compression.  They also get squeezed together and 'lock' into each other, like a log cabin with the rounds of logs notched so that the structure becomes a lot more stable and secure.

The other thing that shows quite clearly, I think, is how the two sets of threads undulate as they curve around each other.

Now, plasticine isn't thread, but the point is, it behaves in much the same way once woven and compressed.  I haven't tried lifting the compressed sample off the table yet, but I suspect that it would not immediately fall apart like the uncompressed version would, now that the warps and wefts are locked into each other.

In this photo the crimp that develops in the threads after compression is clearly visible.

And this is why I am so careful with my terms.

Wet finishing - the very first time the woven web hits water, gets scoured and agitated, and even, perhaps, compressed.

Hard Press - is not ironing, but the application of pressure to the cloth while still damp from the initial wet finishing.  You *can* apply compression later, but it is easiest done while still damp, in my experience.

No, I don't use a pressing cloth.  Yes, I apply the sole plate of the iron (with a Teflon cover) to the cloth.  Yes, this increases the shine in the cloth - if it isn't desired, you can spray the cloth down after compression and the threads will absorb the water and swell which will lessen the flatness of the surface and reduce the shine.

Hard pressing is not a difficult job, but like so many other things about weaving, a time consuming one.  If you have a lot of pressing to do, put on some lively music, or an audio book, or binge watch a favourite tv program.  Keep pressing until the impression of the iron is no longer a sharp imprint.  

And a reminder that the majority of fabric in a fabric store has already been wet finished.  If it has not (and there are some off shore manufacturers who don't) it is a really good idea to run the fabric through the washer/dryer (as appropriate) and apply a good hard press to it before starting to work with it.  Because one of the things that happens in that first exposure to water is the dimensional loss - something you want to have happen *before* you sew something with it, not *after* you've spent all that time sewing the thing.

*I plan on doing a twill example, but rolling the plasticine out into 'threads' is hard on my hands, so I'll do that tomorrow, maybe...

Reflections on Failure

 

So, if yesterday's 'experiment' was such a failure that I am looking to re-do it, why did I share it?

Because that's what life and learning is.  Failing, re-thinking, re-doing, until you get the results you desire.

After the failure yesterday I found a home for the 'bad' plasticine I'd purchased, and checked at a local toy story for the 'real' stuff.  They carry it and I'll go get some and re-do the experiment.

What the 'failure' did was show me that what I was thinking was possible - I just needed different materials in order to make it work the way I wanted it to.

And this is why most experienced weavers tell new weavers to sample.  I can tell people what I do, but then it is down to the person doing it to do what they do - and what they do might be different in some way.  Their loom may be different (have a lighter or heavier beater), they may have different shuttle handling capabilities, the yarn they are using might be a different quality, etc.

The only way to know what your results will be is to...weave it.  Try it.  Find out.

Pretty much like life.  And probably why so many 'fairy' tales have some sort of reference to textiles - Hansel and Gretel (in one version, they have a ball of yarn to mark their route through the forest), Sleeping Beauty (pricking her finger on the spindle), the Swan Princes (where the princes must collect, spin and weave nettle shirts for her ensorcelled brothers to turn them back into human form) Rumplestiltskin (spinning linen into gold) etc.

There are so many lessons 'true' for weaving that are also 'true' for life.

Learning from your 'mistakes' - or poor choices - is just one of them.  But a very valuable lesson when all is said and done.  And sometimes you just don't know that you have made a poor choice until you weave (or do) the thing.

So, no, I wasn't discouraged, or even particularly displeased that the experiment didn't work.  I found out that it *could*, if I had the proper materials.  

I'm busy tomorrow and have a visiting weaver coming on Friday so it will likely be Saturday before I can do the next iteration of the experiment.  And that's ok.  It is just to satisfy my wanting to be able to show what I mean, not just talk about it.  If I can't make it work, it will be back to words.  But not everyone learns just by words alone.  So I hope this will work.  At least I will have tried.

Failed Experiment

 

plain weave, not compressed

plain weave, compressed

I have been thinking for a while how I can illustrate what compression does to cloth and came up with the idea that I could 'weave' some plasticine 'rods' into plain weave and then compress them to show what happens when threads undergo compression during wet finishing.

Unfortunately the plasticine I had was really 'wet' and extremely 'sticky' and it was a nightmare to work with.  So it didn't work very well.

However, it worked well enough that I think if I get some better quality stuff it might show what happens in a more informative way.  I'll look around and see what I can find at a toy store or art supply store.

If you squint, you should be able to see that the 'threads' have flattened and spread out into the spaces between the 'warp' and 'weft'.  It should also be apparent if you look hard that the surface of the compressed example is shiny in comparison to the uncompressed.

If you don't succeed, try again?

Reflection

 

Maybe it's all the health issues I've been having for the past while.  Maybe it's the fact that the high school reunion will be happening next month (and I'm not going, even though I still live in the same town I grew up in - because I don't 'do' large indoor gatherings - because Covid), maybe it's just that I've reached 'that' age.

Maybe it's the fact that I wrote a 'memoir' last year and published it this year.  Maybe I just never grew out of the 'what's it all about Alfi' stage and I've always kind of, sort of, wondered why I'm here and what I'm 'supposed' to be doing.

I certainly have not chosen a life that society deemed was appropriate for me.  And even now there is a huge slice of the population trying to tell me again that - because I'm childless, old, and broken - I'm useless.

What value do we put on life?  Anyone's life?  Is ours the most valuable?  Maybe.  Mine is certainly of value to me.  But is it of value to others?  

Covid has caused a lot of people to ask themselves how much they care about themselves, and others.  And some of them just don't. 

Climate change is another turning point - literally.  On the news nearly every night there is a litany of 'unnautral' disasters - flooding, wildfires, hurricanes, tornadoes, landslides, sinkholes, diminishing glaciers, rising seas.  And every single night, the big 'news' is how governments are going to mitigate the damage, and never, not once, does anyone say 'wait, maybe, just maybe we should be working at fixing the problem instead of the symptoms'.  Instead one politician is stumping around Canada (and why is he doing that, he's not supposed to start campaigning until the writ drops) chanting Axe The Tax!

I'm far too old now to care much about what others think of me.  Maybe because I chose a different path while in my 20s and abandoned society's expectation that I would have 2.5 children, keep a spotless home, have a 9 to 5 job that was killing my creativity/soul.  

I watched my father die slowly from a nasty cancer, far too young.  And I asked myself, was I willing to put nose to grindstone and do what was expected of me or was I going to feed my soul and do what *I* wanted.

It didn't hurt that I could joke about it.  After all, you have to be warped to weave, right?  So I embraced that.  

I chose the road less travelled.  What I didn't expect to find were so many others who also found that road less travelled more interesting than what society had deemed imperative.

As I look back on my life, I have done more, accomplished more, met more people, been more places, than a blue collar kid growing up in the middle of the province had any reason to expect.

Regrets?  Well, I have a few, but I suspect that had I NOT chosen the road I did, I would have been a very unhappy person.  Instead I have helped, encouraged, and promoted others.  I have tried, in every way I could think of, to teach others, point them in the direction of more information when I could not provide an answer myself.  And every day, I get to create something new.  Something that has never existed before.  I focus on creating things, not destroying them.

And all in all, that seems like enough, even if I have to do it at a much slower pace than I used to be able to maintain.

Stay warped, my friends.  

Picking Away

 

Am making my way through the current warp.  Today I will cut off and re-tie and then it should take about 5 more days to finish the warp off.  So, it's time to start planning the next.

I have enough fine linen for about 6 warps and the current warp is #2, so I have some leeway to experiment and explore more of the fancy twills I enjoy so much.  This draft is a fairly plain one (so to speak) because I'm still dealing with uncomfortable pain levels that interfere with my sleep and therefore my brain is a leaky sponge.  No point in doing anything particularly difficult and invite catastrophic 'mistakes'.

This is based on a counter change kind of motif although changed somewhat in order to make it different from other iterations.

One of the things I enjoy doing is designing cloth with motifs that break out of the linear - undulations, to my mind, give a flow to the cloth.  And of course twills are more flexible than plain weave.

The challenge right now is that the linen is stiff and a lot thinner than the 2/16 warp, so I have been adding a bit of plain weave into the tie up which gives the cloth more stability.  So far I'm liking the results, so we'll see how this new one does.  

The colours will be the darker blue and the green for warp with the white linen weft.

On the writing front, I will be reviewing the 2nd article in the next few days.  I find giving myself some mental space before I try to do revisions gives me better perspective.  And another reason why I'm trying really hard to not run myself headlong into the deadline but get everything done in plenty of time.  Then the editor can decide if they are satisfied or if they want more changes, or more samples, or...whatever.

I also need to do something about a current headshot for the magazine.  I truly dislike photos of myself but the only ones I have are years old by this point and it's time I did a new one.  

In the meantime, I have one more towel to weave today, then cut off and re-tie.  And then if I have spoons left, I had a light bulb moment about how to illustrate what happens to the cloth when it gets compressed in the wet finishing.  Perhaps I will have the energy to begin setting that experiment up?

TBD.

Clean Up Time

 

some magazines in which I have articles

Writing several articles on various topics over the past 2.5 months means I've pulled a lot of resources out and now need to put them away again.  As part of my dive into my library, I had a stack of Handwoven Magazines that also needed putting away.  This morning I sorted through the pile and pulled out the ones that had articles I'd written in them and set the rest aside.  I may offer them for sale.  We have some new weavers who may want to beef up their libraries.  Or not.

I'm letting the current article 'rest' for a few days so that I can have some perspective on the text.  I've already read through it several times, plus had a friend alpha read and catch more grammar oopsies.

Yesterday I got the contract to write another article.  The due date is December, but I'm not going to wait very long before I start on that.  It's short (400 words) so I'm going to have to be really concise and clear in what I write.  Plus I've stuck my hand up to write a 4th.  

We continue to have a smoke pall over us.  It's 'better' this morning after some rain, but still not great.  I have zero plans or incentive to leave the house.  I have library books to be picked up but Doug will likely do that for me since he has to be out and about today.  

It's halfway through August and frankly I'm ok with autumn arriving whenever it does.  I rather suspect that this winter will be a repeat of last - zombie fires that sustain themselves over the winter and spring back into life when the warmer weather comes.  At least we are below 400 fires now, but still...

We are truly well into the 'find out' part of climate change.  Weaving may become a survival skill again?

Evolution of an Article

 

Welp, here it is, more or less.

I wove the samples, wet finished them, tagged them for easy identification, analyzed them, wrote up my notes and conclusions, including my resource materials.  I sent the text file to a friend who I trust to run an analytical eye over what I've written and make sure I'm making sense, then applied their corrections, finding yet more things I needed to hone.  Today I went through the samples one by one (each group of them) and wrote up my observations and analysis.  Since I referenced beyond the remit of the contract (because I wanted to follow the thread further), I added some other samples from my teaching kit(s) as examples of where the road might lead others.

Now I'll let the text sit for a few days so that I can come back to it with fresh eyes (and brain) and if I don't find anything else to include or change, I'll send the text file to the editor and see what her feedback is.  If she wants more, there is plenty of time to do more.  If she's satisfied, I'll box up that heap of cloth and send it to the photographer.

All in all, I have spent the better part of two months either thinking about, or weaving samples for this article.  Fortunately I was able to double dip, so to speak, and some of the samples for article one were done on the same warps as some of the samples for this article.

I've agreed to write another article but for that one I need to get a volunteer to help.  Since the weather has been so...unco-operative...I haven't felt much like starting on that one.  Yet.  

Plus the smoke pall has continued for almost a week and there is no end in sight.  My allergies are kicking the snot out of me (literally) and increased inflammation from allergy responses are also taking a toll on the rest of my body.  Hopefully things will begin to calm down soon, but it's only halfway through August, and the latest reports are warning that fire 'season' is now expected to last well into the autumn.  As in October.  :(

Climate change is real and it's time to stop mitigating the effects and stop changing the climate?

Just saying...

Goldilocks Zone

 

A magazine article isn't a book, but some topics almost cry out for longer explanations and deeper dives.  

Weaving isn't hard, but it's complex.  How do I approach writing an article that is actually very 'layered' and nuanced, within a strict word count?  How many tunnels in a particular rabbit warren do I go down, and how much detail do I include?

Do I whet someone's appetite for more so that they go exploring or do I lay it all out?  

When is too much information too much to absorb?

These are questions I have been wrestling with as I try to tease out the end of this particular thread and follow it - as logically as I can - for the current article.  It's one reason I wrote Magic in the Water - what I wanted, needed, to say could not be contained within an 'article'.  It needed a deeper dive in order to cover the topic.  

For now, I think I've covered what I wanted to cover while leaving room for others to poke around and discover more on their own.  Will it be enough?

Guess I'll find out?

Stalled

First two books available here

 

I've woven the samples I felt needed to be woven, and am beginning to dive into my bins of teaching samples to add to what I wove recently.  But I've hit a roadblock.

There is a shittonne of information in those samples.  How do I distill it out for others?  So much of weaving is in the *experience* of taking the threads and turning them into cloth, and all the steps along the way.  The conclusions are 'in the hand' - better felt than described.

How can I convey the knowledge I gained in the doing for someone else to benefit from?

Normally (ha) I don't have much trouble setting down in words what I want to say, but I've really hit a road block on this article.  Until I figure out how to express the knowledge gained in the doing I suspect I'm going to continue to wallow.

My effort to do this has not been helped by continuing pain which robs me of the ability to think beyond very simple things.  I can weave, I'm fine with that.  But can I think?  Unfortunately, not really.

However, I finally decided to run an experiment and see if I could tweak my pain meds.  I can say there has been a slight improvement, but the experiment continues and this coming week will tell me if I have got the right end of the stick (so to speak) and if I can get my brain working better.

As for the weaving, it's pretty much all of the same.  The process of weaving is just that - a process that needs to happen in order to obtain cloth at the end of it.  It all looks pretty much the same, day in, day out.

I'm fine with that, but it makes for pretty boring writing/reading!

Today I will cut the first 7 towels off the loom, re-tie and get ready to do the next section.  I'm hoping to have this warp off the loom in about 10 days.  Last night I decided on the colour combination for the next warp, and have an idea for the draft.  It will be a re-working of a draft I did last year, adjusted for the different weave structure.  Until I put it all into Fiberworks, I won't know if it will actually work, or not.  

Today's goal is to sit down and start listing the woven samples and choose the samples from my stash.  Once I've got them all organized, then I should be able to begin writing.  Thankfully my alpha reader seems willing to continue with that 'job'.  I just don't trust my own brain right now.

Like an Onion

 

view of two towels from the 'side' - upper is loom state, lower is wet finished

We 'know' things in different ways.  There are things we know consciously; there are things we know subconsciously; there are things we know intuitively.

Consciously, I know that wet finishing a web will change it, sometimes radically, sometimes subtlety.  

The things I know intuitively are based on marrying both the conscious and subconscious and extrapolating what happens when I think through all my choices and make an assumption on what will happen when I change certain things.

One of the challenges of teaching weaving is articulating all of those ways of 'knowing' in a way that someone else might understand.

The photo above doesn't really do what I'm going to talk about justice because it is really hard to get a good clear picture of something that is better felt, but here goes...

Over the years I've woven I have noticed changes that happen during wet finishing.  Most of the time I don't spend too much time analyzing, but file the change away in the deep recesses of my mind.  But now that I've been writing again, and doing deep dives into the craft in a more organized way, with an audience I *hope* will be as interested as I am in going deep, I have been weaving samples.  Weaving samples in much the same way I did for my GCW master weaver certificate.  Weaving and then analyzing the results in a much more organized and conscious way.

I have subconsciously noted many times that the change in the web includes the fact that it becomes thicker after wet finishing.  It was not something that was particularly important to me until now, when I'm looking at the cloth from all the angles.  And a lot more obvious with thicker yarns than thinner ones.

And I know the photo doesn't really show it, but it is *obvious* in the hand that after wet finishing *including a hard press* that the wet finished cloth is thicker than the loom state.

Why?  I can think of lots of reasons, but it reminds me of this simple fact - it is very difficult to make thin cloth from thick yarn.

When I started weaving I came to the craft with a broad base of textile knowledge from sewing my own clothing, to knitting, embroidery, and that one year class in spinning and weaving on small looms.  It was only after learning to wet finish my webs that I became completely absorbed in trying to make cloth that *I* would want to use.  I soon realized that I needed to work with yarn a whole lot finer than most weavers to achieve the quality of cloth I wanted to make.

It was largely that goal that spurred me into becoming as efficient as I could possibly become, doing time studies, then tweaking my processes to iron out road blocks in the processes.  

And I did it, for a while.  I used 2/60 silk to make clothing fabric, and loved the results.  But people were not willing to pay me to make that, so I scaled up again and largely worked with 2/8 cotton for most of my production.  

warp 2/60 silk, weft very fine rayon chenille - fabric won 2nd place in the fibre exhibit, Convergence 2002

Even now that I'm 'retired' I still work as efficiently as I am able, and even though I have had to slow down and cut back on what my body will tolerate, I can still weave fairly quickly.  

I've been working on tea towels using 2/16 cotton for the past few years and I know how long it takes me to beam a warp, thread/sley it and how many picks I can (usually) weave in a 45 minute weaving session (the most my therapist will encourage me to do in one sitting).  

And I can confidently say that using 'friendly' linen or cotton weft, I can throw 1000 picks in 45 minutes.  That includes stopping to advance the warp and change bobbins.  That's about 22 picks per minute.

Should everyone be able to do that?  No.  Everyone should do what is 'best' for them.  What I have hoped to do is let people know what is possible, and then let them decide if it is desirable - for them - to work towards their own goals.

I taught a workshop somewhere that had a brand spanking new weaver in the class.  I was told that she was so new other guild members had helped her dress her loom and I thanked them for letting me know so that I could adjust what I was focusing on with her - keeping my advice more direct, simpler, allowing for the fact that she didn't have a base of knowledge others in the class had.  At one point I asked if people wanted me to demonstrate how I wove and when they said yes, I sat down at one of the floor looms and gave a demonstration of holding and throwing the shuttle, discussed how to beat, control the weft, treadle, etc.

Later, that new weaver approached me and thanked me for showing that weaving didn't have to be painfully slow, that if she kept at it, she could become more efficient, and less 'clumsy'.  I encouraged her to keep going and find out what would work best for her.

And so I hope that with the things I've written, here and elsewhere (you know where to find my books and classes, right?) that people will find the best way for them.

Recently I've had a couple of my Olds students contact me and reference the earworm 'what would Laura do'.  Heart; cockles; warmed...

 

Organization

 

repeat photo as I explain my identification process

Yesterday I mentioned I was having to track a large number of samples, and because some needed to be wet finished, it took a while to figure out how to do that.  Someone asked what process I was using.

I'm not supposed to talk about the content of the article, but decided I could share how I am tracking the samples as that is outside of the article content.

Most of the samples are either plain weave or twill.  Most are done with the 'same' warp yarns, but different weft yarns.  Some are done at different densities.  And I knew that a lot of the samples would only show subtle changes after wet finishing so I had to come up with a way to easily and accurately identify each sample.

I grouped the samples according to their shared features and chose a colour to indicate that group.  Then I used different numbers of 'tags' of yarn in that colour for the variations.

For example, the samples woven at 18 epi in plain weave with two different yarns were all marked with colour A.  The loom state for the first variation was marked with one tag; the wet finished for that variation had two tags; the loom state for the alternate weft was given 3 tags, and the wet finished 4 tags.  A similar set of samples woven with the same yarns at 20 epi were given a different colour.

Mostly I can tell the difference between 18 and 20 epi, but I'm sending these away to be photographed, and the person processing the samples to be photographed needs to be able to accurately identify them, too.  I will include a 'legend' for them to consult to make sure of what it is they are photographing.  I don't know what all they will use for the article, so I'm sending everything I wove for them to choose from.

I wove one more variation for the article on the tag end of the last warp yesterday, then wet finished that and the other two I'd overlooked when I did the rest.  When I'm working with So Many samples, I'm not surprised that at some point I got 'confused' and put the samples into the wrong pile.  The good news is that the samples to be wet finished were put into the loom state pile, which meant all I had to do was double (triple!) check and then ensure the samples to be wet finished got tossed into the load of towels I was doing as well.  Much worse if I'd wet finished the loom state samples!!!

Today I will finish beaming the blue warp, then start pressing the stuff I wet finished yesterday.  If I have enough spoons left after that I might start threading.  It's a fairly 'simple' threading so I'm hoping I can get it done quickly.

Once I have the last samples pressed, I will begin analyzing them, and begin to draw conclusions - if I can.  The thing with weaving is that sometimes the 'obvious' conclusions are...less than complete.  I have the magazine articles I'd been looking for thanks to my guild library and the guild library of a friend who scanned the pages and sent them to me.  :)  Yes, of course they will be listed as resources.

This article is the second one for issue 1.  I am honoured to be included in the inaugural issue.  I've also stuck my hand up for issue 2 and 3.  TBD if they are interested.  

For anyone interested in articles I've written previously, the back of Stories from the Matrix has a list of everything my editor could find.  The reason she had to go digging was because I stopped keeping my resume up-to-date back in the 1990s.  It was becoming...overwhelming, trying to list everything I'd written and I was writing Magic in the Water with zero time to do that kind of record keeping.  Once I'd stopped keeping it up-to-date, it was too much work to go back and add in all of the things and keep it current.

In 2008 I started writing this blog, and if you use the labels, you can search for posts I've written on those topics.  Those posts are all available for free.  Articles for Handwoven can be acquired from their back catalogue (digital copies only, now, I think).  Other magazines I've written for have ceased publication and don't likely have archives.

In September my high school reunion is coming up.  I won't be going (still immune compromised, avoiding large groups in buildings with no filtration, or groups who won't be masking, all while covid continues - no it's not gone, people are just trying to ignore it - that's not going very well, so I'm staying home.)  Anyway, I've been thinking about the high school experience and my Office Practice teacher giving me a C with the comment that I needed to learn to organize my desk better and not be so messy.

Well, that lesson never really 'took'.  I still have a messy desk.  But I still also get a lot of stuff done.  Pretty sure she's right - a neater desk would likely be easier to deal with than stacks of books and paper on every surface.  But I'm too old to bother about that now.  So, I guess I will keep on, keeping on...