Breadcrumbs

 

Ms and Ws weaving draft

As I scroll through my weaving files, I cannot fail to notice that so many of my designs have - at least lately - an abundance of twill variations.

This one is 'called' Ms and Ws and is a simple 4 shaft twill which can look 'fancy'.  But it can be used as a 'building block' when variations are generated, and then shafts added to create a 'block'.  And then the tie up can be changed so different tie-up combinations and treadling sequences can be used to expand the options.

Like many things about weaving - and life - it is what we wind up doing with it that creates something 'different', perhaps even 'new'.  Although given the mathematical progressions and availability of shafts for loom control, there are limitations.

How did I gather knowledge about how to do this?  Well, I generated a tonne of drafts, wove some, made small changes, wove them and observed what happened when I tried different yarn combinations, different densities.  

Doing this work (for it was 'work' for me) I was able to make a trail of breadcrumbs so that I could follow the progress as something changed and follow back to where I found something of interest, then perhaps change something else, and follow that trail of crumbs.

Lately the role of 'grist' has been on my mind (watch for WEFT next year with some breadcrumb trails) and how the thickness of a yarn is *related* to the length, but not exactly a 1:1 or 1:2 relationship.  

And in the gap between, lay all kinds of possibilities.  And lots of pitfalls.  Lots of 'failures' if I fail to meet the needs needed when I design a fabric.

This morning I was thinking about bread crumbs, trails, and messing things up.  A phrase in English is to consider the role of 'grist' in terms of sand, specifically sand in the gears of a machine.   And I thought about the Luddites, who were not peasants revolting against 'progress' in industry - specifically the weaving profession.   They were labour activists, trying to protect the professional weavers from being supplanted by machinery that they felt would kill off the weaver/workers.  So they chose to sabotage looms - mainly the 'factory' looms, looms which reduced the number of weavers by one half as there were now fly shuttle looms and one loom only needed one weaver instead of two for the broad cloth looms.

Up until John Kay perfected the fly shuttle mechanism in the 1700s, looms wider than about 48" needed two weavers.  Sometimes two were needed in order to create particular textiles, like vadmal.  Drawlooms needed drawboys until the dobby mechanism was perfected, and then in the 1800s the Jacquard loom.

All of those developments put actual weavers out of work.  Like developing AI to take work away from skilled creative folk right now.

We are facing the rise of fascism in the world (no the US is not the only one - some historians follow the crumbs back to the Luddites and their efforts to fight capitalism for workers rights) and the power grabs that are putting people with knowledge and skill out of work.  

Being a worker who follows their imagination, their creativity, and who becomes informed at the nuts and bolts (and the gears) of their craft, some people are trying to point out that the Luddites were working to keep people in skilled and meaningful jobs instead of shunting the 'work' off to AI type efforts.  And the evils inherent by so doing.

Which doesn't matter to the oligarchs, whose only aim in life appears to be like Mr McScrooge, swimming in his vault of money ('all mine!  ALL MINE!)  As if the acquisition of 'money' cast extra value on *them*.

If you work creatively, continue to create, when you can.  Do it because it brings you joy.  Or even just relief from the never ending pressure to conform to what someone else (who doesn't value *you*) thinks you should be doing.

Every time you add something to this world, born of your own experience, your imagination, you add light to the world.  Light to help others see you.  Light to help them see themselves as unique, individual.  Light to shine on the way you are being manipulated so that you can choose to add a little sand to the gears to slow down the steady creep, cutting you off from your creativity.  You.

This little light of mine, I'm going to let it shine...