Multi-pronged

There has been conversation on one of the internet groups I belong to about what it takes to be a professional in the leisure/hobby textile profession.  An oxymoron, of sorts, but not really.  

Because there are many people who follow the profession of teaching or producing textiles to a greater or lesser extent.

There are people who practice the craft, designing and making textiles for sale.  There are people who research and write about the creation of textiles.  There are people who teach the craft.  And mostly?  There are people who do all of the above.

There are also people who provide the supplies for the crafts, from growing the fibre, to importing it from other countries, to dyeing unique colours, to having local yarn shops, to selling supplies on line.

For me, I did all of that including weaving cloth for others.  I made a great deal of my income for 9 years weaving for a fashion designer, which I discussed previously, but also for other textile artists.  Sometimes it worked out, sometimes it didn't.  Sometimes an international border stood in the way, like the time I wove 'samples' for a designer in New York.  Getting materials across the border and back again was a pain - for both of us.

Right from the beginning I taught.  My very first workshop was a (gasp!) spinning workshop.  No, I wasn't very good at it.  But I was better than those people who came who knew nothing at all - and wanted to.

Right from the beginning I wrote - first the local guild newsletter, then bravely sending articles off to magazines.  The very first one that accepted one of my articles was The Weaver's Journal.  

As soon as I could create enough inventory I took a booth at the local craft fair, plus I sold my textiles on consignment at a local shop.

And I learned.  Boy howdy, did I learn!  I knew very little about retails sales, but I did know how to set up a double entry ledger and how to balance it, reconciling it to my chequebook.  I knew enough that I'd rather pay an accountant than do my year end and file my taxes, so I wove enough to pay for those services.

Eventually we were both working in the studio - Doug was my studio assistant, winding warps on a 'spare' beam while I wove, doing the wet finishing, hitting the road and selling what we were making.  At one point I was weaving 240 yards per month - 200 for the fashion designer, 40 of my own design.  We had 28 shops in western Canada buying place mats, table runners, napkins.

Then everything came crashing to a halt.  Instead of 28 shops, suddenly there were three.  There wasn't enough work for two so Doug got a job elsewhere while I tried to figure out how to continue.

I worked on the Guild of Canadian Weavers master weaver certificate, writing, teaching, scrambling to bring in enough money to keep going.  And I saw the need for a book on wet finishing, so I worked on that, eventually self-publishing so I could include before and after samples.

The book launched in time for Convergence in Vancouver 2002, but taking a booth to just sell a book wasn't going to pay for the booth, let alone anything else so I had started importing yarns and selling them.  From there I started selling yarns at other fibre events, but most of the vendors were all pretty much selling the same things so I started importing yarns from China and dyeing them so sell.

And in between, I wrote and taught, and wove.

I gave up weaving for the fashion designer when I spent more time away teaching one year than I was home.

But that sort of teaching schedule wasn't sustainable, especially when I started having health issues.  Something had to give and I pared back on the teaching.  And then the dyeing.  Because dyeing is actually harder physically than weaving (for me).  And of course I never seemed to have the 'right' colour in the right yarn in the right quantity.  Eventually I just wove up whatever yarn was left over from those days.

Because I had essentially three stashes - the yarn I actually used for weaving my textiles, my teaching yarn stash, and my re-sale yarn stash...

I've been in this business for 40+ years now.  I have pretty much tried everything.  I have pretty much enjoyed a lot of it - some of it not so much.

Bottom line?  If you want to be a professional in this line of work?  It's hard.  You have to show up.  Every day.  You have to be self-motivated.  You have to either do it yourself, or make enough money to hire someone else to do it.  But most of all?  You have to just do it.  Nike got that part right.

#Photofail

Seriously.  I totally meant to take a bunch of pictures today and we got so caught up in making 'not white' that the thought of actually documenting the day completely fell out of my head.

This photo is a bit dark - the colours are brighter than this, really, but I'm tired, I mean really tired and I don't feel like standing up and going down the stairs again to try to get a better shot.  :-/

It all came back to me, just how done I am with dyeing on any kind of scale.  The lugging stuff up (and then back down) the stairs to the guild room, the heat, the humidity, the dealing with huge pots that weigh a ton, etc. etc.

I think I've got one or maybe two more dye days and then everything in my stash will be 'not white' that I need to be 'not white'.

But first the yarn has to be skeined and tied and a day found to - yes, lug everything up the stairs, deal with heavy dye pots, standing at the sink rinsing, rinsing, rinsing.

Obviously I'm not a dyer at heart.  I'm just doing it so that my yarns (and/or cloth) is....not white.

Decisions

I decided to stop dyeing yarn to re-sell - after I'd bought a bunch more yarn in order to dye.  What with all the kafuffle with mom's surgeries, it took a while to get the yarn skeined but I finally got it done over the weekend, soaked the yarn out and spent the better part of 4 hours at the guild room getting this last dyeing done.

While there are still some things that need to be dyed, I have little dribs and drabs of dyes which will do for those small batches.  I have a customer interested in the bulk dyes and I'm hoping she takes all of it.  There's no point my hanging onto it when someone else could get good use out of it.

Today I guess I was mostly in a blue/green mood although there is a little purple in there, too.  If the yarn doesn't sell, it will make nice shawls.  It's BFL and feels quite nice.  I have one skein for sampling with and thought I'd knit a small bag and full it to see how well it fulls.  There is so much non-fulling wool available now people are interested in yarns that they can either knit up or weave and full.  The question is, will I have time before the Alberta conference?

Well I've got lots of taped tv still to catch up on so once the hemming is done, it sounds like knitting will be in order.  :)

Pondering/Rambling Thoughts

One thing doing something like winding skeins allows for is the subconscious mind to pick away at things and one of the realizations I came to is that while I can dye yarn, I don't actually want to any more.  And so once these skeins are dyed I will be inventorying my dyes and will likely offer them for sale.  I'll no doubt keep some for myself, just in case I want to do some dyeing in the future, but I'll have no need for the box of dyes that I currently have on hand.  Rather than have it go bad through aging or getting damaged (by getting damp) it will be far better to sell them on to someone else who actually wants to dye yarn...

Another question that has been simmering away in the back of my mind is that of teaching.  Darryl Lancaster has jumped into on line classes with a will and made them sound very attractive, indeed, from the stand point of the teacher.  (Anyone taken a class - what are your thoughts from the stand point of a student?)  Since the biggest expense involved in my traveling to teach is the actual cost of traveling, I'm seriously looking at offering classes via Weavolution and have come up with two topics that could quite easily be done in an on line format - Magic in the Water and A Good Yarn.

One of the things I'll be doing in May is dropping my computer off to my computer wizard who will try to get a microphone working.  Since the last upgrade the microphone I was using no longer worked - not sure if it is just an incompatibility issue or if the settings just weren't correct.

Anyway, if people are interested in an on line class on either topic, let me know.  Part of the impetus for exploring this venue for teaching will depend on interest. (i.e. students registering)

As I have been standing at the winder watching the counter run up I've had time to think about what I want to do with the rest of my life, for however long that may be.  The events of the past four years have left me in no doubt about my mortality.  If I have 20 years left, how do I want to spend those years?  (In reality, in terms of travelling to teach I probably only have at most 10 years, if that).  Teaching on line would extend the time I have for effective teaching - no more bustling through huge airports dragging heavy suitcases, sleeping in strange beds, eating foods that might make me sick.  Seems pretty attractive.

The downside would be not having face to face interaction with others - although on line classes would at least allow for real time conversation. 

But in terms of how I want to spend the next 20 years?  Weaving is at the top of the list.  Therefore I need to get back to finishing the weaving for the Big Project.  I'm over the half way mark now but running out of time if I'm to get it done by my intended publication date.  So I'm thinking I may have to revise that to September.  The deadline is, after all, my own and can be changed if I need it to be different than originally planned.

One of the benefits of self-publishing.  I know I won't lose the contract because I miss my deadline.  :^)

Currently reading Blink by Malcom Gladwell - interesting that this book should be subtitled The Power of Thinking Without Thinking when all I have been doing for the last couple of days is thinking very hard, indeed!

Of Comfort Zones

shawl warp #4 on the loom

#4 off the loom

I'm down to the last 3 shawl warps done with the silk gimp hand dyed yarns.  All three of the last warps are the same sort of blue/green as this one.  The problem, if problem it be, is that I'm all out of 'safe' colour choices for the weft and am having to go beyond my comfort zone in choosing weft colours to go with the warps.

For shawl #4 I chose a pink varigated that changes value, not hue, and think it turned out okay.  I suspect that once wet finished there will actually be some irridescence happening.  You can just almost sort of see it in the off the loom photo.  The colours aren't quite true in either photo - the actual shade of pink is somewhere between the two.

As I struggled a bit choosing the weft colour for this warp I started thinking about comfort zones in general and wondering how someone like myself who craves security as much as I do wound up in a profession with as little of it as a craftsperson has.  I mean really, how insecure can you be - relying on your own creative abilities to craft something, offering it for sale, hoping that even one other person will like what you've dreamt up and created enough to plunk down their money in order to purchase it?

Even the teaching and writing I've done is a bit of a crapshoot - just because I think something is worthwhile writing down or offering in a workshop doesn't mean anybody else will value it. 

So how did I wind up here, anyway? 

As I look back on my life it all seems terribly irrevocable.  When I look at the choices I've made in my lifetime, I wonder how I could have made any other choices - and remained sane.  Oh sure I could have opted for the security of a 9 to 5 job in an office somewhere - and died a slow smothering spiritual death.  I was, after all, headed that direction when I suddenly veered off the beaten track and chose weaving as a career!

My life has not been a string of successes, either.  I've had my failures.  The challenge, in the end, is to not get defeated by the things that don't turn out the way you hope.  To pick yourself up again, try something else, keep going.

Again I come back to Winston Churchill's advice - when you're going through hell, keep going!  For one thing I've learned is that nothing, and I do mean nothing, lasts forever.  Not the good - and not the bad, either.  Comfort zones are just that - a zone.  They too will end.  But so, too, will the discomfort zones.....

More Dyeing



Another dye day - looks like two more days ought to pretty much finish up the silk gimp.  Today I did 5 more warps.  Unfortunately after I had soaked the yarn out I counted the warps in the box and there were more than I'd expected so it may take a third day.  Or a really looooong day.

The orange-ish skeins at the top of the rack are really a more rust/red rather than the dark pumpkin they look on my monitor.  I'm thinking of maybe combining them with lavender of the same value.  We'll see.  First I want to finish weaving off all the warps.

I'm thinking that, since these warps are really easy - plain weave, very slow gentle beat, that if I'm feeling well enough to weave these might be just the warps to tackle.

I'm hoping to hear from the oncologist on Monday about when he wants to see me to present the details of all the tests he's been running and hear what he proposes for treatment.  Whether or not I'm going to have to cancel any of my teaching contracts or if we can fit my life into the treatment schedule.  The one contract I cannot cancel is the conference in Quebec.  Since I'm the keynote speaker cancelling that would cause a great deal of hardship for a great number of people.  So whatever happens, I have to be able to travel the first week of June. 

Besides, I've never been to Quebec City before and I really want to go!

Currently reading Thin Air by Rachel Caine

Not White

The colours of the red yarn are actually more intense than shown here. The red is more of a deep coral red. And I've made a little progress spooling the skeins off ready for warping. As I took this photo I realized that my dye palette of today is very similar to these yarns and I may in fact use some of the silk gimp as weft for one of the shawls intended on this warp. The very dark blue spruce would look great on these colours. :)

Next Challenge

So, the tea towels are cut and serged, I've figured out what needs to be done on the 'test' warp, the first load of skeins are soaking, alternate yarn for plying has been coned off onto smaller cones for ease of use.....the next challenge is to turn these yarns into a warp for shawls and possibly baby 'blankets'.

The colours are a little brighter in the photo than they are in real life but I think they will go together nicely - mostly green/turqouise with an accent thread of the dark peach, I'm thinking.

Before I can prepare the warp, however, the skeins have to be wound onto spools for sectional beaming, so it's a good thing to get started on that now before I'm done weaving the test warp.

In between times I'll continue to wind skeins for dyeing. I'm really determined to get as much dyeing done as I possibly can. There aren't too many tubes of the silk gimp left, and then there are a few odds and ends of white skeins that can be turned into 'not white' and either used or sold. After I'm done the dyeing I can concentrate on the spinning.

Once I've got the above warp done there are several boxes of the same yarn to also be turned into shawls and/or baby 'blankets'. It will feel really really good to get those boxes emptied and free up about 48" square of floor space! :D And use up more of my yarn stash, both this yarn and the weft. I've got quite a few cones of a fairly fine singles in alpaca and other blends that will be perfect for weft for this yarn, a wool, silk, bamboo blend.

Potholes

In addition to the nasty potholes in the streets I've run into a couple in the studio. :P~

Now that these three skeins are dried I realize that the mylar has broken in at least one place in each skein, sometimes two places.

Now if these skeins were for my own use I wouldn't worry about that too much. They are core spun and the broken mylar ply won't compromise the integrity of the yarn and I would just deal with it.

But these skeins are not for my own use - I'm trying to develop an inventory of handspun yarns I can work on when I can't weave, for sale to others. And I can't, in all conscience, offer them for sale when I know they have broken ply threads.

And so I have to look at alternatives. Not that I don't have some already in my stash!

I could also ply the mylar with something else to strengthen it, but that's just way more labour than I want to invest into something that I don't know people will be willing to pay for - at least pay enough to make it worth my while to make it. (Anyone interested in some 'seconds'?)

So I'll be digging through my stash to look for alternatives, two of which I'm pretty sure will work - just have to dig them out of storage.

The other pothole is the test warp I put onto the AVL the other day. I'm having problems getting it to beat in square and the auto cloth advance isn't working properly either. I think that's a function of the cloth not beating in to match the take up so I've just cut the second sample off the loom, removed the 8 dent reed and inserted a 10 and will change the set from 32 epi (4 in a dent) to 30 epi (3 in a dent).

Keeping fingers crossed that will fix that problem.

In the meantime I'm winding skeins and pushing for the scheduled dye day on Monday.

Currently reading Firestorm by Rachel Caine

...and the Dye God(dess) Smiled

half of the yarn I dyed today....

The other half of the yarn is spinning out, soon to be hung (by the chimney with care?)

Things went exceptionally well today. Both the cyan and magenta dyes set, almost immediately, all the dye vats exhausted and the yarn rinsed clear right from the get go. I worried I'd be there forever but all in all, I was finished much sooner than I hoped or expected.

Perhaps it was the phase of the moon, or the humidity was just right, or - who knows - it's the solstice? Whatever reason I'm very grateful to get this lot all done. I may go back and dip dye some of the skeins to get some true varigateds, not just semi-solids, but for now all of this yarn is now officially 'not white'.

What's left is the silk gimp. A cool 30+ pounds left (better than the 50 pounds I was thinking!) I've got enough skeins wound for another dye day but I need to go buy a new timer (my measuring cup, timer and measuring scoop disappeared from the guild room) and another case of vinegar from Costco first. While I made do with the alarm on my Blackberry, a small kitchen timer works much better.

I'm not a dyer, just like I'm not a spinner. I can go through the motions. I can make yarn 'not white' and I can get a continuous thread accomplished. But I am not knowledgeable about these crafts. I admire and respect people who really know what they are doing and I know that if I spent more time learning I could maybe get more proficient at each. But for now I'm happy just to get a little continuous thread, preferably 'not white'.

My main focus is weaving. What I have learned over the years is that in order to sell textiles, cloth with lively colours will sell much faster than white. So I dye protein fibres. I don't really want to deal with fibre reactive dyes so I buy my cellulose fibres already dyed. There are so many talented dyers - it's nice to support another craftsperson.

Currently reading Somewhere Inside by Laura and Lisa Ling

Making Headway

a portion of my store room with scarves/tea towels...


I've managed to break through the lethargy that has been plaguing me this week and unpacked all the boxes (well, not all, I left scarves in two boxes for ease of storage) and put the textiles onto the shelves in my store room. Ideally I ought to go through everything and re-arrange it but that may, or may not, happen anytime soon.

There are still a couple of plastic buckets with more scarves/tea towels in them but room is running out on the shelves so they will likely just stay where they are. Not 'away' because there is no more 'away' to put anything.

There is a load of skeins soaking in the washing machine with a second load to go in tonight. That will give me 49 skeins to dye on Monday. This yarn is a merino, bamboo, silk blend that I imported from China and it had some problems - too many for me to try and sell to others so I've gradually been dyeing it and getting it woven or knitted. These skeins are the last to be dyed and I have A Plan for them so it will feel really good to get them dyed and woven.

Plus I've started skeining the silk gimp. I have a bunch of warps to dye and weave and need weft to weave them off with so I'm hoping to get some of that done before I leave for NC/FL.

Speaking of which I now have my flights all arranged. I'll need to stay overnight not one, but two nights en route to Atlanta. I don't trust getting out of here on a 6 am flight - successfully - at this time of year so I'll fly to Vancouver on Friday and overnight there, then overnight in Atlanta so that I will make the shuttle to John C. Campbell Folk School in plenty of time. That also gives me a bit of a cushion in case of weather delays.

Frankly I get a little neurotic trying to travel during the winter - I've had too many close calls with flights delayed or re-routed to ever feel sanguine about winter travel. If I were going on holiday it would be no big deal - just another adventure. But when I'm supposed to be somewhere with people counting on me to be present - it's a whole nuther story in terms of stress levels......

Found a new author in the Strange Brew short story collection and got one of her books out of the library yesterday. I'm going to have to rein in my tendency to take lots of books out of the library because I leave in less than 3 weeks and I've loads of things to do before then. Anyway, she has several series but the one that appealed to me is the Weather Warden series. Her name is Rachel Caine and the first in the series is Ill Wind.

And now it's time to get back to the skein winding. I have a lot to do before I have enough for a productive second dye day, hopefully between Christmas and New Year.

Of Dyeing and Warp Winding

Winding three colour warp with cheat sheet

When I'm winding a long or complex stripe sequence I post a cheat sheet above the warping board so that I can keep track of which colour comes next and how many ends of each colour are required.

In this case my counting string will count not merely threads but repeats of the stripe sequence. There will be two warp chains. I will break the warp into two more or less equal numbers of ends so that there will be about 3.5 of the middle stripe repeats in each warp chain. The trick, of course, is to get the warp chains side by side properly, but with this design that won't be difficult.

dyed 2/20 silk

Yesterday was a 'dye day' and I got 40 fifty gram skeins dyed. I'd been having some problems with resist marks from the skein ties and whined about this to someone I respect as a dyer who made her living for many years dyeing silk and would therefore know. She told me to remove all of the X ties and just tie circles of string loosely around the skeins.

Well, I was a bit hesitant but followed her advice and voila, no resist marks. Yes, the skeins did get a little unruly, but not much more so than with X ties.

Which leads me to step onto my soapbox. Many people complain bitterly about fugitive dyes ruining their projects. Often when I ask them how they wet finish they begin by saying something like "I soak the cloth for 24 hours....."

This is an open invitation for any fugitive dye to release and settle elsewhere on the cloth.

I always assume that any dyed yarn has fugitive dye in it and treat it accordingly.

Therefore I never ever soak a web but get it into the water and rinse, rinse, rinse until I am sure there is no fugitive dye lurking to settle elsewhere and ruin my weaving. I use Color Catchers (made by the people who bring you Shout products) when I know for a fact there is fugitive dye in the yarn - and generally any cellulose yarns that have been hand dyed will for sure have fugitive dyes.

I've been told by some dyers that they rinse until there is just 'blush' left which means that there may not be much dye, but there is some left.

I've also found that in acid dyes magenta can have fugitive dye molecules that are difficult to rinse completely out and sometimes cyan can be problematic, too.

So as I say, always assume there will be fugitive dyes and wet finish accordingly.

Just one more good reason to wet finish your handwovens and not gift or sell un-wet finished articles.

And yes, the silk yarn will be on my Art Fire store in the new year.

Silk Yarn

50 skeins of silk dyed today

The dyeing went quite well. I got four dyepots done (two colours per skein) and some of the colours are unusual but attractive, I think.

The red/green at the bottom will look terrific with a dark teal weft - it will be hard to put these skeins up for sale!

The blue/purple above the red/green also looks great in real life. The light purple is not solid but shades from a pale almost pink to a lavender.

I'm really happy with the turquoise/blue. The red/blue isn't my personal taste, but looks pretty good for 'spring' type people. The red in these skeins is more of a coral colour.

These are 50 gram skeins. In future if I import more yarn I'll get it done in 100 gram skeins, so I'll sell this yarn two skeins at a time. That should give enough for a scarf warp at 30 epi.

It should show up on my Art Fire store in a few days as it will take a couple days to dry.

Currently reading The Lacemakers of Glenmara by Heather Barbieri

Dye Day

20 skeins of Bamboo Rain and 40 fifty gram skeins of 2/20 silk

I bought this drying rack a couple of weeks ago, knowing I needed to do a lot of dyeing. Having gotten fed up with the two dinky racks I had and which were falling apart, it seemed time to buy something else. It was more expensive than I'd hoped, but after setting it up last night I realized that it was much bigger and studier than the one I'd originally seen and had gone to buy - until I spotted this one.


The silk skeins are tied too tightly, so there are some issues with resisting the dye on some of the skeins. However, it will be a lot faster to simply re-tie the skeins than buy the yarn on cones and skein the yarn myself. So now I have another tv watching job - re-tieing silk skeins and cutting off the too tight tie. One per skein. Sigh.

Fortunately the new tv season is starting soon, so at least there will be (one hopes!) new episodes to watch. Speaking of which, I've sort of gotten hooked by Defying Gravity. And I've gotten hooked on So You Think You Can Dance Canada, too. :) I watched the finals last year because a dancer from my town made the final 20, and then Sharon said she enjoyed So You Think You Can Dance. So we watched the first couple of episodes while she was here and I've continued watching..........

Given the areas of resist on some of the skeins, I toyed with the idea of doing shadow weave with one white end and one dyed. This idea is in keeping with the realization that I don't have to only do the fastest techniques possible, but can invest a little more time in more complex/time consuming approaches to weaving. And shadow weave has intrigued me for a long time - I've just never had the time to really work with it and weave with two shuttles making textiles for sale. :)

The Bamboo Rain is a merino/bamboo/silk blend. The bamboo doesn't take the acid dyes the way the protein fibres do, so the result is a kind of tweedy effect. The plan is to make afghans with it. The yarn feels wonderful, and throws should feel scrumptious. But first I have to finish dyeing the yarn.