Does It Bring Joy?

 

just some of the bags of the rayon chenille yarn being donated for the stash busting sale at the guild next month...

We spent some time today clearing off one shelving unit of rayon chenille, bagging it up after sorting into the 3 'sizes' represented there. and labelling the bags of yarn with the number of yards/pound for easy identification.

l have agonized for months (years!) over this yarn.  I used to make rayon chenille scarves and sold them as part of one of my 'lines' of scarves at craft fairs.  People tended to love them.  The bright saturated colours, the texture, the drape.  But they were not a lot of fun to make, honestly.  I got pretty good at working with colours, usually in stripes of one sort or another.  And I learned a lot about how colour mixes in a woven cloth, so it wasn't really a hardship.  Just limited in scope.  Plus I grew to really dislike the fringe twisting because it was hard on my fingers/hands.

But I loved the colours.  I like working with saturated colours, and having a shelf full of nice bright colours of all sorts (because I had to make a range of colours, ones that weren't my personal favourite, included.)

As my health deteriorated, I would glance at the shelf full of yarn and quickly look away.  The more I thought about it, the worse I felt about hanging onto it.  Some of it was likely getting too old to be useful as warp - and of course you can't tell until you get it into the loom.

I toyed around with selling it on, but I had dribs and drabs as well as full cones, too much of some colours, not enough of others.  I offered it on here for free if someone would save me the emotional toll of packing it up and taking it away.  

And then I heard that the guild was going to offer members to recycle their stashes by having a 'stash busting' sale in January.

I asked if I could donate my rayon chenille and the guild could have the money and was instantly accepted.  The time line isn't long, which was even better.  No time to re-think.  No time to select some of the yarn and keep it in case I wanted to weave with it again.  Just a nice short timeline to deliver it all to the guild room in the new year and clear it out of my studio.

Intellectually I was more than happy to do this.  As it was happening, however, I found that I still had an emotional tie to the yarn.  I have a pretty good idea of how much money it took to invest in that yarn - in production quantities.  I have a decent idea of how many scarves a person could make with it.  Or to replace it if I should desire to do so (I don't.  I won't.)

But I cannot.  It is beyond my capacity to do.  And even IF I can recover more of my physical fitness, do I really want to spend what little time I have left on making more rayon chenille scarves?

The honest answer is...no.  Much better that I let someone else have the pleasure of making something with the yarn, than let it degrade further so that it won't be useful for anything much?

I have no idea if there are enough weavers in this town to buy even half of the yarn that will be delivered to the guild room in January.  But the guild has a 'yarn by donation' corner, so perhaps it will eventually find a home.  

And one less thing for me to see in the corner of my eye and feel guilty about not using.  One way or another - my stash must shrink.

Stash Diving

 

gaping 'holes' on the shelves because most of it is packed up for the craft fair/guild room sales

Given my conundrum - running 'low' on 2/16 cotton, can't decide what colour(s) to buy to keep going with the towel weaving, I spent some quality time with my yarn stash.  It took a while, but I 'found' the fine cashmere yarn I bought while in Scotland - along with the rest of my cashmere stash.  I'm running 'low' on silk scarves and since I only have limited amounts of some of the cashmere, putting a silk warp on the loom and weaving the cashmere as weft seems like a good approach.

My inventory is currently (mostly) packed up, ready to be delivered to the guild room for the big craft fair Oct. 30, Nov 1+2, then the guild room sale in November.  And I'm drowning in tea towels.  I did get some shawls made, but I've lots of rayon scarves and a few silk+ scarves, but it's time I dug through my silk stash.  The cashmere is largely quite fine, but most of my silk is...a mixed bag.  Some of it is way too fine to use as warp, and I'm not entirely sure what I can do with it.  And of course, the warp and weft colours have to be 'compatible'.  

The next warp is underway, so it is time to put my thinking cap on and figure out what I can do with the silk and cashmere yarns.

I've suggested to the new weaving teacher that she can come and root through my 'samples' to see if any of them are of use to her.  I have bins of 'samples' I've used to illustrate my classes.  Some are just that - samples.  Others are finished items.  And those are the samples I would like to see carry on.  The 'scraps' will likely go into the rag recycle bin.

But oh, the memories when I dig through those bins.  Things I had completely forgotten I'd made suddenly come to life again.  The successes...and the 'failures'...

Because no 'failure' is truly not useful, even if all it does is remind me of what I did, and how it turned out.  

Kind of like life, right?

I had really  hoped to use up those 3 large cones of singles 6 yarn but the only 2/16 I have in quantity is natural.  And white on white doesn't always look very attractive.  And I already have lots of tea towels.  So, maybe it's time to put that aside once the current warp is done and dabble in the silk/cashmere?  I won't get them done in time for this year, but they will take time to design, weave, fringe twist and wet finish.  So, really, I'm working on next year.  My days of scrambling to meet every deadline are over.  I might be 'getting' this 'retired' thing...

If Canada Post gets itself sorted out (currently on rotating strikes) I might post some things to my ko-fi, available to Canadian addresses only.  But I get the feeling that a lot of Canadians are watching every loonie and toonie like a hawk.  Not to mention it will depend how much energy spoons I have.  And I'm learning how to 'manage' what I have, instead of railing about what I have not.  Difficult life lesson to learn, but...needs must...

Decisions, Decisions

 

The state of my stash has been weighing on me - heavily.  These are just two shelves of my current stash.  To be fair, I have gotten rid of or woven a large part of my previous stash, but still...pounds and pounds and pounds of stuff.  

It is beginning to feel less of inspiration and more burden.

Since I fell and damaged my back, it has been a slow - but steady - deterioration.  Now I am left with one option to try and if that doesn't work...the options are not great.  This body is such a spechul snowflake and been rode hard, put away wet far too many times.  I really ought not complain because it has worked for me, and generally worked 'well', through thick and thin.

But as I contemplate the future, I really, truly, wonder how much more (whatever) I have left in me.

I take comfort from the fact that some people still want to know what I know (or think I know) and somehow I feel that I can't 'go' yet because there is something 'else' that I need to be doing.  (Of course I have zero idea what that might be, so I just keep on keeping on...)

Friday Doug took the latest box to the courier to ship to WEFT.  I'm on tenterhooks now with all cross-ables crossed until it arrives.  But overall, even though I didn't get 'perfect' results I learned a tonne, confirmed some of what I thought, and had a good dig around.  I won't say I'm 'proud' of what I managed, but I did it.  And that's not nothing...

The first anniversary of my brain injury is coming up.  In many way it feels as though it is the first birthday of my 9th life.  I survived what was considered a rather serious brain bleed, in my speech centre.  And not only am I still weaving, I'm still writing (maybe not well, but I *am* writing.)

I've had time to think about the zoom interview I did this month for HGA and I have made the decision that I will not be doing zoom presentations to teach.  Last week I took the hour to sit down and view the interview, from an interior point of view (how was I feeling when I said that?  What words were I searching for when I paused and my eyes were darting back and forth in search of the word I knew I knew but could not call to my mouth).  The last 10 minutes of the interview I hesitated to say much at all because I could feel my speech shutting down as my brain became overwhelmed and the words began drying up even further.  And that was a 'casual' interview, a conversation, not a teacher trying to keep a coherent thought in her head, to make sense for students to learn from.

My webmaster is in the final months of obtaining her degree and suddenly things have gotten very crunchy for her.  But in the new year I will be asking if she can do a quick edit to my website and remove all mentions of zoom presentations.

I can no longer 'perform' to my standards.  I either change my standards, or I stop doing it.  

The decision was made 'easier' insofar as a new weaver has offered to teach beginners in person, locally.  I am happy to act as a resource person for her.  At this point it is less about me, personally, teaching, but supporting those who can and are willing.

And conserving whatever energy and brain power I have left to put into my writing.  My alpha reader says she is willing to keep on being my first filter, which is incredibly generous of her and I'd give her more towels but over the years she has acquired more than enough of my towels.  :D  

A local textile person may come over this afternoon to check if I have some fine yarns she can use.  OTOH, my stash might be actually 'too fine' for her to use.  But we won't know until she looks.  I had intended to use some of those fine yarns to ply my handspun, but the arthritis in my hands is making me think I really should not be spinning anymore, either.  :(  But I will wait to see if the next med tweak is more helpful than where I am at now.

Tuesday I get the next jab in my lower back to help (we hope) lower the pain in my lower back, and I will discuss the adjustment to my pain medication and when we might tweak that.  I'm hoping to be functioning 'better' by the end of this month and hopefully start year 2 of my 9th life feeling 'better' than I have been.

Time will tell...

Time Will Tell

 

As part of the Zoom presentation tomorrow on stash management, I realized one cannot consider how one manages one's stash without addressing the space one has in which TO manage it.

So I did a series of photos of my studio on Jan. 1, 2024.  No effort was made to 'prettify' my space, other than put away the drying rack which was no longer needed.  The photos reflect exactly the state of my studio on that day.

Over the years I've crammed an extraordinary amount of productivity into a much too small space.  

Weaving is real estate hungry.  The tools take up a lot of room, but also?  The stash of yarns, then the finished products.

This rack is where I store the items ready for sale.  It's not especially full at the minute, but there is another rack with textiles that are 'finished', just not tagged/priced.  Therefore not quite ready for sale.  They get stored somewhere else until I've done that final step.  It is one way for me to track the state of my 'finished' textiles and keep them organized.

Inventory is a bit lower right now because of the seasonal sales.  Selling handwoven textiles is always higher during the run up to Christmas, plus I did a blow out 'sale' of one design that had been hanging around for far too long.  It was time to move them out.  So I did a BOGO sale.  Some people took advantage of that to purchase Christmas gifts for family and friends, and I cleared some space on this rack for more of the other designs to be tagged and moved here.   Which I still haven't done, but is on my list for the new year.

Over the years I struggled to stay on top of the management side of being a professional/production weaver/teacher/author.  Each of those 'jobs' required space to organize the materials required.  For far too long I operated in very tight quarters, walking through goat trails as boxes and bins were stacked high and wide.

Since my 'retirement' I've worked steadily to weave down as much of my stash as possible, and even managed to sort through some boxes and actually (gasp) throw some things away.

I always hesitate to throw weaving samples away, just in case I need them to illustrate a point when I'm teaching.  But there comes a time when I have to come to grips with my changing circumstances.  

In 1995 I learned how to make bobbin lace, and because I had an enthusiastic enabler, I acquired a rather deep stash of lace supplies.  Over the holidays I thought about the lace stash and I think I have made some decisions about how to proceed.  Now I just need the appropriate spoons to deal with it.

However, since I now have some space in which to work, the first thing that needs to happen is to get all of my lace supplies dragged out, then start sorting through it all.

Since many of the bobbins were painted by my enabler (who died in 2018), there is a lot of sentimental attachment involved, and I know I'm going to find parting with her bobbins difficult.  And I still have dreams of doing lace again.  I even have a proto-plan, which I'm going to let simmer for a while and see if it endures.

Because I'm still in the midst of weaving down my weaving stash and usually by the time I've done my two 45 minute sessions, that is about all the energy I have for the day.

However, I get my next SI joint injection next week and I'm hoping that the progress I've made with physio and massage will mean I will have more energy to use for other things.  Like getting better organized.

In the meantime we are seeing the daylight hours begin to increase, and the weather forecast is warning of snow and more 'seasonable' temperatures.  Who knows, we may yet get 'winter', even if it is a mild one.  But we desperately need precipitation, so I'm not going to complain about the snow that has just begin to sift down from on high.  We need it.  

Time will tell if it will be enough to stave off the wildfires this summer; if I have the energy to deal with my never ending stash; if I feel well enough to do more than just keep on, keeping on...

(changing over my planning calendars - still taking bookings for Zoom presentations for 2024 and will be ready for 2025 in the next day or two.)

Organization

 

inventory ready for sale

In Grade 12 I took Office Practices which went beyond mere typing to teaching other things like double entry bookkeeping, filing, project planning and so on.  As part of my mark for one semester, the teacher wrote that my mark would have been higher if my desk wasn't always so disorganized.

It was a telling comment and a true observation.  I was always disorganized.  And yet I always turned my homework in on time.  It was, however, an appropriate comment for someone assuming that I would, like the rest of the students, likely go on to work in an office.

And I did.  I worked in offices for a number of years, in part because I got pretty good at typing (tested at 80 wpm on a Selectric typewriter), did dictaphone typing, filing, etc.  And my desk was always 'messy'.  

When I chose to become a weaver, it was a real challenge to deal with the chaos that ensued.  The thing that most people don't really understand is that in order to BE organized, you have to have the space to store the things that need storing, and the work space to process what needs processing.

Given the limited space I had to work with, I think I did a pretty credible job of accomplishing what I managed to do.  I am well aware that if I'd had more space/room to work *in* things would have gone a lot more smoothly.  But I had limited space because I had limited income and I had to make do.

For years I had 'goat trails' through the studio with boxes stacked high.  It was a mess, but it was my mess, and generally I could usually find what I needed, when I needed it.

As the years went by and I changed what I was doing, some things got shoved into corners and eventually forgotten.

There were things in my stash that I wanted to use 'some day' and I kept, even when I knew in my heart I would never get to them.  Then I kept 'inheriting' yarn stashes from others.  Some of the yarn I could, and did, use immediately (as in as soon as I could fit them into my schedule); others languished.  But I wove steadily, trying to reduce my stash to more manageable levels.

When I 'retired' from doing craft fairs and then teaching in person, I had stashes that were pertinent to those things that I could begin to get rid of.  Most of it I have managed to use.  Some of it I've given away.  Part of the retirement plan was to get rid of my off site location, which meant giving up the industrial steam press, but also all the storage that the site provided.  That meant all the things stored there needed to come here.

Doug and a young friend spent weeks building shelving against every available bit of wall space, and I got rid of the AVL, which took up a huge amount of space in the studio.  Once it was gone, more shelves could be installed at that end of the studio.  I still have business tax papers I need to hold onto for a minimum of 7 years, and as the years have gone by, Doug has been shredding the 'stale' financial papers, which has been freeing up some shelving from the bulk of those things.

As the stash slowly diminished, I was able to start emptying boxes of yarn and begin weaving it.  When we installed the new HVAC in November, I had to clear out the clean storage room and finally dug deep into the nooks and crannies of that room, discovering yet more things I'd 'forgotten'.  Some of those got given away, too.  Some, like the linen, I will likely use.

The end result of all of this weaving down the stash is that some empty spaces now exist on shelves that used to be crammed full with yarn.  There is still a great deal more to be dealt with, but I can finally say that I have used up some of my stashes.  The most recent is the 2/20 mercerized cotton.  The dribs and drabs have gone into the bobbin lace stash.  I have to decide - do I begin making lace again, or do I try to sell my stash?  I have accumulated enough pillows I could actually teach a class, but frankly I don't want to spend that much time on my feet anymore.  And pillows are bulky and shipping rates have increased.  Plus students would have to wear masks, and I'm tired of fighting for people to wear masks around me.  

The other thing that gives me trouble is the teaching examples.  I have bins and bins of textiles I've kept to use as illustrations in teaching.  But I'm no longer teaching in person.  Some of the samples are just that - samples.  But some are actual textiles - scarves, tea towels, etc.  I could just try to sell them and toss the rest.  

But as 2024 begins, I look at my studio shelves and...I see empty spaces.  Some of those spaces got filled with other things, meaning some of the clutter upstairs now has a place to live down in the studio.  But the goal of reducing my stash is happening.  It just takes time.

So I begin as I mean to go on:  weave.  Weave down my stash.  Continue sorting through the bins of samples.  Close my eyes and just toss them?  or examine each and every 'sample' and decide if I keep or toss.  The temptation to toss becomes overwhelming at times, and that is when I do nothing because I can be brutal and then regret at leisure.  The sorting, sifting, deciding will continue.  

In the meantime, I have a pretty warp on the loom.  I'm going to go weave.  Today, and every day I can.

Never Ending Stash

 

Got this draft threaded yesterday, then noticed what looked like 'mistakes' in the cloth when I wove the header.

Came back and looked at the draft again, and nope, I didn't make a mistake.  It's part of the nature of the weave structure, given the half tones and the changes in the twill lines and how the light strikes the cloth, emphasizing the warp in one direction and the weft in the other.  And it looks...odd.

It is one of the reasons I've been captivated by this weave structure and keep finding new ways to play with the lines.  Even something very simple takes on a complexity when in cloth form.  I'm looking forward to seeing this after wet finishing.

However, thinking I was very close to finishing off the 2/16 yarn, I started 'celebrating' too soon, because a deep dive into the hidden recesses of my yarn storage revealed...yet more yarn.  Some of the cones I will need to do a burn test.  They are from a friend's stash (she bequeathed her yarn to me when she died) and there are no labels to identify the fibre content.  Plus I remembered I had some mill cones tucked away and 'found' them.  Each cone is about several pounds - not sure now, how many.  And I have 5 of those.  I will have to think about what colour I will buy next for tea towels to weave those cones of yarn as weft.  Good thing I'm not bored with tea towels????

Since each warp takes about 3 weeks (when I'm feeling well) to weave off, well, it looks like I'll be making tea towels for a long time to come.

OTOH, I got an email from someone this afternoon thanking me for the generous size of my towels, how nice they feel, and how happy she is with the towels she chose from my ko-fi shop.  :)

I'm anxious to finish this warp because I have a new colour to play with once it's done.  And I'm sure some nice bright colours will be welcome as we travel the dark days of winter.  The solstice is coming soon, and our days are getting very short now.  I console myself with the reminder that as quickly as the sun goes 'away', it will come back.

And today I scored a couple more puzzles.  I got a $5 discount coupon from the local book shop, one that carries some puzzles, and went in to see what they had.  What I found was a huge selection of puzzles, like tables and tables of them!  I managed to curtail myself and only chose two (because I have some at home already) and when I got to the till, discovered that I had more discounts and came home with puzzles that were a lot cheaper than expected.  Happy Solstice/Merry Xmas to me.  :)  

Decision Making Time

 

It feels like I have been working on stash reduction for the last 10 years.  At least.  But while I continued to teach and write, I needed more than just the yarns I wanted to work with - I needed yarns for workshops and for projects designed for publication.

Once I stopped doing craft fairs, I didn't need the depth of inventory I routinely carried, given my reduced output.  It wouldn't do to run out of yarn and not be able to weave while I waited for more yarn to arrive.  So I had a rather large inventory of a large range of colours in the yarn I used most often.

Some of my stash hadn't been touched in years.  Decades, truth be told.  It was 'too fine' for re-sale - and I had too little time to weave something for myself.  Some of the yarn simply stagnated, ignored.

Until I finally got rid of most of the teaching stash.  I still have too much wool and silk - much of it very fine.  And my eyesight is such that some of it is simply far too fine for me to want to weave with it.

So I shipped a box of silk to another weaver who works with fine silk routinely and who I know will actually work with it.  I'm hanging onto the fine wool because I've been using it to ply my handspun.

And there's another 'stash' I need to deal with.  Either drag my wheel out and start spinning or...decide I'm done?  But I've been hanging onto that because if there comes a time I cannot weave, I can likely still spin.  So...saving it for my 'retirement' from weaving?  Ditto the lace making...

But there comes a time when, in order to use up what I have, I need to order more yarn.  (I know, I know.)

I'm halfway through the current warp with one more to go to use up the last of the mercerized cotton.  So I found myself fretting about what I was going to do after that, given the tag ends of spools from sectional beaming, plus the cones/tubes of fine cottons I found as I began to see the deep dark corners of my yarn storage area.

Last night I pulled out the Brassard yarn card and have made a tentative decision about what I'm going to order.  I'm going to look at the colours more closely in the daylight and check to make sure I'm happy with those yarns, given what I need to use up as weft.  And then place an order for 16 pounds of 2/16 cotton for warps to use up those dribs and drabs of yarn left over from all the tea towel warps I've been weaving for the past year or so.  And once those are more or less used up, it may be time to work on the rayon stash.  I still have way too many scarves, so maybe it is time to weave some shawls, too?  

TBD.

How It Started...

 

How it started (sort of)

How it's going...

The four bins in the top photo are some of the 2/20 mercerized cotton that I began with - there are actually more cones on a shelf that are even older than these tubes, but they are a mixed bag of colours and since they are on small cones, they store more easily than tubes with less and less yarn on them.  Plus I've already used up some of the yarn in previous warps in the past few weeks.

The bottom photo is my caddy at the loom as of this morning.  Yes, I will weave directly from the tube, if the tube is small enough.  Since I want to use up as much 'bulk' as possible, as quickly as possible, I've been concentrating on weaving the dribs and drabs of tubes.  Some of the tubes are just a wee bit too much to fit into the shuttle, so I wind off onto bobbins, use those up first (so I don't wind up with a bunch of bobbins with left over yarn on them) and then work on emptying as many tubes as I can.

The caddy shows just what I've used up in the past couple of days.  I'll empty the caddy now that I've taken the photo.

Today I managed to weave enough that I need to cut off what I've woven because the cloth beam is building up and becoming 'padded' by the yards of woven cloth on it and resetting the tension is getting more difficult.  If I weave much more, the beam becomes thick enough my knees touch it, and that's annoying.  So instead I count how many towels (or whatever it is I'm making) and when I've reached around 7-8 yards or so, I cut off and then re-tie and begin again.

Cutting off from time to time (three segments in a 24 or so long yard warp) means I can deal with any small tension issues that may crop up.

I've reached the point now where the tubes that are left are getting larger so the pace of emptying tubes is going to slow.  

There is rather a lot of yardage in 2/20 mercerized cotton (8400 yards in a pound) and each towel is taking around 900 or so yards to weave.  That varies according to the design - some are more, some are less.  I try to make pretty generous sized towels, but sometimes I get the math wrong and some of them turn out a bit smaller, some a bit longer.  Never mind, they will still dry dishes.

Bottom line?  I figure I've got enough yarn there that I will be making tea towels for months.  What keeps me going is coming up with new designs.

On the spool rack is the 2/16 unmercerized cotton I used for the warp.  I should get 4 more warps out of those tubes, and then I'm going to change to a teal/turquoise green.  I have that forest green to use up, plus other colours that would look good - like one half pound cone of a bright pink, which should look nice in a 'fancy' twill on that teal/turquoise.  Plus I have a kilo cone of 16/2 teal/turquoise that needs to be weft only, plus I remembered I also have a 20/2 teal/turquoise unmercerized kilo cone, plus a soft buttery gold, and unmercerized 16/2 white.  While white on white is nice, it's hard to see when I'm weaving and most people seem to want colours, not white on white, so...guess I'll be buying more yarn next month?

I also need to buy yarn for the upcoming weaving workshop, and since Brassard generally shuts down for two weeks over the holidays, I need to order now, not wait.  

So I'm making up a list, checking it twice...

Methodical

 

Some of the tubes of 2/16 cotton yarn that I sorted the other day.

Normally I store the tubes of cotton standing up on their end, but these are small enough that they don't want to stand, so they lay flat.  As such, they tend to take up space and roll around.

There are also several shades of beige which can be very difficult to tell apart, so I carefully looked at them in natural light so separate them into their own piles.

Now this is not all of my 2/16 cotton yarn.  The less empty tubes that can stand are still on the shelves.  They are going to take longer to empty and I wanted some 'instant' gratification so decided to begin with the nearly empty ones and clear them off the shelves.

The dark emerald tubes might not get used on this warp.  It's a twill block design and I'm thinking the high contrast of this and other darker value colours will not look as nice as I would wish.  So I've been looking at fancy twill threadings.  The contrast will still be high, but will be more forgiving in terms of slight imperfections in beat.

And I am reminded all over again at how much play time one gets from finer yarns.  I've used up just two of the colours and already woven a quarter of the first warp.  

Still lots more to go!  Who knows, I might even have to buy more white to finish this off.  

The other goal for today is to take photos of current stock and post the first photo to my ko-fi store.  I'd like to find new homes for some of the tea towels already made, plus mail seems to be moving here again now the xmas rush is over (and our highways open to commercial vehicles).

I don't make resolutions.  I form intentions.  Resolutions have always seemed so either/or to me.  You resolve to do X and if you don't do that, you might as well give up.  Forming an intention is more flexible.  I didn't manage X today, but I will take another stab at getting to it tomorrow.

So - I intend to keep working away at reducing my stash.  It's been a long haul, but I'm finally beginning to see some progress as shelves thin out of yarn.  More room for the dust buffalo to roam, but I'll worry about corraling those another day.

Here We Go Again

 

Looking through Facebook 'memories' I see a lot of weaving happened over the years.  Yes, even on holidays.  Because when your work is something you love to do, you do it every day you can.

Yesterday I continued with the tea towel warp and cleaned off a bunch more tubes.  Most of the first colour were pretty empty, likely less than a filled bobbin.  It felt good to clear off some space on the shelf and toss the empty tubes into my little recycle container.  They will likely go into the bigger paper recycling bin for our household recycling but sometimes teachers will ask if I have any they can use for art supplies so I tend to keep them separate until the bin needs emptying.

It is also becoming apparent that this first warp is not going to use up as much of the yarn as I'd hoped.  Because while I have little left to make a warp, there are miles and miles of this yarn left for weft.  So I'm beginning with the colours that have the least left so I can clear those tubes away.  And besides, I can weave directly from the tube, so no need to wind bobbins.  Win-win!

Last night I dug out one of my resource books with lots of patterns.  I've found a few I think I can tweak to my purpose.  And I'm becoming less concerned about the high contrast of the warp/weft.  Such a high contrast will tend to highlight every little inconsistency, but at this point I'm not too worried about 'perfection'.  A functional tea towel will do.

But I may change from twill blocks to a fancy twill, which will make slight imperfections in beat less obvious.  Still pondering.

The weather here isn't very pleasant.  It stopped snowing but the wind continues to gust and blow snow sideways.  So glad I have nowhere to go, nowhere to be, other than at home, soon at the loom.

I have been gradually reading Victoria Finlay's book Fabric and will do a proper review when I get a bit further into it.  But so far?  I am really quite enjoying it.

Chocolate

 

The next few scarves will be woven with a dark chocolate brown weft.  The photo doesn't do the depth of colour justice - take my word for it - it's a lot darker than this.

I worked with indie dyers to get colours specific to my needs.  Generally I asked them to make 'semi-solids', not level.  If I was paying for custom colours, I wanted something not available commercially.  Although, truth to be told, I was asking them for colours I couldn't get commercially.

The lighter value in this brown is not as light as it looks so the overall effect is what dyers tend to refer to as 'abrash'.

The warp is quite dark value to begin with - a rust red, a kind of forest green and some black.  To add a dark chocolate brown was a 'safe' choice.  It was also the 'best' choice I had available, unless I wanted a lot of rust red Tencel weft scarves.  Which would have been fine, but...I had these skeins of dark chocolate rayon.

This yarn is quite a bit finer than the 2/8 Tencel and the resulting cloth is quite a lovely lightweight fabric which should work well for summer.  It's got a nice hand or drape.  The weave structure is a combination of twill and plain weave.  The density of the warp was chosen for the slightly thicker yarns I'm also trying to use up and to make the fabric be 'balanced' I added plain weave to the tie up.  

I was going to change the tie-up and treadling for each of the four scarves, but you can't really see the weave structure anyway so I'm just going to make all four the same.  

The 'abrash' of the weft is going to make them look slightly different so all in all, I'm not motivated to spend the time conjuring up 3 more options for weaving.

The guild room sale is over and this week everything will get moved next door to the Studio Shop.  Since the Studio Shop is a lot better known, AND it's on the ground floor, not up a long staircase, we are hoping for a nice ending of our sale.  

The year is nearly over and suddenly those distant deadlines are looming (pun alert) and I find I'm needing to scramble a bit to get everything done that needs doing.

I'm also beginning to fill my calendar with guild programs via Zoom so if anyone is interested, they should contact me soon-ish.  With my on line classes launching in January, I will become a bit busy in in the new year.

We are still a week away from the solstice and the weather report for the coming two weeks is cold, cold, cold, with a serving of Omicron.  I'm grateful for the chance to keep teaching - safely - even if on line isn't ideal!

My yarn order should be here, maybe before Christmas.  In the meantime I'll keep working on scarves.  I should finish this warp this week, then put on another one in hopes of emptying more cones.  Or at least making them smaller!  And then I'll go back to tea towels.  But I may do a 2/20 mercerized warp first in an effort to use up that really fine linen I was given a couple of years ago.  Stash reduction.  It's progressing.

One by One

 

I have great hopes of this design because it looks quite different depending on the angle at which the cloth is viewed.  

The warp is 2/16 bamboo (Brassard) and the weft various rayon yarns from my stash.  Because yes, I'm still working on using up my stash!

The weft is textured - a rough kind of 'flake' - and overall thicker than the warp threads.  As such the weft tends to dominate the warp when viewed from face on.  But walking away from the loom I could see that as the angle of viewing changed, so did the appearance of the cloth.  So I am hopeful that once wet finished this will be quite a subtle but interesting cloth.

That is not say this warp has been without incident!  Rather it has been a bit challenging as I made a few oopsies in the processes.  Operator error, combined with pushing the yarn to it's limit led to some interesting two-step shuffles as I put the warp into the loom and got it ready to start weaving.  And then broke a warp end due to a shuttle 'mis-fire'.  Again - operator error.

But this morning I finished scarf #1 and began #2.

I've sorted through my stash.  Again.  Picked several yarns as being good candidates for using on this warp.  And now it is just to sit down and do the weaving.

The warp has some tension 'issues'.  I had already decided to cut off and lash on after each group of three scarves, so that will help even out the tension problems.  But nothing that seems to be proving catastrophic.  So far.

In the meantime I've reviewed what I'm doing and decided on the next warp in this series.  And targeted an array of different wefts that can be used on that one.  It would be nice to use up all of something, but then I'd have a big stack of one colour combination, which isn't great for selling.  Having a variety of different colours, woven on different coloured warps, will give people a much bigger choice.

We still have three more weekends of the guild room sale, then the pop up sale at the art centre.  For that I'm thinking of getting the silk/rayon scarves tagged/priced and  place them on consignment with that facility, plus whatever I put into the guild pop up sale there.  Beyond that, I'm not pushing to get these scarves done, but if they are, they can go into the sale(s), too.

But before that can happen, I need to weave, fringe twist and wet finish them.

So - back to the loom.

Stash Diving

 

I am over the halfway mark on this warp and the cloth on the beam is getting thicker.  When I finish this scarf, I will cut off and remove what is already woven, then lash on and keep going.  I figure I should get 7 scarves from this warp.  This one is #4.

There aren't as many different options for weft as I was thinking, and my options for warp are somewhat limited as well.  Not that I'm out of yarn, just...it's getting harder to combine what I have into a warp that I feel happy about, and then figure out if I've got enough yarn for weft for those combinations.  It seems I have a bunch of dark values, and a bunch of light values, little in between and not enough of anything that goes with other things.  

As this series proceeds, things will change - they have to.

For this warp, however, I have enough options to keep going and not repeat any weft colour.  It will mean shifting into the Tencel, which is fine.  Just means I fiddle with the tie up and treadlings.  Right now I'm also planning on changing the threading for each warp, but that may change if I come up with something I really like.  As in not too complicated and open to being easily changed in the tie up and treadling.  The warps will be about 11" in the reed, so I can't get terribly complicated with just 352 ends, give or take.  Or I could go with something that doesn't repeat across the width.  That is also an option.  Time will tell.

After several months of really demanding challenging warps (with a few easier ones for respite) I'm really enjoying this run of scarves.

So far the loom is behaving and so is the yarn.  And I'm using up stash, some of which is so old there were dust webs on the tubes.  Which admittedly isn't all *that* old, given the amount of fibre dust I produce.  But when I pulled that box out and saw the webs on the tubes, it was a reminder that I really need to get my stash woven down.

It's a bit daunting, needless to say.  But I'm making progress.  The added bonus of cutting off halfway is that I can begin fringe twisting, as soon as tomorrow night if all goes well.   My goal is to have these done in time for the guild's pop up sale at the art centre consignment shop.  And keep making more scarves for the rest of this month and into December to try and use up as much of this yarn as I can before I run out of ideas.

On to the Next

 

Another blast from the past, in part because I'm using essentially the same combination of yarns in the current warp as was used in this one.

The warp is 2/16 bamboo (from Brassard) and the weft will be various rayon yarns I have accumulated over the years.  A scarf takes a lot less weft than a shawl, so I'm hoping to use up some of the colours that are too little for a shawl, too much to toss.

This week is a bit busy, but yesterday I did manage to finish setting up the Megado, generate the file and take it to the laptop I use to run the computer dobby.  

The first weft was a fine silvery grey and while I should have probably added more interlacements to the tie up, decided to just go with a ppi slightly higher than the epi.  

The next scarf will be woven with a somewhat thicker rayon slub in a dark purple and might wind up slightly less picks per inch than ends per inch.  

I am not even trying to hit 'perfect' angle for the twill - close is good enough.

The craft fair went well for the guild and yesterday Doug carried all my stuff up the steep stairs to the guild room.  Today one of the guild members will start setting up the items for sale.  I'll drop in and see if she needs some help but only briefly as I have appointments.

I also need to focus on the documentation for Sweet Georgia.  I've just finally done a couple more pages, then printed off the instructions for the 'sample' we did in the video.  My instructions were a bit skimpy and I need to expand them for less experienced weavers.  

Perhaps I'll feel like weaving later this afternoon.  I hope so because only another 400 picks will finish the grey scarf off and it would feel nice to finish one thing today.

In order to keep myself on track I tend to break weaving down into stages so that I can have a feeling of completion/satisfaction when I finish a stage.  Otherwise it begins to feel like I'm not getting anywhere.

So this warp should produce 7 scarves, and I'm nearly done weaving one of them.  :)   The next warp will be the same combination of yarns, but I'll likely come up with a different threading draft because I only have a few colours for weft and I'd like to make them look different.  I may also change the accent colours to something different in future warps.  

The goal is to work from my stash, not buy more yarn.  We will see how that goes!

Not Set in Stone

 

Posted the Birthday Bash details yesterday.  Today there are just two of the pale green towels shown in the above photo left.  Most of the colours have lots, but some are low numbers, in part because I was using up yarn stash and just made as many as I had yarn.

This morning as I sat and had my 'jitter juice' (as a cartoonist labelled it recently) I thought about the next warp.

Initially I thought I would have plenty of the dark variegated yarn, but as I near the end of the current warp, so am I nearing the end of that yarn.  There won't likely be enough to weave on the next warp, so I have been looking at alternatives.

I have a giant tube of what I think is a 5/2 mercerized cotton in bleached white and had thought I could use that on the next warp.  But the more I think about it, the less inclined I am to use it.  5/2 Perle cotton is quite stiff and thicker than 8/2, so the towels wouldn't be great.  Probably that yarn should be used for table runners or something that doesn't need absorbency or drape.

There is a partial cone of a solid turquoise 8/2 cotton in the right shade, but that will only weave a few towels.  What should I do for the rest of the warp?

I have a bunch of cones of 16/2 cotton in the correct colour, but it's finer than I want to use on these towels.

But ah-ha, I have a spinning wheel.  Instead of using a doubling stand, which would work but be a bit of a pain, I can ply two strands of the 16/2 together.

We talked about how much fibre dust that would create in the house and instead - since it's summer and no rain to speak of in the forecast after highs of 40+C on Mon-Tues, the temps are supposed to go down to the mid-30s.  Which, while hotter than I like, is at least do-able to be outside.

Most of the pollen should be over by then as well, so Doug will set up a table in the carport to protect me from the sun and I'll spend some time outside plying yarn.  I have 6 bobbins for the Device and plan to just go straight from the spinning wheel bobbin to the weaving bobbin so it should go fairly quickly once I get going.  And, doing the plying outside, the fibre dust would be kept as low as possible.  While weaving I have a fan with a filter on it next to the loom to help remove dust from the air.

I've woven enough of my cotton yarn stash that I'm having to carefully consider my options.  I think that's a 'win' in the stash reduction olympics.

Stash Diving

 

Many of these tubes are now reduced in size, but very few have been emptied.  Yet.

My goal was to use up the cotton flake, and to that end I have mostly succeeded.  The dyed flake is pretty much gone and I'm working my way through the large mill tubes - about 2 pounds each.  Each tube seems to be doing one warp.  I have 5 of these tubes left, so another five warps.

In the process of digging through my stash I found some dyed and undyed cotton boucle (loop) so now I'm thinking that should be next after the flake is used up.  I can use the same set up for warps, weave the hems in 2/8 and the body of the towel in plain weave.  I've done this before and it works well for general toweling.  But I could as easily do those on the 4 shaft loom so I'm trying to decide if I weave all that plain weave on the 16 shaft Megado or not.  Do I want to hand wind chains and dress 11 meter long 24" in the reed warps, or beam them sectionally?  I think I know which way I'm leaning.  :D

I also have a warp pulled to begin working on the linen in my stash.  I have a large cone of a single yarn, a little bit coarse, not line but not as hairy as tow.  It may just be a poorer line quality generally.  In spite of that, I know it makes great towels, so I'll use it on 2/8 cotton for warp.

But I'm running low on colour options in the 2/8 cotton so I may have to switch to scarves and spend some time working on my finer rayon yarn stash while I mull over how much yarn to purchase going forward.

Currently reading Snow Blind by Ragnar Jonasson.  This author was recommended by Ian Rankin and it's interesting enough I may look for others in the series.

Rolling Onwards

 

Today dawned overcast and dreary with a high probability of rain later.  Well the rain arrived and I opted to not walk today.  I couldn't face the chilly wet.

However, I did manage to press the 8 towels that ran through the washer/dryer yesterday, then got the next warp ready to beam.  It's hard to see in the photo but there are shades of blue - a darker somewhat greyed blue and a lighter value blue, sometimes called baby blue.  There are also four spools of baby mix variegated with a little white, blue, pink, even a bit of green if I remember correctly.  This warp will have a darker greyed blue cotton flake for half of it, then whatever warp is left will get woven off with white flake.

By the end of the day (4:30 pm) the warp was entirely beamed, the spool rack parked in its spot in the studio, but the yarn has not been put away in case I need any to repair a broken thread.  Much of this warp will go into another mostly blue warp later, in part because I have a lot of blue and a lot of white flake.  

Then I set up the loom in preparation for threading.  The draft (threading only) is printed out and clipped to my clipboard, the reed and beater top taken off as well as the breast beam, the shorter stool in place.  The bouts were taped to a long stick which is now ready behind the heddles.  All that's left is to set up my task lighting.  I may do that tonight when I shut down the studio.

I'm still running a humidifier, although that should probably be unnecessary soon, especially with close to a week of forecast rain.  The humidity should start going up from the low 30s to above 40 soon.  At least it isn't in the mid 20s anymore.

Tonight there will be hemming and who knows, maybe even some more fibre prep.  The bin is nearly half full and should be at least 3/4s full by the time I've used up the dyed braid - mostly cyan, magenta and a wee bit of natural white.  I will probably do one more braid before I put the fibre away and start spinning.  

In case I don't want to do any of that, there is also another scarf on the needles.  My goal is to get enough knitted that I can donate to St. Vincent de Paul, or other charitable organization.  Or maybe put scarves on the sculptures that someone has been making warm hats for the past few years.  Anyone who needs a hat can take one.  If they need a hat, maybe they need a scarf.  But regardless, I have no shortage of yarn to knit with, too.

And now that I am getting close to using up most of my 2/8 cotton and cotton flake, I'm thinking about what is next.  To that end, I have set aside enough yarn for a 2/8 warp which will get woven off with an 8/2 variegated cotton.  It's weak enough it could break and I don't like fighting with my yarn, so weft it will be.

Then there is another bin set aside with darker beiges and a large cone of fine linen in natural beige will get used as weft on that.  I doubt either warp will use up the 8/2 or the linen, but they will make a dent in the cones, and that's all to the good.  Since I had Fiberworks open to print out the threading for the current warp, I also generated a draft for those two stash busting warps.  I'd thought about them for a very long time - months, to be honest - and am finally satisfied enough with my idea to go ahead and put it into Fiberworks.  I'm not saying I won't change my mind, but right now I'm satisfied with it.  I just have to think about hem weft yarn.  I'm thinking of using the same variegated for the hems on those towels, and 2/16 cotton on the beige/linen warp.  Or maybe, because linen doesn't lose dimension as much as cotton, I'll use the linen for hems on that warp.  More pondering to do.

Not Bored

 

As expected, I got four towels each from the peach and the rose.

The peach is a lighter value than the rose and the towels look quite different.  On the peach towel, where all the colours are approximately the same value, the overall look is more subdued with slight differences in hue giving the cloth some extra interest.

The rose was a darker value and therefore the warp is showing in greater contrast and most people would be hard pressed to tell these towels had been woven on the same warp.

I am about to begin the beige, which is an even lighter value than the peach, and then finish whatever warp is left with white, also much lighter value.  

People sometimes wonder how I can weave the 'same' thing over and over again.  I enjoy it.  I have the technical stuff (width in reed, epi, tieup/treadling, dimensions) all figured out.  All I need concern myself with is choosing the colours and then watch the cloth grow on the loom.  I'm not constantly looking for more stimulation, so I can stay in the present moment and just keep weaving more and more of the same quality of cloth, playing with different colour combinations.  

I could change things, but I'm happy with the quality of cloth that is being made, so I'm content to stay in a comfortable 'rut' and keep weaving down my stash.

There may come a time when I decide that I want to design something new and completely different every time I go to the loom.  But for now?  Now is not that time.

Thing is, whatever you do?  If you are happy, keep doing that thing.

If it brings joy, keep it.  If it doesn't, get rid of it.  I suspect Marie Kondo has it right.

Another Milestone

 

my double entry ledger, deposit book and chequebook from a couple of years ago.

No more bookkeeping.  I don't miss doing my accounts!  I truly don't miss it at all.  It was always a pain in the patootie, but necessary to make sure all the bills got paid, all the taxes due were paid.  Knowing where I stood financially was usually a spur to flail around and either book more teaching, submit another article to...somewhere...offer a sale on my stuff.  Try and generate more income.

Now?  I'm 'retired'.  My business is closed.  And I no longer have to keep track of my expenses.  Of course I don't have to actually buy much of anything either because I don't have to produce a line for a string of craft fairs, or for workshop warps.

Today we submitted our personal income tax, so that's one more thing taken care of.  I always like to get it done well before deadline.  Last year the deadline was extended, but we still took care of it as soon as we could.  This year has been extra confusing for accountants, keeping track of the taxable covid benefits and the non-taxable covid benefits.  Since we are both seniors, living on state pensions, I don't think anything we received (which wasn't much, but still helped) was taxable, but whatever.  It is still a relief to have it done.

After a storm overnight we are back to a blue sky sunny day.  I will walk again later this afternoon.  Progress can be measured in yards, not a greater length, but I will take every inch of progress over the back sliding I have been doing the past couple of years.

The second half of the warp is ready to go, but I have a Zoom booked for 1 pm, so I'm going to have lunch, then get set up for that.  If it is cancelled, I'll weave a towel, then go for my walk.  If the Zoom goes ahead, I'll walk after that, then weave one towel.  The next colour weft is beige.  I'm not sure if there is enough for four towels, although I think so.  There might even be enough for 5.  We'll see.  Anything left of the warp after that will be woven with white.  

the next warp is mid-value blues and there should be enough for 7 or 8 towels of the mid-value blue flake; the rest will be woven with white.  

And so I continue, weaving my way through my stash, one bite at a time...

Roadblocks

 

When I get stressed, I start to procrastinate.  When I procrastinate, everything I am stressing about seems to loom larger.  So then I wind up with increased stress and problems that simply get bigger and more difficult to deal with.  

And round I go.

Until I finally get a round tuit and start dealing with them.  Usually a deadline begins to loom and pressure builds to finally deal with the issue I have been trying to ignore.  Like an elephant in the room.  Lurking.  Hiding in plain sight, so to speak.

So yesterday I managed to finalize one elephant, and more or less resolve another that has been irritating me, and which should, with the arrival of a new part, get fixed next week.  

Just knowing that a solution is finally approaching, I feel like a huge roadblock has been lifted and I can now proceed along that line/road/path.

I also pressed the first 8 towels of the 'stone' towel warp, and wove two more.  One more today will use up the last of the black cotton flake, and I'll then begin using up the last of the forest green.  Neither of those two colours will use up the entire warp, so whatever is left will have a beige cotton flake weft.

And then I pulled another bin of yarn for yet another towel warp of this design/quality.  I don't know how much longer I will stick with this except for the fact there is still plenty of the cotton flake - I think I counted 6 two pound tubes of white.  A half a pound of flake weaves three towels so I could do the math and work out how many more towels those tubes could make - and probably will now that I am getting close to using it.  The next warp will use up the peach and beige flake, then start on the white.

There is a medium blue warp pulled which will use up the last of the blue flake, and then white.  The warp I pulled yesterday is pale blue/grey and will be woven with white flake.

I told Doug yesterday that in some ways I feel stuck in a rut, but since my goal is to use up my stash, and I am accomplishing that, it's a good rut.  And I can begin to see the end of it.

At some point I need to begin plying that oh so fine silk so that I can use it.  But I also have a whole lot of fine cashmere, so my first dip into the silk will be for warp and the cashmere for weft.  But I may not get to that for a while because I also have way too much rayon.  And not a whole lot of scarves, so I may spend part of the summer (once the towels are done) working on my rayon stash.  People have no idea how much play time there is in a fine yarn stash!

We woke to a fine dusting of snow this morning, but the weather app says +17C coming next week.  I am gearing up to begin walking.  I say it here so that I can't weasel out of doing it.  :D

Finished reading the latest Donna Leon book - Transient Desires, currently reading Exceptional Canadians by Peter Mansbridge.