Inching Along

 

Finished off the natural beige linen and started on the white for weft.  The colours are subtle - a pale grey and pale green about the same value.  It's an approach to creating textiles I like because it gives the cloth more depth, more 'interest', than a same yarn/colour warp.

Not that that is bad, of course not.  There are lots of times I will use a solid colour warp.  It depends.  (Bet you are shocked!)

The linen is finer than the 2/16 cotton.  Instead of increasing the number of warp ends, I chose to include some plain weave in the weave structure.  Doing this adds structural stability, and it keeps the cloth 'lighter' - more flexible.  Given the stiffness of the linen, this flexibility is A Good Thing (imho), especially for something like tea towels.

When I gift my towels to people, they sometimes protest that they are too 'nice' to use.  I hasten to assure them that they are not - and, that they will improve with use.  I now have several 'fans' who know and understand this.

The last time I gave towels to my massage therapist, I told him that if they have 'enough' of my towels they can re-gift them.  Without even opening the package he asked if they were more of my towels.  When I said yes, he said "Oh no, we love your towels!"

Yesterday I packaged up the parcel with the samples for the first article I did for WEFT.  I'll mail this week when I go to town.  I know I'm 'early' getting it done, but being a bear of little brain these days, I am working on getting stuff done well before deadline so that I'm not in a mad scramble trying to get it finished on time.

Besides, I am thoroughly enjoying the explorations and want to savor them, think deeply about them, and not rush to judgement about what I'm seeing and experiencing.  I also have very little energy, so I need to be aware of what I am capable of doing in a day and not disappoint myself and them and bailing at the last minute.

Once I've got my worktable cleared off, I will begin processing the samples for the next article.  They are all woven (unless I decide I need more) but there are quite a few of them and I need to make sure I've identified them all so that I don't lose track of what they were woven to illustrate.  

I may measure progress by the inch, not the yard, these days, but progress is still progress.

Variations

 

variation on yesterday's draft

Messed around with the tie up and quite like how it looks this way.

Not sure which I will use since both are potentially useful, although I'm leaning more to this one.  OTOH, I won't really know until I start weaving.

The weft will be very close to the warp in value.  I purposefully chose paler hues to make the warps.  With such fine yarns, I could have gone with a higher contrast, but what I did was buy 4 different colours and I plan on mixing and matching the four to produce a range of towels that look different but play nicely together.

I suppose it doesn't really matter much since I no longer do craft fairs, but with each colour combo enough to beam 5 warps, I found I was getting tired of the same colour warps.  Mixing and matching will provide some visual 'interest', I think.  

With 5 kilos of the white linen, each kilo weaving about 20 towels, that's 100 or so towels ahead of me.  I'm hoping to get some done in time for the craft fairs in the fall, but I also still have to finish writing the articles I've committed to writing.  However, Thursday will be a 'light' duty day, so I expect to work on the wet finishing, then 'testing' (experimenting) for the first article.  As soon as I can, I want to get it to the editor in case they want more, or something different.

Plus my sale is on until July 9 and today I need to hit the post office with the bag of packages to mail.

It's a grey dreary day, but honestly?  Better to have rain clouds overhead than thick wildfire smoke pall.  I'm working hard to be grateful and not complain.

Carrots (not Sticks)

 

Yesterday I cut the shawl warp off the loom and started setting up for the next warp, on which I will be weaving samples to illustrate an article I'm writing.  Actually, I'm thinking I could weave samples for two different articles, so I'm thinking about how many samples I need and what needs to be shown.  

That doesn't mean I won't weave more later, but both articles have a deadline of Oct. 1, so I'd like to get started on them now.

Both articles are on topics very much in my 'wheelhouse' (as they say) since both have wet finishing as a factor.  I've just not done much experimenting in the particular aspects that are wanted, so it's a learning opportunity for me - one that I'm very much looking forward to exploring.

The thing is, when I was in high production I didn't have the time (or energy) to dig deeply into some aspects of weaving.  Now that I'm 'retired' (for certain values of) I have less urgent need to produce at volume so I can afford to take the time - and the yarn - to experiment.  I think I'm finally finding my 'retirement' niche!

In the meantime, the yarn from Brassard arrived this morning.  This yarn was ordered in specifically to be warp for the fine singles linen weft.  I have a plan for it but still need to design the actual weaving drafts.  But the concept is formulated in broad strokes - just need the fine detail.

Weaving with the natural linen was so lovely that I'm really looking forward to working with colours that are more attuned to my personal 'taste' - beige is not really my favourite colour!  But I'm pleased with the results of the cloth and am very much looking forward to getting to these colours.

We are nearing the summer solstice and soon enough the daylight hours will begin reducing as we slide towards winter.  With this box of yarn I will have plenty of weaving to do in the winter months.

Beige - Boring, or Subtle?

 

2/16 cotton warp, Lithuanian linen size N56 (if I remember correctly)

When seen from any kind of distance, this cloth simply looks...beige.

The warp is Brassard's 2/16 cotton in two closely related hues and values of beige, and the weft is the singles linen from Lithuania I received as a thank you from a student I helped.

It took me a little time to get to it.  I had to order more cotton in as I had pretty much woven down my 2/16 cotton stash and didn't have anything near enough to create a warp, never mind a colour I thought would be good for the natural coloured linen.

Coming to the end of the warp, I decided I could tell it was going to finish up nicely, so I then took a look at the seller's website and decided to get some bleached linen.  

Why, when I'm *supposed* to be downsizing my stash did I decide to buy yet more yarn - for which I then had to order more cotton to use as warp?

Because I found this warp very satisfying.  In spite of the 2 threading errors and the 3 sleying errors, once the warp was weaving it was trouble free.  The linen, steeped in humidors for at least 3+ days behaved beautifully, and even in loom state it felt like there was great potential for it to be a really nice tea towel.

And, since I recently, consciously, decided to only weave things I wanted to weave, buying more yarn that was going to bring me this much satisfaction seemed like the right thing to do.

The shawl warp should come off the loom tomorrow and then the warp for sampling (and more stash reduction) will go into the loom.  I still haven't decided exactly how much I need to weave for samples, but I'll put on my 'usual' 60 turns (about 24 yards) and crunch numbers later.

The yarn from Brassard should arrive on the 11th, so that will be here ready to go into the loom as soon as I get the samples/towels woven.  I will design another 'fancy' twill, make sure I have some plain weave in the tie-up so that I can keep the epi at 36 and not push it to 40.  The weight and feel of this combination feels quite lovely - and I know that as they are used they will improve.

So, it seems that sometimes you *can* get satisfaction!  (Take that Rolling Stones...)

A Different Tack

 

Over the weekend I got the next warp into the loom and started weaving this morning.  

Shawls are similar to tea towels in that I'm using 2/16 bamboo for warp and a similar sized rayon for weft.  But, shawls are larger - wider and much longer - so it looks like it is going to take about 4 hours to weave one shawl.

The weave structure is twill, and ratio is 7:9 so the cloth has more warp showing on one side, more weft on the other.  That is a little hard to see in this shot, in part because it is an awkward angle, in part because of the light (which isn't great) and partly because it hasn't been wet finished yet since it is still in the loom.

My next warp was going to be tea towels again, using that fine singles linen that just arrived, but instead I've agreed to write an article and will have to do some samples to illustrate.  OTOH, I can piggy back that experimentation onto a warp I had been planning some months in the future to use up some of my 2/8 cotton and that mystery yarn I posted about a few days ago.  Instead it will go on 'next' and I'll start to use up that mystery yarn at long last - once the article samples have been woven.

One of the things about the articles I've been writing over the past month is that they have required some digging, some thought experiments, some examination of my assumptions, forcing me to think about things in a deeper way.  And then, of course, how to design the experiments to prove - or disprove - my assumptions.  

To have the previous warp, and now this one, go smoothly (I hope I haven't just jinxed myself) is leaving me with some time to sit and ponder.  Since I only need surface attention to weave, other parts of my brain can wander hither and yon, looking at the craft, or my approach to the craft, in different ways.

Wednesday I get the next injections for my back and as such I will need a few days 'rest'.  Part of that 'rest' time will be looking at the Brassard colour cards and choosing the yarns to go with the fine white singles linen.  Part of it will be spent reading about the topics I'm exploring for the articles.  I also have a bin full of hemmed towels that need their final finishing press.  I think I have plenty to keep me occupied for a few days until I feel able to try weaving again.

And who knows what ideas will float to the surface?  In the meantime, I'm enjoying these nice 'easy', co-operative warps.  

Oops.

 

Yesterday I cut the first 7 towels off the loom.

I gotta tell ya, weaving with this linen from Lithuania has been lovely.  

When it arrived it was a bit thinner than I had expected (still not great at converting metric to imperial - my bad), but thinner can always - in a pinch - be made thicker, right?

But instead I mulled it over and decided I didn't want a thicker towel - thinner towels are just more absorbent, more flexible, just more...tea-towel-like...than a thicker cloth.

So I bought 36 tubes of 2/16 cotton, beamed the warp, designed a weaving draft based on one from Ars Textrina #14, tweaked it to make it 'fit' what I wanted better, added borders, added hems, etc., and then in the tie up added some plain weave to help stabilize the somewhat thinner linen.

When I was getting close to being able to weave I wound off as many bobbins as I had available and stored them in humidors (see previous blog posts on how I prepare linen for weft - topic 'humidor') to 'steep' for at least 3 days (or longer - longer is better when it comes to linen).

The warp went onto the beam quite smoothly, although I did have some hiccoughs while threading and sleying.  Nothing terminal and soon fixed.  (Just really annoying!)

Since then I've managed to get to the loom pretty much every day for at least one session and the loom is co-operating, too, so this whole experience has been very enjoyable.

So much so, I went back to the etsy site where the yarn is being sold to see if they had half-bleached.

They had what they called 'dyed white' under two different listings.  The description appeared identical, but the price was different.  One listing was being offered at a much lower price.  I mulled it over and thought that perhaps the lower priced yarn was from an older batch and they were just trying to move it out.  As I thought and looked at their other offerings and then went back and forth between the two listings for the white yarn, I noticed that a number of people had the cheaper yarn in their shopping carts.

A really good psychological tool for marketing, because it spurred me to put some in my cart, too.  And thought some more.  And decided that if I was going to buy more yarn it made a lot more economical sense to buy more than a kilo, given shipping and whatnot.

So I ordered.

Five kilos.  

Yes, yes, I know I'm *supposed* to be weaving down my yarn stash.  But I'm not buying this on spec, I have a plan for it.  (Seriously!)

Once the current warp is off the loom I will put a shawl warp on and get some of that excess of rayon yarn woven down and while I'm doing that I will think about which colour(s) to order in from Brassard of the 2/16 cotton.

Because I'm not done with weaving yet, and I'd rather weave with yarn I like than with yarn I don't.

And since it takes a long time to do the fringe twisting, I kinda need to get those shawls done now so that they are ready for the craft fairs in the fall.

My story, sticking to it.

(If you want to buy some tea towels, there are plenty in my ko-fi shop.)

Struggle

 

It feels like my life has been a constant struggle since...I can't even remember when.  My entire life?

So I'm used to things not being comfortable.  Or going smoothly.  Or having to stop and re-jig what I want to do because it just isn't working out the way I wanted it to.

To be honest, this warp started out just like that.

I made not 1, not 2, but *3* threading errors.  Simple ones, fairly easily fixed with the addition of tied in repair heddles.  Just...annoying.

I suspected I had a sleying error but could not find it, only to discover - in the process of fixing the threading errors - that somehow I'd overlooked a bundle of 5 ends and never sleyed them.  Right smack dab in the middle of the warp.

Again, fairly easily fixed, just time consuming.  And irritating.  

But I started weaving again, then noticed that in the process of fixing the threading errors, I'd introduced a sleying error.

GAH!  Again, fairly easily fixed when I got to the cut line.  So, one towel has a very minor 'error' in it which may actually disappear in the wet finishing.  Or not.

But once all that was dealt with and I actually began weaving, I was surprised - and ever so grateful - to have things start to go smoothly.

(I hesitated to actually write about this in case I invoke the 'curse' that comes with the hubris of thinking I'm doing something 'right'...)

Anyway, I just finished towel #5 on this 24 (or so) yard warp which should yield around 19 or 20 towels.

The fine linen is behaving beautifully, having been steeped in a humidor for over 3 days.  My selvedges aren't perfect, but they are 'good enough'.  

And I'm enjoying my time at the loom, not needing to fight with the yarn or the loom - just sit and toss the shuttle and beat the weft into place.

I am enjoying it so much that I am seriously considering buying more of this fine linen to make more tea towels.  And trying really hard to *not* do that because I am *supposed* to be weaving down my stash, not adding to it!

However, it looks very much like this warp will use up the kilo of linen and then I may consider finally putting a shawl warp into the loom.  I prefer to fringe twist finer threads, especially for something like a shawl, and that takes time.  It actually takes longer than hand hemming.  I'm out of shawls, and I still have way too much yarn in a variety of fine rayons that I need to weave down.

But the jury is out on which direction I will go.  At the rate of one towel per day (on average) it will take me another two weeks to finish this warp.  

I have time to cogitate.

Next!

 

Draft shown on desktop screen 

I'm over the halfway mark on the current warp so it is time to get the next warp designed.  This warp will be two shades of beige and the fine linen from Lithuania will be woven on it.  I think the two cones of linen will finish off one warp, although I may run out.  In that case I have some other fairly fine linen I can switch to using, or I could complete the rest of the warp with one of the 2/16 cotton yarns I'm trying to use up.  If that is the case, I will adjust the tie up so that there are fewer interlacements.  

The linen is finer than the 2/16 cotton, so I've incorporated plain weave in this version, but it could easily be changed, if necessary, to accommodate the cotton.

With the two faces of the cloth looking quite different - one side will be warp emphasis, the other weft emphasis, I'm probably going to use the cotton and the 'right' side. 

If I need to change to cotton to finish this warp, the two sides of the cloth will be more equal.

I took the draft out of Ars Textrina - one of the old German weaving pattern books translated by Pat Hilts - but changed the arrangement of the repeats, then changed the transitions between the motifs and added 'borders' to the sides, and hem areas to the beginning and end.  So, not entirely my original work, but changed significantly enough I don't feel any compunction about doing this kind of jigging of a draft designed, potentially in the 1600s, although who knows, the German weaver might not have made it originally but did the same thing I just did and drew on the work of a previous weaver.

The book auction is humming along.  Today most of the purchases were made by people with active bids on other books so I only had one parcel to package and mail.  I also had massage this afternoon and feel like I've been run over (sort of), so I worked on this draft, then worked on the article for School of Sweet Georgia.  I will let it sit for a few days now, then look for the illustrations to go with it.  Perhaps I'll send it to a friend to alpha read it for me, make sure I've fixed the typos and that I've worded things clearly enough.  The due date is May, and May is fast approaching.  Today was a good day to do some wordsmithing.

But now?  Now I think it is nap o'clock.  Doug has been working on the cutlery drawer in the kitchen.  Maybe when I get up he'll be done his fix-it work.

Twinkle Stars

 

After a week of delay I finally got to the loom this morning.

I discovered a 'problem' with the threading, but nothing dire enough to scrap the warp and re-thread it, especially when I'm using a colour that isn't going to show off the design all that much.  There are some angles where the design doesn't actually show at all.  It's like 'damask' - dependent upon the light shining differently on the warp and weft to be seen.

The motif is large - what is showing here is the end of the first towel and the first few picks on the second.  Mostly what you can see is the tail end of the motif and the hem area.

This will be the last in the matrix series, and I do believe I wove it previously in a different colour way.  

The photo also shows the caddy I use to hold various tools.  I sit - or perch - on a tall stool, so I need something to hold wound bobbins, scissors, the other shuttle with the yarn I use for making cut lines between the towels and my drink.  (hydrate, hydrate, hydrate)  You can also just make out the ends of the tubes of the same yarn which will be used *as* bobbins and woven directly from the tube.

And yes, those ARE cassette tapes.  Right now my goal is to weave two 45 minute sessions a day, so I pop a cassette tape into my boombox (with headphones to help protect against the noise of the solenoids) and listen to one side, then stop weaving when the music stops.  The headphones are on top of the laptop and black so you can't really see them.  They are not just audio headphones, but also rated to provide protection against noise.  I have already lost some hearing, even though I have always worn protective headphones to weave.  But I didn't use them when doing other noisy things, like winding pirns or cones, etc.  But I don't have the industrial pirn winding machine any more and don't wind lots of cones anymore, either.  

The 'test' eBay auction is putting along.  I suppose there will be a flurry of bids on day 7.  I hope.  

I have managed to sell some of the guild books privately - guild members were given first dibs - and some of my students who I knew were looking for particular books.  The count is now around 60 titles, although I may cull a few more as being not really worth anyone's while.  I mean, who really needs an extremely old monograph on how rayon is made?  Not in particularly good condition, and printed in the 1940s, it's seriously out-of-date!  If anyone wants it and is willing to pay the postage, let me know.

We are well into spring here, but it's a lot drier than we had hoped.  The drought really has not broken, and a lot of us are holding our breaths, waiting to see how bad the fire season will be this year.  

One of the things taking up my time was the delivery of our new hybrid truck.  It's going to take some time to get used to it, but it comes with some 'comfort' features - heated seats, yes, but also heated steering wheel.  They are going to be very welcome next winter.  I have minor arthritis in my hands and I was having some trouble with that, especially when the temps went below -25C.  It also has a backup camera, and the cab is large enough for more cargo than the old Ford Ranger provided.  But the big thing was that it should use a *lot* less gas than the Ranger.  

It is also taking me a lot longer to dress the loom than it used to do.  So between the books, beaming, threading, sleying the warp, personal maintenance (or I can't do *anything*), and getting the new truck sorted, it was with a sigh of relief that I finally got this warp started.

The next warp will be a combination of two different shades of beige and the Lithuanian linen weft will be woven on that warp.  I also have a pound and a bit of a fine 3 ply linen in a slightly lighter beige, and that will also get used up on the beige.  Once those linen yarns are woven, the rest of the beige will be used to use up other colours of 2/16 - like the two *huge* cones of two different greens, and natural white.

I'm hoping the book auctions will be over in about 10 days, although it may take a couple of days to get all the sold books to the post office.  But I will be flipping through my pattern books, trying to decide on what threading/treadling to use for the linen weft towels.  I'm also planning a 'sale' of my tea towels the first 9 days of July, so that will take time - the photographing, listing, monitoring, then shipping.  The kind of thing that needs doing, but remains 'behind the scenes', while eating up time/energy.

I'm hoping once the book auctions are over that there will be fewer distractions and I can concentrate on getting through the next few warps.  If I can, I'd like to do one shawl warp before the craft fair in November.  Since I usually fringe twist those, I need to get them woven by September.  We'll see if I make it.

I admit to feeling a bit at loose ends because I have no clear idea of what I will do for the linen.  Once I figure that out I'm sure I'll feel a lot more focused.

Exchange Rates

 

So, yesterday I cashed a US $ cheque (payment for a recent Zoom presentation).  The teller informed me that the exchange rate was such that I was going to get a lot more Canadian money than the number written on the cheque.  I told her I was grateful I wasn't buying stuff from the US right now.  

Which reminded me - prices in my ko-fi shop are listed in Canadian dollars.  Which means, if you are in the US, the prices you pay are going to reflect a substantial exchange rate discount.

To make my life easier, the posted price includes a shipping amount.  If someone buys just one towel, that amount covers about half of the cost of shipping, which has more than doubled in the last few years.  If someone purchases two towels, that *nearly* covers the cost of shipping to the US, using the cheapest option available to me.  

In this day and age of 'free shipping', please understand that there is no such thing.  When I go to the post office, I do not get to ship parcels for 'free'.  I still have to pay the postage.  And for the envelope/box, the shipping tape, the labels.  I still have to drive to the post office and stand on line.  

'Free' shipping just means that makers, like me, frequently wind up subsidizing the cost of shipping.  So, when you look at the price a craftsperson/artist is charging, please be aware that part of that price is shipping.  The only thing 'free shipping' means is that we don't add on more money at the end of the purchase.  The price you see is what you pay.  And people like me sort out where the shipping portion goes, and hope there is some 'profit' to help pay for the materials, the power to keep the studio lights and laptop on, the heat in the winter and the a/c in the summer.  And the utilities (wet finishing all those textiles takes water and electricity, not to mention wear and tear on the washing machine and dryer, plus the press.) 

And then there are the care labels, the plastic stems to attach them (which I've lately not been doing for mail orders.)

If anyone is interested in the sorts of considerations that go into being a professional weaver, my memoir A Thread Runs Through It is also available via my ko-fi shop.  And if you are contemplating a career in the arts, you might find some of the lessons I learned of interest.

My other books are available here.  If you are in the US, blurb conveniently does the exchange rate for you and shows you the US $ price.  If you are in a different country, click on your flag (in the upper right hand corner on my desktop) to get your currency.

Enablers

 

Happy Tuesday to me.  :)

I am blessed with enablers who send me yarn (and books).  On this snowy Tuesday morning, a kilo of fine singles linen arrived from Lithuania.

It's a bit finer than I had envisioned, which means I will have to re-tool my plans for it, but never mind, anticipation is all part of the fun of weaving.  Thinking about what to do, how I may need to make adjustments to achieve the desired results is all part of the fun!

The company sells this yarn either singles, or 2, 3, or 4 ply.  If the singles is anything to go by, it should weave up very nicely, and then wet finishing with a good hard press ought to produce a really nice quality of cloth for things like tea towels.

I'll be pairing this as weft on a 2/16 cotton warp.  I needed more of that yarn to finish off the rest of my 2/16 cotton weft yarns anyway, so it will all come together quite nicely, I think.  Giving the singles the eyeball test, it appears to be a wee bit finer than sewing thread and is labelled Tex 56.  They convert that to 8854 yards/pound.  It has slight texture, and a lovely subtle sheen.  I think I'm going to like the results! 

They also offer it dyed, but I chose the natural colour which is has a bit of a golden glow to it.

So I won't get to this yarn right away.  I have the current warp of blue/peacock to finish weaving, then two more of that colour to finish up, which will give me time to cogitate on how to use this lovely yarn and then order what I need from Brassard.

Thank you to this particular enabler who has given me the gift of anticipation and being able to work with a new-to-me yarn.  

Ko-Fi Updates

 

The current towels are difficult to see, in part because the repeat is bigger than the space up on top of the loom, in part because I'm using one of the warp colours as weft.

I have managed to update my ko-fi shop with four more 'matrix' designs, and I am feeling a bit, well, restless, so I think this will be the last in the series.  

The gift linen yarn from Lithuania is already in Canada and in customs for clearance.  It might even arrive before the weekend.  So I'm already thinking about what I want to do with it.  :)  

A kilo of linen yarn should produce quite a few towels and the natural beige of the linen should look nice on the peacock/bleu moyen yarn that is still on the tubes.  There should be enough for two more warps which ought to use up the linen.  Whatever is left will get used up with more of the natural white, of which I have plenty to use up.  Sure feels good to see those tubes go away.

As for the warp currently on the loom, the design is a variation of the 'tiles' I've been playing with but I got 'clever' and found a way to expand the design creating different versions of the 'tiles'.  I may have gotten too clever for my own good, but we'll see.  Since the weft and warp are so similar it's really hard to see the design, but I only have enough of the peacock for 4 towels, so the rest will be woven in natural white, which will be a much greater contrast and show off the changes in the tiles more clearly.  

It might look 'nice', it might not.  Guess I'll find out tomorrow when I run out of the peacock weft and start using the natural white?

Mid-February

 

draft for heart motif

Well, here we are, nearly the middle of the shortest month of the year.

We have sun today, which is lovely, a welcome change from the string of grey dreary days we have been having.  But the weather is not...'normal'...far too warm, and already the slumbering wildfires that never got put out last autumn are re-awakening.  

I learned about the 'curse' "May you live in interesting times" when I was in my 30s, and while I thought I understood why it was actually a 'curse', I never actually thought I would live to see this level of 'interesting'.

When I was in my 20s I was preparing for the Cold War to heat up and nuclear weapons to be used bringing about nuclear winter.  I didn't expect that humans would bring the apocalypse slowly, rather than quickly and that it would be heat/drought.

And yet, here we are.

There is going to come a time when people like me, and others who either grow the fibre, prepare it, spin it, then turn it into cloth, are going to become necessary again.  If that happens, I hope I will have left enough good information for people to learn how to do the cloth making part.

Human beings have been playing with fibres and string for nigh on 40,000 years.  We may see a resurgence of interest as things continue to get more difficult in terms of supply of necessary items.

Today we have sun, so I'm going to try to get some decent photos of the latest batches of tea towels made since the last time I updated my ko-fi shop.  

So, shameless plug:

Tea towels and two signed copies of Stories from the Matrix (and lots of Weave a V) available in my ko-fi shop.   Check later this week to see the new listings.

My books are still available on blurb in both pdf and print versions.

Classes on School of Sweet Georgia are available - four different classes.  I hang out in the forums and answer questions.

Workshops on Long Thread Media are still available.

And my lectures via Zoom.  I'm still taking bookings for this year (and started filling in dates for next).  I've even customized topics for a couple of guilds.  

Last but not least, you can always email me laura at laurafry dot com if you have questions.

Chaos and Entropy

 

Just finished threading, sleying and tieing on the next warp.  This time the thread and heddle count were identical, and the sleying worked out to the exact number of dents.  It seems I *may* have not made any mistakes.

But that will be determined when I begin to weave...

Earlier today I was reading The End of Everything (astrophysically speaking) by Katie Mack.  She was discussing chaos and entropy.  As such, bringing order out of chaos was in the back of my mind as I tied the last rather satisfying knot.

And I thought about how I have always enjoyed that sweet feeling of 'order' in so many things.  (Not housework, nope, too much entropy there!)

But I've always been very satisfied to make jigsaw puzzles, knitting, embroidery, sewing.  Playing with threads.  Part of what attracted me to weaving was that whole aspect of bringing order to chaos.  All those threads, unruly, with minds of their own, bent to my will.  Or, at least, I tried to bend them to my will.  

I 'discovered' quantum physics in my 20s when I was working at the high school library and one day a book called The Dancing Wu-Li Masters arrived.  At first I thought there was something 'wrong' with the book because every chapter was headed as Chapter 1.  And then I read it.  

Mind blown.

I cannot claim to understand everything Katie Mack is talking about, but we routinely watch tv documentaries, sometimes about physics, space, the universe, et al.  So some of the concepts she discusses I've heard about.  Can't say that I understand them, necessarily, but the whole astrophysics field is a great way to break open one's mind and think beyond (way, way beyond) one's own reality bubble.  

I mean, how much further outside of my reality can I go than into deep deep space???

So, no, I don't understand it, but I think about it.  And I wonder.  I think about the possibilities in this universe, this galaxy.  I think about how tiny and insignificant we all are.  How little we actually matter beyond our own tiny corner of this reality.

And I think about how I can bring something positive to this life I lead, because being positive to me means 'order', nor chaos.  And I far, far prefer order to chaos.

I suppose it is one reason why the loom keeps calling me back.  It challenges me to experiment.  Explore.  Try, and find out.  Sometimes I'm pleased.  Sometimes, I'm not.  

But in the end, I feel my activity has, on the whole, been a positive one, not a negative one.  Even when I make mistakes.  Because mistakes are opportunities to learn.  And knowledge is good, I think.

It is late enough in the day and I'm tired enough that I'm not going to begin weaving today.  Instead I will wind some bobbins.  I'm using up tag ends of spools from one of the last warps I did but some of them are a little bit too heavy to play nicely in the shuttle.  So I'll wind a bobbin and relieve the tube of some weight so that it will weave more co-operatively.  The goal is to use up the last of the peacock tubes on this warp, and what is left will get woven with natural.

I think this will be the 'last' (for now) of this weave structure.  I'm quite pleased with the design I've generated - although the proof will be in the wet finishing.  Right now I'm feeling pretty 'clever', but weaving always serves up a dish of 'humbility' whenever I get feeling confident.  So who knows?  Maybe it will work out, maybe it won't.

But the results will still dry dishes, so there is that.

Change One Thing

 

bottom cloth with cotton weft, top cloth 'strip' with linen weft

Truth be told, I did change more than one thing when I ran out of the navy cotton and sampled the singles linen in my stash that I wanted to use next.

Giving the yarns a cursory examination, it appeared the linen was somewhat thicker than the cotton, but it is a slightly slubby singles, and when I actually wove with it, it behaved very much like the 2/16 cotton in terms of how it beat in.

However, I anticipated that the linen would slightly elongate the 'tile' design I had been weaving, so I switched to an undulating design instead.  That way if it didn't 'square' it wouldn't much matter.

On the other hand I knew, from previous experience, that linen weft will not draw in nearly as much as cotton weft.  The linen is stiffer and resists drawing in as much as the cotton will.  So when I finished weaving the cotton, I cut off what was woven, then re-tied and started over again.  I did not want to begin layering the wider linen on top of the narrower cotton cloth because the selvedges would 'suffer' if I did.  (Yes, I could add packing sticks to the cloth beam, but I needed to cut off because the cloth beam was getting 'full' anyway.  Easier to cut off and tie on again, start 'fresh'.)

Before I cut off, however, I wove a wee sample with the linen, just to make sure things would work out.

Now, before and after the linen sample is cotton, so the little strip is drawing in more at the very beginning and end.  The centre linen yarn, however, is pouching out, nearly an inch.  You can clearly see how the cotton draw in is causing the linen to curve and not sit flat on the table.  

I'm weaving these towels slightly longer than my 'usual' because I expect the cotton warp to 'shrink' more than the linen weft.  So, in anticipation of the wider width, I thought I'd weave them a bit longer to compensate for the shrinkage differential of the two yarns.

Now, to be really accurate, I should have cut off after the first linen weft towel and wet finished it.  But I didn't.  I don't actually care if they are slightly larger overall.  They will make a good table centre if someone thinks they are 'too large' for a tea towel.  

OTOH, they could also be useful as a sauna rub down towel, or hand towel, or to 'turban' your hair when you wash it?  

Or you could just dry pots and pans with it.

It looks like I have enough of this linen singles to weave 7, possibly 8 towels.  After that, I'm not sure what I'll use.  I have some finer linen yarn that weaves up beautifully on 2/16 cotton.  Or I could switch back to 2/16 cotton.  I have plenty in white, and some in a kind of turquoise green that might look ok on this blue-ish warp.  

More samples to be woven at the end of this section?

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.  :)  

Holiday Gift Giving

 

The sale in the guild room appears to be going well.  Most of my 'discounted' stuff has been sold so I am delivering more again today, in preparation for the coming weekend.

We still have little to no snow, although we woke to a 'winter wonderland' with all the trees coated with hoar frost.  We may yet have a brown Christmas, though.

Yesterday I beamed the next warp in the never ending series of the new and yet officially unnamed weave structure.  As I work through various ways to design with it, I'm thinking shifted twill blocks comes closest to describing what is happening with it.

So far I've kept a 'twill' progression, although I'm thinking that just like with actual twills, it should be possible to break the progression.  Haven't felt quite ready to try that, yet.  Still way too many options working with the twill 'lines'.

But, and here's the celebratory thing - the mercerized cotton is officially 'too little to weave with' and the tag ends of the tubes/cones have been binned (as in stored in a bin) and moved to the bobbin lace stash.

I'm still mostly working on jigsaw puzzles in the evening.  One of these nights I may feel tired of it and consider what to work on 'next' - there is, after all, the spinning stash as well as the bobbin lace stash.  And, if I ever get to it, shawls to make, which means fringe twisting to do. 

But I'm not there, yet.  Instead when I do feel like handwork, there is that stack of never ending tea towels that wants hemming.

I do pick at the pile, now and then, usually when there is a tv show that needs 'watching' not just glancing at now and then.  So I sit and hem, with no particular sense of urgency.  Because I still have beaucoup des towels, not just in my ko-fi shop, but sitting on my shelves in the storage area.  If I can get decent photos of the dark blue warps, there may be more posted there in the new year.

In the meantime, I still have one more warp of the dark blue with merc. cotton to wet finish - hopefully today or tomorrow.  2/3s of the warp still needs to be inspected and repaired before that warp can go into the washer/dryer.

And the warp just beamed is *also* dark blue, but at 32 epi instead of 36.  The weft for that warp will be the tag ends of natural white 2/16 that I stripped off the pirns before they were delivered to the new owner of the pirn winder.  She had no use for the yarn, and I did, so I used the Silver Needles cone winder and wound the yarn left on each pirn to a cone.  Enough yarn to weave, oh, 10 towels?  Well worth 'saving'.  After clearing off those 20 or so cones, the rest of the warp will be woven with the tag ends of the tubes from the white warps I did over the past year.  The tubes are empty enough they can go into the shuttle as a 'bobbin'.  Win-win.

So, just in case you are looking for handwoven towels, let me remind you of my ko-fi shop

And my books, available at blurb

And my seminars/guild programs available on my website   Taking bookings now for 2024.

Working in Series

 

inspired by Snail's Trails and Cat's Paws

As I work through a series, I usually generate a lot more designs/drafts than ever see the loom.

So it is with this series.

I have a queue of designs I've messed about with over the months, some of them I found acceptable at the time.  Now?  Not so much.

My approach to designing in a series is to build on what I've done before.  Therefore some of the designs are minor 'tweaks' to a previous draft, and therefore quite derivative of previous work.

With not being able to weave for nearly three weeks, and then only for limited amounts of time since then, my weaving pace has been slowed considerably.

Right now I'm managing one towel a day - on a good day.  With hope of treatment and a new pain med, I've been 'pushing' that - a little - and weaving a bit longer,  But progress seems hopelessly slow, given I still have mercerized cotton to weave and made a promise to myself that I won't stop until it's gone (as in, too little to weave a towel).

However, the other day as I was at the loom with only surface attention required, I realized that I could pretty much use any four block twill design and translate it into this weave structure.   (Still no firm idea what to call it - 'shifted' twill blocks seems to be sticking - in my mind, at least.)

The other night I took a look at the 'traditional' Snail's Trails and Cat's Paws design and decided that while I wouldn't want to replicate it exactly, I could fairly easily convert it into something similar.

For reasons, I didn't do an exact 'copy', plus there is an issue of the two circles being two different sizes (because I'm lazy and threading that last 'block' is awkward and I just donwanna), but I think this draft will do.

Making this connection means - if I want to - I can go through my previous block twill designs (of which there are many!) and use them as springboards to spark new designs in this weave structure.

However, I am watching the pile of mercerized cotton going down and by the end of this year may be finished with it.

If (and it's a huge 'if') I can become more functional and at least go back to two hours of weaving a day, that will up my productivity and hopefully allow me to finish this combination of yarns and do something else for a while.

However, I'm not 'done' with tea towels - yet.  When I'm finished with the mercerized cotton as weft, I still have 2/16 unmercerized cotton to use up.  

And once I'm done with *that*, it will be time to consider making more scarves.  I can see this weave structure making nice scarves with 2/16 bamboo rayon, and various fine rayon wefts.  Since I have a stash of *that* to use up, it seems like a reasonable goal to work towards.

Because I can see yet more potential for this weave structure, so why not?

Because I Can

 

'four leaf clover'

This isn't really a four leaf clover, of course I know that.  But I need to name my weaving files with something that I will remember later, just in case I want to do the draft again - or modify it, use it as a stepping stone to another design.

I'm quite pleased with how this design turned out.  It took a while, requiring several iterations before I arrived at this one.  Using weaving software makes me a 'better' designer because I don't stop at one or two attempts but will keep going until I am finally satisfied I have something I want to weave.  

While I stopped exploring here and dressed the loom, as I have been weaving it I can see where I can further tweak it and create other variations.  And I probably will.  Because I'm not done with the mercerized cotton.  Yet. 

I will frequently design a different sequence for the hem area.  This can 'frame' the main body of design rather than have the motif run off the ends of the towels.  Sometimes I don't bother, but sometimes it pleases me to have such a border.

With this design the size of the motif is such that the hem 'border' will actually be hidden within the folds of the hem.  But I still chose to change the treadling for the hem.  I do that as a signal to me that I'm nearing the end of that towel.  It gives me a head's up I can stop weaving soon and I find a little spurt of energy to see me through to the end.

Not so much after the massive muscle spasm in my back.  Right now I'm only weaving for 30 minutes, which is half a towel.  But I still find that when I see the hem begin to appear in the cloth it gives me a frisson of satisfaction.  One more towel!

Does it matter I take the few minutes to add a special hem area?  Not really.  Especially when no one but me knows it exists.  But I do it because I can.  It gives me satisfaction and costs me just a few minutes of my time.  And every single time I come to the end of the towel with the signal of the end due to the changed treadling for the hem, I get another little sense of satisfaction.  Over a 20+ yard warp and 20 or so towels, that's a lot of satisfaction for little effort.

At this point in my life I am primarily weaving for me.  So the very first person I need to satisfy is me.  I hope that others will find what I do appealing, but first and foremost I am weaving, now, for myself.  To learn more.  To explore more.  To feel pleasure in the results.  But also for the physical benefits of doing some aerobic activity every day (if I can).  It is important as we age to keep physically active, within our personal health limitations.  So I weave.

We make choices every day.  I choose to focus on being creative.  Being physically active (as best I can be).  I am grateful for every day I can weave, and thankful for those who encourage me here and by purchasing my textiles on ko-fi.*  

I choose to focus on what I *can* rather than what I *can't*, although some days are easier than others to maintain that focus.  The past few years have been a whittling away of what I *can* do, which has been difficult.  So it has become ever more important to focus on the *can*.  

And keep going.  As Winston Churchill has reportedly said - when you are going through hell...keep going...

*still 3 signed copies of Stories from the Matrix on ko-fi - or purchase from blurb, print or pdf

Kintsugi

 

There is a philosophy of embracing imperfections/flaws in Japan called Kintsugi.  Broken pottery is mended with gold as the mortar.  It is a reminder of the fragility of both life and 'things' and that just because something broke doesn't mean it can't be mended and made whole again.  Perhaps even beautiful.

Leonard Cohen voiced that in the song that goes 'forget your perfect offerings, there is a crack in everything - that's how the light gets in'.

As I get older I become less concerned about being 'perfect' and the little 'flaws' that used to bother me become less of an issue.

Am I perfect?  Of course not.  So why would I pretend that I am?  That doesn't mean that I am happy when I make a mistake, but now I ask myself if that mistake reduces the 'value' of the textile I am making.  Will it interfere with the cloth doing the job it is supposed to do?  How much of an effort will it be to fix the problem?  If it's a small threading or sleying error, I'll generally take the time to fix it.  But I also work with fairly fine yarn and sometimes a minor threading error doesn't make itself known until after I've cut the web from the loom and wet finished it.  

In that case I will sometimes offer the item(s) at a discount, rating them a 'second', not 'first' quality.

On the other hand, the idea of kintsugi and the visual of the gold mortar offered some inspiration to me and I used a gold mercerized weft yarn on a 2/16 cotton warp and produced these:

The colours aren't 'true' - they are in fact more intense than the photo shows, but they come close.  They will be listed in my ko-fi shop today.