Dis/Organization

one corner of my storeroom....


I confess - I'm a packrat. My DH is even worse. Therefore it is fortunate (or unfortunate, depending on your preference) that my tolerance for clutter is rather high.

But face it - in order to put things away, there must be a place to put them! And when your stuff outnumbers the places to put them there isn't much option left but to put the stuff in boxes and stack the boxes where ever there is room to stack them.

Which is one reason why I'm determined to use up some of my stash. No stash, nothing to put away..........

So it is that I am digging into the box in the foreground with the bit of white showing. This is the box with the painted soy protein and Tencel warps that I have been steadily picking away at for - oh it seems like months! In fact it probably has been months. :} And it will be some months yet because there are 12 more painted warps in that box, each warp producing 4 scarves. At a week (average) per warp, that's another 3 months before I'm done. Not counting the time I'll be away beginning in September.......

And then you see the box behind that one? The one piled high with more warps? Yup - another box full of painted warps destined to be shawls.

The shelves above the boxes are filled with mostly wool that I use in workshops. It's not enough I have my production stash, I also have my workshop stash. The yarns that I send out for the various topics I teach. And then of course there's my re-sale stash.

Then there are the binders full of handouts and bins of teaching samples to store somewhere.

Last but not least there are the drawers full of paperwork necessary to run a business. Not to mention various and sundry parts and pieces of booth apparatus for doing shows, a box or two of loom parts I daren't get rid of in case they are needed late some night for emergency repairs, tools, and accessories required for the weaving process etc.

Is it any wonder I close my eyes to the mess most times and call it 'creative chaos'?

On Soapboxes

about 30 yards of scarves....

I have two soapboxes - one for each foot, obviously. :^)

One is wet finishing. The other is issues of ergonomics/efficiency.

Handweavers can in no way compete with industry and looms that weave hundreds of picks per minute.

A handweaver is therefore by definition making 'slow' cloth.

People tell me they aren't interested in working more efficiently because they don't want to 'hurry'.

Working efficiently isn't hurrying. It's working with the least amount of wasted effort as one can.

Working ergonomically is working with the least amount of damage to the body. Quite often the two turn out to be - if not the same - closely related.

One of the big issues I see when I teach workshops is that people sit on chairs/benches etc., that are too low. This is very bad for backs. Another issue is how people hold and throw their shuttles. If a weaver only ever weaves narrow fabrics it's not terribly important. It becomes much more important when warps become wider - and longer. Throwing with poor technique can cause lots of problems with necks and shoulders, wrists and thumbs.

Weaving takes time. Lots and lots of time. I don't want to do it any more slowly than I absolutely have to. I've spent years studying, analysing and tweaking my technique. I am more than happy to show others what I do and how I do it. And why I do it so that they can decide if my techniques (I say 'mine' but many other production weavers do as I do) are appropriate for them.

To this end I produced CD Weaver which shows how I wind the warp, beam it, sley it, and how I weave it off, including video clips so that the processes can be seen in motion.

I also present seminars and workshops.

Next year I've been asked to be at the John C. Campbell Folk School Jan. 9-15 for a workshop called The Efficient Weaver. You don't have to be very experienced to take it - just interested in working more efficiently/ergonomically.

You can contact the school here http://3.ly/9EKb

NEWS has also contracted me to do seminars on both my soapboxes. I don't think their webite is ready yet, but I'm sure it will be soon.

And last, but not least, I have video clips posted both here (click on the video clip label) and on my website http://laurafry.com/

Currently reading A Darker God by Barbara Cleverly

Weave Fail

There are so many ways for things to go 'wrong' during the weaving process.

The project can begin to go off the rails in the design stage when the weaver makes a poor choice of yarn, a poor choice of density, an inappropriate weave structure or a motif that isn't 'elegant'. Why? Probably because the weaver was tired or distracted or maybe learning a new technique and didn't quite get it right the first time.

In this case I'm pleading fatigue with extenuating circumstances.

The error wasn't exactly fatal. Since it was consistent in my liftplan when I noticed what I'd done - 5 pattern picks separating the motifs in one row, 3 in the next - I sighed and labelled it a design feature.

Then of course there are the 'errors' that the loom creates - a shaft lifts when it isn't supposed to, or doesn't when it is. An alert weaver may - or may not - notice when this happens and fix it.

Lastly there are the 'flaws' gifted by the yarns themselves. And in this case - yes there are two points of failure in this scarf - the flaw was fatal.

Rayon chenille does not repair well when it breaks, especially when it breaks at the fell line, no hint of warning that disaster was pending.

And so I have about 30 inches of 10 inch wide fabric that is going to hit the scrap heap unless someone wants it for 'samples'?

The only solution was to once again sigh - much louder this time - roll the warp forward, thread the errant warp end back into it's proper heddle and start over. I confess that a few explicatives were likely used after the sigh. :O

By the way, there's a new group on Weavolution called Weave Fail. I joined it yesterday. Just in time, from the looks of it.

Currently reading A Woman in the Polar Night by Christiane Ritter

Twinkle, Twinkle

Some motifs are easier to weave than others. A star, a simple little 5 pointed star, would I thought be easy-peasy.


Not so. These ones look better on the 'back' of the cloth, which in reality will be the face of the cloth. But I wasn't really very happy with them. They sort of look like a male alien. :} More obvious when looking at them straight on. From the side, these look pretty twinkly. :)

So, back to the drawing board - or rather, Fiberworks - where I tweaked the motif slightly.



This time I think the motif looks more like a star and less like an alien, but regardless I'm weaving it up anyway.

Sometimes you have to really watch the obverse - the little butterflies I did previouis to the stars look fine on one side of the cloth and a whole lot like a pansy on the other side. Still, better than the butterflies that morphed into a crying frog that I did not so long ago!

Currently reading Time Weaver by Shana Abe - not bad - a bit jerky but only to be expected in a tale of time travel.

Book

This isn't so much a book review as it is an anticipation of a good read. :)

Show me a book with 'weaver' or 'weaving' in the title and I will pretty much automatically pick it up in case it actually has a weaver or weaving in it. And so when I saw this book on display at the library the other day my hand naturally gravitated toward it.

As usual I opened the book and began reading the first page. If a book doesn't grip me sufficiently to turn to the next page, I don't bring it home.

So far I've only read the prologue but with language like this: "Emerald hills that hugged the heavens, that invited the clouds down low for foggy kisses." appeals to me and I'm not adverse to fantasy either so I'm looking forward to reading the rest. The rest of the prologue slowly changes from bucolic to uneasy menace.

Shana Abe has written a series of which this is the latest. Usually I prefer to read a series from the beginning but will read one to see if it is worthwhile to look up the rest, so that is what I will do with this one.

Abe is classed as a Romance writer although this series is shelved in the SF section of my local library. Romance, as a genre, generally doesn't much appeal to me but I'm not a snob about it. A well written Romance is as welcome as any other well written book in pretty much any genre.

Hopefully the rest of the book will live up to my expectations. ;)

Ideas

I intended to weave one of this design in turquoise, then had a brain cramp and started a second one. Which then 'suffered' a flaw which will no doubt make it a 'second'. Oh well.



Have been thinking about where ideas come from and how they come into material form. I have ideas. Lots of ideas. Very few of them make it as far as the loom.



Each idea gets filtered through a series of considerations. First one is - is the idea sufficiently original? In other words, has it come out of my own source or have I been unduly influenced by something someone else has done?



If I am sparking off someone else's idea, is my idea far enough from the source to be considered my own, or is it too derivative?



If it is sufficiently 'original' the next question is - in my experience do I think anyone would be interested in buying it? For enough money to make it worth my while to invest the time to make it?



Don't get me wrong - when I'm making something for myself the investment of time is always worth it. :) But my primary goal - beyond working at something I love to do - is to sell my handwoven textiles.



Which then leads me to the question of how efficiently I can make it. If the idea is labour intensive, can I re-tool it to make it more efficiently? If I can't streamline the process, will the results be attractive enough that I can charge more for it? Will it be worthwhile to use more than one shuttle; use a temple; dress the loom with two warps, etc.?



Then I need to consider the materials themselves. Which fibres/yarns would be most appropriate to render this design into material form? All fibres have inherent characteristics. How they have been prepared for and spun will have an impact on those characteristics.



For example, a fibre that has inherently good draping qualities can be given more backbone by combing the fibres so that they are parallel (worsted) and then given a higher degree of twist to make the yarn spun stiffer than it would be otherwise.



So once I come up with the concept, I may go through several different fibres/yarns before I feel comfortable with my choices.



At this point I generally make a sample. Now sometimes my sample warp will be 3 yards long and 10 inches wide - in other words, sufficient to make a scarf (if the concept is appropriate for a scarf). Regardless, a 10 inch width in the reed allows for an easy way to calculate loss of width.



I may weave 6 inches and wet finish the results to make sure I'm going to be happy with the cloth. If I'm not, I may re-sley (looser or denser) or I may change my weft. If my first sample isn't satisfactory, I may try several different wefts. Sometimes the whole 3 yards will get woven off with different sets, different wefts, different weave structures.



Other times I will go ahead and set the loom up based on previous weaving experience. After weaving for 35 years I've woven with a lot of different fibres in a lot of different weave structures. Having that foundation of knowledge to draw on means that I don't start out at square one every time I go to the loom anymore. But when I do use a completely new yarn, I generally weave at least one warp that I consider to be primarily for sampling or getting to know the potential of the yarn.

From the onset of an idea to actually putting it into production can take time. Sometimes, quite a long time, as with this scarf warp. I thought about it for months before I went ahead and dressed the loom with my initial 'sampling' and then a further 12 months passed by before I actually got a production warp onto the loom.

Part of the reason for not getting onto the loom sooner is that the warp required beaming two warps and weaving with two shuttles. It was only when I was in a position of needing to weave slowly that I finally went ahead with it.

Now that I have, I'm very happy with the results and find that I'm running out of warp before I'm running out of ideas for designs to weave on it. Sounds like I'm going to have to put another warp on the loom.

Currently reading Moon Called by Patricia Briggs

Movable Feast

V-shaped scarf in double weave....

Yesterday a present arrived from Sweden - a birthday/thinking-of-you present. :)

The really nice thing about having weavers for friends is that sometimes hand woven gifts appear.

No, the scarf is not sewn into a V shape - it has been woven this way. (For more information see Kerstin's book Weave A V at http://laurafry.artfire.com/)

The scarf was a bit of a challenge to photograph. It's actually a darker blue than shown in the picture but over exposing it allows you to see the weave structure a little bit.

The cloth is woven in 'pockets' of double weave that have had small coins (smaller than a dime) inserted into the pocket during weaving.

I've been thinking a little bit about the nature of creativity and why I can't seem to stop thinking about more and new textiles I want to create. I think I'm an addict in the true sense of the word. I get an endorphine rush just thinking about playing with the thread. But it isn't just the thinking about making cloth materialize (I know, I know - baaaad pun!) it's the actual doing of it, too.

There is an enormous sense of satisfaction in getting the warp onto the beam even when the warp is tangled, like the painted warp I beamed last night. (Ha-ha! Take that you snarled mess! I win!)

I actually kind of enjoy threading - when it's going well - and the anticipation of sleying and tieing on just means I'm that much closer to being able to sit down and throw the shuttle. :)

There are some aspects I don't much like about weaving and generally I ignore them in favour of those I do enjoy. For example, I don't much like hand throwing two shuttles, but there are times, like with the Diversified Plain Weave, where you just have to settle down and do it.

But that's the wonderful thing about weaving. The craft is large enough that it is possible to focus on the aspects that do bring satisfaction and leave those that don't alone.

Currently reading Dead in the Family by Charlaine Harris