Under Pressure

With the pressure of getting the warps to be painted completed, the work table is now available to do other things - like continue the samples for AGY: L&H.

There is added pressure to get cracking on the publication for several reasons.

Doug got up on the roof yesterday because the ice dam over our back door reached critical mass and he spent some time breaking it up and giving the roof a careful inspection.  Turns out it ought to have been replaced at least two years ago - it's in much worse shape than he realized.

If I'd known that two months ago I would not have planned the trip across the pond as the roof is going to cost about what the trip is...but I didn't, and the tickets are now purchased (if not paid for - that's what plastic is for, right?) and can't be cancelled without a big penalty.

With my back, neck and shoulder is such 'delicate' condition, it is also a really good idea to bring as many of the AGY:L&H samples with me so that they can be cold mangled on Kerstin's big mangle.  I can do it myself with my small cold mangle, but it requires a fair amount of physical effort - in all the muscle groups that are protesting.

There are 5 samples woven, #6 is on the AVL but it is going to be hard pressed on Puff, not cold mangled, so that means I have to get the last four samples woven on the small loom before I leave on April 23.  Piece of cake?  Probably.  Hopefully.

I get home on the 17th of May (with any luck a new roof and repaired chimney all present and accounted for) and I need to leave for ANWG by June 19 at the latest.

So long as I don't have any other critical commitments to deal with, I ought to be able to tape/cut the before samples, cut the afters, tie the yarn samples, Doug will staple them and I have to write the text.  Since I've also been sending the text files away to be edited, I need to allow time for my editor to go through the files (she says she goes through each file 4-5 times), get the pages printed and then assemble it all between the time I get home (jet-lagged with a 9 hour time zone difference, plus my Rituximab treatment on the 22nd).

I will also have tasks associated with conference preparation, although not too much as I'm only presenting seminars.

Ready?  Set?  GO!

Perspective

next warp for AGY: L&H - 16/2 linen in natural with fine stripes of half bleached - the green is the yarn used for tying the warp

A few days ago The Yarn Harlot started a bit of a discussion about patterns and how much information they should contain.

Like knitting, weaving is a technology with it's own language and skill set and designers generally assume a certain level of knowledge of anyone following their directions.  How many people do we know who, confounded at the direction to 'use tabby', didn't and then were horribly disappointed in their results?  Or simply didn't know, and were happy?

Since we don't know what we don't know, we don't know that we don't know it.

Which is where the A Good Yarn series came in.

This series is not for the rank newbie.  It assumes a certain level of knowledge of the reader.  In developing the series, I wanted to address people who were - shall we say - Beginner Plus*.  In other words, they knew how to dress their loom, could do the basic math to develop the right size of warp (width and length) for their intended project, knew the formula for working out how much yarn to create that project, and could follow basic directions like 'use tabby'.  Or how to get the number of epi as stated in the notes.  How to follow a threading and treadling draft and to translate it into a liftplan if they have a direct tie up loom (and also knew what that term meant).

The series is about furthering knowledge, filling in the holes in that foundation and assuming that people want to know more about the subtleties of how to create a cloth suitable for their purpose.

If we don't know the basic characteristics of our materials, how can we choose appropriate yarns?

So Linen and Hemp will continue as I have begun.  The samples will be documented so that readers will know how I achieved the quality of cloth but ultimately it will be up to the reader to decide if that yarn and combination of threading, tie up and treadling is suitable for their purpose and work out the details to achieve their goal.

I had intended to have L&H ready for ANWG in June.  A quick look at my calendar this morning leads me to believe that once again I have been blatantly optimistic.  Between now and then I have the workshop in Langley plus the trip to Sweden and England.  That doesn't leave a lot of time to finish weaving the intended 10 samples, write the text, have it edited, printed and assembled.

So, we will see if I make it....

*some would consider this set of skills Intermediate

Colourful

Yesterday Doug got the pressing done and this morning brought home the scarves.  They still need to be trimmed and tagged before they are 'ready'.  I also want to carefully examine them and decide which weft I will concentrate on using.

Of course the one I like best so far is the finest weft (Bambu 12, equivalent to a 2/16 cotton for grist) which means the most weaving.  :-/

I am almost done winding the warps to be dyed so I am going to concentrate on those and see if I can't get that job crossed off my list entirely.  Once they are packaged up ready to be delivered I can go back to weaving for A Good Yarn: Linen and Hemp.

The warp on the AVL will be used for that plus I have two more designed, just waiting for the warping board to be freed up to wind those.  I don't know that I will get the two warps woven on the small loom before I leave for Langley, but that's the plan.

Once I get home from there I will have less than two weeks before I leave for Sweden.  I need to really focus on where to best spend my time.

In the meantime spring seems to have finally sprung.  The snow on the ground is rapidly diminishing although the snow piled high in banks along the roads is going to take a while.

Currently reading Breaking Point by C. J. Box

Affirmation

Just got word a few minutes ago that the towels I submitted to Handwoven have been accepted for the May/June issue.

It's always nice when that happens - a lovely affirmation that I am doing work that other people like and enjoy.  :)

The above photo isn't exactly what they look like, but is a close cousin.  I built on this design to create the design for the towels I submitted.  (For anyone in my classes in Jan/Feb, I had siblings and closer cousins for show and tell.)

I still don't have all the details, but enough information to share the fact that I am now associated with the Olds College fibre program, specifically the Master Weaver classes.

Today I got the Competency Profiles which I need to go over carefully to find out what areas of weaving I need to brush up on.

Weaving is a huge pool of knowledge and no one can be a true 'expert' at every facet of it.  But one person can become very good in several areas and have a working knowledge of the rest.

My field of specialty (or perhaps I could claim 'specialities' by this point) is mostly in the making of 'balanced' cloth - not so much weft faced or warp faced, not so much the compound cloths such as lampas and double/triple/quadruple layers.  But I have done some of almost all of those at some point.  If I'm going to be an effective teacher, I need to re-visit some of the weave structures I have dipped into but not explored in particular depth.

In some ways it feels like I am starting all over again, not as a student, but in terms of refreshing my foundation of knowledge.

And I find that terribly exciting!

As I find out more, I will share.

Self-employed, Self-imposed

one pile diminishes...

one pile grows...

Although I'm storing the warps in a single box, it will be far too heavy to lift and carry so once I'm completely done winding warps I'll re-pack (and count how many there actually are) into more manageable (iow, smaller) boxes.

At knitting drop in this morning we talked briefly about being self-employed and working to deadline.  Something near and dear to my heart.  I don't get anything done unless I make a deadline, artificial as it may be.

Some of my deadlines are outside of my control - i.e. teaching dates (once agreed to), sales events, and so on.  But essentially the day to day stuff of my work is self-imposed.

I am a hard task master.  When I set myself a deadline and I miss it due to procrastination - or whatever - I can get quite cross.  Over the years I have had to ease up some and give myself a break from the relentless pushing one part of my brain insists on.  But it's a tangled web (on a pun-streak these days I guess, but most textile puns are so darned apt!) of satisfying that creative drive (for me it's more than just an urge) and the physical demands of the craft.

Let's face it, my job list yesterday was deceptively simple with just two things listed.  But winding 5 warps?  That's not a 'one job' task.  That was a five job task.  And threading 1280 ends?  That was not an insignificant effort.

So when I didn't finish threading the warp yesterday I was, quite frankly, disappointed in myself on the one hand, and pleased that I'd gotten as far as I did.  So I cut myself some slack and went ahead and dropped in to the book store to knit and chat a while this morning.

I haven't actually written a job list for today although it's almost identical to yesterday's - wind 5 warps, finish threading that warp.  Plus wet finish the 7 scarves and one shawl so that Doug can go pressing tomorrow.

So far today I've done the shawl, the four pink/orange scarves are in their final rinse and one warp has been wound.

How do I decide what to do?  Partly it is how desperately I want something to be finished.  Partly it is how much of an obstacle one of the tasks is.

Right now the warp winding is actually in my way of doing anything else because the two bins are sitting on my work table.  Yes, I could move the bins onto the floor, but then they would still be in the way and I'd wind up tripping over them.  So those last warps are what I'm going to focus on for today, in between trips to the washing machine and dryer.  If I were threading, I'd have to keep getting up from the loom interrupting my threading focus and then get settled back after each trip to the laundry room.  Somehow it just seems more efficient to stay at the warping board where I can actually hear the machines and have a shorter walk to go deal with them.

Looms are patient.  That warp will wait for me.

Another Job List

With so many deadlines looming (pun definitely intended!) I decided I'd better get myself on a more productive track and the way to do that was to make an obtainable (hopefully!) list of tasks to accomplish each day.

I'm pleased to say that I actually achieved completion of yesterday's to-be-done list, and even a tiny bit more.  I did not list fringe twisting and managed to finish one scarf and begin the last one, as well as get the AVL ready to begin threading.  Because that job is on today's list.

Today is a 'short' day because Tuesday evenings I go to the guild drop in.  Not sure what I will bring to work on there, although the fringe twisting does not end with the last of the painted warp scarves - I still have more shawls to be done - so probably I'll bring some of that.

As for today I will be sending the above photo to ANWG for the Instructors Exhibit called Bordering on Magnificence.  I'm not sure the above shawl qualifies, but it's very red and has an undulating design - an effect I particularly enjoy in woven cloth - so it should be visually dynamic if nothing else.

At any rate, with a 'short' day (made shorter by sleeping in and dealing with some more administrivia that arose over the course of the day yesterday), the job list today just has two items on it:

Wind 5 warps
Thread all 1280 ends of the cottolin warp

Since the threading sequence is very simple, I'm not anticipating any particular problems - if I just get stuck into the loom, find my round tuit, and do it.

Currently reading A Country to Rant About by Rick Mercer

Details, Details

  

2/16 cottolin warp ready to thread

pattern for proposed summer tops - short sleeves and probably shorter length (cottolin is 'grabby' and I don't think I want that around the hips!)

Today's job list:

Wind five 10.5 meter long warps (10 inches wide) - one down, four to go
Weave rest of linen warp (about one yard)
Follow up NEWS Faculty Exhibit inquiry
ANWG confirmation arrived which means dealing with:

   Exhibit forms (decide what to send, measure, write descriptions, etc., find out when and where to mail, etc.)
   Housing form
   Travel form
   Accounting form (for payment)
Re-write workshop description for John C. Campbell and email

As you can see much of today is going to be spent on the type of administrivia which is essential (because conference/teaching planning is all in the details) and which will take up much of my day.  These sorts of tasks are the 'hidden' cost of being a self-employed teacher.  For weaving instructors who make their income from teaching, it is the sort of thing that must be done for each and every teaching event.

Not to mention workshop topic development, preparations for each workshop, banging out the details of the actual travel, answering questions from participants and so on.  The daily fee that an instructor gets paid while teaching has to extend to the hours spent in writing up proposals, sending in the breadth and depth of information conference planners are now requiring even before you are hired (which is an enormous amount of time and effort in the hopes that you will 1) be chosen and 2) that your offerings will actually get sufficient enrollment to go ahead - months in advance of any sort of payment...but I digress).

Now that the institution that I applied to for teaching has accepted me as an instructor, I'm hoping that their staff will deal with much of this administrivia and that, other than ensuring my travel arrangements are suitable, will just have to arrive and do what I enjoy - passing on my knowledge and experience to other like minded students of this ancient - and still current! - craft.

But somehow I rather doubt that is going to happen.  :-/

I'm still waiting for details of what teaching for this institution will entail - once I have that information I will share.