A Rebel Born

As a kid growing up, there were all sorts of dress 'codes' that were strictly adhered to.  There were certain colours you just never, ever wore together.  Red heads never wore pink.  You never wore white shoes after Labour Day or before Victoria Day.  Or maybe that was Easter.  Your hand bag and shoes had to be the same colour, etc.

When I was about 14 or 15 I paired a bright apple green skirt with a deep blue/teal sweater.  When I went to meet my school mate to walk to school, she berated me for wearing blue and green.  Horrors!  What had I been thinking?  Blue and green were never, ever seen together!

"Green trees.  Blue sky."

She wasn't impressed with my logic.

Of course all that went out the window during the swinging '60's and Mary Quant et al.

And today this pink/orange/red/yellow warp flames into being on my loom.

It's all good.

Currently reading Thirteenth House by Sharon Shinn

99%

scarf #133

close up

I think it is Thomas Edison who is credited with the saying that creativity is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.

This is very true when you are a production weaver making a 'line' for sale.  Almost all of the creativity is in the proving of the concept.  Once you've got the textile as 'perfect' as you can get it, the rest is all perspiration.  And I do mean that literally.

Right now I am almost 3/4's of the way through my initial run of the new scarf design.  The only 'creativity' at this point in time is choosing the best weft colour to set off the warp colours.  The rest is just showing up in the studio, every day, for several hours, and picking (pun alert) my way through the 4 scarves that can be woven on each warp.

People often ask me if I get bored.  The honest answer is that I don't.  I do get tired, however.  And I admit that after the daily slog of the past weeks I am getting tired.  Tired enough that I am really glad I scheduled another trip in August, even though I can't really afford it (financially or in terms of time off work).  As it happens I am going to be visiting with three family/friends, one of which I haven't seen for over a year, another who recently moved, and the third who has been a great inspiration.

I am also looking forward to a potential face to face meeting with someone with whom I may be working much more closely in the coming year.  Which would be fantastic, given all those empty pages in my 2014 calendar!

Tomorrow I will be receiving 8 more painted warps which will help fill in some of the colours I felt were 'missing' from the first couple of dye runs.  I won't get them all woven before I leave but I will do as much as I can with the time remaining before I leave, and the rest will get woven asap I get home.  And then I will be able to work on something completely different.

Carrots and sticks and lots of perspiration....

Here We Go Again - Warp #33

July 29 10:15 am

July 29  10:44 am

July 29 11:28 am

People sometimes comment to me about how fast/productive I am.

Well, part of the productivity is how many hours a day I spend at the loom.

This is my job.  I have spent countless hours practicing, fine tuning, honing my physical skills.  Because make no doubt about it, weaving is a physical activity.  It is bio-feedback.  It is aerobic.  It is physical.

Weaving is a relationship between the equipment, the materials and the weaver.  That relationship is like any other.  You have to devote time and energy to it.

If you really want to get better and/or faster at the creation of cloth, a commitment needs to be made.  People keep telling me that they have no time.  We each get the same allotment of 24 hours in a day.   It is up to us how we spend that time.

Try making a commitment to yourself of 15 minutes a day doing something related to weaving.  It might be watching some video clips on You Tube.  Reading a blog.  Looking at magazines or websites.  

It might be spending 15 minutes at the loom.  So you only managed to thread an inch in 15 minutes.  It's an inch more than you had before.  You only managed to weave 2 inches?  It is two inches more than you had before.

Try leaving your every day woes and cares outside of your loom space.  Focus on what you are doing instead of your most recent familial or work crisis.  Clear your mind of the stress of every day living and just be a weaver for 15 minutes a day.

Then once a week, schedule 2 to 3 hours of quality time with your loom.  Time where you can really focus on developing your skills as a weaver.  Allow yourself to experiment and find out what happens when you change this or that.  Then don't label it a 'failure' but an experiment.  Analyze your results.  Do you like them?  Repeat them.  Don't like them?  Make a note that you won't do that again and call it a lesson.

If your life is so very crammed with other stuff that you have none to spare, try making the time at the loom a form of therapy - it's a lot cheaper!   And if your time is so limited, learning how to work more efficiently/ergonomically will mean more productivity during the time you do have for weaving.

People often comment to me that they don't want to 'hurry'.  Weaving more efficiently has nothing whatsoever to do with 'hurrying'.  Hurrying is when your mind is focused on what you are going to do next, not on what you are presently doing.

People ask me what I am going to do when I 'retire'.  I tell them that people don't 'retire' from the work that they love.  They may do less of it, they may change their approach or their focus, but they don't 'retire'.

Nor shall I.

Measuring Progress

some of the scarves woven since Tuesday last week - still need to be fringe twisted and wet finished

One of the ways I measure productivity is by crossing things off a list of jobs to be done.

Unfortunately when one item on the current list reads "Weave 36 scarf warps" it takes a rather long time to get to the point of being able to cross that off!  In point of fact, I'm still 4 warps shy of the 36, with more warps arriving from the dyer at the end of the month....

But just because I haven't been crossing stuff off my list doesn't mean that I haven't actually been rather productive since I got home from Sweden.  In addition to the 33 warps already woven, I also dealt with a great deal of administrivia, including doing 3 months worth of journal entries and submitting my sales tax return, updated my Power Point presentation for Weaving Today, did some fringe twisting and got Doug to do some pressing which meant running the textiles through the washing machine and dryer.  Not to mention being away for a week, twice!

But I still can't cross that "Weave 36 scarf warps" off my list.

11 weeks to the first sale of the autumn and counting.

Lemons

One of the things I am trying to do with these painted warps is to use up odds and sods of yarn in my stash.  When I came to this warp I decided I'd use up a medium brown Bambu 12, positive that there would be sufficient to weave a scarf.

No such luck.  :(  I could see that I was going to run out about 2/3's of the way and started casting around for an option.  Because a scarf 2/3's of it's intended length wasn't going to fit anyone but maybe a toddler.  Not having any toddlers in my life I wanted to give a hand woven scarf to, I needed an alternative.

When the bobbin was almost empty I started weaving pick and pick with a yellow/green about the same value - a little lighter but close.  When the brown ran out I carried on with the green.

Voila!  Lemonade.

Attention to Detail

before and after trimming

Doug did some more pressing yesterday and last night I began the final step in bringing my scarves to, in my opinion, saleable condition.

You don't have to do as I do.  Trimming the wispy bits off the ends of the fringe is purely a personal choice kind of thing.  A final step that takes some time to do and isn't, in some people's minds, necessary.

Some people question whether or not the knots will hold once they have been trimmed.  All I can say is that I've not had a customer complain.  Yet.  And my own scarves (lightly worn, it's true) show no signs of the knots not holding.

To me, trimming the fringes makes them look tidy.  Neat.  Hopefully worth the price I'm going to be putting on them for sale.

An item is worth only what someone else is willing to pay for it.  I'm hoping the buying public will think these scarves are worth my price....always a gamble when you are a self-employed creative person...

Nearly 40 years after making the decision to become a professional/production weaver I'm still wondering how someone who needs as high a level of 'security' as I want chose a profession with so little!

Out On A Limb

Antheraea polyphemus, a.k.a., a "giant silk moth."

I am going to go out on a limb here and give a little more information about the webinar I am scheduled to do for Weaving Today later in August.

The topic is A Good Yarn and it will present information on fibre and yarn characteristics.

It is my belief that, in order to make good choices, weavers need to understand more about the inherent characteristics of their materials.

If a weaver does not choose wisely or well, they may be disappointed in their results.

So I have spent the last few days upgrading the Power Point presentation that I have been giving to guilds and at conferences to make it more eye appealing for its debut on the internet.

The above photo is one I took this morning to illustrate the silk page.  It is one of the silk moths native to North America.  No, it is not a Bombyx Mori, from which we get 'cultivated' silk.  But that is not the only species which spins a silk cocoon.

My contact at Weaving Today is out of the office this week, but is sourcing some other photos for me and I will be putting the finishing touches on the presentation before I leave again in August.  I want this wrapped up before I go so that I don't have to worry about anything but how I do the presentation when the time comes.  :)

As soon as I get the go ahead, I will post the registration information here.  If you have already taken this topic from me, you might find this a good refresher with the added benefit that you will have unlimited access to review it once it is posted on the website - for 3 months.  Always wanted a re-wind on life?  This may be your chance!

Currently reading Blood of Dragons by Robin Hobb