Short Month

Who ever made February the shortest month surely knew that they were doing A Good Thing!

Our current cold snap is turning into a much longer ssssssnnnaaaapppp than one would hope, with cold temps forecast into the first week of March.  Spring does not seem anywhere near round the corner!

The days are much longer and with this cold weather we have been having gloriously sunny days.  Frankly I much prefer this to...spring breakup.  But the other side of that bit of nastiness is, ta-DAH! - Spring!

I did not make as much progress this month as I'd hoped.  Niggling heath issues meant it became a high maintenance month with lots of appointments to doctors, labs, chiropractor, etc.  But things seem to be settling down now so it's all good.

This warp is for a special order - maybe.  I've been working with a designer for over a year now, trying to find a good fit with what I want to do and what she thinks she can sell.

If she doesn't find this a good match, I will simply add it to inventory and carry on.

Although I didn't take a photo of it, I am finding that a temple is necessary, which is somewhat slower than without, but is giving me a better 'quality' of cloth.  So, since it is necessary, I use it.

Currently reading Reserved for the Cat by Mercedes Lackey.  Although it is part of a series, you don't have to read the titles in order as they are stand alone novels set in the same 'universe' - Victorian England.  This one intrigued me especially because the central character is a ballet dancer.  She has another in the series featuring a dancer, too.  I'm pretty sure the author must have at least taken ballet lessons at some point in her life.  :)

Weave Like a Pirate

Obligatory visual - and yes, that's an all black warp on the AVL I'm just going to start threading....

Weave like a Pirate?  What?  Where did that come from????

Blame insomnia.

I couldn't sleep the first night at John C. Campbell in January and while the thoughts roiled through my brain I thought about what weaving efficiently was, how some people were adamant that their method was the only method to use or you courted doom, etc.

Out of those swirling thoughts came the idea that when learning how the process of weaving works, you have to accommodate your loom, your dis/abilities, the cloth you are attempting to weave.  The more various ways a weaver knows, the better able s/he is to select the appropriate approach.  Since people remember things if they are broken down into short concise catchy phrases, I distilled all that into three words:

Accept
Adapt
Reject

Or, for short - AAR

Or, in other words, Weave Like a Pirate.

Be a little out of the mainstream.  Be a little daring.  Be a little piratical!  Go on, I double dare you.  AARRRR!

(International Speak Like a Pirate Day is Sept. 19.  Just saying.....)

Onwards We Go

The past few days have been spent on some forward planning (as the saying goes).

After sorting through all the yarn and selecting that which we would try to sell at Fibres West Doug has spent the last few days breaking the large mill cones down into smaller quantities.  I have an industrial cone winder so this is fairly painless, if somewhat boring, but makes nice tidy cones all of approximately the same size.  Much easier to price when they are all within the same weight, plus or minus.

I also mailed my application to Circle Craft for their craft fair in November.  Breath held, fingers crossed, etc., that all goes well with that.  It's a significant investment in terms of cash outlay with no guarantee of selling enough to recoup the expenses of doing the show, never mind getting paid more than a few pennies per hour on my labour.  :-/

But I make way more than I can possibly use or gift, so selling is required.  Even if it is just cash flow that allows me to keep on weaving...besides, I have this stash that doesn't seem to ever diminish...

I also received an invitation to teach in the Seattle area and since I'm booked there in April of next year I suggested tagging on to that trip.  We'll see if that works out or not.

The thing is, there are no guarantees.  Workshops fail to fill.  Books fail to sell.  (Anyone want A Good Yarn: Rayon?  Got lots.)  Shows fail to bring in enough customers who want to buy your stuff.

But I can't do anything else than what I do.  Weave.  Write about it.  Teach it.

Fingers crossed. 

An Embarrassment of Riches

Some of the boxes of Lynn's yarn - 29 in total

This afternoon Doug and I went through all of the boxes of Lynn's yarn.  The second photo was taken after we were nearly finished.  Thank goodness the annex has a fairly large loading dock as we were able to open all of the boxes, sort through the yarn and divide it up into a) donations b) stuff to be re-coned for sale and c) stuff that I would keep in hopes of using it up, some day.

After spending 3 days from dawn to past dark doing the initial sort at Lynn's, then another almost 3 hours today, the yarn represents a significant investment in time - and the cost of bringing it home as well.  Since there were a number of yarns that she had collected in depth as well as breadth, I'm hoping that selling some of it will recoup the actual financial outlay of getting it home.

Doug will start coning the large mill cones off onto smaller cones suitable for an individual to purchase - not everyone wants a kilo of something, let alone several.  Most of the yarn is fairly fine so a little goes a long way.

Realistically, I have to come to grips with the fact that I could not possibly weave all of what I have plus all this yarn, too, in my lifetime!

We will offer some of it for sale at Fibres West in Cloverdale, BC in March, and again at Olds Fibre Week in Olds, AB in June.  We will also have the warping mill for sale.  The Leclerc warping board has been sold.

Tunnel's End

I was going to title this post Deja Vu or something because it feels as though I've been stuck in some sort of weaverly Ground Hog's Day, the only thing changing being the colour of the current warp.

But once the red one is done, this series of towels is also done!  I am anxious to move on to something else as critical deadlines are going, well, critical...

I have decided to go ahead and sell the warping mill.  It is a Glimakra, quite large, and it doesn't fold.  It's very cramped in my studio so it needs to find a more welcoming home - one with enough space that it can stay 'open' all the time.  It can be taken apart, but it's a bit of a fiddle to do it and really needs two pair of hands to do it comfortably.  I'm not sure how long a warp can be wound on it.  I've been doing about 15 meters using only the upper part so it could probably do 30 without too much difficulty.  Each side is about 30" and it stands about 5 feet tall.

It's a dream to wind warps on, rotates at the barest touch of a finger, quiet and smooth.

If someone is interested, we could deliver it in March to Fibres West (in Cloverdale, BC) or to Olds for the Fibre Festival there in June.

If it doesn't sell by the end of June, I will consider shipping it elsewhere in Canada.

We also have a brand new, never-been-used, never taken out of the box (other than to be inspected by Doug, near as we can tell) Leclerc warping board that will wind warps up to 21 yards.  Again, we could deliver to either fibre festival.  According to the Leclerc website the board measures 22 3/4" by 64".

Price for the mill is $250, for the board $100.  Shipping to elsewhere than the above mentioned locations would be extra.

Just finished reading Back of Beyond by C. J. Box and started Jacqueline Winspear's latest Leaving Everything Most Loved

Digging Through the Archive

click to biggify - not sure the resolution is high enough to see any detail though....

Kate asked about the coat fabric, and wondered if it wasn't too distorted from the shrinkage differential to be used.

Well, yes, that is a valid concern.

In terms of designing this cloth it had to be flexible and stable.  I also wanted it to provide insulation.  I do live in an area of the world where cold in the winter is a reality.

This cloth is just pushing the edge of working.  It is thick.  You may be able to see that the seams have been stitched down (see sleeve) as one way to stabilize the seam.

The warp was wound on two beams, the 2/8 cotton at 16 epi for the surface, the fine wool/cotton blend at 32 for the lining.  Since the two warps would take up at different rates, beaming them separately was the safe thing to do.  Since my loom has two beams, it was also easy to do.

The cotton was woven in a plain weave structure, the wool/cotton blend in a 4:4 twill.  The two layers were woven separately except for the occasional tie or stitch which was accomplished by pulling one of the surface threads into a lining shed in a way that the stitcher would be hidden.  I could have just as easily made the stitchers be decorative as in pique', but that wasn't the effect I was aiming for.  The stitching order was a satin progression because I wanted to minimize the twill line.  This was sort of successful.  The stitchers were far enough apart to loosely bind the two layers together and the twill line is not continuous, giving a crackly, pebbly surface to the cloth.

Unfortunately my software file for this design did not survive a computer upgrade, several upgrades ago and I no longer have the original file.  The photocopy of the version I do have is tiny in order to fit into the binder.

If anyone wants it to see if they can reconstruct the draft, I will happily scan and email it.  I tried, but it is going to take more hours than I have to spare to do it myself.

Guest Blogging

I confess that it is always a bit of an ego stroke to be asked to supply a guest post for someone else's blog.

Recently I was asked to make a guest appearance on the blog of The Woolery a shop in Kentucky.

When I visited their website I discovered that they carry yarns from Maurice Brassard & Fils.  Since weavers in the US are always interested in my 2/8 cotton yarns, it was nice to discover another US supplier of the yarn I use so often.

The fabric in the above coat is a stitched double weave.  The exterior is good old 2/8 cotton, the self-lining is a fine wool/cotton blend.  I wove this fabric, oh, way back in the late 1980's, as part of my master weaver level for the Guild of Canadian Weavers.  I still have it and wear it occasionally; in fact I wore it to an appointment yesterday where it provided a few minutes of conversation as an example of the type of thing I can weave.

The purpose of using the wool/cotton in the lining was to full the cloth causing the lining to shrink and create air pockets between the two layers which provides insulation.  It's quite a warm coat and I have worn it during winter for a long time.  Unfortunately I noticed that it is finally beginning to show signs of wear.  After 20+ winters, I suppose I should consider retiring it sometime soon....