What If?

Continuing to ask what if?   This time combining stripes of different weights of rayon chenille.  Tweed is 1300 ypp, solid blue and grey is 2000 and medium blue is 1450.   If it works I'm hoping for a sculptural effect.

And for those who have asked, the scarves are 8" wide, 66" long plus fringe, and priced at $100 plus shipping. 

Grand Forks, BC

Grand Forks, BC is nestled in the south east 'corner' of the province.  It is a lovely little town with a vibrant arts community.  And a weaver's guild.

I have been asked to teach there this year.  The only dates that worked for both the guild and me are the Nov. 28/29 weekend.  Which doesn't give a lot of time to get things organized, so I'm putting a head's up here in case anyone in the area is interested.

Topic is to be determined, although they are considering Mug Rugs and More with a Friday evening lecture A Good Yarn.

Contact Sue at clausensfibregarden@gmail.com to get details as they are decided upon.

Crunch Time

The first show of the season is this weekend.  Doug is packing up all the inventory we have ready and I'm juggling the dry finishing with getting more woven.  As usual I think I can do more than I really can.  Guess at my advanced age I'm not about to learn that time is finite and there are still only 24 hours in a day!

Tonight I will take this bucket to guild drop in and trim the fuzzy bits off the end of the fringe.  Tomorrow they will get tagged and priced so that they, too, can get packed, ready for set up Friday evening.  It isn't looking good that I can get any more shawls ready but I might get them done on the weekend.  If Doug will do booth duty I could still trim and tag the dozen new shawls that are woven and wet finished.  If not, they will be ready for the shows in Vancouver and Calgary.  

I just wish my stash looked like some of it had been used up.  I still have waaaaay too much yarn!

Currently reading Fools Quest by Robin Hobb

Election Day

It is said that if people don't learn from history, they are doomed to repeat it.  But first they have to know what the history really is.

The truth is, women in Canada have been able to vote for less than 100 years.  For some of us, that is within our grandmother's lives.

Democracy, as it is currently practiced in North America, is a very new concept.  And suffrage did not come to everyone at once, nor did it come easily.  Women (and other 'minorities') were considered too mentally 'feeble' to wield the power of the vote.  It took courage for women to request, then demand the vote, up to and including being beaten, restrained, jailed and forcibly fed when they went on hunger strikes to make their point.  Some died as a result of the brutality inflicted on them.

Voting in Canada is done by secret ballot.  While it is currently a right, it is even more importantly a privilege.  Voting is the primary way an individual can make their opinions heard by the government.  Politicians are first and foremost concerned with getting (re)elected and votes are what do that job.

Having a secret ballot means that no matter who tries to coerce or frighten someone into voting their way, when the voter is standing with ballot in hand, no one is looking over their shoulder watching where they place their 'X'.  And they do not have to report or justify who they voted for to anyone.

Yes, I voted today, as I do most every election.  I have missed a few due to being out of the country.  It's a responsibility of citizenship I take very seriously.

I'm hoping to watch the movie Suffragette at some point.  It will be painful, but every woman from age 16 up should see it so that they understand why voting is so very important.  If the movie is too graphic, any history of the suffragette movement would be interesting reading.

Up Close and Personal

This rather messy looking pile of...straw?...is actually a really close up view of cottolin (purple) and cotton (pale blue) woven together.  It is hard to make out but the purple yarn is a two ply - if you look really closely, you might be able to see the one ply of purple on the surface with the other ply in the background.  Look for the shadow of the ply.

Cottolin is a blend of cotton and linen.  In terms of fibres, they have different characteristics.  Some people think that blending them together improves both; others think it brings out the worst in each!

Cotton fibres are from the seed pod of the cotton plant.  When harvested the 'tube' of fibre collapses into a flat ribbon which twists.  The pale blue fibre in the foreground probably shows this the best.  (Do click on the photo for a bigger view.)

Linen fibres come from the stalk of the flax plant and fall into the category of 'bast' fibres.  In order to blend the two fibres, the flax fibres are cut up into a shorter length, close to the staple length of the cotton.  In the photo, the much darker fibres are the flax while the lighter shade of purple are the cotton fibres.

In preparation for the Next Big Project, I bought a little digital microscope.  This is about as far as it will go in terms of magnification.  It's still not enough to easily see the structure of the fibres.  However, there is a possibility of getting some images from a scanning electron microscope.  I'm hoping to get cross sections of the fibres as well as just an enlargement of the fibre.

Knowing the inherent characteristics of the fibres means having the knowledge to choose materials wisely.  The more I know about the fibre, the better.

Upping the Ante

With my health issues taking most of my time and energy lately, I confess my weaving has been...well, I had enough challenges on my plate.  So I stuck to the tried and true, the stuff I didn't have to think about much, that was pretty well ingrained in my thought processes.   Sticking to what was easy for me meant that weaving was mostly about the therapy, not about the intellectual challenge.

Re-visiting rayon chenille scarves, I felt I needed to be more challenged.  I had kind of burned out of doing the 'usual' and started thinking about options, if only to make them more interesting to me.

Since I want to weave the stash down, the first challenge was to see what I could do with what I have on hand.  Since some colours are low enough there might not be enough for weft, the first decision was to use some 2/16 cotton for weft.  This would do two things...the rayon chenille would only be used for warp and the cotton would make a lighter weight cloth.

The initial prototype scarves were acceptable but a bit predictable.  As I started weaving the warps, surface attention was given to the weaving allowing my little grey cells to mull over other options and I came up with a further modification to the stripe sequence I had designed.  

This option isn't easy, in fact it takes quite a lot of concentration to wind.  But I was able to do it, which tells me I am continuing on the healing journey since my addled brain was able to not only come up with something decidedly different AND accomplish my objective.  

I am not back to where I was, yet, but feel that I am making progress.  Thank you for your support and encouragement.  It is very much appreciated.  

Currently reading Murder Road by Stephen Booth

Germination

One of the things about most of the writing that I do is that the articles/blog posts, etc., have a very narrow focus.  Even Magic in the Water was focused on just one (broad) part of the weaving process.  The sample collections were narrow in that they were about just one fibre.  Blog posts, of course, are generally narrow because of their short nature - usually less than 1000 words.

Contemplating writing a book about everything I know about weaving?  We are talking hundreds of thousands of words, very likely hundreds of pages.  It's a daunting task, Herculean, really.

The overwhelming nature of the goal can seem, at times, impossible to accomplish.  Beginning seems pointless because it starts to feel like it will never end.

But it is rather like weaving.  To a new weaver a 10 yard warp seems like it is a huge thing and that they will never get to the end.  But the end does come, and the warp does get woven.  Only if the weaver sits down at the loom and carefully throws the shuttle, one pick at a time, though.

So it is with writing.  The big difference is that in writing the set up is just the smallest part of the task.  Writing an outline really doesn't take very long.  The broad strokes are easily set down on a pad of paper or a spread sheet, or however one best handles that sort of information.  For me, I like to see the relationships between the points so I tend to jot notes down and draw arrows, circle important things, number them for priority.  But not everyone processes information that way.

But as I say, that's the easy bit.  The hard part is elaborating on those topics, getting the correct information (lots of researching, checking various 'experts' to try to find a consensus - because none of those 'experts' hold opinions, right?), trying to organize my thoughts so that concepts are written down in an order that others can follow (a little like leaving a trail of crumbs for someone else to follow - or a thread like Theseus looking for the Minotaur).

As one becomes more 'expert' in a craft, it is easy to assume that others already know what you know.  There is an assumption of a foundation of knowledge, especially in a craft that is so broad as well as deep.  It is that very nature of illuminating the already understood that I hope to deal with - explore the subtleties involved, the layers of knowledge that only come with experience.

It is said that experience cannot be taught, only, well, experienced.  But one can explain principles, make suggestions for variations, point out where things might need to be done differently so that people can recognize for themselves that, oops, here is an exception to the rule and something needs to change to accommodate it.

There is also all that underlying knowledge that people don't know they need to know and because they don't know it, they wind up with unsatisfactory results - choosing inappropriate materials being one of them.  Not understanding the role that spinning plays in how yarns will behave.  Why knitting yarns maybe aren't the 'best' choice for weaving in every situation and why they need to be handled a little bit differently if they are used.  And so on.  And on.

So much to say.  So much desire to help others understand.

And that is why I am going to continue with this Herculean task.  It won't be right away, even though I did make a start in Tennessee - 9 whole pages of single spaced text with 'holes' for information that needs to be added because I didn't have my resources to hand and need to look stuff up.  Because while I may know a lot, I don't know everything.  I don't hold all of this knowledge in my head.  What I do know is how to consult an index.  I do know that fact checking means consulting several sources because sometimes even an 'expert' gets it 'wrong' - or not entirely right.  I know that because at times I am wrong, too.

And that is always a humbling but educational experience.  Discovering that I am 'wrong' means that now I can be 'right'.  That once again I have learned something new.  Getting bumped out of a rut may not be comfortable, but comfort in all things at all times is, well, over rated, I think.  Learning is much more interesting, much more exciting.  I'm quite sure that as I go through the process of writing this (threatening to become a massive) missive, I am going to learn, and learn a lot.  In fact, I already have.

Nine pages...and counting