Olds College Master Weaving Program

We need one more student for the Olds Master Weaving program here in Prince George.

There are some advantages to taking the class here - no distractions, six days (rather than five) of intensive class work.  Looms provided (unless you want to bring your own table loom), small class, lots of attention from the instructor (moi!).

Deadline to register is April 18.  There are five very dedicated and enthusiastic weavers who are already signed up.  I hope there is (at least) one more out there...

Olds Master Weaver Class

Heard today that there are four people registered for the Prince George class.  We need six to make it 'go'.  If anyone is interested, now is the time to register.   

Knitting Was My First Textile Craft

I learned how to knit when I was around five or six.  Long enough ago I don't really remember not knitting. 

I did the usual scarves, toques, slippers.  I even, the winter I was 11, knitted 45 pairs of Phentex slippers at a dollar a paid for the local knitting shop.  She could never seem to keep them in stock and I was saving up money for a new bicycle.  

Knitting these days is pretty simple stuff.  I have knitted Aran sweaters, Lopi sweaters with Fair Isle patterning, afghans, baby things for friends, sweater for myself.  These days, though, I mostly knit very simple things, using up weaving yarns that are too little to weave with, too much to throw away.  These scarves are donated to various worthy causes in town. 

On holiday I ran out of hand work and was forced to buy some yarn.  And needles, not for this but for the other yarn I bought.  Now that I'm home, and need some knitting for an all day commitment tomorrow, I started this yarn.  It's actually my second attempt because I didn't like the first one.  Didn't like the size needles or the stitch I'd chosen. 

The nice thing about knitting is that it comes out easily.  So I ravelled what I had done and started over.  

Much happier with this version. 

As a Follow up to yesterday's post, my lace seminar on Craft University has apparently been taken down.  I'm disappointed as I understood it would remain up for people to take, much like the webinar on the Interweave Press site, the A Good Yarn topic.  Oh, well. 

Lace Weaves

Huck lace 'boxes' with plain weave

Swedish Lace

Many people find lace weaves confusing, not least because there are so many different ways to write the threading/treadling draft.  When the sequence looks so very different, people can get confused about what is the 'right' way.

Well, the 'right' way is which ever sequence - threading, tie up, treadling - that will give you Huck (or Swedish, which is a derivative of Huck) interlacements.

Lace weaves consist of floats on a plain weave foundation.  You can have warp floats, weft floats or warp/weft floats.  

Bronson Lace differs from Huck/Swedish in that the foundation threads are only on one shaft with a tie down on a second shaft.  In Huck there are two shafts for the foundation threads and no tie down.  Swedish Lace has two shafts for foundation and a tie down where a unit is repeated.

Confused yet?

Can I recommend my webinar to help bring some light to the subject?  I tried searching for the webinar on their website but nothing came up so hopefully this link will work for anyone interested.

Learning Ways

You Tube Channel

There are many video clips on You Tube, some of them better than others.

I don't claim mine are the best, but I have added my voice to the internet.  Everyone learns differently and the recent influx of new weavers, either via rigid heddle looms or baby wraps means that the population of weavers has dramatically increased and the average age has dropped.  Which, don't get me wrong, is A Good Thing!  If we don't recruit new younger weavers, the craft really might begin to die out - and that would be a great pity imho.

But rather than paint *all* video clips on You Tube and *all* dvd's as being bad, people should view them, take them with a grain of salt, but most of all, learn as much as they can from them.

In my opinion there is nothing better than learning from a live human being, but if you don't have the budget, or are too geographically removed or tied down with family committments to be able to take a class, then books, video clips and dvds are a valid way to learn.

We all do things differently because we all have different strengths and weaknesses.  We all have different abilities.  We learn in different ways.  Some can learn by reading, some by watching, some by doing, some by all three.

All I hope is that, at the end of the day, what I have done helps someone somewhere.  From the messages I get from people, I think I have helped some people make progress along the road of learning.

Oops...

So - seems the fashion designer has more yarn left.  The price is right and Doug needs to go back to Vancouver anyway, so...looks like another van load of yarn will be coming to live in my studio...

Why am I buying this yarn?  Well, I wove with it for about 9 years so I'm quite familiar with it - how it behaves in the loom, how it weaves up.  I will have to sample to determine how it will work in my own designs, not hers, because I have my own approach to design and requirements.

I had been sort of casting about for a new scarf/shawl design and this opportunity kind of fell into my lap, so to speak.

I will have two weeks to try and figure out where the yarn will go and see about clearing my schedule in order to do some sampling.

Today I worked on marking a little bit and tomorrow I will open the next box.  There are at least two more students sending their work in, the Beginning Weaving workshop April 16/17 (for which I need to order more cotton!), the Olds class here if it goes ahead, the workshop in Edmonton (more yarn needed for that?) then Olds Fibre Week in June (yet more yarn).  So much for stash reduction!

In between there is writing to be done - beginning with the revisions we worked on during my 'working holiday'.  And of course there are all those warps I wound before I left, the rest of the tea towel warp on the AVL and a couple other commitments for the AVL as well.

I sure hope the new beta blocker doesn't cause fatigue like the last one!  I don't have time for fatigue...

Not Written in Stone

I'm old enough that I remember when the convention for writing a straight progression (aka twill) was from the rear most shaft to the front most shaft.  Somewhere along the line, the convention got turned around and pretty much all 'new' publications show the progression beginning on shaft one going towards the last shaft.

I find this older convention easier to thread.  I hold four (or more, depending on the repeat) ends in my fingers, threading all the threads in order.  For me this is less stressful on my body and makes things go a lot smoother and therefore more quickly.

For all those people who say they aren't concerned about how fast they can thread, all I can say is that the posture for threading is uncomfortable and the longer I have to stay in that position, the more my body hurts.  So yes, I am concerned about how long it takes to thread because I don't like hurting for my craft!

I also like to get to the zen part of weaving where I can sit and throw the shuttle and weave.  For me that is the happy part of weaving (and no, I don't get bored if I have to weave more than one of something).

I love getting messages from people saying that they have adopted some of my methods and that weaving is less frustrating and they are more productive.  One recent message said that instead of taking four hours to thread, it now took 45 minutes.  That is a significant savings in terms of sitting in a cramped uncomfortable position.

There has been discussion on some of the chat groups about where the 'proper' placement of the lease sticks is.  Gather any six weavers together and you will get six different methods of beaming a warp.

Hence my recommendation to choose an expert, learn their method very well, then adapt that method to best suit your needs.  Become your own expert.

Also understand that any threading is not written in stone.  Using Fiberworks and the 'shaft shuffle' tool, I can take any threading and rearrange it to better suit my needs - like changing a straight progression from shaft one through to four, to four through to one as shown above.