Reality Rears

The colours are actually much darker in real life and I'm quite happy with it.  I will show my client and tell her to 'see' it darker and hope she likes it.

I have been kind of hiding from the reality that I leave for Edmonton Thursday morning - as early as I can get out of bed.  It's about an 8 hour drive, with a one hour shift in time zones.  So I will arrive after dinner, most likely.

While the workshop itself is pretty much under control, I wanted to bring a few other things - because I'm driving and it's no big deal to throw 'extras' into the back of the van.  And clothing/personal items.  Usually I start filling my suitcase up to 10 days ahead of a trip.  I haven't even pulled it out of the closet.   There have just been too many other things demanding my very limited resources.

But the warp on the AVL is 'proven' (yes, there was a mistake in the treadling sequence, which took several tries to fix, then some 'issues' with heddles getting caught, then one shaft that didn't want to play nicely at first - seems to have settled down now.  We'll see when I get home and start weaving in earnest.)

Tomorrow we shift all the rubble from the guild room back into the room and once that is done the trip to Edmonton will be the number 1 priority.  Because, reality!

Part of the Job

When you are trying to sell your textiles proper labelling is a legal requirement.  

I have been steadily cranking out inventory for the fall sales and now have four large boxes and bins of things ready for this essential step.  With a rather hectic schedule I have been ignoring the stack but cannot ignore it anymore so this morning I am trying to get everything caught up and decided to begin with this so everything can be moved to the annex and out of my dining room.  

The level of rubble has reached MY limit of tolerance!   Not to mention I need the room next week so that I can begin the packing for Olds Fibre Week.  I have to bring EVERYTHING with me, no dashing home at lunch to fetch some forgotten thing.

Some days I feel like a one-armed juggler...

All Mixed Up

Notice anything 'wrong' with this warp?  No?

This is the first prototype warp for a new scarf line.

The past few years I worked a lot with dyed warps but recently acquired a bunch of commercially dyed solid yarns.  I had to think for a while about what to do with them and this warp is meant to test a design where the stripe sequence will be 4 x 4 for 1/3 of the warp, then 2x2, then 1x1.  

When a student asked if I wound the warp that way, I explained that I just wound one of each colour with my finger between them, then manipulated the threads so the colours were in the order I wanted them.  I have done this before and, so long as the yarn has some elasticity and the shift from parallel isn't too great, never had a problem.

Looking at the cross nothing appears amiss, but I also remove the lease sticks and once they are gone there isn't anything for the yarns to catch or hang up on.  

Now to sley, lash on (because slippery rayon!) and start weaving.  And hope it looks like I hope it will!

No Pictures

I intended to take a picture of the group today, but what with one thing and another, completely forgot.  So here is a photo of the valley the town sits in from Cranbook Hill.  :)

It was an incredibly intense six days.  I had some personal stuff going on as did a couple of the other participants and it was good to just shut all that out and focus on weaving.  And the information flowed practically non-stop, for the first three days.  By Day Four I had cut my lectures back in order to let people get the weaving done and today, Day Six, was the oral presentations, then a few final demos that either had been forgotten earlier or just didn't have time to fit in until now.  And then a final review of the homework to be done at home, clarifying what I would prefer to see.  I also urged them not to go home and set everything aside until January, but to review the manual and start thinking about and working towards completing their homework.

One person said she needed a palette cleanser and was going to weave some tea towels before she started thinking about the homework.  Which is not a bad idea - the main thing is that everyone make a commitment to doing some weaving, preferably every day, but at least once a week, so that they don't forget everything they have learned.

Weaving is a complex activity.  Things need to be done in a consistent manner, frequently enough that bits and pieces of the information doesn't get forgotten from session to session.  And burning new neural pathways can only be done with repetition in a fairly short period of time.  If you don't use it, you lose it!

Currently reading Adventures of a Female Medical Detective by Mary Guinan

Value

Some examples of student learning exercises related to value. 

If someone doesn't have an instinctive sense of how to work with colour the eye can be trained by such exercises, looking at how the value of a hue can be changed, and how different values play together.  

A couple of mantras are:

White dilutes.  Grey muddies.  Black intensifies 

If a light, medium or dark value of any hue is used, the same applies.  

Another mantra is:  value is more important than hue.  

I quite often use very dark values of purple, blue, green or brown rather than black to good effect.  

One way to develop an eye for colour is to use watercolours and try to make a value scale, or do yarn wrappings.  The more you work with colour, the better able you will get at putting effective combinations together. 

Day Two

Work is well underway at the closing of day two.  I talk a lot, mainly because there is so much to say.  Hopefully everyone will be able to get their class work done in spite of me.  

The room is cosy, and the weather has been on the cooler side so staying indoors to weave is not a hardship.  Most everyone has begun weaving their samples and/or working on their in class assignments.  My challenge now is to leave them enough time to do all their class work (but there is so much to say!)

"When I am old...

...I shall wear red and purple..."

The colours in this photo are much lighter than in real life.  The red is so dark and more into the blue, so it actually does 'go' with the purple.  I will weave a full sized sample and see how well I like the finished results.  I have used this yarn before in the warp and had no particular problems with it, but usually mixed with smoother yarns.  So I don't know if having only this yarn in the warp is going to work the way I want it to.   Sample, sample, sample!

For now, I need to get back to the loom and finish this place mat warp.  Then do one more before starting this prototype warp.