In Praise of Learning

When I began weaving, information on wet finishing was scarce.  Most of what I know about the process I learned from books, and - most of all - trying things to find out what was what.

The best way to learn was to have someone who knew something about it explain it, but they, too, were hard to find.  In the end I 'found' two people, both of them at conferences.

So why do we have conferences?  There are many benefits to a group of like minded people gathering in one place to share information and knowledge, either formally in workshops/seminars, or informally by meeting in person.

Having an in person experience means being able to not just see the textiles but to feel them.  This is very much a tactile craft and the proof of the textile is in how it feels.

The knowledge of how to make a textile by hand nearly disappeared after the industrial revolution, kept alive in pockets here and there - Quebec, Appalachia, other small areas.  It was Margaret Atwater who became best known for her writing - newsletter and books - then others who followed along.

Now we have the internet, You Tube videos, on line classes, etc.  But none of those provides the opportunity to actually feel the textile. 

If you live in a geographically remote area, the internet can be a god-send.  But there really is nothing quite like getting together as a group, to share, to learn, to inspire each other.

Prince George has always been considered far away from everything.  I know because I was born and raised here.  If we needed something that wasn't provided locally, it was generally a 500 mile drive to Vancouver. 

When I began weaving the local college was running a class but again, resources were thin on the ground and everyone was pretty much in the same boat - we wanted to learn but there wasn't much available beyond the college library.

So I made a gigantic leap and traveled to Finland to take a two week class at the Varpaapuu Summer Weaving School in 1977.  While there I met hand weavers from Europe and the United States.  (There were supposed to be two Canadians but one had fallen ill so both had cancelled.)

There was the French woman living in Moscow.  The Swede living in South Africa.  The Japanese woman living in Sweden (I think - it's been a good many years), some Germans, and half a dozen Americans.

Us English speakers tended to hang out together mostly, and one of them invited me to attend Convergence 1978 being held in Fort Collins, CO.  So my very first conference was the biggest textile arts conference in North America.

Quite the deep end of the pool for someone who had never even been on a university campus before, never mind a conference with 1500 or so people.

It was overwhelming.  It was also a good lesson in so many ways.  I knew exactly two people, and managed to run into each of them once during the conference.  Otherwise?  This introvert had to get comfortable with talking to perfect strangers.  But they were strangers who were just as interested in textiles as I was.  And suddenly I found myself able to talk to people about a subject that was dear to our hearts.

My next conference was the following year - ANWG in Spokane, WA.    Again, it was easy to talk to people because we all loved textiles and talking about them.

There were exhibits.  There were seminars.  There was the fashion show.  There were people attending wearing their hand made textiles.  There was talk and laughter and the joy of being with others who were 'warped' in the same way you were.

It was a time to delve deep into subject matter where resources had been difficult to find.  Over the years I have taken workshops and always, always, learned something.  Sometimes the lesson wasn't what I had been expecting, but valuable, nonetheless.

Sometimes I learned that I really didn't need to explore that technique any further, but I walked away with more knowledge than I had had.

Sometimes I learned that I really wanted to know more, and generally had a list of resources where I could do further exploration.

Sometimes I just was completely and totally inspired and in awe of the person doing amazing things and I became a more informed viewer and appreciator of their work.

A conference is a short, intense, exposure to a variety of techniques and tools that could be done on one's own, but it would take a lot longer and still might not pinpoint the resources needed to fully understand the process.

It is also an opportunity for people to meet face to face and talk to each other. 

Knowing that you aren't alone can be very helpful.  There has been a great deal of growth in knitting over the past few years, and gradually there seems to be interest in spinning/weaving growing, too. 

For our conference we have tried to have a good range of textile techniques because weavers and spinners rarely do just the one - if you spin you are making the raw materials for the next stage of textile making.  So, many spinners knit and/or weave.  If you weave, you can either make a finished item, like a towel, or yardage to be sewn into something else.

We have assembled a fantastic team of instructors.  Having been in the weaving world (and peripherally in others - spinning, knitting, bobbin lace, even a wee bit of felting) I have gotten to know a lot of people involved in teaching.  Having attended many conferences (and taught at a fair number as well) I have gotten to know many of the 'name' teachers in the world.

I think we have a good range of topics, presented by some fine instructors.

So while it may seem 'expensive' to travel All This Way, people will have the opportunity to access very knowledgeable people, see exhibits of really good work, and spend some time getting to know the faces and names of people they may have seen on line.

There will also be a vendor hall...just saying...

We have worked to create a good experience for everyone.  The facilities are all within a block or two of each other and all are accessible with elevators to the upper floors.  There are plenty of restaurants within the hotels themselves, or a short walk away.  Our town has a broad range of cuisines to choose from and many are just five minutes from the convention complex.  Including craft breweries and a chocolatier!  There is a fruit winery about a 10 minute drive away, on the bank of the Nechako River.

We have a conference rate for both hotels and discount codes for both major airlines.  There is an airport shuttle that will take people from the airport to either hotel for a reasonable rate. 

For Americans?  Remember that all prices are quoted in Canadian dollars.  As of yesterday $395 Cdn was approximately $300 US.  The airlines are Canadian and are quoting Canadian dollars, as are the hotels. 

If you've never been north of the 49th parallel, you'll enjoy our long daylit summer days.  Prince George is at about the 54th parallel.

Check out the website for tourism information.  Come early, stay late if you like.  But do think about the rare experience of being able to talk to others as 'warped' and 'twisted' as you may be.  Share your textiles.  Broaden your horizons.  Learn.

Mistakes/Learning

One of my mentors always asked me what mistakes I'd made recently and if I said 'none' she would observe that I wasn't learning anything, then.

A lot of people have a really hard time putting colours together.  I was one of them.  My former favourite colour was white.  Or any hue in both warp and weft.  I felt very insecure about my ability to put colours together in any meaningful way.

After I'd been weaving for about 10 years, I had the opportunity to weave for a fashion designer.  She would send me the yarns and tell me which ones to use to weave the cloth she needed for her clothing designs.

Quite often I was like, wait - what?  Those colours?  Together?  Seriously?  But she was paying me to weave, so I did as instructed and always, always, she was right.  Those colours together were great.

As I wove for her my eye became trained but it was really at a subconscious level.  Then I had the chance to take a couple of seminars from Michelle Wipplinger and began to learn at a more conscious level about how to make colours play nicely.

Value is more important than Hue.

White (pale) washes out
Grey (medium) muddies
Black (dark) intensifies

In 1994 I was very fortunate in getting into a colour class led by Jack Lenor Larson.  He didn't so much 'teach' as set challenges, then - by the process of critiquing what we had done - teach via the examples - good and bad and in between.

To my astonishment, he gave my weaving encouraging comments.  Since he didn't know anyone, nor who had done what, I knew that I wasn't in any way being singled out. 

Getting this feedback gave me the confidence to go further, explore colour combinations in a more adventurous way, and not fret so much in the decision making process.  Because even if the colour combos weren't to my particular taste, if I could still make them work together other people might find them nice enough to purchase.

A couple of years after the class with JLL, I essentially did an in depth study of colour by designing and weaving a couple hundred rayon chenille scarves for the sales I did for the next few years.

I would make a warp long enough for two scarves, sometimes weave the two in different weft colours, but sometimes just make 'twins'.  I didn't worry too much about having two identical scarves because I was selling at quite distant shows and it would be unlikely the two would ever cross each others paths.

By the time I'd finished working so intensely in rayon chenille, I could usually come up with a colour combination that I was happy with.

That isn't to say I don't make mistakes.  I frequently do.  But they are usually more a matter of my not being entirely happy, wishing I'd used a slightly different shade/value.  Nothing is truly 'horrible', just - could be improved upon.

Each time this happens, I analyze and hope that my eye becomes trained a little bit more.

On the other hand, if something is truly awful?  I have a recycle bin and every once in a while I cut my losses and into the bin it goes.  Yesterday a warp went in.  This morning a scarf. 

Neither were hopeless - I just calculated how much time and trouble it was going to take to fix them and decided I was going to spend more time than I cared to 'fix' it when I could easily just start over again.

So I did.  No regrets.  I have also learned not to cling to my mistakes just because I spend a long time making them.

For people interested in learning more about colour with some assistance, I recommend Tien Chiu's on line course.   Having some guidelines and feedback can do wonders for one's self-confidence.  I know it did for me. (Tien is giving a two day workshop on colour at the conference here in June.)

Currently Reading Always Look on the Bright Side of Life by Eric Idle

Learning Curve

For the 1995 ANWG conference here, one of the people on the conference committee had really wanted a workshop on bobbin lace.  When it came time to confirm or cancel the lace workshop, we needed one more person to make it 'go', while the workshop I was supposed to be teaching was lacking 5 or 7 (I forget the cut off). 

Looking at the numbers I told everyone to cancel my workshop and I would sign up to take the lace workshop because I wasn't all that interested in learning, but I was willing to provide a warm body.

At the end of the two days I walked out with $150 worth of lace supplies.

Bobbin lace is just another kind of weaving, one where you build your loom as you weave, where warps can turn into wefts, and vice versa.

I made quite a bit of lace, mostly Torchon, and even taught a few people enough to get them started.  Three of us have kept up a friendship but all three have had significant health issues over the past few years and it had been a rather long time since any of us had felt up to making lace.

Which means, we'd pretty much forgotten everything we knew.

Last year I had to make a decision:  either make lace or get rid of my supplies.

Well, lace supplies are pretty hard to come by these days and I had some really good quality things - pillows, bobbins, loads of thread, books.

So I talked to my friends and we decided that we would like to get started again.  I did manage to make a couple of small items last year, but it was just here and there.  Today the three of us got together and started making a tiny star.

As part of my studio destashing, I found some die cut cards and this tiny star just fits into the 'window' of the card so the intent is to make some stars with hanging loops and put them into Christmas cards for this Christmas giving.  Recipients can use them as window dangles or Christmas tree ornaments.

However, my supplies are mostly put 'away' and I've lost track of some of my things so I'm going to have to make do until I have time to rummage and find my pin pusher and sew in tool.  The sew in tool is fairly easy to work around but the pin pusher is sorely missed.  My fingers don't like the pressure of pushing the pins down into the pillow but I have to or else the threads will get tangled up in the pins standing proud above the pillow.

I have worked the points on the star three different ways because I don't remember the 'correct' way to do it.  I will check in some of my books what I ought to be doing and see if anything I've done so far is even close to correct!

But the star is tiny and no one is going to be able to tell I've not done it 'properly'. 

This little star is pretty simple, but it has a few things that are causing me to scratch my head to see if I can figure it out.  And it's something that I think I will enjoy once I get it figured out.

Last year I mailed out just 9 cards.  Surely I can make 9 stars this year?

Developing a Line

Since I am a production weaver, one of the things I do is work in series - or a 'line'. 

This is a photo of some of the table runners that I wove for the craft fairs last fall.  I wanted them to be thicker than towels so instead of 20 epi, which is what I use these yarns at to make towels, I increased the epi to 24.  A good example of making different qualities of cloth of exactly the same yarns by changing the density and the weave structure.

I began by deciding if I wanted the main focus of the table runner to be the centre, or along the sides.  In this case I chose the sides, so these stripes are repeated on the other selvedge and the middle is plain.

Using Fibonacci, I worked up a stripe sequence I felt was pleasing, fiddled with it, and then started working on the colours I would use.

In each case the variegated yarn was chosen first.  There are three sizes of stripes in the runners, one stripe an outline of two threads of a solid accent colour, and then the background another solid colour.

This is perhaps most visible in the two top runners - the very top one is less orange in real life and more of a 'rose'.  As it happens the variegated yarn is the same in the top two runners but with such a big difference in the main solid, the variegated stripes look quite different, especially once the weft crossed it.

In the upper runner the weft was a rose the same hue as the background.  In the peach runner, the weft is pretty much the same hue as the background.

The rose is darker in value than any of the colours in the variegated so the variegated yarn stands out more than in the peach because the value of the peach is much closer to the same value of the colours in the variegated which tends to subdue the variegated.

Most people would have to look very closely to see that the variegated yarns in those two runners are the same yarn.

I wound up weaving 10 different warps, all with different colours but all in the same stripe design.  

Mindfulness

As part of my never ending attempt to use up my stash, I have been going through my wool yarns and knitting them into shawls.

For the most part there is too little of it to weave with, but there is no reason that I can't knit with it.  It all started with my wanting to have portable handwork I could take with me on trips or to coffee with the local stitch n b!tch group, but also something to make with the hand spun I had been making.

Well, I ran out of hand spun with no time to do more, which was when I turned to my surplus-to- requirements commercially spun wool.

As I dig deeper and into more of my boxes (yes, that means I'm actually using some of it up!) I've come across yarn that I really don't much want to knit with.

My odds and ends of wool yarn have been going to a guild member who makes dryer balls for the guild to sell and it suddenly occurred to me that there is no reason on earth I need to knit the yarn that is really not appealing to me.  So I bagged it up and - with the accumulated bits and pieces - it will go away next week.

Recently I've been seeing all sorts of comments about a young woman who has been promoting a mindful way of getting rid of clutter.  I think tackling destashing in a mindful way is a great idea.  I've not read her book or watched her tv show, nor do I have any desire to, but the way I've been getting rid of surplus stash is very similar in terms of asking - can I use this?  Do I want to use this?  If not, why am I keeping it?  Who can make better use of it than I can? 

Being mindful about living is A Good Thing, I think.  Staying aware of one's goals, working towards those goals, being aware when something isn't working and changes need to be made?  All good things in my opinion. 

Just like in my weaving practice.  In many ways I suspect I'm much like this young woman, telling people "This is what I do.  If it resonates with you, you might find it helpful, too.  If not, ignore me."

So for those people who are finding what Ms Kondo has to say useful?  Good for you.  For those who don't?  Ignore her.  Bottom line is that you don't have to mock someone you don't agree with.  I find there is far too much mocking going on in our society generally.  Whatever happened to "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all"?

And yes, my coffee table IS cluttered.  Yes, it has some of those bits and pieces of wool left over from shawls on it.  And they will go away.  In the meantime, I'm ignoring them.

Ripples

I have - more than likely - shared more than I should have in terms of getting this book 'born'.  OTOH, it's my blog, I get to vent how and when I want, so one final post about The Intentional Weaver (I lie, I'll probably bring it up again, but the conference is about to get very crunchy, so that will most likely be my focus for the next while).

When I placed the order for 300 copies of the book on Dec. 21, the initial estimate for delivery was about 5 weeks.  Given there was a major week of holidays in there, I estimated in my promotional materials that I would receive the book around the end of January, beginning of February.

That would give me about a month to recover from the work (and stress) of getting the book through it's final birth pangs and processing orders.  I was looking forward to making some puzzles, maybe pulling my spinning wheel out, my lace pillow, reading some of the piles of books currently on my coffee table and hearth.  Oh yeah - and maybe even weaving a bit.

Instead the printer appears to have been just waiting on me to place my order and began working on it immediately/over the holiday.  It arrived much sooner than expected.  I have been having some health/physical issues, one of which is a right hand that has been going numb on me, so instead of giving myself that little 'holiday' I'd looked forward to, I began writing out labels, and - when those were done - customs forms.

I finished the customs forms the day before the 30 boxes of books arrived on my doorstep.

The padded envelopes had arrived two days before the books, so knowing that the books would arrive on Wednesday (January 9), I had started immediately sticking the mailing labels to the envelopes, sorting them into zip codes for the US and provinces for Canada.

Wednesday afternoon, as soon as lunch was out of the way, I began signing the books and when I had completely covered the living room floor with boxes of signed books, I cleared the table off and Doug began filling the envelopes.  The books for Canada and overseas went out on the Thursday.

Friday got messed up and I wasn't able to get all of the 0s and 1s ready but we got as many as were ready down to the post office.  Over the weekend, Doug continued to package up the books into the envelopes and on Monday the rest of the 1s, the 2s and 3s went to the post office and we were back on track.  Tuesday the 4s, 5s, 6s and 7s were taken to the post office and last Wednesday, the 8s and 9s were mailed.  Friday the multiple copy orders were mailed because Thursday got messed up, too.

(Did I say I've been having health/physical issues?)

By the end of last week people were beginning to let me know their books had arrived.  Today I got word that books to NC and TN (3s and 4s?) were beginning to arrive.

So the books are going out in ripples, from the furthest away to the nearest, which means that those closer to me will likely start showing up any day.

As I contemplate the amount of work it was to a) write the book (say it fast, it doesn't sound like it was much of an effort at all), then b) market it and c) process and ship the orders of the physical copies, I am grateful that that part of it is done.  There is still more b) to be done because I don't have a big advertising budget and it will need continuous nudging from me to keep people aware of it in the first place.

After honing my craft for 40 years, after having students tell me I have a good grasp of the craft and a knack for explaining it, after having weavers lament that they cannot come to me...it seemed like the most natural thing in the world to write another book and send it - and what I know - out into the world.  In ripples.  Because hopefully if people find the book useful, informative, valuable, they will let others know.

For all those people who emailed to say they didn't know, couldn't find it?  I just did a very basic search for The Intentional Weaver

The first two listings were a) a book review by Tien Chiu (who so kindly wrote the foreword for the book) b) a review by a local arts council newsletter and c) the direct link to the website where you can buy this and Magic in the Water - both in either print-on-demand or PDF versions.

As for the health/physical issues?  We are working on them.  Be assured that there is nothing very serious going on, it's more a matter of getting a handle on how best to manage the adverse effects of the cancer drug so that it continues to keep the cancer at bay while not kicking the snot out of me with said adverse effects.

I had not planned any trips out of town for the first quarter of the year given the book, the conference, the Olds homework marking, so this is a really good time to work on getting me a better quality of life.  And hopefully my hand will stop going numb - which may or may not be related to anything else going on in my body.

Just so long as I can keep the numbness from preventing me doing what I want to do, I'm good.  So far, so good.  It's mostly just really really annoying!

Currently reading A House of Lies by Ian Rankin

Adjustment

So, I'm back working on those scarf warps I wound last year and thought about a comment someone made, somewhere, about whether or not you could manipulate yarns into their 'proper' place.

Yes you can. 

Depending on the yarn, you can actually displace most (not all) yarns by up to about an inch.  What does it depend on exactly?

Well, first the yarn itself.  It has to have at least a little bit of elasticity.  It depends on the loom.  The longer the distance from the heddles to the back beam, the more you can displace the yarn from its path.

So for these scarf warps, I have been winding two ends, one fairly smooth, one very textured.  I thread them randomly, except for the selvedge.  Why?  Because I have found that a highly textured yarn at the selvedge can sometimes make a bit of a 'messy' selvedge, plus sometimes such highly textured yarns are weaker than smoother ones.  In this case, the textured yarn has less elasticity than the smooth one, but it can still be manipulated so that instead of being in one of the outside two heddles, I can move the two smoother yarns to the outside and shift the textured ones inside the selvedge.

This particular series is being woven in plain weave, but even if it was twill, I would still shift the selvedge threads in this way.

I tend to wind my warps with two ends at a time, in part to halve the winding time, in part to do something like this textile which will have the yarns threaded randomly for a less structured look to the cloth.

As always, sample first to make sure the yarns you are working with will tolerate what you intend to do with them.  As it happens these are yarns I used to use for 9 years weaving for the fashion designer and I am very familiar with them and how they behave.

For the book I included one colour and weave scarf woven in four end pinwheels.  I wound the two colours then when threading I manipulated the colours into their 4 x 4 end sequence to create the pinwheels. 

Again, I had worked with this yarn previously and knew it would tolerate this much deflection, in my Leclerc Fanny. 

Sample, sample, sample!