Perspective

view from the loom bench

view from another angle

Yesterday I got the warp on the Megado set up and even found myself with enough energy left to weave the first towel.

Beige is not my favourite colour, but I was looking forward to seeing how this warp was going to look woven.

The warp is not actually beige but a mix of beige, peach, yellow, pale green and a darker blue.  I was worried the darker blue might dominate so I made sure to separate the blue ends so that none were side by side, creating a stripe.  

The weft is the last of a mid-to-light value beige that I was trying to use up.

Not wanting it to look busy, a twill block motif was chosen, and - while it is hard to see on the loom - I think it is working nicely.

But here's the thing.  While I am sitting at the loom weaving, it is just a bland sea of beige.  Not very interesting looking, kind of boring.  It is only as the cloth begins to go round the breast beam that the light catches the threads at a different angle and the design hints at its presence.

Life is a lot like that.

When we are living in the moment, it is sometimes hard to see the bigger picture.  We are too close.  We don't have distance or perspective.

During this time of Staying Safe at Home, it may feel like being trapped.  We may feel depressed or bored.  Or both.  

It is during these times of feeling trapped that we must step back from the situation and remember why it is that we are doing this.  We are in the midst of a highly contagious virus for which there is no vaccine and no cure.  There is only mitigation of symptoms.

The health care system is on the verge of overload.  Health workers are stretched to their maximum and they are getting sick, too.  We can lighten the load, quite literally, by staying home if at all possible.

Our weather is supposed to get better and I am hoping to start walking soon.  Our neighbourhood is small and while I see people walking, there are few people around.  Kids are being kept inside as much as possible.  

In BC (and several other provinces) numbers are showing the beginnings of a decline in numbers.  The curve is beginning to flatten.  But as Dr. Henry says, we need to stay the course.  If we begin to socialize too soon, it could spark another wave of illness - and deaths.

My goal is for everyone I know to survive this so that we can safely meet in real life again sometime.  

Stay home.  If you have to go out, maintain at least 6 feet (two meters) distance.  Wipe down everything you touch.

Stay safe.

Sending love and light to you all.

Little Things

At certain times of the year, the fan light in the front door provides a display of light that splashes across the floor and the wall.  If I am up when it happens, it always helps lighten my mood.

During this time of Staying Safe at Home, it will be the little things that will help us get through the days.

For us, all appointments have been cancelled and Doug is going out to check the post office, buy needed food as it runs low. 

I cannot forget that this time of self-isolating is a privilege not all have.

The pandemic roaring through the human population is frightening, in part because it is a danger that cannot be seen.  So it feels like a childhood bogey man, lurking around every corner, under every bed.

Some people ignore it, sometimes because they have no choice. 

Essential workers are keeping our society going by continuing to go to work.  Everyone is now seeing that it is in large part the low income workers for the most part who are actually essential to the smooth running of North American society.

It is not the billionaires, the superstars, the celebrities.  It is the warehouse worker, the trucker, the grocery store clerks, the cleaners.

And of course, the medical personnel.

Human beings seem to need to have heroes.  It is not enough to honk horns and bang tin pots as a thank you to these people.  We need to start paying them as though they are valuable. 

Because they are.

In the meantime, those of us who can stay home?  We need to do that.  We need to pay attention to what the medical people are saying. 

Some politicians are working to lessen the hardship of an economy that is flattening long before the curve of infection.  Others seem to be rooting in the trough.

I hope everyone sees who is doing what and will vote appropriately at the next election.

#covidkindness

When the world seems dark and depressing, look for those who bring light.

During this time of staying safe at home, flattening the curve, protecting the more vulnerable amongst us, it is easy to lose hope.  This is normal.  It is natural to feel upset, even angry, at what seems to be the world gone mad.

One way I deal with this is to a) stay at home.  b) try to do something productive each day (yes, getting dressed counts!)  c) look for those who help others

Cindy Blackstock started the hashtag #covidkindness on Twitter while Beau of the Fifth Column started the #Rule303 hashtag.  Some of my Facebook friends are great at finding uplifting stories of people helping others and I read those to help restore my faith in humanity when so many - who *ought* to be helping - seem to be actively hurting people.

On Facebook some people are posting things like - what are you looking forward to doing when things are normal?

My question is, how are we going to make 'normal' better for those people who were struggling before the pandemic hit?

Even politicians who are well right of right are - in Canada at least - showing some sense.  Will that last beyond the current situation?  Sadly, I think not.  Others who are well right of right just seem to be taking advantage of the situation to further their ultra right agenda.

Some people are asking what great work you are going to do during the pandemic.  My response is to point out that our first order of priority is to survive.  We'll address great works once we have.

For those people struggling with feeling isolated, reach out.  We have the internet. If someone has the internet, they have the ability to email, message, post that they need a virtual hug - and I will be happy to send them my love - from a distance.

Some people are finding that helping others really helps them the most.  For those people sewing masks for people?  Lovely.  For the restaurants providing free food for essential workers?  Gold star.  For the people checking in with folk who are immune compromised, getting them food or prescriptions?  I see you.

The pandemic is here.  It will kill.  It already has - far too many people.  It will kill more.  Our job right now, every one of us, is to try to stop the spread of the virus.

Stay safe at home if you possibly can.  If you can't (and I see you America with your health care tied to employment), stay a safe distance from others, cough into your sleeve, when you get home wash your hands.

Things are going to be difficult but the main job for everyone is to survive.  I want to see you the other side of this.

Punkinhead

I am entering the Punkinhead zone in regards to my hair.

My haircut was booked for the day after social distancing measures came into play so I was at the point where it was time for my monthly haircut, but couldn't get it.  I am now weeks beyond that and my hair is getting unruly.

I have had a short haircut for decades.

When I was weaving professionally, working up a sweat daily, I would shower at the end of the day and since I didn't really want to go to bed with a wet head, decided to cut my hair short.  So I have had short hair for a long time and see no reason to change now, even though I am no longer weaving 3-5 hours a day, working up a sweat doing so.  I've gotten used to my wash and wear 'do' and since chemo thinned my hair really see no advantage to having long hair.

There are many people in the same boat.

I see posts about how people are no longer doing their 'beauty' routines - no more plucking eyebrows, wearing make up, staying in their pjs or comfy clothing all day long.

Thing is, that was my usual routine.  I haven't worn makeup for a very long time.  I only ever pluck a wayward eyebrow hair now and then (since chemo I have noticed that my eyebrows are now becoming 'wild' in the way that my grandfather's were 'wild' - genetics for the win?).

Women are not shaving their legs - I haven't done that for a long time either.  I can't even imagine wanting to do a bikini wax.

Going bra-less?  I'm not, but each to their own.

If there is one thing I really hope that happens when this Staying Safe at Home ends?  I hope that women will stop trying to mould themselves into some kind of artificial standard of beauty.  I am sick to death of the fashion industry showing ridiculous costumes and passing them off as something any sane person would wear.

I understand that some people want pretty shoes.  I just wish they would not be such high, high heels.  As someone with foot problems after taking ballet including pointe shoes, plus wearing high heels as a younger me, can I just point out that high high heels are bad for your body?

Women spend millions of dollars on make up and clothing.  Maybe it is time to take a breath and wonder why we are doing that.  Who profits?  Fast fashion has spun out of control.  I have t-shirts that are older than some of my friends.  I only get rid of something once it has worn out.  The new trend of visible mending is even saying that something that is 'worn' can be repaired and continued to be used.

If we go back to what 'normal' was before the pandemic?  We will be doing ourselves a disservice.  Now is the time to pause and reflect on our lives and how we can live more thoughtfully.

And when is enough, enough?  (Looking at you, every single billionaire on the planet.)

Wabasso Yarn

In 1959 Wabasso Cotton bought its competition in Welland and Wood’s Manufacturing became a branch plant of Wabasso of Toronto. The entire processing of raw cotton was done at the Welland plant. Denim cloth was now manufactured in Welland where five hundred looms were dedicated to the process. Wabasso was Canada’s only supplier of denim cloth at that time. It was Welland’s largest, light industry employer, reaching a total of eight hundred workers during its best years. French–Canadians constituted the largest number of employees.

Faster, shuttleless machinery replaced looms in 1980 to increase production. This modernization did not produce forecasted results and on December 5, 1984 Wabasso announced the closure of the Welland plant. The closure was completed in May of 1985 when the last employee was laid off. Wabasso could not compete with foreign markets. In December 1985 National Textile bought out Wabasso but continued to sell products under the Wabasso name.

Over the years I have accumulated stash from various sources.  In the current warp I added in two tubes of pale green of 2/16 size.  How do I know it's 2/16?  The manufacturer, Wabasso, says so.

Now, I don't know what the KW stands for.  I wish I did.  Maybe a spinner could enlighten me.  But the label very clearly says "2/16".  Not "16/2".

It is comparable to the Brassard brand of 2/16 cotton which, if you look at the French website, still lists their cotton in the 2/16 format although they changed the English side to 16/2 a while back.

If you compare the standard 2/8 cotton as provided by Brassard, and the standard 8/2 cotton provided by US suppliers, the yarns are very different.

So again, leaping up onto my soap box to remind people that the only thing those numbers mean is how many (approximately) yards per pound the yarn is supposed to have.

It does not speak to how the fibre was prepared or how it was spun. 

The Canadian yarn is strong enough for warp.  If you do a simple break test, it feels weak, but if you do a snap test, it will withstand the forces that intend to replicate the opening and closing of the sheds and the force of the beater against the fell.

When I compared the two qualities of yarn, I managed to discover that US 8/2 cotton is open end spun while the Canadian 2/8 cotton is ring spun.  When I deconstructed the two yarns, the US cotton appeared to have a staple length of about 3/4" while the Canadian yarn was closer to 1".  The twists per inch differed.  The yarn looks different and behaves differently.

These two very different looking yarns are both natural white. (I changed the scan to black and white to show the difference more clearly.)  The top one is 2/8 Canadian, the bottom 8/2 US.  The top one is smoother and whiter looking probably because it has the fibres aligned and is more tightly twisted than the lower yarn which was spun from fibres that are not aligned and are less tightly twisted.

The top one is stronger than the bottom one.  The top one is less absorbent than the bottom one.

Since I acquired the pale green Wabasso yarn after an older weaver had died, I have no idea how old the yarn is.  (I have more of her yarn in my stash - a pale brick red.)  However, it was stored well and does not appear to have deteriorated at all.  Certainly the other colour has been fine.  It also was Wabasso.  I rather suspect that Dorothy probably bought yarn when the mill closed down, so quite possibly in the 1980s or even earlier as she had been weaving for many years before I met her around 1986 or so.

A number of our local guild members were friends, so when she died her family contacted as many weavers as they could to sell off her yarn stash.

I have fond memories of Wabasso sheets and towels.  Since it was Canadian made, mom could usually buy cheaper than textiles made elsewhere.

Canada had quite a few textile mills, both spinning and weaving.  They eventually mostly closed as they could not compete with mills in other countries.  But for quite a few years I purchased 2/8 cotton directly from a mill in Ontario.  When we contacted them, they wanted to know my specs - what size, how many twists per inch.  I told them I'd send them a sample of the quality I needed and they called back when they got my sample and told me it was 2/8 cotton with x number of twists per inch. I think they even broke it down to twists per inch for the single as well as tpi for the ply.

My minimum order was something like 150 pounds of a single colour, so I would buy three 50 pound cases of white from them, then buy the colours from other suppliers - South Landing and Brassard, mostly.  At the time Curl Brothers also provided 2/8 cotton.  It was a higher quality and a higher price, so I only bought a few colours not available from the others.

The difference?  I could (and can) easily break the 2/8 cotton from those with my hands.  The Curl Brothers was more like the Swedish cotton - very strong, almost impossible to break with my hands.

When examining yarn, look beyond the numbers.  The numbers only tell one small part of the story.

Sweet Sixteen

Yesterday I declared this warp done, cut/serged the sixteen towels, ran them through the washer/dryer and this morning got them pressed.

(I woke up at 5 am, having had about 4 hours sleep.  I may need a nap this afternoon.)

I'm pleased with how they turned out.  Unfortunately this photo doesn't show the design at all.  It's a blend of several shades of green/blue, about the same value.  Ish.  The weave structure is a fancy twill with more warp showing on one side, more weft on the other.

Now, I'm working hard on using up 2/16 cotton wound onto pirns.  This yarn has been sitting on the shelf for, oh, 5 years?  What I didn't realize with this particular box is that there was a very subtle dye lot difference that is nearly impossible to detect.  Until you start weaving with it.

Several of the towels show the evidence of this dye lot difference, but only really can be seen on the side that has more weft showing.

So, what to do?  Do I list these as 'seconds'?  They aren't really.   There is nothing wrong with them that will prevent them from doing their job.

But does it look 'wrong'?  Yes.  My eye sees it.  But I can detect quite tiny differences in colour and most people would never notice. 

Knowing that this 'flaw' exists, do I price them at full price? 

Sigh.

I will make up my mind once they are hemmed and I have some distance, emotionally, about the difference.  I think there are three - perhaps four.  I also happen to know a few people who love blue/greens, so those might be gifted rather than sold.

The towels are a bit damp and need to dry fully before they get folded and put into a bin.  The rack is in the way of getting the Megado set up with the next warp.  I can't get at the spool rack.  I wasn't thinking when I set up the drying rack or I could have moved the spool rack somewhere else so I could get it set up for the next warp.  Which I'm quite eager to get at.

However I have other things I could be working on, too.  Like the samples for the other weaver.  It's just that as sleep deprived as I currently am, winding a warp with very particular requirements probably isn't a great idea at the minute.

I got up so very early, I wound up requiring Second Breakfast today.  I think I need to figure out something more 'active' to do than sit around reading stuff on the internet.  For one thing it is pretty depressing.  For another the longer I just sit, the more tired I feel.  Time to get up and get moving.

April Spools

Today is April Spools Day.  Or as some people have been saying, March 32nd.

I have never been a fan of April Fools Day.  So many of the pranks were mean spirited, meant to bait people and then 'haha, it was just a *joke*!  Can't you take a *joke*?' kind of mocking way.

This year especially the joke is unnecessary as we are in the midst of a pandemic and people are very sick, everywhere.

So I am going to go with April Spools Day - I think it was Meg in NZ who started it a few years ago - and focus instead on the next warp in the queue.

The current warp is probably going to come off the loom today.  As the warp diminished at the back of the loom and cloth grew at the front, I started working on the next warp.  With stash busting as my current goal (seems like forever!) I am getting hard pressed to come up with yarn in sufficient quantities in colours that will play well together.  Not to mention different from what has already been woven.

With spring still not quite here, but promising to arrive sometime, I dug through the pastels to see if I had enough of them to make a warp.  A kind of encouragement of spring.

The blues are a bit on the darker end of the value scale, but should play well enough with the rest.

The weft will be the darker beige on the pirns.  Because that is what I am actually working on using up - the rest of the 2/16 cotton wound onto pirns - so that I can send them to the person who bought the pirn winder.  And get rid of more stuff...

My original thought was to blend the colours into a fruit salad mix, then weave in a fancy twill of some sort.  When I started looking at options, however, it occurred to me that with this many hues with not all of them the same value, that was going to look really really 'busy'.

Instead I worked up a twill block design I found in Ars Textrina (Pat Hilts translation of an old German weaving manuscript) and will go with that.  It is quite a large motif and the blocks of solid beige/weft should bring visual cohesiveness to the cloth.  The areas of more-or-less solid beige will provide resting places for the eye to light upon.  I'm hoping the rest will be like a field of wild flowers.

Once I've used up the yarn on pirns, there are other projects simmering on the back burners.

Doug has taken on the role of Person Who Leaves the House when necessary.  That allows me to stay in and work on my projects.  He is very safety conscious and takes care to disinfect things and follows all the guidelines. 

We are Safe at Home.