Layers

 

In that time between sleeping and waking, I lay suspended for a while this morning.  Not quite awake, but my brain had begun to tease at thoughts that have been in the back of my mind for a while.

Layers.  Layers of knowledge.  Layers of memory.  Teasing out connections.  Threads from one to the next.

I thought about how long and convoluted my journey through this life has been.  How my memories of thread go back, long before I should have proper memories.  So are they just dreams then?  My mother insisted that things I 'remembered' I couldn't possibly.  I was far too young when they happened for me to have 'proper' memories of them.  I must just be remembering stories I'd overheard.

But that's the thing.  If I only know the story, it is something I heard.  If I have the visual, the tactile, it feels like a 'proper' memory.

But is it a memory of this lifetime?  Or something...else?  

I am a firm believer that there is a textile gene  - of sorts.  That people who worked with thread survived better than people who didn't.

Archeologists are now saying that there is evidence of working with thread going back 40,000 years.  I figure it goes back even further.  You don't make fine, smooth, strong linen twine the first time you set out to do it.  But textiles disintegrate back into dust, so hard evidence is scarce.  We can infer it from imprints left in pottery, or carvings on sculptures (the so-called Venus figurines).  If some people braided their hair, they probably also braided beards.  If they were braiding hair, they were probably also spinning fibres.

'Modern' people pretend our ancient ancestors were somehow inferior in intellect, assuming that 'modern' technology makes us superior to our ancestors.  Ancient artifacts showing great skill in their making are 'proof' that we have been visited by 'aliens' because our ancient ancestors were too 'primitive' to achieve such excellence in metalwork, glass, and - if they still existed - textiles.

But textiles do exist.  Last night we watched a program on Egypt and one of the things they showed were textiles made 3500 years ago - give or take.  Fine linen, woven garments.  Paintings on tomb walls show gauze dresses and shirts and looms that were staked out on the ground that such textiles were woven on.  It wasn't our ancestors who were 'primitive'.  Their tools might have been sticks and string but they made amazing things with them.  It is not the tools but what we do with them.

So I think about my own personal journey.  I follow the steps back through time.  I remember so many things that steered me towards this day, this life.  I remember my mother teaching me how to sew my own clothing (age 12).  Embroidery.  (age 8?  9?)  Knitting. (age 5?  6?)  Also rug hooking.  For much of my childhood there was a canvas and bits of yarn cut to length to be knotted into the canvas with a latchet hook.  My little fingers fumbling, my mother patiently showing me again and again how to hold the tools, make them work.

But I also have another memory.  I think it comes from the time I was lodged with my father's brother and sister-in-law while my parents built our house.  I remember a string mop set on it's handle on the floor and me on my cousin's lap as she showed me how to braid the strings of the mop.  Over and under, over and under.  Again, fumble fingers, a voice patiently coaching me, her hands helping mine to make the braid.  My aunt pooh-poohing her effort because I was too young and she had better unbraid all those strings or else.

This is not a story I remember.  I remember the warmth of her lap.  Her hands.  The feel of the string as we worked to make the three strand braid.

And now, nearly 70 years later, I go into my studio, my happy place.  And I still play with string.

Spring Break Up

 

some shawls in spring colours as an encouragement for the season to arrive

We are in the time of year where we take one step towards spring, then one step back.  Yesterday I woke to watery sun trying to break through the high overcast and by the time I was overseeing the data transfer of the latest Zoom meeting to You Tube, it was snowing.  Great big fluffy globs of snow.  They soon morphed into sleet, then rain.

Ah.  Spring Break Up.  The most difficult season, I find.

We are also dealing with a global pandemic and everyone is tired.  So we layered on another level of challenge - spring forward to 'daylight savings time'.  I never understood what it was we were saving.  Living this far north (which isn't all that far, truth be told) we still woke up in the dark and walked home from school in the dark in the winter during standard time, and in summer?  Sun rises well before I ever wanted to wake up and set after my bedtime.  Didn't matter how much the clock was...adjusted.  

I remember the first time I travelled 'south' - to Colorado as it happened.  It got dark so early I thought it must be a lot later than it actually was.  Instead of after 11 pm it was barely 9 and fully dark.  I had a chuckle at my expense.

I am also dealing with allergens so my head is extra stuffy and it hurts to think.  As this 'dance' with seasonal change continues, that will continue with dust, snow mould and then pollen.

But spring IS coming, in spite of the snow.  The weather forecast says maybe some more later this week, but it's only March.  Spring Break Up can last 4-5 weeks.  The temperature will continue to dip below freezing for a while yet.  Seems like everything is waiting for something right now.

Patience has never been an attribute of mine but there is nothing to be done for this time of year but wait it out.  

And that's the thing.  Everything changes.  Nothing is static.  Minutes roll into hours, hours into days, days into weeks, then months.  The seasons come...and they go.

So I go - to my studio.  I play with string.  I dig deep into my yarn stash and find colours that speak to me.  Right now I'm working on my 2/8 cotton stash and seem to have an abundance of beige and blue.  So I will figure out how to make beige towels and blue towels that please me.  After months of weaving with 2/16 cotton, the 2/8 seems to be evaporating very quickly.  And that makes me very happy, given how many years I've been trying to weave down my yarn stash!

Today's goal is to work on the place mat warp (blue!) and start pulling my fibre stash out of storage.  I have several braids of hand dyed/variegated Corriedale and lots of solids.  I treat my fibre much like my yarn stash.  Beginning with a variegated I start adding solids and blend them on the Ashford blending board to make 'worms'.  

(I'm told by those who know that what is made on the board is neither a rolag or a puni, so some people have settled on 'worms' to describe the fibre package that results.  I'm good with that.)

I still have zero idea of what I'm going to knit with all this yarn I'm making.  But right now that isn't of a great deal of importance to me.  I'm going to have fun making unique blends and spinning them up.  I'll figure out what to do with the yarn later.

One thing at a time!

In the meantime the sun is actually shining this morning.  The snow is melting.  Spring IS coming.

Patience, Grasshopper.  Patience.

Guest Post - Lorraine W

 One of my students decided to get some hard data for herself so she could better gauge her beating.  She kindly agreed to write up what she did.  Here is part 1.

How hard am I beating ?

 I was weaving today and I noticed as I looked at my web, that there was this periodic line across the width of my cloth. I thought to myself this line is occurring with a regularity that resembles the frequency of my warp advancement. Is it possible that I am beating too hard at the start, after each time I advance the warp? I left the loom and I said to myself, there has to be a way that this can be measured so I can teach my body what the acceptable beat is for this project. What I was looking for was to establish a  biofeedback loop, so I could learn fast from real data.

 Sitting at my desk, I began  to consider the first principles. The force of the beater hitting the fell of the cloth may be resulting in this variable density that I am observing, or at least it is one of the parameters. I began  scribbling, F=ma (force= mass x acceleration). I know that the mass of the beater is fixed and constant . The exact beater mass value is not relevant, since on each beat the mass will be the same, so all I need to do is measure the acceleration of the beater as I move it towards the fell line. If I can get that measurement in a reoccurring manner and record it, I can use the data to help me confidently refine my beat to the desired range, for that project and all others in the future.

 As an engineer I know that there are measuring devices for everything, so I started to look for an accelerometer that I could strap to my loom. I wanted it to be inexpensive, since I was only going to use it for a short period of time to increase my mindfulness. I then had another idea, what about my Garmin watch that I use for running , that has an accelerometer. If my watch has it then perhaps there is an app that I can load on my smart phone. Of course there was an app, many in fact and I chose one called G Accelerometer and the price was right, it was free.

 

After uploading the app , I went into the settings and zeroed the gravity component ,we don’t really need it since I am only interested in the horizontal displacement of the beater. If you leave the gravity component on it is ok, but not necessary. I strapped my phone with the accelerometer app on to my beater and I began to weave. The picture below shows the simplicity of the setup.

 

 What I found was that I had a very sporadic beat after each advancement of the warp, the value of which ranged by an order of magnitude. This graph below was plotted using the numbers that were exported from the app. The absolute magnitude is not of importance, I was looking for feedback on my beating pattern and trends. The Y axis is measured in Gravity units (Gs) and the X axis is seconds. You may recall that one G is 9.8 meters/ sec ² or 386 inches/sec ². If I eyeball this graph and take out the extreme high beat values, I can see a trend line around 0.05 Gs or 19 inches/ sec ²

 

 

 

I repeated this process several more times and I plotted my progress throughout the following days and I eventually got a much improved beat consistency at a lower beat, that gave me the picks per inch I was looking for.  In the graph below, recorded for a longer period of time, you can see  a trend line around 0.015Gs, which is approximately  6 inches/sec ². There are still variances and there always will be, since I am not a machine, however I have learned that a simple app can give timely feedback into our body movements that can be used to improve weaving .  I hope you will give this a try for yourselves, it may be interesting to see how many Gs you are putting on any given project.

 

Spring Break Up

spring green

 

Mid March and we have arrived at second winter, spring break up, early spring.  Take your pick.  The time of year where it could snow one day, sleet the next, snow again, then rain.  Or the sun could be brilliant, melting all that white (or whatever colour it is by this time) on the ground.

Sap is rising and expectations of vaccines coming are too.  I think most people are experiencing a particularly difficult seasonal change this year.  And of course tomorrow we 'spring forward', adding another layer of difficulty as we try to change our sleep pattern and deal with young children, older folks and pets who just don't understand why meals have been moved from the schedule their body is used to dealing with.

And for people with environmental allergies, like me, we are dealing with dust, pollen, etc., and immune systems going a little bit crazy.

This morning I broke down and used the Rx nasal spray I have for 'emergencies'.  It seems to be helping but I know that tomorrow morning it will be a repeat of today (probably) and so I'll be muddle headed for the Zoom meeting. 

However, I have been here before and know that I can suppress it and crash later.

Last night I rearranged the studio so that I can wind bobbins for the placemats more easily.  With six yarns going into the bundle, I need to raise the bobbin winder to get more distance between the tubes and the winder.  A longer distance would be better but I just don't have the room in my studio to set it up and continue to do other things in there.

Doug continues to tag the tea towels woven over the winter, I'm trying to get the next warp for the Megado sorted.  I thought I was doing that last night, then this morning remembered I had decided on a different colourway first.  So I need to wind some yarn onto spools for that.  However, the other one is now ready, so there is that!

Right now I have four warps ready for the Megado - or at least in the works.  As I work through those I will set up a few more because the goal is to try and use up as much of the cotton flake as I can.  I'm also using the 2/8 cotton variegated as accent in these warps, so those cones are also shrinking.

There are a few more bobbins to be plyed, then set up on the dining room table to make blending board 'worms'.  I'm enjoying spinning a bobbin in the evening as an alternative to hemming.

In many ways I feel as though I must continue to 'wrap up' my old life before I can figure out what to do with the rest of it.  I'm sure that when the time is right the 'next' thing will appear.

Patience, Grasshopped...

 

Necessary Tasks

 

Since November I have woven rather a lot of tea towels.  With no craft fairs and little other opportunity to sell much, as each warp was woven, wet finished, hemmed and final press given, the stacks were simply put on another shelf and ignored.

Doug has begun tagging them now, which means my work table is tied up with that task.  Which means processing the warp I finished weaving yesterday has to wait until he is done.

However, I did rough sley the place mat warp and, if I un-bury the Leclerc Fanny, I can be dressing that loom today while Doug continues with the tagging.

But my heart is not on weaving place mats right now.  

I tend to work in series and like to complete each one before I move on to something else.  However, since I have a second loom, the transition from one to the other isn't as great as if I only had the one loom.

Because my mind is on track for a particular quality of cloth, it is somewhat jarring to switch from one to the other.

It didn't used to be.  Time was I could blithely switch from one to the other without too much thought.  I don't know if it is the ordinary process of aging or the chemo/stress brain that is making flexibility more difficult, but I find myself being very one track about things.

In the evening I can more easily shift from hemming to spinning, but am finding myself reluctant to switch from Megado to Fanny then back again for just one warp.

I have managed to do a few other tasks that are necessary.  My tax receipts are sorted and just need to make an appointment with my accountant to go over a few things.  I continue to read through a manuscript that was sent to me.  I would have printed it out so I could read it sitting in my recliner in the window but it was 300+ pages, so I read it in smaller chunks sitting at the desktop.  (I don't much like reading a book on my ipad - personal preference!)  Several bins of yarn have been pulled for future warps and I continue to 'edit' them, sometimes changing my mind entirely about what I am going to do.  But I have the next one ready to go into the Megado as soon as Doug is done.

I continue to work on the Power Point presentations.  The latest one is on design considerations, which I'm finding particularly challenging.  Again, I will be focusing on principles, on theory, on concepts.  I have touched on some of these in one presentation already, but everything is connected so the principles drift into and out of other themes.  Everything about creating a textile is dependent upon multiple factors.

The sifting of potential Sunday Seminar speakers for 2022 has begun.  I'm just trying to clear a few things off my desk before I start working on those again.  

Speaking of selling tea towels, I expect I'll begin posting more of the towels to ko-fi, and I've added a ko-fi tip jar link to this blog.  Thank you to all who have bought (a) coffee(s).  It helps to pay for things like studio insurance, postage, parts to repair equipment,  Zoom, and who knows, maybe even a trip to a conference one of these days.

Now that vaccines are being rolled out, I have been toying with another trip to Cape Breton area, see if I can get my research 'paper' and access to the textile collection at Louisborg.  But that will have to wait, maybe until 2022.  And I will no doubt wear a mask while travelling because who knows what state the pandemic will be in.  Trudeau is saying September for full vaccination, but if so, that feels too soon for me to be traveling from one side of the country to another, even if Air Canada and WestJet are flying into Sydney, NS again.  

And once again we face the time change this weekend.  I had hoped that BC would stay on standard time, or next best, join Yukon on Daylight Savings.  It makes little sense for people living in the north to bother with the seasonal change when we wake up in the dark, go home from work in the dark for a chunk of the year, or have daylight well before waking and well after bedtime.  Far enough north and it is 24/7 dark or daylight, winter/summer.  So why bother to change at all???

Well, no matter.  Bottom line is I need to get to the studio, dig out the Leclerc, start setting up that last place mat warp (of this quality of cloth).  I'm looking forward to the next towel warp which will be mostly turquoise with a little emerald green, a couple of variegated ends of blue/green, to be woven off with the black cotton flake.  I think they will be pretty.  And that should empty another section of shelf.

Onwards!

Pandemic Days - Random Thoughts

 

Not sure if it is because of the pandemic or that I'm 'retired' but each day has a sameness about it.

This warp, beamed the end of February, is now down to the dregs.  Two more towels, which should get woven off this afternoon, and the warp will be done.

I continue to work on the Power Point presentations and nearly every weekend has at least one Zoom meeting scheduled.  For how long?  At least until October.

With the Sunday Seminars being received well, I have begun booking more speakers for 2022.  January is scheduled, a list of other potential speakers has been worked on.  Once I get through a few 'looming' deadlines, I will start slowly booking more, if people are able and willing.

I rarely go out these days and frankly?  I'm not missing it much.  I do hope that we will soon be able to gather in person - in small groups, in well ventilated spaces.  Warmer weather means I can host small gatherings in my carport.

Last night I changed my mind - yes, again! - about which warp to put into the Megado next.  There is also that 'last' place mat warp to be woven off.  Then I'll have to think about what to use the Fanny for in the future.  I won't get rid of it yet as it is useful for shorter warps that I wind on a board.  Like the rayon chenille - of which I have way too much.  

Last night I finished spinning the bin of blending board 'worms' that I'd prepared over two years ago and once those bobbins are plyed the fibre stash will come out and I'll make more.  Which means more fluff flying around.  There seems little point in vacuuming or sweeping until I'm done with that mess.

This weekend we will change to daylight savings time.  Again.  I've always disliked the time change, even more after I found out that we weren't actually doing it to 'help the farmers'.   The farmers didn't even make the change - like Saskatchewan, which has never made the change, or parts of BC which also never subscribed to making the change.  

There is a restlessness in the air, too.  Between spring arriving and vaccinations, people are feeling anxious for covid restrictions to be lifted, to be able to hug family and friends, gather to laugh and just be in each other's company.  I admit to some of that, but I am also well practiced in waiting.  So while I keep an eye on the vaccination schedule, I'm not too worried about it.  I have a wardrobe of masks and little desire to go out and about, just yet.

We are not through this pandemic yet.  Getting shots into arms takes a great deal of logisitical planning to move that many people safely through the process.  I am more than happy to let the professionals get their ducks in a row, their butterflies in formation.  And continue to wear a mask while out until herd immunity is achieved - sometime this summer.  A gentle reminder that the vaccination does not confer instant protection but takes a couple of weeks before the immune system works out it's logistics for defense.

Take a deep breath, everyone.  Spring is coming.  So are the vaccines.  

Stay safe.  Stay well.  Stay covid aware.

Hugs to all who need one.

Zoom Meetings

 

Working on the next Zoom meeting, the theme of which is 'Form Follows Function' I have been doing some deep thinking about issues of design - in all of its meanings.

So - how the cloth is constructed to create the quality required to do the job it is intended to serve.  But also how the cloth will look.

Design is a word that encompasses more than just appearance.  How we design something speaks to all the aspects of the cloth.  Engineers are trained how to do this for their particular slice of creating - be it structural, fluid, electrical, whatever.  As weavers we are trying to serve every aspect of bringing thread into cloth form.  We need the mathematics.  The physics.  The structural capacity of how the threads fit together - taking three dimensional rods and turning them into a flat plane.  One that could be smooth or textured.   Or even not actually flat but three dimensional as well.

We need to think about such things as absorbency, abrasion, drape, dimensions.  All of these things need to be considered.  

I was fortunate in my life to meet and interact with a number of highly skilled textile designers/weavers/spinners.  Even felters.  Since they were all working with the same raw material - fibre - each had something to bring to the conversation that allowed me to learn more.  Dig deeper.

I would name them except there have been so very many I would forget some.  

Not every hand weaver in the 21st century needs to dig this deeply, but some need to be able to hold the knowledge for future generations.  Hence my study groups.

Over the past few years I have had to come to grips with the fact that I'm no spring chicken and am not getting younger.  I am getting older.  I am reaching the stage of life where travel is getting more difficult.  

However, in large part due to the current pandemic, the internet has begun to play a more important part is getting information to those who are interested.  With the rise of computers the late 20th century was touted as the Information Age.  Unfortunately bad information also gets distributed.

So my Zoom efforts.

Each time I do a presentation I learn more.  For example, I did not know I could very simply and easily turn Power Point slide shows into a PDF.  This makes them easier to share with others, if I wish to do so.

You Tube has become very easy to use - once you figure out which buttons to push.  Plus they provide captioning.  Again, something I only recently discovered.  

I have also begun working on more Sunday Seminars for 2022.  I have been thoroughly enjoying the presentations thus far and look forward to learning more.   The more I learn, the more I realize how little I know.  But, and here's the thing, I can continue to learn more.

And that is endlessly fascinating, endlessly interesting.