Zoom Zoom!

 

The information for the Ontario Handweavers conference is now available.  

With Covid continuing to be a problem, a number of in person events have pivoted to on line and a growing number of instructors are becoming quite comfortable with that method of teaching.  

It took me a long time to figure out how I might join in the effort to teach during this time of 'stay home if you possibly can'.  I looked around at what was available, what people were interested in and, most of all, what I was willing and able to do, by myself with minimum technology.

Jane Stafford, Tien Chiu and Daryl Lancaster had already been teaching on line for a while, had systems in place and were providing good content.  Long Thread Media had managed to obtain the DVDs that had been made over the years of Interweave Press and were running those as on line workshops.

It seemed to me that the basics were well covered.  

What was I known for?  What could I bring to the screen?  What skills did I already have that could be brought to Zoom effectively?  How could I convey what needed to be shown?  

Over the months of Covid management, many presenters have figured these things out for themselves and come up with creative ways to convey their lessons.  

Having made the decision to retire from teaching (other than Olds) I had pretty much ignored the efforts to go on line until my Olds students started to get anxious about all the cancellations.  So my effort then became to try to provide them with the course content I felt was most needed for people to 'master' the craft.  While I talk a little bit about things like shuttle handling, the emphasis is on the ergonomics of weaving - position and posture at the loom.  Why I prefer to hold the shuttle the way I do.  Suggestions on how to set up treadles to more efficiently (and hopefully more accurately) treadle.  

And so on.

But what I really wanted to present to these students was more of the underlying principles of the craft.  And the long form answers to the 'it depends' that gets trotted out to pretty much every weaving question.  Because it does!  Depend! 

Writing the Power Point presentations for the study groups has been a personal growth journey.  By collecting the information under the theme of the presentation, I have been able to start the slow process of putting the information together in a way that I hope the students find helpful, maybe even a little mind bending.  My goal is to provide a foundation of knowledge so that they can go on to make appropriate decisions regarding their own practice of the craft.  By understanding how their equipment works, they will be better able to adjust, or repair, their equipment when necessary.  Or push it beyond what it might most effectively do in order to achieve a special effect.

My Zoom presentations to the study groups take about 2 hours or so.  I can cut them a bit shorter, but they are information dense and could more comfortably be done in a 3 hour time slot which would allow for a 'comfort break' halfway through.

Right now my 2022 calendar is pretty open.  I am booking speakers for the Sunday Seminars with three already set up (Jan-Mar).  If a guild wants a 2-3 hour presentation on a weekend, It would be good to contact me now for availability.  Email is best laura at laurafry dot com  I will soon have 12 Power Point presentations that will be available.  I will put my thinking cap on and start doing a marketing blurb for each and post here in a day or two.

Am I Blue?

 

how it started...

how it's going...

Yesterday I had personal maintenance, but managed to get going in the morning and weave the first towel on the mostly blue warp.

The photo doesn't do it justice, and of course the view is of the 'back' side of the cloth.  I set it up to weave by raising 7 shafts per shed instead of 9.

Overall I'm pleased with how it is turning out.  It looks like there is enough of the darker blue flake to produce 7 towels, so I'll cut off and re-tie at that point, then finish the warp with white.

The white shrinks more than the blue, in part because it hasn't been dyed (I think) so those towels are turning out a bit narrower than the ones with the dyed weft.  So I've been using white 2/8 cotton for the hem weft when I use the white flake.  The hems 'flare' a bit because of plain weave and twill differentials, but not enough that I can't make it work.

And that's really the point.  While I always work towards perfection, I never lose sight of the fact that the cloth must perform the function it was intended for.  If I hit 'perfect' that's great.  But ultimately, my primary goal is to make it functional.  And I will settle for 'close'.

After several days of rain, today dawned sunny.  Unfortunately that didn't last long and the clouds have moved in again, with a promise of more rain this afternoon.  If I was virtuous, I'd go get dressed and go for a walk now, but mornings are not meant for rushing, so I probably won't.  

My goal for today is to weave two towels, maybe do some more fibre prep.  I haven't touched that for several days (for reasons).  But I'm very close to finishing the braid I'm blending into the grey and I'm looking forward to the next combo.  Probably with a dark blue base and one of the other dyed braids in my stash.

But I also have a very long book to read and I'm quite enjoying learning more about life (and war) in Outremer in the 1100s.  The more things change, the more they stay the same, when it comes to human beings.  But I also know that the author, Sharon Kay Penman, did good research, so I'm pretty sure what she is writing about happened - she has just fleshed it out by imagining the interactions between the characters.  And for me, that makes history a lot more interesting than a dry recitation of dates and campaign movements.  But during the time I have been picking my way through the nearly 700 pages, I have been receiving more of my library requests, and I really do want to read them, too!  So I am going to have to give myself permission to just sit and read for a while.  

A New Month

 

Yesterday I got this far by 4:30 pm and called it a day.  There are a couple of minor tweaks but otherwise it's ready as soon as I get some bobbins wound for weft.  I was going to do that last night but by the time I got downstairs I was too tired so left it for morning.

We are almost through another month with a fresh one beginning.  May is a difficult month sometimes.  It's no longer winter, although not quite spring.  We are still having freezing nights so gardeners generally wait until the May long weekend to set plants outside.  Even then, it's a good idea to keep an eye on the overnight temps and be prepared to cover plants.

One year ago BC was in the midst of what people were calling a 'lockdown', although it wasn't really.  We were still free to leave our houses but because many businesses were closed there wasn't much incentive to go anywhere.

And that was the point - to NOT gather in groups, spreading the virus.  Our town was still quite safe as covid hadn't really arrived yet.  But it had in other towns. 

I focused on doing what I needed to be doing, and that was mostly staying home and weaving.

My goal of weaving down my stash remains.  Only difference is I'm now working on the 2/8 cotton and flake yarns.  I'm moderately pleased that those are going down.  The shelves of yarn are beginning to empty, replaced by woven cloth.

Eventually I may need to replace some yarn, but for now I'm not buying more, just working from my stash.

Tien Chiu and Janet Dawson have teamed up to bring on line opportunities for learning to weavers.  They currently have a stash busting Weave A Long happening.  If someone is looking for a community and a project, this might pique your interest.  And may give you some creative ideas to apply to your own stash.

When I hit the wall yesterday, my first inclination was to go back to the studio and ignore the internet.  That time of pause was helpful - indeed, it was therapeutic.  But I also came to the realization that I was tired.  Plus, my semi-annual review with the cancer clinic is in about two weeks and while I don't think the cancer is active enough to warrant concern, there is always that niggling of doubt.  And right now, in the midst of a pandemic, other things don't stop and getting any kind of medical treatment right now is problematic.  So there is that concern niggling away at me.

This blue warp will take about two weeks to weave off, and then there is another paler blue ready to go into the loom.  Once that is done, I'll look at another beige warp and then another blue one.  And then see how much of the white flake is left.  Then I'll have to see what else I can do.  I'm pretty sure there is more than enough to plan beyond what I've been working on.  But I won't know for sure until I get this warp and the three cooking on the back burner done.

With about two weeks per warp, I have enough yarn to see me through the summer and another few dozen towels.  Once those are done, it will be scarf making time.  I probably have about 20 years worth of fine yarns for scarves.  

I usually run a 'birthday' sale the beginning of July.  Since I have been unable to face taking photos and posting to my ko-fi shop, I may concentrate on a gigantic sale in July.  We'll see.

Textile Travels

 

Over the course of my life, I've actually travelled a few miles.  As a child we routinely did Sunday Drives wherever we could get to - and back from - home in a day.  Mom would pack a picnic and we would set off.

As a child I needed medical care in Vancouver, and for a number of years we set off on the overnight Greyhound bus (overnight to save a night in a hotel) and we walked and bussed around Vancouver in between trips into the medical office.

At 16 mom put me on the train and I went from home to Montreal and back.  

At 19 I took the train to Montreal again, but this time it was just the jumping off place in order to board a freighter as a passenger to disembark in Oslo, train to Örebrö, Sweden.  While there, I also booked a bus tour of Europe.  That meant another train trip - Örebrö to Stockholm to Malmö to catch the ferry to Travemunde, Germany.  That tour did a circle - overnight in Brussels, then Paris, then Nice where we stayed for a week taking day trips to Cannes and Grasse (to visit the perfumery) and Monaco.  Yes, I 'lost' a few coins in the one armed bandits in the lobby, just to say I'd gambled in Monaco!

The trip back to Travemunde and the ferry took us through Milan, then through the Alps (and I mean through, the bus boarded a train that went through a very long tunnel to get us to the other side of a mountain), then Hamburg before boarding the ferry and taking the train back to Örebrö.

On my travels I met very kind and helpful people, some of whom I stayed in touch with for a number of years before losing track of them.

As a weaving teacher I mostly travelled in North America, but also met kind and helpful people.  Many of them also had interesting travel stories, one of them Winnie Nelon, who will be presenting a Sunday Seminar on May 16.

She has travelled extensively and collected textiles on the way.  In the photo above there is a textile with an interesting story and it is one of the textiles she will talk about.  (If I'm remembering correctly!)

We can learn much about different cultures by learning more about the textiles they make and use, and that is part of the reason I reached out to the people I did - they could shine a light on other cultures and their textiles.

I have begun booking people for 2022.  Zoom isn't the best medium but it's actually quite easy for even 'old dogs' like me to learn 'new tricks'.  And I've been having a great time talking to the speakers as we make our arrangements, then listening to their adventures.

Given Covid and how the pandemic is playing out, I suspect it is going to be another year before travel outside of the North American bubble is really recommended, so I'm looking at booking another 10 seminars for the coming year.  There are names on my list of more people to contact but I'm holding off a bit.  I have three so far with more I need to get in touch with.

I invite you to check out the guild website (link above) and consider registering for one of the seminars.  The prices are in Canadian dollars, so Americans get the exchange rate discount.  :)

In June Stefan Möberg will talk about a project near and dear to his heart and Janet Dawson will share her travels in Turkey.  All are now available for registration.  So far everyone has allowed the live presentation to be taped and made available for 30 days afterwards if you can't make the live date.  Anyone registered will receive the link to the Zoom meeting the Friday before the presentation, then the private link to the recorded meeting.

I've been enjoying my armchair travels a lot.  I hope you are too!

Rolling Onwards

 

Today dawned overcast and dreary with a high probability of rain later.  Well the rain arrived and I opted to not walk today.  I couldn't face the chilly wet.

However, I did manage to press the 8 towels that ran through the washer/dryer yesterday, then got the next warp ready to beam.  It's hard to see in the photo but there are shades of blue - a darker somewhat greyed blue and a lighter value blue, sometimes called baby blue.  There are also four spools of baby mix variegated with a little white, blue, pink, even a bit of green if I remember correctly.  This warp will have a darker greyed blue cotton flake for half of it, then whatever warp is left will get woven off with white flake.

By the end of the day (4:30 pm) the warp was entirely beamed, the spool rack parked in its spot in the studio, but the yarn has not been put away in case I need any to repair a broken thread.  Much of this warp will go into another mostly blue warp later, in part because I have a lot of blue and a lot of white flake.  

Then I set up the loom in preparation for threading.  The draft (threading only) is printed out and clipped to my clipboard, the reed and beater top taken off as well as the breast beam, the shorter stool in place.  The bouts were taped to a long stick which is now ready behind the heddles.  All that's left is to set up my task lighting.  I may do that tonight when I shut down the studio.

I'm still running a humidifier, although that should probably be unnecessary soon, especially with close to a week of forecast rain.  The humidity should start going up from the low 30s to above 40 soon.  At least it isn't in the mid 20s anymore.

Tonight there will be hemming and who knows, maybe even some more fibre prep.  The bin is nearly half full and should be at least 3/4s full by the time I've used up the dyed braid - mostly cyan, magenta and a wee bit of natural white.  I will probably do one more braid before I put the fibre away and start spinning.  

In case I don't want to do any of that, there is also another scarf on the needles.  My goal is to get enough knitted that I can donate to St. Vincent de Paul, or other charitable organization.  Or maybe put scarves on the sculptures that someone has been making warm hats for the past few years.  Anyone who needs a hat can take one.  If they need a hat, maybe they need a scarf.  But regardless, I have no shortage of yarn to knit with, too.

And now that I am getting close to using up most of my 2/8 cotton and cotton flake, I'm thinking about what is next.  To that end, I have set aside enough yarn for a 2/8 warp which will get woven off with an 8/2 variegated cotton.  It's weak enough it could break and I don't like fighting with my yarn, so weft it will be.

Then there is another bin set aside with darker beiges and a large cone of fine linen in natural beige will get used as weft on that.  I doubt either warp will use up the 8/2 or the linen, but they will make a dent in the cones, and that's all to the good.  Since I had Fiberworks open to print out the threading for the current warp, I also generated a draft for those two stash busting warps.  I'd thought about them for a very long time - months, to be honest - and am finally satisfied enough with my idea to go ahead and put it into Fiberworks.  I'm not saying I won't change my mind, but right now I'm satisfied with it.  I just have to think about hem weft yarn.  I'm thinking of using the same variegated for the hems on those towels, and 2/16 cotton on the beige/linen warp.  Or maybe, because linen doesn't lose dimension as much as cotton, I'll use the linen for hems on that warp.  More pondering to do.

Back to Regular Programming

 

The warp in the bin on the top has been woven and tomorrow the bin on the bottom will be put into the loom.

It has been very satisfying to see my yarn stash diminish.  Not so nice to see how much woven stuff I now have, and no shows to do to try and move it into someone else's home.

I had intended to start photographing things and posting them to my ko-fi shop last week, but somehow the week, which had no appointments or commitments turned into this week, no photographs having been taken or posted.

Last week was quite lovely.  Spring seems to have arrived and we had a week of lovely blue skies.  I even managed to walk nearly every day, in spite of the cutting wind.  If you could stay out of the wind it was quite nice, but the wind had teeth so walking wasn't as pleasant as it looked to be, from the comfort of my home.  

And yet, I felt I was making progress, so I mostly continued.  This week isn't supposed to be as nice, but today dawned clear, sort of, so I'm going to try to remember to save spoons for a walk, even if it is just the short loop.  Once you have lost physical fitness, it takes longer to get back, once you are 'old'.  Bodies just don't recover as quickly once you hit that 'certain' age.  

One of the beige towels is a 'second' - there were two dye lots of the beige flake, and in the end not quite enough for a full sized towel.  It isn't very much shorter than my 'standard' length, but with the dye lot difference I will not try to sell that one but gift it to a friend who won't mind either 'flaw'.  

Yesterday I managed to weave one towel with the white flake as weft, which leaves two to weave today.  And then that warp will be done.  

I seem to have adjusted my expectations of what I 'ought' to be doing every day, but my goal of weaving two sessions daily is mostly met, depending on what else is happening.  This week is mostly clear with massage and chiropractor back-to-back on Thursday.  I doubt I'll feel up to weaving after that.  I may make more rolags/worms or not.  I may walk or not.  I try to pay more attention to what my physical body needs now.

When I was a child I didn't know very many 'old' people.  People in their 70s were not all that common and many of my friends no longer had grandparents either.  I had my mother's father, but he wasn't that much of a presence in my life.  Now I have friends my age with great grandchildren and none of us think we are particularly 'old'.  I wonder if my grandfather thought he was still young at 71.

I know that at heart I am still pretty much the same person I was at 41, which was about when I finally started to figure out who I was.  But my body is not.  So I have adjusted my expectations of what I can physically accomplish, while still wanting to do more.  And that's probably the eternal human condition - wanting more, not knowing if we will get it.

Just a bit of Monday Musings...

A Bigger Table - political rant

 

Just over a year ago when word began arriving along with the Covid virus, I paid attention.  I paid attention for a number of reasons.

I am old enough to remember SARS and the devastation it caused in Ontario and other places.  But I am also aware of history and knew that such pandemics become killing machines especially among densely populated areas.  And of course, many of the world's densely populated areas are also areas of poverty with few resources.

Of course my primary concern was my own home.  I'm only human, after all!  But I soon found a website called Worldometers and one of the many metrics it was tracking was Covid.  This website kept me apprised of what was happening around the world - who was managing well, and who wasn't.

We neighbour the United States, and I'd spent enough time in that country and knew a large number of Americans, had read up on political science and the differences and similarities between the two countries to understand that the pandemic was going to be a watershed moment in history.

Over my lifetime, Canadians have been inundated with media generated in the US to the point where many Canadians don't understand how the political system in Canada works.  With the political dynamic in the US slopping over into Canada, I wasn't particularly surprised at the US style conspiracy stories finding their way into my country, too.

I have also been coming to grips, as a white woman, with the racism inherent in so much of our country, which seemed to be being exploited by these conspiracies.

The response to Covid by Canada has been checkered by the fact that health care is not a federal responsibility, but a provincial one.  And a number of provincial premiers have platforms (if you can call racism a platform) that favour business and corporate entities over people, especially brown people.  Even in a province that wants to help, there is a segment of the population that has drunk the tainted orange juice and insists Covid is a hoax, mask requirements are some sort of infringement on personal freedom, restrictions on businesses being open are killing the economy.

I have been appalled by the racism involved in touting the 'China flu' or 'Kung flu' and targeting people of Asian background, especially elderly people, with violence.

Politicians of the 'conservative' bent have done nothing but criticize, even when the federal government does something they previously called for action on, the complaint then became 'you took too long' instead of 'so happy to see you took advice'.  Or even 'better late than never'.

I'm sick of politicians playing devil's advocate who do nothing but complain, but never come up with action to help the situation, instead sitting by and flouting the recommendations by health officers (non-essential travel during Christmas break, for instance) because they are some sort of 'special'.  

"When they show you who they are, believe them the first time" has become all too applicable.

Things are not good right now, even as they get better in Canada.  For those people who are living in a comfortable bubble, I urge you to pay attention to what is happening beyond your reality.  If you, personally, are safe and have the means, I recommend looking for organizations that are actually helping other countries obtain vaccines and other medical supplies.  If you have enough, and can spare something, there are non-profit entities that can use some money.  Last week I donated to UNICEF Canada, in part because they had a matching donation grant from a third party, so my donation was doubled.  It felt like a paltry sum, but if enough people give a little, it can add up to something significant and help others who are literally dying.  Right now.  Another entity I have donated to in the past and will likely do so again is Doctors Without Borders.

The bottom line is this - if the countries who cannot access vaccines do not get them very soon, the level of mutations in the virus will continue.  If the mutations continue, the pandemic will continue in part because the vaccines may not be as effective against the mutations.  (So far it seems that they are, but that can change.)  If the countries who are struggling continue to have very active growth with high illness and death, it means the global economy cannot recover.  It also means that all travel to those countries will have to be curtailed because people travelling from North America to other places can then become infected by those new mutations and bring them home, which will begin the cycle all over again.

Covid is extremely transmissible - which means it spreads very easily.  We have seen this every time restrictions have been lifted and mass gatherings allowed.  We are now standing under the tsunami third wave and countries like India and Brazil (and others, but those are number 2 and 3 in the world - the US continues #1) are having massive case counts and deaths.

At this point I'm assuming that the corporations who make the vaccines have made a tidy profit.  I suggest that it is beyond time to hoard the vaccine and that countries who have a surplus should very quickly start sending that surplus to other countries.  Let the companies who wrote restrictions into their contracts that this could not happen sue the country.  Better to beg for forgiveness than ask permission.

It is time to build a bigger table and invite those countries who need medical supplies including vaccines to the same safety that we have here in Canada.  And make sure that ALL of our communities are also getting the vaccines they need, too.

As has been pointed out, we are all in the same storm but some of us have good boats while others are cast adrift on leaky rafts.  Life lines are needed to help those who are getting ill and dying.

World:  147,605,755 cases; 3,118,992 deaths

US:  32,797,213 cases; 585,941 deaths

India:  17,285,627 cases; 194,797 deaths - with nearly 1.4 Billion people in India, these numbers are going to get much, much worse.

The above numbers are from 11 am, April 25, 2021.  A number of experts say that the numbers out of India are far too low because people are falling ill and dying at such high numbers the official count can't keep up.  Long past time to send medical aid to India...

Stay safe.  Stay well.  Stay Covid aware.