Under Construction

 

One of the things that has been too long neglected is my website.

For too many years I was just...too busy/distracted to try and deal with it.  Then, when I retired, I thought about scrapping it altogether.  Except I like having my website email address, which is dead easy, and which I've used repeatedly over the years and to change all my contact info over to my 'real' email addy was just too daunting.

In the time since the decision was made to 'retire' (for certain values of) other teaching opportunities have come along.  With all the down sides to Covid, there have been some benefits and being able to teach remotely is certainly one of them.  And I do get contacted by guilds re: doing guild programs and even lectures/seminars via Zoom.

So it seemed like a really good idea to hang onto my website - at least for a while longer.

Work has begun and therefore my website isn't functional right now.  However I can still be contacted through my blog.  

One of the things that we are working on (my webmeister is doing the actual work) is having a list of Zoom lecture/seminar topics.  

I wrote these in 2020 for my Olds students.  They were meant to provide a deeper look at some weaving issues that generally don't get covered in any great depth but lend themselves to a lecture where I can answer questions and clarify anything that needs additional information.

The lectures are around 2 hours with Q&A, sometimes longer depending on how many questions are asked, sometimes a bit shorter.

Most of the topics can also be done in about one hour for a guild program although some of them might be too technical.  But some work very well for a guild program - The Efficient Weaver, Magic in the Water, A Good Yarn being some examples.

Like everything, the process is going to take a little while, but it feels good to finally address something that had been hanging around for far too long, just because I didn't have the time or energy to address it, plus I couldn't do it by myself so needed help.  

We get by with a little help from our friends.  Sometimes a LOT of help!

Reset

 

Yesterday I had a 'reset' day.

The past few years have been...I don't even know how to describe what my life has been like.  Busy?  (Indeed.)  Frantic ? (at times)  Stressful?  (Oh my yes)   Challenging?  (Boy howdy.)

During my life as a production weaver/teacher/author/event organizer there has been little time to rest as I shoved the roller coaster laboriously to the top of whatever peak it was challenging, then gravity taking over and swooshing down to the valley, only to begin again. Or Sisyphus as a weaver.

My life has never been 'routine' or 'smooth' or anything but a slog.

But!  It was MY slog.  My choice to take on what I did.  My choice to keep scrambling.  My choice to stay self-employed and dig hard and deep for the energy to keep pushing myself to meet my goals and pay my bills.

But.  But.  The past few years?  Yeah.  Big transition time.

A bunch of things have been ignored as being 'not important enough at this time to spend my energy on' and therefore I have a basket full of stuff that is beginning to weigh heavily on me.

A friend offered to help with one of those long languishing things but she, too, had a busy life until this summer she had a block of time where she needed to push reset on her life at about the same time I did.

Yesterday she came over and spent four hours(!) helping me with 21st century technology issues.

Because I needed to be available to answer her questions I never went to the loom and by the time she left I was wrung out - mentally.

I pressed pause and had a wee think.

I'm looking at a stack of 'mental' work (writing), class prep (thinking/writing), I'm guild chair again (more thinking/planning) and a stash that seemingly has no end.

Add to that I am needing to take heavy duty painkillers due to chronic pain and the brain fog from the pain/painkillers and I realized that I need to re-order my day.  Instead of getting my weaving done as a priority, I need to start doing my mental 'work' in the morning instead of messing about reading on the internet.

Begin as you mean to go on, so this morning I opened a Word document and generated the descriptions for the Zoom lectures and emailed that with the promise of photos for each to come.  She is already inundated with other things, so hopefully she can just add that info to her already bulging file 'folder' and then add the photos once I've sorted through them.  But I need to scroll through my photo files, then write a short description and tag them with the appropriate lecture title.  And that's more than I can manage now after doing the write ups.

On one hand, I'm disappointed I didn't get to the loom yesterday, but on the other, I needed to start dealing with these other things.  My weaving 'deadlines' are my own, to meet or adjust according to need.  And it also showed me that whether or not I weave does not affect the level of pain I experience.  On Friday I wove and had low pain.  Yesterday I didn't but I had higher pain levels.  Chronic nerve pain is a bugger - it's invisible and it's inconsistent.  Some days are better than others.  And you never know what is going to trigger a bad day.  You just need to ride it and manage it the best you can.

So today I can cross one job off my to-do list.  I'm learning to break my 'jobs' down into smaller, more manageable bites.  Part of me rebels against the slowness of my progress, but another part reminds me that the longest journey begins with a single step.  Yesterday I got help with some issues I couldn't manage on my own and today I took a single step towards getting that long languishing task on the way to completion.

And now I think I can reward myself with some loom time.  

Wealthy

 

A friend and I have been having Zoom 'tea' and recently they mentioned they had a 'wealth of years'.

We talked about that for a bit and once again I was reminded that 'wealth' doesn't just always mean 'money' (whatever that is), but we can be 'wealthy' in more than financial means.

(And yes, I know this is an old photo - it's very hot here and I'm reminding myself that in six short months this will be the view out my window.)

So - wealth.  Plenty.  

Right now I have many things which I would consider to have a 'wealth' of...

My years.  I'm in my 70s, which means I have lived a pretty decent length of time.  I have seen things, lived through things that are 'history' to people younger than I am.  These things are not events known about because I've read about them, I have lived them.

I have a wealth of knowledge about a narrow spectrum of available knowledge.  But I also have research skills and I'm not afraid to go digging to find out more.

I have a wealth of optimism that we can survive, given our history.  Surely we can get through this...too interesting times?

I have a wealth of experiences - I've travelled, far more than I ever anticipated given I live halfway to the place on the map that says 'beyond here be dragons'.  It's ok now that I find I am not able to hop on a plane at dark o'clock and cross the continent to teach.  Because I also have a good internet connection and can now teach via the wealth of the internet.  Or visit with distant friends.

I have a wealth of friends.  

I have a wealth of stash.  Recently I told friends that given how much fine and very fine yarn I have I'll still be weaving at 105.  They thought that was a fine idea.  My body?  Not so much.

Too often we tend to equate 'wealth' with how many toys we have.  How much money we have in the bank.  

We treat 'maturity' as though that was a negative quality instead of a positive one.  Or, at least, the European model of values does.

We dismiss our elders as being irrelevant when they hold the key to survival - because they have survived this long in a world that - right now - seems to grow increasingly hostile.  And mostly they have seen this...stuff...happen before and may have some thoughts on how to avoid the looming darkness.

There is a meme going round that snarkily says that 'young' people should be given a rotary phone or standard drive vehicle or other last century technology with the instructions for how to use it written out in cursive.  As if that is some sort of 'gotcha'.  I don't like that meme.  It punches down, and that's never a good thing imho.  Because right now?  This very minute?  I'm waiting for a younger friend to come help me learn how to use my new 'smart' phone.

We will survive these times by helping each other, not by ridiculing and demeaning each other.

Let us celebrate our various kinds of 'wealth', including our diversity and lean on each other, not kick the legs out from under others.

Broken

 

Do not be dismayed by the brokenness of the world.

All things break. And all things can be mended.

Not with time, as they say, but with intention.

So go. Love intentionally, extravagantly, unconditionally.

The broken world waits in darkness for the light that is you.

~ L.R. Knost

As per my 'usual' I got up, got my juice and morning pills and opened Twitter to scroll through what was happening in the Twitterverse.

I mean, it could have been Facebook, or the 'news' or any of a number of other online sites, but Twitter posts are generally short and succinct and about the right amount of info for my waking up brain.

In the pre-internet days it might have been the daily newspaper or the radio bringing me all the 'news of the day', so not much has changed other than the medium being used.

We are in the middle of a heat wave, a global pandemic, another about to become one, climate disasters around the world, and politics gone...I'd say 'mad' but that doesn't quite capture the totality of how I feel about what is currently happening within the species we call 'humanity'.  

In spite of our long summer days, it all begins to feel a bit...dark.  More than a little 'broken'.

It feels pretty pointless for me to head to the loom in a few minutes to weave another tea towel.  How self-absorbed I am, to know what is happening in the greater world and choose to go weave a...tea towel?

Then I came across a cartoon with a handful of stick figures protesting, very LOUDLY, about something, with signs saying 'everyone supports us'.  Across from this tiny group there was a much larger, and quieter, crowd and their signs read 'No we don't!'

And that pretty much sums up what appears to be happening right now.  

So I will finish my coffee, I will go weave a tea towel, and then a 2nd one (because I try to do two every day I can), and then I will work on teaching materials.  Because a more educated population is, IMHO, preferable to an uneducated one.  An inclusive population is preferable to an exclusive one.  And if, in the end, civilization (as we know it) goes to pot, we may very well need a group of people who can spin and weave again.

I will continue to work on my teaching content for SOS (and another entity which I will not name just yet) and do my best to share what I know with people who care to 

learn it.

I will continue to support others who are doing the same.

I will try to not be dismayed by the current brokenness of this world.

I will choose to weave, to live, with intention.  The intention to be helpful and supportive, and light as many candles as I can.  Because lighting another candle does NOT extinguish mine, but doubles the light.

On Fire!

 

Cut the first 8 towels off the loom today, separated and serged them, and piled them neatly to one side to wait for the rest of the warp to get woven.

But as I was serging them, I saw that the cloth is iridescent.  Whether it will last through the wet finishing will be determined when I get to that point.  Sometimes it does.  Sometimes it doesn't.

Life is full of such uncertainties.  Iridescence is one of those ephemeral effects that can be extremely elusive.  Sometimes you can make all the 'right' decisions and still not get it.  Other times it isn't even really on your radar, and oops!  There it is.

Working with a very shiny yarn will increase the chances of it happening, so I wasn't entirely surprised when I spotted it.  I'm just not counting on it staying.

Anyway, if you want more information on iridescence Bobbie Irwin has a book about it.  I was privileged to see all the samples she wove for the book when I dropped by her workshop and found she was on a break and had time to chat for a few minutes.  

The warp is tied on again, ready to go tomorrow.  For now I'm done.  Time to go put my feet up and think about some of the other things I really need to deal with.  Soon.

(The book is available through a variety of booksellers, but you can also order directly from her.  Maybe she will even sign it?)  

It's a Process

 

close up view

more distant view

Orange is certainly not everyone's cup of tea.  Nor it is mine, much.  So while I know these towels won't be attractive to some people, others may find them so.

When I started weaving, the colours seemed very chaotic, and off putting.  The design wasn't large enough to resolve and it just looked - too much.  Too much busy.  Too much orange.

But instead of abandoning my plans, I thought about the design decisions I'd made and decided to have faith.

Faith that the threads would pull together and become 'whole'.  

Besides, I also know not to judge the results while sitting at the loom because sometimes you just need to see it at a further distance or a different angle and suddenly it all begins to make visual sense.

So I finished the first tea towel, then did a quick shufty around the loom to see the results from different distances and angles and hey, presto, it was working.

I carried on and have just finished towel #5.  There is still a huge cone of the copper left so there should be no problem weaving this entire warp with the copper as weft and the overall look is of flames.  So it fits my design 'inspiration'.

If - by any chance - I run out of the copper, there is a pound tube of natural linen which will work well enough, and make a nice quality of cloth for tea towels, so it's all good.

Stash reduction proceeds!

Stay tuned in about two weeks for the after wet finishing results.  

Working in Series

 

Second draft after messing around with progressions - flames

Third draft, after deciding the mercerized cotton needed more interlacements

Fourth draft

Sometimes people ask where I get my ideas from.

Well, that depends (you're surprised, aren't you?)

Right now I'm focused on using up what stash I have, so I'm looking at the yarns I have and working with them to make something they will be suitable for.  Lately it's been never ending tea towels.

As I was finishing up working with the 2/16 cotton, I dug out the mercerized cotton stash - three boxes of it.  As I sorted the colours, I grouped them into potential warp combinations.  There was not enough of any one colour to make a warp (sectional beaming) but I rarely do a one colour warp these days.  (The all natural 2/16 was an exception because I needed something to use up the dribs and drabs of the dyed yarns and natural was cheap and easy.)

What I had when I finished sorting was four bins - one with medium to burgundy red, one with burgundy red to dark purple, one with an 'odd' blue - dark with greenish undertones - one with 'neutral' things like beige, grey, sage green.

Then I found a large cone of copper - about a kilo - and decided that it could be used as weft on the med-dark burgundy and began thinking about flames.  And how appropriate that vision was, considering how the world seems to be on fire right now - Spain, Portugal, large parts of the continent of Africa, the US and Canada.  I think Australia isn't burning right now just because it's winter there.

Then I thought about climate change in general - flooding, drought, other climate disasters.

As I looked at the bins of yarn, I thought I could use climate change as a theme with flames as the first.

The neutrals will be drought.  The darker reds/purples will be heat.  The 'odd' blue will be flood.

Given how fine 2/20 mercerized cotton is, and how slippery, and the colours I will be working with, each warp will be some iteration of a fairly simple progression.  For 'flood' I'm thinking of something more undulating, so that will likely be the last one I do.  But, and there's the thing, after beaming the first warp with the med-dark reds?  There is still a tonne of yarn left.  So this series may extend further.  As each warp gets woven, I look at it on the loom, I look at it from beside the loom, I check underneath, because the cloth looks slightly different on each side, I think about the colours (both warp and weft) I want to use, and I think about the theme.

And I make changes.  

Sometimes tiny ones, like between draft 2 and 3, sometimes slightly bigger ones, like draft 3 to 4.

Most times I don't have any such theme I'm working with, other than 'will this cloth do the task it is intended for?  Does it look pretty (to me)?'

But the world is too much with me these days, and here I am...