Gratitude

 

Recently I've been seeing hints and tips for 'leaders' to make sure they show appreciation to their team and say thank you.

This is something I have done for as long as I can remember - I try to make sure that when someone does something, not necessarily for me, but when I see them doing 'good', I try to thank them.

I know they aren't looking for atta-girls, or at least most of them aren't.  They are just kind people who do nice things, 'good' things, for others.

Particularly during this time of pandemic and isolation, and since the rise of the internet, it seems good old-fashioned thank you cards have become rare as hens teeth.

From time to time I will drop a tea towel 'burrito' on someone (locally) or mail one or two to a distant person who I see doing good things, kind things.  Let's face it, I'm not short of tea towels, and I can't possibly sell them all, so they become 'tips' to my health care team, or a 'just because' thing to friends.

I do this for people who appreciate hand made things - if they don't they will get a verbal thanks.  But some people are 'gift worthy' and get hand wovens, usually out of nowhere, just because I was thinking of them, or I saw them do something 'good' for others, and I wanted to let them know that people notice them doing good.  Because I don't want them to think no one notices or cares that someone, somewhere is trying to do something positive for others.  Especially now where there is so much negativity in the air.

A few weeks ago I sent off a couple of packages to people and this week I got an actual thank you card in return.  It didn't just say 'thank you', but recounted a memory they had of something that happened between us a very long time ago.  They wanted to let me know they still remembered that time and that it had made a lasting impression on them.

It got dusty in here.  Very, very dusty.

I well remembered the time, had no idea whatsoever that they remembered it or that it had made that kind of impression on them.  If I had been looking for something to warm the cockles of my heart (which I wasn't, honestly, but still) I got it that day.

The card sits on my mantel, a reminder that sometimes the 'little' things we do are not so little to someone else.

And that it is always better to be kind.  Always.

Priorities

 

With multiple projects on the go, all at once, it's much like keeping those precariously balanced spinning plates ON their respective sticks.

As a child, one of our Sunday activities was to watch the Ed Sullivan show after dinner.  Frequently he would have various acts on that did amazing things, like the spinning plate guy.  We would watch as he swiftly moved along the line of sticks adding more spin to each plate, adding more sticks and more plates.  Would he be able to keep them on their sticks?  Or would they lose momentum, wobble and fall?

Life as a professional weaver/author/teacher has been a a line of sticks with plates spinning with me running from one to the next, adding a bit more spin, trying to keep them spinning.  I had to learn how to juggle deadlines and prioritize the things needed to be done in order to bring each project to completion.

Even when I was young and had energy and determination to burn, things would get overwhelming, but by and large I managed.  Things may not have been 'perfect', but they would get done.

Now, I have even less energy and my determination is getting pretty thin as well.  And yet.

I still have heaps of paper/books etm on my desk, and, right now, on the floor of my office.  Because once again I am juggling several projects, with too few spoons in my day to keep those plates spinning.

More and more often I am having to ask people to help me.  Something that is very difficult for me to do, but do it I must.

The homework for Olds has begun to arrive and I know how anxious the students are to get their mark, so marking has taken over as a 'priority', but my editor has begun working on the ms so that *also* needs to be a priority.  I have a Zoom lecture for SOS tomorrow, so *that* is also a priority.  OTOH, I woke up with my 'usual' sinus headache and find myself unable to do much that requires the little grey cells.  Not, at least, before the 2nd cup of medicinal caffeine gets onboard!

What I would like to be doing is firing up the loom and weaving those fuzzy hearts, but I also have personal maintenance this afternoon, and when I look at my priorities, I have to rank them, triage them, so to speak, as to which ones will get done today.  And it's not looking good for the weaving.  It will have to wait until tomorrow after the Zoom.  If I have any spoons left after two hours of intense information dumping.

Spring has arrived and warm weather is predicted.  With that comes the potential for flooding as the snow melt heads to the lowest level.  Rivers which have been at record lows for water depth will begin to fill, and potentially overfill their banks.  Flood plains will flood (who could have foreseen *that*?), people will be inconvenienced - or worse.  There are already reports of mountain roads washing out.  

But climate change is a myth. Uh-huh.

I have been aware of environmental damage since Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring.  In the early 1980s I began composting, which reduced the garbage we sent to the landfill by a large amount.  When this community began a recycling program we started saving our paper and sending it to be recycled.  As the recycling programs expanded we set up a recycle storage area in the kitchen and do our best to separate and recycle things.  We buy vehicles that are fuel efficient, and are looking hard at a hybrid.  An all electric vehicle in our climate doesn't make much sense, at this time.  Things may change - eventually.  For now a hybrid is our best choice.  Even so, I've done 'circle' routes for years, planning out the most fuel efficient way to get to the places I need to go.  Public transit was never a big priority in this town and still isn't.  So I either walked, or drove.  Now I can't walk long distances, so if I need to go somewhere, it's use the vehicle.

We are reaching the tipping point where we are going to ruin this planet for life pretty quickly if we don't do something about it.  

It may seem like an individual can't do much, but there are things that a person *can* do.  Find out what you can do, then do it.  Advocate for measures to improve the situation.  Give up some things, like cheap clothing that falls apart quickly, or learn how to mend them.  Visible mending is becoming 'fashionable'.  I don't do that, but I do buy clothing and wear it until it is worn out, not just replace it with something 'new' just because it's a new season.

Some people put in a veggie garden so that they have fresh veggies.  Some people carpool when they can.  Some people eschew long trips abroad.  The one thing worse than flying is taking a cruise ship, both of them heavy polluters.

Human beings need to look at their priorities and decide: do we kill this planet or do we try to save it?  Not just for us, but for all of the life on it.  We forget that this planet was not put here for human beings; that we are not the boss of this planet, nor better than any other life form.  We are merely part of the entire cycle of life and it might be a really good idea to respect ALL life and learn to live together - not just human beings, but all of our 'relations' (as the Indigenous perspective puts it).

When you know better, do better.  Doing the best I can to learn what I can do, then doing it.

 

One Step

 

The longest journey begins with a single step.

Weaving is a long journey.  It is time consuming, labour intensive.  So I tend to 'celebrate' each step of completion, even though the job isn't done entirely.

Yesterday I finished threading the loom with the next warp, got it half sleyed, did some marking.  This morning I finished sleying, tied on, then cut/serged the last of the towels from the previous warp and got the lot into the washing machine.  Then I wound bobbins for the new warp, back and forthed with my editor.  And it isn't even 11 am!  Wow.  

Spring is here.  The temps are warming, the snow is gone (in town, at any rate), the trees are leafing out, the grass turning green.  

I have some errands this afternoon, but I'm going to begin weaving this warp and see if my 'fuzzy' hearts actually look like something or if they just look like 'blobs'.  If the latter I will pivot to something else.  Or I may just continue making something that looks like blobs.  TBD.

The next warp will be a change again.  Instead of a vertical design, I played around making something with a horizontal design element.  Happens I quite like that one so I'm eager to get to it.  I just happen to need to get through the current warp first.  Mostly it is a 'proof of concept' and it may get rejected as being anything I want to pursue.  The half-tones tend to blur the edges of the lines, which isn't a problem when you are playing with lines, more so when it is a motif that has a shape to it.  If you can't identify the shape, then the design simply does not work.  But I have all this red yarn to use up and fuzzy hearts might be quite suitable.  

But that's the thing with a journey.  Sometimes you go off the path because you followed a squirrel and sometimes the path peters out and you come back to the main trail.  But no matter what, you keep taking another step.  And another.  Until you are done.

Hiatus

 

Today isn't the way I thought it would be - for a number of reasons.  Instead of doing what I thought I would be doing, I have been given a bit of a hiatus.  A bit of a pause from the planned activities.

OTOH, there are lots of things to *be* done.  I just need to load up on the caffeine in order to tackle any of them.

The homework for the Olds class has begun arriving.  The first box is wending its way back home while the next is open on my work table and I will begin looking at the written work today.  A good Sunday 'job'?

And one more will be coming in the next few days.  Seems the post office in their town couldn't find my post office box address.  You know, the one where I've been receiving mail for 50 plus years?  Yeah, that 'invalid' address.  Which makes my decision to stop renting the box all the more pertinent.

On Friday I cut the last warp off the loom, managed to beam and start threading the new one.  It's a very simple threading progression, for which I'm grateful.  I'm having too much brain fog to confidently tackle something more complex.  My goal for today is to finish threading, sley and tie on, as well as read the written work for the Olds class.  I'm going to the post office tomorrow to cancel my box and I'd like to take the marked homework with me to return to the weaver.  (The cancellation has been planned for months, not an annoyed decision made in haste.)  But that's putting a lot of pressure on me, and it can just as easily get mailed later in the week as I have other 'town' errands on other days.  Still, I'd like to get the marks back to the students asap as I know they are on tenterhooks.

This week is busy with a number of commitments, for both of us.  The next SOS Zoom lecture is Wednesday, this one on Twills.  I forget when the lace class launches, sometime in July I think.  The plan right now is to visit SOS the end of June and sign whatever copies of The Intentional Weaver they have in the store.  About the only way to get a signed copy right now.  :)  Unless you bring your copy with you if you should be passing through my town.  Both of my books are still available at Blurb, in both pdf and print copies.  But those aren't signed.

My editor has begun working on the ms for Stories from the Matrix.  I'm still hoping for July 9 launch.  I'm pondering a 'book launch' via Zoom.  I'm also pondering ordering in some copies of the new book to sell myself?  But do I want to drag a bunch of books to the post office to ship?  Cheaper for people to buy them from the website.  OTOH, I could buy a few, sign them and put them on ko-fi...  TBD.

This hiatus has taken some of the pressure off of me and allowed me to think about such things.  I'm not feeling too much deadline pressure.  The beginning to weave class started yesterday.  Three students, one taking the class as a refresher, the other two brand new.  All three are doing well.  Now I just have to make it through the next 3 weekends.

We are well into spring now.  In fact it got warm enough that the a/c will likely get turned on soon.  We needed it for the guild room which turns into an oven on sunny days.  And of course weaving *is* a physical activity so I put the a/c on in the afternoon to make the room more comfortable for all of us.

Friday I got 3 more library books, one of which is brand new (Dana Stabenow's latest) and needs to be read asap.  The other two don't, at the moment, have hold requests on them so I might be able to renew my loan if I don't get them all read.  But I like Stabenow and her writing tends to carry me along so that should go fairly quickly.  :)

The coming week will be 'busy' but not too pressured, once the Zoom presentation is done.  I'm hoping to make some progress on weaving the 'new' warp.  There are two more drafts designed for when this one comes off the loom and I'm eyeing that heap of mercerized cotton which is disappearing so slooooowly.  Lot of play time with fine yarns!  But I have condensed the pile several times now and it is melting away, little by little.

And now my standard 2nd cup of coffee is about gone.  Time to get dressed and head to the loom.  I hear the siren call of a warp wanting to be threaded!

Aging

 

Not whining about my body today, but my technology.

My iPad is about 4-5 years old and has been getting glitchy over the past month.  Not enough to worry about - at first.  But getting more noticeable.

So I did a quick search for how old it might be and what the expected lifetime is.

Turns out they last about 5 years and oops - mine is within the 5 year range of lifetime.  And I do use it, quite a lot as it happens.  I also have stuff filed on it I really don't want to lose - like every copy of Heddlecraft, and my Handwoven subscription.

Links to websites I consult frequently from the comfort of my chair in the living room, not haul my backside down the hall to the 'office' to use the desktop.

My leisure activities (games, I confess, I play games - like Scrabble) but also apps that help me with my weaving - iWeaveit, the camera I now use exclusively instead of my elderly digital camera which doesn't hold a candle to the newer digital cameras on my phone or iPad.

My music/playlist.  Over 300 songs.  We use that on road trips instead of watching tv.  Sometimes I need a bit of a lullaby at bedtime if the thought squirrels are too manic.

Email.  Mastodon.  (I still haven't figured out how to link the desktop to my Mastodon account.  Yes, I've left Twitter.  For reasons.)

And so on.

Just spent 5 minutes looking at new iPads.  Sigh.  What I would like I can't afford/justify.  I mean I could 'afford' it if I could justify it.  But I can't.  So one of the lower quality models will have to do.

A friend will help me transfer my files from the old to the new, then do a factory reset on the old one.  I may donate it to someone, with the warning that it's old and may not last long.  But I will wait and see what my friend says.  She may advise to just send it to electronic recycling.

I find myself as prepared as I can be for tomorrow and it looks like just one or two towels left on the loom to be woven.  So I'm going to go weave one and decide if I play yarn chicken for the last one or sacrifice what is left and start beaming the next warp.  I'm feeling like I really want to get ON with the next one.  And I've woven enough of that mid-value blue that what is left can go to a friend who makes bobbin lace.  I know I could keep it in my own bobbin lace stash, but I also know I can get some of that yarn back if I begin making lace again.  If I can't weave, maybe I can fwip (technical term) bobbins?

If I get my cataracts 'fixed' maybe I will be able to see better - enough that I can see the threads to make lace, anyway.  

So, on to the loom.  Be really nice to get this warp off the loom today, even if I do weave two and won't have time to begin beaming the next.  I can begin on Sunday.

Winter -> Summer

 

Summer colours

Seems we have jumped almost entirely over spring into summer.  The forecast for next week is temps in the 20s (70s for those still not using metric measures) and yet this morning the furnace is running.  We have a few weeks of 'spring' in which we need the furnace at night, the a/c during the day.  Apparently that begins this weekend.

Yesterday I completed marking the first box of homework and will be heading to town for errands today so the goal is to mail it back to the student along with an order for a tea towel that came in earlier in the week.  There are some other small errands so everything will get done after lunch and then I head to the guild room to set up the last loom for the class beginning Saturday.

Next week is a busy one with appointments and a Zoom presentation, this time on twills.  I'm hoping to have the current warp off the loom tomorrow or Monday at the latest, and the next warp beamed before I have to re-arrange the studio for the Zoom.

I think the Lace class with School of Sweet Georgia launches in July (above photo is one of the samples I wove for that).  And I am falling down the rabbit hole into looking at crepe yarns/cloth and came up with a 'test' I can do fairly quickly once I clear a few more things off my desk...and floor...

My 'office' is tiny and sometimes I run out of flat space (mainly because I'm 'messy' and tend to 'file by pile' so there are stacks of things in progress - until they are complete.  And sometimes I get so excited by a new project I don't clear away the old...)

My editor has begun working on my file and we've discussed a few things about the formatting and will talk again at the weekend.  I'm trying to *not* be a control freak, but...

One of the things we are talking about is doing a 'book launch'.  Now that we have the internet and Zoom, I don't have to stump around the country promoting my new book, I can do it online.  So stay tuned for an announcement in the coming weeks.  Scheduled publication date is July 9.  Yes, it's arbitrary.  I work best to a deadline.

The snow is gone, the trees are leafing out, the grass is turning green.  Hopefully we won't see anymore snow but we have had snow in May before.  It doesn't stay long but it can come with one last reminder that we live in a part of the country that can - and at times - get snow much later than other parts of the country,  Hard to believe that mid-summer isn't all that far away.  It still feels like winter is peeking over our shoulders.

Never mind.  I have a class to teach, homework to mark (another box is ready to be picked up) and a warp that is nearly done on the loom with three more in the queue.  

Onwards!

Resources

One thing about being as old as I am, doing this craft for as long as I have done it, is that I have resources.  Lots of resources.  A wall full of resources.

Nothing like getting hooked by an 'obscure' technique in a craft with so many variables!

I took the spinning workshop on Sunday because I wanted to be a better weaver.  If I don't understand the nature of my materials, if I don't understand the subtleties of how they are made and consequently how they behave, I won't understand the nuances of my cloth.

Crepe is a cloth that isn't very popular or top of mind for most people.  I've been aware of it for a long time, but everything I read about it said that 'true' crepe cloth had to be made with yarn spun with special aspects to it.  Since I had little time to spin, I kind of ignored that whole category although I did use some of the drafts in Olesner and other books that had sections on crepe weave because of the textures.

During the class we looked at compound plying structures, crepe being one of them.  Taking the time to understand how the yarns were put together has renewed my interest in crepe *weaves*.  But there is very little information that looks at the details of making crepe yarns.  Most of the things I've found have been pretty general.

But here's the thing.  I have a wide circle of friends and acquaintances who are more knowledgeable than me about things like spinning.  It didn't take long after contacting a few to start getting more resources.  And I haven't even exhausted my own - yet.

As usual there is the typical 'it depends' when it comes to nearly everything about weaving (and spinning).  There is a spectrum of advice on what needs to be done.  But one thing pretty much all of the resources I've read so far state the yarn needs to have twist energy built into it.  That twist energy causes the plane of the cloth to contract and develop more 3 dimensional texture.  Some refer to crepe as 'fragile' while others refer to how strong it is, due to the high twist.  One warns that the higher the twist, the closer the yarn comes to reaching its tensile strength and therefore becomes more prone to break due to the tension in the yarn.  I've seen this in action in my own spinning.  A little bit of twist makes a soft yarn, a moderate amount of twist can make a nice pliable co-operative yarn, high twist can make an unruly yarn that requires careful tension control, too much twist overcomes the integrity of the yarn and it snaps.

So, me being me, I am going to look at that spectrum of things and maybe do some experimentation.  I am even contemplating using some commercially spun yarn to pair with handspun.  I do this with my own yarns all the time - spin a singles then ply with a commercially spun yarn.  I think I might give this a try.

Learning how to control how much twist I apply to the singles and then the ply is going to be the hard part.

Will I do anything but make a few samples?  Probably not.

But the point is this - it will add to my foundation of knowledge and help me understand cloth better.  Taking things to the extreme lets me know where the boundary of functional and not functional lives.  

And besides, it's interesting - to me.  I don't have to earn an income from my weaving anymore (although I'll never say no to something in my ko-fi tip jar!  Because there are things that need buying to feed my 'addiction' to yarns/fibres!  And things like ink cartridges, boxes of paper, not to mention yarn...)

There may come a day when I will find I can't weave anymore, but I should be able to spin and knit.  So I'm not going to be too hard on myself if I don't dig my teeth into crepe yarns/cloth right away.  Sounds like maybe a winter project.

In the meantime, it's information gathering time.  The more I discover, the more information I feed into my thinking, the better able I will be to make choices when I get to the point of actually doing something with it.

My story, sticking to it...