FAFO (Fool Around Find Out)

 

I did a little FAFO (or as some like to call it, the scientific method).

In other words, I tried things, documented how they worked - or didn't - and am now in the process of writing out my findings.  And the instructions for the class they were designed for and woven to illustrate.

Since weaving is a very high labour intensive process, I did two different 'experiments' - one was to weave an area of lace/plain weave at one end of the scarf in a colour gamp (repeating the same thread colours as were in the warp), then the second scarf was done only in plain weave, again with the colour gamp at one end..

One set (the lace weaves) will be used as the student project for the lace weave class on SOS.

The other can be used for my lecture on colour theory.

Once again I was reminded of just how difficult it is to weave a 'perfect' plain weave, even when I'm paying attention and trying.  The other is how much a high value contrast between warp and weft will show up every little inconsistency in said plain weave.  And how little an 'imperfect' plain weave will look 'wrong' if it is woven consistently.  Just saying.

A timely reminder going into the new year - to stay humble.

Not a lot to show for a couple weeks of weaving (plus several weeks of thinking, planning, number crunching, choosing the colours to use, all done well before the first warp was wound.)

But the information gained was much much bigger than one might expect given the output of the past two weeks.  (I checked my blog, the first picture I showed was of the first warp after being woven, on Dec. 13.)

Some of these scarves were woven on truly dark and dreary days and were a tonic.  

For now?  It's back to tea towels.  I beamed the warp yesterday and got it half threaded today.  My goal is to finish threading, see if I can get it sleyed as well, then generate the treadling.

As the new year approaches, I will continue as I have done all my life - begin the new year as I mean to go on.  Keep weaving.  Keep teaching.  Keep busting my stash.  Keep on, keeping on.

Wrapping Up the 'Old' Year

 

Today is the 29th of December, 2022.  I am looking forward to finishing off the series of scarves I've been weaving for teaching samples.  The last warp will come off the loom today, the scarves will get trimmed of weft tails, then into the washing machine and dryer they will go, to be pressed tomorrow.  They may not get hemmed until the new year, but the majority of the work will have been done by close of *this* year.

I didn't need to weave so many examples, but I had the yarn, and I'd designed the project to have multiple 'lessons', and since I am still teaching, albeit online, it seemed like a no brainer to extend the examples to include more options.

Once I'm done the last warp, the balance of the yarn will go to a guild member who has been making, and teaching how to make, temari balls.  It's rather more yarn than I might have donated but OTOH, there isn't really enough left to weave with unless I get really creative.

And frankly?  I'm done.  I've enjoyed the process and the results, and that is...enough.

I've also expanded my skills (all that plain weave with high contrast colours warp and weft), being as 'perfect' as I can be with beat, given the change between huck and plain weave.  

It was time to let go.

I am learning, slowly and surely, how to let go.

Let go of obligations.  Let go of grand plans.  Let go of expectations - not just of others, but myself.

It is quite freeing - to let go.

That doesn't mean I will sit back and simply watch the world go by - although it is tempting, some days.  Because I still have way too much yarn.  I'm pleased with the current combo of 2/16 unmercerized cotton warp with 2/20 mercerized cotton weft, plus the new direction I'm exploring in terms of designing.

And that is enough.  I will do it because it pleases me.

And that seems like a good enough theme, or goal, or, if you like, resolution to take into the new year.

Sending all our best wishes for the coming year.

Prepping for the New Year

 

fabric for skirts for a 

local Ukrainian dance troupe

Getting my 2023 calendar in order, realizing how jammed the first week of January is with 3 days of Zoom presentations.  The whole month, really, given everything else going on.

The first Zoom is for School of Sweet Georgia on Jan. 4 on the topic of Form Follows Function.  This is part of the on going series of lectures/seminars that I originally developed for my Olds students during the first year of the pandemic, then realized that others might be interested.  Plus my two new classes will be launched in 2023.

Since then I've begun offering the lectures to guilds as well.  And so on Jan. 5 I'm doing a guild presentation and then on the 7th, a guild 'program' and then later that day, the seminar.

In one week I will do presentations to people via SOS from all over North America (possibly beyond since SOS have students other than just NA), then a group in Washington, and finally in Missouri.

And nary a dark o'clock flight.  Win-win?

Once that is over, I have to prep for the 4 person weaving class that will happen on 4 consecutive Saturdays (with additional support the Sundays following) locally.  There was enough interest that another has been scheduled for Apr/May with 3 people already signed up.

If a guild is interested in my guild program/seminar presentations, they are listed on http://laurafry.com

If anyone is interested in booking me, my schedule is pretty open for 2023.  I can be contacted at

laura at laurafry dot com.

Later today I plan on getting my 2023 calendar pinned to the door where I can easily see it, then set up a planning calendar for 2024.  Not that I probably need to do that anymore, but it's a habit, and a new year habit that helps me be clear on what I need to do, and when.  A clean slate, as it were, full of opportunity and possibility.

For now?  I have a warp to weave.  I won't likely get it off the loom today, but should be able to make a good start on it, making it possible to finish tomorrow morning.  Then wet finish all 8 scarves.  Once they are hemmed, given a final press and I write up my project notes, that is one thing I can put 'complete' on and begin the new year fresh.  Back to using up my stash.  Back to tea towels.  

Wrapping Up the Old Year

 

We are down to the final week of the calendar year 2022.

A lot of people make resolutions for the new year.  I am not one of them.  Over the years I found that a resolution was too rigid.  It didn't allow for Life Happening and then if I missed a day and/or 'broke' my resolution, I felt like I had failed and therefore it was over.  

Instead I think of goals.  

Goals are less rigid.  They allow for days when things go topsy-turvy, allow leniency without making me feel like I failed to keep a promise, even if it was only to myself.

Goals allow for mistakes being made, needing to fix them.  Or change the path I had assumed would be appropriate to meet my goal(s).

Goals recognize that sometimes things go smoothly, and sometimes?  They just don't.  They also allow for minor changes in how one arrives at the goal.

I have - for many years now - been working on weaving down my stash.  At times I have had to buy more yarn in order to use up what I have.  Seems counter productive, and yet?  I see holes on the shelves where there used to be rows of tubes of yarn.

My goals were further battered by people giving me *their* yarns.  In some cases I have given some of that gifted yarn away, but I have also managed to weave some of it.  

My latest 'purge' happened to coincide with needing to do a class project and, because I had acquired some yarn from another weaver, I didn't have to buy anything.  I won't use it all up, but a fellow guild member put out a call for yarn of that type for a guild class, so once I am done the class project later this week, the rest of the yarns will be boxed up and donated for classes.

I have always had daily goals and it is no different now.  I find myself motivated to get things done when I have a plan for the day.  As I age, those goals have had to change.  Instead of getting X done, I do about half of what I could manage even just 3 years ago.  

But because I have fluid goals (weave down my stash) I don't get upset if my plans need to change.  If I need to buy more yarn to use up what I have.  Pivot and do something else (like design, weave and write up a class project) while my larger goal sits for a few days.

So as 2022 wraps up, I look at my stash.  I see how *much* yarn I still have, but remind myself to see the empty spaces on the shelves where a lot more yarn used to reside.  

This week I will change my calendars.  I keep one for studio deadlines (teaching/zoom), my pocket calendar (personal appointments) and a calendar for the year beyond.  That last is much less important now that I am not traveling to teach and am not booking events that far in advance.  But I *am* booking zoom presentations to guilds, so I will keep that system going for a while yet.

Because one of my goals is to keep teaching, even if it *is* only online.  And who knows, maybe guilds will still do online presentations once they get back to 'normal' (whatever that is going to look like in the coming months/years.)

Step by Step

 

People don't realize that the act of creation usually doesn't fall full blown out of one's head into reality.  More usually it begins with a thought, a seed of an idea, and then as I work with it, I begin to push, pull, tug at it until it becomes...something.

So a few weeks ago I had an idea, a concept.  It was pretty well formed - as a concept.  But when I began putting my thoughts onto 'paper' (because I needed to go old school) it was pretty simple.  As the days/weeks went by, I began tweaking the idea, making minor changes, just to see what happened when I did.  

In the interim from having the idea, getting the original woven and wet finished, I have gone through several incarnations, slowly beginning to see how the weave structure works.

And yes, some of those ideas went straight to the trash bin!

However, I have arrived at this one, and once I get the scarves done (hopefully this week) I think this is the one I will put into the loom next.  

Right now I'm enjoying this 'play', trying this, trying that, tweaking here, tweaking there.  It is fulfilling the desire I had to explore weave structure and experiment.  

I'm not entirely satisfied with this, and *may* tweak it a bit further over the next few days because I see a way forward to clean up some of the lines.  But I may wait until I see it in the loom.  That's one of the big advantages of a computer assisted dobby - I can quickly make edits, then give them a try.

But right now my priority is to get the scarves done on the small loom.

What Price Knowledge?

 

Textile Design Theory in the Making

I have been making my way through this book, not because it is difficult to read (although it does use academic language) but because of the concepts it is presenting.

For me, this is a book to be taken in small bites, savored on the tongue, chewed thoughtfully, digested slowly.

I have for many years tried to describe the design process for me.  I have used various words, none of which really described how I felt about the process.  

The concept of 'matrix' was new to me in this context, but the more I think about it, the more I like it.

According to the Concise Oxford Dictionary, the word matrix encompasses:

Womb; the place in which a thing is developed; substance between cells; rectangular array of quantities in rows and columns that is treated as a single quantity (among other things).

That last is so directly germane to weaving I'm not sure why I didn't think of it before.  But now that the concept has been presented to me, I begin to see the 'truth' of it.

Matrix incorporates all the 'it depends'es of how a textile comes into being (be it basketry, knitting, weaving, etc.)

There is much to think about contained between the pages of this somewhat slim (250 pages including glossary, references and index) volume, but the concepts are huge.  Hence, the slow steady intake of what the author(s) are presenting.

Prof. Igoe also talks about the storytelling of textiles.  Someone called me a storyteller early in my career, and I embraced that concept and always incorporate my stories in my writing and speaking.

So much of textile terminology has been adopted by other technologies, especially computers, because the idea of storytelling embraces all human endeavours.  The fact that we have used textiles for thousands of years as a metaphor validates the use of 'stories' in thinking about creating textiles to this day.

This book is not, perhaps, for everyone, being part philosophy, part introspection, part exploration of *how* we think.  It isn't 'cheap', but what price knowledge?

As a person involved in the creation of textiles (and writing to support teaching the creation of textiles) this book has been a welcome introduction to concepts far beyond what I am used to as a designer.  It does not tell me *how* to create, but perhaps *why* I create.  Why I find weaving endlessly interesting.  And why it is, at times, so difficult to pass the knowledge of creating cloth to others.  

Because change one thing, and everything can change.  Every piece of the puzzle affects every other piece of the puzzle.  And until you get the threads into the loom, interlace them, and then wet finish them, you never really know if you have managed to create the vision you dreamt of in your mind.

The book is an academic book with an academic price.  However, the paperback version is being launched in February 2023 and you can pre-order it now.  

If you are, like me, interested not just in how, but in the why of creating textiles, this may be the book for you.  If you find weaving (or other textile arts) intellectually stimulating, you might enjoy this thought provoking look at how we think about how we create textiles.

If it is too expensive for personal purchase, maybe a guild library might invest in it and make it available to a larger audience.  

Christmas Eve

 

I would say I'm multi-tasking except the past few days I've been working on class stuff.  So not exactly 'multi', just a bunch of things that need doing with deadlines 'looming'.

Even though the lace class doesn't launch for some months yet, I promised I would develop a class project and since I have a variety of colours in 2/10 mercerized cotton, which Sweet Georgia Yarns sells, I thought I'd tackle two birds - use up some of that yarn *and* do a variety of colourways for students to either use as is, or springboard from to develop their own colour combinations.  And of course, once I started, I kept thinking of more options, and...since I want to use up my yarn stash as much as possible, why not just weave more?  I rather suspect that whatever is left will go to a guild member who requested mercerized cotton for making temari balls.

Plus the January class is coming up rather quickly, so I got the two warps wound for the class.  If I can't get to the guild room (someone is doing a major re-arranging of the room contents) before we leave for Vancouver, I may be pressed for time to get the two looms dressed, given the trip to Vancouver the week before the class begins.  Better not count on having the energy to both wind the warps and dress the looms, and today seemed like a warp winding day.  That's that bin and bag in the lower left hand corner.

Once those were done, I started two more warps for the lace class.  I have two done, but the yarns were calling my name, so why not?

The warps actually hold a number of 'lessons' - lace weave of course, because that's the class topic, but also examples of using the Fibonacci sequence to design stripes, then colour combinations, how the colours work together in lace and in plain weave.  The warps are long enough for two scarves and one is being woven in plain weave to use as colour blending examples.  Or to sell.  I'll decide later.

The yarn in the bin in the lower right of the photo is weft for the next warp going into the Megado.  At this point it may take a while because right now I'm focused on the lace class, and it's just easier if I finish that project before I go do something else, then have to re-tool my thinking back to the lace.

Goal tomorrow?  Dress the loom with one of the warps wound today, and who knows, maybe even begin weaving?  

That yellow/orange/red warp will be a perfect project for a merry day.

Best wishes to all, whatever you believe or don't believe.  We can all use a little 'happy', so I hope you have some.