Books, Books and Still More Books

 

These are the books still available for sale from Allison's library.

If you are interested in one, the price listed is just for the book.  Shipping is an additional $22 (if you want more than one I will estimate the shipping for a larger parcel - frequently 2 or 3 books can go for the cost of one book).

If you are in Canada, I can accept etransfer, cheque or Paypal.  If you are in the US I can accept Paypal (and if you are in the US, you get the exchange rate discount - just saying...)

 

Alto, Palmer, Weiland.  Sewing Ultra Suede Brand Fabrics.  Soft cover $30

Buxton, Judith.  Selected Canadian Spinning Wheels in Perspective.  Soft back.  $30     Clarke, Leslie J.  The Craftsman in Textiles.  Hardback.  $20.

Fannin, Allen.  Handloom Weaving Technology hardback $30 (2 copies)

Finlay, Victoria.  Color.  Hardback  $30

Hollister, U. S.  The Navajo and his Blanket.  Hard Back.  $30

James, George Wharton.  Indian Blankets and their Makers; the Navaho.  Hard back.  $30

Larsen, Jack Lenor and Mildred Constatine.  The Art Fabric; Mainstream.  Soft back.  $50

Larsen, Jack Lenor and Mildred Constatine.  Beyond Craft; the art fabric.  Hard back.  $50

Larsen, Jack Lenor.  A Weaver’s Memoir hardback.  $30  two copies

Larsen, Jack Lenor and Jeanne Weeks.  Fabrics for Interiors; a guide for architects, designers, and consumers.  Soft back.  $30

Laughlin, Mary Elizabeth.  More Than Four.  Coil back.  $30

Mayer, Anita Luvera.  Clothing from the Hands That Weave.  Coil back.  (water damaged, will give away)

Mayer, Anita Luvera.  Handwoven Clothing Felted to Wear.  Coil back.  $30

Mera, HP.  Spanish American Blanketry.  Paper back  $20

Moorman, Theo.  Weaving as an Art Form; a personal statement.  Hardback.  $30

Pendleton, Mary.  Navajo and Hopi Weaving Techniques.  Soft cover.  $30

Proctor, Richard and Lew, Jennifer.  Surface Design for Fabric.  Soft back.  $30

Ranshaw, G. S.  The Story of Rayon.  Very old – 1930s?  Cardboard cover.  Worn.  (will give away if anyone wants it)

Samuel, Cheryl.  The Chilkat Dancing Blanket.  Soft cover.  $30

Sanders, Nadine and Joyce Harter.  Weaving that Sings.  Soft back.  $30

Sutton, Ann.  Ideas in Weaving.  Hard back.  $30 (may not be sold, awaiting payment)

Van der Hoogt, Madelyn.  The Complete Book of Drafting for Handweavers.   Signed. Coil back.  $50

Waller, Irene.  Designing with Thread.  Hard back.  $30.  (may not have sold – awaiting payment)

Worst, Edward.  Foot Treadle Loom Weaving.  Soft cover.  1976 reprint  (would give away if anyone wants it.)

Ephemeral

 

painted warp scarf

With the news of a huge amount of solar activity this weekend, we decided to head out of town late last night and the light pollution of the city to see what we could see.  We had been seeing photos from Europe where the lights were magenta, which is unusual.

Alas, we spent over an hour at the top of the hill to the west of town waiting, waiting, waiting, as the clouds slowly moved in and nothing much happening.

Finally we gave up and drove back home.

Now I see lots of locals did manage to see the lights, so I'm a bit disappointed we didn't.

OTOH, we *have* seen the northern lights before, so the disappointment this time isn't all that acute.

So much of life is fleeting.  So much of life relies on being in the right place, at the right time.  So much of life is happenstance, serendipity.

But the northern lights truly are something quite spectacular.  If you have a chance, at least look up after dark.  If you live in a highly polluted light environment, a wee drive might be enough to get you a glimpse.

I use nature as a design inspiration frequently.  That whole series of painted scarf warps I did a few years ago was done as a response to some of the colours I see in nature.  Humans get so wrapped up in the latest crisis, the latest chaos (and lordy, I understand, I do!) that sometimes we need to stop for a few minutes and just look.

The fact that we sat on a hill for over an hour, in the dark, and saw not much of anything, was a bit of a disappointment.  But we also understand that the lights are ephemeral, and sometimes they show, and sometimes they don't.  I'm a bit jealous that other locals did get to see them, but I'm happy for them that they did.  Because for some of them, it was their first time.  And for us it would have just been the cherry on top because the lights were exhibiting a deep magenta, which is fairly rare.  

Mostly I've seen the green lights, one time I saw red (also fairly rare).  I've never seen magenta or white, and those are truly a wonder to behold.

Someone posted a quote on FB the other day (I paraphrase) - we enter this life with an intake of breath, we exit it with an exhalation, and we live for the moments that take our breath away.

I was hoping for a moment of breathlessness last night.  But maybe we'll try again tonight.

Me and 'AI'

 

Artificial 'Intelligence'.

Too bad there is less 'intelligence' and more mis- and dis-information being dished up by these 'services' being touted as 'make your life easier', and 'create art like a professional', and 'let me dish up a word salad of nonsense in answer to your search'.

I am *not* saying that there are no programs that are legitimate design tools.  I mean, I've been using weaving software since 1988 when I bought my first program (Fiberworks for anyone interested) at a time when a large part of the weaving community declared that using such software was 'cheating'.

But that's the difference imho - a program takes in the information the user provides.  The current 'AI' scrapes the internet for content, not understanding a thing, just cobbling together an approximation of what is happening in a craft (for example) and without thought, spits it out.

So we have recipes that make no sense.  Wild mushroom foraging books that tell people that a mushroom is safe when it is deadly, books on crafts that make no sense of the technical skills or information involved in mastering that skill.

In the meantime, billionaires spend billions developing and marketing their half baked ideas of what constitutes knowledge about, oh, let's say weaving, without understanding one iota of the actual dynamics of the craft, never mind the physics or how a textile is made from the thread up.  And stealing content from the humans who have actually created content, without compensation, may I add.  (The fact they are now whining that they can't honour copyright because it is too expensive kind of says it all, imho.)

What they are clearly saying is that they would rather spend money creating a faulty tool (Cybertruck comes to mind for some strange reason) than pay human beings to think, create, grow.  They would rather cut out the actual humans doing the skill than pay them for their time, expertise and creativity.

But a tool cuts more than one way.

As usual, everyone has to make up their own minds about whether this new 'tool' is helpful or not.

In the meantime, I'll be sitting here at my desktop with Fiberworks and I'll be drawing upon works that have been done in the past, thinking about them, tweaking them, creating something different than my resource, and using my own brain and creativity to hopefully come up with something that I can put my name on.

I will be sitting here at my desktop, writing words that will hopefully help people make sense of this craft that has been practiced since the beginning of (human) time.  I will be writing, and weaving, and encouraging others to learn.  To grow.  To experiment.  To try to understand the principles and work at 'mastering' this craft.

I encourage people to support other humans, not billionaires trying to starve out actual humans from creative pursuits.

If you want to support me, as usual here are my links:

School of Sweet Georgia

Handwoven class

 My books at blurb

My memoir at ko-fi  plus towels, lots of towels!

And if you are interested in a remote presentation...  (no 's' on the site yet, so you may be warned it isn't secure, or email me laura at laurafry dot com)

Flow

 

I listen to music when I work in the studio.  For weaving, I have headphones that do two things - block out the loud bang of the solenoids, and provide music.  The type of music is eclectic, shall I say?  But mostly I enjoy rock and roll, although not exclusively.

When I'm beaming or threading, I tend to listen to instrumental so that I don't get carried away, singing along (in my head).  But when I'm actually weaving, pretty much anything goes.

I have a rather large collection of CDs, ones I bought, then more that I inherited from my brother which doubled my options.  Recently someone gave me a whole bunch of their CDs because they weren't listening to them anymore, which really expanded my listening options.

It was interesting to note that my brother and I had very similar tastes in music, but only two CDs were duplicates.  The same happened when I got the box of CDs from my friend - another selection of titles I didn't already have except for the two duplicates.

I have a couple of boomboxes, and buy the ones that do both CDs and cassette tapes because I use the tapes to time how long my weaving session is.  Generally I weave for 45 minutes, then when the music stops, I stop and take a break.

This morning I grabbed a random tape (I rarely write on the tape which CD I taped on it) and listened to Billie Holliday in the morning, then Sade in the afternoon.

When Smooth Operator came on I suddenly snapped back into awareness (weaving is a working meditation for me and I'm only half 'here', if you understand what I'm saying).  As the music played and I wove, I realized I was in sync with the music experiencing that flow consciously instead of sub-consciously.  

This warp was a bit of a bother to get set up (see previous blog post) but once it was finally ready, it appears to be behaving nicely and I've been really enjoying the motions, the rhythm, and the flow of it all.

The fine linen is looking 'balanced' and the web in the loom looks promising.  But mostly the linen, well steeped in humidors, is being co-operative.

It's really nice to just sit down and get into the rhythm and watch the picks flow by.

Watershed(s)

 

One is told that life is a straight path to your goals.  You go to school, get an education, determine what you want to have happen, work hard, and voila, you get to the finish line.

No one tells you that the path isn't as advertised.  No one says that the 'goal' is made up of a multitude of smaller goals, smaller achievements, along the way.

Some days, just getting out of bed and getting dressed is about all I can manage.  Because the road has been long, hard, rocky and in some cases, washed out entirely.

But - and here's the thing - it has always been 'interesting'.

Some days that's 'interesting' as in the curse 'may you live in interesting times'.  Some days it's 'interesting' as in 'huh, I did not know that - wow'.

When I chose to retire in 2019 (from selling at craft fairs and travelling to teach) I had no idea how much my life was to change.  The warning signs had been there for a number of years, but I figured I was just...exhausted.  I thought that some rest and ease from critical deadlines was all I needed to get back into the saddle and charge on.

Apparently bodies come with 'best before' dates.  And it seems I have been bumping up against mine.

So, I take the good where I find it these days.  Right now, it's the realization that I am still in an unexpected remission from cancer.  I take it in the fact that the medication I take for cholesterol is keeping my LDL at a 'good' level and I don't appear to be having any cardiac issues.  (And no, I've never had a heart attack - I've got a good strong heart, crappy plumbing.)

Yesterday I had massage and my therapist tweaked my exercises again, and poked and prodded to try and get more muscle spasms to let go.  I'm aching today, but I think I can weave at least one session.  I'm eager to get more of this warp woven because I think it's going to turn out really nice.  Nice enough I might just be tempted to buy more of this very fine linen!  (I know, I know, my mission is to weave DOWN my stash, not add to it!)

I keep mulling over how I might continue to teach, how much I want to promote my remote seminars/guild programs.  I was going to raise my prices, but now I'm not so sure.

I also need to sell some of my inventory.  It isn't enough to weave the yarn, now I need to sell the textiles!

So I'm doing a limited 'sale' on ko-fi - two designs are on sale with a Buy One, Get One Free.  There are a limited number of these towels, and first come, first serve, until midnight May 9, which just happens to be our 54th wedding anniversary.

In the meantime, I continue to juggle personal maintenance appointments.  I really did not understand just how *much* maintenance an aging body requires!  Of course, most of my family died long before they got to my age, so maybe I just didn't have anyone in my life to show me how it was going to be.

Anyway, I'm going to get dressed now that I'm done my second cup of coffee and go fire up the loom.  And vow to actually DO the exercises my massage therapist gives me.  Because when I actually do them, I get better.  Who'd a thunkit? 

Life; Big and Little

 

Next warp - two shades very close in value and hue of beige, with natural linen weft

Sometimes I like to go for a more subtle approach; other times I like bigger, bolder designs.  A lot like life, really.

We tend to think of "Life" as the big, bold moments, but really when you think about it, Life is made up of all those small moments that we tend to gloss over.

Like yesterday, the brief glimpse of the plum tree, wreathed in a crowning glory of luminous white blossoms as the spear of sunlight arrowed through the clouds, just at the moment I glanced out my kitchen window.

The warp on the loom right now is one of those quiet, subtle ones.  Really hard to get a good photo of it in the loom.  The colours/values of the warp and weft threads are very close, making it difficult to see the actual design being woven.

Is this a 'waste of time' because no one will really 'see' it?

Not to me.

And I think of all our ancient ancestors, who did not have 'power' tools, but only sweat equity, who laboured long hours to make useful tools, beautiful.  

So many people condemn those ancient ancestors as being ignorant, or sub-human, when the only difference was that they did not have the tools we have today - and which *we* would not have if it weren't for the fact that we build on what has been done before we came along.  Without our ancient ancestors we wouldn't have, well, *us*.

Anyone who has read history (and it is becoming painfully apparent that too few of 'modern' folk have actually read any history at all), will understand that people 2-10,000 years ago were pretty much the same as we are today.

There are clay tiles with letters written complaining about bad landlords, bad employees, poor weather, natural disasters - the list goes on and on.  We are very little different from our ancient ancestors when we stop and think about it for more than a second.

While artifacts of pottery, metal, glass, even some wood, are fairly commonly preserved, textiles are less so.  It's only recently - as in the past 60 or so years - that researchers bothered to preserve the tiny scraps of yarn/textiles that might be left in the sites they were researching.  Because until recently - as in the 1920s or so, all textiles were made from fibre sources that would degrade back into the soil.  

Now we have a plethora of petroleum based fibres that will live on forever, polluting the ground and water.  

What little knowledge we have of ancient textiles is based largely on depictions in art - pottery, metal, statues, etc.  While more and more people are beginning to pay attention to these rare textile finds, over and over again, I realize that textiles are discovered, or overlooked by many.  I hope that changes before what few fragments are left disappear entirely.

But in the meantime, I work with my yarns, and sometimes I do big, bold textiles, and sometimes, I do quiet, subtle ones.

I'm looking forward to getting these woven and wet finished.  I think they are going to be quite lovely tea towels, in their quiet subtle way.  The reed marks will probably not disappear entirely, but I won't pay any mind to those.  The reed marks in this cloth will be a reminder, a 'ghost' of the loom left in the cloth to remind me that human hands worked with tools to create it.  And human hands will use it to do mundane things, like dry dishes.  

But hopefully as the owner of the towels uses them, they will bring some sense of pleasure to the mundane.  Like that spear of light, illuminating the crown of white blossoms.   Fleeting, but still there.

The Little Things

 

I couldn't sleep and got up at 'way too early' o'clock and put the coffee on.  As I poured my first cup (of two) I glanced out the window at the back of the house and saw that the sun had found a wee break in the clouds and a shaft of light had spot lit the plum tree.

Yesterday the blossoms were beginning to open, but the rain overnight seems to have brought out all the rest and the tree was covered in a crown of white.

I put the coffee cup down and grabbed my ipad to take a quick 'snap'.

It isn't in focus, but almost as soon as the sun had been noted, the clouds moved in again and the tree no longer glowed.

And that's the thing, isn't it?

Sometimes you get so overwhelmed with Life and All and forget that as awful as things are (because of human beings, mostly), Mother Nature still visits and shows us how glorious it can be here, on this planet.

Spring is well and truly on its way as the trees in the background begin to leaf out.  The tree directly behind us is covered with catkins and will soon have a full crown of green.  

And last night we had a good steady rain, which isn't nearly enough, but will at least help.

Yesterday was a busy day (for me, in this time line that I am experiencing).  Today my goal is to sley the next warp, finish pressing the rest of the towels that went through the washer/dryer on Saturday, and who knows, maybe even begin weaving.  I need to test the new linen yarn and see if I've come close to anticipating how it will weave up.

I'm already starting to think about the next warp.  It's tempting to go with the tried and true, but who knows, I may explore something different and see what happens when I try.

But mostly, I need to remember to look up and out from time to time.  Or I might miss a precious moment.