Learning Opportunities

potential place mat warps....

When I finally made it to the loom progress went clipping along.  Of course it doesn't hurt that the mats weave up at around 12 picks per inch - really helps grow that cloth!

Once my feet re-learned the choreography (broken twill, not straight twill) I had time to think. 

Of course the internet is not ideal because not everyone has high speed connectivity.  I know this all too well as I joined the internet in 1994 with a dial up Free-net account with a maximum of one hour at a time.  I only recently got high speed when we changed over to fibre optics for telephone/tv and of course, the internet.  I well remember not having high speed and waiting and waiting for websites to download and oftentimes just plain giving up.

So as I thought about learning opportunities I itemized them and examined them for feasibility.

The best option is to learn directly from someone, person to person.  (People can come here, one at a time, for 3-5 days to study with me.  The rate is $100/day if they stay elsewhere, $125/day if they stay in our modest home - shared bathroom facilities.  Meals are provided although I only cook dinner - student fends for themselves for breakfast/lunch.)

Another person to person option is to take a class at a facility like John C. Campbel Folk School or other 'schools' or shops that have classroom areas.

Guilds can sponsor workshops (usually 2-3 days) for another person to person option.  That means only the teacher travels (generally).

But not everyone can travel - students work full time or have family obligations or they just plain can't afford it.

Books are another way of learning.  Frankly if I'd had to learn from a book I'd never have managed it, but I know plenty of people for whom this is the only option.  In the 21st century we also have DVD's, (and/or video tapes although they are obsolete now).

Many people urged me to make a video tape (or DVD) but I'd done just enough video to understand how difficult it is to make a really good video and opted for CD Weaver instead.  This format combined the best (in my opinion) of books and video/DVD's.  There was text for people who can learn by reading.  There were lots of colour photos to enhance the text.  And there were video clips for people who need to really see what's happening.

I'm not sure why this format never took off and eventually I gave up.  (That said, I have 8 CD Weaver's left - I'll sell them at the bargain basement price of $30 including shipping.)

And now we have the internet and on-line classes.  Again not ideal because of the isolation of many and the difficulty of participating in on line events.

But Heidi asked a pertinent question.  Would I advise people if they sent video clips of themselves.  After mulling this over I realized that this need not happen on the internet at all.  People could make a video of themselves weaving, burn it to a cd or put it on a flash drive, mail it to me and I could observe and make comments, either via email or return mail.  Obviously if the person has internet connectivity difficulties, snail mail might be the best option. 

Lastly there are the chat groups and blogs.  People with slow internet connections can usually manage to participate in these but they are primarily a text based medium and not everyone learns by reading.  Also, there is You Tube but a slow internet connection makes this a problem, too.

Anything else I've missed?

Organized

my 2011 calendar....

I really wish I were better organized than I am, but (you saw that 'but' coming a mile away, didn't you?)........but I'm not.

People who are not organized always have a million reasons why not. I think we spend more time thinking up excuses than it would take to simply get organized! But the fact remains that I live - and work - with a level of clutter that many people would find hard to deal with. Heck, even I find it hard to deal with!

Having 3 years worth of health issues to distract my attention really hasn't helped, either. There have been days (weeks, truth be told) that I just couldn't face the reality that I probably belong on an episode of Hoarding.

It doesn't help that I live with a DH whose level of tolerance for mess is even higher than mine, but that's just one more excuse.

With some forward movement on the health front, plus the start of a new major project, I've done some thinking about what needs to happen for me to get a grip on my disorganized life.

The first thing I need to do is to stop doing so many things. Between production weaving (and trying to sell the fruit of my looms - sorry about the pun - just couldn't resist), retailing yarns and fibres, publishing teaching aids (books, cd's), writing said teaching aids, teaching - all of which require copious reference materials, space to store yarns, products, etc., etc. plus my 'hobby' activities (knitting, spinning, bobbin lace, reading, jigsaw puzzles) - well, you get the picture. And all of this being done out of a fairly modest home.

DH also wants to retire as soon as possible - right now that's about 16 months from now IF the Canadian government in their wisdom doesn't push the minimum age to collect full pension to 67 - which means I want to pare my business expenses as much as possible before then. Which means letting the steam press and annex go. I don't know if we'll be able to sell the boiler that drives the press, but I'm pretty certain the press (made of cast iron mostly) will simply get delivered to the scrap yard and sold for whatever the metal is worth. Hopefully for enough to cover the cost of delivering it to the scrap yard.

But there's all that stuff stored there, too - yarns, books, left over samples from Magic, looms (two of which should really find a new home) etc. And then there's all the booth display apparatus that has to live somewhere.

So in order to make this happen, I need to finish skeining off the rest of the yarn that needs to be 'not white' and get as much of it dyed as possible in December after One of a Kind - which means I really need to get skeining NOW!

I need to sell the rest of Magic (down to 40 copies, plus the abridged copies which number around 60), Weave a V (haven't even recovered the cost of publishing that yet), decide to throw out the rest of the samples from Magic just to free up that space, sell as much of the retail yarns as possible (Fibres West March 18/19, and HWSDA conference in Calgary in June) and think hard about getting out of yarn sales. Getting out of fibre sales is a given - they are far too bulky and way too little profit in them.

As for teaching - I have one shelving rack with my binders holding the handouts (which get reviewed and edited every time I teach them), plus all the yarns I have specially for teaching those topics above and beyond the yarns for production, the numerous buckets of samples for each topic and which I have toyed with tossing out on more than one occasion. But if I'm not going to be in high production (and given this economy, will selling hand wovens really be economical?) then should I focus more on the teaching instead?

Then there's writing. Although I would love to write and be published, it would be best if I could get paid for that. There is only one major publication that pays for articles and there's no guarantee of getting a project accepted there and the once a year (or two years) I've had an article published isn't enough to pay the electric bill to run the computer.

So what do I actually wind up cutting out? Since the chances of winning the lottery in Canada are about 1 in 14 million, I guess that's even worse odds?

Currently reading The Waters Rising by Sheri S. Tepper

Results

a fan of scarves showing my selvedges....click on the image for an enlargement


People quite often exclaim over the straightness of my selvedges. They want to know my secret, or assume that I must have some trick up my sleeve for getting ruler straight selvedges (most of the time, depending {there's that word again} on weave structure and yarn).

The secret to getting straight selvedges is no secret at all. Or at least, I've not kept how I do what I do a secret. I've been active on the internet since 1994 (anyone remember bulletin boards and usenet groups?) telling people what I do and how I do it. (Check the labels here or my You Tube channel for video clips.)

The 'secret' to getting good selvedges is learning the physical skills that need to be utilized and using 'good' tools/processes.

What those tools are will depend on the individual - their physical size, their personal hand/eye co-ordination, their equipment.

But to gain proficiency at something like weaving or any other skilled craft, the practioner must understand the essential theory behind what they are doing, be analytical about how they are doing it, and practice, practice, practice with a self-awareness of what they are doing, gauging the success of their results and tweaking their processes, sometimes changing their tools for ones that will work better for them.

Instead they rely on what I call 'magical thinking' - if I use this trick or this tool I will magically get good selveges without my having to do anything else.

Getting good selvedges requires a succession of steps, any one of which if not done well, will lead to poor selvedges.

First you must beam the warp well and under tension. The longer and wider your warps, the more crucial this step becomes. If your warp is 'cigar-shaped' on the back beam, you will have problems with your selvedges. (Unless you build that shape properly so that the outside threads don't slide off causing them to be shorter than the middle ends.)

A short narrow warp simply doesn't have the length and breadth to show poor beaming techniques because it's all too soon done. So a weaver who has consistently woven short (less than 5 yards) and/or narrow (less than 15 inches wide) warps who decides to put on a longer/wider warp will suddenly run into problems that s/he has never experienced before and cannot figure out what went wrong. They've been weaving for years and never had the problem before, after all!

A weaver should know how to hold and throw the shuttle efficiently. I know, I know, many people aren't interested in being efficient. What these people don't realize is that holding and throwing the shuttle efficiently simply means that you are doing this process in a way that will lead to good selvedges and a good consistent beat. In other words, they will get a better quality cloth.

Some people don't even know that there is an efficient way of holding and throwing the shuttle. I so often see shuttles being thrown (or should I say shoved) 'backwards' or even upside down. When I mention this to the weaver I generally get a blank look and a response of "I didn't know there was a 'right' way to hold the shuttle."

Again, if the weaver is only weaving on a narrow warp, how s/he holds the shuttle doesn't matter as much as when they try to weave a wider warp.

I watched a sheep to shawl demo one time where the weaver held the shuttle 'overhand' which meant she could not get the shuttle from one selvedge to the other as it could only travel 3/4's of the way across the web which meant that she was reaching into the shed to retrieve it. The net result of this? The handspun alpaca warp was stretching at the selvedge and I could see that the selvedge was starting to pull apart from the repeated stretching and abrasion due to fishing the shuttle out of each shed.

Over and over again I read/hear people being advised to leave sufficient slack on the weft. This is absolutely true - as far as it goes.

But over and over again I see weavers leave a nice lovely angle on their weft pick and then as they beat they pull the hand holding their shuttle towards their body which effectively shortens the weft pick and results in excessive draw in. And they get frustrated because they don't realize what they are doing and continue to do the same thing. Or they make longer and longer 'bubbles' in their weft which results in loops forming at the selvedge which in turn results in loose selveges ends and then..........poor selvedges.

Since I have begun having private students come to learn how to weave I have been delighted that they all appear to be 'natural' weavers achieving good selvedges on their very first sampler. It occured to me during a recent bout of insomnia that perhaps in addition to being naturally adept they are also benefitting from my tutoring. They are learning from the get-go how I hold and throw the shuttle and they are very quickly achieving selvedges that are generally consistent and pretty straight right away.

Ultimately if a weaver is happy with their results there is no need for them to change what they are doing. If they are not happy with their results, perhaps a good analytical look at how other weavers achieve their results will get them closer to the results they desire.

For a complete look at what I do and how I do it, CD Weaver III pretty much sums up everything I do except for how I now sley the reed. Since I've posted extensively on that technique (learned from Syne Mitchell who learned it from Peggy Ostercamp) I don't feel the need to upgrade the cd for that technique.

My advice? Get Peggy's new book and look at how she does what she does. Or buy CD Weaver III and try out a few of the things I do and see how they sit with you.

Christmas is coming - ask Santa for either of these resources and be open to trying something different if you aren't happy with your results.

(CD Weaver III is $60 on my website - if you order before Dec. 6 I'll include the sample packet set for free - this combination is $75.00 plus shipping on my Art Fire store.)

Forward Progress

second butterfly motif....

All of the CD Weaver II's have been spoken for. I hope that people find them helpful. :)

When I decided to produce CD Weaver it was in order to provide people with some video without going to an expensive video format while allowing people to be a fly on the wall of my studio and watch how I do what I do. Everything is described in text and illustrated with numerous colour photos - video clips show the parts I felt needed to be seen in motion.

Many people tell me how fast I am. Working efficiently means that productivity can increase. Learning how to do the various tasks involved in weaving with less wasted motion means that a person can do more in less time.

So many people tell me that they have no interest in hurrying. What they don't realize is that I don't. Hurry, I mean. What I have done is learned the value of taking the time to do the preparation at one stage in order to save a whole lot of time and bother during the next stage. Investing 10 or 15 minutes of preparation to save 2 hours further down the line just makes good sense to me.

Today my student came back to finish her sample warp and start her scarf warp. She did the majority of the loom dressing herself - the first time ever for her.

From the time she arrived, she finished her sample warp by practising controlling the beater producing a sample with a heavily beaten section, a moderately beaten section and a lightly beaten section. We talked about being consistent. We talked about learning how to control the loom.

Then I showed her how to wind a warp and she worked at refining her movements until she finished winding - and got the motions down pat.

Once the warp was wound, she rough sleyed the reed, then we took it to the loom and she beamed it using a water jug to provide tension as it rolled on.

Threading presented more of a challenge to her, but she caught the sequencing error she had slipped into as she threaded a 24 end herringbone twill sequence and we fixed it even before she finished threading the entire warp. :)

Sleying proceded without too much trouble although there was a pair of ends twisted between the heddles. Something easily fixed.

I tied on and demonstrated how to begin weaving and at that point it was time to stop for the day. She had done all of the above from 1-5 pm. Just four hours.

She will come back on Monday and weave her scarf and I'll serge her sample so that we can do the wet finishing. Hopefully she will be able to fringe twist her scarf before she leaves on Monday, but if not I can loan her a fringe twister.

Everything I showed her today - except how I now sley the reed - is on CD Weaver (part I).

Part II covers shuttle handling (one and two shuttles), bobbin winding, hemstitching, fringe twisting etc.

Part III brings the series up to speed on wet finishing, plus we added most of the articles I'd written for Heddle magazine, handouts that were included with the Workshop in a Box kits I did a while ago, plus other articles/essays that used to be on my website. Possibly a couple hundred pages - I haven't actually counted them. Some technical, some opinion pieces.

I have 12 CD Weaver III's left. I'm at the stage where I need to decide if I order more of them made up. It would be nice to know if there was any interest in them before I invested more money in doing it. Right now I'm reserving these 12 cd's for the students who enroll in the class at John C. Campbell Folk School next January. To register http://3.ly/9EKb

Currently reading Bone Crossed by Patricia Briggs

Clutter Clear Out

After watching a repeat program on Oprah about hoarding I've been trying to get rid of a little bit of my clutter every day.

Today I'm offering out dated CD Weaver's. I have four left with "You Have to be Warped" and "Weaving Hints" only on them. You need an internet browser to run the cd - Foxfire seems to work for most people.

To the first four people willing to pay $10 each for them who email me at laura at laurafry dot com

Ten dollars pretty much just pays for the shipping and the cost of the cd holder and cd.

I still have a few CD Weaver III's with the sample set if anyone is interested in those, too.

Productivity

orange all used up - changed to cream - the beauty of a neutral warp!


After a weaving demo at a workshop, a new weaver came up to thank me for the demonstration. Essentially she said that she'd resigned herself to the fact weaving was going to be slow forever, and after watching me weave now realized that with practice she could eventually get faster.

Time is a precious commodity. Very few people have the luxury of taking a long time to make something. Granted some techniques are a lot slower than others, but no matter what someone is weaving, there are efficencies that can be introduced in order to make things flow more smoothly.

The past 3 days I have woven 3 eleven meter long warps. Including winding the warps and dressing the loom.

(Warps were 2/8 cotton, 20 epi, 300 ends. Eleven meters is approximately 12 yards.)

No, I have not been chained to the loom. In fact I would have been disappointed in myself if I hadn't woven off a warp a day. After all, the placemats are only 12 picks per inch. It takes nearly as long to weave the hems as it does the mat itself.

I am happy to pass on my techniques to others, either in person or through CD Weaver (a book on cd with video clips). When I'm teaching workshops I make a point of offering to show people how I hold and throw a shuttle. I think this is the area where I most often see inefficient technique and where - with a little help - most weavers can benefit. Not just in speeding up their weaving, but improving the quality of their selvedges.

There are video clips posted to this blog showing how I hold and throw the shuttle. Click on the label Video Clip to view the videos.

I have about 20 CD Weavers left. They are available at http://LauraFry.artfire.com

Guest Post - Katie

My name is Katie Rivas and I met Laura Fry in January '09 while taking a class she did for my weaving guild in Southern California. I liked Laura off the bat and even though the class was round-robin, I spent way more time asking Laura about a million questions I had stored up regarding weaving.

You see, I live in Lancaster, California which is about an hour northeast of L.A. in the high desert. It's a great area to live in but is isolated when it comes to things like weaving (and shopping and finding good gelati - you get the idea).

I learned to weave while living in the Washington DC area, and then moved back home and was like, "Hey - I'm a weaving lone wolf out here!" There aren't any teachers for about an hour radius from me. So I joined the guild and took Laura's class - and by then my list of questions had grown to several pages!

So meeting Laura was GREAT for me! We also talked about her health issues, my mom's health issues, and other stuff.

So when Laura invited me to come to Canada to visit her and weave, I jumped at the chance. I had been emailing her and had told her my long sob story about my love/hate relationship with rayon chenille. Very long story but basically I felt rayon chenille to be the Darth Vader of the yarn world!!

No matter what techniques I tried to get a consistent, even warp on - I could never accomplish this. One side of the warp would always loosen (or both sides), and my back would hurt just trying to get the thing on the loom. It usually took me about 7-9 hours to do one scarf. So when Laura asked me what I wanted to focus on in my 3 days weaving in her studio, I told her - "Learning your technique for getting a good rayon chenille warp on the loom!!" Talk about a no-brainer for me!

I also wanted to learn more about how to do things faster, since I have very limited time in the week to weave. And I wanted to learn about how to do things in an ergonomically correct way, so I'm not tweaking my back out more.

Well - Laura is AWESOME - is all I have to say!!! She taught me how to warp from Back to Front - which I actually had never done. A little hard to get, since am not used to it - but after weaving 5 rayon chenille scarves in a 2 day period (can you believe that?!) - I truly believe B2F is much better with this particular fiber.

Laura's CDWeaver has all of her B2F steps in it if you have that. I can't express what a BREEZE it is warping in this way! We're talking about 1-2 hours to thread the loom and warp on, compared to about 4 hours before. And the warp goes on like a dream - is evenly tensioned and very effortless to weave on.

Laura wanted her rayon chenille stash used up some - twist my arm - so I did 3 different scarf designs. After the last one was done today I was pretty wiped out - am not as tough as Laura - you should feel how strong her forearms are!

Doug and Laura have been WONDERFUL hosts to me the past few days. They are the most generous people with their time, and I got a good look around Prince George - very green with TALL trees. If you're ever here, Connaught Restaurant serves the best salisbury steak dinner I've ever had. Wish I could stay longer, but leave tomorrow for 105 degree heat.

I did purchase a Laura Fry Weaving Studio t-shirt that I've already worn. When someone asked me who I was going to visit in Canada, I said, "You know Yoda from Star Wars? Well, this is the Yoda of the Weaving World" - and she really is :)

The Tally for the Day

Today I:

wove a chenille scarf and finished the warp on the loom
dressed the loom, wove two more scarves
dressed the loom, wove two more scarves
got the next warp attached to the apron beam ready to beam tomorrow
wound skeins to be dyed


next warp - pretty!

I also:
read my book
had coffee with the neighbour where we discussed traditional Swedish upholstery fabric and looked at yarn samples
helped Doug with the bathroom reno
messed about with Facebook

People tell me I'm fast. I guess I am, but then I've made a point of working as efficiently and ergonomically as I can.

Somewhere someone commented that they would love to be a fly on my studio wall. Well, people can actually do that. It was why I produced CD Weaver. The book on cd format allowed me to embed video clips into the pdf document and we literally shot the pictures over my shoulder for most of them. (For examples of two of the video clips, click on the 'video clip' tag to the right, or go to my website, click on Store, then CD Weaver.)

New weavers get so focussed on the cloth they forget that it requires physical skill to weave and that by concentrating on developing good physical skills, good cloth will result. Learning to be consistent will bring a new weaver closer to perfection than obsessing and fiddling with selvedges. It's why I keep telling people that if they can't be perfect, be consistent!

Perfection is just a concept, anyway - a goal to work towards.

Leonard Cohen has an amazing way with words - this verse from one of his songs kind of sums it up for me:

Ring the bell that still can ring.
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything -
that's how the light gets in.

Court perfection, don't try to hunt it down.

Weavolution

This picture is not so much about how I rough sley the reed (which has been covered in step by step detail on CD Weaver in You Have to be Warped) but about the size of the ties I use to secure the cross and tie off the warp chain.

I was reminded about this not too long ago when my studio assistant wound a warp for me and used a 2/8 cotton doubled to secure the cross, etc. This tie was far too skinny for me as I had to fiddle way too much with untying the warp. A fat tie yarn is so much easier to see and to remove than a skinny one.

It is also a good idea to use something with a little 'tooth' - a little grip. Something slippery just doesn't want to tie securely.

In thinking about all this while getting the next chenille warp ready I started thinking about general issues of efficiency and how so few weavers even realize that there are more efficient ways of working than what they may have been shown, or worked out on their own in the isolation of their homes/studios.

I was also thinking about Weavolution as I've purchased an ad and the developers are getting really excited about their up-coming launch date June 8. That's just a few days away and they will soon know if the weaving community will join in the excitement. :)

Weavolution will be able to host special interest forums, and I started wondering if there was any interest in a forum about working efficiently. Now efficiency is personal, depending upon our physical abilities, disabilities, equipment and space available. But it is also general. There is some equipment that just doesn't work very well (impo) but if the person using it has never seen any other type, how would they know?

So what do you think? Would such a special interest forum on Weavolution be something you would be interested in?

Email me through my website http://laurafry.com or post a comment here.

ps - if you have CD Weaver and find it helpful, I'd appreciate reviews to the weaving groups.


Currently reading The Carpet Wars by Christopher Kremmer

Threading

One of the fun things about travelling and meeting other weavers is that we can have conversations about things like techniques and preferences.

Some weavers really dislike TexSolv heddles. I like them, but part of why I like them is due to the way I thread.

I thread in groups, not one thread at a time, so I actually like the fact that TexSolv heddles don't move around very easily. :)

I have also numbered the tops of the bottom heddle bars to make it easier to find the shafts I want to work with.





This photo shows the stick I tape all the warp bouts to in order to bring them all forward so that I can easily reach them. It also shows the numbers (in red) on the top part of the shafts. In this photo I am 2/3's of the way through a one inch section of warp ends, just ready to thread the last 8 ends (taped to shaft 16).

The heddles have been brought forward from the left hand side and stacked - in order - from shafts 16 through 9.

Below I am about to thread ends 8-1.



Unfortunately I didn't have anyone handy to run the camera so I can't show my threading method, but I've covered that elsewhere. What I wanted to show here was that rather than thread my fingers through the individual ends, I pinch them between my index and middle finger at the top, and my thumb and ring finger at the bottom. This allows me to either hold the ends under tension or apply some slack to allow the ends to bow outwards just a little. This makes getting the hook around the end I want easier.

The photo also shows that I am supporting the the heddle that I will thread next by placing my ring finger on the heddle just below the eye (I know it looks like my finger is on the eye, but really it's just below.

As I thread each heddle, my ring finger moves to the next heddle in line to support it until all 8 ends are threaded and then I pull all 8 through their respective heddles in one motion.

Once that is done, I tie a slip knot, move the heddles to the right, and begin the next group by pulling the heddles from the left. In this repeat (which is a straight draw over 16 shafts) I'm threading 8 ends per group. How many ends I do at once will depend on the repeat - it may be 4, 6, or 8.

I don't put a cross into the sections - just tape the bout. Generally I am threading a solid coloured warp, or a random coloured warp, so preserving a strict warp end order isn't a priority for me. It is for others and they have come up with various ways of preserving a cross while beaming sectionally.

Simplify?

Got to Puff on Saturday evening and got some pressing done. These towels were woven a while ago but they are now 'done' - ready to be tagged and priced and put up for sale.

But I've been doing a lot of thinking lately.

For 30 or so years I have woven pretty much every day - or at least done something weaving related - winding warps, pulling yarns for an upcoming project, teaching, writing - unless I've been out of town, or sick.

The reality is that I have more than sufficient inventory of woven textiles to last a good long time. There is really no need for me to continue to weave 3 to 5 hours a day, every day. Apart from the fact that I enjoy it, of course. :) The problem becomes - what do I do with all that inventory if it doesn't sell very quickly?

Well, some of it I give away as donations for worthy causes. Some go as gifts. Some just sits and gets dragged around from show to show until it finds the perfect customer. :}

On the other hand, I have been given a second chance at life and I've been wondering if sitting at a loom most of the day, every day, is the best use of that second chance?

So what is it I actually do?

I weave textiles and sell them. I dye yarn and sell it. I write. I teach.

All of those things require stuff - looms, shuttles, bobbin winders, reeds, *yarn*!

Dyeing - skein winder, pots/kettles, bottles for dye, jugs of vinegar, buckets to transport the wet yarn there and back (I use the guild room for my dyeing.)

Writing - lots of books, notes, paper, yarn to do proto-types, binders of samples. Copies of books not yet sold - boxes and boxes of them. Plus the sample packets produced for CD Weaver, and the Cd's themselves, the jewel cases etc.

Teaching - back to more *yarn* especially for the workshop topics I teach, more binders of samples, handouts, reference books, magazines, notes, etc.

Selling yarn - the yarn I dye, other commercially dyed yarns to go with the hand dyed yarns, labels, proto-types/samples, etc., etc.

All of the above has resulted in a studio filled to overflowing with all of this plus all the support stuff that goes along with it - shipping boxes, envelopes, sample cards, and so on and so forth. So much so that I have a separate rented storage area for what doesn't fit into my studio.

I'm beginning to feel as though I'm drowning in STUFF!

So - I ask myself - what do I want to do? What can I get rid of? Where do I make the cuts in what I am doing that will still bring in an income, because there's no way I can 'retire' - as in weave for a hobby, passtime, recreation - and not generate some sort of income from it.

This year I'm travelling a lot and teaching. I love being there (where ever 'there' is) - it's the getting there that isn't so much fun. :( But if it isn't necessary for me to be at the loom personally, then passing on my experience and knowledge is a worthy cause. So I'm thinking maybe I will look more towards teaching - now that I'm feeling more energetic and my bp seems once more to be more under control. :)

Someone once asked me how I decided where I would teach. I told them that I went where I was invited. Guess maybe I need to let more people know I'd like to be invited? :)

Currently reading: What Angels Fear by C. S. Harris

Changing bobbins

This video clip shows how I change a bobbin and start a new thread. It is another clip from CD Weaver. Using the Leclerc shuttle, I flip the empty bobbin up with the index finger of my left hand, slip the full bobbin on, thread it through the hole, snap it into place and continue weaving.

Next Towel Design

What this photo doesn't show very well is the darker blue in the middle of the cloth. If you squint, you might just be able to make out the colour shift to the far right and left sides.

When I say 'darker', the blue is pale so it isn't very much darker than the white. Perhaps it will show up better off the loom and after wet finishing.

The good news (?) is that I've found enough fine cotton to do another warp without buying more yarn.

I've been thinking a lot about issues of efficiency lately. It seems that the topic is coming up on the chat groups with more frequency, and people are becoming more interested in working with less fuss and bother.

Personally I don't like struggling with my process, equipment or materials. If something isn't working smoothly, my approach is to try to find out where the problem is and fix it. Sometimes that means modifying equipment, or replacing it with something more efficient. Life is short; time precious. This past year certainly brought that to my attention in a big way. :}

Unfortunately if a new weaver is only ever exposed to one type of equipment they don't know that there is anything else, so they wind up struggling with what is available. :( Even worse, when muscle memory has been formed, changing becomes more difficult than if one learned how to do it with more efficient tools in the first place. Most people simply don't bother to try to change because they don't like the feeling of being less than competant than they are used to.

When a person doesn't know what they don't know, they can only do the best they can. But we can change when something better is shown to us. Sometimes going back to the beginning can wind up being very beneficial.

I can weave very fast. The reason I can do so is that I have found the processes, tools and equipment that work well for me. I have refined my technique over many years until I can do the varioius steps with the least amount of hand movements. My goal is to work smarter, not harder - to accomplish more by doing less. Not all of the techniques I use came easily or quickly, but I could see the potential of saving time by taking the time to learn them. So I wallowed at the deep end of the learning curve until I became proficient.

One of the things that causes grief for most weavers is threading. Our bodies are in a posture that is uncomfortable and the longer it takes to thread, the longer we have to stay crouched in that posture. Even though I was considered fast at the time I took a workshop with Norman Kennedy, who showed us a different way of threading I took the time to learn his method and my threading speed increased significantly. Learning how to sley differently recently made that task faster and easier because instead of large arm movements, I now sley with smaller hand/wrist movements.

Now that my health appears to be stabilized, I am looking forward to being able to weave for many more years. Weaving is labour intensive. Whatever I can do to lessen the time and effort required, I will do. Even if that means wallowing at the deep end of the learning curve, erasing and building new muscle memory all over again. :)

(I show people my 'tricks' in the seminar You Have to be Warped, and on CDWeaver.)

Meme'd

Being meme'd! Well, since I don't have folders, I just chose a picture of me. :D This photo is from CD Weaver, showing me doing a hard press with my trusty old GE iron.

I'm so new to blogging I don't follow a lot of them and one of them I do (Tien's) gave me the idea to just challenge other bloggers to do the same thing.

Choose your 6th photo folder, and then the 6th photo in that folder, then tag 5 others.

I'm not sure about protocol - if you can tag someone who has already been tagged - but since out of the few blogs I follow three have already been tagged, this seemed like the best approach. :^)

CD Weaver

After publishing Magic in the Water; wet finishing handwovens, people started asking when I would be producing a video.

I was highly reluctant to do this for several reasons. First, I had done just enough video camera work to know exactly how difficult it is to get good video.

Secondly, I knew that in order to get good video, it cost a whole lot of money - money I simply didn't have after researching, writing and self-publishing Magic, filled as it was with before and after wet finishing samples of fabric (originally 20 projects, now 22 - for a total of 44 actual fabric samples).

Third, unlike a book where you can open it to any page to review whatever part of it you like, you have to fast forward and back and forth in a video to see the bit you want.

As time went by, digital technology developed to the point where I realized that I could combine the best of both books and videos by doing a book on cd with copious full colour photos and video clips - or an ebook as I see they are now called. :)

I began with dressing the loom showing how I wind a warp, rough sley a reed and beam from back to front. The second section included hints and tips - how to hold and throw a shuttle, hemstitching, dealing with more than one shuttle, winding bobbins and pirns and so on.

This past winter it became clear to me that I was having health issues without being able to define what those issues were. All I knew was that it was imperative that I do the third section on wet finishing and at the same time, I had my web master archive the majority of the writing that I've done over my career onto the cd along with the original sections and the new one on wet finishing. Frankly, I didn't think I'd be around very much longer, and that my website - well, if I wasn't here, my website wouldn't be either..........

So CD Weaver III contains the information I consider essential for a new weaver. I am very fast after years of earning my income, always looking for the most efficient, most ergonomic way to do the various tasks. When I find a new way to do something that will require less effort, I take the time to learn. Most recently I changed the way I hold my hook to sley. It took about 6 warps to cotton on to the new method, but I use it all the time now. The change was small, but I do the same job with tiny hand movements instead of using my whole arm.

This change allows me to work with less effort over all and was well worth taking the time to learn.

I am puzzled when I show weavers how I do things and get the response that it's too much trouble to learn something new. But I also have to remember that people are weaving these days, not to earn an income, but for rest and relaxation. And the learning curve can be steep and slippery and not very comfortable, especially if you are trying to unlearn something and do it a new way.

So for those people who are interested in becoming more efficient, CD Weaver is available. My methods won't work for everyone - there are differences in physical size and ability that make no one method the perfect one for everyone.

Until American Thanksgiving, anyone who orders Magic in the Water; wet finishing handwovens will receive CDWeaver III for free. I've had my webmaster post a new video on the CDWeaver page on my website. This one shows how to significantly full a mohair loop scarf, which I later show being brushed to raise a nap in the It Isn't Finished (until it's wet finished) section. The clips are available for free download, and for both PC and Mac users.

The photo above was done for It Isn't Finished (until it's wet finished) and shows the mohair scarf that I fulled in the video clip. It also shows two teasels. The one on the right is a proper Fuller's Teasel. The other is the one that is most commonly found growing in ditches and that people think is a Fuller's Teasel.

To go with the new CD Weaver, I also produced sample sets of the fabric I wet finished, including the above scarf. These are available for sale while they last. They also serve to upgrade Magic in the Water with 5 additional samples. Info on my website. Click on Store, then CD Weaver or Magic in the Water. Email me to order.