Perception

 

rust

cyan

It is really hard at times to get accurate photos of textiles.  (Probably true generally, but textiles is what I mostly take photos of!)

Yesterday I got another 6 scarves wet finished, including a good hard press.  Once the compression was done, they really took on a lovely sheen and even though in several cases I was working with colours beyond my comfort zone, I'm pleased enough with all of them.

Some of the designs actually turned out better than I'd hoped.  Which happens so rarely.

This run of scarves was challenging on many levels.  Working within a severely limited range of colours, trying to figure out how to make them play nicely together, not really knowing how they would look after finishing.  I really had to stretch myself.  I am happy with the results and they do 'work' at both distance and closer up, when you can begin to see the different colours in the warp.

While I think they look good/interesting, the final judgement will be made by the person who buys them.  If anyone does.  

Because there is no guarantee that anything I make will sell.  And there is only so much I can afford to give away.

Given the difficulty of getting 'good' colour shots, I won't be offering these on line.  

The current tea towels, however, are destined to be sold on my ko-fi shop or on consignment locally.

I had great plans for what I was going to do today, but my body has other ideas.  So I am having a 'quiet' day, trying to stay mobile without attempting to do 'too much'.  Since most of what I'm working on this afternoon does need to be done at some point, it's just shifting my list to another day and moving 'quiet' things to today.

Sometimes one just has to listen to their body.

Weaver's Bottom

"Nick Bottom is a character in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream who provides comic relief throughout the play. A weaver by trade..."

It has been said that Nick Bottom got his name as a play on words because so  many weaver's had 'weaver's bottoms'.  It was a known work related injury.

  "Ischial bursitis (weaver's bottom or tailor's bottom) can result from sitting for long periods on a hard surface..."

Over the years I have sat on a number of different kinds of benches/stools etc.  Since I started weaving with the express purpose of making an income by doing the craft, I spent hours every day at the loom.  It didn't take me long to realize that loom benches are *hard*.  I have had a variety of cushions or pads at the various looms I work at and recommend that people consider such for themselves if they intend to do more than a session or two a day.

The bursa can become irritated and then inflamed.  Once inflammation sets in, it can take weeks rather than days for it to clear up again.  So I always took care to pay attention and use some kind of padding on my loom bench or stool.

I can say that I have never had weaver's bottom, nor have I had carpal tunnel - both things that I knew were an occupational hazard.  

During my years of production weaving I have had other injuries, usually outside of the studio (whiplash, twice, for example) but by and large I've managed the repetitive stresses of weaving reasonably well.

But do something long enough and a body can begin to wear out.  And of course just living takes a toll as well.

In the end, the current 'injury' I am dealing with was not caused by the weaving itself, but associated tasks required in running a studio.  Hefting 40-50 pound boxes of yarn, dragging 50-75 pound suitcases around, getting into and out of cars at the airport, thumping them up and down stairs at my hosts or at the guild rooms, up a set of stairs.  The years I spent dyeing yarn, moving *large* pots of water and large skeins of fully saturated water around.  Not much wonder my back would ache at the end of the day.

It is one reason I advocate for people to understand the processes and how their body functions and to work ergonomically - so that they reduce the chance of developing repetitive motion injuries.  So much better to avoid them than take the weeks/months to heal from them.  Because the older I get, the longer it takes to heal.  And sometimes now, I never do get back to where I was.  

So I cut back on doing the heavy lifting I used to do without a second thought.  I make sure I take rest breaks (which have gotten longer, meaning fewer sessions at the loom per day).  I have a massage therapist and a chiropractor (one for my lower back, one for my upper, because each end of my spine has something different 'wrong' with it.)

I keep weaving because the weaving itself doesn't seem to make anything particularly worse and I weave not just for the physical exercise, but for the mental health.  And because I have so damn much yarn!

Working ergonomically is one of the things I will discuss in the SOS class launching next week.

Let's keep in mind that weaver's bottom is no joke, even though Nick Bottom, the weaver, might have been a bit of a joker.

Details, Details

 

It's quite hard to see, but in amongst all the cotton fibres, I *think* I see some linen.  Enough to cast doubt on this yarn being 100% cotton, at any rate.

Cotton fibres are routinely between 3/4 of an inch to about 1.5".  After harvest they go from round tube to flat twisted 'ribbon'.  Linen fibres are longer and more rod like.  

Yesterday I mentioned that I wasn't going to use both yarns in the same tea towel and by that I meant I would not want to use both as weft in the same textile.  They will behave differently.  The one with linen will lose less width than the 100% cotton.  And, because of the difference in twist, they might look markedly different as well.

So the suspect tubes have been set aside and I'll use them together to make one towel.  Anything left over (which likely won't be much) will get put into my recycle bin.  

The difference between the two yarns of the 'same' colour tugged at my eye without my paying too much attention because I was busy sorting about 50 tubes of yarn into colours/dye lots.  It was only when I began looking at each pile of the 'same' colour that I paid more attention to that tiny difference I had noted without actually thinking about it.

In the end it took me a good 20 minutes of looking at the two yarns under the microscope to see if I could tell more about the yarn.  But if I had used the two different yarns randomly, I could have wound up with three towels that were...strange...with different shrinkage rates and looking 'odd' due to the difference in twist.  Instead I'll have 3 perfectly find towels.

Training one's eye to see such fine details is all part of mastering the craft.  Know your materials.  Understand their inherent characteristics.  Be prepared to make adjustments when you spot potential areas of concern.

Above all?  Keep learning.  Pay attention to your inner voice.  Sometimes it has an important message you need to hear.  When in doubt, do something different.  

Looking Closely

 

In sorting through my yarns, I had quickly sorted by colour but when I went to use one of the colours, I took a closer look.  

When I examined the yarns, they looked different to me.  Although the colour seemed really close, one of the yarns was more shiny than the other one which also appeared to be more lofty, even though when I compared them side by side, they seemed about the same thickness.  Close enough to say they were both the same count.

But I kept coming back to the two lots of tubes and the more I thought about it the more I came to the conclusion that there was some sort of 'invisible' difference.

I wondered if the loftier one was actually cottolin.  Since my digital microscope can (barely) get close enough to distinguish linen fibre from cotton, I dragged it out today.

There does appear to be some linen fibre in the one strand, so I'm not going to use these two yarns together as weft in a towel.  However the biggest difference is in the number of twists per inch.

I think you can see from the photo that the upper thread is more tightly twisted than the lower one.  The lower one is also hairier (if that's a word) and it's the one with what looks like linen fibres in it.

While I can't guarantee this is so, I've separated the two yarns out and will not use both in the same towel because they could very easily behave and/or feel quite different, just based on the degree of twist.

Always listen to your inner voice.  Sometimes it might not be correct, but if it is...

Hunkering Down

 

The temperatures warmed up for the weekend, but the wind was blowing and snow drifts built up.  Doug spent much of the weekend clearing snow.  Just in time for more snow to come down.

Now that the holiday season is (more or less) behind us, we enter the dark days of winter.  It is time to hunker down.  Time to pull back and rest.  Time to hibernate - a bit.

The weather forecast for here is more cold weather.  When it comes with wind, it becomes dangerous as the wind chill makes everything more difficult.  Add in falling snow and the roads become difficult to travel.  Plows try to keep the roads clear and that usually means sidewalks get covered.  If you are someone who has mobility issues, this is a very challenging time of year.

I am fortunate enough to be able to isolate as Doug has been cheerfully (more or less) dealing with the majority of errands outside of the house.

I am also fortunate in that I have a studio full of yarns I'm trying to use up and don't need much of anything.

As I look back at the past few months, I can feel some sense of satisfaction.  I have managed to move some inventory via the guild sale opportunities.  Unfortunately I've been making more!  But that's the thing.  Stacks of woven textiles take up less room than tubes/skeins of yarn.  So I AM seeing progress on the stash busting front.

I'm pleased enough with the current towel warp and have been adding more empty tubes to the recycle box.  I've managed to reduce the heap of fringe twisting down to just three scarves.  I've sorted the 2/16 cotton and made a priority list of which colours to use up first, and sorted the close dye lots into their respective piles.  As much as I can.  Any dye lot issues will be ignored since a slight colour change will in no way reduce the effectiveness of a towel to dry.  But so far, I think I've only woven in one dye lot difference.  It's slight, and who knows, it may diminish in the wet finishing.  

Progress is being made on the on line class.  The editing got done before Christmas and the tweaking continued over the holiday week.  Written documentation is being generated, and final touches will be done over the next while.

I continue to make progress on the weaving with two towels per day.  Today I hit the halfway mark and will cut off what I've woven so far, then tie on and keep going.  As the cloth roll builds up, it becomes more difficult to tension the warp and my knees start to bump into the built up beam.  Just so much easier to cut off and re-tie.  The little bit of loom waste has been factored in and well worth sacrificing a bit of yarn for better weaving.  IMHO.

Today I will also sort through my tea towel inventory and decide which pattern to upload to ko-fi first.  Seems I do still have some Snail's Trails and Cat's Paws towels.  Looks like six of them with cottolin weft.  So those will be first, I think.  Be nice to get them to new homes - and free up some space on the shelf.  One of these days I'll take a photo of my shelf - one of them, anyway.  I have two right now and at the rate I'm making new textiles, that will soon return to 3?  

This winter I am again ducking and avoiding Covid as it rampages through the world.  While I miss getting together with friends, I'd rather stay home for a while longer until it is safe(r).

January 2022 seems like a really good time to just stay home, stay focused on reducing my stash, and looking forward to the on-line class with SOS.  (The link should give you a 15% discount coupon for a 3 or 12 month membership in SOS.)

Methodical

 

Some of the tubes of 2/16 cotton yarn that I sorted the other day.

Normally I store the tubes of cotton standing up on their end, but these are small enough that they don't want to stand, so they lay flat.  As such, they tend to take up space and roll around.

There are also several shades of beige which can be very difficult to tell apart, so I carefully looked at them in natural light so separate them into their own piles.

Now this is not all of my 2/16 cotton yarn.  The less empty tubes that can stand are still on the shelves.  They are going to take longer to empty and I wanted some 'instant' gratification so decided to begin with the nearly empty ones and clear them off the shelves.

The dark emerald tubes might not get used on this warp.  It's a twill block design and I'm thinking the high contrast of this and other darker value colours will not look as nice as I would wish.  So I've been looking at fancy twill threadings.  The contrast will still be high, but will be more forgiving in terms of slight imperfections in beat.

And I am reminded all over again at how much play time one gets from finer yarns.  I've used up just two of the colours and already woven a quarter of the first warp.  

Still lots more to go!  Who knows, I might even have to buy more white to finish this off.  

The other goal for today is to take photos of current stock and post the first photo to my ko-fi store.  I'd like to find new homes for some of the tea towels already made, plus mail seems to be moving here again now the xmas rush is over (and our highways open to commercial vehicles).

I don't make resolutions.  I form intentions.  Resolutions have always seemed so either/or to me.  You resolve to do X and if you don't do that, you might as well give up.  Forming an intention is more flexible.  I didn't manage X today, but I will take another stab at getting to it tomorrow.

So - I intend to keep working away at reducing my stash.  It's been a long haul, but I'm finally beginning to see some progress as shelves thin out of yarn.  More room for the dust buffalo to roam, but I'll worry about corraling those another day.

Here We Go Again

 

Looking through Facebook 'memories' I see a lot of weaving happened over the years.  Yes, even on holidays.  Because when your work is something you love to do, you do it every day you can.

Yesterday I continued with the tea towel warp and cleaned off a bunch more tubes.  Most of the first colour were pretty empty, likely less than a filled bobbin.  It felt good to clear off some space on the shelf and toss the empty tubes into my little recycle container.  They will likely go into the bigger paper recycling bin for our household recycling but sometimes teachers will ask if I have any they can use for art supplies so I tend to keep them separate until the bin needs emptying.

It is also becoming apparent that this first warp is not going to use up as much of the yarn as I'd hoped.  Because while I have little left to make a warp, there are miles and miles of this yarn left for weft.  So I'm beginning with the colours that have the least left so I can clear those tubes away.  And besides, I can weave directly from the tube, so no need to wind bobbins.  Win-win!

Last night I dug out one of my resource books with lots of patterns.  I've found a few I think I can tweak to my purpose.  And I'm becoming less concerned about the high contrast of the warp/weft.  Such a high contrast will tend to highlight every little inconsistency, but at this point I'm not too worried about 'perfection'.  A functional tea towel will do.

But I may change from twill blocks to a fancy twill, which will make slight imperfections in beat less obvious.  Still pondering.

The weather here isn't very pleasant.  It stopped snowing but the wind continues to gust and blow snow sideways.  So glad I have nowhere to go, nowhere to be, other than at home, soon at the loom.

I have been gradually reading Victoria Finlay's book Fabric and will do a proper review when I get a bit further into it.  But so far?  I am really quite enjoying it.