21 Dec 2016

Solstice

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According to the internet, the moment the sun stood still took place at 10:44 this morning. So at half past two in the afternoon we are already travelling on our way to spring.

Meanwhile – since I finished weaving the retro warp on the Delta – the looms are also at a standstill, and I have been occupied with various categories of admin and doing some work behind the scenes on the CW website. It’s not the kind of activity that makes for very interesting photos (although my faithful printing assistant is quite photogenic), so instead here are a few flashbacks to the first half of 2016…

In January I made a kumihimo braid every day for #FunADay

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In February I was mixing huck and echo weave to create Coastline scarves for my Waterfront collection

mixed huck twill close-up

And in March I was still weaving them! As well as getting a sneaky preview of this venue…

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In April I unexpectedly had the opportunity to accompany Pat on a bookbinding course

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May was a crazy busy month with the first ever Dundee Design Festival and all the events around it

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And in June it was all about Complex Weavers as I headed west for the biennial gathering of the tribe

out to USA

…to be continued!

“Solstice” was posted by Cally on 21 Dec 2016 at https://callybooker.co.uk

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4 Dec 2016

Field trip

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Another week has got away from me… but before it becomes ancient history I wanted to share a few photos from a Guild field trip last week. We visited Todd & Duncan, a local mill which produces woollen spun cashmere yarn for the knitting industry, and had a really informative guided tour which took in the whole process.

Bales of cashmere – this is the state in which it arrives in Scotland. It has already been dehaired and scoured.

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It looks quite different when it is dyed navy blue.

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The blending machinery is cleaned out very carefully, so that the ingredients for one yarn do not contaminate another.

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And they have separate areas for handling light, medium and dark yarns. This is the white again, but with oil and water added to it before it processing.

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My favourite part of the process was the carding. The fibre is so light it looks like foamy water.

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And my next favourite part was the incredible machine which inspects the spun yarn, cuts out any knots or other irregularities and then splices the two ends together.

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As the yarn is plied, it is pulled through a wax disc. The wax allows it to be used on a knitting machine without too much friction.

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Back in the boardroom, the wall of samples had us all swooning with delight.

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They’ve been in business for nearly 150 years, so they have had time to build up a fair collection.

“Field trip” was posted by Cally on 4 Dec 2016 at https://callybooker.co.uk

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27 Nov 2016

Hunkering down

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This weekend I have been at a staff development conference for the OU, mixing with one of my tribes again. I must admit that being developed is usually fun, but more fun in June than in November! Yesterday’s sunrise was really spectacular but I’m confident it would have looked just as good from my bedroom window as it did from the motorway.

Anyway, the event marks the end of my formal commitments for 2016. From this point on, nobody needs me to be anywhere but here.

Having stocked up on essentials at last week’s Festival of Chocolate, I am quite ready to sit myself down in front of the fire and stay there until 2017. However, what the hibernation period really means is catching up on all the jobs I have pushed to the back of the queue for as long as I thought I could get away with it. The big one is, of course, the tax return. Or perhaps the big one is the file-and-shred routine that is needed to deal with the paperwork mountain. Or the invisible digital paperwork mountain – so much easier to ignore than the visible one.

But alongside the stick of admin, I have the carrot of designing and sampling. In fact, a whole crate of carrots was delivered to my studio a couple of weeks ago.

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That’s just the top layer 🙂

So after spending all of Tuesday going through my accounts, on Wednesday I treated myself to a short sample warp on one of the Ashford table looms.

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I’ve recently had the fun of trying out some turned drafts as I reviewed Barbara Walker’s excellent (oops, spoiler!) book Supplementary Warp Patterning for the spring 2017 issue of Journal of Weavers, Spinners & Dyers. That set me thinking about turning drafts more generally so as to shift more of the colour complexity from weft to warp, which is always my preferred way of working. I wanted to try turned Ms and Os, so I did.

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The result has fulled into a very pleasing cloth with the sort of scumbly look I was hoping for, but I still need to experiment with sett. That’ll be one of my carrots for next week.

I’ve also been emboldened by my success in tying on the dark chocolate warp, so I have tried it again with another silver grey warp. This one, however, is twice as long and I haven’t beamed it yet. Here’s hoping the first triumphant beaming wasn’t just beginner’s luck.

“Hunkering down” was posted by Cally on 27 Nov 2016 at https://callybooker.co.uk

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22 Nov 2016

Tea Green Festive Pop-Up

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Tea Green’s unstoppable heroine, Joanne MacFadyen, is outdoing herself this Christmas with a four-week pop-up Concept Atelier in the Old Flour Mill on Exchange Street, Dundee. I’m delighted to be participating once again, and the new collection of scarves will be making their debut there this weekend.

Those ‘chocolate mint’ flavoured ones are a limited edition especially for this event.

The pop-up atelier will be open every day 10:30am – 6:00pm from Saturday 26th November until Christmas Eve, with late opening until 7:30pm on Thursdays.

“Tea Green Festive Pop-Up” was posted by Cally on 22 Nov 2016 at https://callybooker.co.uk

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