15 Jun 2014

Cut off

3

folklorico before finishing

On the way back from Edinburgh yesterday I called in at the studio to cut this off and bring it home for finishing. My inspection process involves donning my reading glasses and working my way slowly along the fabric while shoving the inspected part into an increasingly ungainly heap at the end of the dining table. I’m not sure that it is terribly effective: I am typically much better at spotting problems after washing than before and the ungainly heap often tips right off the table onto the floor. However, it is all now in the washing machine so alea iacta est.

The training turned out to be surprisingly interesting and very practical, with lots of examples of file handling systems tailored to the OU system (devised to rival the official one which, of course, never quite does what the users at the sharp end really need) and annotation software on different platforms. I think it helped that everyone in the room actually had to use the stuff, and in a maths context too, so there was a strong sense of a common interest in solving challenges. Rather like weavers, in fact.

“Cut off” was posted by Cally on 15 June 2014 at http://callybooker.co.uk

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13 Jun 2014

Mistakes

2

Quite a few today. The most serious was leaving my lunch on the kitchen counter. No lunch! It is hardly any wonder that I spent as much time unweaving as I did weaving. I had a bad case of treadle-brain and just couldn’t keep track of where I was. Fortunately, the knots were sighted

Knots

which did help me to focus. I finished the weaving but had no time to cut it off the loom. Instead I am on a train to Edinburgh where I will be trained in the art of marking maths assignments online. Really.

“Mistakes” was posted by Cally on 13 June 2014 at http://callybooker.co.uk

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7 Jun 2014

Dusting off the wheel

3

Continuing last weekend’s mission to reclaim some recreational time, I dusted off the spinning wheel last night so that I could take it to the Guild today. And when I say “dusted off” I mean got out a cloth and a bucket and removed a thick layer of grime… It’s been a while. When I looked in my stash for something to spin I was horrified by how deep the mine of unspun fibre actually is. When did I buy all that? And when did I think I was going to spin it? I had to stop half way down the pile as it was too unsettling. Anyway, I picked out a small bag of something labelled “Llama, silk & wool” (no indication of what the wool is). I hadn’t got on very well with it when I first bought it. The material in the bag consists of dense clumps with fine hairs sticking out.

llama silk wool fibre

Opened up with the hand carders, it looks like this:

llama silk wool open fibre

I’m not sure quite what’s what, but as well as the hair – which I presume is llama guard hair – there are liitle neps and wee clumps that might be silk noils. The mass of the fibre is very fine and short. Originally I had tried to spin a ‘normal’ yarn with it, but got frustrated at the difficulties it gave me. One of the reasons it was abandoned in the fibre stash!

This time I decided to relax and let it take shape in its own way. Since relaxation for me does not extend to picking out guard hairs or doing elaborate fibre preparation, I just loosened it up with the hand cards and used a long draw to spin it, letting it clump or not as it pleased. A little plied sample was surprisingly appealing.

llama silk wool lumpy yarn

Approaching it without any quality control made for very rapid progress and by the end of the Guild meeting I had this.

llama silk wool bobbin

It was fun to imagine what I might do with it, though I am probably getting ahead of myself. One bobbin doth not a weaving make. The yarn is soft and light, but with those guard hairs you certainly wouldn’t want to wear it. For now I shall just enjoy the spinning and the dreaming.

“Dusting off the wheel” was posted by Cally on 7 June 2014 at http://callybooker.co.uk

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3 Jun 2014

Weave-Design-Weave-Design

3

Threading and sleying were finished on Thursday and then on Friday I headed to Glasgow to submit that hardbound you-know-what. It was nice to discover that they had a letter – THE letter, telling me that I had indeed earned a PhD – tucked under the desk at the Registry all ready to give me in exchange. They must have read my blog… Anyway, we reckoned the Bookers had earned a weekend away from their jobs, so most of Saturday and Sunday were spent in the garden (which is looking a lot better for having a bit of attention paid to it). Back at the loom on Monday morning to lash on and start weaving.

folklorico weaving

The colour change from dark to bright red is a bit too subtle for the camera on my phone – I hope you can see it. I was still a bit scatterbrained so I only wove a metre and spent some time rethreading table looms instead. However, a metre is enough to know that the threading seems to be OK and that I am happy with the colours. I’ll pick up again tomorrow as today I have to wait in at home for a delivery.

It’s quite good timing, in fact, as (now that the above is underway) I am ready to get serious about the design of the next few pieces. I am taking part in Perthshire Open Studios again in September, but this time as part of a group of textile artists and designers who all have different specialisms. It’s quite exciting and, when we had our discussions early in the year, I got a bit carried away with it all! I have pledged to produce a collection of big, bright cushions and throws so I had really better get on with it. I have all these lambswool samples in which I was trying out different setts…

lambswool samples

…and I have a folder of half-way-there drafts which are not quite what I want. This morning I have been scribbling some notes about my options and I am getting closer to making a commitment. To keep things manageable, I am going to focus on extending the style and structure of the Graffiti scarf designs to this larger scale and the different yarns I need to use. I reckon that is enough of a challenge to keep me out of mischief for a couple of months.

“Weave-Design-Weave-Design” was posted by Cally on 3 June 2014 at http://callybooker.co.uk

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27 May 2014

Inching

4

The movement is so slight it is barely perceptible, but I am creeping (or perhaps I should say crawling, on bleeding hands and knees) towards the finish line. I’ve made the necessary revisions to my thesis; they have been approved; I’ve argued (and lost the argument) about rounding with one of the data providers, so I’ve made more changes; those have been approved; everything has been reformatted to the ridiculous specification required by the library (which serves to make it 50% longer and therefore 50% more expensive to print!) and, as of today, the absolutely final version is now with the printer being turned into hardbound copy. I just need to schlep to Glasgow one more time to get my supervisor’s autograph on the last section of the form and turn the whole lot over to the Registry. In a few more weeks my life as a postgrad will finally be at an end. And not long after that my life as a postgrad tutor will be over too: just one more marking mountain to climb.

And I’ve beamed my third sectional warp, following on from these bright samples.

folklorico warp

I am getting quicker and better at it, so of course it was time to complicate things up a bit. Although it is – like thesis completion – barely visible, there is a lighter red in play in the middle(ish) than at the edges. Getting the right colour in the right places was distinctly challenging and I may have failed, but I will work it out as I progress with the threading.

In other news, I’ve started a new-to-me venture: blogging for Craftsy.com. I will be contributing to the weaving blog every two to three weeks and my first post is here. Laura Fry and Kaz Madigan are already among the regular contributors, so it is shaping up to be a useful resource. If you are learning to weave or are looking for some new ideas to enhance your weaving, then I completely objectively recommend you follow along.

“Inching” was posted by Cally on 27 May 2014 at http://callybooker.co.uk

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