Apologies

 I spent a lot of time writing blogs - in my head and I never make it to the computer! So apologies. A lot has happened since the last blog published. We went on a cruise on the Rhine. The food was very good. 95% of the passengers were Americans and the whole thing was tailored to them. It ended up by me walking off from a guided tour of Speyer. Speyer has the largest Romanesque cathedral in Europe and the guide did not intend to go inside!!!! She said it was plain and boring. Sure it has no twiddly Gothic bits but it is gorgeous in its own way. Anyway we won because we spent ages looking round and then patronised a cafe in the market square where they made apple tart and kasekuchen as only a good German cafe can. 

Everyone was tested every day on the ship for Covid and then we fought our way through Basel airport and went home with Covid. This was the German version which had us both very ill and testing positive for more than two weeks so that did a lot of damage to our plans for the caravan. 

We got to Norfolk eventually and the temperature was not too high. but we did not have long there. We have not spent anything like the time we planned in Norfolk. We hope to get some longer visits in this year. 

So have I done anything in the way of textiles. Well yes. I spent a happy day with the Guild chairman dyeing wool. I found several large cones of white wool yarn. I cannot see me every using that much white yarn so I turned one cone into skeins and one into balls and space dyed both lots with acid dyes. I was worried that some of the dye would be too old and not take. Well something labelled rust red  came out orange but everything else was okay.

The balls of wool, all 10 of them, were dip dyed and took several days to dry. They were half dipping in bottle green and the other half in brown. Make a nice warp! 

I finished winding a warp for the 8 shaft Schacht in grey 8/2 cottolin. I am now half way through threading up in a point twill. This will be another ghost warp. The one  on the Megado is doing well and the next project is a double weave blanket. Photos soon!!! I hope 

 

Winding warps

 I have spent a lot of time today winding warps. Found the most suitable place was on the table on the caravan decking but it did mean answering passerbys questions. The reason for the plural in warps is that the warp is for a double weave checked blanket. White background with checks in red and blue. One repeat is 48 ends with ends 32 white, 4 red, 8 blue, 4 red. so this is one warp. i have done a lot today and hope to finish tomorrow so i can take it all home on Monday,

a van selling Indian food has turned up so we are eating Indian this evening.

The swans have paid their evening visited. they gobbled up everything  

Norfolk again

Back to Norfolk for 2 weeks. This time there seems a great deal of wildlife, roe deer, stoats, rabbits. I have heard foxes barking. Not to mention birds. The swans have 7 cygnets and come round the caravans looking for scraps, accompanied at a safe distance by mallards. We feed the swans bread which is allowed but not allowed to the mallards. There are lots of different birds, egrets, oystercatchers, megansers (very handsome in black and white and red) and too many geese. They cackle nonstop. Below is Holkham Beach just after high tide.

I brought a load of craft stuff, Lino block to cut, warp to wind, but have done nothing except walk the Norfolk Coastal path with the dogs who are very happy. But NOW I am going to wind some warp.

Norfolk

 Last October i bought a static caravan on the north Norfolk coast at wells-next-the-sea. gorgeous. It has been closed over winter and now we are back here for two weeks over Easter with two lots of family visiting, Dorothy`s daughter in law and grandaughter and alo our nephew. We made a huge list of things to take which ended up with our hiring a man-with-a-van. That all went off well. that was yesterday and the forecast was for howling gales today. Quite correct.It has been horrendous today. Too windy to walk the dogs much so we got all the jobs done.

the laptop attached to a new router  to give us better wifi than the site provides.

a new small printer installed

linen in boxes under the beds

a trolley from Hobbycraft for painting tools

beds all made up

So now we are both exhausted and intend to sit around drinking tea until bedtime.

Dorothy has a load of books she is getting rid of tomorrow. They  belonged to her son who died young. She discovered a bookseller here who will take the lot, all 16 boxes of them. so tomorrow she delivers half of them,

And what about weaving, you ask. it is going well. The Guild weavers and spinners are taking part in the Black Game (see Ann Sutton). I have to do satin which has ended up with me threading 36 to the inch over the Schacht. If it works, it will look good but ---.

as to other hobbies, linocuts seem to take precedence. i am doing a complicated one of Raglan Castle which is nowhere near finished. So I show this one which I have turned into card,

I do intend to blog more often

Yes I do. I write blogs in my head but never get round to putting the equivalent of pen to paper. Partly my sister has been persistently ill culminating in a bout of lung infection which needed antibiotics. She has not been eating much which in turn has affected her diabetes and so most of the time she does not feel well. The good side is that I have walked the dogs by myself a lot which is a good thing because I can mostly cope with Tome, my sister`s collie cross. His problem is that he does not like dogs larger than himself so he goes for them on the principle of getting in first. So he needs putting on the lead if a larger dog approaches. While Jerry loves every body and will approach a larger dog. He was growled at by an Akita and he was quite upset. You see `Nobody has ever done that before` written on his face.

I have done a lot of weaving and thinking about weaving. The Guild members have just started the Black Jack Game for 2022. This entails getting three random cards from you have to design and carry out a project. Weavers weave and Spinners spin. I have ended up  with a design which involves satin weave, rich dark colours and some fancy yarn. The yarn is Tencel + merino  yarn at 20/2 and space dyed in reds and dark greens from Joy of Yarns and I think bought at Tampa Bay Convergence some years ago. This is going to be interesting.

The Online Guild had January devoted to UFOs  and I accomplished two of my list of three, making the striped cotton fabric up into a giler.

The fabric (from 8/2 cotton) was very thick and seams were difficult to machine. I did not like the arm hole facing. I thinking bias binding would have been better.

The second UFO was to examine my stash and get rid of some of it. Which I have done although I did find some projects which were collected together but not touched for several years. 2023 UFOs?

Flu

 Yes, flu, no not Covid. Just plain flu accompanied by sinusitis, aching bones etc. Not possible to do much. I live on paracetamol and sudafed. However I do think I am getting better and the films on over the holiday period have cheered me up. For instance I am a devoted fan of Carry On films and my alltime favourite was shown on TV - Carry on up the Kyber. Now the rest of the family thinks these films are low class and not quite respectable. I doubt if they could be made today because they are very politically incorrect.

I have managed to do several things. I set out to take part in the Online Guild`s UFO month and the first thing on my list is to make a waistcoat ( using a Daryl Lancaster pattern). The fabric and its dark red lining are shown below.

The stripes will run vertically. Construction is well under way. I have a large metal cupboard in which I put all my fabric and I search in there for a suitable lining. I originally intended to use some very nice Tencel fabric woven by me using a draft from the book The Draftts of Jeremiah Fielding but decided it was too nice to be hidden as a lining. Anyway. I was horrified by the amount (and quality) of what was stashed away in the cupboard. My daughter, Ruth has taken away one armful and I will take some to the refugees  in Didcot. But I still have several lengths of gorgeous fabric, include four lengths of tweed woven by me. Each is quite sufficient for a jacket and I do not ned four new jackets. Could do with a bomber jacket for round the house though and two of the lengths would be good for that.

And now I must get on. Today`s job is darn the elbows of one of Ruth`s sweaters. She is working in conservation these days and is often out on moors so she needs all the sweaters she can get.  

 

Back to Normality (I hope)

I see it is months since I blogged. There has been a lot going on here and I have just about surfaced. 

Firstly the good bit. I have bought a static caravan on the North Norfolk coast - Wells-next-the-Sea to be exact. Only a few hundred yards from the sea and more or less on the Norfolk Coastal path. Dogs are allowed and they love it. There are places where the sand stretches for miles and they take off into the distance, leaving us to negotiate all the little streams. Thsy just walk through. In fact, Jerry, my Boston, has hated water all his life but did not even blink when the incoming tide covered his paws. I think salt water must count as different. 

We have been up and down, filling the caravan with our belongings. We have been therer 4 times since September. All meant a lot of time spent driving.

But added to that, starting in October were health issues for me. I suddenly started having dreadful side effects from a drug I take. It took ages before everyone (hospital, GP and me) realised that it was due to changing said drug on to something very unsuitable. Change back and all is well. and I have been okay for the last week or two. However 4 weeks ago, I sprained my ankle ona Wednesday. We had tickets for HMS Pinafore at London Coliseum on Saturday and there was no way I was going to miss that. However whhat with walking round London (2 miles), I then spent the next  3 weeks with my left foot raised up so could achieve very little.

Now I am fine, back to walking the dogs twice a day and weaving. I am making great progress with the Megado where I have completed two table cloths and started on some tea towel and hand-towels. 

I have  dealt with Christmas and the posting out of our calendars as well as having a thorough inspection of the yarn stash. And  spent some time designing a double weave in alpaca so which I have just enough!! The draft is shown below.

Not in black and white of course but maroon and sapphire. Letts hope nothing else gets in the way of weaving progress!

Jeremiah Fielding

 I forgot to add that Alice Schlein wrote a very flattering comment on the Draughts of Jeremiah Fielding in her blog of 4th September. You can read by selecting from the list of blogs I read in the lefthand column.

Worling Hard but

Working hard but getting nowhere! Certainly not on the weaving front. I have finished tying on the Megado, woven some samples for colour and found four errors. One is corrected but I have had no time to do more. Not sure what I have been doing except tidying up after the linocut course at the end of July!! We have bought a small press. Not anything like an Albion but a modern one from Germany. It took me a bit of practise to get a good result. 

But we are off to Norfolk on Saturday and  getting ready for that. I have bought a new laptop with all the trauma that entails. Mostly it is okay but the USB ports are all these little ones and I have have stuff that needs the old sort (camera memory card reader for instance) and find it difficult to be quite sure that the pictures on line are really the right thing. Bah

But of course I do have some nice photos of Wales from our week in Abergavenny.

More on the Ghost Warp

 I have started tying on the new warp. It is slow but My hands are remembering the technique for the knots and I am speeding up.

The photos below show  views of the front of the reed - where all the action is. The lease sticks nearest the reed hold the ghost warp. The other set hold the new warp. I wound four separte warps in shades of blue plus a pale grey plus a lovely spaced dyed in blue Tencel.

I reckon it took three hours to tie on one warp. The problem now, I mean at this very moment) is the temperature of 30 degrees. The studio with the Megado has a southfacing sloping roof which ensures a very uncomfortable work space. So I have given up tying on and set about my next big job. 

I have been remiss for the last 18 months on photography. Oh I have done some but just gardens, dogs, bits in Photoshop for lino cuts but I am going for a course in the Brecon Beacons in August and need to remember the proper ways to do things. So far I have read the first couple of chapters in a very good book on the Nikon D3400. Tomor5row I shal pick up the camera!

And on the topic of lino cuts, I have completed two recently that I liked. London Skyline first then Lobster Pots

Ghost Warp

 I have put a ghost warp on the Megado. Various points to note. You have to decide what epi is going to be used for the main weavings and then the ghost warp needs to be the same or very near the same epi. Since the ghost warp is not being woven for use, you can use what yarn colour you want in any order. Also you can mix the yarn sizes provided you are not too far from the main one. So there were 720 ghost warp ends and I did tie on and weave a bit looking for errors. I found two in 720. Not bad going. Now it is all done and I have two sets of lease sticks in front of the reed, one is the ghost warp and one in the first true warp. 

 Will post some photos when I start tying.

Curtain Fabric finished

 At last the curtain fabric is finished, hemmed and cut off the Megado. It is currently sitting in a pile on the dining room table so that I can (some time soon) inspect it for mistakes before washing it all. 

Apart from the tomato plants which seem to take up too much of my life, I have been thinking about the Megado and eventually decided that what was really bothering me was warping up. I am old and stiff these days. But if I could spend as much time as it takes to put on a ghost warp, a lot of problems would disappear. No more threading and sleying for as long as the ghost warp lasts. Sooooo. I will put on a straight draw on 16 shafts at 24 epi (for 8/2 cotton of which I have masses). It will be 30 inches wide and I have created several nice drafts already including a 4CDW. Length will be 2.5 metres. 

I am so taken with this idea that I will do the same on my 8 shaft Schacht. I will have to crawl under the loom to change the treadling but I can manage that. The Schacht will be devoted to tweed and things woolly.

And as Cally Booker said `you can always do double weave with a much thicker yarn`.

The Bracknell College has reopened to much joy and the Columbia Press has been repaired. It prints so much better than doing the printing by hand. I have corrected a lot of small errors, especially in the clouds and am printing in four colours!!! An edition of 12 has been printed and I must start on the next linocut (lobster pots).

Wildlife

 There is a lot of it about this year. Very noticeable. This means greenery and animals/birds. The local wood has had a superb show of wood anemone. I am told this is a sure sign of an ancient woodland. Well I had noticed the enormous oaks. After the anemones, came a carpet of celandines and now the place is a marvellous show of bluebells. They were nothing like so widespread last year. This year they are everywhere. Our house backs onto this little wood.

And the slightly further away is Wokefield Common which stretches for miles and miles. First the birches, followed by rowans (Hundreds of seedling rowans this year) and alders. No oaks yet and certainly no flowers at all!!

Now the wildlife which all happened in our garden yesterday, startling all of us, the dogs as well. We came out to walk the dogs at 6.45 am and Jerry stiffened and peered at our tiny front garden. Our collie was similarly anxious and came up to investigation. At which moment, something ran along the fence and disappear to a narrow slot by the house - but that is a dead end. So it must have turned back. It burst out of this slot and headed away from the house at very high speed. A Munkjack!

The second happening was in the back garden. It being a nice day we were drinking tea there when a sparrowhawk burst out of the sky, took a baby blackbird from its nest just over our fence in the neighbours garden. And departed. Oh dear. 

Both happenings were a first for us. I have noticed a lot more birds around the garden this year. Normally we have only robins and blackbirds. This year we have blackbirds, robins, sparrows, starlings, a thrush, magpies, rooks and tits of some kind nesting in our camellia (2 nests).

But of course there is also progress in doors on the Megado. Got to 3 metres now. Still on track to finish by the end of May. I am trying to decide what to put on next.

NO I AM NOT WINNING

Progress is being made on the Megado - but there was a very serious hiccup. Over last weekend, the lap top took to switching itself off - -  without any warning. But it could be turned on again and nothing had been lost. Until eventually, it refused to switch on. So I had to send for our on-call computer man who pronounced that it was overheating and if I changed to a Solid State hard drive and used a cooler, it would be okay. And so he cloned my hard drive (which means the old one is a backup.) and actually it does not get the least bit hot. which it did before, and now seems okay. Nevertheless, I am shutting everything down after an hour of use and after taking a note of where the pattern had got to. It does mean I have lost three days when I could have been weaving.

However I have woven two metres and calculations show that I do not have to order up more yarn from William Hall. So I am still on track to finish all 6 metres by the end of May.

Not done much else except watch a Zoom talk by Lester Capon, President of the Designer Bookbinders. His bindings are stupendous. I have not been so bowled over in a long time. I have four A5 textblocks all prepared for binding and the bindings cut out but they have just been discarded while I set out a new episode in my bookbinding. Mind you, he works in leather and I do not but I will do some trials with bookcloth. 

The last bit of news which is an annoying event is that I have to have a procedure next Sunday, sticking a camera down my throat without an anesthetic. Nasty but in a good cause. That is not the annoyance. That is that I must self isolation from now (Thursday) until Sunday afternoon. Not to see anyone, Not to leave the house. It sounds as if gardening is not allowed, nor dog walking. And all this despite having had two vaccinations. Bah.

A WINNING DAY

I expected trouble today - with computers. But it all worked out well!! Let me explain. Start with a Kindle/my Kindle. Bought many years ago, the battery just died 18 months ago and I could not summon up enough energy to do something/anything about it. Over the weekend I came across the carcass and decided I was well enough to cope. So I bought a new Kindle and it was delivered the next day, Sunday. Put it on to charge overnight and wondered if connecting to Wifi was going to work. So I set aside Monday morning to (hopefully) achieve the connexion. It all worked and I was connected in less than ten minutes! All is well. The books I used to have in my library are still there plus, to my astonishment, all Dorothy`s books. She says that what they do these days when people clearly live at the same address. I can see that might not always be acceptable. 

And now to the second adventure - the Megado. This has not been switched on for over a year. Last time I used it, I had terrible trouble with the software which sends commands to the Megado`s relays. I asked Marion Proctor, an expert weaver from our Guild, who I knew had the same equipment as I have. She said she had the same problems but tried a load of experiments and found what worked which is, have absolutely everything connected before switching power on the lap-top. So first thing, connect everything, second thing switch computer on and pray. Next thing, there it was demanding the entry password and in no time at all, I had a working system. Mind you, I then had to consult the desktop down stairs and the 3 metres I have already woven to make sure I get all the colours right. I am weaving lampas and need three colours, that is, three shuttles. two throws of brown, one throw of yellow and one throw of green or beige depending and repeat these four for ever. Being lampas which is really a form of double weave, weaving is a bit slow but I only have 6 yards to go!!! Anyway if I keep at it, I should be finished by the end of May. 

I managed 4 inches this morning which, given the fact I am cook this week, was quite good. The reason for wanting it finished is that I have a nice idea (four colour double weave) for a piece to be shown at the Guild exhibition in September. And for that I need to have the Megado clear by the beginning of June. As they say, watch this space.

Striped Fabic

I have finished the striped fabric which was on the Shacht. It is mended (odd ends to be disposed of) and washed. Not taken photos yet but will shortly. A long time ago (years and years) I asked Stacey Harvey-Brown what she did about photos of her weaving. Did she employ a professional? The answer was they were too expensive. They charged £600 to £800 a day and that would be much more today. Her advice was take  what has to be photographed outside on  a grey overcast (not too overcast)  day and look for a nice background. Well it is definitely a grey day so I will go outside and see what I can manage.

So I have taken loads of photos outdoors and the best four are shown below.

I like the last one best. I do agree that the top two show the fabric better. One thing that did shake me was the shrinkage. On-loom measurements were 0.59 by 4.10m which went to 0.48 by 3.72 m after washing. That is 15% in width and 10% in length.

I am having rest from weaving until next Tuesday when I will try to get the Megado to function after more than a year of neglect. I am tidying up everything.

PS I have a thing about warthogs which I saw wild in Africa and loved on sight. So I have two metal warthogs , Mummy and baby who is in the last photo.

Troubles with the website - or not

 A year ago I got a professional to create a website for me. I specified everything and wrote the text and she did everything else. The contents of the website are articles on various sorts of weaving and dyeing. She left me with instructions for editing the website. And then I became ill in February 2020 and stayed that way for some months.

Oe of the problems was that I am selling The Draughts of Jeremiah Fielding through the website (works beautifully) but because the postage varies madly round the world, I included a few sample costs of postage. Well some countries never change their postage costs and others work on a two-month cycle (USA for example). Now the costs of posting a copy of the book to the USA is 1.5 times the cost the book. And so I feel it is  essential to let potential buyers know what they are letting themselves in for. And this means changing the website text. Until November 2020, I got my grandson to do the editing but he now has a job and I feel quite quite well enough to tackle the job myself.

Besides the website has a section where a reader can download weaving files. This is my son-in-law`s fault. He discovered that I had created handouts, one for each weaving topic, for example woven shibori or lace for the Kennet Valley Guild weaving classes. And he asked what I was going to do with the handouts. He thought they should be freely available. So I promised that I would include them in the new website. But of course, each one had to be edited and brought up to date. Three different topics were put on at the beginning and I slowly edited the other three and have them ready for inclusion in the website. So there were two bits of editing. 

I started on Saturday morning by reading the editor manual. And by the end of the day I had the postage costs all sorted. One problem I had not envisaged was that I had to edit every single section of the website. Part of the slowness was Google which behaves rather oddly and in a way I did not expect. On Sunday, I set about adding the three new files and I happily succeeded with two but would the third one go in? No it would not. So I gave up and called in my grandson who was puzzled at first but after an hour, remembered that in html, you have to use the exact name of the files, and that means upper and lower case. Bingo. I needed a glass of madiera after that. 

I tidied up all the paperwork this morning, took `do the website` off my to-do list  and spent the day weaving peacefully on the Schacht. Done 3 metres, 1.5 metres to go.

Now I need to start on revising the dyeing handouts and  I was just wondering whether to include one on Japanese bookbinding. I wouldn't mind some feed-back on that.

Oelsner plus Daryl Lancaster

 I have warped five metres of fabric combining Daryl Lancaster and a weave from Oelsner (No 363)> Daryl made a waistcoat from some very brightly coloured Fabric and I was taken by the fabric. So I investigated my holdings of cotton in 8/2 and 12/2 and found I had a lot of small quantities. In fact as a resuk of preparing four equal warps, I acquired 18 empty white bobbins!!! and countless small quantities were used. The Oelsner draft is basically an 8 shaft undulating twill. And the sett was 24 epi. I used a reed of 12 slots per inch. Warping was terrible and I ended up with a lot of errors which took me two days to correct. 

And yesterday I started weaving.

And here is the first 0.25 metres. Definitely loud!

The garden is beginning to spring and there are lots of flowers on the camellias.

The lower one is in the front garden. Flowers are six inches in diameter.

G G Hornby

 My father acquired a book of pen and ink drawings of Edinburgh sometime during his life. I do remember that he took some of the drawings and had them framed, although what has happened to those I do not know. The book ended up with me after my parents deaths. It was in a sad way. Because so many had been removed, the spine was wrecked and the covers dirty and in a bad way. 

I have just finished redoing the binding completely. Since all the pages were loose sheets, I created an album ad each sheet is attached using double sided sellotape. There was no way I could use the cover but by scanning and cleaning up the title page, I made have a passable front cover. The old new versions are shown below. It was taken on my phone so quality not good

Now to warp up the Shacht with a very stripey warp with an Oelsner draft.

Design for Weave

 I have attended several courses on Design and even a couple of courses on Design for Weave but I do not seem to get anywhere. This is nothing to do with the tutors but just that I find nothing in them to change/improve the way I work. I was complaining about this to Dorothy who replied in her usual way that I seem to produce nice stuff. I thought about that and realised that well yes, not bad getting fabric into the Convergence yardage show. But then Convergence always has a theme. Is there a clue there. So I thought a bit more.

I concluded that I get on best when there is a theme. For instance the theme for The Guild`s forthcoming exhibition is THE SEA. And it did not take me very long to decide what to do. 

So I looked at the. Web and found a firm called John England who design and weave a fabric for you and they outline the way they approach designing. The first topic is to choose yarn. Now that really surprised me but they have another 5 or 6 topics.

.

Now I have a lot of nice yarn to be used up. So there are two approaches.   

Select a theme

OR

Select a yarn

Or

Select the final use of fabric

After finishing Daryl striped fabric for a waistcoat (currenly the warp is waiting to be wound on,, I need something for the Guild exhibition whose theme is the SEA. Four colour double weave? I have a 32 shaft draft for such a fabric which was woven in 60/2 silk. I have given all my 60/2 silk to my niece, Cally Booker because my eyesight is not up to dealing with a fabric woven at 60 epi. So I will use colours in 30/2 yarn. Need to size fabric to use what I have already. Suitable colours for THE SEA are needed and I have blue,  green and somewhere in between. I need four colours and the weft. May have to buy some yarn. Start by looking at what I have. Actually this uses two out of the three startpoints.

I feel happier for writing this all down. So conclusion? Do not go to any more classes on design for weaving. And write up how I got to the final fabric each time I weave a piece.

I would be very interested in how other people actually selecct the draft and the yarn.