Christmas Eve 2019

I have finished editing the new website and sent off the files. No doubt when the web designer, she will scream with rage and want lots of changes. So today I carefully checked the proof of my three pages in the Complex Weaver celebration of being 40 book.  I cannot say that anyone would be able to extract the draft from the photo shown. It is double sided  Biederwand on 16 shafts. I wonder if they will have the wifs available?

My sister Dorothy has complained a lot about my last blog entry. Her objection is my complaining about how little I have woven in the last four years. She reminded me quite correctly, that six months was out being ill and the rest of the four years was spent organising/writing the Jeremiah Fielding book. Both comments are correct but I have to admit that I have such good intentions for 2020. I have one major project to complete on the Megado and two more lined up after that. Let`s see if I can do these three in 2020!!

Christmas 2019

Lots of people have pointed out that I have entered anything in this blog for a few weeks. Ah well, that is life. Rather boring  and not allowing for me to do anything interesting in the way of artistic efforts.

What I have done is sell (means coping with foreign exchange and hefty postage charges) lots of books. I only had 160 books printed and in a few weeks have sold over a third of them. And I have not yet advertised! So it is mostly word of mouth.

The other job which really caught me by surprise was my new website. Note yet up and running. After an abortive effort on Wordpress, I decided this update had to be done professionally and found a suitable person in Newbury. I have had a Google website since 2009 but over the years, Google has changed it and a lot of my stuff has just vanished. It has a very old fashioned layout and appearance anyway. Well the designer immediately asked terrible questions like `Who is this website for?` Oh dear never thought about that. The reason for the effort I have spent on it is that the designer said that had to provide all the text for the sections. So I have been rewriting, re-laying-out every section, culminating in adding text to every photo in the slideshow and adding a few more for the last few years.

And that has caused me to think hard because There is very little completed weaving in the last five years. If I look in the years up to 2014, between 6 and 12 projects were completed each year. The last two years have been particularly thin. I think I need to give up some of my other activities but I like them all (lino cutting, book binding, photography). What has changed is that the number of hours I work. After I retired, I did 8 or more hours a day. Now after illness and getting older, five hours a day is quite enough. But selling the book and the website revamp have swallowed up all the five hours. What do I do with the rest of my life? I walk Jerry twice a day - which is, of course, good for me.

Well the website work is nearly finished. Should be completed tomorrow. And when the website is finalised, selling the book will be done on that.

Oh well. And there has been Christmas to think about and the calendar as well. and since I love it to bits, I will post the front cover of the calendar below. I first saw these a few years ago. I still love them.

Dillington Hall

I am at Dillington Hall for a few days, bookbinding. They have tools here that I do not own, most importantly a plow for cutting the edges. The tutor is Angela Sutton. So I have come with three projects to deal with. What I have done so far is to sew a book which arrived in printers sheets and to plow all three edge. Then I made up endpapers which are being pressed over night. Today I shall attach them and then go on to the second project which was originally to makes a small slipcase for a set of pamphlets on gardening but I discovered interesting info about the pamphlets. I acquired from the books of a relative who died recently. There are 12 and all in the same format. Four inches square, stapled on the spine (which had gone rusty and stained the pages, Mr Cuthberts Herbaceous Borders is a typical title. They are priced at 9 pence each. On looking up the web, I found they were published in 1953 and are sold for about ten pounds each these days. Well I like them and have removed the staples and resend some on them. The first job today is to finish the sewing and then start on the slipcase.

The other students are into gilded lettering on leather. Oh well I shall love my books just as much.

The book

For the last few years (I think I started in 2015) I have been working on a book of drafts assembled in 1775 by a Lancashire weaver named Jeremiah Fielding. Last Saturday I took delivery of over 150 copies of  'The Draughts by Jeremiah Fielding'. It is intended as a work book for weavers. There are 59 drafts but some are duplications and one or two have the draft in a mess. But over 50 remain. Of course, the drafts are in 1775 notation which is pretty incomprehensible to modern weavers. So I set to and translated every one into modern notation. There are introductory  sections on the finding of the notebook and the history of the cotton industry at that time but the heart of the book are the drafts. I persuade weavers of my Guild to do one or two or even more samples from the book. and they helped gallantly. Although there were at least two aghast weavers  saying indignantly 'This is double cloth'. A bit of research showed that the poor of 1775 kept themselves warm in winter by creating pockets stuffed with fleece. Because of his own samples, we realised that every one was woven in ecru cotton which shows up the texture nicely. Although some drafts have 8 to 11 shafts and those are patterned. So all the samples were woven in ecru cotton. The book is spiral bound to make the drafts easier to use.

There are 140 teeny samples in the original but they show off dyeing and wood block printing and nowhere are they traceable to a specific draft. The book has taken a long time and I reckon at least 30 Guild members helped in one way or another.

A flyer showing the front cover and the three parts of a weave called Elliot's Cord. Some of the weaves have names which I could trace and some appear nowhere on the web.

We ended up by having more data than we wanted to include and intend to publish that data on a website in the next few months as downloadable files. Two topics which will be dealt with are Jeremiah's house which still exists and we have photos and data! The other one is the usefulness  of the drafts today. Several weavers were so taken with a sample (Myself included) that some lovely weaves have appeared at the Guild's Show and Tell. When everyone has finished this project we will publish them all.

Two photos of a weave using Jeremiah's draft and space dyed tencel.

Any one wanting to buy a copy, it with cost £12.50 plus P&P. Send me a pm.

Spain

I have, at last, found out how to get into my blog with a Spanish WiFi. Mostly done by making wild guesses at the word meaning. Anyway we are in Andalucia and have stayed for three days in both Granada and Cordoba. Tomorrow we move to Seville.

We have been here before but for a half day each city. The Alhambra is overcrowded, in fact the number of tourists has gone up by a factor of 8 or 10. A bit grim for the natives. I have taken loads of photos and eaten a lot of high class food. I recommend aubergine fritters. Lots of lovely fish and huge helpings of meat.
The top photo is from Córdoba mosque and the bottom one from an excavated palace about ten km out of Cordoba.

The excavations are ongoing and we started at the top and worked our way down a very steep slope. The actual excavations are more or less flat so it was only the access which was vertical!!

Earlier we had visited Alhambra which is really rebuilt. All the same it is gorgeous. But again too many people and they have had to restrict access. Nevertheless it is worth seeing.

The bottom photo is from the Alhambra and shows the defensive walls. Not something you usually get shown. The top photo is from their gardens which are still a mass of flowers.

I should say we have had really good food on this trip. And tomorrow we are off to Seville..

Bookbinding

Yesterday my book came back. This is a bound copy of Two Points East which has been away since April, touring Norfolk, being on show in 7 or 8 venues, The organiser included a flyer and a catalogue ( photos of every binding) and it was nice to see all of these in close up. Looking at the binding I am pleased. It is one of the best things I have done. Now I have to bind the author's second book on Norfolk coast!! There are some problems,
1) It is in the form sent out by the printer which means much folding and pressing - and then when sewn,
2)the edges need guillotining and I do not have one big enough.
3) Until 1 and 2 have been done, I cannot read it and so have no ideas on bindings.

 Oh well, what would life be without problems.

The weaving is going well.

Working out what to do

I warped up with some of the charity wool which Rosie Price supplied. It has all been spun by Guild members. I have woven several scarves before and put on an orange-brown warp which called for 10 epi. I put on enough for three scarves. It was stripes of 4 shaft twill interspersed with tabby. And I can get several different drafts out of it without rethreading. I have some nice handspun grenn and started out with that. And had a great surprise. It required more like 20 epi!! The problem is that each spinner had a different colour and every spinner has their favourite thickness. Well that would not do so I hunted for something thicker and found it - Worked very well for the first scarve.

For the second one, I used a red chenille (see below). The pattern does not show up that well but better than the photo shows.

I have found some suitable pastel wool which will do for the third scarve

I have restarted my lino-cut class. Had a happy time printing many Xmas cards and then cutting a new block showing Battersea Power Station. Next Friday, I shall do a proof and finish cutting. I do like lino-cuts.