PULLING MY HEAD OUT OF THE SAND

Posted by Peg in South Carolina

My warp still sits on the loom, waiting patiently for me to find the time(?) to finish the sleying, tying on, and in general just getting it ready to be woven.  I have lost interest in it. 

It has been hard for me finally to say this:  I have lost interest in it. 

I have not, on the other hand, lost interest in weaving.  But I no longer have the kind of energy that I originally brought to this particular warp.  The tremendous energy I have been bringing to weaving these past few years, and which has culminated in this particiular warp, has been diverted.  To music.  To singing.  To working on the development of my voice.  And this requires more physical and mental energy, more purely physical strength, than weaving has ever required.  The work is exhausting.  The result?  I simply have neither the physical nor the mental energy left that this warp demands.

To give me the energy that singing demands, I have upped my levels of aerobic exercise and of strength-building exercise.  I sleep like a baby!

So I have been tempted to just cut the warp off and throw it away.   Get it out of the house.  Out of my sight.  But I cannot seem to be able to do that either. Doing that would break my heart. 

“Pulling My Head out of the Sand” was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on December 18, 2010. ©2010 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina

CRACKLE AND INTERLEAVED THREADING

Posted by Peg in South Carolina 

I took the easy way to begin:  playing with my weaving software.  I took my basic 4-shaft crackle threading (threaded two units per block, the blocks lined up in twill order) and did all the transformations I could work out with my weaving software.  A very simple-minded thing.  But, after a lot of unpromising tests, I did come up with something.

I interleaved this threading with an 8-shaft crackle threading (also threaded two units per block, with the blocks lined up in twill order) and got this:

OBSERVATIONS ON THIS DRAFT

1. There are many weft floats that are too long.  Aside from the “rule” that crackle allows floats of no more than 3, some of the floats are just too long to be weavable, though at 60 ends per inch on a piece that won’t get hard wear (dressy fabric, for example, or an art piece) this wouldn’t be a problem.

2. The crackle threading is no more.  But then, the point of this is not to come up with a new “crackle” design, but to come up with a design that might make for interesting weaving.

3. There are groups of doubled warp ends.  They occur because the two crackle threadings are the same size and the units are threaded in the same order.  This would probably be less of a problem if the two crackle threading units were of different size and/or if the threadings were in a different order.  This is definitely something worth exploring.

4. The final threading has no warp ends on shafts 6 or 7.  This happened because the 8-shaft crackle threading was much longer than the 4-shaft crackle threading.  This means that both threadings should (at least normally) be of the same length.

5. The new tieup failed to include shafts 5 and 8 in the tieup.  They are there simply because I added them manually.  I found this a bit strange.

6. This is not a draft to be woven.  It is simply the beginning of a journey.

AN IRONY

It is an irony that the weaving software which landed me with carpal tunnel sydrome has now led my straight, head-on, into the wall.  Using interleaved threadings, as well as echo threadings, with crackle has been in the back of my head for a long time.  But the notion of pursuing it has frightened me because it is such unknown territory, at least for me.  To try playing with it would risk lots of failures with no promise of success.  In fact, the whole crackle-a-day project was kind of a setup to avoid getting into all of this.  And yet, that is right where it has landed me.

But as long as I show up for work each day and take each day one at a time, I will be more OK.

GOING TO WORK EACH DAY

Pressfield, in The War of Art,  has this to say about getting to work each day:

Nothing else matters except sitting down every day and trying.  Why is this so important?  Because when we sit down day after day and keep grinding, something mysterious starts to happen.  A process is set into motion by which, inevitably and infallibly, heaven comes to our aid.  Unseen forces enlist in our cause;  serendipity reinforces our purposes…..  When we sit down and work, we become like a magnetized rod that attracts iron filings.  Ideas come.  Insights accrete.  
                                                                                                     (p. 108)

Past experience has shown me the truth of this.  And even yesterday, when I had at last begun to take on the challenge, the serendipity began………..and I was once again happy.

PROTECTING MYSELF FROM CARPAL TUNNEL SYNDROME

I have put a timer next to my computer.  When I start working with weaving software, I will set it for 20 minutes.  I will then get up, walking around, stretch, including some specific stretches for carpal tunnel.  I will then return, reset the timer, and so on.

Related Posts: 
4-Shaft Crackle Threading Straight Draw
Beginning 8-Shaft Crackle
Resistance to Doing the Work

"Crackle and Interleaved Threading”  was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on April 1, 2010. ©2010 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina

RESISTANCE TO DOING THE WORK

Posted by Peg in South Carolina 

There is a saying that when the student is ready, the teacher will appear.  The teacher for me has taken the form of a book.   The War of Art by Steven Pressfield.  There is a subtitle, but I hate it.

ABOUT TO HIT THE WALL

I started reading the book this morning.  I have been reading the first part:  “Resistance: Defining the Enemy.”  All at once, my mind started working.  The timing of my back issues.  Yes, it gets me attention.   Do I need attention?  But the timing, it all started getting serious as I was getting into some really hard stuff in terms of crackle design.  I was getting ready to hit a wall.  I could see it.  I could actually feel the wall getting closer and closer.

The wall spelled the end of the easy stuff in the Crackle-Draft-A-Day Project.  The end, actually, of actually being able to come up with a draft a day.  The beginning of the need to take time to think.  Not just play around with easy possibilities.  Those easy possibilities were vanishing quickly.  I was going to have to start to think.

Why did carpal tunnel syndrome suddenly start?   Because I was using the weaving software way too much.  Is there a message there?   I think so.  I was using the software as a substitute of doing the hard work of thinking and imagining.  Using the weaving software, as I was, was largely a technique of avoidance, of resistance.  The devil at work.  And so I was punished with carpal tunnel.

FACING THE RESISTANCE

I have something hard to face right now.  I can’t weave.  I can’t even thread the loom, because of my back issues.  That doesn’t mean I can’t confront the resistance. That doesn’t mean that my mind needs to stop working.

Pressfield asks:

What does Resistance feel like?

First, unhappiness.  We feel like hell.  A low-grade misery pervades everything.  We’re bored, we’re restless.  We can’t get no satisfaction.  There’s guilt but we can’t put our finger on the source…….We hate our lives. We hate ourselves.  (page. 31)

So then, he goes on, we want a drug, we want to go shopping, we want to surf the net endlessly.  Anything to escape.

Not a pretty picture.

But, instead of moping and feeling sorry for myself (and spending half my time on Amazon.com……..), I could actually work. 

When I have encountered resistance in the past, I have used a technique that worked for me.  I would figure out one very small thing that I could do.  It might take only 5 minutes, or even less.  And then I would make an appointment with myself—day and time.  Of course, now I am resisting doing that!

SINGING AS PART OF THE RESISTANCE?

The strange thing is that I have not encountered this resistance in my singing.  I continue to practice 1 1/2 hours to 2 hours a day.  I continue to make progress.  I continue to work very hard.  I have said to myself, at least my body allows me to do this.  And so, that makes it OK not to be engaged in weaving-related activities. 

But think about it.  Where I am at vocally is very much of a beginner.  Not so with weaving.  Resistance rarely makes itself felt for me at the beginning levels.  It only starts to manifest itself as I progress onto levels which require hard work, really hard work, original hard work.

I have turned my singing into a resistance to keep me from weaving!

Gosh, if there is anything I am good at, it is playing tricks on myself.

It is time to stop writing about this.  It is time to kick butt and move on.

Related Posts:

Resistance and Finding Time
Resistance

"Resistance to Doing the Work”  was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on March 30, 2010. ©2010 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina

TEMPTATION

Posted by Peg in South Carolina

Two weaving temptations have recently assailed me.

1. I was tempted not to unweave something that was just plain wrong.

2. I was tempted to let the second blue dyeing of the silk stand even though it still had more of a yellow cast than I was happy with.

TEMPTATION NOT TO UNWEAVE

The first temptation centered on a treadling error.  First I treadled 2x with pattern weft on treadle 4.  Those are the first two lines of gold weft visible in the photo above.  Now, for a moment, forget about the rest of the golds.

I was then to treadle 3x with pattern weft on treadle 8.  When I had finished what I supposed was the second treadling group, which was to be treadled 3x,  I discovered I had treadled it only 2x.  So I treadled one more group.  It did not look right. 

It did not look right because it was not right. After I treadled the first group 2x, I treadled 1x the next/correct pattern treadle.  But for the next 2 pattern treadles I went to a new treadle.

Hmm.  It wasn’t right but it did look kind of interesting. Could l I turn this “mistake” into a pattern?  Between every group of blocks I could treadle one group with the pattern weft thrown on a treadle different from what I had just treadled and what was to follow.  I would determine, at the moment of change which treadle to use for that pattern treadle on the single group of 8 treadles.

So, with this thought in mind, I continued.  It was not very long before reality set in. This was an interesting idea.  For another piece.

The problem was that it destroyed the clarity of the pattern, a clarity which characterized the patterns of the first two pattern stripes.  Looking at the photo above, which is correctly woven, shows that pattern clarity very well.

So I unwove.  Not fun, but not difficult and, since I had woven only about 1 inch (probably had thrown 60 shots), it did not take all that long.

Should I just have unwoven when I first saw the problem?  Doing this would have saved some time.  Oh the other hand, by weaving this new idea I learned, not just that it wouldn’t work for this piece, but also that it was nonetheless an interesting idea. And it working on this led me to understanding a bit more about the qualities of this piece I am weaving.  So, no, I should not have just unwoven without giving the new idea a chance.  

The selvedge ends looked a little frayed, but I didn’t worry.  I could always replace them if they broke (they didn’t break.).

TEMPTATION NOT TO DYE A THIRD BLUE

Unlike the first temptation, the second temptation haunted me for days.  I had dyed the second dulled blue, but when I compared its to the first dulled blue and to the bright blue against which it would be woven, I just wasn’t really happy.

Back and forth I went.  The color will do. No, it won’t do; it has too much of a yellow color cast.  Yes, it will do; it is clearly better than the first dye lot.  No, it won’t do; I can’t live with that yellow cast.  And so on.

At the loom, I wasn’t ready for the dulled blue yet; I still had some more weaving with the reds to go.  So I continued to go back and forth in my head, resisting what I knew I was going to have to do.

I finally broke down.  I wound the white silk weft.  I redid the formula. I dyed.  And now it sits in the dye pot, soaking the very last bits of dye molecules that it can, waiting for the morning when I can rinse and dry.

Related Posts: 
   Resisting Doing the Work
   Improvising at the Loom
   Weaving as Exploration

“Temptation” was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on June 16, 2009. ©2009 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina

Leaving the Comfort Zone

Total Woven To Date: 15"
Woven Yesterday: 2"

To enter the unfamiliar we must leave the familiar. How hard that is! At least for me. And the area of weaving is no exception.

I am finding myself growing comfortable in what I am currently doing. Yesterday as I wove, I found myself thinking, I really like this! I want to do more like this! Then a thought slapped me across the face: I wanted to stay in familiar territory! Who, me? Yes, me. Guilty. All sorts of new things I had been wanting to try out had just evaporated from my head. I did not want to leave my current comfort zone.

Recognizing what was going on, I found it surprisingly easy to change gears. Perhaps it is true that recognizing a problem puts you half way towards solving it. So change gears I did.

Two ideas have been going through my head. One is doing a bit of ikat. I had been thinking very seriously about warp painting or warp ikat or some combination of the two. Warp painting is nothing new for me. I have done it several times and I really enjoy weaving off a painted warp. The constant changing of the warp is really exciting. It is exciting because it is fun just to see the changing colors. But it is also fun to figure out when and how to change the weft colors as the warp colors change.

Nor is ikat totally new to me. I have never done it on my own. I did, however, take a week-long workshop on warp ikat at Arrowmont. I had a very good time and learned a lot. And I took a weekend workshop the Chattahoochee Handweavers' Guild offered on weft ikat and enjoyed that as well.

Combining warp painting or warp ikat with crackle, however, is certainly a totally new thing for me!! I have thought for several weeks about this and, while It think it has some definite possibilities, I don't think it's quite where I want to go right now. Maybe it's too big a jump for me right now. Maybe I'm not quite ready.

If truth be told, my warp ikat ideas were really getting very complicated. Of course I am not ready for what I was conceiving!

But then there is weft ikat. I think I could get something I want to happen in the next warp with weft ikat. I would not weave the whole warp of as weft ikat. It would be just bits and pieces here and there. Kind of getting my toes wet, so to speak.

Weft ikat does pose some difficulties. It is not easy to get the weft to go exactly where you want it to, no matter how carefully you calculate and measure. The result is that usually with each shot you end up adjusting the placement of the weft thread. This has definite impact on the selvedges! But in this case, I am not viewing precise placement of the weft as critical. Or at least I think that right now.

There is a second thing I am thinking of trying on this next warp as well. I would like to use some kind of supplementary warps and/or wefts for occasional lines of black. I've got some ideas on how I might go about this, but nothing firm yet.

I think it is really important to move out of my comfort zone. If I don't, I will get bored and I will stop growing as a weaver. Probably as a person, too.