In an earlier post on originality I talked about originality as a byproduct and not something to be sought out for its own sake. As a commentator on that post said, there is a great deal of awful art that has resulted from people desperately trying to be "original."
Another way to think about originality is to think in terms of style. Talking about style seems somehow less intimidating than talking about originality. So I was intrigued by the following statement I found in a recent Art Calendar. The following statement is from an article by Milon Townsend in Art Calendar, Sept. 2007 . "Wholesaling, Part III: The Purpose Driven Artist":
"Style is the natural result of excellence. Style, like happiness, is not attained through a headlong, direct pursuit. Style is an automatic, peripheral benefit of the long-term commitment to a higher good, to a desire to achieve the highest standard personally possible. Artistic style not only is what will make our work recognizable as our own, but is the excellence leading to the result of making our work desirable and inherently valuable."
I'm not sure I agree with the "automatic" part of the statement. I suspect that there are many artists who have struggled for excellence who have not found an identifiable style as a byproduct. On the other hand, there are geniuses in whose early work you can doubtless see glimmers of a personal style. Otherwise, I think what he has to say is much to the point. In fact, I do not see how an artist in any medium can continue in this kind of "long-term commitment" without loving the process he is engaged in. It is, at least in part, the love of the process that I believe must create the drive for excellence that Townsend is talking about.
It takes a child many many years to develop his own unique personality, even though the glimmers of what will be are often present as early as birth. So it is only logical that it will take a weaver many years to develop a style.
Milo Townsend works in glass. He has created books and videos on the art of glass and also on art marketing. To find out more, go to his website.
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Monday, August 20, 2007
Keeping Records
Dorothy asked the following question:
"What other kind of records do you keep for the samples & items you have woven? "
To put it truthfully, records are the bane of my weaving existence. Given that truth, I do keep records. And the final truth, for the moment at least, is probably that for me it is not the record itself which is important. After all, I do not keep records in order to repeat myself. It is the record-keeping process that is important. It is a process which keeps me focussed. It is a process which helps things get into my memory for future possible use. It is a process from which I learn. The result is quite a complicated answer to a simple question.
First, I keep all my records on the computer. I keep one page in my notebook software just for ideas I might want to explore sometime. Often, my initial sampling explorations come out of one of those ideas.
When I get to the point of making a decision to pursue one particular idea, and sample it, I open up a page in Word Perfect (which I much prefer to Word). This page will likely become close to ten pages in its printed form when I am done with the sampling. It begins as a continuation of my first ideas, whether they come from my notebook page or from some idea I have started to play with in my head but has not made it onto that notebook page.
As these ideas become more concrete, I make notes of them. These could be ideas about yarns, colors, threading, blocks, treadling, whatever comes into my head. At some point I start exploring threading ideas and treadlings in my weaving software. When I finally land on a threading I like and the yarns I intend to use. I make note of all the calculations I need to wind the warp and put it on the loom. This includes, length of the warp, width, sett, all the necessary technical information necessary to get the warp wound, put on the loom, threaded, sleyed and ready to weave.
As I weave the sampler I continue to make notes. I assign a letter or number to each treadling. I put down the treadling information, the yarns used, the colors used and sometimes my immediate reactions to the results, including noting if it would be a difficult treadling to memorize. If I use the same treadling with different yarns and/or colors, I identify these as a subset of the original. Also I make notes if any other treadling ideas come to mind as a result of what I am currently doing. Since I hope to choose one of these treadlings for my final project, it is imperative that I include all the information I can possibly think of.
And so I proceed with each treadling.
I also make a note of the width of the warp at the reed and the width on loom. And I will follow those up with width off the loom and width when washed, as this could be important information for the size of the final project.
The record I make for the final piece is quite similar. It includes all the usual information I need to put on a warp and weave it. If I am weaving yardage things like treadlings, heights of blocks, colors will have to be pretty much decided before hand. I do put on enough warp, however, so that I have enough warp to play with and change my mind about some details before I begin the actual yardage itself. If, on the other hand, I am weaving a scarf, more fluidity is possible and I can do a bit of designing on the fly. That is what I really love to do!
In any case, whatever the project, I continue to make notes as I weave. These notes include problems I encounter and ideas for future projects. By the time I am done, I usually have about 10 pages.
When I am done, I do take a look at the parts of my notes that mention future possibilities. Sometimes I do nothing with them. Sometimes I put one or two in my notebook software.
When I dye my yarns, there is another sheet which contains all the calculations I need in order to dye them.
There is one final piece of record keeping I do when I am finished and the piece is to go to a show, or is to be cut up for some kind of learning exchange. I take the very basics and put them together on one page. This means warp and weft calculations, yarns and their sources, notation of sett and picks per inch, and all the appropriate measurements. In other words, I collect the bare bones data and put it in one spot so it is easy for someone else to follow what I have done in weaving the piece.
Photos might well be a part of these records. So far I have resisted. My husband really wants me to keep a photographic record/scrapbook of my weaving. Well, I have never liked keeping photographic records of our travels and vacations either. The joy for me is in the doing and the watching. And the joy of remembering does not require a photographic record.
When I first began this blog, I faithfully kept copies of each entry in case anything happened to Blogger. And then I asked myself why I was bothering to do this. I have no desire to go back to read past entries. I go back only when I want to link to one of them, but that is an option, not a necessity. And I certainly have no wish to publish them ever! When I realized that, I stopped my investigation into copyrighting blogs. The value for me is in the writing, in the process itself.
"What other kind of records do you keep for the samples & items you have woven? "
To put it truthfully, records are the bane of my weaving existence. Given that truth, I do keep records. And the final truth, for the moment at least, is probably that for me it is not the record itself which is important. After all, I do not keep records in order to repeat myself. It is the record-keeping process that is important. It is a process which keeps me focussed. It is a process which helps things get into my memory for future possible use. It is a process from which I learn. The result is quite a complicated answer to a simple question.
First, I keep all my records on the computer. I keep one page in my notebook software just for ideas I might want to explore sometime. Often, my initial sampling explorations come out of one of those ideas.
When I get to the point of making a decision to pursue one particular idea, and sample it, I open up a page in Word Perfect (which I much prefer to Word). This page will likely become close to ten pages in its printed form when I am done with the sampling. It begins as a continuation of my first ideas, whether they come from my notebook page or from some idea I have started to play with in my head but has not made it onto that notebook page.
As these ideas become more concrete, I make notes of them. These could be ideas about yarns, colors, threading, blocks, treadling, whatever comes into my head. At some point I start exploring threading ideas and treadlings in my weaving software. When I finally land on a threading I like and the yarns I intend to use. I make note of all the calculations I need to wind the warp and put it on the loom. This includes, length of the warp, width, sett, all the necessary technical information necessary to get the warp wound, put on the loom, threaded, sleyed and ready to weave.
As I weave the sampler I continue to make notes. I assign a letter or number to each treadling. I put down the treadling information, the yarns used, the colors used and sometimes my immediate reactions to the results, including noting if it would be a difficult treadling to memorize. If I use the same treadling with different yarns and/or colors, I identify these as a subset of the original. Also I make notes if any other treadling ideas come to mind as a result of what I am currently doing. Since I hope to choose one of these treadlings for my final project, it is imperative that I include all the information I can possibly think of.
And so I proceed with each treadling.
I also make a note of the width of the warp at the reed and the width on loom. And I will follow those up with width off the loom and width when washed, as this could be important information for the size of the final project.
The record I make for the final piece is quite similar. It includes all the usual information I need to put on a warp and weave it. If I am weaving yardage things like treadlings, heights of blocks, colors will have to be pretty much decided before hand. I do put on enough warp, however, so that I have enough warp to play with and change my mind about some details before I begin the actual yardage itself. If, on the other hand, I am weaving a scarf, more fluidity is possible and I can do a bit of designing on the fly. That is what I really love to do!
In any case, whatever the project, I continue to make notes as I weave. These notes include problems I encounter and ideas for future projects. By the time I am done, I usually have about 10 pages.
When I am done, I do take a look at the parts of my notes that mention future possibilities. Sometimes I do nothing with them. Sometimes I put one or two in my notebook software.
When I dye my yarns, there is another sheet which contains all the calculations I need in order to dye them.
There is one final piece of record keeping I do when I am finished and the piece is to go to a show, or is to be cut up for some kind of learning exchange. I take the very basics and put them together on one page. This means warp and weft calculations, yarns and their sources, notation of sett and picks per inch, and all the appropriate measurements. In other words, I collect the bare bones data and put it in one spot so it is easy for someone else to follow what I have done in weaving the piece.
Photos might well be a part of these records. So far I have resisted. My husband really wants me to keep a photographic record/scrapbook of my weaving. Well, I have never liked keeping photographic records of our travels and vacations either. The joy for me is in the doing and the watching. And the joy of remembering does not require a photographic record.
When I first began this blog, I faithfully kept copies of each entry in case anything happened to Blogger. And then I asked myself why I was bothering to do this. I have no desire to go back to read past entries. I go back only when I want to link to one of them, but that is an option, not a necessity. And I certainly have no wish to publish them ever! When I realized that, I stopped my investigation into copyrighting blogs. The value for me is in the writing, in the process itself.
Friday, August 17, 2007
Sleying the Reed
Back from New York City and all the requisite chores done, well most of them, I am now sleying the reed. Actually, I am about three-fourths of the way through. So far I have found only one threading problem. A heddle, with its yarn, on shaft one was crossed over a group of about eight threads. So I put a repair heddle on shaft one in the place it belonged and pulled the thread through it.
Sleying the reed is something I normally find relatively pleasant and easy work. Certainly it goes more quickly than threading, especially when I am sleying three ends per dent, as I am in this case. I am using a 10-dent reed and the epi will will 30.
But this is crackle threaded on eight shafts. And the order of the blocks shifts and changes. And the number of blocks in any given threading changes. As a result, when I reach in to get the yarns I need to sley, I have to work at it because there is no way to know which shafts they are going to be coming from. What is more, finding the right ends for the last three shafts is in itself difficult for me. Perhaps that reflects my lack of experience with an eight shaft loom. The most difficult is when I have neighboring warp ends on shafts one and eight.
So I take a group of threads in my right hand and I separate them out with my left hand into three groups of three ends. While I am doing this I am scrutinizing the yarn to make sure that each group does have exactly 3 threads. At the same time, I am watching the heddles to make sure that there are only 3 heddles in each group. Counting the heddles is a double-check against counting the yarns. I am also watching the heddles to make sure that there are no crossed ends. This is my weak area for I tend to forget to keep watch for this. Consequently it is not unusual
for me to find anywhere from one to three crossed ends when I throw those first weft shots. So I am trying to be very careful. I lay each group of 3 over the top of the beater, continuing to examine them to make sure they contain exactly 3 ends.
I must admit that I do sometimes put four or even five groups over the beater. Sometimes that's all it takes to finish off a group of threaded ends. But I still use 3 groups as normative.
Because the yarn is relatively fine (20/2 pearl cotton), I have to take extra care. Normally I would work with four groups at a time and hold each group in a space between my fingers. In this case, however, part of the extra care I am taking is to work with only three groups at a time. Also, to help make sure my heddle hook doesn't play tricks as it picks up the yarn groups to pull through the reed, I have elected to put them neatly and separately over the top of the beater. Then I pull each group through the appropriate reed slot. I try even at this point to keep my eyes on the heddles to make sure there is no yarn crossing from one group to another.
When I have five groups pulled through, I double-check once again. I am looking to see that there are no skipped spaces and well as to make sure that there are exactly three threads in
each space. When satisfied, I tie them them together with a slip knot. I then have one-half-inch worth of threads in a group. These are the number of groups I will tie together in a regular knot when I am ready to lace them onto the front rod.
I have new glasses. They are helping the process. When I got them, I had the lenses finished with some kind of glare-free coating. The girl at the shop told me it was much easier for her to watch television with this coating on her glasses. Well, I watch very little television. But it does seem to help quite a bit with all the metal heddles staring me in the face. What she did not tell me, however, is that I had to use a special lens cleaner. So I used my old lens cleaner and didn't have a clue as to why my vision was getting worse and worse. Sure that I was suffering from some terrible visual deterioration, I was ready to call the eye doctor. Meanwhile, in the drug store, I checked the eye glass cleaner, as I was running low. There I saw the special cleaner. Did I mention that I was a bit angry with the girl at the shop?
In any case, sleying is taking a long time, for the warp is close to 40" wide. I know there are people who can sit at their looms and in one sitting get their reeds sleyed. I wish I were one of those. I simply am not. I start making errors if I sit too long. So the first session of the day may last an hour or so. But for the rest of the day, I fit sleying in piecemeal with doing other things. It's not an arduous task. Just time-consuming. And I really really do not want to have to make corrections after I have tied the warp on and am making the first trial shots.
Sleying the reed is something I normally find relatively pleasant and easy work. Certainly it goes more quickly than threading, especially when I am sleying three ends per dent, as I am in this case. I am using a 10-dent reed and the epi will will 30.
But this is crackle threaded on eight shafts. And the order of the blocks shifts and changes. And the number of blocks in any given threading changes. As a result, when I reach in to get the yarns I need to sley, I have to work at it because there is no way to know which shafts they are going to be coming from. What is more, finding the right ends for the last three shafts is in itself difficult for me. Perhaps that reflects my lack of experience with an eight shaft loom. The most difficult is when I have neighboring warp ends on shafts one and eight.
So I take a group of threads in my right hand and I separate them out with my left hand into three groups of three ends. While I am doing this I am scrutinizing the yarn to make sure that each group does have exactly 3 threads. At the same time, I am watching the heddles to make sure that there are only 3 heddles in each group. Counting the heddles is a double-check against counting the yarns. I am also watching the heddles to make sure that there are no crossed ends. This is my weak area for I tend to forget to keep watch for this. Consequently it is not unusual
for me to find anywhere from one to three crossed ends when I throw those first weft shots. So I am trying to be very careful. I lay each group of 3 over the top of the beater, continuing to examine them to make sure they contain exactly 3 ends.I must admit that I do sometimes put four or even five groups over the beater. Sometimes that's all it takes to finish off a group of threaded ends. But I still use 3 groups as normative.
Because the yarn is relatively fine (20/2 pearl cotton), I have to take extra care. Normally I would work with four groups at a time and hold each group in a space between my fingers. In this case, however, part of the extra care I am taking is to work with only three groups at a time. Also, to help make sure my heddle hook doesn't play tricks as it picks up the yarn groups to pull through the reed, I have elected to put them neatly and separately over the top of the beater. Then I pull each group through the appropriate reed slot. I try even at this point to keep my eyes on the heddles to make sure there is no yarn crossing from one group to another.
When I have five groups pulled through, I double-check once again. I am looking to see that there are no skipped spaces and well as to make sure that there are exactly three threads in
each space. When satisfied, I tie them them together with a slip knot. I then have one-half-inch worth of threads in a group. These are the number of groups I will tie together in a regular knot when I am ready to lace them onto the front rod.I have new glasses. They are helping the process. When I got them, I had the lenses finished with some kind of glare-free coating. The girl at the shop told me it was much easier for her to watch television with this coating on her glasses. Well, I watch very little television. But it does seem to help quite a bit with all the metal heddles staring me in the face. What she did not tell me, however, is that I had to use a special lens cleaner. So I used my old lens cleaner and didn't have a clue as to why my vision was getting worse and worse. Sure that I was suffering from some terrible visual deterioration, I was ready to call the eye doctor. Meanwhile, in the drug store, I checked the eye glass cleaner, as I was running low. There I saw the special cleaner. Did I mention that I was a bit angry with the girl at the shop?
In any case, sleying is taking a long time, for the warp is close to 40" wide. I know there are people who can sit at their looms and in one sitting get their reeds sleyed. I wish I were one of those. I simply am not. I start making errors if I sit too long. So the first session of the day may last an hour or so. But for the rest of the day, I fit sleying in piecemeal with doing other things. It's not an arduous task. Just time-consuming. And I really really do not want to have to make corrections after I have tied the warp on and am making the first trial shots.
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Inviting Creative Weaving
A couple of years ago I read some inspirational suggestions for doing creative embroidery. I no longer remember which book the suggestions came from, only that the book was English. I thought they were pretty neat. I selected the suggestions I liked and revamped them to fit weaving. I then typed them up and put them in a small frame which I keep on the top of my loom. I called them: Inviting Creative Weaving
1. Plan, warp, weave, in silence.
2. Spend one whole year with one weave structure.
3. Keep a weaving journal.
4. Make goals that move you out of your comfort zone.
5. Change or modify in at least one way any weaving design of someone else that you use.
6. Exercise at least 20 minutes, 5 days a week.
I pretty much have been doing these things. Occasionally I do listen to music when I am weaving. Most of the time, however, the weaving requires too much concentration. So, even if I have music playing, I will realize after an hour or more that I have heard none of it. I am pretty much a person who is happy with no background noise.
I have been spending about two years with crackle. Perhaps I am carrying that suggestion a bit too far?!? My mother wanted me to take Latin in high school. An obedient daughter, I took two years and went on to take two more years. My mother said, I only wanted you to take two years of Latin. Then you needed to move on to a modern language. Ah well. Must be something in my personality.
Nearly every piece I weave takes me in some way or another, out of my comfort zone. Usually it takes me out of my comfort zone in more than one way. And no, crackle is not yet in my comfort zone.
Most of my weaving is my own design. Maybe all of it. I can remember only once having woven someone else's design: a summer and winter yardage for a winter jacket.
Finally, I actually exercise more than 30 minutes a day 6 days a week. At my age that is a necessity. Flexibility, strength (physical and aerobic) no longer are a part of my natural being, unfortunately. They have to be fought for! And as a weaver (not to mention gardener), I need all three. So I walk, I stretch, I lift weights.
The one suggestion that I was not following was the keeping of a weaving journal. I tried several times. I tried with a journal. I tried with a software journal. Nothing seemed to fit. So I decided to blog. My blog has in essence become my journal.
1. Plan, warp, weave, in silence.
2. Spend one whole year with one weave structure.
3. Keep a weaving journal.
4. Make goals that move you out of your comfort zone.
5. Change or modify in at least one way any weaving design of someone else that you use.
6. Exercise at least 20 minutes, 5 days a week.
I pretty much have been doing these things. Occasionally I do listen to music when I am weaving. Most of the time, however, the weaving requires too much concentration. So, even if I have music playing, I will realize after an hour or more that I have heard none of it. I am pretty much a person who is happy with no background noise.
I have been spending about two years with crackle. Perhaps I am carrying that suggestion a bit too far?!? My mother wanted me to take Latin in high school. An obedient daughter, I took two years and went on to take two more years. My mother said, I only wanted you to take two years of Latin. Then you needed to move on to a modern language. Ah well. Must be something in my personality.
Nearly every piece I weave takes me in some way or another, out of my comfort zone. Usually it takes me out of my comfort zone in more than one way. And no, crackle is not yet in my comfort zone.
Most of my weaving is my own design. Maybe all of it. I can remember only once having woven someone else's design: a summer and winter yardage for a winter jacket.
Finally, I actually exercise more than 30 minutes a day 6 days a week. At my age that is a necessity. Flexibility, strength (physical and aerobic) no longer are a part of my natural being, unfortunately. They have to be fought for! And as a weaver (not to mention gardener), I need all three. So I walk, I stretch, I lift weights.
The one suggestion that I was not following was the keeping of a weaving journal. I tried several times. I tried with a journal. I tried with a software journal. Nothing seemed to fit. So I decided to blog. My blog has in essence become my journal.
Thursday, August 9, 2007
Threading Done
The threading is done. The number of threads came out exactly the right number for the number of heddles. Wheww! With my lack of arithmetical skills, even with a calculator, I always worry about that as I am threading a warp. And I worried especially in this case because I had had to make some last-minute changes when I decided to thread on 8 shafts instead of 4.
However, this last day of threading seemed to create all sorts of problems for me. In two different blocks, I insisted on theading heddles on shaft 6 when they needed to be threaded on shaft 7 heddles. Twice I threaded blocks in incorrect directions. But I caught that. And then there were just a couple of plain old mistakes. Why did this happen today? I do tend to rush when I am almost done. But that is precisely why I decided not to try to finish the threading yesterday. And I was very relaxed today and took it very slowly. Perhaps I will just attribute it to the current South Carolina heatwave, cop out though that may be! In any case, it all worked out and I am delighted.
But I will not get the reed sleyed before we leave on Saturday. All that will happen is that I will get everything in place and ready for the sleying to happen. That way, when I return, all I have to do is jump on the bench and get on with
However, this last day of threading seemed to create all sorts of problems for me. In two different blocks, I insisted on theading heddles on shaft 6 when they needed to be threaded on shaft 7 heddles. Twice I threaded blocks in incorrect directions. But I caught that. And then there were just a couple of plain old mistakes. Why did this happen today? I do tend to rush when I am almost done. But that is precisely why I decided not to try to finish the threading yesterday. And I was very relaxed today and took it very slowly. Perhaps I will just attribute it to the current South Carolina heatwave, cop out though that may be! In any case, it all worked out and I am delighted.
But I will not get the reed sleyed before we leave on Saturday. All that will happen is that I will get everything in place and ready for the sleying to happen. That way, when I return, all I have to do is jump on the bench and get on with
Designing with Neutrals
Recently I discussed using the oyster shell image, which was the basis for finding color choices for my current crackle project, as a basis for designing the next warp. That warp, as I have said, which be made of hand dyed silks. I said further:
"I had already thought of it in terms of deep browns and golds and blues, with slashes of black."
Yesterday I was looking at that image again and realized that there are grays! In fact, there is so much gray, I wonder how I could have missed it. What else have I missed? I would never have thought that grays and browns would work in the same image. But there it is.
When I look at the yarns I am using for my current crackle yardage, I see that even here I am using a golden brown and a very very grayed brown. Perhaps my eyes were cooperating but my conscious intelligence had not yet been tapped. Perhaps, once again, this is evidence that I am like the painter who must actually paint the painting he sees to learn from it.
This means that I need to work out my next dye sampling to incorporate grays. For me, grays have been much harder to come up with, but I will try. In general, neutrals are a dyeing challenge for me. That is probably because I have never focussed on dyeing them. My goal is to begin the sample dyeing as I weave off the current crackle warp. Dyeing will be a good alternative activity. Dyeing puts me on my feet for long periods of time, while weaving puts me on my rear end.
I saw a website the other day with an article about creating neutrals from colors that were not opposites on the color wheel, that is, they were not complements. Of course I did not make a note of the url. I have in actuality worked with split complements and I will have to look at the results I got from that work. Split complements, unlike complements, contain all three primaries, and, as I recall, that was the point of using them. That is what, according to the author, made them better than using complements. My thought is that they are not necessarily better, though they may be better for a particular effect. They are just another tool in the dyeing toolbox.
"I had already thought of it in terms of deep browns and golds and blues, with slashes of black."
Yesterday I was looking at that image again and realized that there are grays! In fact, there is so much gray, I wonder how I could have missed it. What else have I missed? I would never have thought that grays and browns would work in the same image. But there it is.
When I look at the yarns I am using for my current crackle yardage, I see that even here I am using a golden brown and a very very grayed brown. Perhaps my eyes were cooperating but my conscious intelligence had not yet been tapped. Perhaps, once again, this is evidence that I am like the painter who must actually paint the painting he sees to learn from it.
This means that I need to work out my next dye sampling to incorporate grays. For me, grays have been much harder to come up with, but I will try. In general, neutrals are a dyeing challenge for me. That is probably because I have never focussed on dyeing them. My goal is to begin the sample dyeing as I weave off the current crackle warp. Dyeing will be a good alternative activity. Dyeing puts me on my feet for long periods of time, while weaving puts me on my rear end.
I saw a website the other day with an article about creating neutrals from colors that were not opposites on the color wheel, that is, they were not complements. Of course I did not make a note of the url. I have in actuality worked with split complements and I will have to look at the results I got from that work. Split complements, unlike complements, contain all three primaries, and, as I recall, that was the point of using them. That is what, according to the author, made them better than using complements. My thought is that they are not necessarily better, though they may be better for a particular effect. They are just another tool in the dyeing toolbox.
Wednesday, August 8, 2007
Warping Progress
The pearl cotton is now beamed on and I am about two-thirds of the way through the process of threading the heddles. I would love to have the heddles threaded and the reed sleyed before we leave on Saturday to visit our daughter and her new baby. Time will tell what unexpected interruptions will occur.
Now that I am threading, I find that I see things as I thead that I didn't see when I looked at the draft. No, there are no errors. At least there are no technical errors. But I do see that the blocks are not always the size that I had wanted. I also see that there is this occasional single block with 4 threads where none had been in the design. Aside from the purely technical errors that I did catch, has my weaving software done something strange in the designing? And if so, why? It seems that when I have my software generate a threading from a block design, I will have to look much more carefully at the results.
If I were a painter, studying a painting to learn from it would not suffice. I would actually have to copy it to learn. This is a time-honored learning technique for painters. Apparently, doing the actual work of the threading enables me to see what I didn't see by just looking. Perhaps I can figure out how to improve my concentration when just looking. I'm not sure, though. Way way back in college when I wrote essays, I would do the last rough draft which preceded the final good copy, not on the typewriter but in longhand. The physical process of forming the letters and words made my critical abilities much more acute.
I think it would be interesting to take the block design I originally created and then enter in the threading manually. I could compare this hand generated threading with the computer generated threading. On the other hand, I have a suspicion that, once the fabric is woven, I may like what I have now better than what I had actually planned. But I would like to understand enough to plan these accidents! That is why I should enter the threading manually and compare the two. Doing that, I think, will further my understanding. I hope that laziness does not get the upper hand.
In many ways what I am really talking about is mastery. I mentioned mastery in my discussion of originality. I think for me that crackle is not only a marvelous tool for color but is also resistant to my attempts to master the structure in terms of understanding. I do understand the basics. But I do not understand the why's of many things regarding crackle. I am trying to move in that direction. Or, perhaps I might better say, I am trying to follow that path.
Now that I am threading, I find that I see things as I thead that I didn't see when I looked at the draft. No, there are no errors. At least there are no technical errors. But I do see that the blocks are not always the size that I had wanted. I also see that there is this occasional single block with 4 threads where none had been in the design. Aside from the purely technical errors that I did catch, has my weaving software done something strange in the designing? And if so, why? It seems that when I have my software generate a threading from a block design, I will have to look much more carefully at the results.
If I were a painter, studying a painting to learn from it would not suffice. I would actually have to copy it to learn. This is a time-honored learning technique for painters. Apparently, doing the actual work of the threading enables me to see what I didn't see by just looking. Perhaps I can figure out how to improve my concentration when just looking. I'm not sure, though. Way way back in college when I wrote essays, I would do the last rough draft which preceded the final good copy, not on the typewriter but in longhand. The physical process of forming the letters and words made my critical abilities much more acute.
I think it would be interesting to take the block design I originally created and then enter in the threading manually. I could compare this hand generated threading with the computer generated threading. On the other hand, I have a suspicion that, once the fabric is woven, I may like what I have now better than what I had actually planned. But I would like to understand enough to plan these accidents! That is why I should enter the threading manually and compare the two. Doing that, I think, will further my understanding. I hope that laziness does not get the upper hand.
In many ways what I am really talking about is mastery. I mentioned mastery in my discussion of originality. I think for me that crackle is not only a marvelous tool for color but is also resistant to my attempts to master the structure in terms of understanding. I do understand the basics. But I do not understand the why's of many things regarding crackle. I am trying to move in that direction. Or, perhaps I might better say, I am trying to follow that path.
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