Spinning for a good long time

The other night we were looking at TV...so often, my usual position is to slouch on the couch, but instead, I decided to try to spin the Bombyx mori silk that pal Sylvia gave me (a whole pound of combed silk top!).  Historically, I've had some difficulties spinning the Bombyx v.s. the Tussah silk, which has a slight 'tooth' to it. 


I used my fabulous Alden Amos saxony wheel, the one with the hand-crank as well as the treadle.  Well, somehow, I seem to have gotten better at spinning Bombyx mori, because it's been coming out well.  A bit of thick 'n' thin, but not bad, and most of it is very consistent.  I'm using a worsted draw.


This silk is to be a single, for warp, and will be dyed a soft grey color using the stripped stems of the Japanese indigo plants, which give a nice grey color according to Bryan Whitehead.

Happier dance

So the Compu-Dobby II that came with my AVL loom turns out to not be repairable.  Alas. 


That said, I decided that I'm just going to go ahead and buy their Compu-Dobby IV - they have a 16-shaft version which will fit my beloved old vintage AVL loom.  I'll have to finance it, but in light of the amazing flexibility it will bring to my weaving, it's going to be worth it!  I was disappointed that the Compu-Dobby II was not repairable; but on the other hand, it's good to know I'll be starting fresh with brand-new hardware purchased directly from the manufacturer, rather than trying to keep circa-1995 digital hardware alive and kicking.  It's one thing for the loom itself to be old - that I can handle.  But when it comes to electrons zooming around, newer is definitely better. 


I will also have to purchase a licensed copy of the designing/weaving software, which will be a few hundred dollars, though I should be able to do some work with the demo only, to keep me amused until I can purchase the license. 

Spinny (or rather more aptly-put: Ply-y)

Just about done with plying all the remainder of the worsted singles I'd spun.  There's still more of the wool to be spun, so I might just spin it all for the warp I've been planning.  I've been climbing the walls a bit unable to be weaving at the moment, so plying those singles kind of scratched an itch temporarily.




My stress level is high.  It's not so much related to not being able to weave at the moment as much as just a summation of certain existential stresses I've been dealing with, including the weird things going on with my health. 




But then I have to remind myself that in a perspective way, things are actually okay at the moment. 
However, as much as I've been trying to minimize it to myself and 'suck it up', having gotten assaulted on Saturday has been sort of sticking with me and making me feel a little fearful as I go around during my day; and I've been having odd experiences still, like at a few points during the day I suddenly smell the guy who went after me, even though he's not here. 


Sleep has been odd...the pain and the numbness have been keeping me from sinking into really restful sleep, and the unending display of childish behavior on the part of a coworker has been really eating at me, though now that we have a new manager, I don't feel quite as bad as I have been for the past year and a half since our previous manager retired.  At least there's someone who has been helping me navigate the tricky waters of dealing with an employee who is lazy, angry, and manipulative. 


I did have a moderately good sleep last night between about 4-5AM (this morning).  Of note, but perhaps not surprisingly, I dreamed about weaving, just as I have been doing.  There are designs and structural things that keep popping into my head, so there's definitely some germination going on.

Monday monday

Mostly very nice weekend.  I was amazingly tired after all the ruckus at work with the Troublemaking Paranoiac coworker.  I'm so glad our department has our new supervisor - it'd been feeling like I was shouting down an empty well this past year.


I went to the guild meeting on Saturday morning with pal Tien.  I had earlier met her at the Embarcadero, where, on route to the Ferry Building, I'd been startled by and subsequently assaulted by an indigent person jumping out from behind a construction wall and roaring and screaming in my face, before he physically slammed me up against the construction wall several times while continuing to scream into my face at close range.  (*not* easy to do to someone my size, but he was actually a head taller than me and just...immense.)  His breath was probably the worst breath I've ever smelled!  I expected that he was going to keep beating me, but then, surprisingly, he let me go, laughing a very 'madman' laugh (and I don't mean the series) and running away shrieking with hyena-sounding laughter.  Somehow, I had managed to control my impulses, and had not hit him back.  Maybe all these years of working with the mentally ill have rubbed off on me.   I'm not a clinician, but if I had to guess, I'd say he was floridly psychotic and also 'enhanced' with substances.  I decided that I felt okay and so just went to meet up with Tien, but by the time we were driving over to the guild I started feeling a delayed reaction, feeling like a mixture of understandably primate-y anger and dread.  I sat silently with this, and everything turned out all right.  But the experience really shook me up.  Later, at home, I found that I could not stop my hands from shaking, and this went on for a couple of hours until I just took a nap.  When I woke up, my hands weren't shaking anymore.


The guild was fun enough, and someone in charge of refreshments had brought an incredibly delicious tapenade-like spread made of goat cheese and beets and garlic, which really restored me along with a cup of tea, and convivial weavers around me.


The program was excellent, despite our guild's projector's malfunctioning.  But the speaker, Mari Yamaguchi, the expert on the bast fibers of Japan and Southeast Asia, didn't miss a beat.  Informative, charming, and mesmerizing to hear, and well organized, she was a rock star.  She showed us some amazing things, including banana fiber cloth from Okinawa, and a whole kimono-type robe woven of elm bark bast (from the Ainu) and decorated with indigo-blue-dyed bands of handspun/handwoven cotton tabby. 


Additionally, I spent more time studying damask and drawlooms this weekend (alas, though with neither damask nor drawloom available).  I did have several great leaps forward in my understanding of the structures of damask, lampas, and beiderwand this weekend, which I'm really glad for.


Still waiting to hear from AVL.  I continue to dream about my Compu-Dobby!

Dreams of Damask and Drawlooms

Still waiting to hear back from AVL about my Compu-Dobby II.  I keep dreaming about it!


Below is the book that has been my bedtime reading lately.  I can't put it down!


It's technically exact and very wonderful.  The author, John Becker, exhaustively explores a number of ancient complex weaves and techniques, and also features extensive technical descriptions and drawings of the different loom set-ups used to execute these weaves.  It includes things like samitum, lampas, damask, and also fabulous gauze weaves used in ancient China, among others.


Mr. Becker passed away in 1986, and his astonishingly comprehensive book had been out of print for some years; however, Donald Wagner, the co-author, has inherited the copyright and generously made this book available online in PDF form for free.  There may be a second printed edition coming out eventually, but just being able to access the knowledge that this book contains is an amazing gift.


http://donwagner.dk/Pattern-and-Loom.pdf


What I'm getting from this book is a much greater understanding of the complex weave structures I have long wanted to learn more about, but also the detail and diagrams with which he explains the loom set-ups is actually helping me learn about the mysteries of drawlooms to the point at which I think I'm going to start measuring my Cranbrook loom in preparation for adding an extension on it, in order to convert it to a drawloom.  I think it would work quite well, and it would be especially good for weaving linen damask since the warp line is straight and not sunken as it would be on a jack loom.  If only I had room enough...


Basically, my plan will be to add another four shafts to the existing four countermarche shafts in order to make an 8-shaft ground harness arrangement, with the second harness for the pattern about 35 cm deeper into the loom towards the back beam.  Then I'll have to make two heddle jigs - one for the long-eyed heddles on the ground shafts, and small-eye heddles for the pattern harness.  Not sure whether I'm going to make a shaft drawloom or a single-unit one.  And this will take some time...and I think that before building it, I should take a course at the Vavstuga in Shelburne Falls, MA, who are experts with the drawloom.


That would make a marvelous combination of looms for me - the Bexall Cranbrook turned into a drawloom for traditional damask, lampas, and samitum, and my beloved AVL, with Compu-Dobby, for exploring the wild and wonderful world of long, computer-driven repeats!

Weird and Beautiful Dreams

I conked out early last night and went to bed before 10:00 PM.  I think I really needed that sleep!


Slept mostly through the night like a log.  I woke up about ten seconds before the alarm went off at 6:00 AM from a very velvety sleep.  I had been asleep on my side and woke up with Stella purring while curled up on my hip, with Frank lying next to me purring and making biscuits on my lower back.  Not too shabby, waking up while being massaged by a kitty!  It's true that they're really there to wake us up to give them their breakfast, but it's much nicer to wake up to a massage than a claw to the face!


I had dreams last night which I recall only in little disunified bits floating through my head this morning. 


In one dream Carlos and I were setting up some big art colony in Wales and were tending to the adaptives such as ramps and lifts.  There was a sense that something very beautiful was happening there.  In another dream I was seated at my AVL loom weaving some amazing cloth made of green silk and gold thread.  It was damask weave (I had actually fallen asleep reading a structure analysis of a piece of very old damask; hence the dream-weave!).  The pattern wasn't distinct, but it was damask and within the dream there was the knowledge that I had been working on a series of rich silk-and-silver/gold fabric lengths using lampas, samitum, and damask weaves.  Nice.


I've been thinking of a learning track - I think it would be better for me to actually take a course with someone in order to grok the more complex weaves.  Learning by doing is by far the most productive learning mode for me. A possible 'bucket list' of learning needs might comprise:


1) Learning to use the weaving software that will run my Compu-Dobby.
2) Taking a course in drawloom weaving at Vavstuga some summer in Massachusetts.
3) Joining a study group in Complex Weavers.
4) Learning double-weave.
5) Adding 4 additional ground weave shafts to the Cranbrook loom, and then building an extension on it to convert it into a drawloom (single-unit draw?  shaft-draw?).
6) Becoming adept at designing weaves.


I credit my weaving friend Tien with propelling me into complex weave structures; it was because of her that I was able to purchase my beloved 16-shaft AVL dobby loom last year, and that has made all the difference.  I had only dreamed of being able to make some of the stuff I've been able to produce on that loom.  Up until then, I had only ever woven on 4-shaft looms; I think I was rather stuck on that.  Nothing wrong with four shafts, of course; but how much I have learned to love diving into the complex weaves.  The part of me that believes I'm incapable of math and of logical thinking haunts my mind still, telling me that I'm too stupid for complex weaves, but I know this to be incorrect, because I've already proved to myself that I can do it.   Old tape playing.