Hmm – once again I seem to have achieved blurry – the photo looked fine on the camera. Oh well, this is just to show that I am making progress. Nearly at the half way mark on the warp. There are four green and 3 red with the fourth about at the one yard mark. That should make about 19 yards (out of 40) woven.
At the bottom of the photo you can see how I store my reeds – standing upright lengthwise, leaning against the base of the loom.
One of the seminars I’m teaching next week is The Business of Weaving (Crafts). One of the groups has invited other artisans to sit in on the seminar so we broadened the title.
Having chosen weaving as a career 30+ years ago, I very quickly had to come to grips with the business of running a business. Scheduling, motivation, costing items for pricing, general accounting etc., etc. Running a weaving business is far different from having weaving as a hobby and occassionally selling the odd item, hoping to recoup your material costs.
One policy I implemented very early was to not sell seconds. At first they got discarded (rag bag), or if I’d invested too much time in completing them before noticing they didn’t pass, were given away.
A few years ago I had a ‘disaster’. While sick with a really bad cold I was threading a very complicated pattern and didn’t notice until I’d woven more than half of the warp (20 yards or so) that I’d made threading errors. Not something that was going to compromise the function of the cloth (tea towels), but definitely the pattern was wrong.
With the growth of the internet and chat groups, I posted to one that I belonged to explaining my predicament and offering the tea towels to other weavers at a cut rate price. Some of them that bought contacted me to say they couldn’t see the error and would have offered them as ‘firsts’.
But I knew the error was there. :}
Now I have a store on Art Fire and one of the things they offer is the ability to offer Special Promotions. So I’m thinking that I could take my collection of ‘seconds’ that are second by virture of flaws that won’t in any way compromise the function of the textile and offer them as a Special Promotion on Art Fire.
But something in me baulks. I really don’t like the idea of having textiles that I’m not happy with being purchased by the general public. 🙁
Currently reading Love Mercy by Earlene Fowler