Category: efficiency
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Light and Shadow
no supplemental light at the front of the loom supplemental light at the front of the loom Winter is here and we have been plagued with a series of really grey dreary days with heavy overcast. One of the things that becomes necessary during these kinds of days – or if you have to weave…
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Folk School
morning mist at the folk school This was the first time I’d been at the the John C. Campbell Folk School in September and it was quite different from the previous times in Jan/Feb/March. The mornings dawned with mist and heavy dew on the grass, but it was in the 90’s(F) during the day and…
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It’s Just String
Allen Fannin used to remind people that what weavers do is make someone else’s ‘raw’ materials. As weavers we are just another stepping stone in the production chain of getting raw fibre into something useful. If you are hand weaving, you are automatically making ‘slow’ cloth. The biggest investment in hand woven cloth is the…
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Mindful Practice
What does that mean, ‘mindful practice’? Practice without being aware of what you are doing, what you need to get better results, is just practicing ‘bad’ habits. It does very little good to cement poor technique firmly into the memory. A friend once said that I got more weaving done on a ‘bad’ day than…
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My Way!
The warp currently on the loom is for gamps. Colour and value gamps. As such, the wefts are 20 of the ‘rainbow’ spectrum, plus 10 shades/tints/neutrals. A total of 30 different wefts, some of them very very close in hue and value. I’m not weaving just one gamp, which I could just go ahead and…
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Musings
My life has been a roller coaster for more years than I care to think about. Being a self-employed weaver in the 20th and 21st centuries is…challenging. Then, for the past 10 years, add in serious, potentially life ending health issues (my allergies and whiplash injuries are not exactly life ending, just annoying), well, there…
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You Only Get One
Body, that is. The photo is from the photo shoot Interweave did for The Efficient Weaver. One of the reasons I particularly wanted to do this DVD (now downloadable course) was to show proper position and posture at the loom. I so often see photos on the internet of people sitting at the loom in…
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Busy
A not uncommon sight in my studio – bins piled up with warps, spools, general…messiness. While it may look messy to someone else, there is a certain level of organization in the mess. Because I never work on just one project, one warp at a time. My approach to getting everything I do, done, is…
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Organized
This draft has a repeat of 20 ends made up of four groups of five. To keep track, I tie each group of five into a slip knot, then when all four groups are threaded I tie them all into a bundle. That way I know all four groups have been threaded and I can…
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Thumbs Up, Thumbs Down
One of the routine discussions that goes round the weaving world is that of how to hold the shuttle. Now, everyone has to work within their abilities and disabilities, but here’s the scoop on whether or not thumbs up or thumbs down is good for you: “What is this “ideal shoulder position,†I speak of?…