Fund Raising

 

still for sale - stay tuned - I may list them on a fibre arts sales group

Not all of the guild books sold on eBay.  Today is the last day of the auction with one more book that will sell for sure.  And today I was able to access the financial statement of how the auction went so far.

The books went for less than I'd hoped, but for 'fair' prices (the ones that did sell), and we have raised some money for the guild.

Given Doug has been trying to get a donated 'loom' functional and it can't be assembled because it is not complete, I am going to suggest that some of the auction funds go towards making the Leclerc Nilus loom functional again by buying new parts from Leclerc.

We were told that the loom was complete, but when the guys went to pick it up, it was in pieces and it was hard to tell if everything was there.  When they got the parts back to the guild room, it was discovered that there were 3/4s of two looms.  One is an old M model and I may suggest we discard that, but the other is a Nilus model.  However, it needs treadles and the brake system is not complete.  It's going to take about $500 (or more) to buy the new parts, but that will at least make the loom functional again.

We have one more loom that is being offered to the guild, and I *think* that one is complete.  We are trying to clear the two partial ones out of the guild room before moving that one in.  

Our guild room is larger than most guilds are able to have, but we also have a very active group of spinners and felters.  We are growing our other textile arts members, and we have a few new weavers that I'd like to see grow some more.  Maybe once all of this loom reconstruction has been done, the auction is over and so on, I will have more energy to encourage the new weavers in their learning journey.

To those who bought books, thank you!  Such a relief to find such nice books a good new home.

Famous

 

The other day I saw a post by an author (whom I follow because I enjoy their writing) saying that a clerk at a shop had asked them what they did and they responded that they were an author.  "Do I know you?" the clerk asked.  Which took the author aback, because how would they know what the clerk read?

I had a similar interaction with a clerk in a shop although it was phrased differently - and since I was feeling a bit cheeky that day, my response caught the clerk off guard.

When he slide the credit card slip over to me to sign (what can I say,  it was in the 90s) he asked me to sign it 'in case you get famous some day'.

As I signed it, I responded "I already am", and smiled as I shoved the signed slip back across the counter.

The expressions (for there were several) that rolled across his face were amusing.

I said thank you and exited the store with him still standing there, looking perplexed.

But here's the thing.  There is 'famous' and then there is small pond 'famous'.  And while I am perfectly aware that the people in my town really don't know me or anything about me (apart from a very few), my 'fame' is not in this town, but in the weaving community.

Did I do what I have done in order to be 'famous'?  No.  All I ever wanted to do was help others enjoy a craft that has brought me so much pleasure (and aggravation), so much joy (and exasperation), and even a certain level of respect (amongst some of the community, at any rate).

One of the things that came home to me as I sorted and listed Allison's books, is that most of them were published in the 70s and 80s (or before).  Many of the authors are no longer with us, and are largely unknown to newer weavers in the community.

As I have written and self-published my books, I know full well that in 20 years they may be just as obscure as some of Allison's have become.  

But again - I didn't write the books for 'fame'.  I wrote them to help people, as best I can.  Will they continue to be of help once I'm gone?  Dunno.  Doesn't matter.

Because I have never done anything I've done, not write, not teach, not post to this blog, for the 'fame'.

And I think that is where a lot of people go astray.  They want the 'fame'.  They want the clicks and likes.  But character is not built on clicks and likes.  Character is something else entirely.  

Now my 'character' of late is 'grumpy old lady shaking fist at the clouds'.  But I'm now old enough I don't much care what other people think of me.  Wayne Dyer used to say that someone else's opinion is none of your business.  Over the years, that message has been conveyed in other ways.  For example, never read the student 'reviews' of your teaching.  As a new teacher, I read them, and tried to adjust my presentations, but most of my changes came of actual interactions with students where I could see that my explanations were - or were not - making sense.  And if not, changing my approach until the student seemed satisfied.  Another is that, if you are an author, don't read the reviews on Goodreads.  (I made the mistake of doing just that a couple of weeks ago and...welp, I won't be doing that again!)

Not all students/readers were satisfied.  Of course not.  Not every teacher is suitable for every student.  But even when I disagreed with someone, or contradicted them, or expanded on the topic beyond the superfluous, I always tried to do it in a way that was respectful.

As I have been struggling with a body intent on breaking down, it is becoming ever more important that I keep sharing what I know.  I may not be able to do what I used to be able to do, physically, but so far?  Mentally I seem to be managing.  

And so I have agreed to write some essays for School of Sweet Georgia.  And I'm still accepting bookings for Zoom presentations.  

For so long as I can keep helping people gain understanding of the craft, I will continue.

The life so short, the craft so long to learn.

Two More Days

 

I have begun de-listing books that have not sold, and letting the rest run out their auction period.  Not sure what I'll do with those that have not (yet) sold.  I have several options and will need to decide which way I'll go.  Allison's books are generally in good condition, and wide ranging - from this memoir by Jack Lenor Larsen, to history of indigenous people of NA, to technical books like textile science.  Even though some of them are 'old', they still hold good information.

Allison was a home economics teacher and well versed in seeing good information presented and valued the history of textiles, as well.  And I'd really like to see her books go to good new homes.

All of this book re-homing has led me to consider my own library.  And I'm really not ready to get rid of any (more) of my books.  I've downsized my library at least twice over the years as interests changed (or I needed money and selling my books was one way to get some in order to keep the studio functioning).

Yesterday I picked up the biography of Mariette Rousseau-Vermette and have begin reading that.  If you are Canadian (or just interested in modern textile art), this book gives the historical background and, having been given access by M R-Vs family to her studio and records, it looks like a very comprehensive record of the work and times of this not-well-enough known textile artist.

I'm looking forward to learning more.  

If we don't know our history, we don't have a good foundation to move forward from.  

I feel very fortunate in that I met M R-V - briefly - when I was taking a class at the Banff Centre of Fine Arts.  I found her to be sympathetic and compassionate.  I sat in on a critique she gave of the paper making class and fully realized the importance of being able to step out of one's ego and be a critical (in the best way) observer of one's own work.

Even though I wound up not pursuing textile art after my one and only solo exhibit, I never forgot the time I spent taking that class and the time that M R-V spent with us.

The slide isn't great - it deteriorated over the decades, but this was one of the installation pieces in my solo exhibit - Sparkling Water Flows.  Yes, woven in the year after the Banff class.

Words of Wisdom

 

I just finished reading The Real Work; on the mystery of mastery by Adam Gopnik.

It was not a quick read, in spite of being a fairly slim volume.  Some books look deceivingly 'simple' or 'small' but contain gems.

Such was the case with this one.

Gopnik talks a lot about 'mastery' and examines the role of knowledge, of learning, of teaching.  He uses stories to illustrate the examples he has plucked from his own experience, and I love a good story!

But there is much to think about, consider, especially as someone who has, for most of her life, taught - in one way or another.

I even have a certificate that says I have 'mastered' weaving.  But I still learn something, almost every day.  And examining the process of learning, of *mastering* something over the course of a lifetime has been both illuminating and affirming.  One of the things I have learned is that there no end point in the journey of 'mastering' something.  There is always something more, something different, to learn.  (Change one thing, everything can change.)

If you, too, are interested in learning and teaching, you may find this book of interest.

I would like to quote the entire book (or nearly) but instead I will encourage people to go find it.  I 'found' it while looking for something else entirely, and kind of wish I had found it 40 years ago.  But it wasn't written.  Yet.  And it's never too late to stop and think and consider such things.

He frames mastery not just as something that we consciously study, but also how we live our lives.  On page 7 he talks about watching his mother in the kitchen:

"She rolled strudel, and then later traced for me the rudiments of Godel's Proof on a beach, and then taught me step by step how to make a beef Stroganoff, my favourite dish at twelve - steps (onions, peppers, beef, sauce, sour cream) that I not only know by heart and execute today but that were, perhaps my first conscious induction into the deeper truth, which the stories in this book recapitulate: that mastery happens small step by small step and that the mystery, more often than not, is that of a kind of life-enhancing equivalent of the illusion called "persistence of motion" when we watch a movie or cartoon.  "Flow" is the shorthand term that's been popularized for the feeling of the real work as it seeps through our neurons and veins, and, though we may know the flow of some things we do so well by middle age that we scarcely feel them flowing, having to set out on a new current makes us feel the resistance that is essential to the motion. "Flow" we learn again, always begins as fragments.  The separate steps become a sequence, and the sequence then looks like magic, or just like life, or just like Stroganoff."

On page 129 he talks about being good, or not good:

"But the last runner need compete only with herself.  Her heartbeats are well expended even in the loss.  I take as much pleasure from playing "Lullaby of Birdland" badly as George Shearing did in writing it well.  Use Your Hearbeats! cries the Internet meme, and as poet Mary Oliver wrote, we can at least choose how to spend them, decide what is it you plan to do with your own wild and precious life."

We focus, as a society, on being 'perfect' and yet on page 158 he observes:

"We need evident imperfection in order to be perfectly impressed.  All the expressive dimensions whose force in music Levitin had measured and made mechanical were defections from precision.  Vibrato is a way of not quite landing directly on the note; rubato is not quite keeping perfectly to the beat.  Expressiveness is error.  What really moves us in music is the vital sign of a human hand, in all its unsteady and broken grace.  Ella singing Gershwin matters because Ella knows when to make the words warble, and Ellis Larkins knows when to make the keyboard sigh.  The art is the perfected imperfection."

And the last bit I will quote here is on page 233:

"The manufacture of this illusion, short steps into seamless sequence, is not a special feature of the movies; it is a fact of life, the truth of learning.  All the steps seemed to meld together into a single, just syncopated seamless whole - outlines only very slightly blurred, the tracks almost overlapped, with a very small echo audible.  Driving and dancing, the acquisition of "the hand" and the movement of the feet; the jab of boxing and the time-tilt of drawing, form a permanent human rhythm, heart-bound, of small actions building bigger blocks."

These are just a few of the passages that caused me to stop reading in order to savour the words, the thoughts, the concepts.  And of course these observations are hung on the author's stories of learning new things - baking, boxing, driving a car, dancing, just as examples.

But each of those activities were akin to learning how to weave (or do any other skilled task).

For years I have asserted that for me weaving is a working meditation.  With each story Gopnik told about learning something new, I could feel the reverberation of a shared experience, in my case related to weaving (and all the other things I had to learn along the way - from writing, to using the internet, to figuring out how to remotely prepare to teach workshops, how to get there - and back again - quite literally turning into a travel agent - and publishing, then marketing my books.)

There is much to think about in this book, if one is inclined to think about such things.  

Blessed Rain

 

No rainbows today, but blessed, blessed rain.  Soft, gentle rain.  Rain that will soak in, drench the ground - if we get enough of it.  Which is moot.

The rivers are still far too low in terms of water levels, and despite the Bright Sparks who keep insisting this is all 'normal', let me be the one to say - it is not.

If someone is basing 'normal' on the past five years, which have steadily increased in being so very *not* normal, then, yes, this year would fit right into the 5 year long sink into drought.

But I'm not 20 something.  My memory goes far beyond the past 5 years, the past 20 years, the past 40 years, when we first began noting significant and worrisome changes to the climate.

It is exasperating to have these bold young (mostly) men (I assume they are young, they are certainly men and bold with their opinions) constantly try to whiff away the very real danger that is current and present with the ground parched, river levels far below 'normal', and nearly 100 zombie fires that never did get put out over the winter because there was insufficient snow to extinguish them.  It isn't even the end of April and there have already been evacuation alerts issued to due wildfires.  This is not normal!

But how can anyone get through the confident declarations of people who refuse to accept the reality of our changing climate?  They will go blindly into the future and then get pissed at everyone else but themselves once there is no more water in the lakes and rivers, their electric bill skyrockets because the largely hydro produced electricity we rely on quite literally dries up.

They will continue to wash their big ass lifted gas guzzling trucks with copious amounts of water, then complain when they can't go to the lake because the lakes have dried up.

And if (a big IF) the rain does come and disaster is averted, they will simply take that as proof that people like me were alarmists.  And they will continue to march into a future that is going to look very different from what 'normal' used to be.

I'm old.  I won't be around to see their comeuppance if things don't change and we manage to stop the march towards self-destruction.

The big difference between people like me and people like them, is that *I* care they they will be in danger, and they don't give a damn about people like me.

And I have no idea how to get through to them that they should care about themselves and their families if they can't be bothered to care about people like me.

As a weaver, I also know that when the apocalypse comes, spinners and weavers will suddenly be necessary and valuable members of the community.  Because supply chains will break down.  The clothing industry, which currently relies on petroleum based products (polyesters, etc) will not be producing clothing and society will need to have people who have the skills to raise fibre crops and turn them into essentials like clothing and blankets.

I chatted with a gardener a few months ago and we agreed that when the time comes, I can make cloth for her and she can grow food for me.

Old skills will be new again.  Human beings will once again need to know where their food comes from and how to coax it from the earth.  

I was promised hand baskets on the road to hell.  Maybe I need to learn basketry, too?

Exchange Rate Discount

 

As the book auction begins to wind up, I'd like to remind people that if you are in the US, the prices listed in the auction are *Canadian* dollars.  So you get an automatic exchange rate 'discount'.  How much?  Dunno.  The exchange rate fluctuates, so it depends.

And *I* have zero control over the exchange rate, just saying.

I have begun culling books from the auction, beginning with my lace books (which I used to test the site).  Those books have been relisted twice and apparently no one is much interested so I am removing them and will think about how else I can get them into other hands.

Once I'm over the hump of getting the bundles of books currently waiting for their auctions to end, and get them out of my hair, I will begin culling the weaving books, too.  Again, I may look at other options for re-homing them.

I told my spouse before the auction began that I estimated that it would require about 100 hours of volunteer time to sell Allison's books.  And I'm right on track with how much time I've already spent preparing for the auction, then doing the listings, and monitoring the site answering questions.  The most popular one being if I will ship multiple purchases to the same address can they get a 'break' on the shipping.  Yes, of course.  Which simply means a lot more work on my part to track those, and make sure I get the books to the correct person, then issue refunds for the shipping once I have the final receipt from Canada Post.

And no, eBay, I won't add a US carrier to make things more convenient for US purchasers.  Canada Post does a good job and I know how their systems work, I'll stick with that, thankyouverymuch.

But all of this re-homing of Allison's books is reminding me that I really, truly, need to face the fact that I have way too many books and need to begin thinking about my own studio stuff.

I'm just not ready to begin downsizing things like books.  

I do, however, currently have a younger person willing to help with getting rid of my things.  I suggest that if you don't, maybe you should make friends with someone who will act as your studio executrix, or better yet, do it while you are still alive and can help make those decisions.  I'm finding it quite satisfying to see Allison's books go to younger hands and hope that these books will be loved for many more years to come.

Sunny Day

 

Yesterday a parcel arrived in the mail.  When I got home from the dentist, it was waiting in the mailbox and I sat down to open it and discovered this lovely bit of sunshine in the form of two tatted doilies.

Now, I never did grasp the 'secret' of tatting - I could never get the knots to set properly - but I am familiar enough with the technique to appreciate the delicacy and consistency of these lovely textiles.

There was also a note with them.  A note that definitely warmed the cockles of my heart.

In many ways, sitting down here at the desktop letting my thoughts ramble around feels, well, I don't know how to explain how it feels when I write my blog posts.

I know that there are people 'out there' who read what I write, some of them regularly, some less so.  Some let me know that my technical posts are useful, helpful, and honestly that was what I was hoping for when I started this 'conversation' in 2008.  

I've been on the 'net since 1994, long before Facebook or other social media sites.  I enjoy helping people.  But I soon learned that unsolicited advice wasn't always welcome.  Rather than horn in on a conversation in groups, I decided to put what I had to say here - my site, my opinions - as someone put it.  

I'm the first to admit that not everyone agrees with me on everything.  And that's fine.  I just don't need to get into slanging matches with others.  Either they agree with me or they don't, no need to get petty about it.  Besides, change one thing, everything can change.

Someone commented recently about the 'discussions' I would have on a group we both belonged to.  There were times that I would offer my advice/opinion and would immediately get shut down (or so they thought) by someone vehemently disagreeing with me.

One instance was someone asking how to adjust their AVL in order to achieve greater tension on the warp.  I hesitated to answer because while I did just what they wanted to do, I knew it was NOT recommended by AVL.  After waiting for someone else to answer the question, but no one really addressing what the original poster asked, I finally chimed in and told him what I did in order to do what he wanted.

About 5 or 6 guys (yes, they were all guys) immediately lambasted me saying I didn't know what I was talking about and even suggested, very forcefully, that before I damaged my loom I needed to go, post haste, to the AVL school and find out how to use my loom 'properly'.

By this point in time I had been weaving on my AVL for nearly 20 years, in exactly the way I had explained.  While I'm sure these 'johnny com lately' weavers had been weaving on an AVL for a few years, I'm also quite sure none of them could match my output (at the time).  And I was doing it in exactly the fashion I had outlined.

I read through their admonishments and shrugged and went back to the loom.

When I came back I discovered that Allen  Fannin (who I agreed to disagree with him on several fronts, but never felt that he talked down to me like the dude bros had been doing) said that while we did agree to disagree on a number of things, when I answered a question people should pay attention because "Laura knows what she is talking about".

The lovely person who sent these doilies has been very encouraging and supportive, even though they are not a weaver, but does other textiles arts.  They thanked me for my writing, saying that they frequently learn 'something' even though I mostly discuss weaving.

But that's the thing.  The principles that apply to weaving also, in large part, apply to other textile crafts.  Because we are all working with 'string'.  And that 'string' is made from fibres, and those fibres have been spun into yarn.  

So a lot of the things I say about weaving can also be said about, for example, tatting - if you can't be perfect, be consistent.  A thread under tension is a thread under control.  

And as a person working in the creative field, others in different creative fields may also find lessons that apply to them, too.

I'm just finishing reading The Real Work; the mystery of mastery by Adam Gopnik.  And even though he doesn't talk about weaving, he talks about learning.  About paying attention.  About 'flow'.  And I think about how all of those lessons he is talking about are applicable to any process that requires skill - and that pretty much means anything human beings do.

I haven't decided where to use these doilies.  They are so pretty I'm tempted to frame them.  But I'm also a huge believer in *using* useable things, not 'saving' them for 'good'.

Lately I've been posting nearly daily, and like a pebble I toss my thoughts out 'there', never knowing where the ripples will end up.  And sometimes, those wavelets come back to me and I know that someone, somewhere, has read what I said and taken something of value for themselves. 

And I feel like I have 'permission' to keep tossing thought pebbles out there, never knowing where they will go, and how they will return...