weaving again

i'm making a scarf for my friend cherie's birthday (which was on monday, better late than never). not having access to a loom was driving me mental, so i borrowed this off Drew the WeaveTech at college.

it's the spit of my old table loom isn't it? except it doesn't have turning wheels at the left-hand side, so the let-off is a bit more difficult, and the ratchet n pauls are wooden, not metal. it might be a little wider as well, and this scarf is a little narrower than usual

yeah i know, another bog-standard 2/2 twill. i must admit after 2 years of making 2/2 twills it is starting to get a little boring, but next semester i get access to dobby looms, so lucky me eh? about time too, i've been getting right impatient doing all this other stuff that isn't weaving. though using a domestic knitting machine is kinda fun, i must admit, i should try making a jumper. don't really have time just now, i'm overloadd with work and i've been ill, having caught the zombie plague on halloween (i dressed up as a zombie because i'm lazy and all you need is black, white and red and a torn t-shirt, at least i didn't go as yet-another-batman-joker) however i then proceeded to get stuck out in edinburgh for 2 hours at night without my coat and a t-shirt full of holes and caught some kind of horrible cold which i still haven't fully recovered from.

heyho, it's always a good reason to take time off work. talking of which i really should quit my job and get a cheaper flat. maybe i could get a rat-infested doss-house full of fleas and dodgy electrics, it'd be just like the old days, except i'd be paying rent this time.

anyway, enough of that. so there it is anyway, another weavemaster table loom, definitely the singer of british table looms, i think they were manufactured in the 40's and 50's, for that whole handicraft revival thing that never really managed to hold on over here. nobody manufactures handlooms in this country anymore. i believe the company that used to make these now sells industrial loom control software, but they might just be using the same name.

* * * WARNING * * *
* * * LONG WINDED POLITICAL RANT AHEAD * * *
* * * RADICAL CONSERVATIVES PLEASE CHANGE CHANNEL NOW * * *

you can still buy reeds from a place down in england, and a guy on ebay as well, made to your exact specifications as well, reasonable prices i thought. when i get a place to use my floor loom i'm getting a 48" 14dpi reed. hopefully they'll still be in business by then. knowing the way things go in this country, the last of Thatcher's minions will get them in their eternal quest to destroy british manufacturing.

it's crazy ain't it? the Luftwaffe spent years bombing the shit out of our heavy industry trying to destroy our manufacturing base and then Thatcher came along and did their job for them 50 years late and with practically no violence whatsoever. Aaah, there's nothing for maintaining proletarian pride like working in a call-centre is there?

we're gonna be so screwed when peak oil comes around. Well, at least we've still got a decent railway system and some local food production, unlike certain continental superpowers i could mention

anyway, i guess what i'm saying (in my had anyway, it probably isn't too clear here) is that we're going to need to build up a network of decentralised production co-operatives independent of centralised state control is our society is going to survive the end of the oil era without descending into fascist barbarism. it won't happen though, at least not on the kind of scale that'll prevent us from being economically dominated by a certain Asian superpower i could mention (god i'm so subtle)

anyway, go communism! that's the original vision of communism, as in independently federated networks of workers and peasant co-operative using consensus decision making and localised production, not the hideous parody that emerged in the soviet union. whether it's even possible is a good question, maybe we're doomed to be slave to our own creations, forever feeding an inhuman machine we have no control over whose goals are completely at odds with human survival and happiness.

looking on the bright side, global capitalism appears to be completely unsustainable, so i guess the worst that could happen is a thousand year global dark age in a world completely stripped of all easily attainable metals and fossil fuels and littered with the junk and poisons of 300 years of selfish and poorly co-ordinated production.

as George Carlin famously said "the planet wil be fine . . . the PEOPLE are fucked"

so i guess that's something to be cheerful about

-andrew

ps. see how i did that? used my perfectly harmless weaving blog to rant on and on about peak oil and anarchist communism. see, fascist do this sort of thing as well by appealing to people's natural concerns about the unfair distribution of economic and political power in capitalist society and then turn the whole thing on it's head and just blame it on the muslims and the blacks. the difference between that and what i'm doing is i'm a nice boy and don't want to round up all the muslims, blacks, homosexuals, jews, communists, catholics and so on and put them in camps. all i want to do is live in a nicely organised urban commune growing veg and weaving clever fabric

i'm in college now :)

have been for 4 weeks

oh, it's terribly overwhelming actually, i haven't been in proper education for years and years and i'm getting so much howework to do.

we have 2 full days of knitting machining on monday and tuesday, which is pretty greuling like, and i spend a lot of time swearing at the machines cos they're awfully finickity things and they drop stitches at the slightest provocation, at least they do for me anyway.

and then on wednesday i've been having to paint, and i can't paint to save my life. never mind. we're onto pattern cutting and sewing now and that's much better.

we don't have weave for another few months yet though, so i've got the lend of a table loom off the weave techinician and gonna make a scarf for my friend's birthday.

hooray!

anyway, sorry for the extended absence, which reminds me of a joke

man goes to the doctor

man: i've got a problem doctor, it's a bit embarassing to tell truth

doctor: well, there's no need to be embarassed in front of me, anything said here won't leave this room

man: well, it's like this, for the past week or so everytime i've farted it's sounded awfully strange

doctor: well, maybe you could demonstrate for me?

man screws his face up with effort, assumes wrestlers stance

man: eeeeh, urrgh (strain, struggle, etc) . . . HONDA!

doctor: well, that is curious, does this happen everytime you fart?

man: yes, i'm the laughing stock of the office

doctor: has there been any change in your lifestyle or diet recently?

man: well, my wife left me last week and she always did the cooking so i've mainly been living off ready meals and pot noodles, i don't know how to cook for myself

doctor: hmmm, well i have a theory, if you could just drop your trousers so i can examine you?

man: ok then (drops keks)

doctor: hmm (shuffle, peer, probe and so on), well, i think i my have found the issue here, there's an absess on your left buttock, if you put your trousers back on i'll give you a cream that'll clear it up, i think you'll find you'll be farting normally in a matter of days

man: what? (shuffles back into keks) but that's ridiculous, what on earth could an abcess have to do with the sound of my farts?

doctor: well, it's like the old saying goes . .
.
.
"Abcess makes the fart go HONDA!"


good eh?

oh come on now, it's not that bad.

really, some people don't know when they're in the precense of a comedic genius

-andrew

The Knotted Pile Course at Castlehill

Well, i still don't have my camera lead, and i still don't have internet access at home, but it's been almost a month since i did the course, which was fairly significant and i might as well post something or i'll never get round to it.

unfortunately, no pictures. heyho

but like i say, i taught a Knotted Pile Weaving course at Castlehill Heritage Centre in Castletown, about 2 days before i moved down here to gala. It was a great success i thought. basically, everyone got a square frame with a warp of rug wool already on it, because i figured we could lose two hours putting warps on frames because it's terribly fiddly and takes a while to get right, and anyway it's something that anyone can figure out how to do themselves in their own free time, so i did it myself the night before.

Really, it's quite a simple technique and once people have done a line or two of pile, it becomes quite automatic and folks can start messing about with their patterns and experimenting and stuff. one person had a good idea of the picture she wanted to make already, so she got on with that, most people just chose 4 or 5 colours and made stripes and squares and stuff, there was a bit of good colour blending going on, using various hues of the same colour to make a sort of mottled effect, very nice. one person even figured out that she could have areas without pile on the pile line without having to ask how it was done, which was pretty cool.

there were 7 people in all, and a good time was had by all. at the end of the day i showed them all a wee bit of tablet weaving, and actually managed to show one woman how to warp up during lunch break, which was nice. so, 7 wee mats made and two tablet weaving warps given away.

i enjoyed myself, and i think everyone else did as well. it was fun.

anyway, that's that, no pics, cos i don't have the technology just now. never mind, maybe next week.

also, in other news, after 3 weeks of applying to every damn place within 20 miles of my house i finally have work. it's a relief i can tell you. but i can't relax yet, cos the council are threatening to cut off my goolies cos i haven't yet IMMEDIATELY supplied them with a piece of paper they didn't ask for and which i have never before needed to supply to any council anywhere else in britain.

don't you just love it when you recieve a letter on the 10th that's dated the 5th telling you that you MUST supply them information within 5 days of the date of the letter or they'll do terrible things to your financial well-being? what's even better is that when you take this letter to the office to moan about it they then say "oh, ignore that, it's just a computer generated form". so i'm being bombarded with empty threats by the council mainframe? hooray for beaureacracy!

wow, i think i spelled that right, it looks right anyway.

anyhoodle, it's roasting and i don't start work till saturday, so i'm off to lie about in the park and die of heatstroke

just so you know

i haven't been posting recently because i left the USB lead for my camera up north in a box within a box. silly of me

i'll get pictures of the workshop as Castlehill up on monday when i get all my tat back down here.

in other news, there's lots of lovely forests down here, and the job market is absolutely dire.

-andrew

TAT! JUNK! FLOWERS! RAIN!

sorry for the caps

that's me rationalising my tat in my parents' front room, they're away on holiday in Foreign the now.

I just salvaged the wool from an unfinished rug that went wrong half a year ago. hooray!

i'm getting on the train in 5 days, yikes. and doing the workshop in castlehill on saturday, jings, crivens, and so on.

That's the garden there, descending into chaos through a process of entropy whereby all systems gradually collapse when they're not constantly maintained.

i apologise for the sideways pics making your eyes bleed

i include these two pics cos about 30 minutes later (it was dead sunny when i took them) a storm broke over holborn head and it was all thunder and lightning, fork lightning and everything, i've literally never seen anything like it. i was round the corner at my neighbour's house drinking tea and i ran back to get my camera and shut the door and the storm broke over me and i got soaked up to the waist running through sudden puddles.

a house got demolished by the lightning over at scrabster, a few telephone poles got set on fire, and i've been told people actually saw ball lightning in the air near scrabster. i was going to put my bike back in the house, but i was too scared to hold anything metal. least i wasn't my mate, who was walking back from scrabster with a bunch of fishing poles.

it was proper scary, and cool as fuck like.

i like it when nature scares the crap out of us all, so secure in our apparent domination of the globe and all it's forces. being put in your place, and realising we're really no different from all the other animals scurrying about eating and burning stuff up with no thought for our long term survival.

all hail Earth, she'll outlive us, won't hardly break her stride when we've blown ourselves all up cos we think we're gods

hooray for millenarianism! :)

-andrew

back to basics

my house is almost empty now.

i have no looms. so i'm weaving on a frame.

you could say i've got piles. knotted piles. sounds painful doesn't it?

i'm practicing on the little frame before i make something on the big frame. i want to make a big square piece out of two length sewn together, for sitting around on the ground on.

i haven't done any weaving for a while and it's nice to do something simple, with equipment that anybody can get hold of. i won't be able to keep a loom in my new house cos it's tiny, so i have to learn how to weave this way. i think one could make quite substantial rugs by sewing strips together. we'll see.

-andrew

on the rocks