The Times They Are A-Changin’…

With apologies to Dylan.

If you read my previous post, I mentioned that I’ve been around the weaving world for awhile.  I’ve seen a lot, heard a lot, taught a lot, laughed a lot, admired a lot, seen guilds fade away and become reborn, buried long time members who started guilds, read a lot of books and magazines on the subject, and so when I say the times they are a-changin’, I come with a pretty strong background of experience.

The great news is that new blood has entered the weaving complex and that is a really really good thing.  The hard part is, the new blood brings new experiences, social media expertise, a curiosity and a new perspective.

Unless you are really really fortunate to live near Yarn Barn of Kansas or Webs or Halcyon or the Woolery or Eugene Textile Center or any of a handful of weaving suppliers, you must rely on the internet for all your weaving needs.  No problem.  We are a computer savvy group and you can find it quickly and have it shipped right to your door.  Back in my day, we bought weaving yarns on cones.  Big cones.  We bought by the pound.  You had a stash automatically because there were always leftovers on the cone.  The current crop of weavers who have come to the dark side via knitting have so many yarn choices that I can’t even begin to sort out the possibilities, but mostly they buy by the project, the way they might have as knitters.   As a matter of fact, many of the projects in Handwoven magazine are now available as complete kits through the Interweave Press Store; yarns pre-measured with no leftovers for stash building.

Every morning when I get up, I check my email on my phone to see if there is anything urgent that needs my immediate attention, and delete the junk.  Then I switch over to Facebook and scroll through the newsfeed.  I have a lot of textile friends from all over the world.  I actually don’t know many of them personally, but if they are friends with a couple dozen other fibery people I know, I add them to the list. Every morning I smile as I look through the latest projects and interesting weave structures and use of materials that they have posted.  There are Facebook pages for weaving, inkle weaving, four shaft weaving, eight shaft weaving, Strickler in Color (Carol Strickler’s well loved tome of eight shaft drafts) and a bunch more I belong to, where color and texture just jump off the screen.  The thing is, I can’t touch any of it.  Fiber is such a tactile medium that when one happens on another weaver or fiber enthusiast, say like at a conference, the first connection is to touch.  No words necessary.  That is all being replaced by visuals with no touching, but beautiful all the same.  And I can see textiles from around the world; all from my warm bed using my cell phone app.

What I especially love are the comments.  Usually, there are 127 “likes” followed by a number of, “Gorgeous”, “Just Beautiful”, “Amazing Colors”…  and then the questions start.  Back in the day, the first questions that were usually asked once one handled the textile (usually while on someone else’s body) were about fiber content, and how many shafts.  The shaft thing is still an important question, because so many new weavers are working on a rigid heddle loom (which is essentially two shafts).  The options for structures in Strickler’s book just aren’t there.

But now, there is a new first question being asked that completely blows me away.

I’ve been weaving since the 1970’s.  Weaving yarns back then were limited; mostly what came from Lily Mills, Maypole, Maysville, Robin and Russ, and some of the knitting yarns that were put up on cones. And lots of mill ends.  Silk City Fibers revolutionized the use of rayons and blends in handweaving yarns back in the early 1980’s, Maureen and David pounded the pavement of the craft fairs in the northeast showing samples of their yarns to all the weavers in their booths.  There have been many pioneers in the handweaving world in the last couple of decades, who have changed the way we think about handweaving and its purpose, process, and product.  Some have written books, some have invented weaving software, some have published magazines, both digital and print, some have pushed the limits of what a hand loom can do, some have started social media sites and spent countless hours moderating them, and some have blazed trails in the teaching world, especially in the new digital formats.

One of those trailblazers is Kathrin Weber of Blazing Shuttles.  I only really began to pay attention to Kathrin’s work a few years ago, when a flurry of Facebook sites popped up involving her, her hand dyed warps, or her students’ work.  She maintains a lot of Facebook pages, and I’m most entertained by the ones that show those who have purchased her hand dyed warps and what they have done with them.  You see, back in my day, purchasing your pre-wound warp from someone was not even part of the weaving lexicon.  You bought yarn.  You wound a warp. You wove it off.  You showed it at a guild meeting.  End of story.  If you were really really good, you entered it into an exhibit at the local weaving conference.  And if you were really really really good, you entered it at Convergence.

So the upshot here, is Kathrin dyes warps, and sells them.  Her warps are all over the internet.  The fabrics produced from those warps are knock your socks off.  She teaches her students to blend them, reverse them, use every kind of structure imaginable, and new weavers and old weavers are collecting Blazing Shuttles warps like the world is ending and there won’t be anymore yarn left.

So now, we have a new first question that gets posted when I put up a photo on Facebook that confused me at first until I realized that the times, they are a-changin’.  We live in a global world, where everything you make can be documented step by step, other weavers can get excited about what you do, you can share knowledge and blaze those trails holding hands, or shuttles as it were, even if you live continents away and speak different languages.  And you can buy warps.  Pre-wound.  Pre-dyed.  In all kinds of fibers.

And here is the fabric I started a year and a half ago, as documented by this blog post.  And to all of those on Facebook who asked that first question, “Whose warp is it?”  It is mine.  All mine.  I dyed it.  There are two separate warps, mostly rayon.  They are blended and a dark hunter green rayon bouclé was added for definition between the warps.  It washed up beautifully.  It is soft and drapey, and I can’t wait to make something with it. Probably multiple things.  Of course, like all my fabrics, it does need to age.  I’ll eventually figure out what to do with it.

I’ve been dyeing warps this way since 2005 when Sarah Goodman stole me away after a NEWS conference to her studio in NH and taught me how to dye with MX dyes.  You can see some of the other warps I’ve dyed made up into garments here.

Stay tuned…