Wednesday, April 3, 2019

Hold the line


     
I began the new weft color today, pale orange. It’s over the breast beam, but short of the cloth beam. When I begin a new tie on, I prefer to get that nasty tie on rod over the breast beam before I first leave. But I’ve been weaving for enough years now that it’s safe to stop and indulge writing a new thought.

What I like about weaving: watching it happen. Some very basic mechanical occurrences are advancing the work over the cloth beam the first time, getting that tie up bar out of action and relatively incapable of snagging a weft thread, undetected. Grrrr… 

Other mechanical happenings are the emptying of bobbins, the take up of weaving, filling the cloth beam until there is no more room for knees. Occasionally pushing the cloth take up so far the weaving is brushing the loom frame, but just one more advance, please weaving fairies, and the warp will be gone.

The best part of watching it happen is watching the warp become cloth; watching each row fill in a pattern. It once came to me, it’s like the time my brothers didn’t return to school after lunch. This is the way olden days when we walked home for tomato soup and grilled cheese, and walked back to school. My brothers were first and fourth graders.

The principal called home and mom left, driving along the route to school. There they were, at the corner of Damon and Hollibaugh, watching a city crew make a repair to a sewer. Watching it happen, brick by brick.

Speaking of mom, thanks to my sister we have the missing word, though Jan mulled for half a day to get it. Mine was cup board. Mom’s is even better: mislead. Say my-zuld. She said she was an employed adult before she was corrected.

I bet we have thousands of such words among us. I’d love to hear them, if you’re inclined.

And back to weaving, here are two inexcusable customer service errors. Normally I would mention them in placing my next order. In this case, I will switch suppliers.


All the bobbins I've wound and woven for the last, huge warp I wound on, have been full of factory knots, as we came to call them. There is a tool workers in thread factories use to tie ends of thread together. The tool ties and tightens an overhand knot. Overhand knots must be cut out and replaced with a weaver's knot, which basically is a square knot. It leaves two ends parallel with the original threads. These ends we leave long enough to work into the weaving, the knitting, whatever needlework we have at hand. 



That is a factory knot from the current creamsicle. I've cut hundreds from the thread I bought for towels I've woven since I came back from breaking my leg. Literally hundreds. It came to me today, as I wound the bobbins for the last of the towels, what so many factory knots mean. 

My supplier, The Woolery, in Kentucky, purchased thread on ten or more pound cones from the manufacturer, Maurice Brassard, in Canada. The Woolery has a set up for downsizing. Our rug warp supplier made half pound tubes from large rug warp put ups. They used to overwind cones, and we could not put them on the spool rack. Oh, the problems of entrepreneurs.

In my current instance, an inexperienced operator is having difficulty learning the machines and breaking a lot of thread. Oh, no problem! They just tie that nasty knot with their handy knot tier and carry on. A bobbin of thread weaves about a towel, and since I weave continuous yardage, there may or may not be one knot in a towel. However, there is at least one knot and perhaps two or three in every towel I've woven since December.


But today, the offensive inexcusable. A grease mark on the thread. I get it that equipment may leave dirt on the operator, who then is honor bound to get it off their hands before returning to the job. So, not only will I report to The Wollery why I am placing all future orders with The Yarn Barn in Kansas, I will call Brassard et Fils and tell them, too.


36 comments:

  1. I can't think of a word. But I will say The Yarn Barn in Lawrence KS is a lovely shop! Yes, I've been there! The nice lady helped me with KF&B on a project I was working on while Phil drove home.

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    1. We sold yarn to the Yarn Barn, back in the day out barn was loaded with too many mill ends.

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  2. Once again I have learned more about weaving than I will ever understand. It is interesting. I believe I would probably become hypnotized watching as it becomes cloth.

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  3. I do believe that I might possibly have understood 22% of the above post. My goodness but weaving is an entire world unto itself!
    It was probably up until a few years ago that I finally started pronouncing the "th" in "clothes." Up until then, I just said "close." As in, "Have you packed your close?"
    Also, it wasn't until last year that I finally started pronouncing ceviche correctly.

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  4. Love reading your posts about weaving but would much rather be watching you weave.

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  5. I wonder whether your explanations to these companies will result in any changes...I really do. Be well, Joanne.

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    1. It should make a difference. It's a small business.

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  6. Quality control was missing that day, which probably means that it has happened before.

    It would be hypnotic to watch the weaving.

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  7. I pronounced 'misled' just like your mom did for probably 40 years until I heard someone on tv say it one day. I don't think I ever used it, just read it wrong. And another one just whizzed through my brain, an Army tactic I think, but now it's gone. Jeeze.

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  8. Well, I won't use anything but Brassard ring spun.....and I'm a dealer for them so I love the price.....and I've never had knots like that...not ever. Was this just one cone??? I'm curious. They are very nice, and I think you should have asked The Woolery for replacements......and I will give you a better price, btw.

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    1. No, it was a box of about thirty to forty half pound cones of dyed Brassard ring spun from The Woolery. I surmise the Woolery put up the half pound cones, but both the Woolery and Brassard need to know. I'll contact you about pricing.

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  9. Wow so much learning about weaving, I understood, as I knit, about 40%. I've watched weaving tho, does that count.

    You put me in mind of my darling mum and her mispronunciation of the word "hereditary". It was a word she adored and she pronounced it "Herdittery" a charming non-existent word. We would continually correct her, eyes rolling of course. But she never got it.

    XO
    WWW

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  10. awry. I pronounced it aw-ry before I was corrected. and I imagine me reading weaving talk is like people reading my shop talk.

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  11. When I get too many knots in a ball of yarn I get real annoyed because they might have to be cut and redone in order to camouflage them in the piece of craft work. If I also found a grease mark that would really annoy.

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  12. As a knitter, I'm more than a bit po'd about the knots in the very expensive self patterning yarns I've bought lately. It would be okay if the knots tied matching ends, but I've yet to see that.

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    1. I haven't knit socks in some time, but I remember that problem, and how many yards were sacrificed to get to the match.

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    2. I'm knitting daughter some mittens with extremely expensive yarn I bought in Toronto. One mitten is fine, but the second has about ten knots in it where I've been trying to match it up where it was fouled. She won't care but I'm really not happy about it.

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  13. 'Ornery' I pronounced as 'onry' well into my 30s!

    I enjoyed reading the bit about your brothers ditching going back to school in order to watch the sewer repair instead.

    I like the creamsicle color.

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  14. Posthumous is a word I cannot get my town around.

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    1. There is a river south of me, the Tuscararwas. I cannot form the word.

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  15. A shame about the knots, but good of you to tell the company why you are leaving them. Hopefully they'll make corrections for the better.
    I remember always reading underfed (under fed) as un-derf-ed and couldn't understand why such a word was in the story. I didn't make the connection for many years, because I'd never known anyone who was underfed. Things became much clearer when I bought myself a dictionary.

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  16. Customer service is not what it used to be in many areas, that's for sure.

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  17. I had to work with my daughter for quite some time (read years) before she could say jewellery correctly..it came out jewly. My husband is deaf and pronounces many words incorrectly simply because he doesn't hear them correctly. I'm sure I pronounce many words incorrectly but people are too kind or polite to correct me. The knots are a giant pain but the grease spot is, as you say, unforgiveable.

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  18. Sometimes words are pronounced when and where you are. Myself, I still have to think about "pistachio" before saying it as I am likely to put a 's' before the 'p'. Your weaving descriptions are wonderful and completely intimidating.

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    1. Actually, exactly like following a knitting or crocheting pattern. You learn it and do it.

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  19. How exasperating to find knots in your thread! I'm a crocheter, mostly with fine thread, and know how disappointing it is to find a knot after I've painstakingly strung on sometimes hundreds of tiny seed beads. This winter while crocheting scarves I found at least a dozen knots in one skein of famous maker yarn, causing a lot of waste as many of them were maybe a foot apart. I'm hoping that was a one of a kind occurrence. You are surely justified in changing your supplier!

    My Mom said "alumium" for aluminum.

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    1. I learned to crochet with 5 cord and a size 14 hook. I honestly do not recall these stinking knots in DMC brand back in the sixtiesl

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  20. What do they think? That you won't notice? Won't mind? Those gaffs are inexcusable. I hope they sit up and take notice because, thankfully, there are other suppliers with higher standards.

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  21. In this day and age, things like those knots or grease really matter. They will be sorry to lose your patronage, and you might be gloriously happier.

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  22. Surely the manufacturer knows the kinds of problems those knots will cause the end user. That narrows the cause to lack of quality control, for which they will eventually lose customers, as they are losing you.

    Growing up, I was a reader but wasn't exposed to a lot of words in real life, so I mispronounced - in my head - names like Penelope, Persephone, and Gina for years. I know there were non-name words I mispronounced too, but can't recall what they were. "Anesthetist" is a word I still have trouble pronouncing even though I know how it's supposed to sound!

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  23. Oh my! And I thought dealing with fixing my desk top and using N Iphone was beyond me. The terms and technicalities of weaving would be hopeless for me...:) Ray

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  24. too much tech today for me - someone robbin my bobbins

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  25. I don't think I have any word issues (no one has pointed out any :-)). But thank you for the discussion of knots in yarn! As a new knitter working on an afghan I have had a few and have been worried about how to disguise them. Now I know! Retie in a square knot (thank you Girl Scouts) with long ends that I can weave into the work. Thank you. I should also say that I am a new reader of your blog and enjoy it.

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