not another yarn blog (spinning, weaving, and natural dyeing)

Someone somewhere recently asked me how I plan and work on my videos.  

Chaotically



So this is a list I made for myself.  This includes the videos I am actively working on and if they have any deadlines (and yes, dyslexia is a thing - don't even bother correcting, I promise it will do more harm than good).

To get on this list, the video needs to be in the filming, editing, writing, crafting, or gathering materials stage.  The list fails to include some of the long-term projects where I'm gathering footage over several years (I started a flax video in 2019 for example), videos still in the planning stages, or videos that got stalled in the editing due to not having the right story to be worth making... yet.  There are also a few secret projects that won't make it into this either.  

Wondering if a q&a would be good to add to the list?   Would there be enough questions?

That depends on how people-y you want to go, and how you want to do it. When you open yourself up to that type of interaction, you have several options with which to accomplish it. You could put out a questionnaire, to guide them toward the types of questions you're willing to answer, or open it to live questions, or simply have folks submit any questions they want, select the ones you want to answer, and do the video(s) based around those, or... whatever other format you'd be willing to try. But, live doesn't give you a buffer of any type, so I'd not recommend that way. But, your knowledge could very well make a difference, for many people, if they had that type of access to it.

It would be a recorded video with the questions asked before hand.   I could see doing some spinning or mending while answering some of the questions.

I was supposed to be foraging dye stuff,  but someone was too cute

and some sheep time.





although they were less impressed by the camera than I had hoped.  

Everything in my life got put on hold when, two days before the weaving class began I got an email saying..."um, you know that yarn they use for the final project at the end of the class... that's discontinued and sold out."  

WHAT!?

What's the final project?  Well, the table looms can maybe weave 15" wide if we push them, but really do better at 12" wide.  That limits the final project to a few things, but I like a scarf because it gives a decent amount of weaving time before the warp is finished.  

So a scarf.

They learn how to plan the project, and more importantly,  they learn it's okay to combine yarns.  We have the luxury yarn and then the basic affordable cotton.  How to combine the two in a wallet-friendly way that gets the best results.  What are the pros and cons of the different choices?  That sort of thing.

Between you and me, there aren't many yarn shops that have consistent availability and can ship within 3 days.  As we don't know the colours the students choose until the week before the project begins.  Most shops don't carry all the colours and need a few weeks to get anything in.  Except one.  And that shop has stopped carrying the mid-range luxury yarns.

Because I want to set the students up for success, I choose a different yarn that is available at a local wholesaler.  This is cotton and not enough like any other yarn to be obvious how it behaves.

thus my life being taken over.  I need to get to know the yarn and make some sett samples for the students so they don't have to.  

And because ...me.  I filmed it.



I'm a bit nervous about this because I stray from the story a bit to focus on the technical aspect.  I like to geek out about yarncraft, but it greatly limits the number of people who might be interested in this video.  We'll see how it works, but so far the stats from the first few hours of being published have been pretty dismal.  

Just hop hop hopping along.

Not yarn, but it does say it's "not another yarn blog" so...

5 minutes of wholesome chicken content for your enjoyment.



and if you can pop over to YouTube and give the video a thumbs up, that would be awesome!

Samantha is passionate about natural textiles, too. I think you two would really get along if you met in real life. She makes sweaters from the wool of the sheep she tends! Samantha was an instructor in this summer's Permaculture Technology Jamboree and this is a snippet of the video taken during the event. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytK0O_gYldM

r ranson wrote:Someone somewhere recently asked me how I plan and work on my videos.  

Chaotically



So this is a list I made for myself.  

Making that list broke me.

I don't know what happened, but something fell apart when I looked at that list.  I haven't touched yarn since except for necessity.

Today I MUST touch yarn again.  I've left it to the last minute.  



From another point of view, last week a friend complained she hadn't woven anything in a week.  My reply (not socially acceptable as usual) was that being a weaver is like cancer or alcohol - you never really stop being a weaver, you just go through periods of remission.



And from yet another point of view, Margaret Atwood describes this lull as a Fallow State

“The theory was that while in a Fallow state you were gathering and conserving strength, nourishing yourself through meditation, sending invisible rootlets out into the universe.”
― Margaret Atwood, MaddAddam

I know from experience that these fallow periods happen.  They happen suddenly in my life and I snap out of them just as suddenly (usually at 2am).  Or I come out of them slowly by doing something with yarn that is necessary (like teaching).

yarn that waits for me

So yeh, it's been nearly a year since I've touched yarn.  

Call it burnout or whatever, but I'm trying to be gentle with myself and slowly get back into it.  This morning I cleaned off my loom!  Maybe tonight I can find my notes to see what I was weaving.


But it got me thinking, why?  

Why did I need a break?

Was it the pressures of youtube?  Possibly.

But knowing that it's okay to step away and the yarn won't be going anywhere without me helps me feel less bad about it.

And can I help others know it's okay?

maybe?  I made a 30 second video about it and who knows if it will do well or not.  

I totally get it. I work on things in weird bursts. I'll do something consistently for a while and then not touch it for weeks, months, a year. Then start up like I never stopped. Or jump back into it and be obsessed with whatever project and do almost nothing else. That's just the cycles of my life.

r ranson wrote:So yeh, it's been nearly a year since I've touched yarn.  

Call it burnout or whatever, but I'm trying to be gentle with myself and slowly get back into it.  This morning I cleaned off my loom!  Maybe tonight I can find my notes to see what I was weaving.


But it got me thinking, why?  

Why did I need a break?

Was it the pressures of youtube?  Possibly.

But knowing that it's okay to step away and the yarn won't be going anywhere without me helps me feel less bad about it.

And can I help others know it's okay?

maybe?  I made a 30 second video about it and who knows if it will do well or not.  

Most definitely OK!
After weaving for both 'fun and profit' for more than thirty years I found my enthusiasm fading...and then eventually just stopped with plenty of other creative outlets to fill in the gaps.
After another ten years with no urge to weave at all I sold the last of my looms and equipment and was totally out from under what had become a feeling of guilt I guess everytime I saw it.    No regrets

It's been over a year since I've touched any of my raw fiber, or even any that has been processed, for that matter - and it's very nearly shearing & rooing time, again! At the rate I'm going, it won't be long before I could simply disappear in the fiber mountain building up in my craft room. I'm seriously considering selling it - or at least most of it. Hmmm... Fiber U is in July... I could bag up a bunch, sell it, and maybe that would(if it sells) be enough to pay the lovely processor to do the rest. It's a thought. It would be a nice way for my hobbies and critters to pay for themselves.

Carla Burke wrote:It's been over a year since I've touched any of my raw fiber, or even any that has been processed, for that matter - and it's very nearly shearing & rooing time, again! At the rate I'm going, it won't be long before I could simply disappear in the fiber mountain building up in my craft room. I'm seriously considering selling it - or at least most of it. Hmmm... FiberU is in July... I could bag up a bunch, sell it, and maybe that would(if it sells) be enough to pay the lovely processor to do the rest. It's a thought. It would be a nice way for my hobbies and critters to pay for themselves.

Spinning is my go to. I could sit and spin til my arms fall off. It's the rest of the crafting that I am back and forth on how much I do.
I want to keep all the fleeces so I can spin them! But I know that doesn't work out that way so I put everything up for sale and then I process what doesn't sell. I'd be seriously buried in wool if I didn’t!

kadence blevins wrote:

Carla Burke wrote:It's been over a year since I've touched any of my raw fiber, or even any that has been processed, for that matter - and it's very nearly shearing & rooing time, again! At the rate I'm going, it won't be long before I could simply disappear in the fiber mountain building up in my craft room. I'm seriously considering selling it - or at least most of it. Hmmm... FiberU is in July... I could bag up a bunch, sell it, and maybe that would(if it sells) be enough to pay the lovely processor to do the rest. It's a thought. It would be a nice way for my hobbies and critters to pay for themselves.

Spinning is my go to. I could sit and spin til my arms fall off. It's the rest of the crafting that I am back and forth on how much I do.
I want to keep all the fleeces so I can spin them! But I know that doesn't work out that way so I put everything up for sale and then I process what doesn't sell. I'd be seriously buried in wool if I didn’t!

I'd likely only have the processor take it from raw to batts or top, so I can spin & dye it, myself. You know - pay someone else to do the grunt work, so I can just do the fun stuff. Then again, I get a certain feeling of accomplishment, when I take it all the way from critter to a finished product, all by myself, too. But, I think just doing one or two of those a year would be quite enough to achieve that, lol.

r ranson wrote:So yeh, it's been nearly a year since I've touched yarn.  

Call it burnout or whatever, but I'm trying to be gentle with myself and slowly get back into it.  This morning I cleaned off my loom!  Maybe tonight I can find my notes to see what I was weaving.


But it got me thinking, why?  

Why did I need a break?

Was it the pressures of youtube?  Possibly.

But knowing that it's okay to step away and the yarn won't be going anywhere without me helps me feel less bad about it.

And can I help others know it's okay?

maybe?  I made a 30 second video about it and who knows if it will do well or not.  

Hi Raven,
I was reading this thread yesterday and today from pg1 to this, and I'll step out of the lurking.

Life happens in bursts. It seems that sometimes there's a burst of Silence, out of nowhere.
We want to understand and explain everything, because something is out of the ordinary, but...is it really necessary?

I'm writing this to myself as much as to anyone else perhaps interested in reading.
As a former todo-list adept, it's strange for my mind/former me to live without plans or a list.

But every day is packed with Life anyhow.

My former life, with creativity and pondering (as in: my life used to be arts&crafts, spirituality and shamanic journeying) have transformed from living in a subtle and silent modus to rough and loud - renovating a house and establishing gardens, tending to a new flock of animals is "loud" in comparison, and physically tiring.

Slowly I'm learning not to make too many plans, those would fix the vision of my future as "desired direction", but to be open and curious to every here&now as it happens.
Today I was making protective fencing for the fruit trees (the sheep seem to like nibbling at the bark) and my ram came to sniff at me, curious. Now that I was working close to the ground, closing the wire fence, he smelled at my hair, the skin of my face, my breath. I could feel the warmth of his breath out from his nostrils. It was a very quiet, calm encounter, all the time I kept on weaving the fence around the tree, smiling at the special encounter.

Anyway, thank you for sharing all the inspiring fiber arts posts! Enjoy whatever IS in the moment.


A friendly wave from France,
Nina

Thank you.
Those are beautiful and helpful words.