Little Monarch, Textiles and Tea, Keila McCracken

Lately this is the mold and pollen count 

This accounts for the endless coughing and streaming and staying indoors despite lovely sunshine.  I have to be careful about allergy remedies because of blood pressure issues, so I try avoidance.

Then yesterday I had bone density and mammo testing. The results show some bone deterioration, not surprising, I suppose after two years, at this age, despite medication. 

And they tell me I need a mammo recheck and ultrasound. Again. I've been there before, and all was well, so I'm hoping that's true again. 

The good news was that I got out so fast from the testing that I got a ride service home, saving a wait for Handsome Son to pick me up after work, and saving him a task.

Not only that, I was in time for a terrific Textiles and Tea with Minnesota based Keila McCracken. She's the only known weaver on the continent using a pedal-driven Hattersley loom.  Invented in my native county, Yorkshire, Keighley to be exact. 

To see it in operation, here's a great doc made some time ago by regional public broadcasting out of Minnesota. This gives you enough information to find it. I just did, and it's enlightening. Common Ground is the series title.

It's about her principles of creating sustainable fabric and concern for the life of textile workers. 

The Hattersley loom fits in with her need for large amounts of yardage for her designs,  produced faster than on a floor loom, but using no power other than human pedalling.

Meanwhile here's more.

I also learned the concept of the fibershed. This means fiber produced, as on the sheep, processed, spun, woven, sewn, sold and worn within a single region.  It's a very environmental concept, minimal footprint, maximal use. 

There are a couple of fibersheds in the US, echoing ancient practices.

Check her out, her personal integrity is a real human model.

Speaking of which, speaking as guinea pig rather than model, I'm booming ahead with my YouTube shorts channel.

 I'm very amused to see how it's going, and what concepts bring in big numbers. I don't know why some shorts boom and some lag, but I can see how content creators are pushed around by the algorithm's rewarding certain videos while starving others. 

I don't plan on being pushed around, since I have my own idea about what I'm doing, and as always, am not interested in an income, nor in being told by a techie how to make my art. 

I've always run my life, as long time blogistas know, so as to provide for my living outside of my art. That keeps your creative impulse up and your joy intact. 

Once you make your art your living, you've created your own treadmill and closed off many options.  This suits people with an artisanal frame of reference rather than someone with a real art life.  Lovely for them, but not my jam, see below.

Anyway I'm amused though not influenced, by seeing that my few seconds of a small plane overhead has brought in, in short order, over 1200 views!

And another short, of a man I videod on a riding mower, started racking up numbers in less than five minutes from uploading. Engines rule?  

But then there's my jam cooking and quiche sizzling, also popular. It's interesting that the videos I like, for getting closest to what I was trying to say, tend to get low acceptance. 

It's not surprising, since most people go for what's familiar, not quite ready to rethink. Good art doesn't confirm your ideas, it offers new ones, unsettling at times. 

That's why it's wonderful when people receive the energy openly even if it doesn't remind them of grandma's mule, or whatever. It's unforced and very happy.

Happy day everyone, it's all good. Fingers crossed for good outcomes from my various doctors' verdicts. Every body part its own practitioner these days!

Sez Ted and Big Ursy and Pony and Ursula 

And a gracious rainy drive-by, by our little local monarch, pushed by her faithful retainer. 

You saw them recently out walking, well he was carrying her, only the best service!