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!

Resistance reading, Tuesday Knitting group and Textiles and Tea

Today's resistance involves reading Malcolm Gladwell 

The gist is that the powerful figures of our time aren't as fearful as they seem. And that the smaller people can defeat them. We need to remember this when it seems the oligarchs are winning.

We have examples from our own experience of resisting. Target,  boycotted by the people, is now struggling, the price of denying diversity and supporting a tyrant. 

Citizens Bank now starving ICE prisons of funding after massive public pressure. There are so many more. They all need us to stay brave and do our bit. None of us is exempt from trying. Wr have more power than we know.

Meanwhile I'm reading Gladwell for tips on strategy as well as encouragement.

The Tuesday knitting group was fun as usual, my bracelets admired and the Ukraine one under way 

Wearing one project while embarking on the next 

The embroidery continues, but she'll soon be teaching again so we'll only see her occasionally 

This work goes on until all the yarn is used up.

Chat ranged over birthdays and death days, Shakespeare productions, cat behavior, baking, age, birth order, socks, travel, quilling, glasses and more.

Home to Textiles and Tea with 

A young New Yorker from Venezuela whose work in textiles expresses resistance, narrative and the impact of economics on the individual. 

She runs community events creating large textile installations, often with braiding, where anyone can show up and participate.

She also creates intuitive woven gallery pieces, with great color sense and high energy. Look for her teaching a workshop in Queens NY in September, and a gallery show in New York in spring 2027.

She's worth following, so young but she's made her mark already in North and South America.

Happy day everyone, Tuesdays are always full of things happening here. 

Departures of a palm and other good things

Yesterday Gary and friend came to collect the tall palm, and the next door tenant seized the chance to make him take another big plant he wanted to leave there. Timing.

The palm is reclining in there, on two seats.

 Shortly to be joined by a large pony palm 

Here's the open space left

And the rearranged plants looking much more compact. I like this.

Meanwhile the wheeled platform I'd made for the tall palm is now reassigned to my  box of weights. They're under the coffee table so that I remember to use them. Now they're movable, too.

This was great. Turns out the other pony palm belongs to me. I thought I only had custody.  So we're all done with the plants.

Then Tuesday Knitting group, and a lively group with new and returning members.

I started a new knotting project with more threads. This could be any width, really. Another participant watches me a while and plans to try this herself.

 

Marvelous sock knitting, expert level, and she's always happy to show beginners how to get going.

Here's the beginning embroiderer, no longer a beginner, doing very well.

This expert knitter is wearing her own work 

So's this one 

Knitting, knotting, crochet, embroidery, all in action.

Talk ranged over cat behavior, afternoon concerts, English pronunciation, poutine, Montreal, social media, Ravelry, early cellphone use, group chat, diamond rings and more.

Then home to a pot of tea, and Textiles and Tea with a fifth generation weaver, closely associated with the Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts.

Here she is with her granddaughter, another weaver

Here, underneath, an overshot piece woven by her granddaughter, on top an overshot piece woven by her grandmother. 

Here's part of a retrospective exhibit for her 85th birthday 

She makes garments too

 Early pictures of Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts 

She survived the 2016 Gatlinburg Tennessee,wildfires which ravaged large areas and many homes

Her home and car were incinerated, the car melted and running down what had been the driveway. She lost a lifetime of looms, yarn, everything.

In response to my question about recovering from the fire her granddaughter showed pictures of weavings from after the fire, with pieces of the melted car incorporated. 

Frances gave the weavings for permanent holding to a local exhibit venue, just didn't want them around her after she worked through the losses of all kinds 

Look her up, she's a treasure, an artist and weaver, a survivor and a historian, from a long line of similar women.

Happy day everyone. I certainly had one.