AVL Looms
http://avlusa.com
When I was making the decision to set off as a professional weaver, I interviewed about a dozen weavers, past and present. Every one of them used variations on the same loom: a production dobby from AVL. Several of them told me that this is THE loom to have if you’re serious about production. It took me a long time to afford it, but I am sure glad I did.
Everything on this loom is designed to facilitate production, minimizing the weaver’s work and maximizing the productivity. The beam-attached tension device means that each beam has its own tension, set once and forgotten. Every shot has perfect tension. Always. When you’ve woven enough so that it’s bunching up at your knees, feed the finished fabric to the cloth take-up beam on the back of the loom and keep on weaving.
That’s really the crux of it. This loom takes care of everything so that you, the weaver, can just “keep on weaving”. Whichever loom is the right size for your needs, you will never regret buying an AVL. Each one is engineered to make the weaving experience as enjoyable as possible.
And the folks at AVL are great! You can read a blog entry about the day I went to pick up my loom HERE.
Colourmart
http://colourmart.com
If you like high quality luxury yarns, want cheap prices, and don’t mind using a yarn that may never be available again, Colourmart is for you. They carry all kinds of luxury fibers: silk, cashmere, merino, angora, and more.
Their stock consists of remainders from high end textile manufacturing. Maybe the color was discontinued, maybe it wasn’t exactly what the manufacturer ordered. Whatever the reason, these are gorgeous fibers at incredible prices.
Don’t let the fact that they’re in the UK dissuade you. My orders have arrived faster than many shipped within the US. One last surprise: the shipping price is included!
When you’re ordering, pay attention to how much of each yarn is available and make sure you can get as much as you need. Once it’s gone, it’s gone.
Halcyon Yarn
http://halcyonyarn.com
If you are doing custom design work, their “Yarn Store in a Box” is an absolute necessity. It contains organized cards with a sample of every yarn that they carry, packaged in a tidy and durable box. You will know the exact size, texture, and color of every one of their yarns. Then, when it’s time to order, they offer great prices for quantities useful to weavers. A fantastic resource for the professional weaver.
Pro Chemical and Dye
http://prochemical.com
This is the professional stuff. I’ve used their Sabraset acid dyes for animal fibers, and their Procion MX for plant fibers. They are fantastic. The dyes are easy to use, and give repeatable, professional results. People have told me that the mixed colors are inconsistent from one batch to the next, but this is certainly not the case with the primary colors. I use only Yellow, Fuschia, Turquoise, and Black. With some perseverance, they can be used to create EVERY color you can imagine. And once you’ve created a formula, it will dye nearly the same every time.
They ship quickly, and provide an amazing value for the price. If you’re serious about dyeing, I would highly recommend getting your chemicals from Pro Chemical and Dye.
Book: The Techniques of Rug Weaving By Peter Collingwood. 1968.
In Episode 15 of WeaveCast, http://www.weavezine.com/2007/04/episode-15-certificate-of-excellence.html we heard an interview with Sandra Sarbrick, past president of the Handweaver's Guild of America, about the Certificate of Excellence program. One little tidbit that came out is that they use Peter Collingwood's book “The Techniques of Rug Weaving” as a handbook of weaving techniques. As well they should!
This is a comprehensive textbook on weaving techniques applicable to all sorts of weaving. Peter is an engaging author who provides history, clear instructions, complete diagrams, and techniques of his own invention. The information is meticulously organized, making this a must-have reference book for every weaver, even if you have no interest in weaving carpets.
Peter Collingwood passed away in 2008 but his legacy lives on in his books, which serve as definitive works and enrich the experience of weavers around the world.
Tool: Schacht Auto-Reed Hook
http://www.schachtspindle.com/instructions/accessory/autoreedhook.htm
After getting myself one of these, I find it hard to believe I ever used an S-hook for sleying. It does take some getting used to, but once you've got the swing of it, it makes sleying the reed a pleasure. Every time you pull a set of threads through the reed, the hook walks itself into the next dent. No more watching, counting, or carefully inserting the S-hook into the correct dent.
If I have any complaint about this excellent tool, it's the fact that sleying goes so fast that I don't have time to thoroughly enjoy using it. Click-click, click-click, click-click, and I’m ready to tie on!
Mac Software: Daylite Customer Relationship Management
http://marketcircle.com/daylite
I know that a software review seems a little strange to have in the midst of reviews of products for handweavers. If, however, you are weaving for a business, don’t forget that you need to handle the business end of things as well.
I’ve used Daylite for several years now, using it to run a series of businesses. For small businesses who need to share information about multiple business opportunities, projects, and clients, this software is invaluable. There are well-written reviews out there for those folks, but few seem to have reviewed it in the context of a single-user DIY business owner.
In my opinion, this is a perfect way to use the software. The model is easy to use. You enter contacts and capture all of their information. You then create business opportunities, making sure that the appropriate contacts are linked into it. Then, you create actionable tasks and appointments for each opportunity. When an opportunity leads to real work, you create a project which maintains links to all of the data collected along the way.
It is beneficial to get the Daylite Mail Integration module and use Apple’s Mail program for your email. Then, all emails back and forth are linked into every opportunity, project, and contact as a separate note. It takes two seconds to see a complete record of all the communications right within Daylite.
And, finally, the crowning gem of the suite is the Daylite Touch iPhone app. With this, the work that you do on your desktop is synced to your phone. If you have any downtime during the day, no matter where you are, you can check in and look for a task to perform at that moment. Maybe you have time to fire off a quick email or phone call? The Daylite Touch app will let you see what needs to be done, give you a link to the contact information, and let you mark the task as completed.
If you’re a fan of David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” methodology, you’ll be pleased to know that the entire suite has been developed to support it. You can sort tasks based on context and help ensure that things don’t slip off your radar screen.
And what will all of this mean for your business relationships? It means that your customers are much less likely to feel forgotten. Even if you don’t have time to follow up at the moment, you can easily review all of your projects and ensure that they have appropriate next tasks and notifications. In true GTD form, you can utilize tiny bits of time to get more done and, more importantly, know where every project stands at all times.
If you run a small business of any type, you owe it to yourself to check out this award-winning software suite and see how it can help you.
iPhone App: FMTouch Database
http://fmtouch.com
Record keeping. We all know that it's important, right? You don't want to have a successful project and then be unable to recreate it later. Exactly what data do we need to store, though? How do we find the data we're looking for when we need it?
As a hobbyist, I didn't really keep notes. I kept receipts from yarn purchases, thinking that if I ever needed to find out what yarn was in a piece, I could just pull the receipts. As for thread count and pattern, well I could glean that from the piece itself, I thought.
This all changed when I decided to become a professional weaver and make a living from it. I started needing real data. In order to determine how much to charge and pay myself a sustainable wage, it's necessary to track material cost and actual time consumption. I developed a Filemaker database to capture this information and process it.
This has been fantastic, but a little cumbersome. It has allowed me to see which parts of the process consume the most time. This helps me to make tool purchases intelligently. I'm not tempted to fix what isn't broken. The biggest challenge was keeping the data up-to-date when the computer is all the way across the room. Even though it's a notebook, there's no place for it on the weaving side of the loom. I needed to get up and enter a timesheet every time I changed tasks.
And then along came FMTouch. It solves that problem entirely. Now my database is in my pocket at all times. Setting it up was simple. I designed layouts on the computer using the templates they provided, exported a layout file, synced my data and poof! It works exactly the same on the phone as it worksd on the computer. It's as if I've been given the power to design my own iPhone app but without all the programming and hoops to jump through.
The data syncs wirelessly with the main database on my notebook. The main computer handles the analysis and reporting, allowing the iPhone app to handle the data collection and keep my records up to date.
When this database has proven itself for a while I'll go ahead and make it available to other professional weavers.
iPhone App: Palettes
http://www.maddysoft.com/iphone/palettes/
Here's another review for a product that seems to have little to do with weaving. I assure you, though, it's completely related.
It's an iPhone app called Palettes. Now, bear in mind that I've written color palette extraction and manipulation software myself. This program does several things that other programs, including my own, don't do. It sits in your pocket, ready to capture inspiration the moment it hits.
Here's what usually happens to me: I sit down to design color palettes for weaving or dyeing projects. I get out my Pantone fashion predictions, open up the folder of clipped images from recent runway shows and start painting color combinations onto a blank canvas in Photoshop. After a few hours of this, I sort through them and choose the palettes I'm going to use. It's not ideal because I'm not starting out from an inspired state. I'm starting out with a todo list item.
With Palettes, the workflow is natural, always ready, and fits into the Getting Things Done methodology that I use. Let's say that I'm in the park and see a beautiful set of colors in a flower. I snap a photo of it with my phone. On the bus ride home, I pull the images into Palettes and extract the colors from them. The task "Create Color Palettes" never hits my todo list. It's done in the tiny interstices of ordinarily wasted time.
Once I've grabbed the colors from an image, the powerful palette creation features kick in. I can rearrange color chips, delete some or make new ones. The app's tools let me interpolate between chips with fantastic control. I can create new colors using various color compliment tools. If I have no specific inspiration and just want to play around with colors, the Palettes app lets me browse or search the archives of the COLOURlovers service, importing and editing any palettes that strike my fancy.
And when it's done, I email the palettes to myself or wait until I get to the desktop and export them all wirelessly. The end result is a grid of RGB and CMYK values for each color chip. The inspiration image stays linked inside of Palettes, even if I delete it from my Photo Library. I do wish that this image would be included in either the email or the export palette function.
Then, when it's time to do a weaving or dyeing project, I sit down and flip through the palettes and color combinations that I created and saved during fleeting moments of inspiration.
You can get the app HERE. Or, for free, and without an iPhone, sign up and use the COLOURlovers service. Create your own palettes and use the palettes of others as inspiration.