Saying "NO!" to the ALS Ice Bucket challenge

I've been nominated for the now famous "Ice Bucket Challenge" (IBC) and rather than ramble on at length on Facebook I thought it more appropriate to move my thoughts to a blog page.

Firstly I think the challenge was an inspired piece of fund-raising and tapping the Facebook zeitgeist has hopefully raised millions for the charity. Well done to both the originators and the thousands world-wide who have taken part.

Having said that, I'm not taking part. Why? Lots of reasons.

1: I'm fed-up with FB becoming a request for me to do something someone else thinks a good idea. No, I do not want to play Farmville or Bubble Safari thank you! No I don't want to take a quiz to tell me what mollusc/Hindu God/geological sediment best reflects my personality, nor do I want to share with the world which hell-hole tourist-trap holiday destinations I've failed to avoid. Nor  do I want to be told/nominated to do the IBC.

2: The invitation to take the challenge is actually someone telling me how I should spend my money, that I should donate some to charity and, indeed the ALS/MNS charity specifically. Hold on,  a cotton-pickin' moment, it's my money- what the hell has what I do with it got to do with you (my wife Liz excepted here, of course!)

3: It's actually worse than telling me what to do with my money - it's bullying/blackmailing me into spending it. If I don't do the IBC then I may be named and shamed on FB etc and be a lesser person. For me personally "does this face look bovvered?". However I've already seen friends on forums agonising on how to best avoid the ICB, worrying about how a simple "No" will be perceived. They are being bullied, pure and simple. Stop it!

4: ALS/MNS isn't particularly high on my charity list. Oh, yes, I know it is a particularly horrible and insidious disease and of course I should contribute to better understanding and hopefully a cure. It's just, thankfully, I don't know of anyone who actually has MNS; of course, I know of several people who have or have had the disease but I don't actually know any of them personally.

On the other hand a close friend has severe Alzheimer's and watching him deteriorate and the look in the eyes of his wife who not only has to see the disintegration of the man she so deeply loves but also has to care for him like a toddler is so movingly pitiful it brings tears to my eyes even as a write this.

Or a close family member whose lives with the daily fear that his next stroke could be of much more significant consequence. Or another friend who, after, several years is still grieving daily for his beloved wife taken so early with cancer. Liz's Mum died of cancer too (albeit a different one) and my own Mum of Myloma. Both our Fathers went with severe respiratory problems.  

My personal "thing" is mental health. We see a patient with a broken leg and are full of sympathy and asking "is there anything I can do to help, it must be so awkward", yet a broken mind so often elicits "Pull yourself together, there's nothing wrong with you". One of my male friends, married with children, went through a period of crossdressing and make-up wearing. The middle-class Daily Mail group we were with all tutted and said "How dreadful, should be locked up, shouldn't be allowed out in public"  without a single one given any consideration for the sheer mental turmoil he must have been going through.

So sorry folks,  Alzheimer's Research, Stroke Association, Cancer Research, British Lung Foundation, British Heart Foundation (heart disease being the UK and World's #1 killer) and MIND all get my money before MNS. Oh, and I've always had a soft spot for the sterling work Barnardos do too.

That said, had any of these IBCing friends had done their challenge as a sponsorship, then of course I would have contributed. We all have our favourite charities and I'm more than happy to contribute to yours if you are fund raising (well, as long is it is not for anything religious or to do with domestic animals).

Right, that's my rant., Got me quite worked up, hot and bothered. Think it's time for an ice cold shower to cool down!

It's been a while - inkle bookmarks

It has been a while (over 2 years) since I last posted. In part because I haven't had time to weave too much - although all most of my looms have warps on. The good news is that I'm scheduled to take early retirement in a year's time. Time to weave, at last!

Anyway in 2008 I did weave some inkle bookmarks for an internet exchange and since I rather like some of them I thought I'd share here.

Some pics of work in progress:


My favourite is based on a Peruvian tablet weaving pattern I think I saw on Linda Hendrickson's excellent website

There were 15 different pick-up patterns in the end:




In case anyone is interested, the loom is a rather nice floor inkle by Thomas Creations -

Alphabelt (work in progress)

I bought Linda Hendrickson's wonderful book "Weave a letter" and so just had to try double faced tablet weaving. Peter Collingwood has made some fantastic belts using this technique, often with jokes and puns - I like his idea of weaving a belt with the letters b,e,l,t woven in opposite colours to the rest of the alphsabet, so I 'borrowed' it.

Here's the work in progress using an Ashford inkle loom to hold the warp. The tablets are a pack of square playing cards with a circular hole in the middle. The hole is so the pack could fit on the neck of a beer bottle, and was given away as a promotional gift by Bateman's brewery here in the UK on a bottle of Xmas ale a few years ago - wish I could find another couple of packs. The beer was nice too!

Campervan Inkling

Once again it has been time for the campervan holiday.
My little Romahome campervan is a no-technology zone (to make a contrast from my home and work), so reading and weaving are the recreations of choice. The little Tornadowood mini-stick inkle loom is perfect for the confined space of the campervan.

First up was a warp with thin cotton thread as a basketweave background and some #5 red cotton to make some pick-up bookmarks - not sure which side is front or which is back so here are both:

The van really is quite small so I was worried if I could actually put a warp on in such a confined space. As it happens this belt made from #5 cotton was one of the best tension warps I've ever made. Also I made the most of the warp and got a full 50" belt out of the little ministick. Nice to weave plain weave rather than pick-up.

Pickup patterns for Lucy's belt

I was asked for the patterns used in the pink belt below. Click on them for a larger, clearer picture.

They are made with my pick-up program (available in the Files section of the Yahoo Inkle group). Every thread with a 'A' mark is a pattern thread picked up from the bottom half of the shed and every thread marked with a 'V' is where a pattern thread on the top half of the shed is dropped to the underside.

For Kimi (and Lucy)

This afternoon I was reluctantly trying to do a little work to compensate for the fact that as I get older weeks also seem to get shorter, when I was unexpectedly and pleasantly distracted by incoming Yahoo messenger from Kimi, a new inkle weaver. During our chat I mentioned I was working on a new pick-up belt for my daughter Lucy. I tried to describe it over the messaging chat but a picture is worth a 1000 words:



The band is about 1-1/4" wide and is approx #5 perl cotton in coral colour for the background and approx #3 white cotton doubled for the pattern. The weft is the coral warp but doubled (to make a nice basketweave in the background only areas).


The warping is:
  b b C b b b b b C b b C b b C b b C b b b b C b b
b b C b b b b C b C b b C b b C b b C b b b b C b b

The pattern does not extend the width of the band nor does it run continuously through the band - it is separated by approx 4" (36 picks) of plain weave as shown below.



The weird width variations are an artifact of the camera - the selvage is straight and the band is constant width (as verified by my pencil marked toothpick used as a visual temple)

BTW - the reason that I only have an approximate idea of the size of these yarns is these, like most of my other yarns, were found in a local charity shop (thrift store, to you folks in the USA). The total cost of the belt will be in the order of a few pence.

A pick-up belt

The Helene Bress Inkle Weaving book has a fantastic pick-up belt by Doramay Keasbey - it is awesome and I wanted one!!! Trouble is I'm not an artist and had no idea how to design all those fabulous motifs... but I am a programmer (or was once) and so I wrote a simple program to facilitate inkle weave pick-up design. It's available directly from me or from the Yahoo Small Loom or Inkle groups.

So here's my homage to Doramay


(click on the pictures if you want a more detailed view)