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55: Jacey Boggs and John Acord (transcript)

 

WeaveCast 55: Jacey Boggs and John Acord
 
This is WeaveCast with Syne Mitchell
 
Musical interlude
 
Hello and welcome to WeaveCast. This is episode 55. This episode we have two wonderful interviews for you.
 
First up Jacey Boggs who is one of the leaders of the new art yarn movement will talk about spinning her wild and crazy yarns and how she’s built a career for herself in the spinning world. After that we’ll talk to John Acord of Flat Water Electronics. He is a weaver and electronics enthusiast who has come up with an interface that you can use to breathe new life into old computer driven looms.
 
There’s a problem with the older computer driven looms in that many of the interfaces that were used to send information to those looms have become electronically obsolete. Some weavers are having to hoard Windows 95 machines and keep them going and hope that they don’t break because if they do, they can no longer use their computer driven loom. 
 
But John has come up with a fix for all that. So if you have a Commby, or a J-Comp loom, it’s like Christmas came early.
 
Speaking of the holidays I am recording this on December 21st, the winter solstice. This is the day of the year in which the days stop getting shorter and start getting longer again. And I don’t know about you, but I am ready for more sunshine!
 
I grew up in the south but I’m living in Seattle these days, so getting dark at 4:30 just seems wrong! Wrong, somehow. I want sunshine again!
 
Ah. So happy solstice and enjoy this time of staying inside and working on your projects and look forward to the warmer weather to come.
 
This episode I’m trying out a bit of new gear. I recently moved into a new studio and as part of that move I lost all of the great sound proofing that I had in my old studio. So I bought this thing that’s called a reflection filter. 
 
What’s interesting about it is that it’s essentially a sound baffle so instead of sound proofing the room you just create a little baffle and put your head into it.
 
One of the layers that’s used to create this sound baffle is layer of wool, which I thought was kind of cool.
 
So you’re going to have to let me know what you think of the sound quality on this episode because it’s a brand new set up.
 
Do comment and let me know what you think.
 
In my personal weaving life right now, I am excited about e-textiles. Have you heard of these?
 
This is the idea of combining electronics with fibre arts.
 
And it’s something that I’ve been intrigued with for a while. My first introduction to e-textiles was talking to Laura McCary about some of her wonderful work on a previous WeaveCast episode.
 
And then after that, Lynne Bruning published an article in WeaveZine about using the clasped weft technique to weave circuits, to make LED’s light up in your fabric. Since then I’ve been researching and playing around with it, and it has just taken over my imagination. I cannot tell you how excited I am by this.
 
It’s really funny to me because I started out in the sciences. I was a physics grad student for many years. You know, life happened and things changed, and I ended up working in the fibre arts and now here I am remembering things like Ohm’s Law and how to use a multimeter and putting together micro-controller circuits. So it’s kind of like I’ve come full circle now. And it’s really fun to be able to take my old knowledge of electronics and put it together with textiles.
 
What’s sneaky and interesting is that it’s not hard. If you’ve ever been intrigued by the idea of textiles that light up, or that sense temperature, or that sense motion – it’s really not hard. There are all these great new products that have come out on the market specifically for fibre artists.
 
If you go up to sparkfun there is a little micro-controller that is cute. It’s call the Lily Pad and it looks like this little purple flower. It’s got a micro-controller in the centre and the petals are all pins that you can use to control and interact with sensors. It is just adorable and it’s designed to be sewn onto garments.
 
One of the nice things about it, is it’s actually washable. 
 
The other thing that I’ve been playing with lately is el wire, which is kind of like flexible neon tube that you can sew or, in my case weave, into cloth. It’s very very cool.
 
It’s like weaving with light. I guess that gets back to the whole theme of this solstice episode – Bring Back the Light!
 
I’ve been visiting with a lot of artists. I’ve got to the studio of Madelyn van der Hoogt. I’ve been visited by Claudia Chase of Mirrix Looms and her daughter Alayna. 
 
I went and learned to weave card weaving with Marilyn Romatka and Selah and I got together and built some class samples for this garment class we’re co-teaching at Madrona.
 
Normally I work isolated in my studio, but what I discovered by interacting with other artists is, you bring your set of ideas and knowledge and they bring their set of ideas and knowledge and when you put the two together you get a gestalt, something more than the sum of its parts.
 
Now all these sparky brain things start happening because you’ll have an idea and then they’ll go “But wait, there’s this other piece of information you didn’t have but I have” and then suddenly it builds on itself and builds on itself and it’s just been tremendously inspiring.
 
I’ve come away with many more ideas than I can weave right away, so I’m scratching down things in notebooks and, it’s really a fun and productive time.
 
If you’re lucky enough to have other artists, other weavers and spinners and dyers in your area, I’d encourage you to get together with them, either in a guild setting or just one on one and talk about your art.
 
You might be surprised what you learn and what you can teach.
 
This episode of WeaveCast is sponsored by Schacht, makers of the Matchless and Lady Bug spinning wheels. Watch their website for information about the Side Kick, Schacht’s new folding travel wheel coming out in the summer of 2011.
 
Next up we have our second in the listener question series.
 
 
 
“Hi Syne, this is John Sandstrom in El Paso, TX. My questions is, as a single weaver with very limited space, I’m having problems winding long warps on my loom. Do you or your readers have any suggestions on how I can do this more efficiently?
 
 
Thank you very much.”
 
Hey, John, this is Syne. Thank you for the great audio question. It’s fun to hear other people’s voices on the show. And could you please, please send me some of that El Paso sun? It is sooo dark and gloomy up here.
 
Now, on to your question. You asked how to wind a warp in a very compact space, but you didn’t give me a lot of information on what type of loom you’re using and what you mean by a long warp. Because for some people 10 yards is a long warp and to other people 100 yards is a long warp.
 
But I’m going to take a guess here.
 
I’m going to guess that you’re talking about a rigid heddle loom and the peg method of warping. In that method you have your loom clamped down over here and a peg over there and the length of the warp is determined by how far away you can clamp your peg.
 
So, weaving in that situation would be tricky if you had a small house and you wanted a long warp.
 
In that case I would suggest using a warping board. This is a more traditional tool for weaving. It looks a lot like a picture frame with pegs embedded around the perimeter. What you do is you pick a path on your pegs and you wind back and forth. For example, I have a Schacht warping board that I can put 14 yards on. 
 
So if 14 yards is long enough for your purposes that would be a really good solution.
 
If you need an even longer warp, you could go to sectional warping. That takes a bit of gear and I’m not sure it would really help you in terms of compactness.
 
There is also a tool called a Warping Wheel. This is put out by AVL. It’s also used for sectional warping and I know people have been able to put 20, 30, maybe even squeak in 40 yards with this tool.
 
It’s a big honking piece of equipment, though.
 
So I guess my first answer would be if 14 yards is good enough in terms of length, I would go to a warping board and learn how to wind the warp with a cross, preserve the cross and put it on your loom.
 
If you need more than 14 yards I would investigate how to build a very compact sectional warping technique because that’s going to let you put on those 100 yard warps that production weavers do. But I’m guessing that’s not what you meant.
 
If it is, call me back because that would be very interesting to hear about.
 
Anyway, good luck with your weaving endeavors. Take care.
 
 
You can still submit questions to WeaveCast. Simply go up to ￿/audio and select the Ask A Question menu option.
 
And I will tell you, I’m a bit prejudiced in favour of audio questions as opposed to emails just because I’d love to hear your voices on the show. 
 
So I’m keeping a list of all the questions I’ve gotten this far and in March I will be drawing from everyone who has submitted a question – whether it got used on the show or not – and one lucky listener will receive a copy of Peggy Ostercamp’s new book, Weaving for Beginners.
 
It’s an excellent reference. It’s a great reference even if you’re not a beginner. So send those questions in.
 
Coming up next we have an interview with Jacey Boggs about her art yarns and building a career in craft.
 
Musical interlude
 
 
Jacey Boggs is one of the most popular spinning instructors working in the fibre world today. She took some time to take to me about her work during a break in the action at a workshop she was conducting for my guild last fall (2010).
 
NK Jacey, start out by telling me about your fibre journey. What introduced you to fibre and how did you get to this point? Where did you start and where are you now?
 
JB Oh goodness. They are so vastly different.
 
Uh, you know it wasn’t until I was um, maybe 8 or 9 years ago I was driving across country moving from Missouri to California and I decided that all of these cool women were starting to knit and I should learn how to knit.
 
So I bought Debbie Bliss’ Learn to Knit book and some acrylic craft yarn and a set of big purple needles and I tried to cast on and within 15 minutes I decided that I must just be too punk rock for knitting and I gave up. And when my partner, when it was my turn to drive, and he got in that seat, he promptly cast on and by the time we got to California had knit a tiny baby sweater for our unborn baby.
 
Which just made me less inclined to knit. So maybe another year before I started knitting – it was after the baby was born, we were taking a Waldorf class, like a baby Waldorf class. And there was a women knitting in it and she taught me how to knit.
 
And I didn’t know anyone that knit. I didn’t know anyone that spun but I was knitting for maybe two weeks and I was still buying craft yarn at like unnamed craft store and I decided that it would be insane to spend $16 to knit a sweater. I was still very naïve about fibre. And so I felt I should just learn how to spin my own yarn. 
 
I didn’t know anyone that did it but I bought a Louet S-10 on eBay for $100 and checked out a bunch of books from the library and I taught myself to spin out of books.
 
It was probably two years before I met another spinner or another knitter.
 
I started blogging about it. I was a woodworker before that and so I promptly changed my blog from woodworking to fibre because I just fell in love with it.
 
I started blogging about it and this was back before there were a lot of fibre blogs. Etsy didn’t exist yet. There was no one – not a lot of people selling handspun yarn on line and so in blogging about it, after about a year, people started to ask if they could buy it and so I started selling all traditional yarns at that point.
 
Just little. Like, I just set up a cart on my blog and another year went by and I was spinning about 4 to 6 hours a day. I fell in love with it, immediately.
 
They say that if you spend 10,000 hours doing something you can consider yourself an expert so by the end of a couple of years I was an expert in spinning and kissing. Those are the two things I can be considered an expert in, I think.
 
I started spinning and about two years into it I came across Adrian Bizilia with her pillow yarn and she had a coil in one of her yarns and it’s like “how did she do that?”
 
And then I spent the next two years investigating kind of textural art techniques, how to spin them, how to improve on them, how to make them like stable and balanced and how to take like, these interesting things people were doing but apply them in all the things I had learned about spinning because I read these great books from the spinning masters and I wanted to make sure I was still employing all of those ideas and all the fundamentals that I’d learned – that I was making interesting textural yarns.
 
So I really kind of changed the texture techniques that were going on and adapted them to make them durable and have some longevity and…
 
NK You said you went for a couple of years just spinning on your own. That’s a long time to go without connecting with other people who do the same thing.
 
What kept you going?
 
JB Um, you know, I just spent, I think my life, like a lot of people, looking for that thing that you love. Looking for that passion.
 
I knew people growing up that were writers, or musicians, or artists, and they would say things like, “I don’t do it because…” like people would say “why do you write?” and then they would answer “I don’t write because I want to, I write because I have to.”
 
And I had never felt that about anything. And I always, I kind of thought something was wrong with me, maybe I didn’t have that passion or that drive. But it turns out I just hadn’t hit upon the thing that did that for me.
 
You know I was almost 26, 27 before I found it and as soon as I started knitting and spinning it was there. I was like, this is what I want to do.
 
I tell you, my house got a lot messier.
 
Because when you don’t have something that you love that you’re driven to do, at least for me, my control issues kick in and I spend all that extra time I have before kids, cleaning and organizing. I would organize my drawers. Once a month.
 
But as soon as I found that thing, it was like “Oh, this is why people have messy houses!” Because that’s what I wanted to spend my time doing was fibre.
 
NK Well, you’re lucky you found it at all.
 
JB Right!
 
NK Most of us don’t find it for a lot longer!
 
You first hit the national scene when you produced your DVD. How did you get involved in that production and how has it been received?
 
JB Oooo. Well, I think I’m lucky enough to have a partner who is also a bit of a dreamer, like myself. We tend to be kind of unrealistic people and so um, we home school and I think that it’s because we sit around a lot saying things like “We should do this and we should do that” and when a crazy idea pops up like “Hey, you know what we should do is a spinning DVD for textured art yarns.”
 
The other one doesn’t say “nah…that sounds crazy”. The other one says “Yes! Let’s do it!”
 
So um, that’s really all it was. It was sitting around one night, I had just started teaching some workshops and people in the workshop would tell me that it’s so much easier to learn in person, like see someone do it than to read it off a blog, or to see it in a like, Lexy of http://pluckyfluff.com had her book out, so see it in a book. So I was like, well, then I should do a DVD so people could watch me do it.
 
And my partner was like “yes, okay” and we had this friend who was a great guy and is a professor and lives a small way away but he had a little extra money and he happened to be at dinner one night when I said it and he piped up in the background and said “I’ll pay for it.”
 
And so we actually just happened to our community. This is one of my favourite stories.
 
We tapped into our community so a friend of ours had some money – he paid for it. I had another friend that shot footage. He was a cameraman for Animal Planet. And so he shot it. And we had another friend who did editing of videos and he edited it and he actually taught my partner how to edit. And then we had – my partner is in a band – so they did all the music for it. 
 
I knew a couple of spinners just on line – I hadn’t really met very many in person except for the workshop – so I called them up and said “Can we buy you a ticket so you can come out and spin with me in this DVD?”
 
And it just kind of went from there. There was a whole lot of drama about trying to find a space but we built a set. We got all our friends to come over and build a set. 
 
It’s one of those things that I didn’t know any of this about my friends – I knew my friends – but I didn’t know any of this about my friends until the option to help out came up.
 
And then I had this wealth of like, skills, at my disposal, and I think that everybody has that. They may not know it, but it’s one of those things that I like to tell people that – if you want to do something – like our first DVD you should totally do it because my guess is you talk to your friends, you have most of the skills that you need.
 
You don’t need to go to some company and ask them to pay for it or pay someone to do it, but you can really go back to when we lived a little more simply and tap into your community.
 
Because we did it without, like our friend loaned us the money, he said if it goes well, pay me back and the 8 or 10 friends who were involved in it get a percentage, and that’s it.
 
So it was really cool.
 
One of my favourite things is when it gets reviewed and people say it’s so professional.
 
I’m like, that excellent, because it’s totally, like none of us were professional like – we did it because we wanted to and all my friends thought it was like a cool and weird project.
 
Let me tell you – it’s totally funny when you get a professor of English and uh, a bunch of other people that do other weird jobs, and they spend the weekend shooting a video and then after editing for the next 6 months, and then afterwards you have all these friends that are talking about twist direction and grist and people that before had no idea what you did.
 
“What about the twist direction, and are you anchoring that?”
 
So, it was really fun.
 
NK You represent an entirely new and different character to the scene of fibre arts. You’re tattoo’d and you are very different from most of the middle aged women in spinning and weaving guilds, so would you say that you represent the face of the new fibre artist?
 
JB Oh goodness. I think I represent a face of a new fibre artist but not necessarily the new face.
 
I think that one thing I really love about fibre, and I didn’t get this the first two years, but one thing I really love about it is that people of all ages, all professions, all looks, tattoo’d, not tattoo’d, um, you know, people who teach medical school, people that are farmers, all come together and we are united by this thing that we love and I’ve met so many women and so many men that maybe I wouldn’t have ever connected with or wouldn’t think I had something in common with.
 
But they have become great resources and great friends to me. People that maybe, if they’d seen me before would cross to the other side of the street. But now, you know, we email, we talk on the phone, um, so I think that, I think that, I just happen to be different.
 
I think that it’s kind of fun for the, what did you call them, the middle aged conservative spinner?
 
I think it’s kind of fun for them to come to a workshop with someone that looks like me and realize that I’m not – that I’m nice!
 
NK Let’s talk about your art yarns. Your artistic profile is about crazy interesting yarns and they do seem to sell out quickly on your website.
 
Where did you come up with your approach to these yarns? Besides looking great, what do you use them for?
 
JB Okay, so, um, I – I’d already been spinning for a couple of years and a lot of hours when I started investigating and trying to figure out these techniques. So I really wanted them to be useable.
 
I wanted them to have structure. I wanted them to have balance. I wanted them to be – I was a knitter – I wanted them to be knit-able.
 
I didn’t want to have to set them in some special, like, tension set them or put weights on them. I wanted them to be good useable yarns, so for me, that’s what they are.
 
Like, everything I spin can be used just like the regular yarns. It’s going to look different because it’s got texture. Generally people rarely use them for very large pieces. They use them for small pieces or accent on larger pieces.
 
Although I did have a woman knit a full cocktail gown out of my vitreous humour eyeball yarn.
 
Which is something to see!
 
But, generally I try to apply all of the fundamentals of spinning to the techniques that I do so that you can use them.
 
And more than that, at least for spinners – now they do sell out to knitters really quickly, but I think that it’s a wonderful thing for spinners to learn because I say this all the time – anything you learn about spinning is going to make you a better spinner. These techniques, while you may not spin them all the time, or you may not knit with them all the time, are going to improve your fibre and hand control.
 
So I think that more than anything, they are great for spinners to learn because it really will teach you about what fibre can and can’t do.
 
NK What do you like to teach people in workshops that they’ve never tried before?
 
JB You know, I guess, I teach a workshop a month and they generally have – I cap it at 20 people and they, thankfully, they’ve been mostly selling out for the last year and a half or so, so I get a wide range of people. So I get people who have spun, like crazy art yarns that don’t have a lot of structure or a lot of balance. They just want something crazy.
 
So I am able to teach them how to gain some control over the yarns that they’re spinning.
 
And then I teach people that have been spinning traditional yarns for 30 years and they’ve never done any of this.
 
And so that’s, both ends of the spectrum are amazing.
 
But I teach – I like to teach people everything I know. If I could teach everybody everything I know that would be awesome.
 
Because I know that the next time I see that person – if they have everything I know? And they add it to what they know? The next time I see them they’re going to be able to teach me something brand new.
 
So I’m a big believer in teaching what you know so that we don’t have to re-invent the wheel every single time.
 
NK You made the cover of Spin Off a few months ago.
 
JB Whoo-hoo!
 
NK Yes! Now you’re writing a book for Interweave Press. Tell us what that’s about.
 
JB The book for Interweave Press is very exciting. It’s essentially, well, it’s everything I knew up to about a year ago. Now I know some more stuff.
 
But it is all of these textural techniques. It is very specific technical guides to creating them. Not only how to do them but why they work.
 
Why, how to work within the confines of what fibre can do. Not trying to break the rules of fibre but actually trying to figure out exactly what fibre can do and then using that knowledge to make the yarn look how you want it to look.
 
So the book has 33 techniques in it and it has skeins and step by step instructions and swatches for each technique.
 
NK You’ve been to Europe and Australia to teach and I see on your website that you’re going to France in 2012?
 
JB I’m hoping I am.
 
NK You’re booking very far ahead. What is the future hold for you in terms of your career – if you could peer into your crystal ball?
 
JB You know what’s exciting, is that I can now actually call it a career. It’s just so awesome!
 
I’ve always kind of not had a career. Like I couldn’t find the thing I loved and it’s only about 2 weeks ago that I turned to my partner and I was like, you know, I think I can call this my career now.
 
So I don’t know. More of the same, I hope.
 
I hope to keep teaching. I, teaching, is really what I love, love to do, so I hope to keep teaching. I teach a workshop a month, which is perfect for me. I’m home most of the time with the kids and I get to go and do these amazing workshops and meet amazing people.
 
And, so I hope to keep doing that.
 
I have two more book ideas fleshed out. I have a couple of new DVD’s we’re shooting this spring and I am going to keep writing for Spin Off and I’m done having babies.
 
I have 3 kids, by the way. I’m done.
 
And, I don’t know. I think that it’s all going to be about fibre. I don’t think I’ll leave fibre I really love it.
 
I do want to learn to weave. Someone gave me a loom and I really am excited about learning to weave. But, um, hopefully it will continue on the path that it’s on.
 
I really love it so….
 
NK Well, you know that we all wish you the best of luck in your career and I can speak for myself and say that you’ve been a wonderful teacher for the workshop you’ve been teaching for my guild.
 
So best of luck to you.
 
JB Thank you so much. It’s been great. It’s been amazing. And also, for all of you people out there, if you don’t belong to a guild totally join one. There’s something magical about being with people who are passionate about the same thing you are.
 
PLUS, you know, it’s an hour or two a month you get to be with people who don’t think you’re crazy. So – go join a guild.
 
NK If you’re interested in learning more about Jacey, visit her website at http://insubordiknit.com
 
For WeaveCast, I’m Nancy Smith Kilkenny.
 
Musical interlude
 
SM I’m here on beautiful Whidbey Island with John Acord, who is a weaver and electronic technologist.
 
So, first of all, could you explain a bit what an electronic technologist means?
 
JA Simply that I’m just using common ordinary readily available technology rather than re-inventing it myself.
 
Right now I’m working on some older computer dobby looms that have computer interfaces that are out of date. They were designed many years ago to work with the computers of the time, and, uh, because of the changes in computer technology they won’t work with modern computers.
 
So I’m re-designing the computer interface for the loom to make it work with today’s generation of computer.
 
SM Well, give us an example. What are specifically some of the looms that you’re developing new interfaces for?
 
JA  Well, the first one was the Combby, which was a very early computer loom. It was designed to work on the printer port of the computers and those are no longer available technology. Today’s computers don’t have printer ports. They have USB ports and serial ports.
 
So I put together an electronic change over that would plug in to the Combby loom in the place where the original parallel port plug in was and uses a serial port connection that all the modern computers have.
 
SM Basically you’ve solved the problem for the Schacht Combby where you used to have to keep around a computer that could run Windows 98.
 
JA That’s correct. And now it will run with any version of Windows 7 that is now available.
 
SM Now, I am so wishing I had not gotten rid of my Combby now!
 
JA It’s a nice loom. It’s a small portable loom. There’s nothing wrong with the loom. It’s just that the interface was out of date and so it seemed like a good thing to do – to keep this old loom going.
 
SM For the folks who are not familiar with the Combby, it is meant to be on a Schacht Baby Wolf and automate the process of raising the shafts. So if you had, like a, 8 shaft pattern you could just press two treadles and the loom would automatically pick up the right shafts for the pattern you are weaving.
 
JA Yes. These are all what we call computer dobby looms using a dobby mechanism – it allows the computer to choose which shafts instead of pushing a treadle or combination of treadles to lift the shafts that you are weaving.
 
Not only does it automatically lift the chosen shafts but it keeps track of all that and you don’t have to remember a sequence, the computer does the sequence for you.
 
SM When you say interface, you’re not talking about a software interface you’re actually talking about a physical hardware interface.
 
JA It’s physical hardware. What we’re dealing with is one physical interface and another that are electrical, that are incompatible.
 
So it’s from hardware to tie these two together and the bridge across those pieces of hardware is a little chunk of software.
 
Nothing very big, not like a computer operating system or a Windows program – just a little simple short program to do a translation from one protocol to the other protocol being the way that the weaving software talks to an individual type of loom.
 
SM And you just a few minutes ago showed me this. You lifted off the top of the black box that’s on the top part of the Combby where the electronics are, and you had inserted this little – it’s about 3 inches by 2 inches piece of hardware that plugs directly into that port, with some chips and some electronic components on it.
 
JA It’s not very big and it’s not very complicated. It doesn’t take a lot of electronics to do this. It’s an assembly of some very rudimentary off the shelf electronics components.
 
Not re-engineering or even re-defining anything, but just re-assembling the pieces to make it fit together. And because modern electronic pieces are small you get all you need on a little 2 inch square circuit board.
 
And this is made so that it is very easy. You just unplug the old and plug the new in and you’re ready to go.
 
SM Well, I loved how it fit inside so that you didn’t even have to like change the box or anything. 
 
You’d never know it was there except suddenly your computer now works with your loom!
 
JA Yes.
 
SM What are some of the other looms that you have come up with miraculous fixes for?
 
JA I don’t have a Combby myself. I actually did that one for a friend, but I have a J-Comp, which is a wonderful and robust, very nice weaving loom that was built about the same era as the Schacht Combby and it also has a parallel interface that’s no longer compatible with modern computers.
 
So I’m doing the same kind of plug in circuit board that goes into the J-Comp loom and gives you a serial interface to modern computers.
 
SM If somebody has a Schacht Combby or a J-Comp is this a product you’re selling?
 
JA It is. I have a website where they can go look at the information. It’s http://www.flatwaterfarm.com
 
There you’ll find information on the things that I’m working on.
 
SM Is it hard to install these things?
 
JA No. You definitely need to be able to have a screwdriver to take the cover off and they are all plug in devices that you unplug the old piece or the cable, that plugs in to the loom. Plug in the interface in it’s place and plug the cable back in put the cover back on with the screwdriver. A screwdriver is about all you need to do this.
 
SM Do you need any specialized software or is that all included in the hardware?
 
JA It’s all built in the hardware.
 
The thing you need to do is, if you used to run this loom with weaving software that called, for instance for J-Comp, now the piece of hardware and the piece of software addition runs with the Macomber protocol.
 
So you just tell your weaving software that this is a Macomber loom and it will run just like it always has.
 
SM That is so simple and elegant! I’m so delighted that somebody has come up with a solution for these great older looms that have just kind of fallen by the wayside electronically.
 
JA It’s very satisfying because they’re really nice looms. All of them, Combby, the J-Comp and I’m also working on an older Macomber loom that has an archaic interface. They’re all good looms that weave nicely and the J-Comp is a nice large size loom with, made out of beautiful furniture grade cherry wood. I mean, it’s a shame to not use it just because the interface is old.
 
SM What I want to talk about next is a little bit of your electronics and your weaving background. Because that’s such an unusual thing. I mean there aren’t many of you around. We’re glad you’re here with us making these cool tools, but how did you come to learn about weaving and how did you come to learn about electronics?
 
JA Well it goes back to a young man. I learned to weave. I was living in Nevada City, CA where there was a wonderful group of artists and artisans, and was introduced to weaving and had done some weaving for several years in my 20’s. Then I put it aside and was learning a living and raising a family. 
 
My career choices started out in physics, studying physics and putting myself through school by repairing equipment for the science department. 
 
I made up a lot of electronics. That’s where I learned my electronics, mostly, is in that environment.
 
And then at one point I got to where I decided I really didn’t like the theoretical aspect of it so much, that I was getting into. I wanted more hand’s on things and I looked at a couple different avenues. One of them was electronics engineering. But a friend introduced me to the elevator trade.
 
At that time, a lot of the things that I had been doing with scientific gear and electronics were being applied to elevator control. Programming micro-computers and making the electronics work with the physical devices.
 
After I retired from the elevator business and had a little more time, I went back to weaving.
 
I have several four shaft looms that I was weaving on. I was introduced to some people in the Whidbey Weavers Guild and I thought well, this would be interesting, and joined the guild.
 
The guild had a computer dobby loom, one of the AVL workshop dobby looms. Since I had always done very simple weaving looking at the dobby loom looked to be something interesting.
 
So I checked it out and worked on it for a while. That was really my introduction to computer dobby looms.
 
I had an opportunity to do a little bit of adjustment and repair work on that loom, which it needed. One thing led to another. A couple people in the guild found out that I could work on these kind of things and it just sort of blossomed out from there.
 
SM Now I understand that you’re not the only weaver in your household?
 
JA My wife weaves. She’s kind of part of getting me back into weaving. I had been thinking about it a little bit and she had a friend who had a loom and she said “Oh I think that would be interesting. I’d like to learn that.”
 
She brought the loom home and asked me to help her set it up. I did and remembered how much I enjoyed that and so we both began weaving again, together.
 
SM What do you like to weave?
 
JA I’m really interested in complex patterns. I probably lean that way because I’ve dealt all my life with computer programs and solving complex problems so, the intricacies of fine pattern work is the thing that is very interesting to me.
 
SM Are there any other looms that you are looking at creating interfaces for?
 
JA Not at this point but anything that comes up would certainly be interesting to look at.
 
SM Ah – so if somebody has a weird old computer driven loom you’d be the man to get in touch with.
 
JA I’d certainly like to look at it.
 
(laughter)
 
SM Now one of the things I saw on WeaveTech is that you actually have made a dobby from scratch at one point.
 
JA Well, that was an interesting project. I had a weaver come to me that had a 12 shaft table loom.
 
She wanted it converted into a floor loom. The table loom had originally be operated with levers and it was easy to get 12 levers on. But I was sitting down trying to figure out how we could get 12 or 14 treadles on a 24 inch loom and by the time you put that many treadles in they’re just too narrow. You can’t do it.
 
SM It’d be like typing with your toes.
 
JA Yes, it would be very like typing with your toes. So I suggested that we convert it to a computer dobby loom.
 
Her reaction was “I’m too old to learn computers. I don’t want to computer loom.”
 
Well I had actually been giving it some thought. At one point I stopped and read a little bit about ergonomics and looms and things. I had sort of kicking around in the back of my mind a way to do this with switches and a simple control system where you could set the program – you would have a dobby interface but you didn’t have to have a computer.
 
What it had was a group of switches, like a light switch on the wall, just an on an off switch – the equivalent really of treadles.
 
Instead of tying up a string from a shaft to a treadle you turned on a switch.
 
Then once you had that switch set in, then you needed to have the equivalent of pushing a treadle. Kind of like pushing a treadle using a keypad, one through fourteen.
 
So you could have 12 pattern selections as if you had 12 treadles and two for tabby. It had a keypad, kind of like a little phone keypad and you would press a number on that and that was the first pattern selection.
 
And then it had, like many computer dobby looms, two treadles, one to lift the shafts, one to lower the shafts. So that the actual physical lifting and lowering the shafts was just like any other loom.
 
SM That’s such an interesting meld up of the idea of a tie up loom and a traditional computer dobby where everything is kind of like a peg plan.
 
JA It was just something that was kicking around in the back of my head and then this person comes up and says “Could you do it?” And so I built it.
 
It’s off now and being used to weave on and working happily.
 
There’s actually 14 rows of 12 switches. The first row of switches is treadle 1 and if you want shafts 1, 3, 7 and 9 to lift for that treadle you turn on switch 1, 3, 7, and 9 and then for the next treadle you set the switches for it however shafts you want to pick up for that treadle.
 
And then the treadle selection is the equivalent of putting your foot on a treadle is the keypad.
 
SM So basically you’ve programmed the treadles ahead of time…
 
JA Just like you would tie up a loom by going underneath the loom and tying the shafts to the treadles.
 
SM Right. And then after you’ve got those 14 switches programmed, then you just push them to do your actual weaving.
 
JA That’s right. And actually I posted some information for it. On WeaveTech. I posted a description of this and a picture on the list. So you can go find it.
 
It’s posted under the file name of A No Computer Dobby Loom.
 
SM And if you don’t know what WeaveTech is, it is a Yahoo group.
 
JA Yes, it’s for intermediate and advanced weavers and the topics are technical and complex weaving.
 
SM It’s a great resource if you’re interested in multi-shaft weaving.
 
So what is next for you?
 
JA Priority is to finish up the J-Comp interface because I want to get weaving on my loom.
 
And getting information out to people that have J-Comp looms, that there is a solution to keep the old loom going. Just like the Combby – if you’ve got a Combby and your old computer died or you have a J-Comp and you want to run it with your laptop instead of a desktop computer then you can get one of these interfaces and keep using the loom that you like.
 
SM Thank you so much for being on the show. It’s been a pleasure.
 
JA Thank you.
 
Musical interlude
 
That’s all for this episode. And now it’s time to get warped because everyone knows you have to be warped to weave.
 
Musical interlude