Abbie Groves Creative

  Perfect Angle I Can't Confirm Yet I am going through a self-study course via the OHS, and I am currently on Unit 1: The Basic Weaves. I have already written about my mis-haps and adventures with the first several weaves. The fifth project is the first twill, and it's the first time I've finished a weave and genuinely not known whether I got it right. Right now, on the loom, the twill line looks like it's sitting at 45 degrees, which is what I'm after. But here's the thing about twill, and about this wool in particular: what I'm looking at isn't the final answer. The angle you see on the loom is a negotiation between sett, beat, and what happens in the wash. Once the cloth comes off, gets wet, and the wool relaxes and fulls, that line can hold steady, shift steeper, or go shallower. Until then, I'm reading a draft, not finished cloth. And if you've been following along, you know the wash is exactly where this wool has surprised me before. The b...

Finding Joy in Your Craft: Why Clicks Don't Define Meaning When I first started weaving seriously, I had this vision of what it would become. I imagined a beautiful Instagram feed. A growing following. People that are excited about my work. I thought that external validation would be the thing that made the craft feel real and valuable. That lasted about six months before I realized I was exhausted. Not exhausted from the weaving itself—the weaving felt good, felt necessary. I was exhausted from performing the weaving. From thinking about how it would look in a photo. From counting interactions and watching metrics like they were the heartbeat of my practice. From feeling small when a post didn't perform well, even though the thing I'd made was beautiful and true. Grand Prix towel in plaited cobalt twill Clicks Don't Mean Quality Here's something I wish I'd known earlier: clicks and followers and likes don't measure the quality of your work. They don't ...