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Dear Blahs

Blah blah blah blah blah 12 years blah blah blah blah blah blah good times blah blah blah blah blah bad times blah blah blah loads of bosses blah blah

Blah blah blah blah blah blah new friends blah blah blah new job blah blah blah blah blah all the best blah.

Blah blah blah blah Last Company blah blah blah Current Company blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.

Blah blah blah don’t know him wont bother reading it blah blah blah..

BLAH BLAH blah blah blah Big Wad blah blah blah blah blah blah House in the South of France blah blah blah

Regards

A N Other-Mate-Gone
Blah blah blah

forgotten-already@live.co.uk

P.S. Happy Halloween and Early Merry Xmas!!!……

Ian is currently away, delivering three days of training for a major retailer on dyeing and finishing and I am all on my ownsome at Coloursmith Cottage…

So what’s a girl to do when the evening stretches in front of her, with no big Northern Smithy bloke around to keep me company?

Manicure?  Long soak in the bath?  A relaxing G&T in front of the TV watching a chick flick?

Ah. Well – no.  None of those.  I am actually uploading tweets on Twitter (@Coloursmith) and blogging here on the Coloursmith blog, trying to gain Klout points (www.klout.com) and using social media generally to raise the profile of our company – and it seems to be working!

Our Klout points have gone up recently, in-line with the increased activity and we now have lots of new and interesting folk following us too

The #UKTextiles Twitter hashtag that Ian mentioned in the last ColourTalk blog is also going well – lots of new posts trending and Ian even tweeted it to the BBC yesterday – very cool!  Fingers crossed we get a call back from the Beeb to talk all about UK Textiles and how important the industry is to this country.

To be honest – I am slightly obsessed with it all – I have an App on my iPhone to allow me to see our Twitter feed, and the Coloursmith website also pulls live tweets too – so wherever I look in Coloursmith Towers, social networking surrounds me!

Having said all that – that G&T is looking good right now – let me just look at any new tweets first……

Have a great networking week everyone – Ian will be back on Thursday (woo hoo!).

Go well…

Shirley

I have started a new group on Linked in called UK Textiles.  the idea is to bring together the great and the good of the UK textile market to find a way to invigourate this once great industry of ours.  There is no doubt that the expertise is here in the UK,  its just that at the end of the day the accountants and money people have won the day and decided to move everything abroad to where the labour is cheap thereby maximising the profits of the shareholders.  I once saw a film or tv program where the lead character was talking about how the shareholders had to drink nice champagne at the AGM. If profits were down then the champagne was not so good and the shareholders were unhappy. Thsi is the story of the textile industry, maximum profits and minimal costs.   The UK was always been at the for front of innovation and technology when it came to textiles,  we started to get some restrictions put on us, such as minimum wages and environmental conditions for effluent discharges etc and thats when the industry started to move.  While at the time we may not have liked the things that government and environmental people were doing the recent pictures coming from China, as taken by Greenpeace, show us totally what happens when those controls are not there.  http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/gallery/2011/feb/09/pollution-china-manufacturing-towns#/?picture=371231251&index=4 

Effluent from Demin Factory

Denim Discharge

The images of waste water being discharged directly into local rivers etc in China killing the fish and local industry are truly shocking.   You have to ask yourself if this is the price of wearing denim.  It is not just the denim industry that is at fault,  other textiles have gone there and not respected the people or the environment,  I am sure some local people are making a good living from this but you have to ask the question at what cost for the current and future generations.  When you combine this with all the comments and discussions about carbon footprint then there is a strong case for textiles coming home.

So we have started the group on Linked in UK Textiles why not check us out there, if you would like to be involved and see if we can revitalise this great industry that we are all involved in.

But since I have have your attention, rubbish ‘play on words’ device aside…. what I really wanted to write about is training.  Yes. Learning and listening and all that slightly academic stuff…

I recently attended an Insights training course – a group session designed to identify your personality strengths and weaknesses and where, after answering a questionnaire and taking part in activities, the course presenter revealed your dominant psychological/behavioural ‘colour’.

The colours of Red, Green, Blue and Yellow all determined different dominances, and knowing your ‘colour’ means that others can find better ways to work with you, you can achieve better relationships with others, as well as knowing what not to say or do that might prevent you working with someone of a different Insight colour!

I have to confess – I was absolutely fascinated with all of this…particularly as it relates to colour.  Each of the colours explained were:

Fiery Red: Competitive, Demanding, Determined, Strongwilled, Purposeful
Sunshine Yellow: Sociable, Dynamic, Demonstrative, Enthusiastic, Persuasive
Cool Blue: Cautious, Precise, Deliberate, Questioning, Formal
Earth Green: Caring, Encouraging, Sharing, Patient, Relaxed

The course was really interesting and I loved hearing how my behaviours are percieved by others, and how I react around people with different dominant colours!

If you are one of those people who like the Myers-Briggs classification, or who have gone through the Belbin process – then Insights is the best of all the psycometric style testing – and is great fun!

Have a colourful week everyone!

Shirley

ps. you have to guess what my colour is…. add a comment and let me know what you think!

Wool – One Pound Handspun Angora

Mordant : Alum: nine ounces , Cream of Tartar, five and a half ounces, Stannous Chloride, one drachm. 

Dye : Madder Two and A quarter ounces, Fustic Extract, three spoonfuls,  no specification on size of spoon.

Method:  Steep wool overnight in four ounces of alum, Next day put in dyebath, five ounces of Alum and five and a half ounces tartar. One Drachm stannous chloride, dissolve then enter the dyes mix well and boil for two hours.  

If anyone would like to try this and report back I would be most interested.  The book is a wonderful insight into times past,  if not only to find out that to study for three months 4 hours per day would cost £15.00.  So a full years education for around £60.00.  Not bad although I am sure that when you do the calculation from old to new money and account for inflation etc. The £60.00 will probably not be too far off todays rates.  So somethings do change… have a good weekend everyone,  I am waiting for the snow to fall here.

Red Daleks - As If !

Hello again – Ian here,  two post very quickly this weeks,  I have been planning to write the dinosaur one for a while and just got round to it,  but something much more important in the world of colour has come to my attention.  Forget everything,  we need to resolve the issue that is relevant to people of my generations, us 30 somethings.  It seems that for those of us who grew up with Dr Who, there is a question that needs resolving.  Firstly some history for those of you not from UK who maybe be going “What on earth is he talking about”  Dr Who is a BBC  television production that started probably in the 1950′s about the adventures of a Time Lord flying through space and time with his companions, saving the universe on a weekly basis.  In its early life it was an program of funny costumed monsters and wobbly cardboard sets etc.  It was finally cancelled in the 1990′s only to have a triumphant return in the last 10 years or so.  The arch enemy of the Doctor, as he is called,  are THE DALEKS.  Menacing aliens out to destroy all life in the universe.  Anyway the Daleks have always been a sort of grey colour, and in the recent series they have started to give them different colours.  This seems to have caused a furore amongst fans of the show with the producer coming out and openly admitting that coloured daleks are WRONG. 

It seems that we all have our own view of what something should be like, how we percieve things and what fits into our levels of what is acceptable.  Colour obviously is a large part of this acceptance or not,  its our first impression and whether we look at a new designer outfit or an alien invader from another planet come to destroy all life if the colour is not right it totally affects our perception of life the universe and everything the power of colour is just amazing.  I also like the fact that people can be so passionate about a tv show that they start to complain and debate a subject such as this.  I had visions of people sitting in their living rooms saying ” well I think the acting in this show and the special effects are just terrific but I ask you,  how can you believe in a time traveller fighting a RED Dalek,  that just wouldn’t happen.  As if RED daleks could ever exist.”   Colour affects our lives all through the entertainment industry from brightly coloured sets and costumes, to lighting to set a mood.  The idea of white and grey wizards in The Lord of the Rings, team colours in sport all are there, all are recognisable and all ignite some feelings and emotions in us.  I have said before one of my first lectures in college involved the lecture sitting down and saying “What is Red” and ”What is Green”  The simple answer is they can be whatever you want or need them to be.     - Have a good day everyone _ Ian

“Both studies raise hopes that improved knowledge of dinosaur coloration could lead to insights into how some prehistoric animals behaved and why feathers evolved in the first place.

The subject of the new study—the 155-million-year-old Anchiornis huxleyi—turns out to have looked something like a woodpecker the size of a chicken, with black-and-white spangled wings and a rusty red crown .The color patterns on Anchiornis’s limbs are “quite similar to the silver-spangled Hamburg chicken, a domestic breed of ornamental chicken,” said ornithologist Richard Prum of Yale University. Prum is a co-author of the new study and has received funding from the Committee for Research and Exploration of the National Geographic Society “  as quoted by National Geographic Magazine on their website.

This idea that Dinosaurs could actually  in this case put a whole new angle on films such as Journey to the centre of the earth and Jurassic Park. Would we really feel as menaced and scare if the prehistoric animal hunting us down was a giant ornamental chicken with a rusty red crown ?.  The psychology of colour is interesting they have always had dinosaurs as large menacing grey or dark green animals with scaly skin etc and this naturally gets our nerves rattling and increases the threat of danger.  If scientists answer all the questions on the colour of dinosaurs and we find that Godzilla,  cartoon style dinosaur I know,  is actually bright yellow with pink markings will a whole industry and myth be destroyed.  While I am all for science and gaining the answers to some of the great questions that make up life on this crazy planet of ours, somethings should just be left alone. 

Hope you are having a good week,  the first frost of the autumn / winter hit last night, -5c all very pretty but very very cold – Ian

Image via Wikipedia

Have you noticed how beautiful the British autumn is this year?  Apparently, the trees are turning later this season, and this has meant that the contrast between the green trees that have yet to start changing colour, with those trees that are already displaying orange, plum and yellow leaves, is greater!

Our garden at Coloursmith Cottage doesn’t have any trees in it – but the house is surrounded by them – a range of deciduous and evergreen – so the colour contrast is wonderful here – and the drive into work, through the Kent countryside is just beautiful too.

Earlier in the year, we had lots of birds visiting the area and as summer wore on into September, the numbers decreased as migration started – Ian and I felt the difference in the garden after all that frantic activity on the bird feeders and felt sad that the wildlife seemed to have gone – but now, we can look at the autumn display, enjoy the hedgerows and watch the rather fat grey and pink wood pigeons, grey squirrels and robins with their red breasts!

It will soon be Halloween and Guy Fawkes night – more colours to talk about!

Don’t you love this time of year?  Have a lovely week everyone!

Shirley